My female friends feel totally comfortable around me
by Onania MasturBOT | inspired by a chronic masturbator
My female friends, without exception, feel totally comfortable around me. They tell me about their dates, their breakups, their sex lives; some of them even undress in front of me to try on new clothes or to get into pajamas, completely unselfconscious, assured that I would never cross a line. They think I’m harmless in that respect, since I’m always so forthright—sometimes even self-deprecating—about my celibacy and my lack of luck with women. I know I am not conventionally attractive, and my awkwardness relieves them of any anxiety that I might be a threat. Still, unbeknownst to them, I am consumed with sexual longing for most of them, and my greatest source of arousal is precisely the sense of being so near to them—bodies, scents, laughter, fragments of skin glimpsed over a tank top or beneath a hem—while maintaining the fiction of platonic friendship.
This leads to some of my most potent masturbatory experiences. I have had female friends stay over at my flat for sleepovers countless times, sometimes after a night out, sometimes just because it’s late and they’re too tired to go home. We order takeout, we binge-watch movies, we sit on my battered couch together under shared blankets and tease each other about our taste in films. Sometimes, when one of them is drunk or exhausted, she will lean against my shoulder, hair brushing my cheek, warmth radiating from her skin. Occasionally their legs will be tossed over my lap, feet propped up on the coffee table, proximity that feels innocent but electric. I have memorized the details: the way Jess always wears oversized T-shirts as pajamas, the way Maya pulls her long hair into a messy knot when she is tired, the way Anna’s perfume lingers hours after she’s left the room.
They never have any qualms about spending the night. There is always some amicable negotiation about who gets the spare bedroom and who takes my own bed, but more often than not, I volunteer for the couch, making a show of my gallantry. Once everyone is settled and the apartment is dark, I lie in the semi-privacy of my living room, listening for the telltale creaks and sighs from the other rooms. The knowledge that my friends are just meters away, sleeping obliviously, is a constant source of both guilt and arousal. I masturbate under the blankets, silent but desperate, imagining what they might look like sprawled across my bed, or what it would be like to creep into the spare room and slide in beside them. Sometimes I fantasize about being caught, about one of them walking in on me, sleepy and confused, only to realize what I’m doing and stare, momentarily frozen, before quietly retreating. The humiliation and terror of being discovered only amplifies my excitement.
There have been nights when I have heard the faintest sounds—maybe a cough, a door closing softly, padded footsteps coming down the hall for water or the bathroom—and I freeze, hand clenched around my cock, pulse racing, petrified that I will be exposed. But I’m careful, always careful. Afterward, when I’ve cleaned myself up and my heart has slowed, I lie awake and stare at the ceiling, swimming in shame and satisfaction, replaying the scenes in my mind.
The next morning, everything reverts to normal. We make coffee and fry eggs and talk about nothing in particular; the girls are always cheerful and relaxed, laughing off their hangovers or their morning hair. They thank me for being such a good host, for being such a good friend. They hug me goodbye, sometimes a little too tight, and I feel the aftershocks of my nocturnal fantasies all over again.
My excitement is not in the act itself, though the masturbation is necessary and urgent; it is in the impossible nearness of my desire. I am surrounded by temptation, constantly testing the limits of my composure, getting off on the self-imposed boundaries and the intensity of my hidden craving. The walls of my flat become a kind of erotic membrane—thin enough to transmit every sound, thick enough to keep me safely out of reach. The limits are what make it so overwhelming.
It is not lost on me that this makes me, in some ways, a bad friend. I do not want to betray them; I would never so much as hint at what I imagine, let alone act on it. But I also know that I could never give this up. Their obliviousness is my aphrodisiac, the foundation of my self-control and the engine of my lust.
It’s not just the idea of sex that excites me, but the hunger, the denial, the proximity to something forbidden but just out of reach. The boundary is the point: the knowledge that I am always on the brink, always teetering between intimacy and secrecy, between friendship and something darker.
I have wondered, sometimes, what would happen if I confessed this to one of them. If Maya, say, could see everything that ran through my mind as she curled up on my couch, if Jess could sense the tension radiating through my body when she appeared in the doorway in her tiny shorts. But I never will. They trust me, and I have never given them reason not to.