At the risk of getting too sexy too quickly, have you ever looked down at the flopping, moistening parts of your pubic mound and thought, “what?” Good! Then you’re the perfect audience for the Sinclair Intimacy Institute’s Forbidden Pleasures “A Better Sex Video Series” 2003 DVD, A LOVER’S GUIDE TO SELF PLEASURING.
Your memory and perineum may recognize the Sinclair Intimacy Institute as the same organization that brought us The Better Sex Guide to Anal Pleasure. They sound like some kind of academic research center, but they’re more of a dildo store. Which is fine. If you want to market your lubricant like it’s anthropology class, this is America. And nothing is more American than dressing up your sex stuff in a weird disguise.
So here’s the problem with marketing your sex toys as a 60 minute masturbation educational video: jerking off isn’t that hard. Once you’re done with all your advice, you have fifty nine and a half minutes to kill. And the Sinclair Intimacy Institute kills every second of it.
Like he did in the video about anal pleasure, the “Director of Sex Education,” Mark Schoen, emerges to cautiously burp his catch phrase, “It’s hArd to t-talk abOUT sex.” And then he proves it by reading a teleprompter like he’s trying to blink the location of his kidnappers. It’s unclear why he’s here or why he would put himself through this. He’s explaining what we already know from the DVD’s name, he’s terrible, and he hates every second of it. We are about to watch several fully nude couples jerk off, so maybe they wanted to add something so unsexy it could never be mistaken for pornography. And if that is his job, Mark is the best.
They quickly introduce the couples we’ll be watching masturbate because this video isn’t for single people. Those people know how to jerk off. These are self pleasuring tips for loving couples only. And since not a lot of married people say, “Will you fuck in front of two cameras for $300? I have a masters in wet holes,” they are mostly the same performers from other Sinclair Institute videos. Wendy is one of my favorites because she will comfortably go to town on herself with something called the Industrial Colondectomy Only For Use with Sriracha Mayonnaise Experimental Buttplug and then give a cute interview about how she thought masturbation was against God’s law before this very morning.
Mark tries to explain how what we’re seeing is “award winning,” but doesn’t list what those awards are, nor what kind of madmen are out there forming academies to judge and award The Best Jerk Off Instructional Video. There would be no good place in the home or office to display that honor, and when I tried to Google it I got very distracted. It might not be a real award. Anyway, we meet Tony and Tania who are playing moon checkers in their underwear. Tania is a limber woman who seems suspiciously experienced pleasuring herself in front of a camera crew, and Tony is the first boy grown from lab bologna.
Joelean and Kristian make out over another checkers variant. I think the production designer knew everything on this set was going to have to be burned and they were trying to get rid of some old parlor games. Or this video was actually produced by sincere health educators and they think everyone incorporates backgammon into their lovemaking.
Chris has the sexual energy of someone whose religion requires him to stay one backgammon board away from his wife and the body of a loaf of bread learning to swim. But I remember him from the other video and I know he has the flexible anal muscles Lisa’s hand, forearm, and elbow crave. Let’s get to the real education, though.
I can’t blame them for this being insane since there’s no right way to do it, but the video is still explaining itself and the basic concept of jerking off. They say, “You’ll learn about expanding eroticism, variety, and communication through the self-knowledge that masturbation can help achieve,” which should give you some idea of the tone. The producers think this is a postgraduate course, but for people who have had sex with their faithful partner so many times they are bored, yet got to this place in their life without ever trying to jerk off. It’s like producing a DVD called How to Disable and Dispose of a Malfunctioning Bologna Boy, A Video Manual for Tony-Growing Scientists. They know! This is their specific area of expertise!
The video’s real host, Jane Monreal, walks in and sits down to tell us we’re about to hear the troubled history of masturbation. She professionally enunciates every word like jerking off was declared dead after a police-involved shooting. She is absolutely committed to the bit of this being education, and not a XXX marketing campaign for fuckable silicon tubes. The producers knew some viewers would be getting excited to watch nine couples expand their eroticism through self pleasure, so this is how they cooled things down– a person in a literal beige pantsuit to give a history lesson on masturbator civil rights. But this is also a fakeout, because they’re doing “OLD MYTHS” first.
They cut to some street interviews with a few pedestrians saying masturbation isn’t “sex.” Which means put that boner away, 2003 DVD masturbators, because we have a semantic argument to litigate. Does masturbation count as sex? It obviously didn’t before anyone asked, but now the very dumb question is a way for pedantic nerds to be difficult. And here’s one now.
“Um, technically,” whines Beverly Whipple, Ph.D., RN, FANN. She is a doctor, a registered nurse, and a FANN of masturbation (the extra N is for extra No Actually It Counts). I don’t know why the video is wasting its time on this. It sounds like a talking point the world’s dumbest person would give to the world’s most bullied 9th grader, and they never go anywhere with it. They insist again and again that masturbation is a useful tool! Taking notes on the best sections of your penis to touch will help your partner! I can’t believe they’re still trying to give the owner of A LOVER’S GUIDE TO SELF PLEASURING permission to touch themselves. Again: they know! Again: it’s their area of expertise! And she’s not the only very educated masturbator to say stupid shit about it. Meet masturbation author Eli Coleman, Ph.D.:
Dr. Eli talks about the waxing and waning of masturbation acceptance. Um, actually, “many” cultures “celebrated” it, he claims, backing it up with a montage of historical art. It’s not very convincing. I didn’t even know a montage of masturbation tapestries could seem “too short,” but it’s how I would describe Dr. Eli’s. Honestly, I don’t trust anyone who looks like Eli Coleman, Ph.D. and willingly declares himself a masturbation expert. This guy chose a life where he relives his saddest moment from middle school every day. And look at his sources:
This is a sculpture from the year 700 of a skeleton father jerking off. Was restraint not invented until 701? This looks like someone trying to invent the first Hustler cartoon before his hands fell off from leprosy. I mean, I don’t have a Ph.D. in pulling on myself, but if a culture is capable of making this, I say don’t use them as an example of good masturbation judgment. This thing must have taken so long to carve with Middle Age tools. At any point during the many days that went into it, the artist could have thought, “When a skeleton has a baby in one hand, he probably shouldn’t have a rock hard cock in the other.” If this was charcoal, sure, I could understand a sudden and uncontrollable surge of horniness while you’re sketching one side of a sex lich. But a stone sculpture!? Ridiculous. Fucking caveman pervert shit. Let’s see another.
Again, I’m not sure this is the best art to show when you’re trying to sell us on how history used to be so cool with masturbation. This might be a servant in the 1800s being very bad at his job as toilet paper. The point I’m making is this video is worse than all over the place. It’s functionally insane. This is the cheapest copywriter the sex toy industry had to offer listing every masturbation fact they remember in random order. And they repeat. For example Beverly comes back in around here to declare Medieval people knew masturbation was real sex. And that it was wasting the seed. And that it wasn’t real sex? I know this sounds crazy, but they might be going too quickly through the entire history of self pleasure.
Beverly Whipple, FANN, brings up famous enemies of touching yourself like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg. It has been over 100 years and people are still talking about how hard the guys fucked for thinking they could stop masturbation (which we now know as a vital tool) with ordinary snack foods. I wasn’t kidding when I said this video contained all human masturbation knowledge, as recalled by a vibrator distributor using 2003’s Internet. We cut back to Jane who visibly can’t believe the cue card says this:
Jane is normally much more polished than this, so if you were wondering what it takes to rattle an anal pleasures host, it’s a random list of groin tortures dropped without a warning or happy ending. And now that you appreciate living in a society which allows extreme masturbators to keep their genitals, they cut to my favorite guy who looks right into the camera and says:
Eli and Beverly tell you to just ignore this ass crushing adult sex haver. Grown ups are allowed to masturbate! “It’s real sex,” reminds Beverly. And if you’re thinking, “Jesus Christ, when are they going to get to anything close to a point, I agree 100%.” And they’re nowhere close. Jane starts listing situations where you might use masturbation, and every single one of them is something an embarrassed person would say to hide their shame. Like when your actual erotic lover is out of town, or when their real human holes simply can’t take any more of your insatiable lust… maybe they’re at the Cool Dude Semen Collecting Championships, you don’t know. It’s such a mess, and then suddenly, my next favorite guy:
It’s a stunning panel of experts, but I worry these wet-dicked gentlemen might be plants to set up strawman arguments for Eli and Beverly to counter. And counter they do. Did you know you can do stuff to yourself even when someone else is in the room? Checkmate, sepia-toned sex machine and toy train fucker. And now we’re about to prove it with all these nude, masturbating babes. Oh, but first…
You’re not going to believe this, but there are areas of the genitals you can touch that feel good. Which, again, is a useful tool! I’m not sure you’re getting it, nerd, so let me explain it like it was a Zelda boss:
These are your targets. At many points during masturbation, you’re going to be lost inside a maze of sloppy guts, and these glowing areas can be found at any exit. Once you identify one, go ahead and rub the affordable and dishwasher safe devices available on the Sinclair Intimacy Institute’s easy-to-use world web landing page on it. This counts as real sex, and historically it would have gotten you either applause or a ritual degroining.
Despite already telling you each of these things several times, Dr. Beverly presents her list of the Four Major Benefits of Masturbation. Number one, she says “It feels good. This is the most important part.” I don’t have a joke, I think she might be right. Number two, it’s a great release when your partner’s not available. Or your toy train, whatever. By the way, this 15 second list of obvious things had its own title card.
Number three, it’s a great tool to learn about your body. She and Eli have made this point at least 7 times already which supports my theory that this is not a deep field of science. You can get a doctorate in masturbation by walking past a chimpanzee cage at an unlucky time. And finally, number four, “in the age of AIDS, it’s a safe sex practice.” This sounds like a mood killer, but while she’s saying it, a guy named Lee is furiously pounding one out and Jane suggests “let’s explore the nature of self pleasure.” The editor of A LOVER’S GUIDE TO SELF PLEASURING should be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chaos. But to be fair, I’m its first owner to not immediately fast forward to the naked people jerking off. Speaking of:
Charles shows the viewer how to do it. First you get a loose reverse grip on your flopping monster hog and then you fail to wrangle it like an undermanned firehose. Charles absolutely loses a wrestling match against his own absurd penis. There is nothing within a seven foot radius of Charles that goes unfucked, and there’s nothing he can do. He seems sorry about it, but it’s violent. It looks like he was bit on the dick by a radioactive horse and he’s still testing the limits of his new abilities. Chris does a demonstration too, but his is less impressive.
Chris gently rests his human-sized dong in a thermos called “The Slipper” in what has to be the least effective commercial ever filmed. What I mean is, if you sold a product that erased “The Slipper” from my brain I would buy it at any price. Chris self pleasures like a Play-Doh Fun Factory Playset. I will never watch someone carve gyro meat with an erection again. Julie, on the other hand, lights up the screen. She places her crotch against the couch, lifts both feet of the ground, and vulva-levitates for three straight minutes.
Her lover Billy comes in to try to put his appreciation for this move into words and can’t. She’s handlessly bringing herself to climax with a pommel horse routine. The situation calls for a poet, and Billy is, at best, a bookstore creep. But great point, Billy, about how seeing a naked woman bang an invisible astronaut makes you think, “Oh, right, now that you mention it… sex!” I’m not arguing with him, but is it conceivable to say less? Dumber? This video has somehow assembled the twenty people on Earth most eager to discuss masturbation and not a single one of them has anything to say about it.
Even A LOVER’S GUIDE TO SELF PLEASURING has figured out they’ve said all there is to say about the subject, so at this point of the video the wives lay down some towels and silently test sex toys to completion. I’m not learning much, but it’s getting really good. Then Jane ruins it by explaining the penis, like as a basic concept.
This is the problem with declaring yourself an expert on something everybody already knows. You end up halfway into your penis stroking guide and think, “These beginner masturbators need my take on penises existing!” Even assuming you’re some cave fish who has only ever seen someone fuck by ejecting ovum from their beak, at this point in the video you have already been shown the full functionality of 13 different penises. I don’t want to explain a penis mistake with a penis analogy, but this is like Charles explaining what cheeseburgers are after you’ve already watched him prepare and feed 13 of them to his penis.
It’s a testament to how easy this course is that you can go from “WHO IS PENIS” to “ANAL & PROSTATE PLEASURES” in five seconds. What a gross way to put it, by the way. It sounds like something Willy Wonka would say if you asked him what the fuck he wants at 3am.
This section is mostly Chris demonstrating the versatility and storage capacity of the human butthole. Because of the strange choices I’ve made with my life, I’ve already seen him do this, so I’ll go ahead and skip this part.
Despite insisting this entire time that masturbation is for couples, it’s time for the section on couples masturbation. Or as most people call it, “hand stuff.”
Once the hand stuff starts, things get completely out of hand. Things start going in mouths and holes and Jane has to improvise, “These couples use more than genital stimulation to enhance each other’s self pleasure.” Creatively speaking I wouldn’t change anything, it’s great, but I presumably bought a video on how to masturbate and got a terrible, insane video essay on the half-remembered history of pervert torture followed by nine married couples doing normal sex. I counted 16 times they told me “Masturbation is a tool your partner can use to learn what you like,” which is the exact quantity of “Cyberskin Realistic Dong” I ordered.
I wasn’t making that up: Cyberskin Realistic Dong.
Everything Jane Monreal says is magical. It’s like they wrote her an entire script of opening lines and each one was so good they used them all. “In the excitement phase, engorgement causes the erection,” she explains. I found myself transcribing every line she punctuated in her practiced newscaster voice. “Butt plugs: a dildo made especially for anal use are one way to explore anal eroticism. It’s designed to not get lost inside you.” She talks about sex like a U.N. committee passed a resolution to work your naughty balls. “The anal muscles are a source of bacteria, going slowly is the key to success,” she says as if there were a failure condition to shoving things up your butt. And Jane leaves us with the perfect sign off:
It started rough and no one learned anything. Between the shy Christians, professional sex workers, doughy self-fisters, and python cock grapplers they never landed on a tone, but maybe the proper tone for this will never exist. They ran their two talking points into the ground harder than Chris’s torso after the clone scientists removed his bones. It’s hardcore pornography stapled to a coloring book about the miracles of your body. You could describe it all of these ways, but mostly it’s nothing for nobody and I will thank Jane Monreal every day for the gift of A LOVER’S GUIDE TO SELF PLEASURING.
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