Male masturbation has an arsenal of great euphemisms. I grew up in a small town, so laugh or pardon my ignorance but I always thought a knuckle sandwich was jerking off until someone told me they were going to give me one; a knuckle sandwich. I thought it was a very strange thing to say to someone as in my mind a knuckle sandwich was by definition something that one could only give to oneself.

This sparked a great curiosity for me about how guys refer to masturbation? I started asking the guys I hung around with in high school and I asked my boyfriends and my lovers and my one night stands.

I discovered that there are more ways to describe that single act than there are words for penis in Italian. This is incredible to me because I recently learned that pretty much every word in Italian means penis, depending on where you put the inflection.

It’s interesting and funny that many of the descriptions don’t really make sense. I could be putting the inflection in the wrong place, but choking the chicken only creates a slightly more realistic picture than spanking the monkey. Milking the moose, clubbing the clam and grappling with the gorilla all sound a little bit like things only outdoorsy camper types or fisherman or Tarzan would do.

Doing the solitary rhumba, doing the five-knuckle shuffle and doing the pork sword jiggle all imply an action that makes sense. The first two are viable but if somebody told me they were going to do the pork sword jiggle, I would have no idea what that meant. In fact, what comes to mind would probably cramp anyone’s ability to beat off, jack off or whack off, let alone get off!

I love that there are no limitations when referencing buttering the corn. I love that guys can kill tadpoles, yank bacon, slap meat, grease poles, pull carrots, whack the pope, and its all good. I love that guys can make fun of and have fun with their need to visit the one eyed purple garden hose.

When I have bouts of insomnia, instead of counting sheep, I lay in bed and make up lists of ways to describe male masturbation Sometimes I go in alphabetical order; Anchoring the bobbing boat, Burping the baby, Clamping the tide, Derailing the train… Sometimes I have a theme; watering the garden, pulling the weed, dead heading the daisy, harvesting the crop, canning the pickle… Sometimes there are no rules and I get on a roll. I come up with really good ones that I’m sure I’ll remember but by morning they’re usually gone.

This game has lulled me to sleep many times throughout my life. Maybe it’s because imagining all the ways there are to tease the weasel sometimes makes me want to tap the keg. As it were.