Our recent posts (“Pulling The Lion’s “Tail,” “Maybe I Am a Prude,” “In Praise Of Handjob,” and “An Edged Lion is a Happy Lion”) talk about various aspects of handjobs, a woman masturbating a man. This rather harmless activity turns out to be heavily nuanced and more profound than I first thought. My first reaction to the idea of a woman masturbating me is that it is a nice thing to do that makes me feel good. There’s much more going on.

First, women have very different views on the subject. Some worry that if they handle a penis, its owner will want to penetrate them. Touching a penis is foreplay. Sure, it can be. Taking that position makes handling the male sex organ a sort of commitment to intercourse. That certainly restricts the desire to touch one.

Other women use it as a sort of sexual pressure release valve. If the male is getting too” friendly” a few minutes of penis massage will reduce his ardor. This use of the handjob is particularly popular with teenage girls. It’s an easy way to avoid an uncomfortable situation. Both approaches are female methods of increasing or decreasing the possibility of more intimate activity. I think they are valid and useful. I have always been happy with a woman using this tool for sexual management.

The problem is that this approach to a penis overlooks an obviously good use of one. A penis is a toy that most men will share. If this sounds too trivial, consider how males are different from females—for example, sex in terms of ejaculation isn’t an end game. Unlike women, who often believe vaginal activity is an emotional as well as a physical experience, men approach it very differently.

Most men masturbate (jerk off) from an early age. There is a tacit understanding that boys do it frequently. It provides physical release and theoretically frees us from pressuring our dates. Jerking off isn’t an expression of love or commitment. It’s often not very important—It’s release. We are playing with our toys. It feels good.

Inside a relationship or friendship, it isn’t hard to include handjobs that aren’t green lights to intercourse. A man already understands that ejaculation isn’t necessarily an expression of romantic love. If the woman makes it clear that playing with the penis is just for fun and isn’t romantic sex, we will understand and happily share our toy.

If a man, like me, for example, likes to bottom, a handjob is an excellent activity to demonstrate female dominance. Doing this requires no equipment or training. Simply have him undress and play with your toy. Mrs. Lion has made it clear that the penis attached to me is her toy. It isn’t mine. She can play with it any time she wants. It isn’t mine, so I can’t.

Since it’s her toy, she can tease me and make me believe that I will come, but stop before I get the chance. Or, she can masturbate me with others watching. She can also let a friend play with her toy. Mrs. Lion chooses to play with her toy when we are alone, and she doesn’t like to share. It’s her choice.

The idea that a penis is a toy works in vanilla contexts too. As soon as a woman disconnects the idea that playing with a penis is an invitation to intercourse, the couple can enjoy a fun toy. Many women don’t consider masturbating a man as sex (for them). It’s an amusing activity that makes her man happy. Take off the emotional weight and have a good time. You’ll have a hard time finding a man who won’t share his toy with you.

Mrs. Lion wrote about teasing me on Monday night (“An Edged Lion is a Happy Lion“). She’s worked out her handjob technique and can now masturbate me to orgasm if she wants. Or, as is usually the case, bring me to the edge and let me teeter. For the last year, almost all of my sex has been oral. Yes, I love it.

An orgasm is an orgasm, you might think. Most guys will agree an oral orgasm feels better. It does for me. I’m not sure if it’s the actual orgasm or something else that makes me like it better. From a strictly physical point of view, an oral orgasm is produced with slower motion. Most people can’t bob up and down on a cock as fast as they can jerk it off. A second factor is that the mouth gently encircles the penis. There is contact all around.

When Mrs. Lion is between my legs, her tongue contacts my most sensitive area on the underside of my penis. Her head motion is fairly constant. Even if she lets me come, the relatively slow head motion is almost like being edged. It is very exciting. Even vaginal sex doesn’t offer that advantage. Movement tends to get faster the closer I get to orgasm.

I think there is another factor that works in favor of a handjob. Oral or vaginal sex requires intimate contact with my partner. My penis is inside her mouth or vagina. When I ejaculate, it is inside her. Even if you exclude her orgasm, she is still very involved. A handjob is much less personal. Very little contact is involved on the woman’s part. All she has to do is wrap her hand around my penis and move it up and down. When I ejaculate, she can wipe it off if some get on her hand.

On the other hand, I am intensely involved. I’m consumed as the arousal builds. I’m every bit as excited when I ejaculate as I am when we are both intimate. The investment and reaction are all mine. This is why in the BDSM world, masturbating a man as part of the scene is effective, particularly at a party.

Being naked and spanked or having clothespins on my balls is a little embarrassing with an audience watching. Being jerked off is far more humiliating. Sexual humiliation is magnified when the humiliated person reveals something private, and the partner or audience isn’t vulnerable at all.

A handjob certainly counts as an activity of this kind. Mrs. Lion can be fully dressed and jerk me off. The contrast is obvious. She could go shopping, and I am naked and erect. She can treat masturbating me like a reward, a sexual doggy biscuit. I’m not saying that she thinks this way. I’m saying that I do. It’s one of the best parts of a handjob. No, I don’t like it better than oral or vaginal sex. I prefer them. The sexual humiliation factor does make the mechanical nature of a handjob more fun for me.

Okay, I’ll just say it. I miss sucking Lion. He has a statistic for every category imaginable. Does he have one for how he was edged? I wonder how long it’s been. I don’t need him to keep track of it. I just miss it and I would have done it last night if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with a hand job. Who’d have thought he’d actually prefer a hand job over oral sex? I also offered him his ride and he turned it down, although that I sort of understand.

Lion had a pretty long wait. I think his last two waits were both 21 days. I didn’t plan it that way either time. We’ve had a bunch of miscues and that’s made his waits longer. There have been a few days one of us didn’t feel well. There have been quite a few days I screwed up. No excuse. I dropped the ball and never picked it back up. We’ve had a few shoutless shouting matches. We tend not to have knock down, drag out fights. I won’t say no one gets hurt feelings, but we work it out eventually. Usually he can’t see that he’s wrong so I have to give in. (I’m kidding!) Sometimes we’re on different pages. For the past month, however, it seemed we were in different books altogether. Hence, the long waits.

I guess we went back to basics and I started off with hand jobs. For a long time, I couldn’t get Lion very far by hand. My shoulders and back would start to hurt and I suggested oral sex. He doesn’t usually turn down oral sex so he was happy to oblige. When we had out miscues, we decided to try again. For the past week or so, I’ve been giving him hand jobs exclusively. I say hand jobs. I don’t know what else to call it when I use my hand but only edge him. My hand hasn’t worked one hundred percent of the time, but it has been working better.

Saturday I had a big headache. It started in the morning, let off in early afternoon and came back early evening. I don’t think it was a sinus issue. It even hurt to snuggle with Lion. So much for his warmth being my cure-all. By yesterday, the headache was gone and we were back in business. I didn’t have a plan. I just went to work on my weenie.

I will say that the past few times, I’ve moved to his side of the bed, perched on the edge, to play with him. I assume that changes the angle and my grip. It seems to be a little easier on my shoulders. Maybe that’s why we’ve been more successful. It’s not like I never did that before. Whatever it is, I’m glad it’s working. And now that he’s had his full hand job with orgasm, I can suck him again.

Lion thinks my grip has changed when I jerk him off. I’ve tried to remain constant. I think he’s the one who’s changed. When I agreed to his insane (my thinking at the time) idea of male chastity, I decided I needed to know how best to masturbate him. I’d been doing it for years, but I wanted expert guidance. Who better to ask than the guy who’s been masturbating him since he realized masturbation was a thing? I had Lion jerk off for me one last time. I watched carefully. Fingers there, got it. Speed of stroke, got it. I’ll never be as expert as he is, but I figured I could do it pretty well. And I think I did until very recently.

I have not been good to my body. I have a bum knee from a soccer injury that probably should have been looked at by a doctor, but we didn’t do doctors when I was growing up unless it was something major. I could still hobble around on it so I was good to go. I have many non-descript injuries suffered while building a house with my ex. Of course, I can lift fifty pounds while standing on the top rung of a ladder and hanging out over a roofline. My right shoulder is still sore from heaving softballs to home plate from the outfield during my son’s field day twenty-five years ago. The left shoulder and right knee probably gave out trying to compensate for their injured counterparts. Luckily, none of these things hurts constantly. The problems often occur from overexertion.

When we snuggle, and I start to play with my weenie, I make sure I grip him the same way he showed me. I won’t say I consistently grip him that way. If I’m distracted or tired, I don’t always do it correctly. From the picture on his post, you can see his fingers are just below the head. A week or so ago, he told me that grip was incorrect. Excuse me? He said he needs me to expand my grip to cover more territory. Um. Okay. Sure. So I started doing that and he seemed happy. And then he wrote that my grip now tends to cover more of his cock and he thinks that’s because my shoulders hurt. Huh?

Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to hit a moving target. Maybe he needs my grip to be all over with special consideration given to the spot just below the head. I’ve never asked if my tongue manages to hit all the right spots when I suck him. I wonder if I’m inconsistent there too. Maybe he doesn’t mind because I’m sucking him and that just feels good no matter what I do.