In 2009 Masanobu Sato masturbated for just under 10 hours, and so became the world record holder in the men’s division of the Masturbate-a-thon in San Francisco. Masanobu trains for it. He swims, he eats well, he spends quite a bit of time at home in front of the TV watching the news or porn while jerking off. It’s not about orgasm; it’s about endurance. While he trains at home, his 
girlfriend sits nearby, engaged in her own hobbies. Sometimes she helps out by keeping time on her iPhone. So I’m thinking: How does one begin to unpick the scenario of a guy on a futon-chair with his dick in his hand and his girlfriend at the sewing machine making her own clothes, checking on the pots in the kitchen. And on the TV: The news! Masanobu says his workmates support him, that his family knows about his success:
They feel proud of me since last year’s victory, I think. They were really glad and happy to hear when I reported them I could defend championship and what’s more I could blow away my own world record by 25 minutes.
Hmm. Well. Back to me. Over the past twenty-four hours I’ve I spent about three hours (on and off) on the phone having phone sex with guys, most of them regulars. Three hours of masturbation. Not continuous, not nearly ten hours, but still, a fair amount of time with my dick in my hand. It could have been less, and most times it is. With the right guy on the phone I probably would have come earlier, but some of the guys I chatted to came before me (I’m good at this; I really am) and then hung up, and others just weren’t interesting enough, arousing enough, inspiring enough. It’s about the imagination, mine and theirs. A meeting, as they say, of minds. When they asked Masanobu how he does it, how he keeps going for nine hours and fifty-eight minutes, he attributes his success primarily to his “abundant imagination.” Masturbation, according to the champion, is about imagination.
Our fantasies give us insight into who we are. But I think what he’s also saying, what is hidden somewhere there between the lines, is that in order to have a good time jerking off, or to really stay hard for a long time, you need a lot of fantasies that really turn you on. There are some guys I talk to who excite me so much I want to disappear, or I feel like I’m disappearing into the fantasy when I hear their voices. Sometimes it doesn’t even matter what we talk about, who we imagine raping, how we talk about fucking each other or pissing in each other’s mouths. The feeling is a kind of gratitude, a beatitude, a supplication, a devotion, like a whirling dervish into the ecstasy, the same motion over and over until you are nothing but sheer abandon. Enlightenment? Mm, maybe not. But it is definitely is intense, and like in the ecstasy state of any addiction, nothing else exists. The world is nothing and you are nothing but this moment.
One of the guys I chat to is an ex-con. Fuck knows if that’s true, but for the purposes of masturbation, anything goes, and if you believe it, it is no legend. It is fact. He’s not on the chatline often. Where’ve you been, mate? I’ll say. Ah, mate, I was inside for a bit. Nothing major. And so it goes. We talk about fucking these eighteen-year old twins, smooth white boys who are gonna be taught a lesson. He’s got a 9″ dick and he wants to cause some damage. He wants to see the looks on their faces when he takes out his dick, when they realise that this is what’s going up their cunts. He’s from up North, so he pronounces it to rhyme with the German word for dog. I’m the dad and he’s the son and he wants to make me proud. It’s kind of a wild fantasy, but we egg each other on into a bit of a frenzy. Often after we come we chat a bit. What I tell him is the truth – that I’m a teacher, that I’m in London, that I’m in my thirties, that I’m 6’2″. I buy his story about prison and being married and fucking guys while he’s inside. I could talk to him for hours. Why? Because he makes me feel like nothing else exists but to adore him. He is funny and kind and gentle when we talk. He’s a big guy, the kind of big that could handle a cuddle.
Is that what is at the heart of addiction? Moments of disappearing, of forgetting, of acting out the story that cannot be told?
The other thing that helps Masanobu Sato masturbate for hours is TENGA. I’d never heard of Tengas before I stumbled upon Masanobu’s story on TheRumpus.net. I can’t remember how I happened to visit Rumpus… oh yes, that’s what it was… someone had posted on Facebook some beautiful drawings by Jason Novak on The Rumpus, and the Masturbate-a-thon piece was on the Homepage. Tengas. They seem to be a kind of fleshlight (or is it flashlight?), and after a bit of Googling I discovered that Masanobu actually works for Tenga. He is a walking advertisement for jerk-off paraphernalia; he takes a whole range of them with him to the marathon – the variety of sensations that different ones give help to keep him aroused. So, as a Christmas present to myself, I bought my first Tenga. What the heck, it’s only £12.99, and I need something new in my repertoire. I’m not a porn or a sex-toy person, but I’d like to try. They seem friendlier than some of these alien-worm-looking fleshlights that you see on x-Tube, and I like the idea of playing with it when my regular German guy gets back from his family Christmas in Hamburg.
Michael Wynne 