Abundance of Happiness

Bradley Stoke

“Many of you might wonder why, since masturbation is so obviously good practice, that I don’t encourage it more.”

Penny yawned. The headmaster was always preaching to his pupils what they should do to improve their lives, and this was no exception. She wriggled uncomfortably in her seat while Mr Finnegan addressed the school assembly, surrounded by senior teachers, and accompanied by swotty Amanda who’d just read that inspirational text by Henry Miller.

“I know many people subscribe to the view that frequent and regular masturbation ensures an abundance of happiness. That it is how we can assuage our incessant sexual desire. That it is an entirely harmless way to provide personal satisfaction,” continued the headmaster, pushing his wire-framed glasses up the bridge of his nose and scanning the mixed assembly of boys and girls. “I have no problem with views like that. Indeed, I am of the firm opinion that masturbation should be encouraged as a matter of course. I have no hesitation in telling you, or any of your parents or guardians, that I am a frequent masturbator. I set aside at least half an hour in each working day for self-stimulation. And my wife and I occupy many hours together in mutual onanism. It is only natural. And, like most headteachers, I provide facilities, separate ones for girls and boys, so that they may masturbate freely during lunch-times or morning and afternoon breaks. It is only to be expected that, as you pupils grow up, you should feel the need for auto-eroticism. And I am happy to report the immense popularity of the masturbation lounges. Although,” and here the headmaster permitted himself a chuckle, “I do get complaints from the cleaning staff from time to time.”

Mr Finnegan paused for effect, so everyone, including Penny, could appreciate just how liberal and forward-thinking he was. Penny glanced at her watch. She’d much rather be studying English or History than listen to the headmaster drone on like this.

“So,” he continued, “you can imagine that I took very seriously the suggestion made by several pupils, and supported by very strong arguments from some of my staff, that we should teach masturbation in the classroom. Of course, the theory of masturbation has been taught for many years in Sex Ed. We’ve all seen the videos that explain the many benefits of masturbation, both before and after marriage. In fact, my wife and I have both had the privilege of appearing in such videos. But I’m afraid I have to draw the line somewhere.

“And the reason why I have decided not to institute practical masturbation classes on a formal basis is not only that you pupils are able to attend extracurricular classes in the discipline in your own free time, but because I have a very real concern about the sensibilities of pupils who might, with good reason, feel intimidated in a class of mixed ability masturbators. Not every pupil is as adept at the art of genital stimulation as each other. Some pupils are late developers. Some may not wish to display their genitals in an engorged state in front of their peers. Some may not perform to the best of their abilities in the company of others who are less bashful.

“So, it is for that reason I have decided, despite the pleas from Angela Warden in 5C, Daniel Jones from the Lower Sixth and, most persuasively, Mrs Patel the Games Mistress, not to institute such classes.”

Penny could almost hear the groans that greeted the announcement, though the pupils were too polite to express their disappointment vocally. Penny, however, was actually quite pleased that Mr Finnegan had decided against the new classes. She’d been dreading a more positive response.

As the day went on, the lunchtime break approaching, eyes glazed over with boredom and her mind wandering during her Geography class, where Mrs Ferguson was really getting rather too animated about Norwegian fjords, Penny contemplated the benefits of a spell in the girls’ masturbation lounge. She had such a strange dream last night, the details of which she’d completely forgotten, but she knew it included an element of sex. And when she was awoken by the alarm clock, reinforced a few minutes later by her mother knocking on her bedroom door, she was left with a fantasy interruptus that demanded resolution.

So, as soon as the class bell rang, Penny deliberately dodged past Dorothy and Selena, her classmates, and dashed down the corridor, books grasped to her chest and shoulder-length hair billowing behind her, to get to the lounge. She knew that if she tarried then not only might the best couches be taken, but she might even have to stand in a queue and wait for one to become available. But as she could see, when she pushed open the door, she really needn’t have been so anxious. There weren’t that many girls already there. Maybe on such a pleasant spring day, fewer girls felt the need to divert themselves indoors.

Penny could hear the grunts and snorts coming from the boys’ masturbation lounge next door. Boys were such show offs! She was glad she didn’t attend one of those very liberal schools where girls and boys were encouraged to masturbate together. She was sure there was truth in the opinion held by many forward-thinking people that the best environment in which boys and girls should masturbate was within sight of each other, but Penny would rather not see Brian’s semen spurt all over the carpet. It was bad enough that she could hear him shouting “Fuck! Oh Yeah! Fuck! Fuck!” through the closed door.

“Hi there, Pen!” Amanda greeted her as she strode past and sat down in the couch opposite. “Feeling the itch?”

Penny groaned inwardly, but remained as polite as she could. Amanda was always in the masturbation lounge. Top at Maths. Top at Chemistry. Good at games. And top masturbator as well. Penny hated her. Well, not actually hated her, in the sense that she wished her ill, but Amanda always made Penny feel inadequate.

“You here again?”

“Three times a day!” Amanda boasted. She had removed her knickers and skirt, and placed them neatly folded on the floor on top of her satchel. Her blouse was cut short above the navel and her tie had been loosened. She’d kept on her wire-frame glasses, but pinned back her straight brown hair with a hair-grip. But Amanda’s vagina was the most prominent sight: neatly shaven with only a small vertical stripe above the clitoris, and her labia engorged, along with her clitoris, from the results of her stroking.

“I’m aiming for just fifteen minutes,” Amanda said. “Ten minutes slow and sensuous and then five minutes fast and furious. I’ve got badminton at half twelve. I don’t want to miss that.”

“So, you’re keeping it below your usual hour-long session?” Penny asked, restraining a sneer. It was only masturbation. You didn’t have to time it. Penny had never quite learnt the knack of controlling her auto-erotic responses to anything like Amanda’s exactitude. In fact, she never knew whether she’d even be able to bring herself off. In truth, she usually didn’t. And when she did climax, a squirt of female ejaculate on her hand or wrist, it usually took her totally by surprise.

“I’ll make up for it after school,” said Amanda, a long finger idly probing the outer lip, while the forefinger and thumb of her other hand gently tweaked her swollen clitoris. “Masturbation is good for you. And I intend to keep my quim as creamy as I can. For as often as I can.”

Jesus! It was a good thing there were no examinations in masturbation. Then Penny would again be shown up by Amanda. Was there nothing she didn’t excel in?

Penny sighed, pulled her knickers down to her ankles and let it fall (plop!) on to the floor. She bundled her skirt up to her waist and, with one hand holding up her skirt, lowered the other onto the labia majora, threading her fingers through the bush of untamed pubic hair, her long middle finger probing inside the inner and outer lips and its tip pressing on her slightly smaller than average clitoris.

And then Penny tried to excite herself, imagining sexy scenarios, while her middle and, increasingly, her fore finger, stroked, probed and wiggled in the folds and contours of her vulva, relishing the texture of coarse pubic hair on her palm, and occasionally permitting a finger to sidle into her vagina, the walls of which gradually moistened from her ministrations. It usually took more than fifteen minutes of this kind of exertion for her to achieve orgasm. Penny wasn’t like Amanda, who could pace herself, take longer about it or achieve orgasm within only five minutes. She’d seen Amanda in action, just as she was able to observe her now, using creative circular and rhythmic motions with her fingers and the palm of her hands, bringing herself up to false climaxes, relaxing, and then building up again. Penny was lucky if she even managed to achieve orgasm at all before she lost interest. She would sense herself dry up just as did her repertoire of sexy thoughts.

Today, Penny was imagining herself naked in the open air. It was a favourite fantasy of hers, and the one most reliable in stimulating her sexual desires. She squeezed her eyes tight and tilted her head back on the couch’s headrest. She imagined the touch of a warm breeze over her naked flesh as she strode over the hills, wearing only shoes, as she ascended the rocky outcrops, eagles soaring above her and white-topped mountains in the distance. Or perhaps no shoes at all. Grass through the gaps between her toes, as she walked casually, with no care for clothing at all, her hair free of hair-grips or hair-spray, her nipples hardening on a cool breeze, but her thighs contrastingly hot from the warmth of the sun, her freckled face burning in the glare of the midsummer sky, and below a burning heat between her legs that was growing and growing and growing inexorably towards its ultimate and inevitable…

“Uuuhhh! Aaaaahhhh! Oooohhh!” Penny suddenly heard breaking into her reverie. And no, it wasn’t Penny’s own voice excited by her fantasy of public nudity, but Amanda’s, noisy and passionate as ever, her fingers pushing and thrusting with fury, damp with congested female ejaculate and vaginal fluid. And then louder and more urgent, returning Penny’s mind back to the masturbation lounge, as true to her word, Amanda achieved her several minutes of orgasm, vocal and urgent, while the clamour of her passion denied Penny any chance she ever had of achieving the same herself.

Penny was still a little peeved when she left school at the end of the day. She should be concentrating her thoughts on the essay she was supposed to be writing for Eng Lit about Iago’s treachery of Othello. Instead, she was still smarting from her earlier disappointment. After Amanda had strode off, skirt and knickers neatly restoring her modesty, a badminton racket in one hand and a satchel slung over her shoulder, Penny tried and tried, but she couldn’t recapture the feeling of sexual warmth that had so nearly brought her to, if not orgasm, then something fairly gratifying. When all her finger could do was irritate a vagina now hardly moist at all, she let her skirt drop, tugged her knickers back over her mussed pubic hair and resigned herself to the realisation that she had yet again failed to bring herself off.

“Are Dad and Simon watching telly?” Penny asked her mother, when her dinner had been assembled on her plate and the plate placed on a tray.

“Yes, dear,” Penny’s mother replied. “It’s some kind of porno. Don’t ask me what it is. It doesn’t look very nice to me. But you might enjoy it.”

Penny sighed. That meant her father and brother would be masturbating again. She much preferred to watch a film with her mother, even though the soft-focus sex movies her mother preferred, with their shaven-chested hunks and air-brushed heroines didn’t appeal to Penny at all, even when they proceeded to fuck each other, which they somehow did with almost the same degree of perfect politeness as they did everything else.

She entered the living room, plumped down in the chair she always sat in, briefly acknowledged her father’s nod and chewed through her pizza and pesto salad, occasionally sipping from a glass of elderberry juice, while she watched the action on the video that the men of the family had put on.

It was a typical man’s movie, with the inevitable three- or foursomes, a lot of swearing, some totally gratuitous violence, and sex that always involved prolonged fellatio. Penny fancied she recognised an actress from some other porno she’d seen. Typical porn model: all pumped-up silicone breasts, a slightly sneery expression on the bright red lips and a little stripe of pubic hair, just like Amanda’s. And while watching the male actors (mostly reduced to just a pumping penis and a forest of pubes binding it to their otherwise almost redundant bodies) she averted her eyes as much as was polite from the equally erect penises sported by her Dad and Simon. Dad’s was the larger and had the longer staying power, but it was Simon who would inevitably produce the most, and certainly messiest explosion of, semen.

When she was younger, Penny wasn’t bothered by her father masturbating in front of the television. Although when he did so together with her mother it was sometimes embarrassing when the two of them got so aroused they would have to dash out of the living room up to the bedroom where they could release their mutual passion. Nowadays, especially now Simon had become so enthusiastic, it was more difficult for Penny to relax in the sight of a penis being massaged to full erection and, so quickly, men being frighteningly efficient and reliable in that regard, to ejaculation, the result of which sometimes arched right over the carpet, despite all attempts to hold it back. On one memorable occasion, which Penny remembered with a shudder, it caught her squarely on the cheek.

Penny didn’t care whether she got to see the end of the movie. Anyway, she knew what would happen: the usual orgy when her father would at last let loose the ejaculation he’d stored up, a restraint Simon was not yet capable of. She left the empty plate with her mother, who was in the kitchen reading a glossy magazine full of pictures of naked men and desultorily stroking her crotch with a hand inside her unbuttoned slacks. Although Penny sometimes masturbated when only her mother was around, she much preferred to do so in the privacy of her own bedroom.

But somehow, even after she had torn off all her clothes and buried her nose in the pillow, a finger in her vagina and her buttocks raised high, it wasn’t really right. That warm feeling with which she’d woken up in the morning was totally dissipated. She rolled off the mattress, slipped on some jeans and a tee-shirt, and dashed out of the house to visit her best friend, Isabel, who lived only a few streets away.

When she arrived at her friend’s, where she hoped to sit in front of the dressing table, chatter over various cosmetic agents and sing along to recently purchased CDs, she was disappointed to find Isabel sitting on her bed totally naked. Isabel’s mother had smiled at Penny in that simpering way that implied that her daughter was otherwise engaged and that Penny should have chosen a better time to visit. But Penny ignored her unspoken advice. Or, if not exactly ignore it, pretend not to notice it. She was sick and tired of other people’s need for masturbation interfering with her own perfectly legitimate needs.

“What’s up, Izzy?” Penny asked, knowing exactly what the answer would be.

Isabel smiled foolishly. She wasn’t really the sort of girl who enjoyed being seen masturbating, unlike Amanda. She shared with Penny a similar disdain for those who paraded their skill at auto-eroticism so blatantly. But it was obvious that masturbation was exactly what Isabel had been engaged in, and not merely because she wore no clothes, not even socks, but from the ruffled state of the bedsheets and the slightly damp mark on the pillow where she’d buried her nose. Her hair was slightly disarrayed and there was still a flush on her cheeks and forehead.

“I’m sorry, Pen,” Isabel said, leaning forward on the edge of her bed, her hands clasped in front of her. “It’s this new routine I’m on. It’s all in this book. I’ve got a chart and everything.”

“Routine?”

“The Auto-erotic Happiness Routine,” Isabel explained. “I read about it in a magazine. It’s a way toward more satisfying masturbation. A way to attain better orgasms. It’s supposed to make everything better. The book says that once you know how to rise to an orgasm every time, then you feel more satisfied and your life becomes much happier. You can see the chart on the wall.”

Isabel pointed at a huge calendar that fit between posters of a black all-girl group and the pouting face of a male Latino singer. Penny leaned forward to peer at it. For each day, there was a sequence of time slots against which were peculiar symbols and a series of numbers.

“It’s my masturbation chart,” Isabel continued. “It’s where I record when I masturbate and how long. And there’s a key to describe how good it is. You know, whether I actually climaxed. How intense the orgasm. That sort of thing.”

Penny sighed. She was getting a bit fed up how everywhere she went there was someone better at masturbation than her. She could see at a glance that Isabel had got into a fairly regular and, by all accounts, satisfying masturbatory routine.

“So, your last time was this morning, before getting up, for fifteen minutes and it ranks as a ‘7’. But you didn’t actually have an orgasm. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” smiled Isabel, standing naked beside Penny in front of the chart. “That’s seven out of ten, so it wasn’t that good really.”

“So what about just now? You know, just before I came in. How did you score then?”

“Well, the schedule says thirty minutes. But thirty minutes frigging is really tiring. And I’m supposed to try and get an orgasm after fifteen minutes, a multiple orgasm after twenty-five, and a small one at the end. But you know, and don’t tell anyone, will you, Pen, I only got a double orgasm, and that was more like after twenty minutes. I mean, it was a good orgasm. Probably an eight or a nine if it was meant to be just the one, but it’s not like a multiple one. I’ve only ever once had a triple orgasm. And that was before I started this routine. I don’t think I’ve got the technique right at all!”

“Don’t worry, about it, Izzy, “ said Penny, putting a comforting arm around her friend’s bare shoulder, letting her forehead and short hair rest against her cheek. “We can’t all be super-masturbators. And I don’t think it’s just how well you frig. I mean, loads of girls are supposed to not be able to orgasm at all. We can’t all be like Amanda.”

“Amanda!” sighed Isabel. “I think she was masturbating as soon as she emerged from the womb.”

“I was with her in the frig room at lunch. I hate her! But credit to the girl. She got her orgasm. And Jesus! Wouldn’t you know it! She doesn’t come quietly.”

“Is there nothing the girl can’t do well?”

“Well, she’s better than me,” confided Penny. “I don’t think I’d ever get more than a three or a four on your chart.”

Isabel laughed tremulously. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’m crap. I really am! I just can’t do it right. And I thought today I’d be perfect. I even woke up this morning feeling really hot. I thought I’d be able to... that I could… well, I thought I could have a multiple orgasm. You know, I’ve never even had a double one!”

“Oh! You poor thing!” laughed Isabel sympathetically.

The two girls studied the chart, on the margins of which was an equal number of pictures of boys and girls, of all ages, all in some pose of sexual ecstasy and in every case without the assistance of anyone else. Penny put a finger over a picture of a boy with an unfeasibly large erection from which was spurting a fountain of semen.

“Boys are lucky! They can come real quickly. And they can do it every time!”

“I know! I know!” agreed Isabel, raising her head off Penny’s shoulder and putting an arm around Penny’s waist. “My brother, Michael, he wanks three or four times every evening. And he wanks in bed as well. Mum says she has to change his sheets every other day. All he’s got to do is watch a porno, and he’s pumping it up. And before you know it, he’s splattering his sperm everywhere. Mum’s really proud of him, though she insists he try and catch as much as he can in a tissue. Triple ply, I think.”

“Triple ply! Let’s hope he doesn’t blow his nose with the same tissue. That’d look really weird. You know. All the stuff on his face!”

The girls laughed and then sank onto the bed, Isabel’s arm still around Penny’s waist and Penny’s arm around Isabel’s naked shoulders. This time, Penny slumped her head onto Isabel’s shoulder.

“I was thinking about buying a vibrator or dildo or something,” Penny admitted. “Perhaps if I had a bit of artificial assistance, I could do it, you know, more reliably.”

“The book I’ve got doesn’t recommend it.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with things like that?”

“The book says it’s not natural. Also it says that once you get used to doing it with vibrators and so on, you forget how to do it with your fingers and everything. You get to expect a sort of whirring, whizzing kind of thing every time.”

“You don’t need a vibrator for that though,” giggled Penny.

“What d’you mean?”

“All you need is a mobile phone. You know, one with a vibrating setting. I can see you can guess what I’m gonna say…”

Isabel’s face was broken into a confiding grin. “Yes, I’ve done that. It’s fun! Didn’t get me to orgasm exactly. But it was fun!”

“So, you did the same? Put the mobile up your crack and phone yourself on the landline?”

“Yeah! Though you’ve got to remember to turn the sound down. It’s really weird when you’ve got music coming out of your twat!”

The girls laughed. And laughed. And fell on top of each other, giggling and chuckling, rolling about on the bed, Isabel’s naked body and Penny’s fully clothed one, the heat of Isabel’s body burning against Penny as they further ruffled the duvet and sheets, the smell of Penny’s perfume intermingled with Isabel’s body sweat and the springs of the mattress complaining at the motion.

They then sat up, still with their arms around each other.

“So, you still haven’t had the perfect orgasm, Pen?” Isabel asked.

“No. Have you?”

“Sometimes it’s been pretty good. But it’s never been like they say in the books. And nothing like Amanda’s.”

“I don’t think I’ve even had one as good as yours,” Penny confessed sadly.

“No?”

“I don’t think so. I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes.”

“Oh.”

The two girls sat silently at the edge of the bed.

“Perhaps if I tried frigging you, maybe that would help.”

“You think so, Izzy?”

“It’s worth a try.”

“Okay! It won’t sort of muck up your masturbation schedule?”

“How could it do that? It’s your pussy not mine.”

“Okay. I guess you’re right.”

With that, Penny pulled down her jeans and knickers, neatly folded them and placed them on a chair. And then, wearing only her socks and a plain green tee-shirt, she lay down on her back on Isabel’s bed, while her naked friend knelt down between Penny’s open legs.

Isabel’s hand hovered momentarily over Penny’s pubic region, perhaps uncertain where to land amongst the tangled forest of hair that covered the hills and mounts, valleys and gorges, of Penny’s vulva. And then two fingers settled on her clitoris, tweaking and stroking it, while an open palm stroked Penny’s thigh, hip and belly. Isabel’s eyes focused downwards, never looking up, only concentrating on Penny’s crotch, while the lucky recipient closed her eyes and leaned her head back, just as she imagined she might do if she were having a massage in a beauty salon.

It was certainly a very different sensation to frigging oneself, Penny reflected. She didn’t know at all where Isabel was going to place her fingers and what she would do next. And Isabel knew better than she did how to build up the sexual tension, slowly and sensuously, bit by bit, the fingers just circling and teasing, and then gradually working up to a faster and a faster rhythm, fingers vigorously rubbing the clitoris back and forth.

And then, a different sensation. At first soft and warm, and around the clitoris, and then, when Penny was at last able to identify this new agent as being Isabel’s lips (what else could it be?) a moist, salivary sensation as she felt the tongue, a third thing, making a trio of sensation: two probing and one licking. At that Penny bucked up her hips. And that came from somewhere inside her. Not something that she willed. Something that spasmed within her.

And then there was a confusion of sensations, orchestrated and arranged by Isabel, not one part of her crutch immune as those fingers delved deep deep inside her vagina, two, maybe three fingers, at once. The tongue gliding around, teeth nibbling her clitoris, fingers probing her labia, both inner and outer lips, and all the while Penny’s body jerked up and down from a passion she’d never felt before.

And then she could restrain herself no longer. The strain of each additional orgasm, piling one on top of the other, an internal seizure gripping her, releasing itself momentarily, to be followed by another. And then another. It was too much! She jerked forward, pushing Isabel upward, clasping her friend’s naked body to herself, tears streaming down her face, her stomach somehow clenched inside her, while a startled Isabel disengaged her fingers, Penny’s arms around her shoulders.

And even now, the spasms continued. Penny’s eyes were wild. Sweat dampened her hair, brow and chest. A strong scent emanated from her engorged vulva. She gasped and panted, unable to articulate herself.

“Are you all right, Pen?” Isabel wondered, gazing into her friend’s eyes.

Penny nodded frantically.

“I thought you said you’d never had a multiple orgasm before, Pen. I’ve never had an orgasm like that!”

Penny nodded again, breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling, her tee-shirt lifting with the heave of her breasts.

“Shall we do it again, Pen?”

Penny nodded. She breathed in. Held her breath for a moment.

“My turn!” she at last announced, pulling off her tee-shirt and eyeing Isabel’s crotch. “My turn to do you. It’s only fair!”

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Abundance of Happiness

Bradley Stoke

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