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The stupidest of the last remaining social taboos is masturbation. Paedophilia, necrophilia and bestiality are understandably discouraged, but having a fap or a fiddle? Everyone does it. Sticky seats in the Celebrity Squares of the library? Flushed students emerging from a hot lecture with Tony Zaharic on meiosis? Let that slow-fuck your mind as you walk around campus. However, it’s hard to grasp (haw haw) the concept that your flatmate may relieve themselves in your communal shower. Which is why we’ve decided that it should really become a dinnertime conversation.

The other day at the flat, I was waiting for my shower and noticed that Louise was taking quite a while, the water stream making intermittent contact with body, floor, body, floor. “Oh God,” I thought, “If she’s washing her hair…” But when she finally emerged with a hot-dayum glow, the showerhead was left hanging in her wake. Vivid images of the steaming stream pummelling her snatch invaded my mind as I went about my perfectly innocent rub-a-dub, struggling to contain a certain envy that women have such easy access to a tool which makes redundant the trick of sitting on your hand so it feels like someone else is doing the work…

Which leads me to Tim. 30-minute showers and a tub full of short-and-curlies? We’re not fucking stupid. But you can see why: water easing the friction, added calm from the hot sauna environment, the shower noise to cover up the blatancy which deaf people must really struggle to work out. Doing it in the shower is a step up from the old sock and hand manoeuvre. There’s a reason why our resident web guru is up in Wellington at the national mass debating championships. You see, guys are quite jealous that girls have the uncanny ability to guerrilla-masturbate. I mean, how difficult would it be for a guy to jerk off in the back of an anatomy lecture? Not only can the fairer sex pass it off as “having an itch”, but there’s also no mess to clean up later, just a finger-length of sticky residue. I guess it’s just really fucking convenient to whack one off where there’ll be no evidence.

So, fuck it. Do it in the shower, but remember two things: the noise gets amplified, and clean the gunk up afterwards. And as Woody Allen said, “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone you love.”