Flicking the Bean

Explaining my depression with sexual metaphors

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

I’ve been going through depression for a long time — years at this point.

Everyone’s depression is different. No two people have the same experience with it. So it’s really hard to describe it to people who haven’t experienced your depression.

But I’m going to try anyway.

Do you remember the first time you orgasmed?

I was on my knees in the bathroom, rubbing my nuts against tiles warmed by a hot shower. I can’t recall why I chose that specific method, but I was a lonely teen and — back in the 2000s — I didn’t have enough data on my prepaid SIM card to watch a tutorial. So I went at it like a deer shedding its antlers.

Suddenly I felt a wave of fire going from my head, all the way to my dick. It felt good. Really good. In fact, the best feeling in the world. Because the build up and release of desire floods your brain with dopamine, oxytocin, norepinephrine — drugs that would get you sentenced to death in Singapore or promoted to head coach on a Russian Olympics team.

Imagine that one day, the ability to feel that euphoria is taken away from you. You can get an erection, you can keep jerking off. It feels nice, but it’s not “whoa.” You try different kinds of porn, try having sex, try not having sex, and more dangerous kinds of sex. Nothing changes.

You visit a doctor who knows a lot about this stuff. You tell him that your orgasms aren’t euphoric anymore, that the thrill of the flames you felt coursing under your skin doesn’t exist anymore.

And he says, “I know a bunch of people like you whose orgasms no longer feel like a hammer on the head.”

You try explaining to him that a hammer is not what you experienced at all. But to him, a hammer is a hammer, flames are a hammer, and any other experience that doesn’t feel like a hammer is, medically speaking, a hammer.

To solve this, he starts you off with a prescription of a ball-peen hammer that you can keep under your pillow and whack yourself on the head with every time you orgasm.

Sometimes, it works because the numb shock of whacking yourself over the head when you cum is at least different from whatever twinge you’ve been feeling so far. The whacking makes you bleed, so you keep going back to your doctor to change the size of the hammer, or change it to a screwdriver. And the feeling changes every time.

But no matter what you do, you can’t get back to that first time you came.

Social media, your friends and your family convince you to hang on to the hammer because “you have to see it through to the end to make it work.” But eventually, the feeling of hammering yourself gets unbearable or plain boring. So you drop the hammer without telling anybody, even though the doctor warned that your head might explode without a hammer to beat it into shape.

You continue to touch yourself because, well, that’s what everyone’s doing. In fact, some very famous jerker-offers have spoken out about their inadequate orgasms in public. If they’re still flicking their beans, maybe there’s some hope for you too. Maybe you just have to keep choking the chicken until the divine flames of ecstasy magically return to you one day. And if they don’t, at least you tried.

But slowly and secretly, you’ve stopped polishing the knob with the ardour you once applied to it. After all, why polish if no orgasm? It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Why butter toast if you’re not going to eat it? Why press the ignition if your car is on blocks? Why?

And everyone you talk to about this either doesn’t have an answer or grows worried that you’re going to stop flogging the dolphin completely one day. You think about it sometimes. You hope something happens to stay your hand mid-beatoff one day.

And you wait. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait. And you wait.

Maybe the flames are right around the next wank.