THE EXPERIENCE OF MATURATION: EJACULATIONS AND WET DREAMS
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA
“Ejaculations and Wet Dreams” is the third of the five parts of “The Experience of Maturation”, the third section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.
The black-and-white illustrations are taken from Pan Magazine, to which Dr. Brongersma was an important contributor while he was working on Loving Boys.
A second event of utmost importance to those concerned is the production of ejaculate, beginning, as already noted, at a mean age of 13.4 years.[1]
Even today some boys are simply not prepared for their first seminal emission: parents, teachers and peers, for some reason, have failed to inform them. It can be quite frightening if it happens during sleep or, say, while play-wrestling with a friend: “Something got burst in my belly and now I’ll die soon!” one lad thought. “The suffering thus caused may be keen and prolonged.[2]
54 A New Zealand boy relates, “I remember having a dream and feeling it happen in the dream and thinking to myself, in the dream, ‘What the fuck is happening to me!’ I could feel the spasms. It was such a body shattering experience it really changed my mind. It was something very different. I had just no idea what had happened. In the morning I was all sticky in my pyjamas as if I’d cut myself. I looked down and it was all sticky, white creamy stuff. I thought it was some sort of discharge. A sickness or something. But I was too scared to tell my mother, because it was around my genitals and I knew it must be dirty. The thing was, I had my next wet dream almost a month later. I thought, ‘Oh, Jesus.’ I sort of knew women had a monthly cycle and I started thinking, ‘God, oh God am I a boy or a girl.’ Maybe this was a man’s monthly cycle that nobody had bothered to tell me about. I’d never been told about periods, it was something I had just worked out. I was petrified. I thought about going to a doctor but thought, ‘No, he’ll tell my parents.’ I was sure that if they somehow found out I was unclean they’d lock me up or commit me or something.[3]
55 Hite[4] gives quite a number of examples, among others:
“At ten I was masturbating and I came. I thought it was blood. Punishment from God for doing this filthy and unnatural thing. When I turned on the light, I saw this funny creamy white stuff.”
“Age fourteen. I thought something had broken inside but it felt wonderful.”
“Age twelve. I was riding my bike and I came. I thought I had damaged myself.”
“At thirteen. I had a wet dream. I was frightened. I thought my insides were coming out or I was dying. No one had told me what to expect, even though Father was an M.D.!”
“I was horrified when this thick fluid came out of my penis in spurts. I thought I had harmed myself and was very distraught.”
“When I first masturbated, I thought I had killed myself.”
“I orgasmed, and this sticky gooey whitish stuff spurted all over me and the bedclothes. I thought that whatever had felt like it was breaking, had broken. I’d ruined it forever. I was scared and felt guilty and sinful.”
56 One of Dr. Stekel’s patients had started masturbating when he was thirteen. Soon, however, he tried to stop it and suppress his desires, since he had been taught that this practice was reprehensible and unhealthy. He told Stekel, “Nobody had the least inkling of the lacerating feelings I suffered; nobody, not even my parents, suspected my agony. Then the ‘nocturnal pollutions’ began and these convinced me that I was very sick, possibly past the point of recovery. I was too shy and too ashamed to confide in anyone; instead I guarded my ‘secret’ very closely. When I was alone I begged God in my childish faith to heal me, to free me from these pollutions which I believed to be dangerous, life-shortening effusions. I wept in secret, implored, wrung my hands, raised them to God, promised Him never intentionally to defile myself again and waited in vain for an answer. Then I began to doubt God’s goodness. I started to brood, and soon I turned into a dedicated atheist.[5]
How frequently it happens that parents fail to prepare their sons for this important event can be seen from the research Hertoft carried out in Denmark. Only 48.1% of the boys in his sample had been prepared; 18.2% had been mortally frightened; only 15.5% had had the courage to discuss, it with their fathers or mothers. Nearly 80% of the boys Hertoft studied had carefully concealed the beginning of a process which, with a natural upbringing, would have been cause for rejoicing.[6] In a random sample of university students Shipman found that only 6% had been pleased with their ejaculating the first time this occurred.[7]
The source of so much boyhood misery is the idea, derived from the Old Testament, that the emission of spermatic fluid during sleep is dirty, a “pollution” (Leviticus 15: 16-18). The individual to whom this happened was ritually unclean. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest Christian theologian of the Middle Ages, “argued that devils in the form of succubi seduced males and thereby received their semen.[8] English medieval church penitentiaries considered nocturnal emission a sin.[9]
This widespread neglect of parental duty is of course not the result of evil intent but of the fact that these parents are themselves victims of a sex-negative, chastity-oriented morality which has made them shy away from discussing sex openly with their children. They often don’t even know what words to use. The unintentional cruelty they inflict upon their sons, their breach of duty, must be blamed upon the unfeeling preachers of this morality which still today tortures so many innocent victims.
57 How different things are for the boys in Léonide Kameneff’s “School on Ships”! Kameneff is a French pedagogue who takes on children for one or two years, detaches them for that period from their families and puts them on his sailboat, or on one of his donkey caravan expeditions in the Sahara or with a bicycle group visiting the lands of the Mediterranean sea. His education is anti-authoritarian. Kameneff noted that on board ship boys tended to fall into two categories: the real children of nature and those who had already been largely shaped by the way adults live their lives. The latter cannot do without their cigarettes, their transistor sets playing pop music, their Coca-Cola, television and movies. They are embarrassed by nudity, are sexually rigid and secretive. The children of nature, on the other hand, who are by far the most promising pupils of this school, happily throw off their clothes as soon as the ship has put to sea and they have left land and its society behind. Weather permitting, they work naked and often masturbate openly while sunning on the deck. They are frank about their sexuality which they shamelessly accept as a beautiful gift of nature. One day Michel, already mentioned in No. 41, presented himself proudly and happily before his group leader and told him, “Just now I got seed for the very first time in my life![10]
58 In the collection of the Brongersma Foundation there are a number of reproductions of drawings made by Sicilian working class boys, aged 12 to 17. They were frequent visitors in the home of a German artist living in Italy, and when they saw him at work they wanted to make drawings themselves. He gave them paper and pencil – and four-fifths of the sketches they produced dealt with sexuality, often in a most fanciful way. One fourteen-year-old wanted to make the same announcement that Michel had made in Kameneff’s school. He sketched a large, stiff penis, drawing it, however, rather lightly; what was emerging from its tip, however, was boldly accented to make it the most important part of the picture: big, thick drops. And proudly Filippo wrote next to it “Nuova novità” (the latest news)!
59 ”When I finally ejaculated at thirteen, I felt great! Hooray, I’m a man! The world was complete.”
”At eleven after masturbating I came. I felt now I was a ‘man’ and could do anything.”
”With my first ejaculation at fifteen. I thought of it as a big thing, quite macho. Something to brag about with the guys.”
”After I came while masturbating, I thought I was a great guy who was gonna lay every chick in sight.[11]
60 Erik, one of Sandfort’s adult subjects, had had relations with many different boys. He observed “that it is a problem for the immature not to have an ejaculation. You have it, and they don’t. They’re terribly curious about the experience, what you feel when you come, if the sensation is different. When André finally had an ejaculation it was cause for real celebration. He was wildly delighted. And from that moment on boys feel they are full-fledged partners: now they are just like you; they can take part in sex with you completely. And they like this very much. I have noted this not just with André; with other boys it is just the same.[12]
A boy’s first ejaculation is usually brought about by masturbation; more rarely it occurs while he is asleep and is accompanied by some kind of erotic dream. Only rarely does it happen during intercourse.
61 The Negro boy from Abidjan, already mentioned in No. 35, had intercourse for the first time when he was eleven with a girl of twelve. After this a long time passed without his having any sexual adventure. But one evening he found himself with a girl who already had mature breasts. She showed him a book with erotic pictures.
“As I looked at them my cock went stiff. I had more courage now, as I was a little bit older. I said, ‘Do you want to do it?’ She said, ‘Yes, but where?’ We went to the back of the house; she laid her loin-cloth on the ground and we lay down upon it. I threw my clothes off, and as soon as I was naked we started. Suddenly I felt something unspeakably nice coming from my back. I can’t really describe it, but it was so delightful! And then, suddenly, it was over. I thought it ought to have lasted longer, it was so fine. Then I pulled my cock out of her, and, as I went to pull my trousers up, I touched my cock and saw it covered with sticky slime that was clear like water. Then I thought, this is the wet stuff big boys are often talking about, I grew scared that I might have made the girl pregnant.[13]
It is often said that a boy who has his first ejaculation in the course of love-play with an older friend feels thenceforth a particularly close bond with him.
62 One of the men whose history is told in detail by Ellis was nearly fifteen when the big event occurred. He had once again sought contact with a man ten years his senior with whom he had been intimate when he was only five years old. “He put me into his bed while he undressed himself and came toward me in perfect nudity. In a moment we were in each other’s arms and the deliciousness of that moment intoxicated me. Suddenly, lying on the bed, I felt attacked, as I thought, by an imperative need to make water. I leaped up with a hurried excuse, but already the paroxysm had subsided. No discharge came to my relief, yet the need seemed to have passed. I returned to my companion, but the glamour of the meeting was already over (…) On a second occasion, one day, I seemed involuntarily about to transgress decency, but again, as before, separated myself, and remained ignorant of what it was on which I had verged in my excitement. At another meeting, however, I had been allowed to prolong my embrace and to act, indeed, upon my full instincts. Once more I felt suddenly the coming of something acutely impending; I took my courage in my hands and went boldly forward. In another moment I had hold of the mysterious secret of masculine energy, to which all my years of delirious imaginings had been but as a waiting at the threshold, the knocking on a closed door.[14]
Not all beginners have the sense of responsibility shown by the black youngster from Abidjan who worried about making his girl-friend pregnant.
63 In Down Under the Plum Trees, which is an excellent sexual source book for adolescents, a 13-year-old New Zealander is quoted, “I didn’t use to worry about shooting in a girl – it just didn’t worry me. Normally I never used contraceptives (…) Actually, the idea of getting a girl pregnant was quite exciting – an ego trip.”[15]
It is most exciting, especially for the more intelligent boy, to look at his own ejaculate under magnification and see the swarming life he has produced. Many boys find this deeply moving. A young Belgian said, “I immediately brought the first sperm I produced to the microscope; I felt very rich indeed when I saw all those entangling spermatozoa.”[16]
Many immature boys are able to repeat their sexual climaxes almost indefinitely, one following immediately upon the other, just as can girls.[17] Kinsey cites instances in which immature boys attained orgasm ten times within ten minutes, and twenty times within a half-hour. With one 11-month-old baby 14 orgasms were observed in a space of 38 minutes; with an 11-year-old boy 19 in an hour’s time; one 13-year-old boy had 26 orgasms in one day.[18] But the capacity to ejaculate puts an end to these multiple orgasms of childhood.
64 (Continued from 31) When Max, at the age of seventeen, was questioned about his sexual evolution, he said, “When I was six my eleven-year-old brother taught me how to masturbate. He showed me pictures of naked women whom I thought were very beautiful, and they excited me, too. But back then I wasn’t able to get a climax. That happened the first time when I was ten – a dry climax, of course, without sperm. From then on I was indefatigable, rubbing my cock every day and having up to twelve orgasms one right after another. That multiple climaxing came to an end when I started to emit sperm when I was thirteen or fourteen. Since then I usually masturbate about ten times a week.
“At first I was afraid it would damage my health, and I had some guilt feelings, but soon it just became a habit that I didn’t worry about any longer. And then, too, sex was always being talked about at school, so I knew all the other boys were doing the same thing.”
65 A patient of Dr. Stekel reported, “At fourteen I couldn’t resist the temptation any longer, so I started to masturbate to excess. I masturbated I every night; I did it continuously, without stopping, until about 2 or 3 a.m., always lying on my stomach and imitating intercourse (…) During the day I also masturbated in the lavatories (…) It was a big relief when at last I had that first ejaculation which I had so eagerly looked forward to for so long. This great event took place in the lavatory and my first seed fertilised the basin. I felt myself liberated and greatly relieved (…) After that first ejaculation my excessive masturbation ceased.[19]
66 A fourteen-year-old told his doctor “that he decided to test his ability to jerk off the previous night. He professed the achievement of 13 separate orgasms from masturbation using his hand ‘and plenty of vaselline’.”[20]
67 René, 16 years: “Nowadays doing it once or twice completely satisfies me. The second time is still pretty nice, but the first time, of course, is the most delicious. Previously (that is, before there was any seed) it didn’t make any difference whether it was the first time or the fourth: the feeling was always the same. In those days I liked it too, of course, but now, when I come, I feel a lot more satisfied. The pleasure is much greater. That’s the difference.[21]
This “dry orgasm” which the immature boy is able to repeat almost indefinitely, is quite distinct from the phenomenon of double orgasm first described in adolescents by Kahn and Kinsey. Kinsey found that in 4,000 subjects there were 380 who regularly had more than one orgasm during a single sexual contact: “In a fair number of cases it is habitual for a male to ejaculate two or more times in continuous intercourse and while maintaining a continuous erection.[22]
68 ”Walter, a fifteen-year-old hairdresser’s apprentice, accompanied me into the dunes to go sunbathing. He took all his clothes off and immediately got a hard-on which simply wouldn’t go down. ‘I always feel sexy when I’m naked,’ he said. Then he told me about the Wednesday nights he always looked forward to because his mother, a widow, went to choir practice and he and his brother, who was a year younger, became temporary masters of the house. They always invited girls in. They began first with dancing, then gradually got rid of their clothes until at last all four of them were naked. He envied his brother who, despite his younger age, had a much bigger cock. Finally they went to their beds to have intercourse, but there his brother was rather clumsy and several times Walter had to help out, guiding the young boy’s cock because he couldn’t find the ‘hole’. To avoid pregnancy Walter would withdraw his penis right at the last moment before he spurted, but then insert his cock again for about fifteen seconds, after which he would take it out again just before he climaxed and ejaculated second a time. He was firmly convinced that the male could fertilize only during climax. I told him this was a dangerous misconception and explained why, promising to bring him a book with more factual information the next time. But I was also interested in his ability to have double ejaculations and told him he was the first boy I had ever met who had that capacity. ‘Want to see it?’ he proposed eagerly. ‘If you jerk me off it’ll happen in a hurry.’ I did so, and after a few minutes Walter, breathing deeply, turned slightly on his side so that his sperm wouldn’t splatter on his stomach. Then it spurted out, a good quantity of it, white and creamy, and I thoughtlessly let go of his penis. Immediately Walter cried, with near hysteria in his voice, ‘No, no, keep doing it!’ so I resumed my rubbing, and, sure enough, after about twenty seconds the boy had another discharge, with the same force and just as voluminously as the first.” (Personal communication)
69 The American poet Dennis Kelly devoted a whole volume of poems, Size Queen, to the sexual organs (and what they got up to) of his students at school and his young friends. He describes the same phenomenon in one Gary:
Gary Cumstock must be nine inches soft.
One time after I proposition him in the
locker room, it gets 11 or 12 miles long…
One time he tells
me how many million sperm I’ve just
swallowed, as I milk his tool of its
last drop. Then he doubles it, with
a nice big double load. It’s tasty.[23]
This capacity of doubly ejaculating, “to forge two nails on one fire” as it is sometimes called, mostly disappears at the end of adolescence. Only very few young men still possess it; older adults never do.
With the onset of puberty, many boys start to have nocturnal emissions, “wet dreams” with voluptuous images provoking orgasm. Kinsey found a few eight- and nine-year-old boys were already having this experience; after ten years of age the percentage steadily increased until with fifteen-year-olds it stood at 40%; by twenty years of age nearly 80% of the male population had experienced nocturnal emissions.[24] Hertoft found somewhat higher percentages in Denmark: 7.8% began at twelve or younger to have wet dreams, 27.1% of the thirteen-year-olds had them, 52.4% of the fourteen-year-olds, 67.7% of the fifteen-year-olds, 76.7% of the sixteen-year-olds. Finally 85.3% of the male population had had such experiences.[25]
The average frequency is once in three weeks, with a maximum in some fifteen-year-olds of twelve times a week.[26]
There has been almost no research done into this phenomenon, which is surprising. It seems that the penis is in erection one fifth of the time one is asleep[27] and that the erections occur at intervals of about 90 minutes, according to Dr. Mary S. Calderone.[28] It has been estimated, moreover, that 12% of the dreams which young men have deal with sexuality. In 14% of these dreams only the image of the desired person will appear; in 30% the dreamer makes some kind of sexual overture to someone; in 11% he kisses and fondles someone; in 18% he handles someone’s sex organs and in 27% full intercourse is attempted or takes place.[29] It seems that the dreamer often touches and rubs his penis during sleep. Orgasm usually awakens him.
If we were to impute intentions to nature, we might suggest that the purpose of wet dreams is to draw the boy’s attention to his sexuality and to seed his mind with the desire to achieve awake and in actuality the lustful scenes conjured by his sleeping mind. In any case, nature misses no opportunity to provoke a boy’s salacity.
We might also suppose that, physiologically, the chief purpose of wet dreams is to get regularly rid of the accumulated products of the sex glands. Nature “irritates the swollen organs with much seed,” as Lucrece said.[30] But this mechanism doesn’t function in every male. Some boys never attain orgasm during their sleep. And those who deliberately try to stop their wet dreams by relieving themselves adequately by masturbation or shared sexual activity are often unsuccessful. According to Gagnon & Simon[31] orgastic dreams are not less frequent in males with an active sex life. This proves that a purely physiological explanation is insufficient.
A variable with great importance for a boy’s “male pride” is the force with which his penis spurts his seed. Friday[32] records the masturbation fantasy of a subject who imagines himself totally nude in front of six or eight fully dressed women: “After a while I spread two sheets of newspaper lengthwise on the floor and then kneel at one end and the women place their marks on the paper and place a bet on how far I can ejaculate and the one that comes closest wins the bet. I then proceed to masturbate while they watch and cheer me on.”
Just before orgasm, at the very last moment, the various sexual glands release their fluids deep into the urethra, where they become mixed to form the familiar ejaculate. With the onset of orgasmic climax muscles around the root of the penis squeeze this out. With some boys it seems to well up rather quietly from the slit on the tip of the glans; in many it comes out in jets synchronised with the spasmodic contractions of the ejaculating muscles.
Commonly there are three or four jets following each other at intervals of 0.8 seconds.[33] There are indications that the number of jets increases when an individual feels less inhibited and more excited and that at such times the individual experiences a prolongation and deepening of orgasm as well. In an amateur home movie I once saw a German fifteen-year-old produce no less than seven powerful jets. The record might be eight.[34]
The distance travelled by these jets of ejaculate usually is no more than 15 to 25 cm, but measurements have actually been made of sperm throws up to 1.65 meters.[35] “I have been known to spurt far enough to hit my sex partner in the eye at a distance of five to six feet,” a subject of Hite[36] declares. An Amsterdam boy-lover once showed me encrustations on a china lamp-shade: the carefully preserved traces of seed from his fourteen-year-old friend. The lamp stood at the head of a settee on which the boy had lain as he was brought to climax; the distance between lamp and penis tip was more than two metres!
Continue to The Experience of Maturation: Orgasm
[1] Broderick, C. B., Kind, jeugd en seksualiteit. Utrecht: Spectrum, 1971, 89. [Author’s reference]
[2] Ellis 1910, VI-60 [Author’s reference, not identifiable in his bibliography].
[3] Tuohy, F. & Murphy, M., Down Under the Plum Trees. Waiura (New Zealand): Alister Taylor, 1976, 136. [Author’s reference]
[4] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 605-606. [Author’s reference]
[5] Stekel, W., Sadismus und Masochismus. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1925, 447. [Author’s reference]
[6] Hertoft, P., Unge mænds seksuelle adfæd, viden og holdning. København: Akademisk Forlag, 1968, II-31. [Author’s reference]
[7] Winkel, C., De sexuele ontwikkeling van het kind. Zeist: NISSO, 1972, 18. [Author’s reference]
[8] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, 422. [Author’s reference]
[9] Bullough, V. L., Sexual Variance In Society and History, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976, 358. [Author’s reference]
[10] Kameneff, L., Ecoliers sans tablier. Paris: Simoën, 1979, 31. [Author’s reference]
[11] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 606. [Author’s reference]
[12] Sandfort, Th., De ervaringswereld van kinderen in pedofiele relaties. Doktoraalskriptie Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, 1979, 213 [Author’s reference]
[13] “1979, 121” [Author’s reference, not relating to anything in his bibliography].
[14] Ellis 1915, II-155 [Author’s reference, but does not correspond exactly to anything in his bibliography].
[15] Tuohy, F. & Murphy, M., Down Under the Plum Trees. Waiura (New Zealand): Alister Taylor, 1976, 177. [Author’s reference]
[16] Kruithof, J. & Ussel, J. van, Jeugd voor de muur–Vlaamse sludenten over hun seksuele problematiek. Antwerpen: Ontwikkeling, 1963, 84. [Author’s reference]
[17] Hertoft, P., Orgasmus und Nähe. In: Nørretranders (Ed.), Hungabe, Über den Orgasmus des Mannes. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1983, 70. [Author’s reference]
[18] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 179-180. [Author’s reference]
[19] Stekel, W., Sadismus und Masochismus. Berlin: Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1925, 144. [Author’s reference]
[20] Marcus, I. M. & Francis, J. J., Introduction. In: Marcus & Francis (Eds.), Masturbation. New York: International Universities Press, 1975, 7. [Author’s reference]
[21] Sandfort 1979, 214 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear which of two works by Sandfort published in 1979 is meant].
[22] Kinsey 1949, 215 [Author’s reference, but no work by Kinsey published in 1949 is listed in his bibliography].
[23] Kelly, D., Size Queen and Other Poems. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1981, 103. [Author’s reference]
[24] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 522. [Author’s reference]
[25] Hertoft, P., Unge mænds seksuelle adfæd, viden og holdning. København: Akademisk Forlag, 1968, II-31 [Author’s reference]
[26] Kinsey, A. C. et al, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948, 243. [Author’s reference]
[27] Vangaard, Th., Phallós. København: Gyldendal, 1969, 170. [Author’s reference]
[28] Calderone, M. S., Fetal Erection and its Message to Us. SIECUS-Report May-July, 1983, [Author’s reference]
[29] Bell, A.P. & Hall, C. S., The Personality of the Child Molestor. Chicago: Aldine Atherton, 1971, 22. [Author’s reference]
[30] Burnet, E., Lucrèce notre contemporain. Tunis: Maison Tunisienne de l’Edition, 1984, 81 [Author’s reference].
The real source here is Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things IV 1029-1036. Any of the several good translations will do.
[31] Gagnon, J. H. & Simon, W., Sexual Conduct. London: Hutchinson, 1973, 96. [Author’s reference]
[32] Friday, 1941, 47 [Author’s reference, not clearly linked to anything in his bibliography]
[33] Verveen, A. A., Seksuele aktiviteit van de mens. In: Intern Rapport 1977 Laboratorium voor Fysiologie. Leiden: Rijksuniversiteit, 1977, 22. [Author’s reference]
[34] Osborne 1977, 1-19 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear to which work he is referring by Osborne listed in his bibliography]
[35] Baker, R., Kär lek mellan män. Revolt 1: 21-25; 2: 43-47, 1977, 25. [Author’s reference]
[36] Hite, Sh., The Hite Report on Male Sexuality. New York: Ballantine, 1981, 589. [Author’s reference]