A Masturbator's Glossary
There's a certain vocabulary by which really dedicated bone-strokers may recognize each other. Certain words that aren't used in the mainstream, or words that are used by ''outsiders'' but which may have additional nuances attached to them by the Bate Brotherhood. This glossary is an attempt to gather and define such terms for newcomers.
In some cases, there may not be a widely agreed-upon term even though there's clearly a general recognition of the concept -- for example, the Glossary lists the term "bate-speak" even though some guys would say "verbal" or "cock-babble" or "dirty talk" or whatever. But a lot of us are very familiar with the phenomenon, whatever you want to call it!
I've also included a few terms that probably aren't used by any masturbators in the world except me -- but I threw them in because I thought that other guys would recognize the concept that I'm talking about.
Of course, I would love to hear suggestions for other terms that should be added! And since this is a work-in-progress, if you see any terms followed by a (TK), it's just a reminder to myself that I need to write a definition but haven't gotten around to it yet. With that introduction out of the way, here is...
The DICK-TIONARY
- Albolene -- Widely regarded by many serious masturbators as the only lube they'll ever buy again, this blend of mineral oil, petroleum jelly, and paraffin is actually sold as makeup remover for women, which explains why it's not more widely known as a lube.
(If you're in the U.S., look for it in the women's skincare products aisle of any drugstore. It may seem a bit pricey -- I don't think I've ever seen it for less than $10 for a 12-ounce tub -- but a little goes a long way, and you won't have to buy a new jar for quite a while.) Beloved by most men who've tried it because it doesn't dry out, is surprisingly easy to clean up, and liquefies from the warmth of your skin, resulting in a very distinctive texture. Although I totally love Albolene for solo j/o, its friction-reducing properties really come into play when dudes are masturbating each other -- the stuff is so slick that you don't need to worry much about yanking your buddy's dick too roughly.
One important caveat: Because it's made with oil, oil, and more oil, Albolene is totally unsuitable for use with latex condoms -- and it could potentially shorten the lifespan of toys such as Fleshlights, j/o sleeves, dildos, etc.
Incidentally, you may wonder whether any women actually buy Albolene for its labeled purpose as a makeup remover and skin conditioner; I was once informed by an African-American j/o buddy that the two major consumer markets for Albolene are little old black ladies (who use it on their face), and male masturbators of every color (who use it on their dicks)!
UPDATE: Scroll to the bottom or click here for instructions on making "moonshine" Albolene right in your own kitchen! - bate-speak -- Some guys really like to verbalize while masturbating, whether or not there's another guy listening. Bate-speak may involve the simple mantra-like repetition of key words and phrases that the individual masturbator finds particularly hot: cock, jizz, wank, bate, man-scent, goon, penis, hairy chest, men being men together, shoot, ejaculate, sperm. It can also take the form of out-loud narration about what the masturbator is doing, as though describing the scene to a listener, even though there may be no one else present: "Oh, yeah, I'm a horny dude stroking my hard dick! This fucking wanker is gonna shoot a big spermload all over his chest!" Clinical talk (q.v.) can be considered a subcategory of bate-speak in which formal "textbook" terms are preferred. Bate-speak's flowing, ecstatic nature can be reminiscent of a religious mystic's ''praying in tongues,'' which is also known by the high-falutin' term glossolalia. From this, we could coin phalloglossolalia to describe the bibble babble of penis-worship.
- (the little) brown bottle -- Another way of referring to poppers, after the glass container that they're usually contained in.
- c2c -- (1) Abbreviation of "cam-to-cam," used by bators who enjoy sharing the bliss of masturbation online via webcam connections. (2) Abbreviation of "cock-to-cock."
- ''clinical'' talk -- It may seem counterintuitive that anyone would find seemingly dry terms like penis, masturbate, and semen to be bigger turn-ons than their ''pornographic'' synonyms like cock, jack off, cum. Yet if you study posts on j/o-specific websites, you'll find there's a persistent subculture of men who have a special fondness for the ''formal'' or ''scientific'' phraseology. Why? Because they think the words sound hot!
- cock-to-cock -- The practice of placing your erect penis against another man's shaft so that the sensitive undersides are in contact (lubing up your dicks first is usually a good idea, unless between the two of you you're leaking enough precum to get your cocks slippery the natural way). Feeling a buddy's erection throbbing against yours can produce a surprisingly powerful sense of psychological connection with each other's maleness -- and plus it's just plain fun to take turns jacking those two fuckin' man dongs with one hand. As a great bonus, many "buddy bators" find that going cock-to-cock together makes it easy to have near-simultaneous orgasms, if that's what you want -- because as soon as you see your bud's stiff dick start pumping out a spermload, and you feel his warm, slippery ball juice getting all over your own cock, it can put you over the edge in a split second! See also frottage.
- docking -- The act of one man slipping his foreskin over the glans penis of another so that the two erections are coupled head-to-head by the foreskin. Guys who are circumcised can somewhat imitate this effect by putting both their dicks into a lubricated rubber masturbation sleeve, so that the elasticity of the sleeve holds their throbbing shafts tightly together.
- edging -- The practice of masturbating until you feel like you're just seconds away from ejaculation and then stopping before you actually "go over the edge" to a full-blown orgasm. Once that near-orgasmic sensation has subsided a bit, resume jacking. Rinse, lather, repeat, for as many cycles as you can possibly stand it before you've just got to let that hot cum go all over yourself. Experience edgers will often go for hours before coming, or even have several different j/o sessions over successive days without pushing themselves all the way to orgasm, in order to yield a bigger sperm load in the end. Sometimes, with practice, you can learn to release a bit of semen and then back off without having a full orgasm and losing the whole load -- lots of fun if you often fantasize about eating your jizz but find that you lose the desire after a full orgasm, and also fun because you can use your spunk as dick-lube!
- 420 (pronounced "four-twenty," not "four hundred and twenty" or "four-two-zero")-- Marijuana. The term is definitely not specific to 'bators, but because it frequently appears in profiles and is less well known to many people than other slang like "weed" or "pot," I thought it should be listed. See this article at snopes.com for a discussion of the term's origins.
- frottage (fruh-TAZH, but often shortened to "frot," which rhymes with "hot") -- A practice closely linked to male/male "buddy j/o" and sometimes synonymous with "cock-to-cock," but often with greater emphasis on rubbing naked bodies together (not just your dicks) so as to maximize skin-to-skin contact. Guys who are into frot with other guys like to feel each other's coarse, hairy, muscular, MALE-shaped bodies just as much as they enjoy touching another dude's dong -- it's all about maximizing that powerful experience of masculine-to-masculine sharing. Frottage is sometimes called "dry humping" or "the Princeton fuck," but frot enthusiasts often argue that these terms only serve to perpetuate the idiotic notion that frot is somehow not "real" sex appropriate for grown men -- that it's just for inexperienced teenagers in the back of cars, or a measure of last resort for desperate and dateless heterosexual fratboys at all-male colleges (as Princeton used to be). However, guys who've discovered the pleasures of frotting with other guys know that it can be very real and incredibly intense M2M sex, and not a second-rate substitute. In some gay circles, frottage has also attracted a certain degree of political controversy because a few "frot advocates" on the Web have chosen to take a radical stance against any kind of anal sex, for various reasons of their own. But the rest of us guys need not buy into this all-or-nothing purist mentality -- you can love frot but also enjoy other forms of sex. "Frottage," in the sexual sense defined here, should not be confused with "frotteurism" -- the practice of rubbing against unwilling strangers in a crowded place, such as a subway car. While this may be fun as a pure fantasy, needless to say that doing it in real life is incredibly uncool and crosses into the territory of criminal sexual assault. "Frottage" also has a totally non-sexual meaning, by the way -- it's an art term for the technique of placing paper over a highly textured or engraved surface (e.g. a brick wall or a tombstone) and rubbing it crayons, pencils, or some other soft drawing medium.
- (See this wikipedia article for even more info on "frot"/"frottage," and for links discussing similar practices outside of a male/male context, such as lesbian "scissoring.")
- gooning -- Along with Albolene, one of the bate-culture shibboleths that reveal a man as an obsessive (and knowledgeable) Masturbator.
The word possibly derives from childhood traditions of making a grotesquely silly "goon" face (e.g., at the end of the "Little Bunny Foo-Foo" game), or from the goggle-eyed, phallic-nosed character Alice the Goon in old Popeye comic strips from the 1930s.
''Gooning'' may be most simply defined as that state usually achieved after a prolonged edging session, when a man becomes completely hypnotized by the beautiful sight of his own erection, so that he no longer really needs other stimulation such as pornographic words and imagery. He's turned on by witnessing his own sexual arousal -- that is, he's turned on by the fact of his turned-on-ness -- and by simply gazing at his own hard, throbbing, precum-leaking, magnificently MALE PENIS.
He may also have a sensation that he is his cock, and his cock is him, and furthermore, that nothing exists except himself and the DONG. (Being a geek, I once suggested that the goon state could be compared to that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where a subspace fluctuation in the warp drive's matter/antimatter ganeckticazoid ends up flinging Beverly Crusher into a collapsing micro-universe that contains only herself and an unmanned U.S.S. Enterprise.) Anyway, while all this is happening, there's a high probability that his face is contorted into some mighty undignified expressions -- and hence the term "goon." - J/O Club -- A private, "members-only" establishment that exists to provide a space for exhibitionistic jacking, mutual masturbation, and circle-jerks. Although theoretically the venue could be the home or apartment of a dedicated masturbator who opens his door to dick-stroking guests, in some cities J/O clubs meet in multi-purpose "sex space" facilities that may also be used by S&M enthusiasts or golden-shower fans or other groups on various days of the month. Many younger dudes assume that J/O clubs were instituted as a safe-sex response to AIDS, but in fact they were around long before the epidemic. The clubs were founded in part because some men wanted a space where there wasn't an expectation of anal sex, as in the bathhouses -- not because they were fearful of disease, but because some guys thought that dicks belonged in men's hands and in men's mouths, not in men's butts. However, the primary motivation behind the founding of the original J/O clubs was much simpler and more primal: namely, lots of dudes just really really loved showing off their stiff hairy man dicks to other males, and getting into some mutual dick play, without worrying about "gay," "bi," and "straight" labels! As a somewhat older email correspondent once wrote to me,
"The original concept of the NY Jacks was that the human erection was too beautiful to hide in any orifice. Men came to celebrate and display Hard Penis, under the motto Phallos must be seen."
Wow. Just let that percolate through your brain. King of Clubs -- My suggested shorthand name for a particular cock-to-cock position that many men enjoy but that is a little cumbersome to describe: both guys lying on their backs, one guy's legs over the other so that your sperm tanks and throbbing boner can be placed in direct contact with his, heads at opposite ends of the bed/sofa, ideally propped up on pillows or the sofa's armrests so that you can look at each other. It's especially good for balls-to-balls rubbing -- which is sometimes underappreciated, but can bring on that "male bonding" sensation even more intensely than penis-to-penis rubbing. (After all, while the dick may be a man's pleasure center, he wouldn't HAVE a dick if not for the testosterone and other male hormones produced by his own embryonic balls when he was still floating around in his mom's womb, no bigger than a cocktail shrimp.)
- man in the mirror -- One's own reflection as an object of admiration during the 'bate.
- Ouroboros ("oo-roh-BOR-os" in Greek, but often said as "or-ROH-buh-rus" in English -- take your pick!) -- (1) The ancient Greeks' name for the mystical image of a serpent eating its own tail, found in many world cultures. Although you might think it would represent auto-cannibalism and hence self-destruction, in fact the ouroboros is often used as a positive symbol of miraculous renewal and self-sustaining processes. (See wikipedia for more on the mythology.)
(2) A pretty good metaphorical way to describe the ''feedback loop'' of sexual arousal that develops when a gooner gets more excited the more that he looks at and thinks about his own hard, throbbing cock; and also when two or more men masturbate with each other in a self-feeding circle of exhibitionism and voyeurism. In plain English: It turns me on to see your penis, and thus my penis becomes erect; in turn, you are excited by my erection, and your own dong gets stiff; I see your throbbing meat and become more visibly excited myself, which in turn boosts your horniness, and so on. And this feedback can operate on multiple levels -- for not only is it exciting to see another male's erect penis, but it's also exciting to display your cock to him. So, I get turned on by showing another man that I have a woody from looking at his dick, and he gets turned on by (a) the sight of my woody, and (b) the knowledge that his own manly body is contributing to my erection, and (c) the fact that he is displaying his own dong to me. And around and around and around it goes...
- PNP -- Sometimes innocently misinterpreted as signifying "porn 'n' poppers" or "pot 'n' poppers"; in fact, it stands for "party and play," a euphemistic reference to sex under the influence of "hardcore" drugs, such as crystal meth. Thus, it's not a contradiction in terms if you see a profile that says "420 and poppers OK, but no PNP please."
- poppers -- Any of several volatile chemicals generically known as "alkyl nitrites," often sold in small brown-glass bottles, and beloved by some masturbators because inhaling the fumes can produce a short-lived euphoric state that many users subjectively experience as intense horniness.
The "original" poppers were amyl nitrite, for which reason some users -- and unscrupulous vendors -- may still use the term "amyl" even though most poppers sold these days are in fact butyl or isobutyl nitrite. The primary biological effect of inhaling the fumes from alkyl nitrites is that the muscular walls of blood vessels relax, causing the vessels to temporarily widen -- a process called vasodilation-- and thereby lowering the blood pressure. (The euphoria and increased horniness that some users experience is actually a side effect of the vasodilation.) Amyl nitrite was formerly prescribed by doctors as an emergency inhalant for patients with certain blood-pressure conditions, and the chemical was typically dispensed by pharmacies in the form of small fabric pouches containing a delicate glass capsule full of amyl. The cloth was meant to safely contain the glass fragments after the capsules were snapped in half -- with an audible POP, hence the slang name.
The primary safety issue with poppers is that they should never be used together with V¡agra or similar drugs, since the combined effects could potentially cause a life-threatening drop in blood pressure. However, the combining effect is not so potent that you need to be paranoid about "secondhand fumes" if you've taken boner pills and your j/o bud wants to sniff poppers. (For lots more info, check out the Popperbate group right here on Bate Nation.) - ricky-shicky -- Onomatopoeic representation of the "wet" noise made by a hand as it slides up and down an erect penis that's thoroughly slick with lube, precum, or spit; hence, also, a synonym for masturbation. During phone-bate sessions, many a guy enjoys hearing his buddy put the receiver close enough to his penis to pick up this soft but singularly arousing sound.
- sweet spot -- The small area on a man's dick that is more sensitive to pleasurable stimulation than the rest of the penis. For a lot of guys, that spot is right over the frenulum area on the underside of the shaft -- the frenulum being the thin piece of skin that connects the foreskin to the shaft. (The little membranous thingy that anchors your tongue to the bottom of your mouth is also a "frenulum.") Circumcised guys no longer have their frenulum, but the skin where it used to be is still massively supplied with highly sensitive nerves. For other guys, the "sweet spot" may be somewhere else on the penis shaft, or on the glans (aka cockhead), or on the corona (which is the flared edge of the cockhead). Wherever the spot is located, finding it and learning to "tease" that area properly -- and knowing when to avoid it -- is key to long, mind-blowing bate sessions.
- taint -- The perineal ridge between the scrotum and anus (so called because ''it ain't the nuts and it ain't the asshole''). Often overlooked, but very sensitive to stimulation. Some guys who are into male/male masturbation like to plant their taint solidly on a buddy's raised knee and grind away while jacking or while being masturbated by the other guy. (The idea is that your own body weight against the other guy's knee puts a lot of indirect pressure on the sensitive prostate gland.)
SUPER-AWESOME BONUS ALBOLENE RECIPE!
If Albolene isn't available in your neck of the woods -- or if you just want to be incredibly thrifty -- you can whip up a homemade batch in under 30 minutes! Here's the recipe:
- 1-1/4 cup (= 10 ounces = 300 mL) mineral oil
- 1/4 cup (= 2 ounces = 60 mL) petroleum jelly
- plain unscented white candle OR solid paraffin wax
Combine mineral oil and petroleum jelly in a small saucepan on the stove. Use a hand grater or knife to grate/chop about 1/4 cup (60 mL) of candle wax or paraffin, packing the grated wax into the measuring cup as you would do for brown sugar. 
