Paul arranges to come around the following Saturday evening for a movie. I tell him that I’ll cook, as long as he will share a curry with my brother and I. Mum and Dad don’t do spicy, so I usually cook an Indian or Chinese-style curry for the two of us on a Saturday evening and making it stretch to three people is easy.

We watch a movie, Paul delighting in the cinema experience that a 120-inch projected image gives us. He’s soon confidently scanning through the collection of movies on my server after the film ends. He’s been given an eleven o’clock curfew and we still have nearly an hour.

I have everything on the server divided into folders, roughly by genre, with sub-folders for series or trilogies and such. One folder in particular catches his eye as he browses.

“Adult?” he asks me quietly.

“What?”

“This folder on the server, it says ‘Adult’. Is that what I think it is?” he asks with a bit of a grin.

I’m not exactly embarrassed, but still a little hesitant and I probably do blush a little. “Yes, that’s my porn collection. Just some stuff I’ve downloaded over time.”

Downloading anything from the internet is still a slow and unreliable process and big free-to-view sites are not a thing. I hadn’t tried too hard to gather my small collection, but sometimes it was nice to just watch a video of people having sex while I had a wank.

“What sort of porn? Can I have a look?” He taps on the folder to look at the titles of the videos.

“Of course, there’s nothing that I’m ashamed or worried about. It’s just the usual, you know, bad actors with exaggerated body parts fucking.”

“Yes, but aren’t you a bit embarrassed about having it or needing it?”

“No, not at all really. I don’t see the point of being embarrassed about sex. If I sometimes want to watch a video of people having sex while I have a wank, then I can’t see anything wrong with that,” I tell him. “As far as I can tell, almost all men wank, at least if they’re not having regular sex, and I’m no different. Anyway, what I do here in private is my own business. And,” I look him in the eye. “I’m sure you masturbate too. It’s perfectly normal.”

He seems to consider my words for a minute or so, weighing up whether he is free to answer. “Yes, of course I do. Like you say, I think every guy does. It’s just that, at school and college, all the guys just make jokes about it. It’s made out to be something a little sad and funny that only people who aren’t having sex do. They always try and make out that it’s somehow only for losers.”

“Yes, some things don’t change then. It was exactly the same when I was at school twenty years ago. Do you really think they are all having sex, or just worried that you might know that they aren’t and they are all wanking as well.”

“Probably all wanking. I know some of them have girlfriends and one or two of them might be having sex, but most of them are the same age as me and single. Obviously, we will be doing what we have to do to take care of ourselves!”

I could hear the slight embarrassment in his voice, he was clearly just a little bit uneasy with the subject, but I could also tell that he wanted to talk about stuff. Just like me, this was probably a first-time conversation.

“Hey, Paul, we’re friends, right? You can talk to me about anything and I’ll try not to judge and I certainly won’t make fun of you. I’m no expert on sex, actually, far from it, but I’ve had more than my fair share of experience wanking!” He lightens up a bit and manages to laugh a little at my joke.

“Why do you think you’ve had more than your fair share?” he asks, seemingly a little more comfortable.

“Well, I’m still a virgin.” If he is surprised, he hides it well. “I’ve never had sex with anyone, but I have a pretty high libido – you know, sex drive. I’ve been wanking since I was probably just turned fourteen and need to do it quite often.”

“How often? If it’s okay to ask something like that?” he asks more confidently. He clearly just needs a little time to get more comfortable and gain a little confidence in his own skin.

“Now? Pretty much every day and maybe more than once on some days and not at all on others,” I reply easily. “Sometimes I’ll go a couple of days without, just not in the mood, but other days I’ll need to orgasm two or three times to get that niggling need out of my system. I don’t keep count; maybe ten times a week?”

“Oh, wow!” He seems a little taken back. “I don’t need to do it that often. I only do it maybe three or four times a week.”

“Well, everyone is different,” I continue. “There is no right or wrong. You should have seen me when I was your age. I probably needed to wank anywhere up to twenty times a week when I was a teenager, three times a day or so. Morning and night and maybe several times at weekends! I wasn’t addicted or anything though, honest.”

“And you really do still do it?”

“Of course. Mind you, now I like to go for quality more than quantity. Hence the videos I suppose. I’ve had an awful lot of practice over the years and now prefer to make it last a bit longer if I can. I try to do a little bit of edging, stopping right before I come, then waiting a moment for the peak to pass before starting again. It makes the orgasm more intense when you finally let it happen,” I pause to think for a moment.

“Sometimes, though, I just need to get it over with quickly and get that urge out of my system or just get rid of an unwanted erection – and, yes, I still get spontaneous erections, even at my age!”

“So, did you ever have wet dreams?”

“No, I feel I might have missed out on something there. I never have erotic dreams of any sort. Must just be wanking enough to never have the need for my body to release. What about you?”

“I had a couple when I first hit puberty, not for a while though. I think I was just having them before I really knew I could wank, or what wanking was really, and have a deliberate orgasm. They just make a mess though, you know, boxers sticky with spunk when you wake up.

“And it was just a bit embarrassing. Nobody ever said anything, but Mum had to know what was happening. We never talked about puberty at home, I just started to change and had to figure it out for myself. Dad just asked me if I needed to buy a razor when I started to get a bit of a moustache.

“What I remember about the erotic dreams themselves is pretty fantastic though. I think I have had bigger orgasms in my dreams than I do in reality. Does your spunk shoot out when you come? In my dreams, mine goes everywhere.”

“Hmm… Sometimes, if I’m really turned on, or have my foreskin fully retracted. I’m not circumcised. Because it’s usually covered, my glans is super-sensitive and I’m not quite long enough to stroke it comfortably behind the head when I pull my foreskin back, although with a different grip I can make it work. More often it just squirts out an inch or two, or dribbles and pulses.” I can tell he wasn’t expecting me to answer that one as fully as I did. “When I do shoot though, it can go a couple of feet three or four times.”

“I’m not circumcised either. I don’t think I know anyone who is. I certainly never saw that any of the lads in the showers at school were. I don’t tend to spurt much at all, mostly, like you say, a couple of inches.”

“No, being circumcised seems to be an American thing more than a British or European one. Lots of porn actors seem to be cut though. Probably because they’re mainly American or selling to Americans.”

“I don’t really see much porn,” he said after a minute or two, slightly changing the subject to be a little more general rather than deeply personal. “I can’t exactly sit at the family computer and download an watch some. Also, I don’t have anywhere private to watch it comfortably on any screen bigger than my phone. A laptop would help with that. I do use my phone sometimes in my room. It’s nice.”

“So, you really want to get a laptop to watch porn?” I ask him, teasing.

“Piss off!” he whispers. “No, I need it for college, but, you know, I don’t do college work all the time. And, yes, using it to watch a movie or even some porn isn’t that bad. You just said it was okay to watch and there was nothing wrong with wanting to.”

“I did. I’m just teasing. It’s not exactly something I ever normally talk about. Don’t take anything I say too seriously. I’m not an expert.”

“No, I get that. We’re just being honest with each other, aren’t we?”

“Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever been this honest about my sex life, or rather lack of one, with anyone else though. I’m not sure it’s a conversation most guys have, at any stage in their lives. I begin to think that it’s a healthy thing though.”

“And you’re okay with me watching some porn here if I want to?”

“Well, I don’t mind if you want to watch something,” I ventured. “But if we really are going to continue being honest, obviously I watch porn to get turned on and that usually means masturbation. If we’re relaxing here on the couch watching people fucking, I may not be able to control getting hard and it might be obvious. I’m not hung like a stallion or anything, maybe a fraction bigger than what they say is average, but I don’t think I can or would want to hide it.”

Paul thinks about this for a long time before replying, “Yeah, I can understand that. For now, though, let’s just watch another normal movie.”

“No problem. The offer to watch something different, if you ever want to, will always be there.” I reply.

Paul flicks back out of the ‘Adult’ folder on the screen and finds my complete collection of Buggs Bunny cartoons instead.

Paul’s next visit is a much more work-related occasion. He’s been given his reading list and the syllabus for his college course and is keen to show it to me to get a second opinion. I take a copy so I can have a proper look at it in my own time and assure him that we will be able to do it and I’m still happy to help. “If the course is two years, the we have loads of time. You could even get away with doing it all in the last few months of the second year, but I don’t recommend it,” I tell him.

“Yes, I know. I’d like to at least start to do some of the simple stuff, with your help, fairly soon and spread the work out nicely.”

“Okay, we will make a start in the next few weeks. Well, actually, you’ll make a start then come to me when you know exactly what you need me to help with.”

“Aw… I thought that you were going to help me with it all?”

“No, not exactly. Seriously, you probably do need to know the stuff as well. It would actually be easy for me to do the whole thing and just give it to you at the end. But that’s not how this works. I want you to get the qualification not me and that means you have to partition the work between us.”

“Yes, Sir!”

“That’s better. Show a little respect for your elders.”

“Whatever you say, old man!” Paul laughs.

“Have you got your laptop organised yet?” I ash him, changing the subject to keep him working.

“No, but I do have a budget. My parents are contributing a bit towards it. Can we have a look at some options now?”

“Yes, I’ve a few ideas. How much are you able, or willing, to spend? What size of screen, how much memory, how much storage?”

We pass quite a bit of time scanning through dozens of possible models and specifications, but at the end of the day, Paul goes away with a short-list of just two or three different ones that will do what he needs. It takes so long to narrow the list down that we don’t even get time to watch a movie before Paul has to head for home.

It’s so easy to forget that young people have curfews. This is particularly true when the time passes quickly in comfortable companionship.