1. I am a happily married heterosexual 30-year-old stay-at-home dad. I'm white, upper middle class, overeducated, Jewish, and generally cognizant and guilty about my position of privilege and freedom in society.

2. My first orgasm was when I was twelve, sleeping in the top bunk, lying on my back and silently rubbing a pillow between my legs. I only partially understood what was happening, and remember being a little disappointed that that was it. I thought perhaps the spasms were the beginning of a second phase in which my body would take over and multiply the pleasure of my rubbing.

3. I have only ever had sex with my spouse. We met in the first weeks of college, dated other people for two years, then got together junior year. We were sexually active within a few months of that.

4. My first serious sexual experience with her was a blow job she started to give me. Neither of us knew what we were doing and as I started to come I panicked about what was about to happen and what it might mean for our relationship, and I pulled away.

5. I masturbate once or twice a day, for an approximate total of 7,000 orgasms. The vast majority of those sessions have come by lying face down on a surface and putting a pillow or my hand under my erection and grinding against it.

6. When I was 14 or so and had the privilege and privacy of my own room, in the basement no less, I challenged myself to find out how many times I could come in an hour. Answer: seven. Result: chafing. In retrospect: very much a teenage boy sort of thing to do.

7. Speaking of chafing, senior year, my wife moved off campus and had a big old clawfoot tub that we would fuck in. One time when we didn't use lubricant I ended up with an ugly raw patch near the head of my penis, which soon crusted over with a white scab-like thing. I thought it was a scab and took it easy for a few days, but didn't wait long enough before masturbating again, and it rubbed off, leaving the rawness exposed again. This repeated, sometimes with masturbation, sometimes sex, for months, in an addictive, self-destructive way. I finally went into the doctor to get an outside opinion and discovered that men can get yeast infections too, treatable by diflucan.

8. I think about sex probably 20 or so times per day.

9. Of those, about half include my wife, a quarter are pure fantasy or recollections of some image of pornography, and a quarter include women (and very occasionally men) I meet in my day's routine.

10. The closest I've come to cheating was the year before we got engaged when I got quite drunk after an out-of-town meeting and hot and heavy with a recent divorcee a few years older than me and in a much more senior position in the meetings. I grabbed her breasts on the dance floor. She felt my cock in the taxi. When her friend got out of the hotel elevator on 2, we kissed without abandon until 4, when I got out, looked back at her, and, to her surprise and a little my own, said, "I'm sorry. I love my girlfriend."

11. An occasional masturbatory fantasy keeps me in the elevator with her up to her floor and back to her room.

12. I was closely involved with my partner's pregnancy and labor and delivery. I was particularly awed by her during her totally natural childbirth. While I identify strongly as male, I am jealous that her body is capable of creating and birthing a child. If it was possible, I would want to be pregnant myself.

13. Until becoming a father and spending a good deal of time skin-to-skin with my little one, I closely associated touching and being touched with arousal. Now it's a bit more complicated.

14. I have two brothers, also both in long-term relationships with their first sexual partners. The monogamy of the three of us is a little surprising to our parents, children of the Sixties, who hint at the promiscuous lives they led before meeting each other in their mid-twenties.

15. Since the birth of our daughter, my spouse's and my sex life has been pretty hit-or-miss. She is night-nursing our two year old, who sleeps in our family bed. If I think I'm aware of non-arousing skin-on-skin contact, it is nothing compared to her experience.

16. These days we have full-on, classic, insertional, orgasmic (for at least one of us, and not always me) sex, with foreplay and grunting and the lot, at most once a month. Another one or two times a month we get naked, or digital, or oral together but stop there and fall asleep or are interrupted by the baby or get out of the shower and dressed and on with our days.

17. I am, I think, strongly feminist. I believe that a far wider range of human activities than regularly acknowledged is gender neutral, from excelling in mathematics to cooking to interest in cars or dolls or squishing bugs. I am enthusiastic to be a stay-at-home dad. I vacillate on whether sexual expression is gendered or not.

18. Among my friends are a few stay-at-home moms who I've met because we have similarly aged children. I've always made friends more easily with women than men. Two of the moms are separated from their husbands. I think of myself as attractive (at least I think I would be attracted to me if given the out-of-body experience) and "worry," in a narcissistic kind of way, that one or both of them will come on to me.

19. I am very curious what sex with other women would be like. The things that would have to happen before I could satisfy that curiosity (loss of trust with my spouse and cheating or divorce, becoming a widower, or a wholesale shift in our social milieu to something where swinging was perfectly normal and even conservative) seem so outlandishly painful or unlikely that I try to put it off in a category of "things I'd like to do in fantasy world," like walk on the moon or breathe underwater.

20. Despite my frequent masturbation, when I've gone a week or two without sex I start to get antsy, needy, and touchy. Intellectually, I know that, at most, I should channel that energy to creating the kind of romantic settings my partner has described to me as a turn-on for her, but I don't. A few times over the years she's mentioned that she like to be dominated, but I don't fulfill that one often either.

21. I find masturbating to be relaxing, routine, guilt-provoking, private, and usually quick.

22. I've come with a half flaccid penis and around 20 seconds of physical stimulation, when overwhelmingly arousing images and memories have surfaced in my mental space.

23. I'm interested in the sexual qualities of my anus. A year or so ago I mentioned to my spouse that I'd like to get an anal probe, which would be our first sex toy, and she indicated she'd be on board with exploring its use in me, but neither of us acted on it. I have had awesome orgasms masturbating in the shower with a finger up my ass.

24. I imagine sex with my wife will be more varied, intense, and frequent when we move past the stage of life of being parents to young children. I hope so.

25. Some of the sex we've had together is among the times I've felt closest to her, like I really understood her and could be express myself to her with fewer of the barriers I put up between myself and the world of other people. But that's been rare.