Masturbation was something I more or less gave up during my twenties. Maybe it sounds strange, but I went through a long period during which I truly enjoyed the sensation of being wet and “on edge” for days at a time. At thirty I got into a sexually unfulfilling marriage, and when it ended after less than four years, I emerged with a new set of priorities, including the physical urge to more quickly consummate flashes of desire.

Fortunately, I met Irwin, a wonderfully creative lover, but we both travel a lot and prefer a dating relationship, which sometimes leaves me alone on occasions when I’m hot and ready to go. Thus, have I rediscovered self-pleasure, though it was only when I chanced to go public that masturbation became something more for me than “the next best thing.”

The first time I did it in the open was late at night on a train from New York. It wasn’t something I’d planned to do or had ever even fantasized about. Rather, it all happened in spontaneous response to having spent the day in business meetings with a handsome, sexy man whose very nearness in several conferences and throughout lunch had kept me wet between my thighs and hot all over.

I say it was “in the open” but, truthfully, the car in which I was riding was only half occupied and there was really no one sitting within sight of me. Intending to nap, I had put my magazine away, shut off the little reading light above my seat and arranged my coat atop my half-slumped body. But the image of Roy was so fresh in my mind and so arousing that I found myself caught up in a spicy mental slide show.

In the privacy of my own daydreams, I fawned over Roy’s cute, tight butt, which had peeked out teasingly from beneath the drapery of his suit jacket all day. Alone on the train, I mentally stripped him down to an imagined pair of skin-hugging bikini briefs and then slowly unpeeled the final layer to reveal his nakedness.

Soon enough, his charming smile, which had been no closer than across the table from me throughout lunch, hovered thrillingly above me as the rest of his trim torso fit itself in the crook between my spread thighs. “I’m going to fuck your hot little body, Priscilla,” he said, or so I pretended. Purely out of pure reflex, I shifted my bottom on the train seat and tucked my hand under the coat, under my loosened skirt and, finally, into my soaked panties.

I began a timid, seated sashay, a finger on the nozzle of my gushing spiggot priming the private pump of Roy-images that rushed forth, one after another: Roy going down on me, Roy “wiping” his erection teasingly across my face, Roy doing me doggy-style, Roy’s cock deep in my throat.

I fought a small battle with the urge to begin moaning aloud, a bedroom custom of mine whether I’m with someone or alone. And when the first passerby came into view, a senior citizen heading for the snack bar a few cars away, I sent a signal to my face to shut down the expression of rapture I assumed was showing there. In the next few minutes, several strangers would pass by my seat, all of them causing me to feel enough self-consciousness to avoid eye contact, but none turning off the play of my fingers on my clit.

I remained wet, knobby and throbbing until, when the coast was clear, I let myself go, bucking ever so slightly where I sat in a hushed but heavy orgasm which endured longer than was “safe.” A church matron could have just then chosen the seat next to mine and not caught my attention until the residue of my imagined scene with Roy (he had me tied up for the finale!) was fully consummated.

When it was done, I sat there in my seat and thought, Wow! As a woman who prides herself on being very much in touch with her own sexual workings, I had managed to take myself by surprise. And while I knew that Roy was a big part of the accomplishment, I also realized that the public setting had contributed mightily to my pleasure. I couldn’t remember ever finding masturbation so satisfying.

But because I considered myself a “respectable” person, I more or less put the little incident on the train out of my mind for fear of developing too much of a crush on the whole idea. That is to say, I put it out of my mind for about a month, until another irresistible opportunity for public masturbation presented itself.

Far more risky, however, was my urge to “do it” in the same lounge where a number of us from the office often went after work. Spurring me on was the regular bartender there, a tall, black-haired Adonis of a man with an extremely aloof manner who showed no particular interest in anyone among our predominantly female after-work clique. I dreamed of going into the lounge alone one night, getting the darkest corner table, within sight of him but as hidden away as possible, and repeating my train-ride experience.

Which is exactly what I did, staying at work late one evening and arriving at the lounge near the end of happy hour, when the place tended to empty out. I tucked myself way back against the wall, with the unoccupied chairs of my table arranged to provide as much cover as possible. I ordered a drink from the waitress and pretended to read the newspaper. I wore a long fitted skirt that buttoned up the front with ample room between buttons through which to fit my hand. And underneath, nothing.

To say the least, I was terribly nervous, and I made several false starts. I was certain I had everything arranged just so, but I was self-conscious anyway. Oddly, this sense of hesitancy did nothing to diminish my state of arousal, which was heightened when a second drink arrived. I snacked on the Adonis-like bartender in quick glimpses, each of which revived my faltering nerve. Eventually, halfway through my second drink, I got my hand through to my hot and sticky pussy and began, timidly at first, to masturbate right there in the lounge.

Unlike my first in-public experience, this one was nurtured less by image and more by reality. The smallest commonplace movement of the handsome man behind the bar could, I found, equal the sauciest inventions of my mind. Being tied to a bed by delectable Roy in my fantasies was no sexier than actually watching the real-life bartender merely reach to fetch a beer glass from the rack above him. And, the closer I came to orgasm, the less self-conscious I became, a devil-may-care attitude welling up inside me simultaneous with the rolling rushes of pleasure I heaped upon myself.

My God, there I was, sitting alone at a corner table in a public establishment, watching the bartender speak a few inaudible words to my waitress, and suddenly I was going off under the table in a sequence of hard-to-control spasms. One of my legs was stretched out on the seat opposite me, my legs were half open, and the newspaper, which I clutched with my free hand but made no pretense of reading, was covering my own personal point of attack from public view.

When it was over, I glanced about the place at the few people scattered here and there and detected no visible sign of acknowledgment from any of them. I slowly extricated my hand and sniffed my own fingers, trying to find the scent that Irwin always called “delicious.” But all I smelled was myself. Still, I did get a little post-orgasmic rush at the idea of my burning pussy being so close to the dreamy bar tender and, for that matter, to all the other men in the place.

I have been back to the lounge several times for the same purpose and have put my clever little fingers into play in other situations as well. At a party one night, I went into a vacant bedroom and had nearly brought myself off when a slightly tipsy couple stumbled up on me. There I was, bent over a chair with a hand circled around me so I could approach myself from the back and fantasizing that all the men downstairs were having me from behind one at a time. I straightened up quickly and explained that I’d dropped an earring in the seat and was looking for it. The couple pretended to believe me, just as I pretended to believe that they had stumbled into the wrong room while looking for their coats.

When, about an hour later, I saw them sneak upstairs again, I followed them back to the vacant bedroom and hurried into an adjacent bathroom. Hunched over on my spread knees with my ear pressed to the wall, I could hear the bed creak and the couple begin to giggle and then moan. I addressed myself at a tempo that brought my heated anxiety to a pleasant climax almost simultaneous with the woman’s next door.

Bathrooms have indeed been arenas of last resort for me when outright public orgasms are impossible. During my most recent business meeting in New York, I sat bellied up to the conference table and, while the “legendary” Roy made a marketing presentation, fingered myself to a mushy wetness and body fever that I knew would result in a very public orgasm if I let go all the way. The instant the meeting was over, I rushed to the ladies’ room, where I massaged myself to a furious finale.

Recently I told a girlfriend about some of my escapades. She confessed that she sometimes bribed the clerk at a peep house to smuggle her into one of the booths and let her watch the coin-activated videos. When she described the thrill of being “booth-to-booth” with so many masturbating males (“God, Priscilla, you can just sit there and sniff them going off, one after another!”), I knew I had to try it. And I have, several cunt-scorching times.

Lately I’ve been thinking about trying to masturbate at the racetrack, where Irwin takes me from time to time. We always sit in the top row of the stands, which is perfect because there’s no one behind us. When the race begins, everybody, including Irwin, jumps up and focuses solely on the horses. The way I’ve imagined it, it would take me maybe five or six races to come, the thirty-minute intervals in between providing a bittersweet agony that would ensure a dynamite climax when I finally let it happen.

The idea of doing it at the track intrigues me precisely because it is a place in which gambling is the main interest. Obviously it is the riskiness of public masturbation that has proven to be the ultimate turn-on for me. Otherwise I’d go dry as sandpaper out of sheer nervousness. Also it seems that my public adventures are further enhanced by fantasies carved from the circumstances themselves.

In the peep booth, I enjoy the videos but inevitably go off in response not to any image on the screen, but to the fantasized image of myself being led by the clerk from booth to booth, where I’m required to blow each occupant. In the lounge, I eventually got caught up in the idea of being bent over a bar stool and penetrated anally by the gorgeous bartender while all the patrons look on.

I suppose that the ultimate fantasy for public masturbation is the idea of getting caught. My urge to try it at the racetrack is probably fired in part by the fact that Irwin will be the one doing the catching. If I ever do get caught, I want it to be by somebody sweet and sexy. And someone who understands that I am, really, a respectable woman who sometimes just can’t stop herself. Who knows? Getting caught might be as much fun as getting away with it!