KURT LODER, voice-over host: Masturbation is the original cheap thrill. A guaranteed good time is always available and so simple to master even the novice can have a hands-on experience right away. Hardly a substitute for the sort of sex that requires at least one other person in the room but it does allow the dateless to score and not only will it not give you some horrible disease, it won't break your heart either. Like traditional two-person sex, masturbation also carries its own little nostalgic charge. Who could ever forget his or her first time?

MARILYN MANSON, musician: I think I first discovered masturbation when I was playing with Scooby-Doo color forms and I started getting this fascination with Daphne.

JANEANE GAROFALO, actress: I was on a cross-town bus during peak hours and accidentally my hand brushed against my zone and I realized, now this is a great way to pass the time during a commute.

LES CLAYPOOL, Primus: Discovering masturbation? I think that was just one of those things I just woke up rubbing against the sheets and realizing it felt good. And that was about a week ago.

LODER: But biblical tradition condemns masturbation as a sinful squandering of god's procreative gift and even today, practitioners are regarded in some quarters as lacking in self-control not to mention being icky and twisted. Consider the public treatment of Pee-Wee Herman creator, Paul Reubens, who was arrested for an alleged solo sex interlude in a Florida porno theater in 1991. This trivial incident effectively ended Reubens' kiddy TV career and the story was played in the press as if some shocking new perversion had been unearthed. And yet when Reubens bravely appeared on-stage at that year's MTV Video Music Awards show, the audience gave him, well, a warm hand.

LODER: Masturbation has been the subject of occasional pop music salutes: Cindy Lauper's "She Bop", for example, and Aerosmith's "Blindman." Generally, though, it remains a topic that must people would rather not talk about and when U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, already in hot water on other political fronts, suggested that masturbation should be dealt with in public schools, she was fired.

JOYCELYN ELDERS, Former U.S. Surgeon General: As many things as I've said, they could've found something a little bit better to fire me about than what is a normal part of human sexuality.