GettyImages-692102912.jpg
Getty Images

Ahh, May. Finally, we've reached the time of year when we can put away our rubber shoes and let our gills dry out for a few weeks—at least until Junary rears its ugly head and we are reminded, once again, that life sucks. You may, in this season, be tempted to dive into Lake Washington on especially sunny days, which will be a rapid reminder that the water doesn't actually heat up until August 1. And yet, even after you learned this lesson the hard way once, Lake Washington will be exactly where you run screaming when you're sunning yourself on the beach and you notice a fellow sunbather with his dick out, staring at you while he strokes himself. Welcome to Seattle spring.

While public nudity is not a crime in Seattle, indecent exposure is. And there are plenty of indecent exposers here in our city parks. I don't have any way to quantify how many, exactly, but turn to the nearest woman in your life and ask her how many times someone has jerked off near her in a public park, and, chances are, it's at least once. (Actually, it's 2018. Don't do that. Ask your wife when you get home from work.) A brief list of places I've seen dudes jerking off: Denny Blaine, Jefferson Park, Seward Park, Interlocken, and Denny Blaine again, which, despite its one-time reputation as the dyke beach (it's called "Dykiki" for a reason) seems to have more dudes feeling themselves than the Louis CK writers' room. Why do men do this? I honestly do not know. If you think women enjoy this kind of behavior and will grab your crotch and join in, you are—speaking for myself—very fucking wrong. There is nothing less sexy than a stranger panting at you with his dick in his hand while you're trying to read the latest O Magazine at the beach.

An SPD spokesman declined to speculate on the gender breakdown of public masturbators, but I'm willing to bet it's almost entirely men. Of course, this being Seattle, a land of theoretial equal opportunity for men, women, and other alike, there are exceptions to the rule: In August 2014, for instance, a woman was arrested for fucking a lawn chair in someone's yard in Beacon Hill. Or, as the SPD put it: "a 33-year-old woman—who officers would later describe as 'extremely intoxicated'—wandered into the yard of a home in the 7800 block of Beacon Avenue S. There, several family members inside the home looked on through a window as the woman hiked up her dress and engaged in an intimate act with several lawn chairs." It goes on: "The woman, clothes in disarray, then began urinating on the lawn before quite purposefully exposing her genitalia, and then posterior, to the family inside the home." The women was booked her into the King County Jail for indecent exposure and the lawn chairs (one hopes) got a good wash.

Park masturbaters have already been seen this spring, as one redditor noted Tuesday, writing that his girlfriend was in Volunteer Park on Monday when she "saw the guy, 30 ft away, masturbating completely naked while staring at her." The girlfriend screamed and ran away, but SPD recommends that if you see someone jerking it at the park (or anywhere else in public), you call 911 immediately and provide a description of the dick who's involved.

Now, there is plenty of discussion in Seattle's more social justice minded corners about when, if ever, it's acceptable to call the police, especially if the person involved is a person of color. In light of this, I'd like to make a personal plea to all the exhibitionists out there, which will save us all a call to the cops: Please, don't jerk off in public parks. This isn't 1940. You don't have to meet people to fuck in the park while your wife is home bathing the kids. They make entire phone apps for that. Still, I know it's warm out and the feeling of the sun on your balls makes your blood run hot, so if you must jerk off in public, do in the one place where self-gratification isn't just allowed but encouraged: right outside the Amazon Spheres, ideally, during a tour.