Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images

Masturbation has always been a favorite subject for Louis C.K. While many comedians — particularly male comedians — appreciate a good dick joke, C.K.’s preoccupation with the subject takes on more sinister (and creepy) overtones in the light of today’s New York Times report in which five women accused C.K. of sexual misconduct, detailing instances in which the comic either masturbated in front of them or expressed a desire to do so.

As the Times says, “The stories told by the women raise sharp questions about the anecdotes that Louis C.K. tells in his own comedy. He rose to fame in part by appearing to be candid about his flaws and sexual hang-ups, discussing and miming masturbation extensively in his act — an exaggerated riff that some of the women feel may have served as a cover for real misconduct.”

Here are 17 C.K. jokes that highlight his long-running obsession with the theme.

“Sexual perversion is a problem. You can’t stop it. People gotta do what they gotta do. This country’s pretty perverted. We have to jack off to everything. Sex is in everything. You watch the news and there’s like a woman telling, like oohh and in Libya, and I’m like yeah well tell me about Libya [makes hand gesture of him masturbating]. Tell me about Libya. Say Libya again, come on. I’m fucking right up to my screen, my flat screen. Come on, say Libya again. [Grunts.]” —Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theatre, 2011

“My problem is very simple — trying to find a place in my house where I can masturbate without somebody bothering me. And that’s getting really difficult, there’s nowhere to go. And my wife has her mother living with us. I’m on the streets now with nowhere to go. Now I know when I see a guy in the West Side Highway, jerking off in plain daylight. That’s not a homeless guy, that’s a married man right there. He’s got nowhere to go. Fuck it. Fuck you. Go ahead and look, man. What else am I going to do?” —Louis CK: One Night Stand, 2005

“She always wants to know shit about it, she always asks me stuff, my wife’s like, ‘Well, do you think about me when you’re doing that?’ Are you fucking high? I can think about anybody, that’s magical. Why the fuck would I, I married you? Do women really think their husbands are going, oooh, my wife? Oh yeah, that’s fucking hot. Oh yeah, picking her up at the airport and getting yelled at, yeah that’s fucking hot.” —Louis CK: One Night Stand, 2005

“Masturbation doesn’t bring much joy to guys. Women seem to like masturbating; they put flower petals on the pillow and they’re like ‘AHHH, ME!’ or whatever, you know. And the guys are like ‘Ah, shit … Ah, fuck it all … Goddammit.’ Sometimes you find ecstasy but it’s followed by the deepest self-hate and depression you’ve ever felt. It’s an amazing drop from way up here this like, ‘Aw, yeah, aw … What the fuck is wrong with me, goddammit! I got to get to work, I don’t have time for this shit right now!’” —Louis CK: One Night Stand, 2005

“Men don’t really have judgment, they have intent. They just want to spray the world with their cum, with their mist.” —Louis CK: 2017

“Some things I’m sick of, like the constant, perverted, sexual thoughts. I’m so tired of those … It makes me into an idiot. Jacking off to morons, and ooh, look at my tits. Yeah, your tits are awesome. It’s a dumb part of life that I’m sick of.” —Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theatre, 2011

’I showed my penis to a crazy old man in my hometown. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and there was a guy. They called him “Florida Steve.” This weird little old man. And he’d come up to you, if you were in the park or in the street, and he’d ask you about Florida, he’d just steer the conversation … He’d say ‘bet it’s hot in Florida right now’ and you’d go ‘yeah, it’s hot in Florida.’ He goes ‘what are the girls like down there?’ and you’d tell him … everybody in town knew how to do this … you’d tell him, ‘well, the girls, they got big tits down there,’ and he’d start jerking off in his pocket. Like, this is just something he would do. And anyway, so I saw him … you know, you’re with your friends and you make fun of Florida Steve, the crazy old man. One day I was alone in a park and he walked up to me. I took out my dick and showed it to him. I don’t know why. He just went ‘okay, have a nice day’ and he walked away, and I realized I had freaked out Florida Steve.” —From Opie and Anthony #11, 2017

“It is (important to me). It keeps me sane. I’m a good citizen, a good father, I recycle, and I masturbate. And I’m proud of it … And later, I’m going to masturbate and think about you. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” —Louie, “Come on, God,” 2011

“This is another aging thing. I was jerking off and I looked at my penis and it was blurry because my eyes are going. So I had to go to the drug store and buy reading glasses and I felt weird, like, ‘She knows I’m jerking off with these.’ Like, she’s just looking at me like, ‘You ain’t readin’ shit, you dirty old … ’ Anyway, so I got reading glasses and I looked at it and it was still blurry. So I don’t think it’s my eyes. I think my dick is getting blurry.” —Louie, “Something Is Wrong,” 2012

“I need to cum, I need to — cumming is a need, I came the first time when I was 12 and I haven’t skipped a day. I cum every day and I fucked maybe 20 times in my life so. It’s just been me doing most of the work and I really — you know, I jerk off way too much and it upsets me and I don’t know why. Maybe cause it’s so selfish, I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s bad, I know I’m hurting somebody somewhere. There’s something wrong with – I was thinking the other day, that you can figure out how bad — how bad a person you are by how soon after September 11th you masturbated, like, how long you waited? And for me it was between the two buildings going down.” —Chewed Up, 2008

“You know it’s bad to jerk off and run out the door, ’cause you run into somebody, ‘oh, she knows.’ You gotta take some time alone to process the shame.” —Chewed Up, 2008

“I don’t even jerk off to her, that’s how much I like her. I still just jerk off to that wedding album I found in the garbage.” —Louie, “Daddy’s Girlfriend: Part 1,” 2012

“I’m 42, I’m really good at masturbating. I’m like the best masturbator on the planet earth. I’m really there is nobody better at that than me, so I’m gonna continue to excel at that. I’m gonna focus on that and raising my children. I know it’s not nice to say both those things in one sentence, but they happen to be the two things that I do the best.” —Louie, “Night Out,” 2010

“Before that, I was, uh, it was just me masturbating copiously, happily, I loved it. When I discovered masturbation, I was so happy, I loved it. Everybody loves it. Nobody’s [jerking off motion], ‘this fucking sucks.’ It’s pretty universally liked.” —Shameless, 2007

“As far as sex goes, for guys it’s a release. It’s not complicated. We just need it. Women, it’s a fucking emotional thing … We need to cum, just because we need to … For guys, it’s something we need to do so we don’t murder people … maintenance, open the fucking valve every once in a while, please. The city should put a red tag on a dick that has a PSI level that’s unacceptable.” —Louis CK: Shameless, 2007

“Now when I see a beautiful girl walking down the street, I’m like, ‘Hey, fuck you, I don’t give a shit.’ — ew. Go fuck somebody else, I’ll jerk off to you later, probably have a better time.” —Shameless, 2007

“My dick had touched a lot of things — because — that’s what you do when you’re a young boy, you touch your dick to many surfaces around the world, just fucking looking for anything that feels good enough — that, uh, you don’t have to talk to a girl.” —Shameless, 2007