I'm sure I've been touching myself all my life, some of my earliest memories are of me getting in trouble for doing it at inappropriate times. It became something I did daily at some point when I was 6, the transition from doing it just cause it felt good to doing it specifically to dry orgasm, I don't remember exactly when that happened, was probably gradual. As far as knowing I liked men, in retrospect it was right from the start, I was always trying to get into my friends pants and spy on as many dicks as I could in public showers, locker rooms, toilets, etc. At the time I didn't think anything of it, I just thought wanting to see dicks and what I was doing with my buddies was just regular guy stuff, also the idea of being gay just wasn't really something you were exposed to as a kid in the late 80s. I even remember having a conversation with a junior high school buddy who was also a jerk off buddy, about what gay was and wondering if anyone at our school was (too clueless to realize that maybe it was us!) I was 15 when I first realized that maybe what I was doing with other guys wasn't "normal" and it took till I was 17-18 to accept that I liked guys more than girls.