It has been suggested that Joe is actually masturbating while all this is going on – and some of Voice's remarks do, not unreasonably, attack his current level of sexual prowess – but scholars tend to skim over the imagery used in the final section of Voice's so it is difficult to give anything more than a speculative interpretation. Beckett certainly has not shied away from the subject (it appears in "Mercier and Camier" for example) but there is a danger of reading too much into Beckett rather than just enough.