Chris Difford said, "The lyric is autobiographical in some ways, another song that mentions masturbation.
Chris was spot on in analysing him as someone who liked smoking joints and shagging birds, but what's wrong with that?
This is because East Side Story was originally intended to be a double album, with each side produced by a different producer; others intended for the task included Nick Lowe and possibly Paul McCartney.
"[1] AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine described it as "the almost ideal opener" and said that it "strangely enough sounds like [Elvis] Costello's 1981 album, Trust (it really was an incestuous scene)[.
]"[1] Another AllMusic critic, Stewart Mason, opined: "A quintessential (sorry) Squeeze song, 'In Quintessence' kicks off the band's masterpiece, 1981's East Side Story, in grand style."