Oral sex with a man can happen anywhere. That’s part of the pleasure. And time and place adds to his experience. In the office after hours, it’s naughty, sexy, on the sly. A bedroom can make it more comfortable and private, allowing a broader range of sex play—fellatio as a part of sex that can include one or many different acts in an evening. There are more devious places, such as bathroom stalls and other semipublic settings, where the sheer wickedness of fellatio combined with the risk of being discovered add to the charge of the experience.
Getting Head: Check Your Assumptions at the Door
There’s a particular emotional sense of being fully accepted that I feel when a woman gives me head that adds to my pleasure. You’d think that’s what intercourse is for, but to tell you the truth, I actually experience that sense of total acceptance more strongly when I receive oral sex.
For most men, the thought of an enthusiastic pair of lips wrapping around their penis triggers a response similar to that of a popsicle being similarly sucked—they melt. Getting head is often one of his favorite things; there is really nothing that can duplicate the feeling of a mouth and tongue, supply the arousing visual stimulation, or communicate the acceptance found within the act of his lover kissing his most intimate physical place, his genitals. When you fellate your lover, you make him feel incredibly good physically, stimulate his fantasies (or participate in the creation of new ones for him to revisit later), and make love to him in a direct way, face-tocock—a way that says “I want you” loud and clear.
It’s a commonly accepted cultural idea that head—and all the wonderful things associated with getting it—is what every man wants. Also wrapped in society’s onionlike layers of assumptions surrounding fellatio are two oversimplified stereotypes about men and sex: that men always want it, because penises are like machines and can just plug in anywhere anytime, and that men want head because it’s like an instant service, akin to dropping off the laundry. Not to say that for some men these perspectives aren’t true—they may be true for a few men most of the time, and other men might feel this way only occasionally, while others seldom, if ever. But in reality, these assumptions and stereotypes about fellatio only serve to distance us from our lovers. A cock is not a lightbulb. Its owner might even have concerns about getting a blow job.
Men can feel stress about receiving oral sex. Having someone look at, watch the reactions of, smell, and taste your genitals is an intense experience for anyone—especially in our world of constant comparisons. He might be worried about his performance, size, or shape, or whether he’s responding appropriately to your touch. He might also be contending with sexual shame, which can cloud his ability to relax, let go, and enjoy what you’re doing. These anxieties are not limited to men—we all have issues regarding sexual comparisons and shame, which come from the culture we’ve grown up in. But oral sex in particular can bring these issues into sharp focus. If you feel as though your partner might have questions or anxieties about receiving fellatio, encourage him to read chapter 3, “For Him,” in which I cover men’s oral sex anxieties in detail.
Giving Head: Eye of the Beholder
Nothing makes me wet like when I feel him get extra hard in my mouth and then the spasms begin… I love to feel him come, really feel it come out of him, and have it shoot onto the back of my tongue and in my throat.
Going down on a man is one of life’s singular pleasures. Nothing compares to having the absolute focus of your lover’s heat, intensity, lust, and desire right in front of you, and in your mouth. You hold his enjoyment and his orgasm within the confines of your body. Make it a long, loving tribute, a gentle massage, a prolonged seduction, or a quick and dirty episode that you both share—it can be anything you like. Giving our lovers pleasure gives us pleasure, too. For some who like to give, it’s more a pleasure of the heart, mind, or soul; for others, it’s a direct pathway to their own arousal; or it can be both.
In a very general sense, there are two ways in which a blow job can be performed. There is fellatio, the technical term used to describe the act of a person going up and down on the penis; and there is irrumation, in which the giver stays stationary and the man receiving the blow job provides the in-and-out motion with his thrusting. However, fellatio is the colloquial blanket term for all things blow job, and that’s how I’ll be using the word throughout this book.
The idea of performing fellatio makes some people anxious, uncomfortable, even afraid. If you’re one of those people, then you may dislike feeling that oral sex is purely for the enjoyment of the person on the receiving side. You may not consider fellatio to be a sexually mutual act—especially if your perception of oral sex in general is negative.
Our culture perpetuates the image of the sexually receptive partner as being submissive; the very act of receipt is often thought of as a brand of humiliation and shame. It’s tough enough to shrug this notion off of how we view penetrative sex (vaginal and anal), but when it comes to fellatio, cultural perceptions everywhere suggest that anyone willing to put a guy’s penis in his or her mouth is dirty and disposable, and deserves no respect. However, these myths exist only in the eye of the beholder; any sex act between two people is what you make it.
Mixed into the myth of the soiled cocksucker is the idea that fellatio is done solely for the pleasure of the person getting the blow job. For as many people who believe this, there are probably twice as many who get wet or stiff from going down on a guy. The mouth is an erogenous zone that triggers erotic responses, and for many people simply the act of taking him in their mouth (or just the idea of it) can trigger powerful arousal or even orgasm.
If you still feel uncomfortable about fellatio, indulge me for a moment and try on a new idea, just to see how it feels: the flip side. Many people view taking a man’s erect penis into their mouth as an act of unrivaled intimacy and sharing. For some people, being up close to his most private areas, face-to-face with his pleasure, able to kiss and adore him in the most immediate way, is a closeness that can’t be found in other sex acts. Many people find oral sex to be more intimate than intercourse. That he feels comfortable with your face in close contact with his genitals is an erotically charged gift of unrivaled trust. Plus, the fact that you can see his desire for you, and he can see yours for him, right there, makes it a delicious moment of sharing.
The connection I feel with my partner while getting head is amazing. There’s nothing more beautiful—it’s like the hottest, sexiest thing I can be engaged in, and the more I know she’s enjoying it, the hotter it is.
You’ve probably heard this phrase, or something similar: “Who do I have to blow to get a cup of coffee around here?” It’s a stereotypical perception in our culture to regard blow jobs as a commodity, effectively removing the “sex” from the act. But it’s a sexual act, and quite an intense one for the giver and the receiver. It’s confusing to reconcile these two views, and the end result is often a perception of giving head as a sex act that reduces the giver’s status. When people joke about giving head for coffee, then what’s the worth of the person going down? It’s this way of looking at fellatio that makes it easy to think of giving blow jobs—and sex in general—as degrading.