quizzical pussy

I’ve never dated, fucked, or even made out with a guy who admitted to naming his penis. I’m one click short of naive enough to believe that this proves beyond a doubt that I’ve never been with a guy who had a name for his penis, but if you were the sort of person to name your genitals do you really think you’d be the sort of person to hide that fact?

While I like to name things as much as the next sexual deviant, naming my genitals would feel too much like dissociating myself from them, and that’s the last thing I want to do a) because that’s where I have a great deal of my fun and I have no wish to start living vicariously through my own body parts, and b) because if they got to have opinions they’d probably be very disappointed in me just now because I haven’t been keeping up on my caretaking duties (read: masturbating) lately.

I have jokingly given my tits names before, patently unsexy names that I throw out at really inconvenient times.

INT. SOME RANDOM COUCH – NIGHT

Groping is happening. Groping moves in a booberly direction.

Quizzical Pussy (indicating left breast): Ooooh, see that’s Statler.

Confused Dude: Huh?

Quizzical Pussy: The other one’s Waldorf. Now back to the balcony, kiddo! The old boys aren’t quite done with you!

Confused Dude: You sicken me.

Quizzical Pussy: Ah ah ah I lahve eet!

…This sort of thing is really great fun until I run out of people willing to fuck me. That’s when the laughter stops.

(image source)

Many of the women in my acquaintance have remarked to me that they’ve given blowjobs to a lot more guys than they’ve had penis-in-vagina sex with. Some of them insist that their “number” doesn’t include blowjobs, but if it did they’d be dangerously close to the “slut” category.

I’m not in this camp. First of all, I see no problem with a higher-than-average “number”. I love sex, and I figure that anyone who would judge me for having had the amount of sex I’ve had would be someone who I’d either a) not tell (e.g. family members, employers), or b) not care if it bothered (e.g. people I’d rather know sooner than later that I oughtn’t date). As a nerdy chick who’s never been wicked popular in the romantic arena, I actually feel like kind of a stud each time my number goes up (it’s at a whopping, debaucherous eight now, if you care). Secondly, I’ve had vaginal intercourse with six guys and given blowjobs to six guys, although one guy was intercourse without any blowjobs and one was blowjobs without any intercourse… still, it evens out. Thirdly, though, I think that oral sex is sex. To me there’s no real ideological distinction, although there sure as hell are other distinctions. But I just can’t see my way to “not counting” oral sex if we’re counting sex partners. Am I just going to not count people I had awesome orgasms with? Am I going to not count women because neither of us has a (real, flesh) penis? Horsefeathers.

But that’s not to say that blowjobs are in every way equivalent to vaginal intercourse. That’s not true at all. I enjoy giving blowjobs, yes, but not in the same way that I love have a cock plunge into my eager pussy. While both can give me orgasms (giving head can be that much of a turn on, yes), the latter has a much more direct and reliable mechanism with which to do so. I’m more finicky about the former. If I don’t particularly like you, I might consider using you for sex but putting your dick in my mouth won’t appeal to me at all. So (perhaps predictably) when a relationship is going downhill, I tend to avoid giving oral sex but still want to fuck. Yeah, I’m pretty much a selfish jerk that way.

Oral sex is very intimate and personal, and that’s part of why it’s so sexy. It’s completely devoting your attention to someone else’s pleasure. That intensity turns me on like crazy. Which, paradoxically, makes me want to fuck. So, while it’s hot to suck cock until hot semen gushes down my throat and all, at times there’s a (big) part of me that feels like a little kid whose ice cream fell off the cone and onto the cruel, hard ground. To wit, it feels like a waste of a perfectly good erection that could have been pleasuring me. Again, yeah. Selfish.

So the best of both worlds is certainly to have a blowjob segue into intercourse: in hooker speak, the ever popular half-and-half.

But today I heard something rather disturbing. My friend Miriam Spiralti has great sex with her fiancé, but they aren’t entirely compatible in terms of drive. As she told me a few years ago, “When we were seeing each other once a week, we fucked once or twice every day… for two days straight. Now that we live together I want exactly that amount per week, and he wants exactly that frequency.” He especially wants oral sex daily, and she likes giving it, but it’s getting to feel like an obligation. And here’s the kicker… it “doesn’t count” if it transitions into sex. It also “doesn’t count” if it’s a short session, and he tries to make the spectacular “I’m getting my cock sucked” feelings last as long as possible. So Miriam ends up feeling burned out on marathon blowjobs and feels more and more reluctant to give them, and her man feels frustrated and unfulfilled. Not a great situation.

I blame this “it doesn’t count” mentality. What’s with all these rules about what counts when it comes to blowjobs? They don’t count as sex, it doesn’t count if they’re not done to completion, etc. I mean, there are no stone tablets I’m aware of that give us the Articles of Head, but to my mind, if I’m sucking your cock you’re pretty much getting a blowjob, and I should probably list you as a sexual partner. Just saying.

Anyway, I jokingly suggested that Miriam tell her fiancé he gets 30 minutes of oral sex a week, and can break it into six 5-minute blowjobs, three 10-minute blowjobs, or one half-hour session…his choice. “That’s actually a really good idea!” said she. If she actually implements this plan I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a hit out on me in the near future, so this blog might get very assassin-run-in heavy all of a sudden.

I’m realizing more and more that I’m oddly picky about sex terminology.

The term “cock worship” grates on me. I don’t love the term “pussy worship” either, but it doesn’t gnaw on my raw patriarchy nerve, and so doesn’t bother me nearly as much.

But I don’t like calling that cock worship. I guess I don’t want to feel less important than a body part, even if it’s a really fun body part. If that implication is built into your power dynamic, cool, but it’s something I’ve never signed up for, so it doesn’t apply to me. If I’m just sucking your cock don’t try to transform it into a religious experience I’m meant to be having without consulting me about it first, buddy.

The following is an actual email. It is also an actual work of art. You may possess such a gem yourself, but you’ve likely cast it into a “spam folder” using your fascist art filters. Don’t worry, though! I’m willing to share…

***

Subject: Your sausage will become hunger than ever before.

________

Making love is always pleasant especially when the girl you love screams from a great satisfaction that she achieves while your tool gets inside the deepest parts of her flower!

According to the statistics some close relations bring people together better than any soul relations and inner world.

That’s why it comes obvious that if you want to conquer the girl’s heart you ought to be a monster in her bed. Every girl love large tools, so that’s time for you to look at your device and decide whether you are able to satisfy your girlfriend or not.

Obviously your tool is not that big to provide the wonderful pleasure and you are risking for your girl to break up with you. So, hurry up to change your lifestyle and inner look. Our enlargement pills are definitely what you need to take in, in order to keep stable relations or make them tighter.

All the information about our enlargement pills and the effect they may give you is available at our site.

***

There it is, people. This is the absolute best thing I’ve ever read. John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce: sucks to be you. You’ve been bested in a fair fight by the little Penis Enlargement Pill Email that could.

However, I want to see these statistics about “some close relations” vis-a-vis “any soul relations”. If you’re reading this, company whose website I will never go to without extensive antivirus prophylactics and some holy water because it would probably be the internet equivalent of licking the toilet stall floor at a highway rest stop, please send me your data.

Speaking of devices, my Mr. Limpy came today. Mr. Limpy is a packing penis, not really a useful for sex play so much as gender play. I’ll be packing him for my drag act in an upcoming show. Sure, I could use a rolled up pair of socks or a condom filled with shaving gel, but I wanted a real packer. Of course, I’ll review it after I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces, but there’s one thing that stands out: this is meant to represent a flaccid penis, I ordered the size small, and it’s about 6 inches long.

The folks at Fleshlight might not have an incredibly realistic concept of what a small flaccid penis actually looks like. Not that I’m complaining. If I were a real guy, a 6-inches-at-rest penis would pretty much guarantee that my tool could get inside of the deepest parts of her flower, if you know what I mean. Still, that’s size small? And in case you’re wondering, the large is about 8.5 inches.

The old adage that there’s no such thing as a bad blowjob is a little ridiculous. For one, it reinforces the man-as-sexual-supplicant myth, which really needs to end. Additionally, though, I don’t think it’s based in truth. I think that bad blowjobs can and do happen, and they may be happening to someone you know. Chilling, right?

Leo Tolstoy wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s not actually true of families or of sucking cock. But there are many ways to give a bad blowjob, and each bad blowjob is probably uniquely bad in its own special way. However, if you follow the bulleted rules below, you will most likely succeed in giving one miserable excuse for a blowjob. And, because I’m a philanthropist, I’ll also have a short italic section in which I talk about ways to avoid or address each rule because I honestly don’t wish bad oral sex on anyone. I wish zero oral sex on some really nasty people, but never bad oral sex!

I don’t know how realistic this is, but when someone is giving me oral sex I don’t want it to feel like a favor. I certainly don’t expect servicing me to be the sexual highlight of anyone’s year, but an “Aren’t I incredible? I’m suffering through this for you!” attitude gets an automatic “You shouldn’t have. No, really, you shouldn’t have.” response from me. I can have fun without oral sex, but a martyr in my bed really spoils the mood for me.

But I’ve been fortunate enough to have some really amazing tongues give me mad orgasms with enthusiasm and what passed for joy. And generally these people don’t even have to ask me if they’re incredible because I make that damn clear. So goes the blowjob. While just showing up and putting a dick in your mouth is cool, I guess, it doesn’t necessarily cut it.

Thus, the first and most important rule of a bad blowjob is…

• Be lukewarm and begrudging about it. He’s lucky you’re exposing yourself to this indignity in the first place; make sure he remembers that every fucking nanosecond of this ordeal.

If you find that you aren’t enjoying giving blowjobs, or that your partner isn’t enjoying giving them to you, you might have to get really unorthodox and actually have a frank conversation about sex. Maybe the giver has had a bad experience in the past, maybe there are some hygiene problems, maybe something the receiver is doing or saying is turning the giver off (I have no idea why, but if you call a blowjob a “beej” it automatically halves my motivation to give you one, which is admittedly rather finicky of me, but also fact). Maybe you need to employ the old 69 trick of training each other to associate giving oral sex with getting orgasms. There are many ways to address this problem.

I’ve heard it suggested that the absence of deepthroating ability and refusal to swallow are features of blowjob malfunction. I actually think that these “faults” are greatly exaggerated. Most guys like the idea of bottoming out on a willing throat, but very few will actually complain if you can’t do it. It actually seems like deepthroating is considered more of an advanced oral technique rather than a basic requirement.

I’m going on record right now saying that I don’t understand spitting in the “spit or swallow” dichotomy. If your goal is to not taste semen, spitting actually maximizes its contact with your tongue as opposed to having it spill down your throat. Is there another reason someone might want to spit? Vegetarianism? But why should spitting make a blowjob bad? It’s technically over by then anyway. Also, some guys actually prefer to come on your face,  tits, or various other body parts. Last time I checked that’s not swallowing.

Contrary to these old tropes, the two complaints I’ve come across most often as to technique are more about the fundamentals than the frills, and inspired rules two and three of giving a bad blowjob:

• Avoid falling into any discernible rhythm.

• Make sure to stick with the exact same technique, style, and tempo for the duration of your cock-sucking adventure.

It may seem like these two are at odds with each other, but they’re really not. It’s important to establish a rhythm and not flop about aimlessly, but it’s vital to not get so focused on keeping a rhythm that it gets boring. Do different things: tongue the head, suck the shaft, vary your pressure and depth. Have you ever been fucked by someone who was inept and dull in bed? Chances are he or she was following one or more of these two rules, because they don’t just apply to blowjobs.

I’ve heard conflicting things about what specific techniques guys like and dislike (e.g. suction, head vs. shaft focus, interaction with balls, use of hand/s) and guess why? Because these things are personal preferences, and there’s no magic formula for the perfect blowjob. That brings us to our fourth and final rule.

• You’re an infallible sex deity. You know what men like. Pick a generic blowjob to give to every guy and stick to your guns. If he hints, suggests, or flat-out tells you that he likes a certain kind of stimulus, ignore him. You’ve got this.

Sometimes when people get overconfident in their status as superlovahs they forget that there’s no such thing as “what men like” or “what women like”. There may be some statistical trends, sure, but assuming that your partner complies with what you consider the norm marks the death of sexual discovery. No, this rule won’t always guarantee that you’ll fail at sucking every cock, but it will ensure that if you continue sucking different cocks, eventually you will fail a lot. That penis is attached to a person. Pay attention to the feedback that person gives you, ask questions. If you’re honestly not interested in personalizing this experience for your partner, then congratulations! You’ve actually just managed to make someone else’s blowjob all about you!

In closing, now I want a blowjob. A good one.

I’m about to set the record straight for good and all, people. The record on penis size.

The official record on penis size is, understandably, a source of contention and much gnashing of teeth. The blue whale’s mighty member can measure up to 8 feet long, but that’s not very impressive in proportion to his massive body. It’d be like an average-sized man having a 10 cm penis– which happens, of course, but it’s not getting into any record books.

Barnacles have the biggest penes proportionally (about 40 times the length of their bodies or something insane like that), and since most species of barnacles are hermaphrodites, they mostly all get them. Of course, if each of us had been born with a forty-million-dollar trust fund, none of us would feel all that rich, now would we?

If you care only about vertebrates, look no further than the Argentine Blue-bill duck, who curls all 17 inches of his pendulous prick up inside his cloaca until it’s business time. And most birds don’t even have pricks, so in birdland, this one-eyed snake is king.

If you are so terribly anthropocentric that you care only about human vertebrates, then the largest verified penis measured in at 13.5 inches in length and 6.25 inches around (I’m assuming that’s erect), documented in the early 1900s. This guy matches that length, and is 9 inches flaccid.

This entire italic section is a huge digression, by the way.

Here’s the interesting thing about what women like when it comes to penis size, and what I’m about to share is absolutely true…

• Some women like a lot of length.
• Some women prefer more girth.
• Some women want exceptional length and girth.
• Some women prefer average or smaller measurements in length and/or girth.
• Some women don’t really care, they just like cock.
• Some women are revolted by cock and would like you to put yours away now.
• I’m going out on a limb to say that men fall into similar categories regarding penises that aren’t theirs.

Did I miss anything? My point, of course, is that I can’t say that penis size is or isn’t a big deal. It all depends on whom we’re asking. Some size queens are going to be disappointed with certain guys that are still statistically above average, and some women who aren’t into deep-dicking don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Then, there are those guys who don’t seem to trust what their partners think and feel inadequate no matter what. Penile dysmorphic disorder must be a sober road to travel, and I can relate to it in a sense. Clearly there’s some societal pressure in play: guys feel like they need to measure up to be virile and alpha and all that, and it must be hard. Kind of like, say, having photoshopped fashion models with B.M.I.s of 16 shoved in your face all the time and being told they’re the non-negotiable physical ideal. Or something.

It becomes obvious why this penis extension sleeve and other such products start to seem like a logical option.

Personally, I’ve never had sex with a cock that felt “too small”, but maybe I’ve just been lucky. It’s hard to really compare them to the average cock (roughly 6 inches long, 4.75 inches in circumference erect, if you’re curious) without my trusty tape measure. And of course every guy I’ve been with claimed to be above average. I can say, however, that the first one I experienced was also the smallest, and going back to that size might be a trifle disappointing. Just being honest.

If a penis works and is attached to someone I’m partial to, size isn’t a primary consideration. And there’s such a thing as uncomfortably big for me, especially since I hate getting my cervix pummeled and I tend not to use lube for vaginal sex. But again, this is just me.

So far I’ve been reveling in the subjectivity of it all (which is what I often do, because I think pretty near everything is subjective, being the godless harlot that I am), but do you think human beings with our tinkering monkey minds have really been content to leave it at that? Of course you don’t. Deep down you knew that people like Ed were working hard on the problem.

Most guys have used rulers and tape measures and eased their cocks into empty toilet paper rolls to figure out length and circumference. They likely even compared numbers and roll snugness with their friends or strangers on the internet. But Ed has taken it to a whole different level. Ed wrote an ebook! And, of course, Ed made a graph.

Based on Ed’s extensive non-medical research, which I’m not sure but I think probably involves the super-empirical “asking women on the internet how they feel about their partners’ self-reported sizes” method, the perfect penis is… it kind of looks like anywhere between 7.125 and 8.375 long and between 6.125 and 6.375 inches in circumference. Anyway, the red blob. If your penis is longer, shorter, girthier, or skinnier than that, it’s relegated to “very satisfying but not ideal”, “satisfying”, or “enjoyable”. Or, heaven forbid, “not satisfying” and “freaky”.

Ed’s pretty fucking harsh. There. I said it. Also, am I the only one who thinks these circumference measurements are just a smidge unrealistic? My huge mitt is 8″ around at the widest point when in a silent duck posture, so you’d better believe that 7″ is firmly in fisting territory when we’re talking smallish female hands. For me, that amount of pain wouldn’t be very “satisfying”.

It’s too bad penises aren’t jointed or prehensile or something, because I’ve had all sorts of orgasms with just one finger in my pussy. Or with nothing at all in there, for that matter! Has anyone told Ed about my clitoris yet?

So of course all this left me wondering about my cock. A reported 7″ insertable and 5.5″ around (although my measurements place it at closer to 5″), my Feeldoe is solidly above average. It can fit partway into a toilet paper roll but then it gets stuck. Ed’s chart asserts that it would need another good inch of circumference to be “ideal”, and as it is it’s only “satisfying”.

I have fucked myself with that cock, and yes, it is satisfying. It’s “satisfying” like there’s “a bit of a problem between Shias and Sunnis”. Accurate, sure, but not exactly astute. Can you imagine coming up for air after fucking someone, searching her eyes dreamily, hoping she found it as glorious as you did, and then she remarks blandly, “Well, that was enjoyable.”

Bish please! Maybe you forgot that it vibrates.

It’s kind of cool when you realize that the positions you like best also seem to be particularly good for your partner.

I’m really super partial to what I guess we’ll call the “folded deckchair“, although traditionally I like to call it “throw my legs over your shoulders and fuck me sore.” For me, that and doggy are to sex what Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are to modern comics. In vulgar parlance, they’re the my baby daddies of their respective fields.

But I also don’t like to ask for things in bed. Ever. You may recall that when I ask for things, it hasn’t always worked out in my favor. I guess with my experiences of it backfiring, my natural diffidence, and my reluctance to rock the boat when someone inexplicably actually wants to fuck me, I just tend to go with the flow instead. It’s to the point where I generally don’t even suggest new positions to try out (zounds but I’m dull!), although I do occasionally maneuver into them with utmost subtlety.

I’m not sure why Laramy and I hadn’t tried the “folded deckchair” yet. (Also, that name is stupid.)  I guess maybe we just hadn’t gotten to it yet, but that night it seemed like a good idea. We were settling into good old missionary when I flung my legs over his shoulders. Oooooh, yes! I thought, I remember why this is awesome now! Suddenly his cock was catching my G-spot from the most delicious angle and my orgasms came fast and urgent, one after another, building.

I have my suspicions that the texture of my G-spot or the grip of my pussy when I come so hard is something that Laramy likes especially, because we both seem to favor the G-spot heavy positions. With my legs like that, he was getting that face he gets when it’s unbearably good, slowing down a little to dial the intensity back. I felt a jolt of joy that we were together on this one: this was Watchmen, this was a triumph. At some points my legs moved down under his arms and he grabbed them for leverage, and at others I’d toss my legs higher again and we’d grimace together at the absolute bliss of that angle. We felt it together. We sucked in air together, except when I forgot to breathe while I curled my head back in climax after searing climax.

When you have dozens of orgasms, scores of orgasms, a motherfucking shoal of orgasms, the odds get pretty damn good that you’re going to have a simultaneous orgasm with your partner. Laramy and I come at the same time often, and it honestly doesn’t get old. It’s like twice the orgasm. The feeling of his cock pulsing and pouring its heat into me sometimes sends me over the edge even if I’m not quite there yet. But this time I really, really was. It was like Michael Bay was directing my vagina. I swear.

Laramy and I were both sweating and spent. He hung over me, draped on the frame my legs gave him. He was panting and grinning and blinking like a big-budget explosion had just torn through the bedroom: it was kind of adorable. I grabbed my ankles and pulled my legs back to my own shoulders, lowering him right over my lips, and then we kissed, which made us laugh. “I didn’t know you could do that!” he cried.

Piffle. Of course I can!

Watching a guy play with himself fascinates me. But I’m not interested in a long, lingering, self-conscious tease that acknowledges that I’m watching and attempts to give me a show. I like to see how a guy gets himself off normally, without frills. I revel in the businesslike, perfunctory action; I like noticing the parts of his penis he focuses on and the places he ignores. I want to understand what it means for him to possess his genitals, to spy on his relationship with them. And sometimes, I find myself relating to him as much as I’m turned on.

And this is why I bought my Feeldoe. I wanted a cock of my own. Specifically, I wanted to jack off. It did occur to me– casually– that I might want to fuck another person at some point. Also, that it would be hot to slide my pretty purple cock between a set of lips, provided I could find someone to agree to give me a blowjob. But I wasn’t holding my breath or my order for any such opportunities to emerge: they were like the wacky roadtrips you might envision when you get a new car, but you’re really getting it for your day-to-day driving. Basically, I got it for day-to-day wanking.

A few of my male friends have remarked that buying the ingenious strapless strap-on to jack off with is perhaps the purest and most excellent reason to get one. It’s always nice to get unique compliments. I’m pretty sure my reason is simply the most penis-envious. Of course, if I were male I’d likely consider penis envy pretty pure and excellent myself.

I adore my pussy. I love my small-but-mighty clitoris. I write poems about my G-spot. But a cock is a beautiful thing to have, as an accessory, and I picked an especially good one.

About a year ago I was looking at strap-ons online and thinking how none of them really seemed all that tempting. I could see how the act of penetrating someone could be kinky and erotic and all, but I couldn’t imagine any harness/dildo combo feeling all that good from the fucker’s end. There’d be some clit stimulation against the harness, but it probably wouldn’t be all that different from dry humping, would it? But then. Oh, then! Then I saw the Feeldoe.

Naive as I was, to me a double dildo was a long, straight, two-headed phallus used only in porn and Darren Aronofsky movies. But this was different. This was brilliant. “Surely,” I declared to myself, “a woman designed this marvel.” Turns out, yup. It has a bulb that the top puts inside her pussy so she can feel every thrust she makes with the external dildo, and ridges that press enticingly against her clit. I could imagine the Feeldoe propelling me toward real, joyous fucking, compelling me to push faster and faster into my fuckee like a man in the grip of his impending orgasm. I also immediately realized that if I had this wondrous device I could jack myself off, and that possibility made me dizzy with longing.

I tried to reason with myself: there was no point in spending all that money on a two-person toy if I was only ever going to use it by myself. I might not even enjoy wanking like a guy, maybe I just liked the idea. But the image of stroking my own cock kept creeping into my brain, eventually camping out as a persistent fantasy. I couldn’t explain it: I wanted a cock. It didn’t matter if I never penetrated a single orifice with it, I wanted it and I would make my own fun.

So I decided to stop being a jerk and to let me have my penis. And when it came, all my wildest dreams came true. Not about fucking with it, or even getting a blowjob, because none of that has happened yet. But jacking off with my Feeldoe is fabulous. The ridges that work my clit (which I consider the major tell that a woman designed it, by the way) feel amazing when I pull on the shaft, both ends of it feel great inside me, and the little bullet vibe is a mind-blowing enhancement when I want a little something extra.

The only problem is that when I come especially hard my pelvic muscles tend to contract and push out whatever’s inside me, be it warm, pulsating flesh or slick violet silicone. So I have to concentrate on keeping it in if I want it to stay put. But the beauty of a detachable penis is that you can take it out and put it back in with ease. I do so love having it all.

Quizzical Pussy: WTF????

Sex tips are an odd institution. They’re like body mass index or the census: not necessarily useful for individuals. They’re often more just rough indications of averages, helpful tools to know what to expect in the general population. But despite what I may have said in moments of anger, I’ve never had sex with average. No one’s tastes ever perfectly match all the sex tips you’ll find. Hell, not even all the sex tips match up with one another. It’s confusing.

This is why when I write about sex I talk a lot about myself: what sex is to me, what I like, what I think and feel about it all. It isn’t my narcissism (okay, it could partly be my narcissism) so much as the fact that I can’t realistically say “guys like this” or “girls like this”. I often feel uneasy declaring “Laramy likes this” or “Edwin liked this” because how can I get a good enough grip on these things to be comfortable saying I know them to be true from my outside, insecure, biased-as-fuck perspective? I like “Laramy seems to like this” or “Edwin said he enjoyed that” better.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never write a “How to Succeed at Reverse Cowgirl Without Really Trying” manifesto, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to take myself seriously enough to pretend it’s going to be widely useful.

Which brings us to blowjobs. A specific thing about them, really. From time to time I’ll run across a list of oral sex tips or some guy’s account of what makes a blowjob great for him, and often you see the same things come up again and again: lots of saliva, using hands, engaging balls, stroking the perineum. These are all things that have usually enjoyed warm receptions and glowing approbation from my barely-random-at-all sample of the population (read: guys whose dicks I’ve had in my mouth). Often, though, I pause when I read what may be the least-sexual all-star highly agreed-upon oral sex tip ever: eye contact.

I have no problem kissing, fondling, or fucking with eyes open and clamped onto my partner’s. Eye contact can add to the experience. It’s intimate, but doesn’t have to be emotional; sometimes it’s just deliciously intense. But for some reason I feel completely weird about establishing much eye contact when I’m giving head. For a moment of “this is fun, isn’t it?” camaraderie? Sure! But eyes locked on his for a substantial portion of the fun? It seems awkward to me. I’m not saying it should; it just does. I hope it doesn’t make me a bad feminist. I hope it doesn’t make my oral skills too inferior.

Here’s how I see it: I enjoy giving blowjobs, and part of why I like them is because they’re so entirely about pleasing the guy I’m with. I get off on how I’m making him feel in addition to the sensory pleasures of actually performing fellatio. But the point is mostly that I’m focused on him. That’s what many guys appreciate about it (although I’ve heard rumors that it feels kind of good also).

This might be way too neurotic, but I feel like in that sense I should be almost invisible. Or at least unobtrusive. If I keep pulling his attention back to me I’m intruding on his blowjob, even though I’m the one giving it. My mission is to turn my lips, my tongue, my hands, my throat, my larynx, into a chimeral machine of pleasure. This is not the time to make it about me. It’s not even the time to make it about “us”. It’s about him and his cock.

Also, I wouldn’t want either of us to feel bound by this eyelock thing. Looking down at me might get tiresome when maybe he wants to close his eyes and enjoy, or at least stop straining his neck to look at me. And I’d rather concentrate on what I’m doing, frankly. I want to be able to choose position and trajectory based on things like comfort, pleasure, and accessibility, not visibility.

Eye contact personalizes oral sex, of course. It might be a huge turn-on for a guy, seeing the dilated pupils, the raw cocklust pulsing in the eyes of the face with the mouth that’s currently housing his penis. Maybe it makes blowjobs romantic and sweet to extremes they otherwise seldom reach. I don’t know. I’d feel presumptuous. I don’t want to decide how personalized a blowjob needs to be. Maybe he doesn’t like me all that much; maybe he’s closing his eyes and thinking of England and the last thing he wants is me looking up expectantly, all like “aren’t we sharing quite the moment!?”

Now, if a guy tips my chin up gently and instructs “Look at me,” the whole thing becomes insanely sexy and I will fucking lock eyes like it’s my prime directive in life (until such time as the blowjob ends, at which point I go back to my usual prime directive, which is [classified]). But otherwise, eye contact’s not even on my radar.