quizzical pussy

I quite like giving oral sex. Putting the main focus on someone else’s pleasure has some amazing perks, like getting a chance to really notice how much they’re enjoying themselves, which sometimes gets obscured in the torrent of one’s own orgasms, where one is me.

Of course, sometimes I get off just sucking cock, but it’s not the fast and furious coming that happens when I’m getting penetrated. It gives me more leisure to enjoy the process, to survey the shivering, shuddering, gasping fruits of my labors.

This might be odd, but in a way I never feel as sexually powerful as when I’m giving, not accepting, an orgasm. Not dominant, not submissive, just powerful somehow. Or no, powerful is probably the wrong word. I guess it’s more that I feel most sexually useful when I’m concentrating on giving pleasure. And maybe that’s almost like something vaguely approaching feeling sexy. For me, at least.

Perhaps this is why it’s so important to me to believe that I’m good at giving head. Maybe that’s why I was so scared to have sex with women before I tried it. It was terrifying, imagining that I’d have nothing to offer a sex partner. I’d had enough positive feedback from men that I could reasonably believe I had a moderate level of proficiency at blowjobs, but I’d be starting from square one with a chick. And if that was the case, why should she even bother?

Luckily, eating pussy didn’t turn out to be the obscenely treacherous puzzle box that popular culture would have me believe (at least not the pussies I’ve eaten so far). I imagine that possessing female anatomy barely hurts the learning curve either. I’m not saying I’m a rockstar at it yet, but I’m not inept either!

Of course, there can be drawbacks to giving oral sex. Some people just don’t taste all that great (in my experience, these people most often have shitty diets, but my sample size isn’t large). Pubic hair isn’t designed for easy swallowing. Jaws get tired, tongues get sore. There are STDs to worry about (as with most any sexual contact, but it seems a lot harder to convince someone to use barriers with oral sex), and there’s the frustration that can come when you realize that you’ve just sated a partner beyond any hope of further fun.

Often these issues are greatly mitigated or simply absent, depending on whom you’ve chosen to interface with. Some people taste good, have been tested recently, are always eager to reciprocate.

But there’s one thing I can never get away from that makes giving oral sex (specifically blowjobs) kind of less awesome than perhaps they should be. Wrapping my lips tightly over my teeth to eliminate any untoward scraping, I somehow always end up cutting the inside of my upper lip with my two top incisors. If I give another blowjob before that’s healed, the cut gets worse, and so on. I think I might need a mouthguard. Or maybe some tips from my clever readers.

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This ConTuesday has several sorts of anonymous confessions to sample: transgressive, triumphant, murky, and really kind of gut-wrenching.

While I was married to my first wife, I had an affair with her sister, that lasted about a year. In all honesty, I should have stayed with the sister, life would have been much better. One night, I butt-fucked my SIL, and then went upstairs, and woke up my wife, and had her give me a blow job. What made it even more weird was that my SIL stood in the hallway and masturbated while she watched us.

I recently discovered that if I apply really strong pressure to my clitoris as I’m orgasming, the climax keeps going for an extra thirty seconds or so. I wish it was socially acceptable to share these sorts of little personal triumphs with the world at large, but it’s not, so I’ll share it with you.

You know how something will randomly pop into your head and you’ll think “I have to remember to look this up on the internet later”, but you don’t have a smart phone and you every time– without fail– forget to look it up when you’re actually on a computer? Well, in a similar vein, I keep meaning to try this!

Boy, you are very cute and you have a tophat, which is always a plus. However, you violate the xkcd rule, so despite your flirting I doubt we shall ever have a relationship. …Maybe making out. But that is definitely the limit here.

If I wear top hat will you make out with me? I’m just curious here.

I confessed here before my boyfriend barely touches me. He’s doing such a great job convincing me he doesn’t find me attractive, that I’m starting to find him less attractive… I go to get my nethers waxed and think sadly how I’ll keep paying for this because at least twice a month, I know someone will touch me below the waist.

If I wear a top hat will you let me give you a big hug? Because this confession really makes me want to.

Send in your anonymous confessions using this convenient form! Make haste!

I have to confess I haven’t been doing very well lately. My health has taken a turn for the worse, much to the chagrin of my sex life (and life in general). It’s getting to where I’m just too exhausted to see my boyfriend regularly, let alone pursue madcap sexual adventures. I’m hoping this is very temporary, but in the meantime I thought I’d infuse a little positivity by posting some of the most joyous– perhaps verging on gloating– anonymous confessions to ever appear in my inbox. Read and enjoy, because these people certainly are! I’m into it.

My long distance girlfriend came to visit last week. A good time was had by all, including some fun with chocolate sauce and a basting brush. By the end of the week she was around, she was referring to me as “The Energizer Bunny” and “A God in Bed”. Even managed to make her legs give out at one point. I just had to brag a bit.

(Re: June 29th confessions) Being bi is totally awesome for avoiding jealousy. My partner and I check out women or men together and we share porn all the time. (Gloat brag gloat)

I got the hood of my clit pierced a few years ago because guys had too hard of a time finding it – my clit’s too small. That’s not a problem anymore!

Last week I bound my breasts for the first time. I love being female and I love my boobs, but I wanted to know what it would feel like to have a flat(ter) chest. And it was awesome! I was bound all afternoon at work, put my (Share XL) cock on before I went to see my partner, and greeted him with a big, packaged hug.

Sometimes I get the feeling I’m easy to fall in love with. This isn’t the type of thing you can just tell people.

Got something to brag about? Or bitch about? Or just confess anonymously? Bring it all here.

Have I mentioned yet that I kind of like sex toys? Have we covered that? Yes? Oh, good.

Well, I might start reviewing toys for Babeland, one of my favorite purveyors of sex toys, soon. Notice there’s a little banner for them on my sidebar now. That’s how excited I am about this (plus the banner has a hot chick, so there’s that too).

If you like sex toy reviews, the good news is that they may be coming in a little thicker over here in the not-too-distant future. If you don’t like sex toy reviews, feel free to send me other things to review. I particularly enjoy British roadsters.

For my fifth birthday my aunt took me to our local metropolitan art museum. I was showing some early interest in drawing and my coloring books were usually crayoned in roughly inside the lines, so she decided it was time for me to be exposed to some real art.

We ate at a cafe nearby and she gave me a little ring with a tiny diamond chip in the center of a golden heart that now fits my pinkie. It was an amazing day to be a little girl. My aunt is pretty awesome.

Those statues and paintings at the museum were probably the first images I saw of naked people. I grew up with conservative Christian parents and had a healthy Protestant shame of my body, and it was obvious that I felt miserably guilty seeing all those body parts I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to know existed. And my aunt told me something that I still remember. She said, “when you really look at the human body it’s very beautiful, and there’s nothing wrong with it.” And that, to me– when I was five and so very sheltered– was revolutionary.

This story has very little to do with the point of this entry, but what I’m trying to say is that I like art. I even have a small but personally rewarding degree of ability when it comes to two-dimensional art. But, while I hate to admit this because it’s such an abominable stereotype that women suck with three-dimensional space, I totally suck at three-dimensional space. I have a few friends who do amazing things with ceramics and metal and such, and I just stare in wonder as if they’re holding wands and muttering pseudo-Latin Harry Potter pastiche, because it’s so far beyond me.

In fact, if you give me clay I will make a sad-looking dinosaur. Pretty much every time.

And when three-dimensional art and orgasms combine, what can I say about it but HALE to the YES.

This is how woodgasms are born.

Which brings us to our point. Epiphora, one of the best sex toy reviewers ever, period, is teaming up with pleasure boutique SheVibe to give away an amazing NobEssence piece of fuckable art.

I’ve never had the privilege to use a NobEssence toy, but they are a gorgeous line of hard wood toys that, if they feel half as good as they look, might as well all have Phoenix feather and Unicorn hair cores because they are absolutely fantastical.

A few amazingly cool features of the Woodgasm giveaway:

1. There are a lot of ways to enter. Most of them disturbingly easy! In fact, I’m entering it right now, if you know what I mean.
2. This isn’t just any giveaway. This is a customized giveaway. You get to CHOOSE which creation you want from SheVibe’s entire NobEssence collection! You’ve got beautiful dildos, butt plugs, cock rings, and more to pick from.
3. If you win, you are going to feel so fucking classy putting that elegant woodgrain museum piece inside you.
4. There’s still time for you to get in on the twitter trivia party tonight, for extra chances to win!
5. I just want to use the term “fuckable art” again.

So what are you waiting for? Go enter!

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Anonymous confessions from the internet! The first one is very timely, since Buy A Sex Toy Day is this Friday, and someone wants some tips on what to buy…

Can you recommend a sex toy for me? I’ve been inspired by Buy A Sex Toy Day, and I think it’s time for me to get better acquainted with myself. It needs to be cheap (under $50) because I’m unemployed and broke. It should be non-threatening, because this makes me incredibly nervous. And it should vibrate, because, well… I want it to.

Yay! I’m so excited you want to get a sex toy for BAST day! I wrote about the Wahl massager yesterday, and I have to say, I think it would fit your criteria very well. It’s unintimidating: it doesn’t look like a penis, it has no clues to its sexual applications on its packaging, and in a pinch you might even be able to convince people you use it on your sore neck. Oh, and does it ever vibrate! The only real problem is that it isn’t insertable, so if you’re looking for penetration you’ll want something more like this Orchid G, which I’ve never tried but have heard good things about. The bulb gives you g-spot stimulation, but it also makes it versatile as a clit vibrator. The major con to this toy is apparently that it’s wicked loud. If anyone has any other suggestions, please comment!

I was not very worldly when my first boyfriend started talking about anal. Didn’t sound like a good time to me, but if there’s one thing you can say about me, it’s that I’m game. One night he plied me with wine, teased the hell out of me and made me beg for a proper seeing-to. I was feeling very warm and agreeable when he flipped me over on hands and knees and very gently, very gradually eased his huge large cock in. I actually really liked it and I squirted. [two confessions in one: I didn't know about squirting and was horrified-- I def. didn't need to pee. Took me years to realize...] The next time, he was in a big, big rush. I was getting turned off by the relationship in general at that point, planning my exit, and maybe slightly less game than before. He hurried me to drink some cheap wine (ugh!) and then I was there on the floor, hands and knees. I admonished him to go slowly, to let me tell him when to move forward, but once things commenced, he decided to ram it home. Fucker. He was a big clothes horse and spent vast sums on clothes/shoes, but was the last of the galloping cheapskates in every other way. So there I was on the floor, NOT about to squirt, not about to have anything I’d remember as a positive experience and he’s going to town in pursuit of his own pleasure. I felt the bile rising in my esophagus. *gack* What to do? I was gonna puke. The combo of cheap wine, personal distress and rushing what could have been a good thing was a perfect storm of oogyness, and I had to think fast – where to direct my vomit? One of his prized shark-grey Bruno Magli loafers was nearby, yawning, oblivious to my plight– someone had to pay. I grabbed it and yakked. Instant boner-kill. FWIW – anal is now on my definite list of likes, but has to be done very carefully. I think it’s sad how many people miss out on it because they don’t do a little research and proceed in a way that won’t damage the fuckee. Lube. Lube. Lube.

I absolutely agree. Anal sex can be so much fun, but! Lube. Lube. Lube.

So me and my ex-husband swang, we split, and he loved me so much that he felt the need to find me a lover. Only thing is, is this lover he wanted me to get with was 1) A good friend of his 2) married and 3) my former capt. I acted all offended but contacted the guy anyway. We have been together for a year now and part of me so wants to tell my ex how much better in bed he is, but a bigger part wants my ex to be there to watch it.

I never told my first that he was my first- and he never noticed.

Do you have any deep, dark secrets, questions, or concerns? Send them to me. I’ll give them a good home.

People come up to me all the time and say, “Quizzical Pussy, I was so entirely sorry to learn of the demise of your Jack Rabbit.”

At this point I always give my little funereal grimace/smile that I practiced when all my grandparents were dying off; I nod gravely. “Thank you for being here. It means so much to the family.”

But the conversation doesn’t end there. How could it? The next question is only natural, and it comes as surely as dry-humping appears at your first unsupervised high school party: “So, if you don’t mind my asking, Q.P., what are you doing for orgasms these days?”

It’s an excellent question. It deserves a good answer, and thorough. Of course sometimes I get orgasms from my boyfriend, Laramy. You know how solo orgasms can be every bit as satisfying and powerful as those you experience with an ultra-hot, highly-skilled partner? Yeah, me neither.

If I could work out a way to do this feasibly, I’d probably want 97% (with a 3% margin of error) of my orgasms to be partner orgasms. But guess what? That isn’t likely to happen, ever, given any logistics at all and my cartoonish desire for more and ever more orgasms. So masturbation is still eating up huge swaths of my sex life.

I love jacking off. It’s one of the coolest feelings ever, but putting something (like, say, a Feeldoe!) in my vagina is a big masturbation commitment for me. If the person I’m fucking doesn’t put something inside me I feel like I’m going to go insane (not in anything approaching a good way). This sort of treatment elicits a whimper that clearly says, “There are no fingers, toys, nor penises inside me right now! Heavens, why not? And did your mother know you were diabolically evil while she was carrying you in her womb or did she come to find out later? Also, still nothing in my pussy!? Hate you. Hate. You.” … I mean, all that’s in the subtext of the whimper. But on my own I can’t be arsed to penetrate myself. Clit work is clean and powerful and entirely satisfying when I’m fucking me, and (let’s face it) not really all that turned on in the first place, compared to when there’s real lust and attraction and all that.

I’m not sure if it’s normal, pathological or quirky that sex with someone is a related-but-entirely-different animal from sex with myself. I’m guessing it’s fairly common.

Anyway, for my purposes, jacking off with my Feeldoe isn’t going to replace my rabbit (whose shaft was barely ever used–especially after all the fancy rotation functioning died, but whose little bunny ears gave me more orgasms than I can possibly even try to begin to count) as my sexual staple. And clearly my Hitachi Magic Wand was not going to step up from its glamorous life of pummeling knots in my shoulders to meet the challenge. No, my new mighty mighty foot soldier of love isn’t even from the glamorous side of the I’m-a-personal-massager-not-a-vibrator-dammit tracks. Indeed, these days I’m getting most of my orgasms from the humble Wahl 7-in-1 massager.

I rode horses when I was younger, so for a long time Wahl was synonymous with the roaching of manes and the clipping of bridle paths. Much like Hitachi makes everything from automatic teller machines to elevators to sex toys, Wahl makes animal clippers, soldering irons, and… fucking magic, baby.

I’ve had my Wahl 7-in-1 (also known as the 2-Speed All-Body Massager) for years. It isn’t flashy, it isn’t sexy, it definitely wasn’t my first choice when I had those amazing flickering jack rabbit ears at my disposal, but it is solid and reliable and profoundly good at what it does.

Looking at the utilitarian, clunky, blow-dryer/glue-gun-esque form of the 7-in-1, I defy you to muster up an ounce of surprise when you learn that the design hasn’t changed since the nineteen-smumblies. It’s heavy for its size, made of hard gray plastic, and comes with little rubber-like attachments that slip over the peg at its muzzle. You use a little trigger at the handle to turn the thing on and adjust the speed from ooooooooh buzzy to aaaaaaahehehe jackhammer! and back again. It’s whisper-quiet for the power it’s packing.

It comes with seven exciting(!) attachments. I don’t really like them all, but they end up covering a lot of bases and I could certainly see how someone might have entirely different favorites than I do…

General Body kind of looks like a megaphone or the bell of a brass instrument. I have never figured out how this attachment is a good idea. In full disclosure, I think this attachment is floating around in my closet because I accidentally-on-subconscious-purpose lost it, so maybe it never got a fair shake. Still, I tried it several times and blah.

Deep Muscle looks like a pierced nipple with a barbell and two concentric nipple ring-shields. That’s the sexiest thing you’ll hear about this attachment all day, I bet. Or at least I never really use it, because I find it insipid.

Spot Application is kind of just this huge nipple thing, and it’s definitely my go-to attachment. I cannot use this on high, but it’s glorious on low. If I had to pick just one attachment and throw all the others into a volcano (or my closet), I’d be surly about it but there would be no question. Spot App, it was always you.

Scalp has lots of roundish-but-still-pretty-pointy teeth arranged in three circles on a big dish. It has an “Oh god I’m not putting that on my genitals” look to it. Of course for you people, I tried it. It’s quite lovely on one’s scalp (as you might hope), but really much nicer on my pussy than I thought it would be. Like lots of little fingers with a light, tickling touch. Don’t press hard, obviously, unless you have a special interest in lots of little fingers with an ouchy, stabby touch.

Facial…Hehe. Facial. This attachment looks more or less like a satellite dish. It feels roughly awesome, and mellows/spreads out the vibrations. I have it gently cup my whole pussy, one edge hovering over my clit and the other poised at my perineum. On the highest setting, this is just shy of “way too intense”, and it feels amazing. The Wahl’s high setting actually feels like it pummels you a bit rather than just vibrating politely, so if you follow my facial attachment method, there are some funny labia-slapping noises that you will not regret if you have any sense of humor (and/or are getting off like mad). You’ll also feel an interesting breeze, which is all part of the “Wahl facial” experience for me.

Knuckle-Joint looks like a rounded roof off a tiny toy house. This one is pretty good for applying direct pressure to the clit: you can use the rounded edge or corner to maximize intensity or a flat plane for a more dissipated effect.

Muscle Kneading is a deeply ribbed rectangular attachment. This one is a little better at actual massaging than getting me off. If this got misplaced somewhere in the depths of my closet I probably wouldn’t notice.

…If you have a super-sensitive clitoris, both high and low settings could be too intense for you, especially if you’re using an attachment that provides direct stimulation. But some of these attachments do diffuse the vibrations a little, which affords Wahl wider appeal than, for instance, the Hitachi Magic Wand enjoys. That is to say, I like the Wahl better and I suspect that many woman might feel the same way.

Did I mention that the Wahl is a plug-in, so you’re not burning through batteries? The cord is under 9 feet long by my measuring tape, so you don’t have crazy range to play with, but it’s serviceable. Also, extension cords exist.

Add to all that the Wahl 7-in-1’s durability and versatility, and the fact that you can get one for under $15 if you know where to look*, and you’ve got an absolute gem of an orgasm-giving machine. Oh, and I hear people use it for muscles or something too.

*It’s good to patronize sex-positive companies that promote sex education and all that, but most sex shops that don’t overcharge for most things still overcharge for this particular product. I have no idea why.

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Ancient Egyptian Deities <3 sex toys. Ask anyone.

International Buy A Sex Toy Day is fast approaching (it’s June 4th!), and I’m contemplating what to buy. I want to make this sex toy purchase count (toward mad orgasms). I’m not above buying cheap-ass sex toys, no, but in honor of the first annual BAST day I want to get something special, something I’m sure I won’t regret. So I’ve narrowed my current wishlist down to five top contenders. And here they are…

1. Sqweel The way oral sex simulators are described always irks me. For instance, the marketing copy for this toy on most sites says: “Luckily, the Sqweel won’t give you any excuses. No tired jaw, no early meeting the next morning, so it’ll keep going as long as you need.” Ooh baby. Nothing makes me horny like thinking about how much people hate to go down on me! Nevertheless, this toy looks like fun, and completely unlike anything else out there. In partnered sex, I tend to prefer oral sex with hard fingering right on my G-spot, so I’m curious as to whether I’ll feel the need for some penetration while using this.
2. We Vibe 2 The We Vibe is made specifically for wearing while fucking, in the sense that it’s supposed to go inside you (and also outside you) while a penis is also inside you. That promises like a million and seven standard units of stimulation for everyone involved! A while back, Laramy and I visited a sex toy shop and the We Vibe 2 was sitting there all coy on a glass shelf, begging to be picked up and fondled. Once we figured out how to turn the damn thing on, the vibration patterns were mesmerizing, and my imagination was captured: I wanted to put it in and fuck him right there on the floor immediately. Unfortunately, it was not that kind of place. Two misgivings: I don’t really know if the added friction against something shiny and silicone (even though it is, as advertised, quite soft) is going to be a problem for my partner’s penis, and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up with the plot of the sequel without first seeing We Vibe 1.
3. Njoy Pure Wand This is the G-spot toy, apparently. I want it both for personal use and for its great potential in the realm of girlfucking. It should come with a t-shirt that says “I will make you squirt”. Or wait, would that be tacky? Oh wait, don’t care.
4. Lelo Ina So my Impulse Jack Rabbit all kinds of died. It’s pretty much a mere shadow of its former, bliss-giving self. We had a good run so I’m not mad…I’m just disappointed. But if the rumors are true, Lelo has taken the winning Rabbit vibe formula and elevated it to high art with the Ina. I feel like that might just help me through my mourning process.
5. Eroscillator As a huge fan of clitoral masturbation, ever since I read Epiphora’s review of this technological marvel I’ve been consumed with desire. I burn, I pine, I perish. For reals. Plus, this is the only vibrator ever recommended by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, and you may recall that BAST day is on her birthday. It’s fate or something, I swear. Of course, the package I want goes for $240.90, so I’m starting to think that fate is cruel. Realistically, I’ll probably start saving up now so I can buy it for BAST day 2011. Still, it’s a beautiful dream.

Honorable Mention: Fleshlight Ice I can’t emphasize enough how dearly I want to fuck a Fleshlight with my Feeldoe. It would feel so deliciously postmodern. And the Fleshlight Ice is the clear favorite for this activity because of the visual treat of seeing every inch of my beautiful cock as it slides in and out. The only problem is that I mostly want it for novelty because I’m not sure it’ll beat jacking off with my Feeldoe one iota sensation-wise.

So there’s my shortlist. Each of my top five occupies a different sex toy niche, which makes the choice both more interesting and harder. As always, your input is welcome.

I hope you consider going online or visiting your local sex shop to buy a sex toy on June 4th, or at least spreading the word about BAST day! Blog it, tweet it, whatever! I think it would be wicked fun if it caught on.

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I endured ever-escalating physical and emotional abuse from Reginald Sleeth for over four years. I remember being literally afraid to move sometimes, whether he was watching me or not. I was hobbled by the knowledge that I could do something unexpectedly wrong at any time, and earn a harsh and ugly punishment. It wasn’t like walking on eggshells; it was like the air itself purred with the promise of invisible razor wire, hidden anywhere and everywhere.

I wanted to fade away, be smaller, tiny, unnoticeable. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to somehow become insignificant and non-threatening enough that he wouldn’t need to hurt me anymore. This was living in a kind of poverty of self. Nothing about me seemed to have substance in those years. Everything was transient and flimsy as his ever-changing moods.

When I finally left him, do you think it was because I’d dug down deep and found strength from a vital, indomitable place? Do you think I finally howled “ENOUGH!” to the universe, myself, and that floppy-haired sadist, showed him my back, and slammed the door on the terror that consumed me for so much of my youth? I wish. Want to know why I finally left him? Want to know what the real final straw was? I wasn’t getting enough sex.

Kind of.

I love sex. My sex drive is nigh maniacal. It was the one part of me that I couldn’t shut off, even when everything else was floating. Reginald, on the other hand, didn’t seem too interested in it beyond his ability to control me with it, which was considerable. He was my first everything: my first kiss, my first non-masturbatory orgasm, my first attempt at anal. Until I was well into my twenties, he meant sex to me, and that’s a powerful thing to a horndog like me.

Abusive relationships often function like an addiction, really. The euphoria of the love fable is followed by the punishment phase, which is like a withdrawal or a crash, like coming down off a high. It’s an ugly cycle that hooks you with the highs then slams you against the bottom. While you stay in your broken relationship, you try to get back to the high of feeling loved. I was a fragile, naive and sensitive teenage girl with the hormones of a teenage boy when I met Reginald, and to me the euphoric crest of our wave was always, from the very beginning, wrapped up in sex.

Before we had penis-in-vagina intercourse, he was an enthusiastic partner and lots of orgasms were had. But when we finally “did it”, it seemed like something shifted. I don’t know if he resented me for deflowering him or if by then he’d realized my will was broken down enough that he could control me in non-sexual ways, but little by little the sex dried up.

That’s when I started feeling like my sex drive was disgusting. That I, as a sexual being, was disgusting. Reginald told me as much, and in those days I believed what he told me. When I masturbated he accused me of “raping [my]self” and threw tantrums. I was base, mammalian, and greedy, and I was no longer worth touching.

The guilt was overpowering. I still shyly asked him for sex, but never pressured him into it. I didn’t want him to do something he didn’t want to. But even just wanting sex, I was suddenly repugnant. I even tried going on Prozac, chiefly to dampen my libido, but also because I sort of wanted to die and thought maybe I should do something about that besides, well, dying. But eventually I woke up one day and realized my high was gone. That was how I started gathering the strength to get away.

Despite therapy and personal reflection and triumph of the human spirit and being a basically happy and functional person (I like to think) I still have a few hangups. Maybe, possibly more than a few. I’ve mentioned before that I can’t flirt, don’t ask for things in bed, have trouble admitting that I’m attracted to someone, and am basically a great big chicken. I’m realizing that I’ve never really gotten over the feeling that my sex drive is disgusting and that I, as a sexual being, am disgusting. It’s so deeply internalized I don’t know how to shake it. Maybe I’ll always try to hide my sexual interest from people until they unmistakably initiate. Maybe I’ll always feel like I’m getting away with something when someone appears to be attracted to me. Maybe I’ll never really believe I’m worth touching. Maybe it’ll never be okay to want things.

And lately I’m getting really fucking sick of it.

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.