quizzical pussy

I’m not the best gift giver, especially when we’re talking about prescribed gift-giving events. If I find something that reminds me of you and that I think you have to own, I’m happy to buy it and give it to you. I might even wrap it. But how often do I find such a thing close to an actual birthday or gift-giving holiday? Not all that often. And I’m not about to hoard an item for months waiting for an authorized moment to give it to you. That’s madness! So when a special date rolls around, I’m often at a loss.

*THAT'S WHY I STOPPED! (could not resist)

Another shortcoming I have is that I have trouble thinking up sentimental gifts. I often opt to give something practical, which, to be honest, does tend to get a little fucking boring.*

The thing that drives me absolutely cuckoo is when people refuse to tell you what they want for their birthdays, etc., but clearly want you to come up with something inventive and thoughtful or they’ll be massively disappointed. That is terribly irritating, and probably some kind of metaphor for the kind of relationship you have with that person, although I can’t be bothered to suss out exactly how at the moment.

But one thing I do know, no matter how hard it might be to decide what gift to get for someone, there will always be some hard and fast rules regarding what NOT to get your mother for Mother’s Day.

For example, do not (ever) buy her any of the following unless following a specific and explicit request rendered in person and before witnesses (and even then, by all means have misgivings!):

1. Black market organs
2. Horrible Mothers: Breach of a Sacred Trust by Alice Thie Vieira
3. Cocaine
4. A stripper
5. Sexy lingerie
6. Vaginal rejuvenation surgery
7. An e-card
8. Parenting for Dummies
9. A huge mess that’s not going to clean itself
10. A vibrator

Newegg, apparently, did not get this memo. Behold:

This is a excerpt from an actual recent Newegg promotional email that arrived in Laramy’s inbox, and he was kind enough to share it. Go on and click it for the full thing on Newegg’s site. It is very true! Go on. I’ll wait… Yup, they’re actually suggesting that you buy your mom a Hitachi Magic Wand, because it’s not a sex toy, no! It’s a personal massager. But really, you guys, it’s a sex toy, right? Can’t we just all agree on that once and for all and admit that when people use it for other purposes (as I do) it’s aberrant?

And get one for my mom? Bad. News. Bears. Don’t listen to Newegg. They crazy. Although, $32.79 isn’t a bad price for a Magic Wand…

I ended my relationship with Edwin Pomble when I finally got the courage to tell him that I’d been raped years before, and he probed relentlessly for more information, making me relive the event in excruciating detail for over an hour until I couldn’t stop crying, then screamed at me and told me I must’ve liked it.

Don’t ask me why I tried to be friends with him after that, but I did. I extended myself until I unraveled, trying to show him that although I couldn’t trust him enough to have the relationship we once had, I still cared about him and didn’t want to “throw him away”, as he put it.

It took him all of two weeks before he stopped apologizing and started resenting me for not taking him back. Sometimes I wondered: was I being too hard on him, being a bitch about the whole thing? He certainly thought so. But when I actually considered being together again I couldn’t stomach the thought. It didn’t matter how perverse and unyielding I was being, the breakup event had forever fractured the way I saw him, the way I felt about him. No part of me wanted him back.

So we tried the friendship thing. I made an honest go of it, but I don’t think he did. To him, our friendship was a purgatory he had to suffer through until I finally came to my senses and begged him to be my bride. The longer things went without that happening, the more resentful he became, and the more he pressured me to give him his way.

…

It is a frigid Saturday night. We’ve been broken up for a few months. The hemisphere has spun into a biting post-holiday winter gloom. My illness has been unkind to me for all of the newborn year so far: my headache raging and my joints complaining. I’ve been stuck indoors for a week, lonely and bored, feeling just better enough today to be restless. Edwin calls and invites me out to a karaoke bar a few blocks from his apartment, to come hang out with few of his friends. Great, I think. I can socialize with Edwin in a friend-type way on neutral territory with witnesses, all the post-breakup planets aligning perfectly for once. Plus, he’s been alluding recently to one of his friends being interested in him. I hope maybe it’s one of the chicks that will be at the bar that night. We can all hang out together and I can give them my unspoken seal of approval. I decide to get in non-pajama clothing for the first time all year and meet them.

10:30 PM. It shouldn’t be a shock that the bar’s crowded, being Saturday night and all. But Edwin seems to freeze up as soon as he sees how many people are there. He declares his intentions to leave. I want to stay, and tell him so. I damn well came to sing karaoke and have fun, not to go to Edwin’s place and sulk together, or whatever. So I stay and sing and have fun with a bunch of people I barely know.

But then he calls and leaves me a voicemail explaining how he had really been worried about me and that’s why he’d wanted to leave, and he wouldn’t have left if he’d known I was okay with it (note: we did talk about how he wanted to leave and how I wanted to stay before he left, so I suspect he’s trying to manipulate me somehow. But I’m pretty easy to manipulate, as we will see). But I start feeling like a bit of a prat. Maybe it was rude of me to stay at the bar when he didn’t want to. I don’t really know. So despite my “being alone with him” misgivings, I leave after a couple of hours of karaoke and stop by his place to prevent being a total jerk.

As soon as I climb the stairs to his second floor flat it’s clear he wants to have sex. With me. He’s really, really adamant about it and I in turn am really, really adamant about not wanting to. I tell him I don’t think of him in that way anymore, that I want to be friends and nothing more. Yes, I, sex fiend, am refusing sex! I try to leave. He grabs me, presses against me, then, rebuffed, starts going on about how horrible the rejection feels. He’s getting more and more passionate, getting upset, maybe getting angry. This flips a sort of switch with me. I can’t explain it very well. I tend to have problems putting my feelings above a guy’s feelings (especially if his feelings resemble anger) in a disagreement like this because for years any disagreement meant I was in major, violent trouble (see: my entire relationship with Reginald). Edwin seems angry to me, and my will collapses.

Fear crackles through my body, a response to things that have happened before as much as anything happening in the present. Adrenaline pumps into my bloodstream for no reason, I feel far away and small. The protests I was making moments ago seem like they came from someone else now, like I was reading from a fantastical script that I could never hope to really live.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. If you want, we can have sex,” I hear me say. The words are mechanical. I sigh as I say them. It is clear to us both that I absolutely do not want to.

He says, “Are you saying that because you think you’ll lose me if you don’t?”

“No,” I tell him, “I’m saying it because I don’t feel that I have the right to say no.” And that’s the simple truth. In that moment, I’m afraid not to give him his way, although I don’t really know why.

So he makes a big show of how he doesn’t want that. How he isn’t that guy. I’m still frightened, but I’m thankful. It’s exactly what I was hoping would happen if I told him the truth. I haven’t figured out yet how to not feel this fear but it’s not going to win tonight. My body is nominally mine for now. I head for the door. I hit the bottom of the stairs. My hand is on the door knob.

A split second before exiting I hear him say, “I’ve changed my mind. Come back .”

It feels like my blood’s been flash frozen and my skin’s been slapped with something cold, dead, ugly. I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I scale the stairs and numbly follow him into his bedroom. For some reason I don’t feel I have a choice.

It is the worst sex of all time, and I’ve had some bad sex. I just want it to be over. My cunt feels arid then raw. I hate how his sweat drips down on me. The condom breaks and he doesn’t notice until after. I can’t even make myself care. For some reason I just want to know that there aren’t any pieces of it stuck inside me. It’s all that matters now. As I ask him if they all came out with him, I choke the words out. He tells me it’s all there. The thin veil of senseless panic leaves me and I’m flooded with nausea. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and quietly wretch into his toilet. As I leave, Edwin says he loves me. It sounds far away.

…

The next day I found a small, round scrap of latex inside me and snapped from numb to livid. Not even at him, really just at myself.

It’s Tuesday again, and that means more anonymous secrets to share!

A friend of mine recently became engaged to his girlfriend. As I’ve gotten to know her better I’ve learned that she is very into the kink scene and he’s very vanilla. I don’t want to steal my buddy’s girl or anything, but that doesn’t mean I don’t to make her my slutty little secretary so I can spank her for all her mistakes and fuck her across my desk.

I lost my virginity, not to my sweet boyfriend of the time, but to a close friend at a party. Then I lied and told my boyfriend I had broken my hymen masturbating, before losing my “virginity” again. I felt like because I hadn’t actively said I’d date him (he kissed me and then assumed and I felt trapped until the day I ended it) that it was ok to cheat on him. I finally broke up with him after getting an additional boyfriend and girlfriend which he knew nothing about. He doesn’t know until this day I was never faithful.

There’s been a serial rapist attacking women at knifepoint on my campus over the past three weeks. Everyone’s scared. I personally hope he attacks me. I want to kill him in self-defense. I don’t know if I could do it, but I’d like to try to take him down with me.

I have two kids and a good sex life with my hubby. I have never been able to find my clitoris. Books, web sites, drawings, photos…I’m starting to think I don’t have one!! I know where it should be but I can’t find mine and I don’t think I’ve had any sensation from that location. I would die if anyone knew!!

Send me your secrets!

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.

…Oh wait. Maybe it kind of is. Ugh.*

Laramy and I watched porn together for the first time on Monday night.

Actually, it was the first time I’ve ever watched porn with a partner, and I’m not sure why I haven’t before. I’ve never been one to take exception to my partner enjoying porn, and I enjoy it on occasion myself, so why no one wanted to watch porn with me until now is a mystery. Maybe previous partners thought I’d get in the way of their enjoyment or something, gumming up their fantasies with my flesh-and-bloodiness.

This isn’t to say that I want to watch porn while having sex, especially not as a routine. I can’t imagine too many things more joyless than getting ready to get it on with someone and hearing, “Oh wait, let me just put on this movie of people fucking to distract me from the fact that I’m fucking you, non-buxom, non-blonde, pale girl without a tramp stamp whose name I can’t recall just now. By the way, could you move your head so I can see the screen? Don’t want to lose my erection.” That would be depressing.

In fact, as someone who usually masturbates to pictures or just doesn’t use visual aids, I think porn is fun to watch, but it’s very hit-or-miss for me in terms of arousal. But watching it with someone cool always seemed like it might be fun and sexy: laughing at the cheesy parts together, critiquing techniques and positions, getting turned on and forgetting the movie halfway through. All fun, right?

Never happened that way for me. The closest I’d come until recently was when Edwin Pomble’s roommate pulled out Pirates one night and informed us it was the funniest porn of all time. “This I have to see!” I declared. Edwin agreed that we could all watch it together as long as we fast-forwarded through the sex scenes. …Yeah. This was shortly before I realized I’d rather be fucking his roommate.

When Laramy asked me if I wanted to watch Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy, a 1976 musical porn starring Kristine DeBell, with him my only misgiving was that I find nearly everything made in the 1970s ugly–not people, obviously (call me), but TV and movies, etc. I’m not sure what went on with film processing or whatever during that decade, but it’s unacceptable. But hey, I finally had an offer to watch porn with someone hot, so I was going to take it! Plus, Laramy loathes musicals and likes porn, so I was looking forward to a hilarious internal conflict at the very least.

The film is pretty ridiculous. Which is fair, because Alice in Wonderland is a literary tribute to the sublime within the ridiculous. On the plus side it didn’t take itself too seriously, there were some crazy hot chicks in it (I watch gay porn for the men; straight porn is all about the girls for me), and there was one section where, shortly after a lesbian nurse scene, they actually had sing-along lyrics posted: “His ding-a-ling up! His ding-a-ling up! We got his ding-a-ling up!” referring to Alice’s  messianic lifting of Humpty Dumpty’s erectile dysfunction where the hot nurses had failed. Needless to say, it was a fun movie.

The problem was, neither of us found it all that arousing. Sure, there were a couple brief moments where I felt myself getting into it, but then some new absurdity would get in the way and they’d all have to sing about it or stumble through some halfhearted rhyming dialog. It felt a lot more like watching a hilariously bad movie than a hilariously hot one.

Oh, we still had awesome sex afterward. But we both agreed, not without a twinge of disappointment, that the musical porn we watched beforehand had very little to do with it.

I must say, I’m fairly excited to see the upcoming Erica McLean’s Alice starring Sunny Lane and featuring April Flores as the Queen of Hearts (see Epiphora’s glad tidings about the project here). Fleshbot indicated that maybe it was scheduled to come out on Monday, the very day we watched the old Alice, which would’ve been a freakish coincidence since I thought it was coming out later. But I’m not so sure that it has, since the website doesn’t seem to have any clues as to how to get it.

Anyway, our porn-watching experiment was a blast, and I think we’re going to make this a regular thing. Musicals, probably not so much, although I did make him suffer through The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. early on in our relationship. Love me, love every single one of those 5,000 fingers, dammit.

*Or maybe it’s just our dirty, dirty minds and he was just being very nice to that little girl. The world may never know.

You may be interested to know that although I’ve been putting sex confessions up for a little while now, I haven’t yet had anything close to an inkling of whom any of them are coming from.

I’m not sure if that says something about the wonders of anonymous forms or my profound density concerning recognizing writing styles (if people who leave comments on the site or whom I know in real life are indeed sending in secrets). The only ones I know for sure about are the ones I send in (for the record, the one about Lemon Party was me and it’s absolutely true). I can’t even begin to speculate on the rest.

Without further ado, here are this week’s secrets:

I’m a nice and lovable guy who gets along brilliantly with everyone who meets me or knows me. And yet 90% of the things that come out of my mouth are lies…about everything, starting from simple things like what I did that day or ate the previous. Ending with things like my level of education (I’ve lied it to be higher and lower than it really is) and pretty much everything to do with sex. I’ve been to a psychologist with this problem and ended up making things up so well that she said that I’m just imagining the fact that I’m lying to everyone and about everything.

I made a big deal out of my fuckbuddy sorta-kinda-a-little gray-raping me when we broke up, but I never told anybody that it was the second time. Several months before that he’d gotten on top of me and I’d said “no” and he stuck his dick in me anyway. But only for a second, and it didn’t hurt or anything, and maybe it was some kind of misunderstanding, I was lying naked in his bed after all. So I felt like it would be silly to make a big deal out of such a small incident and kept seeing him.

Oh, and before that there was an incident where he just lay on top of me and held me down (he’s got a good hundred pounds on me) and didn’t let me move for several minutes even though I was begging him. But he didn’t do anything sexual to me, it was just… weird.

It’s not at all my place to say whether you should consider your own experience rape or not, but I feel like I should say this in hopes that you’ll read it: I personally think that any time you’re saying no and a guy sticks his penis inside you, it’s a big deal, and you’re perfectly justified and not at all silly if you treat it as such. I know there are lots of forces that work against feeling justified in that, so I want to make sure you hear it from somewhere. For what it’s worth.

I want one night in the sack with my boyfriend’s best friend. Just one night. I don’t want to date him, don’t want a relationship with him (god knows it wouldn’t work), but the way he looks at me sometimes I know he’d eat me right up. I just want to see what he would be like to fuck. I know we’d go after each other like a pair of crazed weasels. I don’t feel terribly guilty about it; I’m sure my boyfriend keeps a file of women in his head that he’d like to go after, just once, just because they turn him on that much.

I haven’t had sex with my wife in a year or thereabouts. She’s given me head ONCE since our wedding. I should of realized this would happen, when we were dating and engaged she NEVER offerred, I always had to beg. Then when she knew she had me it stopped. Other than the disappearing head we had an OK sexlife until the sex stopped too. Now I think I hate her or close. She’s a glorified baby-sitter (for kids I love but who she insisted on having) who always wants more cash and attention. The worst thing is that I’ll never have the guts to divorce her or cheat.

When I was young, I used to watch porn on my parents’ computer. I’d also read hot (but badly written) erotica about everything: beasiality, food, stepfather rape, whatever. When the computer started getting viruses and bugs related to sex, my parents asked me and my siblings about it. I blamed my older brother. They still don’t know it was me. (I’m female)

Now go visit the Sex Confessional and anonymously tell the internet something you’re never going to tell anyone who matters. You know you want to.

Sometimes I go on Facebook and notice that my little teenage cousin has once again changed her relationship status. She’s openly gay, except for a brief interlude with a boy during which she was “interested in” women and men, but then switched it to women a week later.

Every time her status switches back to single again I do a little internal wince for her because I know breakups are hard. Every time it swings back to “in a relationship” I grin because I know that starting a new relationship is exciting and heady, and I like to think that’s what she’s feeling.

I don’t talk to her much. I don’t even Facebook chat with her. It’s safe to say that I would never learn about these little ins and outs of her personal life if it weren’t for the magic of social networking.

I came a little late to the Facebook party. I graduated university shortly before it launched, and considered it a college thing when it first started getting popular (you know, cause it kinda was).  I saw no reason to join until my little brother stopped answering emails and phone calls and it became increasingly clear that the best way to reach him was through Facebook message. That’s when  I folded and signed up.

I’d been in an exclusive relationship with Edwin Pomble for a few years at that point, but when filling out my profile info I just left the relationship status blank. I wasn’t “single”, I wasn’t “in a relationship”, “it” wasn’t “complicated”… it just wasn’t anything. It wasn’t like I was planning to use Facebook as a dating site, and all six of my Facebook friends had met my boyfriend, who wasn’t even on Facebook himself. So I figured, what was the point?

Part of me automatically tries not to fall into the trap of defining myself by my relationship status. It’s probably a fairly common and natural reaction after being in a relationship where one has lost one’s identity (see: Reginald Sleeth). I want to be me first, and then someone’s girlfriend or whatever. I’ve gotten that very wrong in the past. My feminist side influences this too, demanding to know why it should make any difference to anyone whether I’m single or seeing someone. I’m the same person either way, dammit!

The wincing and grinning that I do when I read my cousin’s announcements aren’t meant like that, though. I don’t think she’s worth more when she has a girlfriend; I just sympathize with the feelings that likely come along with her status changes. I think most people are the same way. I could easily have been overthinking this “stop telling me I’m nothing until someone loves me in full digital view!” stance. In fact, I probably was.

But, my decision to leave my relationship status blank wasn’t all political. I didn’t even pretend to myself that it was. See, I also wasn’t very happy in my relationship with Edwin. Even as I was signing up and not disclosing my relationship status I felt very relieved to be avoiding the inevitable change when I finally successfully ended things with him in the future. I felt more and more comfortable with my choice as our relationship disintegrated. Meanwhile he signed up for Facebook and several of his friends friended me, and still my status was blank. When we finally broke up I didn’t have to change a thing in cyberspace.

Did I avoid Facebook drama altogether this way? No. When Edwin decided months later that he didn’t want to stay friends or remain in any kind of contact I unfriended him on Facebook. It seemed the thing to do. But he called me, very upset, as soon as he saw, and told me he’d changed his mind and wanted to try to be friends after all. Ironically, I guess Facebook had just made it all too real.

I actually kind of met Laramy Fuquerton through Facebook. We had tons of friends in common but hadn’t met yet when he friended me and we started chatting. After we’d been properly introduced and had been hanging/making out a little while, he joked “We should be each others’ ‘it’s complicateds’,” referencing the old xkcd (see above).

But we didn’t do that. Months passed and my relationship status didn’t appear and Laramy’s didn’t change.  Now, I’m not so afraid of commitment I can’t tell the internet I have a boyfriend, and I don’t actually feel like I’m pandering to some patriarchal standard if I disclose my relationship status. But part of me felt like I’d taken a stand that relationship status wasn’t important, and I should stick to that.

But lately it occurred to me that I wanted to be “in a relationship” with Laramy anyway. No, it’s not important if you tell your second cousins and coworkers of yore and people you were sort of friends with in 8th grade that you’re dating someone. But all my close friends know me as someone who avoids commitment and tries to steer clear from all the sentimental trappings that can creep into the room while you’re just trying to fuck someone. And this was one of the most decisive gestures I could’ve made to indicate that it’s different this time. Because this time I’m really, really happy with someone rather than just tolerating his personality to get some sex. I know, I’m such a romantic.

So we talked about it, and he was into it, and we did it. We became boyfriend and girlfriend on a website rather than just in boring old meatspace. And a few people whom I’d mentioned Laramy to several times were all like “congrats on ur new relationship! ^_^” because apparently the status change had a lot more impact than actually saying the words “my boyfriend”.

More and more we’re hearing that it’s not official until it’s on Facebook. Horsefeathers. But still, sometimes it seems that way. Now that I’m in a relationship that I really don’t mind being official, it seems like there really just might be a point in broadcasting it.

This past fall/winter was truly a time of prodigious fucking. I say this because out of my friends and family, roughly 6,000 people have babies due this summer. It’s madness.

I don’t get the whole baby thing. My reproductive drive, my biological clock, is completely absent. I’ve never wanted kids; I’ve never even thought “maybe someday…”. I didn’t like to play with dolls as a kid (My Little Ponies FTW), I wish I were sterile now, and nothing has ever shaken my utter disinterest in baby-having. Which is weird considering that my baby-making (read: fucking) drive is insatiable and biologically you’d think those two things might be linked. I guess I just prefer orgasms to changing diapers. Actually, when you put it that way it’s not even slightly weird.

I realize that everyone is different, and evolutionarily speaking, I’m the one who’s broken here. I’m an evolutionary dead-end and all these happy mommies-to-be are passing on their genes. Still, it boggles my mind that there are people so enthusiastic about living my worst nightmare. But however hard it may be, I try to be polite when people are getting excited about their waxing bellies and baby registries and so forth, and I make an effort to listen to their thoughts on impending parenting challenges.

One of my friends (due in August, I think) is a feminist and an engineer. She’s unsure of whether she’s carrying a boy or a girl, but either way she intends to practice gender neutral parenting as far as practicality allows. Gender neutral parenting, as I understand it, tries to insulate a child from expectations to conform to gender stereotypes (e.g. girls wear princess dresses and play with dolls, boys get all the cool toys), allowing children the freedom to make up their minds about interests and preferences. This parenting style sounds awesome… idealistic, difficult, and probably frustrating at times, but awesome.

My friend mentioned several things, including the fact that she’s becoming more and more sensitive to gendered sayings like “boys will be boys”, and that she doesn’t intend to dress her child in the traditional pink or blue to denote her/his sex.

I don’t dislike pink, but I really, really dislike the practice of slapping pink on something (e.g. a cell phone, skateboard, or gun) and expecting it to automatically appeal to women. I also dislike the fact that little boys– hell, even men– are discouraged from wearing and liking pink for no good reason. Far be it from me to say that you can’t dress your little girl in pink or your little boy in blue. I don’t care how you dress your child. But I’m not sure I buy the suggestion that these are innate color preferences dictated by gender.

One study performed a few years ago by Newcastle University researchers reported that female test subjects tended to like colors at the redder end of the spectrum compared to men. Apparently because they found that this pattern was true for a handful of subjects born and raised in China, so the researchers concluded that the preference is biological. According to one of the researchers: “Evolution may have driven females to prefer reddish colours – reddish fruits, healthy, reddish faces. Culture may exploit and compound this natural female preference.”

I don’t understand how you get to exclude social conditioning and cultural impact as factors just because 37 of your subjects come from a non-isolated foreign country. That seems wildly assumptive to me.

In Western society, pink=girl blue=boy is a very recent phenomenon, emerging in the last hundred years or so. More interesting still, many sources suggest that in the past these colors were reversed, and many magazines and books listed blue as the correct color for girls and pink for boys. Blue was seen as delicate, pretty, and feminine, while pink was seen as the diminutive of exuberant, manly red. The current color standard definitely doesn’t date back to the earliest flickers of civilization.

It doesn’t really matter if women generally prefer pink to blue. Maybe they’re just taught that pink is for girls, or maybe their primitive minds really are seeking out ripe berries. Maybe it’s a little of each, or maybe there’s something else altogether going on. It’s intellectually worthwhile, though, to challenge anything that reinforces cultural stereotypes by saying “we’re just wired that way”. Reducing our behaviors and thoughts to the remnants of a simpler time when all humankind was interested in was eating, fucking, and raising young is lazy. It lets us just ignore thousands of years of social pressure, and countless other variables. It’s too easy, and it’s too easily manipulated. You can end up with lots of hilarious assumptions, but often not much science.

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.