Great Expectations (part three)

This far into the series, and if you’ve read my other writings as well, you’ll know that I’m not averse to a spot of fellatio. Something I’ve often wondered, however, is - where do I fall demographically? Into an open-mouthed, open-hearted majority? Or into a select band of rogue warriors to whom nature gifted a peculiar craving?

Surveys are no help whatsoever. As the old pre-election caveat goes, you can prove anything with statistics, and a poll in one place that insists that every girl loves it will be instantly disproved by another, somewhere else, where nine out of ten respondents said “bleaugh.” I might even have shown up as one of that number a few years ago, when I was dating a guy whom I had absolutely no interest in blowing, for reasons we will get to later. That’s what I mean about surveys, though; they only apply to the people who are surveyed, and even then, there’s a vat full of variables.

Which (and we touched upon this in part one) might explain why guys can be so pushy about asking for it.

Let me explain. You take off your clothes and get into bed with a man, and he is going to assume - rightly and almost 100% accurately - that you are about to fuck. He doesn’t need to ask, he doesn’t need to speak, and he doesn’t need to make unsubtle movements, gestures, or grunts in the hope of stirring you into action. He assumes, and he is correct.

He does not make the same assumption about a blowjob. He may hope. He may beg. He might even cajole. The fact that he is even prepared to do those things would suggest he has had sufficient “disappointments” to know that not every girl is interested.

In another article, I referenced a survey that claimed two-thirds of women give head because they feel obligated to do so. You can translate that however you wish. Do they feel pressured? If so, by whom - by society? By him? It doesn’t matter. Do they believe it will make him love them more? Do they think it will make him less likely to stray? Is it a reward for good behavior? Is it a way of getting some sleep? There are a thousand reasons, and all of them are valid. However, what it boils down to is, in a straightforward survey of “do you or don’t you enjoy performing oral sex on your partner,” with “yes” or “no” being the only available responses, two-thirds of women would apparently answer in the negative.

True or false? It doesn’t matter. I don’t know how many women were surveyed for that particular poll... let’s say one hundred, and it is quite possible that if a different hundred had been asked the same question, the results may have skewed in the opposite direction entirely. The fact is, not every woman is the cum-hungry slut so beloved by porn mags, erotic writers, and XXX films, and not every guy is pumping loads down the throat of his lady every night.

My own aversion, with the guy I mentioned earlier, came down to one thing. We met at a party and wound up in bed, where we talked a lot more than we fooled around, and when we finally had sex (straight intercourse, in a very sleepy missionary position), it was already in the knowledge that we’d be seeing one another again. Which we did, two or three times before we were back in a bedroom, and at that point all things were possible -- even likely.

Until, and it came without warning, completely out of the blue (and just after he’d gone down, rather nicely, on me) he growled, “now suck my cock like the bitch you are.”

Excuse me?

Now, I’m not a prude when it comes to bad language, and I’ve reacted well to a lot worse things than that. I’ve probably said them, as well. However, this was so unexpected, and so out of place, that if it hadn’t been the middle of the night, on the other side of town from where I lived, and if he wasn't my only means of transport, I’d have dressed and walked out on the spot.

Instead, I considered all that, and then shook my head. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t like doing it.”

I stayed the night, and I gave him a handjob simply so I could get some sleep. While nothing more was said on the subject (and we even went out to a gig a few nights later), so far as I was concerned, the relationship was over. If he had taken part in one of those surveys at any time in those last five or six days of us being “together,” I’d have been firmly in the “she won’t do it” department.

I tell you this because it illustrates just how easily a woman can be “put off” sex - not just oral, but anything. Everything. Sex is an instinct, the biologists tell us. However, it is also a conditioned response, something that we know we should enjoy to the utmost of our ability, in which we shed all inhibitions and revert to primitive pleasure machine.

There is nothing like setting a bunch of ground rules like that to ensure that we immediately fall short on all counts. Especially once we realize that we’re falling short, at which point one worry piles on top of another, and a third comes running across to join them, and before you know where you are, you have a human pyramid of sexual neuroses dancing around your head. Often without you even being aware of them.

For men, the most common manifestation of this is performance anxiety, which in turn translates into erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. For women, one example is a marked dislike of cunnilingus, brought on by a fear of unpleasant odor, taste, and appearance (thanks, ad-land!).

A chance remark is all it takes. I was out with some friends one night, and the conversation turned, as drunken students are wont, to increasingly filthy jokes. The jokes included one that was disgusting enough that I will not repeat it, but it involved a customer vomiting on a prostitute’s vagina. To this joke, my roommate sitting next to me whispered, so only I could hear, “and it’s shit like that which turned me off oral sex.”

I knew exactly what she meant.

Back to Mr. Suck-It-Bitch. Whether it was what he said, or the way he said it, it chased all thoughts of fellatio out of my head. For a night. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if some girls were put off for life - not by the words, necessarily, but by the attitude within. If a man thinks the only woman who’d want to blow him is a bitch (or a slut, or a whore, or any of those other lovely words that horny guys seem to think are such turn-ons for us), then what does that make you if you go ahead? Also, if one man thinks like that, do others? Probably not, but there’s a world of adult entertainment out there that could probably argue the other way entirely.

Fellatio already comes with a sack load of submissive and even demeaning connotations - remember, “blow me” is one of our language’s strongest put-downs - and while recent years have seen a degree of positive reinforcement break cover, old stereotypes are difficult to break down. Masculine attitudes towards “the kind of girl” who would happily suck his cock may be Neanderthal. That doesn’t mean they’re extinct, though.

Okay, what about those demeaning connotations? Personally, I think anybody who considers a blowjob to be an act of submission has obviously never enjoyed giving one. Forget the fact that you’re the one with his most delicate parts at the mercy of your sharp white teeth. Forget that you not only control his pleasure and pain, you’re also dictating his orgasm. When a cat rolls on its back and displays its fuzzy tummy, it does so as a sign of surrender. When a guy does the same thing... yep. He surrenders, and it doesn’t matter how much masculine grandstanding he had to put on before he got his dick in your mouth, all he’s really saying is “take me, I’m yours.”

Again, stereotyping resists that interpretation. The muscle man standing while the girl kneels at his feet, his hands twisting and tugging her hair as he holds her head still and pounds his prick in and out of her mouth. She’s choking, she’s gasping, her face is contorted with discomfort. Then, when he cums in her mouth, it pours out of her nose. No, it’s not the most empowering image, is it?

Ah, but images can lie (meaning - it’s nowhere near as bad as it looks [insert smiley face!]), and even if they don’t... I’m not going to say “one bad apple,” but I have never met a guy who has tried to do that unbidden, and those that do are probably the same kind of guys who can spoil anything, from Sunday dinner to your dreams of a happy marriage. Some men (and women, too, I know) are pigs, and if you’ve encountered one, I’m sorry. However, don’t let him spoil the rest of your life. He has enough on his plate fucking up his own.

We talked about physical impracticability's, medical and otherwise, last time, but there is one other major reason why some women do not like fellatio, and that is - quite simply - the fact that they don’t like it. For the same reason, I don’t like sprouts, or you don’t like Radiohead, or politicians don’t like having reasonable conversations with one another.

There is no deep-seated psychological reason. There's no fear of getting choked, or concerns about hygiene (which is very real and understandable, but can be solved by making sure your man takes a shower on occasion). No science-based aversion to the biology of the act (“I am not going to suck the thing that he pees through”), no tangible “ah, so that’s why” at all. They just don’t like it. No amount of impassioned “but it’s great fun” flavored articles are going to change that.

So, next time, we’re going to talk about that.