According to recent press reports, Americans are having foreplay at alarmingly younger ages-- and with increasing nonchalance. (Note: Oral sex here refers solely to fellatio.) Foreplay precedes and often replaces sexual relations due to the fact that it's perceived to be noncommittal, fast and safe. For some kids it's a cool thing to do; for others it's a low-cost adventure. Raised in a culture in which speed is valued, kids, not surprisingly, look for pleasure principle through oral sex (the woman by immediately pleasing the kid, the young boy by kicking back and enjoying the flight). A relatively facile command over the sexual landscape of one's partner is achieved without the encumbrances of clothing, coitus and the rest of the unpleasant business. The blow task is, in essence, the new joystick of teen sexuality.
In other words, if we are to believe today's sociologists and culture mavens, oral sex has ended up being regular. However the increased banality of the blow job is perplexing. When I was a teenager, in the bad-taste, disco-fangled '70s, fellatio was something you finished into. Rooted in the excellent American sport of baseball, the sexual metaphors of my generation put fellatio someplace after home base, way off in the distant plains of the outfield. In reality, avoiding all the bases and going directly to fellatio was the sort of crowning achievement booked just for racy, borderline lawbreakers, who delighted in a host of licentious and prohibited activities that made them stars in the firmament of teenager recklessness.
The very first blow job I ever provided (after systematically groping my way past all the bases) was an act of faith. After finally determining how to by hand manage my boyfriend's strange vestigial organ-- how to brandish, control and manage his swollen, tumescent pink love shaft-- I now had the overwhelming task of needing to determine how to handle it orally. Lick? Draw? Utilize your hands? If only the how-to books that exist today existed back then.
" Put both hands into the L position around the base of the shaft," states "Sex Tips for Straight Women From a Gay Man." "Lick the whole idea and after that use your tongue to lick up and down the sides. Covering your teeth with your lips, and keeping your mouth tight, slide the head inside and lick the sensitive spot below with both the pointer and flat part of your tongue ... continue down the shaft as far as you can go in one fell swoop." And on it goes. It consists of tips on curiosities like dick whipping, hummers and tinglers, plus suggestions on how to breathe. (Men may fear the cavernous tunnel that results in the prehistoric soup of the womb, however women risk death by gagging.).
Clearly even the most rigorous bout of coitus pales in comparison with the intimacy of fellatio, a minimum of for the one offering it: nesting one's face in the musty, doughy pelt of your partner's loins; bringing the full blast of your tongue, lips, teeth (undoubtedly, your whole face) to bear on the inflamed, supplicant shaft; coaxing the salty swell of seed-bearing spermatozoa burgeoning from deep within the vulnerable, fuzz-laced scrotum; and, finally, partaking in the ultimate exchange of physical fluids. (For what could be more carnal and, well, in your face than swallowing sperm?) All this is even more intricate than the easy act of coitus, where the essential fits in the ignition and things basically just take place. Fellatio is difficult labor, in every sense of the word.