Hang-ups

I’ve been thinking a lot today about sexual hang-ups. A friend of mine wrote something a while ago about the relief she felt when she discovered that the majority of women don’t come from penetrative sex alone, having spent her teenage years believing that there was something wrong or different about herself, because she couldn’t get off that way. Carrying that level of anxiety about a perceived sexual flaw can be exhausting and deeply inhibiting: its impact isn’t just localized, but instead leaks into other, nominally unrelated areas of our sex lives, causing us to worry about acts and scenarios that we’d previously looked forward to.

It helps to talk though, and in sharing a hang-up with others we invariably discover that, far from being alone in our misery or embarrassment, we’re actually surrounded by fellow ‘sufferers’, in the same way we would be if we were confessing to a fear of heights or an inability to roll our tongues.

In that spirit, here is my Friday confession: I don’t like blow jobs.

Actually, I should qualify that. I like blow jobs: I just don’t enjoy them to the same degree, with the same frequency, or in the same way as I’ve been led by porn, Cosmo, and a host of former partners to believe that I should. And for years the gap between those externally-imposed expectations and my own experience served to restrict even further any pleasure I derived from oral sex: while I did sometimes manage to let go and lose myself in the physical sensations, in the end I’d always be dragged back into a state of frustration and guilt, especially if I could tell that my partner really wanted me to come.

At the grand old age of 32, I’m now a lot more relaxed about it all, but I still have those moments when I can’t help wishing that the other person would stop; that we could move on from the amuse-bouche and tuck into the rest of the buffet. Every now and then I feel that way because my partner simply isn’t very good at giving head, but happily that tends not to be the case: whether through luck or judgment, the vast majority of the women I end up naked with seem to love sucking cock, and in most cases their enthusiasm is matched by their skill. Instead, it’s what I perceive in that moment as my own inadequacy that makes me want to wriggle free and pay them some attention instead. The more they break out their best moves, the more conscious I become of the fact that I’m probably not going to give them what they want, especially when that very obviously involves a mouthful of cum at the end of it all.

To some extent, it’s a lack of communication on my part that’s to blame, though I’m less guilty of that these days. It took me a long time – and a couple of slightly older, more experienced partners – to shake off the belief that telling a woman exactly how I want my cock sucked constituted a clear breach of sexual protocol and a grave insult to her finely-honed technique. Clinging on to that fallacy meant that a lot of my partners didn’t really stand a chance; they were blind squirrels using trial, error, and unreliable muscle memory to try and find a nut, before giving up or being gently pulled away and smothered in my apologetic kisses. I still find it difficult to be completely upfront about what I want – at least till I’ve let the other person do it her way for a bit – but I’m certainly much more vocal than I used to be, especially with women who make it clear that they appreciate a few pointers.

I suppose what I’ve only recently come to realize is that unless I’m in that rare state of arousal where just about any physical contact will send me over the edge, oral sex will never function for me as a direct route to climax, except when it’s basically delivered as a souped-up hand job. Expressing that can be awkward – a lot of women seem to view it as a defeat if their mouth alone is not enough to coax an orgasm out of the man they’re with – but when I manage to do so it allows me to reach a point where I can appreciate the act for the overwhelming pleasure it gives me, as well as for any enjoyment that my partner takes out of sucking my cock. It makes sense as well. I’m circumcised, so lube has always been key to pretty much any form of stimulation I receive; at the same time, the vast majority of mouths are not strong enough to apply the level of pressure needed to the slightly desensitized head of my cock; it’s only when someone really nails the contrast between the firm grip of their hand and the soft, wet, supporting stroke of their lips and tongue, and uses the two in tandem, each reinforcing the other, that I start to lose all sense of where I am or what year it is.

As a stand-alone act, I think I’ll always feel slightly ambivalent about the blow job, and will continue to suffer – with new partners at least – a level of performance anxiety that I’m mercifully spared in all other aspects of my sex life. That makes me a little sad, especially as I know it’s almost exclusively a result of my own failure to readjust and articulate my view of the role it plays in my sexual enjoyment; when my partner and I have both been in a place where we see it as a supporting element of foreplay, or as an ongoing (or one-off) expression of dominance, I’ve enjoyed receiving oral a lot more, and been much more confident about doing so.

Maybe that’ll happen more in the future. Maybe this is one hang-up that will just melt away completely. Until then, I’ll continue to feel just a little bit shy about admitting that when it comes to giving head, I’d much rather be the one on my knees.