Let’s break it down, shall we?
It usually begins with a make-out session that is rudely interrupted by the not-so-subtle pushing down of the head. That is the penis owner’s code for: ‘I would like an orgasm that requires no physical exertion on my part. Thanks in advance.’
If you accept your fate and agree to be a selfless blow-job hero, you then have to pull off the dude’s undies and untangle his sweaty bulge from his hairy balls (one of which always needs to be peeled off the inside of his leg) and unfurl them like one of those wrinkly puppies stretching out in the sun.
All the sweat that has been collecting in between his pubes from hours locked inside his penis-oven now glistens on your hands, which you try to politely wipe on the bed/carpet/your own pants without him seeing. Because romance/magic/don’t ever dare ruin the moment etc.
After some obligatory kissing of the general area, you eventually realise that you’ve put off the inevitable long enough – you must take the actual penis into your mouth. You can only cup sweaty balls and kiss the safe zone between the belly button and the pubes for so long. You must get down to business.
(Also, let’s take a brief moment here to acknowledge that even the concept of putting something in your mouth that was probably shooting out urine just minutes ago is straight-up gross.)
It’s important you try to get comfortable now, as there will be some sustained physical effort on your part. The key word being ‘try’, as comfort for a person giving a head job is generally regarded as an urban myth. You’ll either get a dead leg from being on your knees, or an aching arm from lying on your side and trying to hold up the top half of your body with one elbow.
Highest possible comfort level (that is, not very) attained, you must then ‘ease’ into proceedings, as just shoving the whole thing into your mouth and letting it sit there like a docked boat until it explodes is, unfortunately, considered poor form.
You must try to coat the whole shaft in your (sexy, make sure it’s sexy) saliva to ensure adequate lubrication for your hands (usually still covered in glistening ball sweat), which will shoulder some of the workload while you avoid the inevitable for as long as possible: the attempted deep-throat.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a penis must be in want of an individual to deep-throat it. And no matter how many times he has tried and failed, he will grab the back of your head mid-blow-job and try to push it as far forward as he can.
Men tend to forget the concept of head ownership during sexy-times; they assume that if their penis is currently attached to someone’s head, it indicates ownership of that head. It does not indicate ownership of that head. The person who owns the head knows how far it can go in, okay?
It’s at this point that you are usually expected to begin ‘sexy moaning’. This involves ignoring the fact you currently have a penis trying to poke the top of your left lung, so that you may concentrate on making the relevant human sounds that indicate sexual pleasure.
It is also, though not always, expected that you make sexy eye contact with very sexual eyes. It should also be noted here that looking sexy with your gaping mouth stretched around a penis is impossible – no amount of sexy eyes is going to fix that.
It’s been said that a very rare and select group of women look attractive while crying – I suspect those are the only women who look attractive with a dick in their mouths.
Here’s where things start to speed up. At this point you are basically like one of those perpetual-motion chicken toys that drinks the coloured water, except on steroids. All pretence of hand involvement is forgotten. This part is all about you trying not to gag as your head moves back and forth at an exponential rate. You must resist the urge to switch whatever leg/elbow/hand/toe you are leaning on, or the rhythm will be interrupted and you may end up having to go even longer.
The lips you have wrapped around your teeth to protect his precious manhood are starting to feel the pressure. All you can think about is how much easier this would be if you were fitter. You desperately need a glass of water.
Then . . .
He finishes. Which is just a nice way of saying that he explodes one billion little wriggly sperm into your mouth, which immediately begin gasping for air, racing towards an egg they’ll never find.
Grouped together, sperm have the consistency of warm snot and the taste of broken dreams. And it doesn’t matter whether you spit or swallow; some of them will definitely end up wedged in sad little sperm graveyards between your teeth.
So, that’s it. Not unbearable, but certainly not pleasant. I’m not saying that I never do it. I’m just saying that I hate it. And I know, I know, I’m not the only one.
Because giving head is the worst. (Now please excuse me while I go and watch any chance I had to find a man slowly fade away.)
Um, where were we? Ah yes, finding a bow to put on my boyfriend’s dick so Cosmo wouldn’t consider me a failure.
Despite my reservations about blow jobs, by this point I had teased him enough that he was sufficiently into the whole thing, and expectations were high. Not to mention, Cosmo was telling me that if I didn’t do something drastic in the bedroom, our relationship would be over and I would (gasp!) not be married by the time I was thirty. So I decided to improvise.
I found a pastel-pink piece of ribbon in my craft box. It seemed long enough that I would be able to do something sexy-ish with it.
‘Okaaaaay,’ I said, trying out the sexiest voice I could muster (I just assumed elongating words made them sexy). ‘It’s time for your preseeeent!’ The poor guy was lying there with his eyes closed and his pants down, clearly expecting the most amazing sexual experience of his life.
I approached his penis with the ribbon. The most logical way to do it seemed to be to tie the ribbon around the shaft like a shoelace. I tried that, but it just looked a bit . . . shit. And the pastel-pink colour wasn’t helping.
I spent the next couple of minutes trying to tie it a bunch of different ways, but no matter what I did, the ribbon just looked like it belonged around the neck of an itty-bitty puppy, tied in a dainty bow.
‘What’s going on?’ my boyfriend asked, clearly confused.
‘Shut up,’ I said in my sexiest voice. ‘I’m being seeeexy.’
Eventually, the ribbon was as good as it was going to get.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Open your eyes!’
He looked down at his penis.
‘What the fuck is that?’ he asked.
‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s sexy. I’m giving you a sexy blow-job present.’
‘But why is my penis covered in a pretty hair ribbon?’ He was perplexed.
‘Um . . . because . . . I wrapped it like a present? Because sexy?’
We both looked down at his penis again. I appeared to have shocked it back into itself. So now the pastel-pink ribbon was tied in a pretty bow around a soft-looking pile of skin. I felt like I should name it Petunia and take it to high tea.
We did not have sex that night.
And if the pretty pink penis bow was the beginning of my quest to impress men sexually, the Tinder date was the end. This was the night I realised it was time for a sexual revolution. I was twenty-eight, it had been ten years since the failed Cosmo sex tip, and it was finally time for me to stop letting sex be all about the guy.
The Tinder date was . . . actually, I’m not entirely sure what it was. Let’s just say I ended the night slightly confused, but with all my suspicions about this ‘exciting’ Tinder thing confirmed. Like a kid who sees Santa without his beard on leaving a shopping centre in his Toyota Corolla.
To be totally upfront, this (one and only) Tinder date was actually also the first date I’d ever been on. Yeah, I was twenty-eight, and it wasn’t my first romantic entanglement by any means. I’d been in two long-term relationships and had a steady stream of hook-ups and messy one-nighters outside of those. But I’d never actually done the part that comes between those two extremes.
The two boys I’d loved were my friends before anything else, and I’m pretty sure I tricked them both into pairing up with me before they realised what was happening. ‘Oh?’ I would say, when they asked about that bikini wax I’d said I got religiously when we were still friends. ‘I said that, did I?’ Then I’d hike up my flannelette pyjama pants and spend the night farting in my sleep.
So, relationships, I had done. Hook-ups, I had done. But a date? An actual, awkward, ‘We both know what’s going on but we’re not going to say it’ date? Never. Something about that has always felt . . . off to me. Why admit that you like someone and that you’re hoping they like you back? Why would you ever give anyone that kind of power? What kind of sick masochist would enjoy that?
Not me. I was perfectly happy to continue on with my plan of being alone, waiting for the day a smart, funny man would read something brilliant I had written, fall instantly in love, and ironically wait outside the Mamamia offices with a boom box playing that song from that movie I’m not old enough to remember.
But then came Tinder. And after a drunken, embarrassingly giggly cliché of a night with my girlfriends, I promised to sign up for twenty-four hours. And even though I had ample warning from the moment I started playing, I somehow didn’t realise Tinder was essentially just an online pimp until about hour twenty-three.
In hour one, I was still finding my bearings. I quickly discovered that, in Tinderland, anybody not asking you about the possibility of inserting a range of objects into your vagina instantly seems like a gentleman. That’s how I ended up chatting to someone who enquired about my nipple and its current state of erection. ‘At least he’s keeping it above the waist’ is actually a thought that went through my brain.
I should have known my standards had dropped dramatically when I started enjoying talking to Nipple Guy. It had only been forty-five minutes and Tinder had already broken my brain.
Nipple Guy messaged me several times the next morning, and, encouragingly, all of it was civil and nipple-talk-free. He asked if I wanted to meet up that night, and with my 24-hour time-limit in mind, I said yes.
At twenty-eight years of age, I had successfully set up my very first date.
Now, as hard as I’ve tried to be cool since the moment I shat my pants and pretended I hadn’t so I could hang out with my big sister’s friends, I’m not cool in even the most generous interpretation of the word. So while other people would have wondered if sex was on the table, that thought didn’t even cross my mind. When he suggested I go to his house to have a few drinks and watch some TV, I thought, ‘Yes! Amazing! Someone else who hates going out on Saturday night!’ When he suggested I come at 9pm, I thought, ‘Yes! Amazing! Now I have time to drink wine in the shower before I leave!’
And that’s how I found myself, at 9pm on a Saturday night, having very average intercourse with a dude who had charmed me by being polite enough not to send me a dick pic. And yes – intercourse is the most appropriate word I can think of in this circumstance.
Things started off fine. There was chatting and drinks. I knew immediately that it wasn’t a love-connection, but I was determined to commit to the whole experience. (I’m a writer! I must live life! etc etc etc.) I somehow turned the conversation to feminism, which he very politely endured, considering he was probably confused as to why I wasn’t rubbing my nipple on his ball sack yet.
Then (and in hindsight, I understand that this is the point I probably should have realised he was really, really hoping for sex), he stood up, cracked a joke about ‘pants-free Saturdays’, and proceeded to take off his jeans. He then sat back down on the couch and kept chatting, like it was totally normal that he was now wearing only underpants.
I didn’t quite know how to respond.
‘I’m not taking my pants off,’ I blurted out.
‘That’s fine,’ he said, before continuing on with his very valid point about sexism in the workplace.
Somehow, I still didn’t realise that he was hoping for sex. I didn’t even pick up on it when he suggested watching a movie in his bedroom. ‘I love watching movies in my bedroom!’ I thought. ‘Me and this guy have so much in common! Dating is fun!’
So there we were, sitting on his bed, watching TV. I felt a little strange about the no-pants situation, but who was I to dictate how he dressed in his own home? I figured I must just be one of those people who is so adept at putting others at ease, he just felt like he could relax around me. ‘Well done, Rosie,’ I thought. ‘You are so fucking personable.’
But then, just as I was giving myself a mental pat on the back for being so incredible at getting along with strangers, Nipple Guy took things up a notch.
Without taking his eyes off the TV, my date took his left hand and started massaging his balls. And just like when he had taken his pants off earlier, he sat there, eyes ahead, like it was the most normal thing in the world to be watching TV with a stranger while fiddling with one’s sack.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was when it finally dawned on me.
‘Ohhhhh,’ my brain realised. ‘I’m here for sex. This is a sex thing.’
I figured at that moment I had two choices. I could say thanks but no thanks, and graciously make my exit. Or, I could commit to what this whole Tinder experience had to offer and, well, go with it.
I went with option number two. And as soon as I realised that getting half-naked was not just an odd lifestyle quirk of his, things moved pretty quickly. Before I knew it, half-naked became completely naked, for both of us.
It soon became apparent, though, that Nipple Guy didn’t want to get laid so much as he wanted a head job. He kept contorting his body in a way that meant his dick was constantly in my face. He was like a phallic acrobat.
Now, at that point in my life, I had grown enough sexually that I knew when I really didn’t want to do something, but I still wasn’t great at saying when I didn’t want to do something. I was of the opinion that if it could be hinted at with a little delicacy, that was far less awkward for everyone involved. So every time he would try and coax my head in that direction, I would half-heartedly stay there for five seconds before making my way back up, hoping that he would get the picture.
But then I would blink, and there’d be a dick in my face again. He was so quick. And we continued playing that weird grown-up version of cat and mouse for about ten minutes, until it reached a bizarre kind of sexual stalemate.
He pushed my head down. I moved my head back up. He pushed my head down. I moved my head back up. We kissed for a bit, and he tried to push my head down again. I moved my head back up. Then he actually got up on his knees and put his dick in my face. So then I got up on my knees and started kissing his face again. And just when I was thinking I had won this drunken strategy game of sexual etiquette, he actually stood up on the bed and put his dick in my face.
‘So this is Tinder,’ I thought, as I sat in an unfamiliar room and wondered how much higher this thing could go. ‘Playing Jenga with my face and a penis.’
Somehow, I eventually managed to kibosh the head-job idea without ruining the mood (that is, by forcefully pulling him down from his ridiculous standing-on-mattress position), and after that I was ready for it all to be over.
I wasn’t really enjoying myself, and he was taking forever. I even faked an orgasm, hoping that maybe he was just waiting for me to finish before he did. But he wasn’t taking forever because he had sexual manners. He was taking forever because he still wanted a damn head job. So, getting serious motion sickness from all the thrashing and vodka (and really just wanting to get home to watch Seinfeld reruns), I sat up against the head of the bed, opened my mouth and let him fuck it. He came in about eleven seconds. ‘Ah,’ I thought. ‘So all I had to be was a blowup doll.’
I went to the bathroom to get myself together, and also to try and come up with a good excuse for why I would need to leave immediately. I didn’t quite know the etiquette involved. Was he expecting me to stay? How could I leave this place
and never come back without seeming rude? I was still trying to figure out what to say when I came out of the bathroom, only to see him fully dressed, looking like he was about to leave.
‘Um, I’m really sorry, but I sort of have to go,’ he said.
He had to ‘go’. From his own house.
‘It’s my friend, he’s going through a really bad break-up, and he really wants me to come over.’
I couldn’t believe I was the one getting rejected, when I had just been about to do the rejecting.
‘Dude, I was about to leave anyway,’ I said, picking up my stuff with an air of dignity not quite befitting someone wearing her underwear backwards.
We gave each other an awkward kiss on the cheek, and I left (after which there’s no doubt in my mind he got straight back into bed). I was so pissed that he had been the one to ask me to leave first, that I was determined to be the one to delete him off Tinder first. And as I was sitting in the cab, I realised that it had been almost twenty-four hours exactly since I had signed up to what I now understood was essentially an online sex service. Perfect timing.
I deleted my account. Then I asked the taxi driver to pull over so I could spew.
Starting with the pretty pink penis bow and ending with being fucked in the mouth like a blow-up doll, I’d had ten years of sex completely focussed on what the guy wanted. And after I wiped the excess vomit from the side of my cheek and rolled back into the cab, I let the night wind touch my face as I decided: no more! From that moment on, I was going to make sex about me. I was going to orgasm, and not just by myself in the bathroom. I was going to say no when I wanted and yes when I wanted. I wasn’t going to follow ridiculous sex tips just because I was scared of losing a man. I decided in the cab that night that I was going to stop trying to ‘do’ sexy, and start trying to have sex that I’d actually enjoy.
The Anti-Cool Girl Page 19