Oral traditions
Dorothy Black wonders if men shouldn't start paying more attention to their techniques when it comes to cunnilingus...
The ancient Egyptians believed that the fountain of eternal youth was to be found in between the legs of a woman. The story goes, apparently, that a man could live forever if he enjoyed a woman's sexual fluids at least once day.
I told Miss America this snappy little piece of info over breakfast the other day.
"They'd better have known what they were doing," she snorted. "I can't abide by a man that doesn't have a clue what's going on down there even once – let alone abide it every day."
It's a harsh truth that got me wondering about the pains and the pleasures of the oral tradition.
Although great head is mind blowing, bad head is a real passion killer – a boring interlude in the act of foreplay at best and a total turn-off at worst. You'd think that our growing generation of snags at least would've cottoned on to that fact.
So why is it that women are still subjected to bad cunnilingus?
While women learn to master fellatio as a matter of course – overcoming the gag reflex and negotiating the complex multi-tasking maneuvers between blow and hand job, while engaging the full spectrum of mouth and tongue movements – there are still men out there that can't even find the clit.
In fact, there are still men that think twenty seconds of rabid tonguing in the general area should suffice. Or subscribe to the quantity over quality theory, that two hours of bad technique will somehow drive the point home.
It's all you can do sometimes not to pat Mr Man on the head while he's down there to bring him up from the deep and save yourself from the tedium.
Of course it's not all bad.
There are those men that can make your toes curl with what they're able to accomplish with their mouths. And, bless them, we do like a man that knows what he doing.
But where's the brotherly love? Why aren't they sharing the inside info with their desperately under-experienced mates. For all the great PR blow jobs get in women's glossies, I don't see any men's mags with headlines screaming "3 500 ways to give her great head".
What's up with that?
Is it because men are selfish and lazy? Did some of them figure out that eternal life was in fact no longer in the offing?
Or is it because a lot of men still have outdated, preconceived and juvenile ideas about the vagina that makes the whole issue a bit of a uncomfortable chore? And any woman will tell you that the biggest turn off is a man that feels obligated to go "down there".
Reluctance – and all its unspoken reasons – is the voyeuristic pink elephant in the room that quickly initiates inhibition.
The opposite is also true.
I once dated the King of Cunnilingus (KoC for short). The man was clearly a lover of the vagina – a fact he made perfectly clear when he made a beeline for my crotch on our first sexual encounter. Before I could calculate how many days it had been since my last wax, the KoC had planted his face squarely between my legs, quite literally growling with delight. I practically came on the spot.
The KoC proved to be perfect in every way. He had the techniques, he had the patience and, good god, did he have the enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, life doesn't always hand us the great KoCs and as we can't rely on magazines, locker room talk or infomercials to get us great head, we're often left with having to teach our partners ourselves.
I asked Miss America if she ever articulated to her lovers what she wanted when they made the trip down. "Good god no," she gasped. "I just don’t feel comfortable with that."
Weird, I thought. But she's not alone.
Few people know how to express what they want in the bedroom and many people are actually offended if their partners tell them what feels good.
It's a pity really. To think how many women are actually missing out on some marvelous orgasming.
Maybe we should get that ancient Egyptian belief on the roll again. Practice makes perfect as they say, and as far as I'm concerned an orgasm a day in return for eternal youth seems a fair price to pay for our men upping their cunnilingus game.
Do you agree with Dorothy? Should men start paying more attention to their oral sex technique?
- Women24