Blow jobs are an invasive act. There’s a dick being shoved down your throat, and much like white blood cells are sent to attack infection, your body has protections in place to keep you from choking. (Your gag reflex doesn’t know you want your face fucked!) And so, while there are massive Reddit threads devoted to what women think of while giving head, most of them are about getting over this gagging feeling first and foremost.
Still, when we do, even the sharpest minds can wander during the act. I know mine certainly has — especially when I’m getting head. These thoughts range from “What the fuck is he doing?” to “Who lied to this man?” as I try to guide them the best I can, because obviously the alternative — no oral — is much, much worse.
In fairness, though, I’m just a focus group of one. And so, I took to Twitter and asked more than 30 men to give me a glimpse into their pussy-eating internal monologues, and boy, did they ever deliver. Well, after a little wrangling.
Despite the fact that I specifically didn’t ask for it, the majority of the men who answered my inquiry wanted to give me excruciatingly detailed accounts of their various techniques — things like the quantity of tongue flicks, how they become one with a lady’s hip motion and incredibly specific fingering moves, including circling the top of something one refers to as “the vaginal tube.” Much like watching sausage being made, I began to wonder, “Would I ever be able to enjoy oral again?”
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I assured all of the men that I was operating under the assumption that they were the best pussy-eaters in the world and didn’t need any bona fides. I then requested more information about the times they weren’t at the top of their game and what they were thinking about that may have distracted them (very gently, of course, so as not to hurt their feelings and/or make them think they might have been wrong the first time around). That’s when the truth started coming out, as a few guys did confess that they definitely did NOT think they were the best in the world at eating pussy — a big part of their problem.
“For me, oral isn’t necessarily something that’s going to pay the bills,” says Stephen, a 45-year-old in Australia and admitted subpar pussy-eater. “I feel like my time would be best spent doing something else (firing up the massive antique ‘massage’ jackhammer for instance). I might also sometimes reflect on the mechanical inadequacy of the things I’m doing with my mouth versus the old jackhammer. On the other hand, not a lot of thinking really. I do reflect on the odd smoothness of the clitoris.”
Stephen did mention having some success with the alphabet technique — an old-school sex trick where a man traces every letter of the alphabet on a woman’s clit with his tongue, like some sort of porn-y Sesame Street segment — although his reliance on it ended up becoming formulaic and boring. (I was stunned that about half the men I spoke to brought up thinking about this technique while going down on a woman; I honestly don’t know if a guy has ever done it to me, but I can already picture myself saying, “Did you just write a fucking Q on my pussy?” if I ever thought they were.)
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Other men admitted to more selfish thoughts — e.g., that the women wouldn’t want to have sex after cumming from oral, as well as figuring out how to keep hard while doing “work.” “I almost always think about staying hard while doing it. Truth be told, I usually worry that by the time I finish, or my wife is ready for intercourse, my dick won’t be interested anymore,” says Seans, a 40-year-old in Vegas. “I know it’s selfish, but I can’t concentrate on eating her out and maintain my own desire.”
Another thing Sean worries about is what he looks like during the act. (The first rule of Fuck Club is never thinking about how ridiculous you look while fucking.) “Ass up, face-down or knowing that her view is just the top of my head, it makes me feel oddly undesirable. Does my wife want to see my doughy body down there like that?”
John, a 42-year-old from the Bay Area, had a fear of cumming too quickly when he was younger, which led to bad habits that continue to haunt him today. “When I was a teen and anxious about lasting long enough during sex, I’d sometimes start doing the ‘think about baseball’ thing, because I was worried I was already too turned on,” he confesses. “The joke is, now I’m older and can’t stop my brain from distracting itself. When you’re young, you’re worried about being too into it, and you’re trying to think about something boring that sucks; but when you’re old, you’re eating pussy and trying to forget that your life sucks, and suddenly your shitty brain says, ‘Did you reply to that email from three weeks ago? OMG, did you forget to pay the credit-card bill?’”
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My most nerdy respondent, Tricky, a 38-year-old in Washington, says he thinks about the vagina like it’s an escape room. “I think of lock-picking. I try and read sound, vibration, swelling and temperature as feedback to determine the finesse each unique lock needs. Some locks want to open quickly, but for some locks, time is a component as much as the tools you choose,” he explains. “I’ve definitely thought of the vulva as the mouth of an alien I was dating, whose species can orgasm from a solid make-out session. Sci-fi!”
Sir.
Meanwhile, Mark, a 45-year-old in Illinois, had a story that spoke to me on so many levels as a chronic dark thought-haver. “When I was a teenager, there was a news story on the Howard Stern Show about how a woman miscarried because her partner blew on her pussy while going down on her. I guess it sent some kind of air bubble up to her uterus and somehow killed the fetus. Now, it’s never occurred to me as a thing to do, but over the years, it’s popped into my head, and all of a sudden, I’m thinking about a dead fetus instead of making my girlfriend cum.”
My lovably neurotic friend Will really struggles with letting go of this kind of hang-up. “For years I had an obsessive fear that I’d burp while I was going down on someone and then later she’d tell her friends, and for the next decade of their lives, whenever they needed a laugh, they’d bring up the guy they called ‘Pussy Burp.’”
When I asked him if it was okay to use his name, he said, “Use my real name. I talk about my ex shoving my cum into my mouth on my album. Who gives a shit about anything anymore?”
You don’t need to convince me: “Who gives a shit about anything anymore?” has been my motto since I was 4.
Your Hardest Questions About Sex, Answered
- Why do we think hard sex is an orgasm highway?
- How can you last longer in bed — especially when it’s, well, been a while?
- Here’s one way: try a little face-sitting.
- Should you be more worried about low sex drive or premature ejaculation?
- But really, what the hell is a “good” sex noise, anyway?
- What’s it like to have sex when you’re nonbinary?
- Stronger, more intense male orgasms? Yes please!
- Was the sex even that good if you didn’t break a sweat?
- Scientifically speaking, what’s the right age to lose your virginity?
- For real, though, do tongue piercing make blowjobs better?
- And why do we want to screw as soon as we set foot in a hotel room?
- Ever wondered what the average number of thrusts is during sex? Here you go.
Desi Jedeikin
Desi Jedeikin is a writer living in Los Angeles. She co-hosts the podcast Hollywood Crime Scene and has lots of things in development that will probably never happen. She wastes a lot of time on Twitter @desijed.
