Today we learned that however salacious and taboo-entangled HBO shows might be (pretend I used a gross example from Game of Thrones here), the premium cable network does have its limits — or did, 20 years ago. A Vanity Fair interview with writers on Sex and the City revealed that a shot of a Virgin Mary statuette overlooking an array of condoms on Miranda’s bedside table was nixed by higher-ups, as was the final scene of Season One’s “The Monogamists.” The story there, as SATC creator Darren Star recalled, concerned a partner who kept demanding blow jobs from Charlotte:
“He basically was always pushing her head down to give him oral sex. And he had this golden retriever who was always around. In the final scene, she basically let him have it about being offended by his insistence on just wanting a blow job. She accused him of only liking her for that and kind of stormed out. And then she walked back in and saw that his golden retriever was going down on him.”
Writer Amy B. Harris added, “It’s sort of horrifying that we shot that. We shot him putting peanut butter on his penis, and Charlotte walks back in like, ‘Oh, I’m being unreasonable,’ and then she sees that…”
Bizarre and shocking, to be sure. But where does the legend of gettin’ some doggie dome — Urban Dictionary terms the zoophilic act “Peanut Butter Wonder” — come from? SATC is hardly an isolated example. Shortly after “The Monogamists,” Sacha Baron Cohen featured the gag that HBO wouldn’t allow in his wildly raunchy Ali G Indahouse, though without the use of spreadable condiment.
The web is crawling with similar stories, some of which sound like trolling. But many more, I regret to inform, bear the hint of uncomfortable truth.
Here’s a guy who told a relationship forum that he’d performed the Peanut Butter Wonder as a “silly dare,” and for money — but then started “doing it more and more,” because “it felt good.” Or check this Reddit confession: “In junior high I didn’t know what a blow job was but I thought that my dog’s tongue would feel good against my penis. I used to lather my penis in peanut butter and let my dog lick it all up.” The guy is haunted by this. “I can’t get a blow job without thinking of my dog and wish I could find a way to forget or not think about it,” he wrote. Another dude swears his dog gave him an extremely painful orgasm.
Of course, a lapping dog tongue is probably better-suited to cunnilingus than fellatio. That could explain why the popular urban legends of getting head from the family pooch, dating back as far as the early 1980s, per the indispensable reference site Snopes, involve female recipients.
One popular variation describes a group of friends catching a woman in the act while waiting to jump out of hiding places for her surprise party; another cites an unfortunate teen girl nicknamed “Skippy” because of a rumored proclivity for indulging herself this way. For whatever reason, Snopes reports, this sort of tale exploded on the internet and in print in 1994 and has stickily endured ever since.
Of course, you may well ask, Are people seriously doing this? I’ll tell you what a producer once jailed for shock fetish porn told me: For pretty much any nasty, forbidden sexual stunt you can name, “there are people who are willing to do it.” Why else would people express their guilt over this exact thing, or defend the practice by saying, “I used to like it, it didn’t hurt the dog and cannot be counted as cruelty!”
Oh, right — if you were wondering about the legality here, it’s kind of a gray area. Bestiality laws vary widely by state (still a-okay in Kentucky and New Mexico!), and even where the behavior is outlawed, it’s typically defined as a type of sodomy. That won’t necessarily get you off the hook for “Peanut Butter Kisses,” however. In California, for example, the penal code forbids sexual abuse of animals, or “sexually assaulting an animal for the purpose of arousing or gratifying your sexual desire,” noting that “the conduct doesn’t have to be forced or violent.” The crime is punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.
If you’re dying to try this, then, I’d suggest moving to Canada, where oral sex with animals has been sanctioned by an authority no lower than the Supreme Court. Their ruling that “a person must actually penetrate an animal or vice versa in order for the act to be considered bestiality” was the result of a sad, lurid case where a man had smeared peanut butter on his stepdaughter’s vagina so their dog would lick it off.
You know what? I’m starting to think the HBO censors may have had a very good point.
Miles Klee
Miles Klee is MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert. He’s also the author of the novel ‘Ivyland’ and a story collection, ‘True False.’
