The trick to a good blowjob is to not overthink it. Don’t start thinking about the way it tastes on your tongue, or the way the tip hits the back of your throat. You’ll lose rhythm, lose the pressure in your hand; the essential nature of the act. Put on your best show. Make sure your eyes roll to the back of your head––lashes sticky from glue. Mentally prepare yourself beforehand––remember to keep your mouth wet and your moans genuine. Sound like you’re choking. Sound like you’re dying. They like it.
I developed early. I was irregularly interested in sex from a young age, or more so the intimacy that it suggested. Starting with YouTube videos, I psychoanalyzed how the strange man on the beach would grab a pretty girl as a prank, watched closely as their lips would meet erotically, and stared at the way these two once-strangers became so hastily acquainted.
Youtube became Tumblr.
Tumblr became Reddit.
Reddit became Pornhub.
I have always thought of human anatomy as impossibly beautiful. I have always admired the angular structure of collarbones, the gentle curve of a spine, and the fold of skin that crinkles between hip and thigh. I would sketch naked bodies for hours on end in art classes, but this––this was different. It felt wrong to look at all of these strangers in such vulnerability. I hated the way she spread her legs and threw her head back. I hated the way he pinned her hands down, hated the way he didn’t stop when she said to. I hated the way they would look at me through the screen, the way they would watch me, their eyes would shifting to mine almost accusingly, as if I was violating them. I hated all of it. But I didn’t stop watching. I couldn’t look away.
As the years passed, this nauseating filth crawled through my skin every time I would have a sexual thought. My shame in my sexuality was relentless, but my hunger for intimacy, for touch, only grew. I would do anything to feel it. To feed it.
So I learned.
I sat back in my prepubescent teenage body and learned the way the women arched their backs and faked their moans. I became so convincing that I could have been the lead in a pedophile’s wet dream.
I capitalized on these lessons. My sexuality became the most interesting thing about me. I was in bed with a boy by twelve. I went down on a man at thirteen. I lost my virginity at fifteen. For a while, I loved the way boys looked at me. I guiltily took pleasure in the catcalls and the way their eyes shifted between my face and my chest during conversation. My sexuality gave me power. It temporarily took away my shame and replaced it with pride––with authority, and a semblance of autonomy.
For months, whenever I had sex, it was as if I was no longer inside my own body. I floated overhead like a puppet master––carefully pulling the strings attached to my lifeless frame to form the perfect seductive silhouette. I became an oscar-winning director. A talented actress. I became my own porn.
I aim to please. So badly I desire making my partner feel good, feel sexy, feel wanted. My lessons have trained me to do so. But lately, my mind has been rejecting my all-too practiced muscle memory, willing my body to stop.
The truth is, I am terrified that the ones I love will start to look at me the way I do the women in porn. It is difficult to look at them as people. It is hard to imagine them as daughters, sisters, or mothers. Because in porn, women are presented as so replaceable, so usable, so depersonalised, that it is difficult to recognize them as even human.
Over the past year, I have worked hellishly hard to heal my relationship with my body and mind. When I speak, people listen. When I call, people follow. When I write, people study. I have proven to myself that I can be, and am, more.
Yet, I cannot open my mouth without thinking about how many lips have touched mine. I cannot scribble a single letter without scrubbing my fingers clean of my self-induced guilt. I cannot sleep without thinking about how many hands have undressed my body.
As a woman, I cannot be proud of my sexuality and my achievements simultaneously. No matter how smart I get, no matter how much I trust my partner, I feel as if being seen––being touched––by anyone will erase me of my authority and reduce me to the same scared, starving girl I was three years ago. Even now, as I stare at my flashing cursor on a white screen, I force bile down my throat merely contemplating how my readers will perceive me. How they will regard me after I strip my sheer layers only to reveal my terrifyingly naked body.
I do not know why I carry such shame in my pleasure. I do not know why women must constantly apologize for the way we taste, the way we smell, the way we look. Why must we apologize for the space we take up? Why are we not allowed to be both intelligent and sexual? Why are we not allowed to be both authoritative and vulnerable? Why are we not allowed to be fully, unexpurgatedly, human?
For years, I have felt as if I have no one to blame but myself for my hypersexuality. It is partly true. I am a guilty party. I exploited myself. But I simply cannot go on any longer allowing my achievements to be tainted by my past. I am still struggling to grasp that my insatiable longing for intimacy is not a sinful act. The hands that have undressed me do not make my body any less clean. The lips that have touched mine do not make my words any less eloquent.
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