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According to a psychologist specialising in sexual studies, Dr William R. Stayton of Widener University in Pennsylvania, most homosexual men giving fellatio swallow the semen, which adds to the erotic pleasure for the recipient, whereas most women do not, citing the taste (fishy for some, salty for others, bitter for others still and pleasantly spicy for a handful of real enthusiasts), worry about gagging on such a large object in the mouth and a common belief that semen is fattening – it actually contains only about 5 to 15 calories per ejaculation. At an average time of four minutes from the height of the pre-orgasmic state through to the end of orgasm, we can typically expect to burn 25.6 calories per coition, meaning even with a healthy helping of semen on the side, sex is still a reasonably slimming activity.

Just as the taste of vaginal secretions varies from woman to woman, so does the taste of semen vary from individual to individual. Diet is a factor; asparagus, in particular, gives semen a strong, bitter flavour; dairy products are almost as bad because of their inherent bacterial putrefaction. The gag reflex, which may also be stimulated by ejaculation in the mouth, may be overcome for some fellators by grasping the base of the penis with a hand and thereby feeling in control of the depth of penetration. Some skilled ‘deep throat' fellators manage to learn to recondition their gag reflex by a process of slowly taking the penis deeper into the throat.

The attitudes of women to fellatio range from the idea that
it is perverted and unhygienic to the view that it is normal and pleasurable, and even a preferable method of sexual activity because it is free from the risk of pregnancy. Most men love being fellated by a woman, but some worry that if they ejaculate in her mouth, they will choke her.

Is oral sex as applied to the genitals a natural, if optional, part of the pre-copulatory sexual routine, or a contrived, add-on behaviour calculated to provoke orgasm where none has previously occurred, or alternatively to repeat orgasm in a refreshingly different way after copulation? And is it possible, while we consider this, that our distant ancestors ever discovered fellatio and cunnilingus?

To the first question, the answer is ‘either'; oral sex is ingenious, but cannot be said to tax the intellect or imagination too much. The sensitivities of the more primitive American States notwithstanding, it may not be unreasonable to describe it as a fairly ‘natural' practice. What is interesting about oral sex from the point of view of the history of the orgasm is that it is a further example of the non-reproductive but pleasure-seeking complexities that have evolved with human sex. Masturbation and, more importantly, contraception, both of which we will examine later, are further variations on a behaviour that, it is easy to forget, is essentially reproductive.

Along with contraception in particular, oral sex, despite having only recently become mentionable in polite society, is one of the boldest statements of the primacy of orgasm in human life. Not only is it the most stark example of reproduction-free sexual pleasure, but it could even be said to act as a mild contraceptive if practised before copulation proper, by allowing the bulk of the male's sperm a non-productive nemesis, ensuring that the next body of semen he produces during the same sexual encounter will have a lower sperm content.

Oral sex has, surely, to merit a special position in the panoply of human sexual behaviour. A British writer, Paul Ableman, put up a sturdy case for its essential humanity in 1969 in
The
Mouth and Oral Sex
– the last book in Britain, interestingly, to be the subject of an obscenity trial when it was published.

‘One can imply, by performing oral/genital contortion, that nothing about the loved one is offensive,' Ableman wrote. ‘… the proximity of the excretory apparatus to the genitalia can be conceived of as a chivalrous challenge, the acceptance of which expresses some such sentiment as: “See how much I love you – if I am prepared to do this.” Putting one's mouth to the genital regions, breaching the hygiene taboos and conventions of decency, is in fact a gesture of intimacy that transcends coitus itself.'

Whatever the position was in past eras, in cultures where the taboos against it have withered or died, oral sex is extremely popular. Modern research cited by William R. Stayton indicates that in Western societies some 80 percent of single men and women between the ages of 25-34, and 90 percent of those unmarried and under 25 years of age, participate in oral sex. Stayton notes that from the 1950s onwards studies strongly suggest that the practice is more prevalent among better-educated and younger people.

This willingness among the better educated to engage in oral sex has come about, one would imagine, as a result of a modern intellectual rejection of what are seen as overly strict hygiene obsessions. Progressive twentieth-century thinkers on sex from D.H. Lawrence to Dr Alex Comfort have despised hygiene at the expense of sexual rapture as suburban and
petit bourgeois
. As for prehistoric humans and their take on oral sex, there is obviously a dearth of evidence in the form of cave paintings or artefacts, but informed guesswork rather suggests that both Mr and Mrs Ug will have discovered it one way or another, in the absence of any hygiene hang-ups over bringing the excretory organs into close proximity to the organs of breathing and eating. It is probably only when religion began poking its snout into human groins that taboos against oral sex took root.

There may have been isolated taboos concerning wastage of
sperm, but this again is improbable since it is not likely that prehistoric people were aware that sexual intercourse and child production were connected. Surviving primitive peoples often still do not acknowledge any relationship between the two.

Above all, prehistoric humans will have had time in abundance to discover oral sex. Prehistoric nights were long and dark, and there is no reason to suppose that couples did not sleep in a huddle together, if only for warmth. It is beyond contention, surely, that at some stage man realised that the mouth on a face bears a distinct similarity to the mouth of a vagina, and then had a hunch that it might be interesting for woman to apply her mouth to his penis, and vice versa.

It has been suggested that proximity to animals, if nothing else, will have prompted a curiosity about oral sex in early man. Paul Ableman postulated that: ‘a relatively common way in which children discover the possibility of pleasurable contact between mouth and genitalia, is through accidental contacts with animals. This form of initiation is much more common to girls than boys, the obvious reasons being that a dog or cat may perform cunnilingus spontaneously but not fellatio.'

A less obvious form of orgasmic pleasure via oral sex occasioned by the proximity of animals was the subject of a slightly shocking speech in the British House of Lords one June evening in 2003. Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall, a conservative peer, proposing an amendment to a new Sexual Offences Bill brought their Lordships' attention to an old agricultural practice he knew of called avisodomy. This is sex in which a chicken's anus is employed as a makeshift receptacle, or the still nastier practice of using a decapitated chicken's throat. His description, as chronicled by
Hansard
is something of a collector's item. Avisodomy, he told the hushed benches, is ‘the practice of breaking a hen's neck at the moment before penetration so that you benefit from the spasms that the animal undergoes afterwards.' Lord Lucas professed himself against avisodomy, but was concerned that it might avoid being
outlawed because the chicken was clinically dead at the time its conspirator was enjoying his orgasm.

The probability of prehistoric cunnilingus having existed or not might be more problematic. Cunnilingus would not seem to be an obviously instinctive behaviour, and neither is it as immediate an option as fellatio. But knowing as we do that the prehistoric female probably owned a working clitoris, we can assume that she discovered how manipulating it can be highly pleasurable. Transmitting that information to men will not have stretched rudimentary communication skills too far (even if it does for some couples today). And the non-existence of knowledge about either hygiene or conception will, arguably, have made it still more likely that men and women would ultimately have put two and two together.

Whether the pleasurable diversion of oral sex is followed or bypassed, most sexual encounters ultimately result in penetrative intercourse. Yet just as orgasm, the apex of the sexual pyramid, is far briefer and more acute than its preamble, the penetrative phase of sex is, today, generally much shorter than the pre-sex, wooing and foreplay phase. Did prehistoric humans spend time on foreplay? Although we can have no evidence one way or the other, it would not be unreasonable to surmise that the whole copulatory sequence today is much longer than it was for our most distant ancestors.

But what will almost certainly have been the same then as now is that the length in time of the consummatory phase of intercourse will have been dictated, as it is today, by the amount of thrusting movement it takes before the male reaches orgasm. This can vary from a matter of a few seconds to an hour or more, the latter in the case of highly controlled males using deliberate and quite intellectually demanding delaying strategies; it is usually difficult for penetrative intercourse to proceed immediately after male orgasm, although a degree of tumescence may persist, enabling the male to continue, albeit with some effort and discomfort to him.

At the moment of the male orgasm (which we will deal with first for the very good reason that it often occurs first unless measures are taken to avoid it) the vital functions reach some of their highest peaks outside those attained in moments of extreme danger. Heart rate at the sexual climax can accelerate to 180 and blood pressure a bottom (diastolic) figure as high as 250. Extra heart beats and skipped beats are not uncommon, especially in people who are not in good physical condition. Respiratory rate may increase to 40 per minute. There is facial grimacing and breathing becomes a desperate gasping for air, with a rhythmic moaning or groaning as a counterpoint. The testes withdraw upwards to their maximum elevation.

Erotic sensations travel from the various outposts of erogenous skin to brain at high speed – 156 mph to be precise. As muscle tension and blood-flow to the pelvis approach their peak before dispersing in the final orgasmic reflex, there are spasms in the buttocks, tingling in the fingers and toes, and mounting muscular tension
(myotonia)
in the neck, legs and arms. Most (but not every) male orgasm involves ejaculation, which internally occurs in two stages. During the first stage of emission, seminal fluid is expelled from the vas deferens, seminal vesicles, and prostate gland into the base of the urethra near the prostate. The collecting fluid is felt as a consciousness of imminent ejaculation. Some men can have an orgasm at this point through rubbing the prostate gland.

In the ejaculation stage, the seminal fluid is propelled by the muscular contractions of orgasm into the portion of the urethra within the penis and then expelled from the urethral opening. The mechanism of the ejaculation is a series of powerful muscular contractions from the pubic or pubococcygeal (PC) muscle group that supports the pelvic floor, running from the pubic bone in front to the coccyx, or tailbone at the back, and within the testes and scrotum, then continuing through the epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, prostate gland, urethra, penis, and anal sphincter. These contractions, a maximum of three or four in number, at 0.8-second intervals, have
the effect of expelling the seminal fluid along the urethra at a speed that has been measured at 28 m.p.h. The initial contractions can be followed by two to four slower ‘aftershock' spasms. The length of a male orgasm is typically from 10 to 13 seconds.

Even though friction from the passage through the penis obviously slows sperm down from its 28 m.p.h. starting speed, the initial volley is occasionally, especially when there is a build-up of semen, still fast and powerful enough on exit to project a body of seminal fluid from roughly a fraction of a centimetre to a few centimetres. The young male capacity for sexual self-mythologising will often expand this masturbatory projectile capacity to implausible ceiling-scraping proportions, however. In Argentina, it is said, boys have for generations gathered in parks to compete to see who can project their semen further while masturbating. The evidence suggests this can hardly have been a great spectator sport.

Pornographic films, in which an impressive (and often faked) ‘cum shot' (otherwise known as ‘the money shot') is
de rigueur
, increase the pressure on males to exaggerate their own projectile capacity. It might be noted that once inside the vagina, where it is designed to go, semen has a fight ahead akin to swimming in treacle. It slows down to a less than snail-like 0.0011 m.p.h., which means it spends five minutes travelling the six inches or so to the cervix.

The amount of ejaculate expelled, typically one to two teaspoons (2½ to 5cc) per orgasm, differs between men, the volume (as well as the potency) varying with the frequency of orgasm. A man produces 125 million sperm each day, and each orgasm expels between approximately 80 million and 800 million. In the average lifetime, a man produces 14 gallons of ejaculate, enough to fill the fuel tank of the average-sized family car. The semen's chemical composition, spermatozoa aside, is inconsistent even in individuals. About 8 per cent of the solution consists of dry solids, the majority of the sperm is a mix of more than thirty elements and compounds from
nitrogen to fructose, cholesterol and vitamins C and B
₁₂
. Interestingly, the average ejaculatory volume contains about 60 percent of the American recommended daily intake for vitamin C.

Just as the truth about ejaculatory distance is fogged by vanity and nonsense, ejaculatory volume is also a contentious area, undermined by mythology and bragging. The line taken by many sex websites (often those selling quack potions) is that women are impressed by voluminous ejaculations (although less so than by penis size) for psychological reasons to do with their perceptions of virility and the likelihood of their being fertilised. The 2½ to 5cc ejaculatory norm is even said to be on the low side, many women regarding anything less than a tablespoon as an unacceptably small load. The one to two teaspoon figure, it is asserted, is misleading because ejaculatory quantity is related to sexual excitement, and men are not inclined to be very excited in laboratory conditions.