The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio (7 page)

Illustration 4. How Do I Look?

If you want to compare how you look to men in porn movies, guys in
Playgirl,
or gay male mags, you certainly can—but it won’t give you an idea about what’s really out there, and more important, what your partners are seeing. Are you worried about how you look? Do you think that your penis, testicles, anus, or pubic area are too hairy, or not enough? They don’t look like the ones in porn? The cocks you see in magazines are airbrushed (often heavily) and lit, angled, covered in makeup, shaved, and positioned just
so
. In porn movies, makeup and shaving is standard, and as with the magazines, it’s only the guys who are larger than average that make the grade. You won’t see any regular penises in porn, period. And seldom any soft ones, for that matter.

The huge market for penis enlargement gadgets, injections, operations, and pills neatly serves to reinforce your insecurities and sexual shame. It’s a business like any other, though it’s a kissing cousin to the diet industry and the breast augmentation industry—sleazy, and offering impossibly quick fixes to get you to “fit in” to unrealistic, invented, and often impossible standards. Penis enlargement is a bad idea. Vacuum pumps work only temporarily and can cause lasting damage if used improperly; also, the erections they provide are big but soft. No pill will make your dick bigger. And remember that any surgery you have on your urogenital system will cut through nerves, fibers, and erectile tissue—things you need in order to enjoy sex. Plus, silicone implants often need to be replaced, can become infected, and look lumpy. Liposuctioned fat eventually melts back into your body. Why put yourself through any of it when you could be enjoying a blow job instead?

Do Vegetarians Taste Better?

For men who worry about odors and flavors their partners may encounter, rest assured that your genitals smell and taste exactly like you—your skin, actually. The obvious answer to any cleanliness dilemma is to shower daily, and for men who have a foreskin, to be sure to clean under the hood—any buildup will lend a funky odor. If you’re wanting to impress your partner by emitting less odor, you can shower shortly before your encounter. If your partner is anxious about your flavor, showering together before fellatio can allay fears—they may even want to participate in getting you “squeaky clean” or might enjoy beginning oral sex in the tub.

If you plan to ejaculate in your partner’s mouth, you might wonder if you taste okay. An obvious answer to this question is to taste it yourself first—for some, no big deal, but for others, this is something they’d rather skip. Whatever you decide, there are a few things you can do to make sure your come tastes and smells neutral. Things that can make the flavor of your semen strong or pungent are vitamins, asparagus, beets, coffee, cigarettes, and garlic. Strong substances like these can influence your ejaculate in much the same way they do your urine. To keep it smelling and tasting neutral, avoid these substances at least twenty-four hours before oral sex, and drink plenty of water. Carnivorous men tend to have stronger-tasting semen than those who stick to vegetarian diets, though whether this is unpleasant to the person doing the tasting is debatable.

Sweetening your come is a whole different matter. Conventional wisdom on this subject (if there is such a thing) states that if you want to make your ejaculate more palatable you should drink lots of citrus, pineapple, or celery juice, and eat a lot of sweet melon. However, the jury seems to be out on the results, and it will probably be around eight hundred years before someone does a real study on the effects of cantaloupe on the taste of come.

There are a few products on the market that claim to enhance the bouquet and zest of semen, most notably Seminex and Cum-So-Sweet. Both products claim not only to make it sweeter but also to impart it with a citrus flavor that “women will love.” Seminex is a powder that comes in packets; you mix it with water and drink before you go to bed for two to three days before you want to be tasty. Cum-So-Sweet is a sublingual tablet (it dissolves under the tongue) that both partners use just before oral sex to change the taste of whatever fluid ends up in your mouth—sadly (and mistakenly), it’s assumed by the manufacturers that pussy is also an undesirable taste and that both partners are heterosexual. No products that make these claims have passed any sort of clinical or safety trials, so buyer beware, and read the ingredients of any product that makes these claims before you ingest it.

Erection Questions

Contrary to popular conceptions, men’s erections and orgasms don’t erupt like Old Faithful. Nothing in the male or female pleasure cycle is entirely predictable, and that goes for arousal, orgasm, ejaculation, the timing involved for any of it, and especially erection. Erections work on two levels simultaneously. One is the physical: touching your genitals or an erogenous zone, or having them touched, triggers a response along nerve pathways to begin the flow of blood into your penis. The other level is the path that leads directly from your brain: an image, fantasy, idea, or mental or visual stimulus triggers the same nerve response, filling your penis with blood and growing it into an erection. The stiffest cocks and the hottest sex come when both pathways are stimulated at the same time.

The perplexing thing about erections is that they sometimes like to come and go as they please. They arrive at the party uninvited or leave when everyone’s having fun. During sex they’ll stiffen and soften as your pleasure cycle dips and peaks along its normal course. This swelling and shrinking may not be noticeable, or it may gradually become more noticeable with age, anxiety, stress, or medication. Sometimes these issues make erections unreliable altogether.

The best course of action when you’re concerned that you won’t be able to achieve or sustain an erection is a piece of frustrating, though accurate, advice: relax. Stressing out about having a hard-on creates inner tension and turmoil, making it almost impossible to access the neural pathway whereby the brain engages the cock—sometimes physical stimulation can conquer the inner demons, but not always. Anxiety, anger, and guilt kill erections, period. However, if you are experiencing pain or numbing, or if you are taking medication that may effect erections or are having other health problems, talk to your doctor about what’s going on. Just keep in mind that your doctor will first tell you that men with healthy erections have low-fat diets, get plenty of exercise, maintain a healthy weight, and don’t smoke.

Possible Causes of Erection Difficulties

Every man is likely to have trouble achieving or maintaining an erection at some point in his life. According to the National Institutes of Health, between ten and thirty million American men have consistent trouble. Causes may include the following:

DRUGS OR MEDICATION

• Anti-anxiety meds, such as BuSpar, Valium, and Xanax

• Antidepressants, including Prozac and Zoloft

• Antifungal meds, such as Flagyl, Diflucan, and Nizoral

• High blood pressure meds, including Inderal and Lopressor

• Party drugs such as crystal meth (speed), cocaine, alcohol, ecstasy, and pot

• Drugs for substance abuse, such as Anabuse and methadone

• Ulcer meds, such as Tagamet

HEALTH CONDITIONS AND OTHER CAUSES

• Arteriosclerosis

• Diabetes

• High cholesterol/high blood pressure

• Low testosterone from age or HIV

• Neurological issues, possibly from an accident, surgery, MS, or Parkinson’s disease

• Prostate problems

• Smoking

• Stress and depression

To have better, stronger, and more dependable erections, have more of them. Your penis is comprised of more than 50 percent muscle—smooth muscles, not the kind you can bulk up. In order to be healthy and function properly, this muscle tissue needs oxygen, which it gets in the form of blood that flows in when you’re aroused. The best way to keep the tissue oxygenated is to include regular sexual stimulation in your daily life, such as masturbation or sex with a partner.

And while we’re working on your new sexual exercise routine, don’t forget to do your Kegels. Dr. Arnold Kegel was a gynecologist who taught women to strengthen their pubococcygeal (PC) muscles, initially to help with incontinence. The side effect turned out to be more (and stronger) orgasms for the women who practiced the exercises regularly. Men have the same muscles lining the pelvic floor, and when they do their Kegels, their orgasms become more powerful and last longer; some men also report a faster recovery time between erections.

To find your Kegel muscles, stop the flow of urine midstream. These are the muscles you want to flex. Do Kegels anywhere, anytime you feel comfortable. A daily routine is recommended: start by contracting the muscles for a count of three, five to ten times. Then do a series of rapid squeezes in sets of fifteen. As time goes by, you can increase your reps, and experiment with holding your contractions for longer periods of time.

Coming Too Soon

Early ejaculation is often considered the curse of young men, or men who are new to having sexual experiences. It’s frustrating when it happens, even more so when you are no longer young or new to sex. In truth, it’s a common thing that happens to most men, and it happens to all men at some point in their lifetime.

If you’re young or new to sex, then you can rest assured that control will soon be yours with a little time and experience. If early ejaculation stems from hypersensitivity, you can use a condom or even two, and experiment with frequent masturbation to decrease your penis’s sensitivity. But if you just plain keep coming before you’re ready, and you’ve checked in with your partner and they have expressed the desire for you to last longer, you have a couple of options.

Try using the squeeze technique. This is done by placing a hand at the tip of your penis so that the thumb is on the underside, pressing on the frenulum (brush up on your anatomy in chapter 2, “The Anatomy of a Man’s Pleasure”), with the fingertips placed on either side of the coronal ridge. When you feel yourself getting close to orgasm, squeeze for three or four seconds, then release. This will make your erection subside a little, and you should wait about thirty seconds before continuing with sexual stimulation. The squeeze technique can be used three or four times during your encounter, and as a delicious side effect, it will make your orgasm very powerful. Some men prefer squeezing at the base of their penis, or instead of squeezing, pulling their balls down—experiment on your own during masturbation to see what works best. Then try it with your partner; some men enjoy having their partner do the squeezing.

An alternative solution is the stop-start technique. At the same point that you would employ the squeeze technique, stop the stimulation altogether until the feeling of impending orgasm subsides. Practice this once a day, and see how long you can make the waiting period last. The more you practice, the more control you’ll have over your orgasms.

I was very close to coming, but every time I was just about to explode, she would momentarily stop her oral actions and squeeze me firmly at the base with her fingers. Over the next few minutes she performed this maneuver three more times, and I was going crazy, on the verge of coming but not. It felt sooo good.

Masturbation and Fantasy

You might have noticed that I’m enthusiastic about masturbation. Masturbation is the cornerstone of our sexuality—it’s where we build our fantasies and learn how we like to be touched. Masturbation is a source of release on many levels. Unfortunately, our culture has a restrictive view of it and tends to shroud masturbation in a cloak of shame or failure—but that is changing with the times. Still, some guys might see jacking off as a negative thing: a self-defeating substitute for partnered sex, a secret shame, an admission of guilt. These ideas are damaging, and if you are coping with these feelings when you want to masturbate, consider what effect these self-deprecating thoughts may have on your emotions, and your emotional future.

It can be difficult to release guilt if your sexual fantasies are making you uncomfortable. An erotic fantasy is a thought, idea, image, or scenario that is sexually interesting to you. It doesn’t have to turn you on; or it may turn you on a little, or a lot. If you think you don’t fantasize, think again. Fantasies can emerge from your erotic imagination in different forms; they can be detailed or fragmented. We may see famous people that are attractive and imagine that our lives overlap. We revisit memories of times we have enjoyed, and they make us feel good in the present. Often, we envision scenarios that have never happened and some that aren’t even possible. Sometimes we tell others what we have done, making a fantasy for them—or us—come true. Whatever shape your fantasies take, looking at them can open doors to understanding what arouses you and allow you to tap into new channels of erotic expression—channels that work for you.