Where have all the Blowjobs Gone?

Ok, so something’s a’brewin’ out there in the dating scene, and if I’m right (I never am), it’s fairly disturbing.  In my own personal life (and thus one may safely extrapolate to western society as a whole), I’ve found the occurrence of blow jobs to be seriously on the wane.  And satisfying blow jobs are even less frequent.  And far far FAR more disturbing: the frequency of actually getting off in a girl’s mouth is WAY DOWN.  If you were to plot it out on a chart it would be one of those lines approaching zero graph things.  So, I’ve established that girls hate giving blowjobs, let’s move on to analyzing the trend and hopefully we can learn something important about the shifting character of the nation.  What?  I haven’t proven anything yet? Ok, FINE! Let me dip into anecdote.

In high school, I think I got a grand total of two blow jobs.  That’s right, and they were both from the same girl.  I mean, it’s totally understandable, because as I recall at that age I myself (and every other guy) was busy struggling with the difficulty of overcoming a fear of eating pussy.  We saw it as something gross and unpleasant yet more and more necessary to realizing the goal of getting laaaaiiiid.  And I’m sure it was a hard sell to the ladies as well to get them to put that in their mouths.  But it was the 90s, and men were being encouraged to be sensitive to a girl’s needs and to take a girl’s pleasure seriously.  Look at movies like Mr. Mom and Mrs. Doubtfire.  Male nurturer as role model.  It sunk in and guys learned.

Girls had different pressures from mass culture.  Lemme see if I can find a clip of something to illustrate more what was happening on the lady side of shit.  Ok here’s one that encapsulates the ideas of feminist sexuality during the beginning of this trend.  Let’s just say this video kicks the thing off (in a very positive and hopeful way) and it spiralled out of control from there.

Men/boys were being strongly encouraged to think of women’s needs and act to support the fulfillment of them on their terms.  Women/girls were being encouraged to talk about their desires, that what they wanted was important and deserved to be considered.  These women were shown embracing previously masculine forms of sexuality (see the construction workers?).  Now, I can’t back this up with anything other than my iron-clad anecdotal recollections, but at the same time, a new/twisted style of feminism was really REALLY taking hold of the US, and leading into 2000 began to fuel a whole pop culture movement, which in turn served to warp, spread and distill it’s message to more and more girls.  Chiefly, that a sexually aggressive and liberated woman was the ideal woman.  A sexual woman is a powerful woman.  Moreover, she enjoys showing off her body while seizing and appropriating roles normally associated with men, i.e., enjoying cheap frequent sex with several partners with little to no emotional attachment, while encouraging the objectifying male gaze that 80s feminism fought so hard to bring to our attention.  Something happened on the way from woman as proud sexual being with the right to assert her desires to her realization in the mass mediated popular culture.  “Girl power” became equivalent to being super super slutty.  I know this is hyperbole and oversimplification, but the right to demand that a guy use condoms (Salt n pepa era) devolved into stripping on a pole as “exercise,” burlesque as new “art,” and classes in blow job technique as the new Tupperware parties.

In other words, it was a good time to be a sensitive 90s man.  I personally benefited from this rise of wanton female sexuality, as I know many other dudes have.  I not only got more blowjobs, but the quality and duration was better.  As women embraced sluttiness, I got blown in cars, bathrooms, subways (yes, believe it) and had a generally amazing time.  And to my surprise, girlfriends were even into that shit.  As in, I’d settled down for a year but my lady still wanted to duck behind this car and give me a blow job.  It was hot for everyone.

In college (1995) I had a lady friend who insisted she blow me every time we made out.  I protested the inequality (she was uncomfortable with receiving oral sex so she wouldn’t let me go down, which is a theme I definitely want to return to later, there’s a lot of stuff there) maybe the first 4 or 5 times, and then made peace with getting my dick sucked nearly off my body every day for months.  She was vigorous.  I had a neighbor who liked to practice on guys because she wanted to excel in the art of the BJ.  A girl I knew liked to play with the junk she got out of hard cocks because its texture fascinated her.  A girl I had just met once asked me if she could see my cock (she claimed to never have seen an uncircumcised penis) and in the bathroom after i pulled it out asked if she could put it in her mouth.  We’re moving forward in time, but you see things growing more and more apeshit as we head to the mid 00’s.  More and more girls ask me if I want to come on their faces, and my sheepish “yes” is greeted with delight.  Things I had previously only seen in porn online start coming up in the sack, initiated by the lady (I have a theory about porn access and sexuality shifts, but you get the picture).  Much of this is, incidentally, centered in Williamsburg.  I have a few other anecdotes, and so do other dudes I know, but the point is that it was bonkers, but shit’s changed.

In short, I am claiming that during the period of time from about 1995 to 2007 we were living in a blowjob bubble, and that bubble has burst.  So what was that lecture about the sluttification of feminism in the 90s all about, you ask?  Well I’m not entirely sure yet, but my hypothesis is something like this:  After centuries of the oppression of the sexual female, our young(ish) women were given an opening and opportunity to shove open the gates and pour through to sex town.  This could be measured (scientifically) in the astronomical number and quality of blowjobs the average guy could get in an average month.  Everybody was winning.  But now the BJ-boom is drying up.  Is it coincidence that the world economy just went to shit recently?  Is this a market correction for blow jobs?  aIs i t coincidence that the most powerful female role models in pop culture aren’t jiggly titted sex machines anymore?  I mean, you could totally tell that MIA was embarrassed in that super bowl halftime show.  She clearly regretted the decision to take part in Madonna’s attempt to revive late 90s female super slut sexuality.  Watching it again, I had totally forgotten the middle finger she gave to the camera, but man does that not support my argument or what?

But HIE, you say, you’re just getting old! Life is amazing when you’re young and virile and playing the field!  OH were it only true, my friend.  It’s not.  If anything, getting action is easier and more frequent than ever for the average guy (me, clearly).  “But you don’t live in the center of sexual hedonism anymore, Williamsburg, a veritable ground zero for irresponsible sexual deviance and exploration!” you say.  Take a closer look, my friend.  See the truth in the stress lines around that young professional’s eyes as he stumbles home from a night of pounding whiskeys with a bar full of tattooed bra-less etsy knitters and burlesque dancing school teachers.  He definitely did NOT get a BJ in the bathroom.  Five years ago there would have been two chicks who didn’t bother leaving their numbers as they left him in the stall to clean up.

Two more anecdotes and I’ll wrap her up.  I have recently been fortunate enough to bang some chicks several years younger than me.  These girls are firmly in the sweet spot of the age of sexual experimentation and freedom.  It was a girl their age who asked me to choke her with my cock for the first time about 5 years ago.  For whatever reason, 23 year old chicks want to sleep with me.  Fine.  But they don’t give blow jobs. After a combined total of maybe 15 nights of sex and cunnilingus, I got zero BJs.  I even asked one girl about it and she was like, you never asked!  What, I just love the taste of pussy so so so much I gotta have me some?  Sure ok yes, but it’s a dance, not a solo performance.  Another girl kept asking me what I wanted her to do.  I played along and said something to the effect of “swallow my cock” which got a good reaction.  Turned her right on.  But no blow job.

Some of you may point to the fact that the 90s male sensitivity training was too successful.  It produced a generation of men who care too much about how their lady is feeling, what her motivations and desires are.  I’ve met a lot of girls who now fantasize about a man that takes charge.  The extreme of this is the rape fantasy I’ve heard from a few girls, in the deep of night sharing a last beer over pillow talk, in which they say they “kinda” want a guy to break in, tie them up, throw them on the bed, and do their rough sex thing to them.  The sentiment shows up in okcupid profiles, pop culture, etc etc etc as far back as that terrible song “Where have all the cowboys gone?”  You might say, HIE, obviously these girls are waiting to be TOLD to blow you.  You need to just jam it down their throats.

I would say you might be right but it’s not gonna happen. Because if you have to ask for it, that blow job just isn’t worth it.

______________________

UPDATE: The pseudo-relationship that I have been dancing around and swearing up and down I’m going to end got ended for me.  She told me tonight that she’s never going to get over her break-up and move on (we’ve been mutually consoling each other off and on for a while) if she’s always able to use me for support and sex.  No shit.  I called it 4 months ago, which sucks.  The lesson here is if you want out of something get out before they do.  The person who makes the break always comes out less fucked.  True story!

And here it is, Part one?!?!

So I think now’s a good time to lay out the Reese story.  I honestly can’t think of a legitimately interesting post topic (because let’s face it, my life is full of problems that no decent human being can relate to), so I’m gonna cheat and rehash/recount something from the past.

You may remember I mentioned Reese in a previous post about Saturday Night Live cast members.  Ironically, searches for “SNL cast hangouts” are my main source of internet traffic.  How can I get rich off that?!  Naw.  Anyway, Reese.  I’ve had a little wine tonight, so I’m going to be brutally honest.  It won’t make me look like sunshine, but it’ll be more fun for you, my lone reader.

Ok, wow. So, we met on an interesting night.  I had been invited to attend a party at this dude’s super fance condo in Williamsburg (former center of the cool universe, current center of the commodification and consumption of cool), and the party was designated as “wear something elegant” or something.  I haven’t talked much about this group of friends, but they party like rich people.  Many of them are, it turns out.  I was lucky to be invited to this one (because I only get invited to about 5% of the total super-fun group activities they do, not because the swankiness was super desirable), so I went.  Earlier that night, and because when I get one invitation I get 30 on the same night, I had a back yard dinner party at an ex-coworker’s house in sketch Bushwick.  Which justifies my choice of slightly not-elegant clothing.  Ok, it wasn’t elegant at all at all.  I was just dressed for a sat night.  But if I had dressed fancy, I would probably have been shanked in the kidneys and left for dead.  Just sayin’.  Good thing too, because this guy had a hookup for the original Four Loko, which I tried for the first and last time (baby sips).

I show up at the thing.  It’s interesting.  There’s some sort of fancy laser light ball installation thing that works via remote control.  The place itself is two stories starting on the ground floor, with a back yard filled with beach sand (WASTE), with a sort of overhanging walkway thing leading from the back wall of the top floor to the ground.  Party upstairs, party downstairs.  Rich douches “spinning” tunes on fancy laptop plus PA speakers plus DJ software setups.  No-one dancing yet.  There’s food that’s trying reeeeally hard to live up to the “elegant” requirement.  Failing. And most people are in sharp suits and cocktail dresses.  Or fancy dresses from the 20’s complete with feathers and shit.  Whatevvvvzzzz. It was a little awkward for me, especially since my closest friend there (basically dominating the elegant outfit requirement) is also this girl I dated and got dumped by twice, and for whom I carry a touch of the hates right next to the torch, and probably always will.  She’s hot AND annoying.  She swooped me up (lets face it we have this insane chemistry, too, like Diane Chambers and Sam Malone from Cheers)

and took me around introducing me to the lovely people.  We had conversations that got awkward and from which people walked away without a word.  I was a regular fish out of water.  But not really, as my Diane pointed out to me.  And then her pointing that out to me turned into an excuse to get mad at me.  She stormed off.  And thusly was I liberated, free to cast my line as it were and see what I could catch.

First off, I ran into this crazy Polish chick I had sex with about 5 years ago.  Weirdly, she was a satellite of a completely different group of kids who I went to college with but don’t EVER see anymore, so it was a really interesting treat to run into her there in swankland.  She wasn’t happy to see me.  In fact it was pretty clear she had been nursing a grudge for all 5 years.  We had gotten hot and heavy really early in our fling, and then one night we had a date lined up but she she fell asleep and was 30 minutes late.  I had a headache and was in a foul mood so I told her we should just reschedule (she was still at home “getting ready”, and I was outside the spot).  I got on the subway home and when i emerged I had a string of intense voicemails starting with honey and ending in vitriol.  Moving on.

Ran into some dudes I knew and we rated ladies.  Turned our attention to guys and started rating them.  It turned out we were all super jealous of this dude who was basically a tall hipster Kennedy, who we all decided was going to nail whomever he chose that night.  We also figured he was probably going to ruin our chances with the ladays he didn’t nail.

So the party heats up and I see this tall blonde smiling and laughing and chatting with my acquaintances like she’s one of the gang.  Which intrigued me because I had never seen nor heard of this girl.  A regular piece of American apple pie she was.  And dressed well and cetera.  I don’t remember how, but I managed to get introduced and to pour on some charm and we talked and smiled and laughed and drank.  I have to admit she was pouring on quite a lot of charm too.  Then, of course, there was a bona fide fight upstairs.  Like between the rich dudes who really identified most with “street culture.”  I think one of the dewds was literally wearing a bandana.  You could see it through the floor-to-ceiling large plate glass windows from the ground level.  And hear the shattering tinkle of some fine crystal getting smooshed.

I took my cue and wandered away (you don’t want to cling at parties, it’s a recipe for failure).  And I got swept into a tiny whirlwind around this shorter, crazier brunette.  She was the real fire at the ball and we swapped a few jokes slash flirts.  But nothing deep or memorable until i passed her on the “dancefloor” upstairs.  I sort of fake danced behind her, which she embraced as real, and we danced a little…ironically and not.  We swayed and moved closer, smiled, and she grabbed my junk, and then breezed away smiling even more.  After that, I guess the ice was broken so we talked and laughed and I’m having a great time.  Meanwhile it had started raining.  People were escaping the back yard, tracking wet sand into the ground floor.  Until the water, which hadn’t been draining from the “beach,” began to encroach on the indoors.  A drain in the bathroom also began to let water into the house.  Everyone fled upstairs, people began calling cabs, which of course everyone in the neighborhood were doing, so there weren’t any.  I went to the bathroom and saw that Reese was still there still having a good time still charming all and sundry around her.  When I returned upstairs Brunette was gone.  She had driven (her car!) to the party so I assume she drove away too.  I also assume (and I’m always right about this shit) that she either had a boyfriend or a fiance or a husband and needed to get the fuck out before she went “too far” with the random dude from the dancefloor.

At the time I just felt rejected.  Chastising myself for letting the rush of a junk grab distract me from the real prize, I VERY drunkenly staggered up to Reese and asked her for her number.  She obliged.

Having gotten that, I felt better.  I waited in the hall by the front door for a cab with a bunch of friends who happened to still be there as well, and when one finally pulled up I piled in with (lo and behold), my Diane.  When her stop came she dragged me upstairs to her place and we had probably the best night we’d ever had.  Not going into detailz, losers.

So.  A few days later I summoned up the courage to call Reese.  She does not have voicemail.  What?  No voicemail? What. The. Fuck?  So what do I do? I leave the rest of our story for PART 2.  It gets better and worse.