Rachel Kramer Bussel's Open Salon Blog

Where Have All the Blowjobs Gone? Why Esquire Is Wrong

Wed, 4 Apr 2012 14:04:09 -0400

In the latest issue of Esquire, writer Goeff Dwyer frets that "[t]he blowjob has fallen on hard times." What he really means is that the female-delivered not-so-enthusiastic average quality male-received blowjob is on the wane, but even sticking to heterosexuality, Dwyer simply doesn't know where to look. Firstly, he pits fellatio against cunnilingius in some kind of oral sex bracket game, as if the two cannot coexist peacefully and be enjoyed mutually. Secondly, he ignores the spaces where men and women are celebrating women who love to open their mouths.

Blowjobs are, in fact, popular enough that Violet Blue's The Ultimate Guide to Fellatio was revamped for a second edition, while sex educator Jamye Waxman is teaching a bjowljob bootcamp at Toronto sex toy store Come As You Are in May where you can "Learn about the frenulum, the taint and how to go down deeper. Find out why gagging can be sexy, and why enthusiasm gets you farther." Other books on the market: Fellatio 101, Going Down: An Illustrated Guide to Giving Him the Best Blow Job of His Life, Blow Him Away and Oral Sex He'll Never Forget: 52 Positions and Techniques Guaranteed to Blow Your Man Away. Camille Crimson and her partner Mike Flirt have a whole series of videos dedicated to The Art of the Blowjob and she writes, "From an industry standpoint, although blowjobs are really popular, they're either treated as a boring prelude to sex or they're really rough and there's very little skill involved. We wanted to show that a blowjob can be beautiful and something exciting for both men and women, so it felt like a calling."

Perhaps Dwyer's use of Updike's poem "Fellatio" is telling. Dwyer says that Updike celebrated "that each of these clean secretaries / at night, to please her lover, takes / a fountain into her mouth." But what's happening now is different, because women are giving blowjobs to please themselves at least as much as to please their lovers, and as someone who falls into that category, I believe this kind of ownership of the BJ can be a little unsettling for men used to having to wheedle their way between a woman's lips. We don't just like going down, we talk about it, in detail. We're not closing our eyes and hoping the guy will come quickly; we want to savor every last moment of it, from start to messy finish. Violet Blue offers up a FAQ on "What Do Men Taste Like?" (answer: "The taste of come can be neutral, slightly sweet or lightly tart, or stronger, salty, musky. Things that can make the flavor of semen strong or pungent are vitamins, asparagus, beets, coffee, cigarettes, a diet high in red meats or garlic.") while blogger Chelsea G. Summers delivers a deep-throating primer ("Take a moment and think about your mouth and throat. Now pull the base of your tongue at the back of your throat down, as you would if you were about to yawn. Think about making a big, round cave at the back of your throat as you kind of retract the base of your tongue.") In a list of "rules for blowjobs for women," Selena Kitt's first and most important one is to enjoy it. I concur; not only is it obvious if you're not into it, but you can get much more out of it if you find a way to make it work for you. But I digress. My point is that female pleasure is now as much a part of the straight blowjob equation as male pleasure.

The idea that women don't like giving head is part of what's fueled the launch of Masque, a line of sweet-flavored strips that dissolve on your tongue and are designed to "mask" the scent of semen. Their about page states, "We understand that, for some, the tastes associated with fellatio can make the act less than enjoyable." I'm not their target audience, as I have enjoyed giving blowjobs since I started doing it, and neither is blogger Minx Grrl, who tested all four flavors (watermelon, mango, strawberry and chocolate), and wrote, "I doubt my test subject could pick which one his favorite was, but I may have added a little more gusto to my cock sucking since I really enjoyed the mango...I love the taste of my Master so the mango was a lovely side note to him as opposed to masking his flavor altogether." Minx Grrl also posted recently about coming for the first time from receiving oral sex, further proof that fellatio and cunnilingus are not mortal enemies but friendly erotic teammates.

On the other hand, though, we're still debating things like whether facials are inherently degrading. The idea that women don't like giving oral sex is so pervasive that sometimes, for those of us who do like it, we're treated as anomalies, outliers whose judgment simply cannot be trusted. Just as we shouldn't be pitting fellatio against cunnilingus, we shouldn't be pitting BJ-lovers against BJ-haters (though those poles are pretty extreme). I'm in the lover camp, and in fact I would consider a guy who didn't like getting blowjobs a dealbreaker, but thankfully have only enountered that type of guy once. That doesn't mean, however, that I've loved every blowjob I've given, am always in the mood, or that I can't understand why someone wouldn't be into it. To each their own.

I think the problem Dwyer highlights isn't the lack of blowjobs being enjoyed by givers and receivers but the fact that sex acts are not and will never be "trends," no matter how much writers want them to be (see AJ Daulerio's 2010 "Hey You: Bring Back the Handjob"). They might get highlighted in pop culture and I think public displays of sexuality are a good thing in terms of bringing awareness and entertainment, but just as interns weren't climbing under their boss's desks in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and otherwise non-kinky women aren't racing to emulate the submission in Fifty Shades of Grey, men aren't missing out on blowjobs simply because Dwyer says they are. And if you are a guy and aren't getting your dick sucked as often as you like, look harder for someone who wants the same thing you want.

Before someone comes back at me with the claim that I'm making it more challenging for the straight women who don't like going down to avoid it, let me be clear that I don't think blowjobs or anything else should be mandatory in bed. You have to figure out what you like and what your partner likes and the Venn diagram of where those intersect, and if there is no intersection, that's a problem you'll need to resolve in order to have a satisfying sex life.

While not all women (or gay men) love giving head, I'm pretty sure the days of the reluctant but willing secretary are on the wane, and those of us who want to be blowjob queens straight out of Liz Phair's classic nineties song "Flower" are doing so, and we don't need Esquire or anyone else to tell us we don't exist.

My iPhone Photos (all 5,000 of Them), Myself

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 13:01:57 -0500

I'm in the process of transferring over 5,000 photos from my iPhone, almost all the photos I've taken since I bought this phone in November of 2010, onto my laptop, and I have to admit that it's very challenging to click the little trash can icon in the bottom right of my screen. I finally learned how to transfer them from my phone to my laptop (thank you, Google), but even now that I know they are securely on my MacBook Pro, I'm still reluctant to part with them. Deleting them feels, pardon the exaggeration, like I'm deleting a part of myself. I enjoy scrolling through hundreds of photos at a time, watching them whiz past me so fast I cannot truly separate one from another, but there they all are, waiting for me to revisit them, waiting for me to pause and remember a meal, a flower, a friend, a day.

My photos are a travelogue; during almost every month of 2011, I hopped on a plane and took off, and even when I'm home in New York, I'll pause to capture, say, a display of coffee cups in the window of Gimme Coffee, or beautiful street art, or a mannequin in the window of Pas de Deux in the East Village wearing fishnets. My 2011 photos take me from Los Angeles to Berkeley back to Los Angeles, to Seattle, London, Vermont, Las Vegas, Maine, yet I know I must make room on my phone for new photos, of places like Hawaii and Milwaukee, new versions of me. Though intellectually I know this, my hoarding mentality runs deep.

I love having these images that capture, for the most part, food and scenery, with the occasional friend, family member or self-portrait mixed in. They images are of objects, yes, but ones that bring back very vivid memories. It's no so much that I need the image of the "I Heart Vagina" sticker that I got on Sproul Plaza so much as the fact that seeing that image makes me remember walking through my former campus with a mix of emotions at 35, just over twice the age I was when I entered as a student. There are photos of the tattoo that spells out "heart" in script on my arm, and when my friend's two-year-old daughter, who can scroll through images on my phone even faster than I can, gets to those, she knows it says "heart" because I've taught it to her. I sat on the floor with another two-year-old who I'd just met, both of us giggling over the joy of double clicking on the nose of one of my favorite cats, Ferocious (see below). We zoomed in, and out, in and out, over and over, and it was ridiculous and fun and childish and delightful; I wish I could hang out with kids who made me laugh like that over the simplicity of the press of a button every day.

If a photo is supposed to be worth a thousand words, then I have the equivalent of over 5,000,000 words in the palm of my hand, and yet, I don't think it's such a simple equation. What I see when I look at each of these images is going to be different from you see, unless I give it context, and even then, a photo, standing alone, just like any story or work of art, is subject to the interpretation of whoever's viewing it. To me, the photos are memories, and ones I am desperate not to lose. I can look at myself sitting outside Pike Place Market on a gloriously sunny day, my glasses having transformed into sunglasses, my hair flying all around, the freckles that come out in the sun making an appearance, and smile all over again at what a happy day that was.

Yes, I can still look at these images once I transfer them, but it won't be the same. I like having them literally next to me, and even if I haven't figured out how to create albums on my iPhone, I don't complain about having to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to the image of the vegetable plate I love at the restaurant Westville. Writer that I am, I just don't have a thousand words in me to describe the beauty of their simple asparagus with parmesan or their honey dijon Brussels sprouts, not to mention the peanut butter and jelly jalapeño poppers at Shelter in Seattle, or the waffles at Sweet Iron Waffles. Don't get me wrong, I love words passionately, ruminate over them, pause and reread sentences that trip off the tongue, but there are things photos do that words, no matter how sensual and poetic and well ordered, simply cannot. The palm trees and waterfalls, art, manicures, images from readings and vacations and daily life, are vivid reminders of where I've been, physically and mentally.

I'm not a professional photographer, so I don't keep them because I think they're great art, but rather because they're vital reminders. They connect me to who I was when I took each one, serving up momentary blissfulness that I treasure and don't want to part with, even temporarily. I've been listening to the Sam Phillips song "When I'm a Camera" and she captures some of what makes having this possibility in my hands at all times, along with its results, so special. I suppose the idea of making room for more applies to my own memory just as much as my iPhone's. I don't need to relive every beautiful or crazy or smile-inducing thing I've seen, as long as I trust there will be more in the future.

Now that I've actually taken close to a thousand words to tell you why they matter to me, here are a few of my favorite photos I took in 2011.

catsitting for Ferocious

my grandmother's nails

my friend Jesse Oleson's art at her Cakespy shop in Seattle

brie on a waffles at Seattle's amazing Sweet Iron Waffles

the peanut butter and jelly jalapeño poppers at Seattle's Shelter

Kyoto Grand Hotel and gardens in Los Angeles

yes, I take pictures at museums (in this case, LACMA)

my friend Tess's bunny shoes

bingo obsession

if only I could find these fishnets

Violin Monster takes New York

me on a sunny day in Seattle

30 Hours of Sleep, or, The Fantasy of Escape

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:12:28 -0500

From around 11 p.m. Saturday night until 10 a.m. Monday morning, I slept approximately 30 hours. The numbers are a bit fuzzy, but I do know I woke up at around 4 on Sunday afternoon, hazily aware that it was late, but not that late. I know that I roused myself enough to cancel plans to make meatballs with a friend, then, when I actually mustered the energy to rouse myself from my bed and walk outside to get a bagel, realized I felt like I was going to topple over, and canceled my plans to go to A Little Murray Christmas (if you've ever seen the amazing entertainer Murray Hill, you know that he is not someone you should cancel plans to see unless severely ill).

The main culprit for my feeling like my body was trying to claw its way out of me, my nausea, wooziness and severe lack of energy would be my period, except that in my twenty-plus years of menstruating, I do not ever remember having symptoms like that. Pain, yes. Emotional angst, yes. Wanting to stay in bed all day, definitely. But the kind of pain where it feels like I would rather sleep forever than face it? No. I'm not that much of a baby when it comes to pain; I have tattoos, I've been in pain before, but this pain was something new and awful. It made the dull buzz of depression and emotional upheaval of the last few months seem like nothing.

Sleeping, I can't help but assume, was my body's way of avoiding experiencing that level of pain. Yet it also tapped into a frequent fantasy of mine of late: the desire to escape, disappear, vanish until a time when life is magically better, simply because the future has arrived. That is a utopian way of thinking, certainly, but also one that on some level is factually true; next month I will receive a royalty check that, even on the small side, will give me a bit of financial security I don't have right now. I find myself wishing it were January in the same way that for much of this year I wished to leapfrog over the hard parts and get past being 35 to 36, which I've found, to my chagrin, has not been as drama- and stress-free as I'd imagined. Still, when a day or week or task seems too daunting, even when I know I should be leaping right in to confront it and get the most challenging parts over with as soon as I can, I find myself easily falling for the desire to run away, pretend the day or moment doesn't exist so I don’t have to face it.

Perhaps I didn’t realize the extreme level of angst my daily life has taken on since I got laid off a little over two months ago, though I'd be hard pressed not to be aware of it. My to do list seems to grow exponentially longer (in the time I've been writing this essay, I've paused at least five times to add to it), and I wake up with a gnawing sense of dread, shame and guilt about all that I haven’t done. Those feelings are tempered by a sense of possibility and hopefulness which has inspired me to submit work to new venues I'd be overjoyed, to put it mildly, to see my work in, but overall I've begun to feel like I would much rather sleep through the next week, or month, or maybe year, because the daily work of life, of making sure I'm getting the most of out of each day, of contributing, of being a better person, feels overwhelming. It's enough just to make it through the day, and sometimes even that seems like a gargantuan task.

I almost long for the hyper-immediacy of a panic attack, as ridiculous as that sounds; it's been a month since I've had one, yet this malaise is its opposite, a pervasive emptiness that seems to push all thoughts and emotions aside in favor of a dull-down hazy murkiness. It's especially laughable when I slap on my new favorite red lipstick, because then I see the contrast between my insides and outsides extremely clearly. The lipstick works because it makes me smile, it brightens more than just my lips, but it makes me feel a little bit like a fraud. Does someone who feels so dead inside deserve to rock Make Up For Ever's Rouge Artist Intense 44? Perhaps not, but on some days it's the best approximation of humanity I can come up with.

Sleeping for so long meant I had lots of dreams, some utterly absurd, some peppered with exes, family members or strangers, some intense and vivid, some inconsequential. My thoughts were muted, less "Why aren't you doing this right now?" than "You should really get up sometime soon so you can do this." There was something comforting about knowing that as I lay in my deconstructed bed (really my mattress on the floor, with the frame I've meant to throw out still taking up space in my room), snug under several layers of covers, I could hear the rest of my neighborhood going about its day. I liked knowing that the world hadn't ended, that when I was ready, it was there waiting for me, as I drifted in and out of the real world and one of my own making.

I believe the lesson I needed to learn is that sometimes I need to shut off completely, not for the weeks or months I might fantasize about, but for a day, a weekend, enough time to recharge myself and recognize that I can only do so much at a time, and there are only so many problems I can try to fix on my own without exploding, or feeling like I might. I'm not proud of having slept that long; as opposed to my fantasy, in real life it felt slothful and wrong, not decadent. Then again, I rarely take a vacation where I just lie on the beach (but am hoping to take one to Hawaii as soon as I can scrape together the cash). Maybe I should build a little "relaxation time" into each day, rather than constantly feeling like I haven't done enough. I may not have, but sometimes that's okay, and maybe I can even be fully conscious and give myself a true break, one I can actively appreciate, rather than simply dream my way through.

Why I Love Greenpoint, Brooklyn indie bookstore WORD

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:11:01 -0500

I love books, and I love talking about books, but I'm often hard pressed to find people outside the internet as eager to chat about the latest romance and young adult novels as they are about the new Gary Shteyngarten or Haruki Murakami (no offense). Where I know I can always go and discuss the nuances of historical romance novelists Sarah MacLean and Eloisa James, or debate the fact that so much YA is full of death, or simply compare tattoos or thoughts on what's new in book land, is WORD, at 126 Franklin Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where the staff genuinely love books. When they recommend something to me, I don't feel like I'm getting the hard sell so they can make a buck, but rather a genuine, customized recommendation. "Sometimes I buy books online," I whispered a little shamelessly while in the store last night. "When they're cheaper," I hastened to explain. Nobody gave me a hipster death stare.

book lover greeting cards

book cover t-shirts

Recently, I wanted a copy of the graphic memoir Underwire by online comix creator Jennifer Hayden, and being the somewhat lazy person I am, I posted to WORD's Twitter account (@wordbrooklyn) asking if they had it. They didn't, but they ordered a copy for me, emailed me when it was in the store, and I just picked it up and am loving this quirky, profanity-laced comic about motherhood and marriage. I do often shop for books online, because, again, I'm lazy, but what I get from WORD is the art of the random discovery, such as a book I carry in my purse in all its tattered beauty. One afternoon when I was looking for something to cure an increasingly broken heart, I found poet Nikki Giovanni's Bicycles. It's a deceptively slim volume, but it contains a poem, "I Would Not Be Different," that spoke to me in a way all the other women who've fallen for married men couldn't ("You sort of see someone/And you don't want to notice/That ring on his finger/Nor really that sort of happy/Look in his eyes"). That poem alone has gotten me through some tough times, and I have WORD to thank for it. Bonus: for every $100 you spend, you get $5 in store credit. Last night's purchases—Underwire, the latest issue of food magazine Lucky Peach, and a recommendation of a children's graphic novel from event organizer Jenn Northington, whose word I trust immensely, Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke--mean I have a credit to spend next time I'm in the store. Lucky me.

my most recent WORD purchases

romance novel swag from a signing I attended earlier this year

pop culture pencils

this is not true of me, but aren't these fun cards?

Adele, Joni and Me, Or My Two-Song Broken Heart Playlist

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 15:10:18 -0400

I can't seem to go a day without hearing "Someone Like You" by Adele. At a deli, a café, in a store or on my very own iTunes. I've been listening to it for months now as an anthem of a relationship that needed to end but that I didn't want to end. It was at once hazy and undefined, punctuated by periods of intense attention and interaction followed by fallow periods of silence, extreme highs and lows interspersed in ways that fed off each other in what I'll delicately call not the healthiest way.

The Adele song is not an exact transliteration of that relationship, but the spirit behind it is one I've tried to feel all the way through me. She says in the link above that she was miserable and lonely when she wrote it, that it came at a moment when she was "on her knees" and that this song summarizes her entire relationship, and that it's made her who she is at the moment, and that is the part I deeply, deeply relate to. Wherever I am, when it comes on, I have to pause and listen to the whole thing, truly listening in a way I rarely do to even my favorite songs. You think you know what they say, you sing or hum along even if you don't know all the words, or maybe you just listen to the throatiness of Adele's voice, the power and beauty and sadness and love wrapped around every note.

It's also not a perfect song because it's a little insulting to everyone—myself, the person I was in love with, any new people who enter my life—to take the idea of finding "someone like" an ex, to explicitly compare one human being to another. It's impossible not only because that relationship was unlike any I've ever had in my life, what I hope in many ways is a uniquely singular experience, but also because we are all so very, very different. If you're looking at people to see how they measure up to other people, not only will they always fail, but you won't let yourself see their unique treasures if you're looking for someone else's.

The other song on my extended, long-term, getting-over-someone-whose-presence-is-everywhere is the soon-to-be-seasonally appropriate Joni Mitchell song "River," off her most famous album, Blue. I used to focus mostly on the "river" part, the escapism, the longing to be anywhere but where I am right now, but again, when I paused and truly listened to every aspect of the song, from the strains of "Jingle Bells" at the beginning to the lyrics that transcend any holiday season, I heard something else entirely:

He tried hard to help me

You know, he put me at ease

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

I'm so hard to handle

I'm selfish and I'm sad

Now I've gone and lost the best baby

That I ever had

I wish I had a river I could skate away on

What these lyrics remind me of is that more than feeling loved or cared about or desired, though this relationship made me feel all those things, it made me feel gotten, which is probably the most elusive quality of all my relationships, something I've only truly felt in one other. I won't attempt to explain exactly why I felt that way, because I don't have concrete evidence, a single moment or conversation or exchange that told me he understood who I am to my core. It was something I felt, and it didn't require words or physical presence or anything except tapping in to it. It was something I desperately wanted to give back, in even the smallest of ways, something that I always look for whenever I meet someone new, whether the relationship is romantically inclined or not, becuase I'm not sure what the point of relating to people is if the person you're befriending isn't truly the person they are.

Yet it's pecisely this lack of anything more tangible than the deepest of feelings that makes me wonder , now, looking back, if all of that was only in my head. I'm pretty sure it wasn't, and the rational side of me knows that whether it was or not, I need to move on if I'm going to have the kind of life and relationship that truly meet my needs. And trust me, I'm trying to speed along, or at the very least, kickstart, that moving on process, with everything in my being. I'm not strong enough to pursue someone who is pretty much a textbook definition of taken, no matter what our feelings for each other were or are. I kept tricking myself into thinking I was that strong, or close enough to it, because I was so sure I couldn't live without it, and while certainly, my life is different without him in it, I can indeed live apart, but retain some of the best elements of what we shared.

Perhaps more than wanting to find "someone like" him, I want to find someone who makes me feel like the person I was when I was with him, when I felt like no amount of distance or difficulty could interrupt that connection. I don't want to overromanticize our kinship any more than I have (as if that were possible!), because in no way was it perfect, or anything close, but it impacted me so profoundly that extricating myself has proved both painful and challenging. Every time I think I've made progress I see or read or hear or remember something that reminds me of him and I'm back to, if not square one, somewhere much closer to it than I'd like to be.

"Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?" asks Adele in "Someone Like You." When I first heard the song, I was so tragically locked into holding on to the bitter side of myself, of that relationship's aftermath, that I couldn't access its sweetness, its transcendant moments that even though I was there often seem more like fiction than truth. I learned so much from that experience, about myself and who I want to be and how I want to be treated, and about what I have and need to give. I've learned that the process of getting over someone isn't straightforward, for me, at least. It zigs and zags, and one day I'll feel strong and proud and sure I've made the right choices, and the next I'll hear Adele singing and burst into tears.

I'm also learning how much my instinct is to retreat in the wake of this. It's made me feel elated and blessed as well as neglected and a kind of sad I don't have words for. But I know it's also, very slowly, so slowly I'm still catching on to it, made me bring a level of empathy into my other friendships and relationships. I know that when I feel hurt I tend to lash out, to assume that I'm the only person feeling that way, and while the rational side of me knows that's not true, it's rarely been the rational side of me present while navigating this relationship, and I consider that one of its benefits. I've had to tap into a side of myself that operates by pure instinct and I'm grateful to have had that opportunity because had I only acted on rationality I highly doubt any of it would have happened. I want to push myself, even when it's not easy, to not operate out of self-protection, to live more by my heart (a word I plan to get tattooed on my inner arm as a birthday gift, and eternal reminder) than my head. I hope that is the greatest lesson this selfish, sad, hard to handle but nevertheless romantic person I'm trying to become puts into action.