The Blow Job as Path to the Divine

I am not a religious person. I don't even know that I want to be. I have sort of tried, a little, but for better or worse, I don't seem to have the God gene. The closest I ever get to the sublime feeling of connection with the universe that religious people describe is generally through music. Walking at night, the wet smell of the evening mist, a full moon hanging overripe in the sky, and Pandora radio seducing me with exactly what I want to hear before I know myself (Damn, Pandora, I will tell you again, I would so fuck you if I could) is the closest I get to experiencing the Divine.

Except for sex. I think what's appealing to me about sex is not the actual friction between body parts-- although that's pretty damn good, too--but the out-of-body, out-of-your-fucking-mind, brain/body explosion that happens during the best sex. Good sex is just somehow...beyond. You're extremely focused on the Now, the line between you and other is blurred, and, in the best moments, you feel like you and the Universe are sort of throbbing together as one. Which sounds a lot like religious ecstasy.  (Other times it's just you and your partner, or your hand, or your vibrator--you get off, then go about your day. Which is fine as well.)

In an oldish issue of Playboy, Samantha Gillison wrote a wonderful essay "The Platonic Ideal" on this idea of sex as route to the Divine. I would link to it, but-- incredibly in this day and age--it is not available on-line! Well, unless you pay. That's why this month I am a member of iPlayboy.com, for you, dear reader.

In Gillison's piece, she describes the moment she became illuminated on the joys of giving head. It was after a Bad Brains concert, and in the darkness of the parking lot, she knelt before her date.

We could have been strangers--we almost were--and somehow the darkness, the anonymity of the situation liberated me from worrying about doing something wrong or feeling self-conscious. I allowed myself to sink deep into the fantasy of what it must feel like for him--the pressure, the warmth, the wetness. All of a sudden the only thing in the world was that cock and my connection to it.

Previously, Gillison had thought of blow jobs as something you gave, like a gift, or something you did as a favor. Plus there was some fear and uncertainty.

It was just that I was unsure of cock when I got up close to one; it contained unreadable male mysteries. I might hurt it or maybe just do nothing right. Maybe I looked ridiculous. I didn’t really know which parts of it wanted to be touched, or how. It seemed to be its own creature, almost uncannily separate from the man who owned it. Perhaps simpleminded but authoritarian and judgemental. 

This time, however, she had a revelation.

But starting that night in the parking lot, I began to understand the profound, dirty pleasure of giving blow jobs. It isn’t just that I discovered how much I like being in control, how much I like giving the kind of pleasure that makes someone helpless, and how intoxicating it is to be on the receiving end of hurricane-levels of desire. But, that night, it was also the revelation of the particular male smell you get up close with a cock and balls that turned me on in ways that are almost beyond description. It was like being inside sex.

"Being inside sex." Dear God. 

Plato said that human beings can only truly access the divine through sexual ecstasy, Eros. This has always made so much sense to me. When else are humans as rapt by feeling as when they come and when they touch God? That feeling of connection to the universal, the feeling of having exited my own body as I orgasm is nothing other than touching the infinite.

Yet I have never been able to get close to that Platonic, out-of-my-mind kind of sexual ecstasy unless I can satisfy a primal hunger: Whether in fantasy or reality, I need a connection to another equally raunchy human being. It has always been the case with me, since I was a teenager, that I have to see someone else’s horniness in order to feel horny. What I happily realized on my knees in the parking lot is that an erect cock in my face is among the most blatant ways of experiencing the realness of someone else’s desire I’d ever encountered. And every time, it spurs a response in me, hot and dark and if I’m doing something transgressive in the best possible way.

Blow jobs! Philosophical talk! The phrase "erect cock in my face"!  Gah, I am a goner! LOVE this $%$#!

I'll add a little bit more of her essay, because I want to make sure I don't stray from "fair use" territory to "stealing" and "copyright infringement." Here's Gillison on the experience of blowing a long time friend and feeling, then overcoming, the awkwardness inherent in that particular situation.

But then a supple communication started between me and his penis as I began to suck, a communication beyond words and much deeper than any we had ever had before.

His cock felt so sexy in my mouth, hard and hot and aching with desire. But I could also feel how much of this man was being revealed to me: his sexuality, his vulnerability, his musky smell.

Soon the connection started to feel like a merging, as though I was experiencing that blow job too. It felt crazy, off-the-charts raunchy, to fantasize that I was not only giving head but getting it. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by pure animal pleasure. I was so turned on that I came.

Since that night’s discovery I always revel in the double fantasy of giving and receiving. And I honor the wisdom of the old Greek philosophers who pointed out that although the Divine is inscrutable, it is easy to find while sucking on a dick.

And there is no better way to end a post than what Gillison ended with right there, so I will leave you to your day.

xoxoxo
jill

* Afterword:  Do NOT do a Google image search for "penis public domain." Hideous medical photos!  "Lesion on the glans"! Holy crap! Look away! Look away!

photo: William M. Rattase

Consent

I recently wrote a piece for Cosmo on quickies and one of the suggestions involved waking up your loved one (or liked-well-enough one) with a blow job. The idea was that it was this silent communion in which they'd wake up to the feel of your mouth on their cock. Which, to me, seemed good for all.

However, not one, but several, readers called it out, saying it was sexual assault and/or rape. I changed the wording slightly, because technically it is rape, or at least rapey, I guess.  Made more so because the dude would be asleep. "Unconscious people don't want tea" and all that. 

But I felt a little pissed off about it because I'm a big baby and hate being schooled on anything, even if I'm wrong. But in this case, I felt kind of un-wrong. (caveat: I always feel un-wrong.) It seemed so inherently implied in the situation that you would use a little fucking judgement in the situation. If you started sucking someone's dick and he woke up and said, "WTF? Quit it!" or even "Mmmm, sleepy, later..." you would obviously stop.  You also wouldn't go to town on some random dude passed out in the alley, etc...

Intellectually, I understand the need for guidelines. Every day people are acting like fuckheads around consent, like Brock Turner's dad calling his son's rape of an unconscious woman "20 minutes of action."  But in between that and wanting to wake your man up with morning head where, if any, is the wiggle room?

I love the way reader Spiffy McBang explained it/talked me down in the comments on the post This is How You Please a Woman.

"Dan Savage has the most logical take on consent I know- if you've had some level of intimacy with a person, that creates a level of implied consent where that person should feel reasonably free to try engaging in acts you've done in the past, and if you're not interested, you tell them no. Running on the assumption you're naked in bed with the person you're trying to wake up with a BJ because you have, at some point in the past, fucked, that would fall under the implied consent standard. 

If people want a stricter standard of consent than the above, they should be clear with any partners about that and not suggest it apply to everyone. I mean, realistically, how often is someone being awoken with a BJ by somebody they're not already pretty comfortable with? It's like the letter of the law versus the spirit, and this is a case where just about everyone is fine with the spirit. Calling it rape or sexual assault in a comments section doesn't help anyone, and it diminishes real, traumatic assault by assigning the same term to both."

I also asked Judith, someone on Twitter who'd complained, bc she was from Oslo so I stereotyped her as someone who would be reasonable. "It's implied in many situations, but when just waking up, it can feel like, and be an assault, even if the intention is good. I think we agree. I understand that u of course meant consensual, but in a situation like that it is extra important. Consent might not be sexy. But I'm sure u can find a way."

Yes, I could find a way.... but the thing is, I am sort of into lack of consent. (To a certain extent--of course.) To me, consent for every damn thing is the verbal equivalent to a dental dam or female condom--yes, it's the smart thing to do, but it kind of ruins it.

My old housemate/fuckbuddy in college once woke me up by coming into my room and bouncing his fat cock insistently on my nose. I absolutely loved coming out of sleep to this hugely visible sign of his arousal. And--I report this to you and only you--part of the turn on was the general rudeness of it and the audacity to assume I would appease him. 

Another time we slept together all night (rare, it was a fucked-up situation, as you may have surmised) and throughout the night, he would press his hard-on into my back, sometimes sliding in, in a sort of gentle all-night fuck. It was divine. And it would have been completely ruined had he woken me up every single time, asking me if he could slide his cock into me.

By contrast, later I was with a lovely man who respectfully obeyed the accepted rules and asked me for permission before touching each part of my body. I hated it.

As I wrote in my highly offensive and/or brave piece on James Deen, Darkness and the Erotic, this reminds me of what Esther Perel writes about eroticism in Mating In Captivity: "Sexual desire is politically incorrect, often thriving on power plays, role reversals, unfair advantages, imperious demands, seductive manipulations and subtle cruelties," she notes. The erotic lives--and thrives--in places of darkness and the forbidden. Whether we like it or not.

If you find someone who gets this in the same way that you do, fuck the shit out them.

xoxo
jill

PS See my new Sex Toy Recycling piece on AlterNet if you feel like contemplating the fate of the used dildo.

(Photo: The amazing Corwin Prescott)