Action: A Book About Sex (16 page)

In the following suggested courses of action, you will not find the syllabi provided by women’s magazines that ask you to lingually slip an ice cube or a hair tie over the penis of your poor, unsuspecting mark, or the misguided vaginal slapping that occurs with peculiar regularity in machismo-fogged pornos. Sorry and/or you’re welcome.

The next part of this book establishes, instead, general tactics for performing a few run-of-the-mill acts, and variations on how to personalize sex. Try all of it. No matter what you’re doing, do it like the entire meaning of life can be translated through your sexual talent… because, if you do, that’s kind of true.

KISSING’S NOT DEAD

Kissing may seem so chaste, in the context of sex that involves more body parts than your lips alone. It’s not. Being a good kisser is elemental to almost every other sexual undertaking, even if it’s only because you know what’s up when it comes to using pressure well. How you make out with one person might be totally different from how you french another, so it doesn’t get boring as long as you’re curious about that.

Kissing isn’t just about your lips, anyway. Pay attention to where your hands go—to shoulders, the sides and/or back of necks (this area is flush with nerve endings, and it’s nice to imagine them racing around under your fingers), hips, waists, and the smalls of backs.

Eyes-wise, some people are uneasy when the person they’re frenching keeps the shutters open, but, as I have thought since first hearing this as a kid: How would you know if someone was both open-eyed and–mouthed unless you were? Those people are full of it!!! If they weren’t, they literally wouldn’t see the difference.

ORAL MYSTERIES

Squished somewhere between “breakfast lasagna” (regular lasagna eaten before 12 p.m.), Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the fact that “fostering kittens” is defined as
getting to hang with three tiny cat-cubs until they mature into sullen jerks
, oral sex occupies a top spot on the list of all that’s worth spending time on. Giving blow jobs and eating pussy are my sexual pay dirt: I’m most turned on by other people’s sexual pleasure, so my personal taste is that
tasting other persons
, a horrible euphemism for going down on people, has the highest value of any tendered sexual act. This doesn’t have to be true in your case, but for me, it means not that I am expecting something in return, but it’s usually the
simplest way to knock off somebody’s socks. (I ask you to reconsider your judgment if you are having sex with a person who hasn’t already removed them.) Its recipient can’t replicate what I’m doing by themselves, so if you shred at giving head, you become a specific kind of sexual asset. This goes doubly if you serve them a baked Italian pasta dish in the morning should they stay over.

I had to learn to love going down on people the not-always-good old-fashioned way: trial and error. There was
so
much error, in my early years: “watch your teeth” = the heavily reprised prayer flung at this halfway-feral teenage seraphim of the third base. The archaic practice of blindly hoping you’re doing something right—of ascertaining whether that’s the case
only
by interpreting moans—isn’t as worthwhile when you realize that you can open your mouth for one of its other uses: talking about it.

HOW TO FINGER

Fingering someone can mean more than simply putting two digits inside the vagina in question. Some people love being stroked through their underwear, or their clits touched with just a finger or two, or having a person fuck them with part (or all) of their hand.

The feminine handjob can be its own pet—more than a stopgap during the approach to lingual or genital… jobs. If you’re involved in sex of the latter case, fingering can efficaciously ready a person with a vagina for penetrative sex. So: You can shuffle fingering in with other acts, but it feels impeccable on its own.

Look at your partner’s vagina—the positioning of her labia (outer lips), clitoris (small, circular, nerve-ending-packed area at the top of the orifice), vulva (inner lips), and so on. You can make someone’s day without being able to define just what it is you’re touching, but I find that degree of talent rare… and if you’re a man who is totally 100 percent positive there’s no need to bother
knowing what the parts of a vagina are because you know intrinsically that you’ve got it all figured out, you are very likely wrong about yourself, I’m sorry to say. Knowing how to label an anatomical diagram is just the beginning of fingering someone. Here are some more stravagems:

There are preparatory concerns that shouldn’t be overlooked. Rather than trying to cram a dry hand into your partner, make sure your fingers are wet. Put your fingers in your mouth or use some lube to make it feel natural instead of weird and arid. Why do some people think that pummeling you with their dry knuckles, as though you’re scrapping in the street over some sports misunderstanding or something, is exactly what provokes orgasms? I want nothing to do with those kind of fisticuffs.

What’s up with your nails? If they’re long, don’t put them on a very sensitive part of your partner. This is the vaginal equivalent of toothy head, so invest in some nail clippers and come back later. (But not too much later, please.)

The sensitivity of most clitorises is tough to adequately understand unless you have one yourself. You know how being tickled is pleasant enough if someone does it lightly, but almost hurts your insides when it feels like too much? It’s like that, kind of, but even more intense. I like getting fingered most when people start outside of my panties. The subdued friction gets me acclimated and makes me want to rip the person’s clothing to tatters with my teeth.

Underneath that: With two non-parched fingertips (you can also put them in your partner’s mouth, if you’re super hot) pass over your partner’s clitoris quickly back and forth, skating on it carefully. If you’ve settled that they should talk about what they like, they’ll tell you if they’d like to be handled with less fragility.

If you keep going, start by easing one finger inside unless you’re directed differently. Slowly push your index finger in until it can’t go farther, then remove it slowly and methodically, as though withdrawal were the entire point of this. Do that a
few more times, quickening the time signature as you go. If you haven’t yet, move to two fingers if you’re being met with audible gratitude. Listen for what she likes, or have her tell you.

On the Spot

Every person touching a V can learn to locate a G-spot, which is found in a little area way inside a vagina, up against the top of it. It feels spongy and, for those who are having it touched, heady as fuck when gentle pressure is applied to it.

When your finger is all the way inside a person and the non-fingernail side is facing the ceiling, make the come-hither motion like a sleaze in a 1950s movie set in Europe twice in a row and, if you’ve found it, watch your partner bug out. For extra fun and entertainment, listen to them try and make conversation in full, grammatically accurate sentences for an hour after you finish.

HOW EAT PUSSY

It’s 12:29 p.m.and I literally just cracked a domestic beer in satisfied preparation for this section. This is one of the most gloried aspects of all of time and space. I know I sound like a guru from southern California with this. I don’t care! This is what I mean when I deflect a certain question by offering up that “I consider myself, you know, spiritual?” The oracular and mystic truth I can impart here: There are so many ways to be a god at this.

Stop time in the beginning. For the first few minutes you’re giving head—and this whole act may last a very long while, which, in sex’s altered time zone, sometimes means “upward of twenty minutes”—you’d do well to elongate every single one of your movements by going at about half the speed at which you’re naturally inclined.

Mentally outline the parts of your partner’s vagina by also
tracing them with your tongue. As you’re taking your time, you can make a map key of their responses to being touched in each area. Go over again, and press with your lips and tongue more firmly, then softer, then harder, at alternating speeds and patterns of motion. Responses to these, both physical and spoken, will decipher how they like to be eaten out.

Outside of your tongue-cartography, less thorough strategies are worth exploring, too. Use your whole tongue, flattened out, like you would hold it out to accept a tongue depressor, but stationary and firm. Sharpen it to a point. Focus on flicking it across small individual areas, especially her clitoris. Touch the rest of the person’s body with your hands, especially their breasts, and look at them, which will prove extremely useful when you’re masturbating to this mental picture later.

You can and probably should fuck them with your tongue, taking occasional breaks to kiss their clitoris, although be sparing with that if they seem squirmy or overwhelmed—while some people love relentless, dedicated contact, others loathe to be tickled.

If you want to use your fingers while you also give someone oral sex, they’d probably love that. When you’re using both your hands and mouth, it can feel like a lot to undertake at once. What, you are supposed to traverse this whole breathtaking (and neck-straining) landscape in a way that makes them moan like they’re being paid for footage of it, while ALSO trying not to let how turned on you are by them distract you from the matter at mouth… AND finger-fucking them? If you’d like to try this but are anxious that it’s all too balletic to do at once, use your fingers in a simple in-out motion and add movements as you go.

Be mindful of your nose. If you’ve got a honker, I am 57 percent likelier to find you very cute, but that statistic corresponds also to how much warier I’m going to be of your putting it near certain parts of me. When people dip their heads to pay attention to some lower region, they sometimes end up grazing with their noses, which can feel very nice… or very intense and weird, depending on how endowed the head-giver is (size does matter, in
this respect) and how heavily they’re breathing. Don’t poke your schnozz where it doesn’t belong.