If you are wearing a baseball cap, and it is not positioned front-and-center on your head, then one of two conditions must be true.
For the record, I have found active catchers to be a tiny minority of the backwards-cap-wearing population.
— Frenulum
(Nothing to do with erotica, but I have been wanting to get that said for the longest time.)
Some of the most interesting comments I get on my stories are the ones that make me look at a story in a way I hadn’t considered.
For example, I heard from a fan of Royal Succession the other day, who wrote:
I was hoping they would finally "figure it out," but no.
That’s a new angle for me — but when I mentioned it to another reader, she told me that she had had the same thought. Perhaps I was so taken with the thought of Bert and Penelope and their ten-beejers-a-day regimen that I forgot to feel sorry for what they were missing.
Another interesting take came from a reader of Checkout. He wrote:
I imagine you had difficulty with the codes. MF sort of, but no sex; MC sort of, but is he merely delusional?
Now, I wrote the story as [MC], but after that comment I re-read it; it turns out to read just as well if one imagines not mystical powers, but insanity, in the shopper.
— Frenulum
Fellatio is an expression of reverence, performed by the eyes.
Done properly, it is articulate, visual, and feminine.
While technique matters, artisan cocksucking is not about technique, it is about attitude and purpose.
Let me expand now on each of these principles.
Sex of any variety is meant to be a communication. Whatever form intimacy takes, the intent of it is to put powerful emotions into sensations, transmitting them in ways that words cannot. The ideas are like these: “I love you.” “I trust you with my body, my nakedness, my vulnerability.” “I want to please you — your pleasure is important to me.” “I can let you see my needs; I like to know yours and to meet them.” “Your joy becomes my delight.” “You’re sexy, you’re hot, you arouse me, you excite me.” “I find you beautiful in body as well as in spirit.” “You fill me, you satiate me, I want to do the same to you.” “My body responds to you, just as my heart does.”
Much sexual activity involves a pretty good degree of balance. In vaginal intercourse, for example, the motions stimulate both penis and clitoris. In cocksucking, by contrast, his physical pleasure centers are involved, while hers are not[1]. It is therefore inherently a gift, a service, from her to him.
And that is how it must be approached. Never as a duty. Never as part of an exchange (“If I give him a blow job maybe he’ll do something I want later on”). Never as a reward, never as a down-payment on something to be demanded in the future. Rarely, if ever, as foreplay. Rather, cocksucking should be an expression of adoration, reverence, worship, thanksgiving, and awe.
Religious words? They are. And that’s the right way to approach the art: as a service of worship. There will be other ways for him to show her his adoration and devotion, and in a healthy relationship that mutual appreciation and respect will balance. Cocksucking is her chance to show him that he is the sun around which she orbits, her reason, her purpose, her One. She needs to approach the act with the intent of demonstrating to him, proving to him, that she feels awe and gratitude and a sense of wonder that she is the incredibly lucky one to have him as her lover. (A natural consequence of this is that he finds himself with the same feelings of awe and great fortune, to have a partner so clearly devoted. It’s a good sign in a relationship when both people insist “No, I am the lucky one to have you as my belovèd.”)
Fellatio is not about orgasm (a desirable outcome, to be sure, but not the reason for it). It’s not really about sex. It is about devotion. I call it cock-worship, but that’s a convenient shorthand. What it is is him-worship, communicated in an exciting way through convenient parts:
His cock, and her eyes.
Yes, other items come into play. Her lips, tongue, teeth, palate, cheeks; her whole face and head; perhaps her throat if she has learned to offer it. His scrotum, testicles, perineum; his asshole if we choose to extend matters as far as rimming. But her eyes are key.
Artful cocksucking is above all else expressive of the adoration it is meant to convey, and there is nothing more expressive to him than her direct gaze: her eyes filled with love, awe, gratitude, joy, reverence, excitement, and pride. She can show her feelings much more clearly and directly through her beautiful open eyes than through anything her lips or tongue could ever do.
What he needs to see is that she loves the act even more than he does. That by participating in fellatio he has given her a treat. That she is excited and happy and already looking forward to the next time she has the wonderful privilege of sucking him, and the next, and the next.
The best positions for good eye contact are with him seated or standing, with her kneeling or squatting before him. If he is supine on a bed, and she is sucking his cock with her head resting against his belly, all he can see is the back of her head: not adequate (not to mention her limited mobility in that position). If he is supine and she is prone between his legs, the angle of her eyes, if they are on his face, is too extreme to maintain for long. The soixante-neuf position not only makes eye contact impossible, but it is a distraction for both lovers. Obviously, good lighting is another requirement.
Concerns that readers have mentioned to me, about a small mouth or an easily-triggered gag reflex, are misplaced. If her attitude is reverent, if she wants (genuinely, wholeheartedly) to give her lover a blow job even more than he wants her to, and if her love and adoration and awe can be seen in her eyes, then she has all of the essentials for artful cocksucking.
I’ll mention one more essential attitude before moving on. She must think of herself, no matter how adept and artful, always as a cocksucker-in-training. It can be difficult for lovers to guide each other: to say “I like that” or “That’s not the best way for me” or “Try it like this”; she has to encourage him to comment and teach her, and convince him that she welcomes any information that will allow her to please and serve him better. This is natural behavior for a submissive girl, but is quite unusual in an equivalence relationship. Nevertheless, there is always room for learning and improvement, and she needs to welcome training and to let him know that she does.
There are three characteristics of fine head: it is articulate, visual, and feminine. I’ll address those in turn.
The vagina is a passage-in-potential that at rest has zero diameter. It stretches to accomodate whatever is inside, whether a finger, a cock, a toy, or a baby. It is always a snug fit. Therefore, the sensation offered to his cock is fairly uniform. Yes, she can use her pelvic floor muscles to impart a squeeze, and yes, the motions of intercourse can vary: speed, depth, angle, rhythm, etc. (and of course there is much more to the intimate act than a couple of organs). But by and large, the degree of variation to be felt is small: his cock is stroked full length with fairly constant pressure, and that’s it.
The anus, similarly, sounds a one-note song. Tightness and contraction are within her limited control, but just like vaginal sex, anal sex is sliding through fairly constant pressure, a uniform sensation over all of the cock.
This is by no means to dismiss either activity as unworthy: both are delightful and both support the intimate communication that is the purpose and essence of love-making. Rather, I simply want to contrast them with head as relatively inarticulate.
Cocksucking is articulate: she has control in a hundred ways over the sensations she imparts to his cock and its surroundings. For one thing, the tongue is a muscle over which she has unparalleled control — else the wonders of speech would be unavailable. She can offer varied sensations by using its tip, its surface, its underside, its sides; she can lick, lap, swirl, tap; she can ply it in lingering full-length slides or in tiny, teasing touches. Add her lips: she can mimic the tight constraints of cunt and asshole, or open wide, or something in between; she can kiss, nibble, caress, slide, squeeeze, or suck. Add her teeth, carefully used, edge or surface. Add the inner surfaces of her mouth: hard and soft palate and cheeks: she can rub his cock against their varied textures, or turn sideways for some visually exciting chipmunking.
And as her mouth is busy elsewhere, say lapping at his balls, her face is in play: forehead and cheeks and nose and chin rubbing against his cock with all of their varied textures and sensations — perhaps her hair as well, an oft-neglected asset.
In summary, rather than just offering a passage that provides some pleasant, productive friction, she has control over the sensations that she offers in her service of worship, which means that she can provide variety, surprise, sensuality, and different degrees of effectiveness. I’ll return to that last point in a bit. To an extent that vaginal and anal sex don’t offer, oral sex is a performance that can be tailored to each situation anew, shaped to meet his needs at a particular time, changed and exciting and unpredictable every time she kneels for him.
Now to my second principle: good cocksucking is visual.
I’ve already defined a blow job as being performed by the eyes (with assistance). I mean more than that here. As a general rule — with exceptions stipulated both for individual people and various times and circumstances — women derive sexual arousal from situations, emotions, relationships, and stories; men derive sexual arousal from sight. This explains, among other things, why the pornography industry is skewed the way it is.
Well, it doesn’t matter if he’s a “breast man” and she has the most perfect pair he’s ever dreamt of, or if he’s a “leg-and-ass man” and she has legs up to her ears and the most appealing spank-me-please bottom, it doesn’t matter if — well, whatever visual turn-ons light his fire, I can promise that they fade to insignificance compared to the sight of her, kneeling before him, looking up adoringly into his eyes, with her messy[2] face worshipping his hard cock.
It is far and away the most beautiful sight in sex.
If, that is, she has succeeded in conveying to him that sucking him is for her pleasure, that it is her delight, that the direction of gratitude for the privilege is from her to him.
In a missionary position, or lying on their sides, a couple has great eye contact, but can’t see the center of the action. In a few other positions for vaginal sex (e.g. rear entry, “cowgirl”) he, at least, can get some of the visual stimulation of watching. But as beautiful as a pretty pink pussy is, and let me be the first to celebrate it as a great natural wonder, it is not, and does not feel like, it is her. Whereas her face is just that: it is or seems to be or feels like her face is where her self dwells; it is the icon or symbol for who she is. And so the sight of her face engaged with his cock is far more impactful, far more intimate: he can see himself making love with the essential her. The sight is entrancing, delightful, lovely, and supremely hot.
Finally, artisan cocksucking is feminine. I tried to explain this a bit in The Education of Heather S. but let me see if I can do a better job here.
Think about a woman’s path to orgasm. Suppose we could graph the level of her arousal over time. It starts at the origin, and wends its way rightward (+x) as time goes by. She gets a thought, or he says something romantic, and the level increases slightly (+y). They begin to touch, kiss, fondle, play... and it grows again. But (typically) this will be a non-monotonic ascent. Even as the engagement warms, the clothes come off, the kisses deepen, the touches become more explicit, even as they cross the fuzzy boundary between play and foreplay, we would see her degree of arousal rising and falling. What we hope for is that, over time, the rises outpace the descents, so that gradually her arousal grows and grows; however, we would not expect to see a straight line, but a wandering path. And for most women, it takes a good deal of time[3] for arousal to peak into orgasm. Once it does, it may not fade: she might be within reach of another climax or more.
Now for men, the typical graph would be a sharply rising line, either straight or perhaps accelerating: never lessening, right to the top, to orgasm and then — a complete reset to zero. For most men, this does not take long (typically 3 to 7 minutes, according to one study), given the constant stimulation of manual, vaginal, or anal sex. Indeed, the different patterns of men and women are a source of tension and strife in many couples, especially if when he cums he loses both the ability and the interest to keep her going.
What we have in artisan cocksucking, however, is a way to give a man the arousal/orgasm pattern of a woman, which is why I call it “feminine.” Because cocksucking is articulate, it need not provide the steady, unvarying, repetetive stimulation of other sex acts. She has the ability to feed off his responses (remember, she’s almost always watching his face), to change her techniques, to respond with something provoking or calming, tight or loose, direct or subtle, hot or cool; to move from head to shaft to balls to perineum to ass; to suck deep, driving hard, or to kiss with gentle tenderness. In playing his body as she would a fine instrument, she can coax and direct his reponses so that his arousal ebbs and flows. She can give him the experience of slowly meandering to orgasm, rather than rushing there headlong. And believe me, dear reader, that is an incomparably superior experience. Sadly, one that few men ever know.
Of course, this also means that when she starts her devotions, she is committing to spending a long time at them. This should be no hardship if her purpose is, as it should be, to communicate love and adoration.
Most men are not prepared for head at this level of artistry. She might hear, when first taking this approach, some sort of request to hurry. “Just suck me,” he might say, or “Pump it with your hand at the same time.” (Hands have almost[4] no place in fine cocksucking — I’ll cover that in part 2.) Here’s why: he is conditioned by experience to think that his lover will only be willing to spend a short time sucking him; he is afraid that if he doesn’t cum within, say, a few minutes, that she’ll stop and say it’s time to move on to some other activity. The remedy for this is for her to explain that she wants to spend a long time pleasing him this way, that it fills a desire of hers to prolong the blow job. “Please, honey, I know it’s not what you’re used to, but I want to spend a whole hour getting you to cum in the most wonderful way I know. You can help by training me to know what pleases you, and guiding my head when there’s something special that you want me to do for you.” After he learns to trust that she won’t short-cut the experience, he will begin to relax and enjoy the incredible rush of a slowly, thoughtfully, artfully crafted orgasm.
Part 2 was published in October 2011.
Notes:
1. This is not to say that she can’t or won’t be sexually stimulated. A submissive girl can cum from cock-worship, because service is intrinsically sexual to her: the act of serving is a sex act as powerful and effective as any.
2. “Good girls give sloppy head” — I’ve always wanted that as a bumper sticker, but I’m not sufficiently bold :o) I will address this assertion in part 2.
3. A well-trained submissive girl can be taught to cum in just a few seconds, on command. Often it is more fun to let nature take its course, but this ability definitely has some delightful and edgy uses.
4. A novice should read this as: hands have no place, period. A note on this: don’t ever watch porn and try to learn how to suck cock from the “professionals.” With precious few exceptions they do a horrible job, the antithesis of fine head.
— Frenulum
“Your employment is terminated as of today. There’s no evidence that you do any work at all, nor that you intend to improve. Nor that you have ever contributed — I frankly don’t see why my predecessor kept you on for more than three years!”
“Well, now, Miz Winters, p’raps it was my effect on her... managerial morale.”
“Wait. What are you—? Stop that! Stop that right now! You cannot undress in the middle of my — my... my god. Oh, my god.”
“Not yet, but it soon will be. Now, I believe we were discussing my annual raise.”
— Frenulum
(Apologies to R.E.M.)
I sat out in the back yard on the bench, with a glass of wine and my binoculars, and was sorely disappointed.
I reasoned that those ascending in the Rapture would leave Earthly things behind — including clothing, naturally. I was prepared to enjoy the view — surely some of the chosen would be comely ladies! Alas, not a one did I spy.
Perhaps I live in a particularly wicked neighborhood. It’s the only explanation I can come up with.
— Frenulum
(Yes, Cathy, I love it when she blushes. How perceptive of you!)
A blush in any girl is a lovely thing to see. Just on a physical level, the color is pretty, and the accompanying facial expressions — averted eyes, a tooth-caught lip — are often endearing. But more, the blush is a sign that one has touched something that is personal and important, and perhaps that she did not know was visible outside of her private thoughts.
The blush of a submissive girl for her owner is even more to be admired. For often her blush is a sign that he is leading her along an edge — of experience, or potential, or self-awareness — and that she is peeking over it: apprehensive, but secure that he will never let her fall.
I am thinking now about the last time my belovèd blushed; but I’m thinking more about how I will cause her next one. It is not difficult :o)
— Frenulum
[Apologies if this is a repost for some subscribers... not sure what went awry.]
My friend TL informed me yesterday that next week’s weather forecast calls for temperatures in the 90’s (°F), and that it would be difficult to keep the tartlets from trying to shed various items of clothing.
Me: Why on Earth would you want to?
TL, laughing: I knew you would say that.
Me: Good grief. If it were my classroom, I’d bring in space heaters.
— Frenulum
I have enabled anonymous comments as an experiment, having heard from a few folks that this would let them participate. If the spammers show up I'll switch to a moderation model, but for now it’s wide open.
— Frenulum
Perhaps it will seem surprising, given the genre I have chosen, but there is one thing that’s particularly tough for me to write about: sex.
By which I mean: the sex scenes, the actual progress of physical engagement.
I love to write about characters, personalities, motives, relationships; situations and complications and plots; desires and fears. I especially love to dwell on edges and transitions, whether it is the young virgin’s dawning realization that sex is not an abstraction, but something that applies to her personally, or a married woman who finally decodes, understands, and accepts her submissive nature. I love dialog — my dialog-only stories are pure self-indulgence — and the personal dances that happen around the borders of sex acts.
But... when it comes to hydraulics... it is really hard to write.
Let’s face it. Sex that you are not personally involved in is, well, pretty awkward. All those legs and arms to arrange, sweaty bodies, parts slipping around where they aren't meant to. “Ouch, move your elbow, you’re on my hair!” “Oh, baby, that’s so — oh, oh, oh, foot cramp, stop stop stop.” There is no good universally-understood vocabulary of positions. And even when all is going perfectly smoothly, romance, passion, and communication undistracted, what is an author to describe? It's not like there is much mystery to convey, not to an experienced reader.
And don’t get me started on the inarticulate gasps and moans and sentence fragments that accompany passion; nor the un-spellable sounds of orgasm.
Finally, it often seems intrusive. I tend to develop a liking for the people I write about, and then it seems quite impolite: hey, wait, I need to write about the condition of this girl’s vagina? Isn’t that a little too personal?
Please don’t misconstrue this: I love all these things when I am in the midst of them with my belovèd — then, I think they are beautiful and real and declarative and significant. It is just that it’s hard to write about. But readers of erotica, by and large, want the physical details. If I write twenty pages of really hot prelude and say “Then they made love, the end,” I would leave people high and dry (see previous post about masturbation).
All this, longer than I intended, just to say that I am at my usual sticking point in Four Bars. Everything is written except for the sex — and, as always, it’s the hardest part to finish. Because, really... “they made love, the end.”
— Frenulum
I never want to assess and rank the various sensual pleasures life offers. Too much is a matter of the moment, too much a matter of individual specificity.
But the feel of running my hands up my belovèd’s stocking-clad leg... first the sheer, silky fabric, with skin-warmth bursting through, curvature, muscle, softness... then richly textured lace at the top, rougher on the fingers but promising, marking, celebrating, announcing... slowing down there, just for the pleasure of hearing her beg... then soft bare skin, hot, honey-wet, slick... It is by far one of the sweet ones.
— Frenulum
I just discovered that google exact-wording searches for Earning Her Tuition or Lust For Elsa return my stories as the first result. I already knew that was the case for The Education of Heather S., but that title is so specific it isn’t much of a surprise. The first two are. I don’t suggest that this is significant in any way, only that it interests me.
I also discovered that I Hate This Part is a song by The Pussycat Dolls :o)
— Frenulum
If you haven’t read Lust for Elsa this would be a good time to take a look. For it’s that time of year again: my dear friend TL is teaching a fresh class of fetish-clad half-naked tartlets the Human Reproduction lesson.
And I am once again enthralled by the competing emotions of these mostly-innocent, predominantly-virgin girls: their feelings of doubt, apprehension, fear (mostly driven by rumor and lies), and a desire to cling to the safe territory of childhood, mixed in equal measure with fascination, anticipation, eager arousal, and a sense that in adulthood there are wonders to be found. Their hunger for facts is intense; the first few tentative, embarrassed questions open the floodgates of inquiry. I find that delightful.
Every year, what astounds me is TL’s assertion that most of the girls have never so much as looked at their own bodies. “Draw us a picture, so we know how all these parts are arranged,” they clamor. Never looked, never touched, never dreamt of masturbation. It is a level of sheltered innocence that I find stunning.
To be fair and honest I should have listed TL as the co-author of Lust for Elsa; I will at least take this opportunity to articulate my gratitude once again.
— Frenulum
In a comment on another post, reader hecate wondered about whether men and women were equally socialized not to discuss sexual topics. I can offer some perspective on that.
[Stipulation: people who write to me are a self-selected subset of the population, and generalizations based on their behavior are not statistically sound.]
I assume it to be common that people masturbate while they read erotica. That’s why they choose to read erotica rather than, say, baseball stats, I think it’s safe to (generally) say.
The men who write to me almost never allude to this. They comment on the plot, or a character, or the nice editing job. And the very rare times the subject does come up (groan), it's usually a mention that the story was entrancing enough that it stopped being a wank session. One fellow wrote, very sincerely apologetic, “I’m sorry I didn’t cum, I got so caught up in the story. I hope you don’t mind.”
The women who write to me almost always mention masturbating and cumming. I get detailed accounts of which plot points or even individual phrases got them off; I get shame-free tales of soggy panties and spotted skirts and puddled chairs; I get told that they are making their keyboard sticky but that there’s no point in washing up since “I am going to read it again and cum some more.”
So perhaps women are not socialized to discuss their sexuality in public. But when they have a safe, private outlet for it, they do not hold back.
Which, by the way, is kinda hot. Thank you, ladies!
— Frenulum
I track a lot of readership statistics carefully (obsessively?), but for some reason I haven’t ever tracked the percentage of letters that come from men and women readers.
Nevertheless, I think I have a decent seat-of-the-pants estimate that it’s about 50/50.
Now, I know what percentage of readers write to me (about 1 in 850), but there’s no way to know how those percentages break down between the sexes. It could be that 20% of readers are women, and 100% of them comment, while 80% are men with a 25% comment rate.
Why the curiosity? I would just be interested if it’s true that half the consumers of erotica at my site are ladies — simply because it runs counter to the common perception.
Thoughts?
— Frenulum
I mentioned in the profile that I write stories and essays. If you are familiar with my work at asstr, you might be thinking "Essays? I don't remember those."
Your memory does not fail you. But I have undertaken to start one, with a lot of encouragement from some readers, friends, and loved ones, who have impressed upon me the need to share my thoughts more widely; the subject will be the owner/submissive relationship as I construe it.
There is no shortage of material on the net about dominance and submission. But most of what is there is about inequality, objectification, diminishment, and BDSM. I believe that two people who are naturally dominant and submissive, and who wish a relationship founded on love and equality, can have it. That a strong, capable, independent, self-confidant woman can submit to a gentle, caring, loving man without being weakened.
I have had a steady stream of readers over the years asking me about the respectful portrayals in my stories of submissive women, and I have had extended sessions of advice and counsel with many of them. Almost all have said: you need to write this down, so that other women like me can know that there is an alternative to what they’ve been exposed to... because I had no idea.
That's essay number one. It exists at present in outline form.
A very savvy fan said to me today: it’s going to be a long time before you can finish that — you should put some thoughts in your blog to get them out there sooner.
Seems like a good idea. So I will.
Oh... the other essay is about artful cocksucking. I get begged for that one a lot, too :o)
— Frenulum
I’m not sure about this. I wonder what will become of it.
There is precious little time to write stories, which is what I need to do. With another novel, Empty Nest, and a short story, Four Bars, in progress, and with forty-odd fragments in the Works-In-Progress folder, I feel like they should get my attention, not a blog that will likely have about five readers.
But... sometimes all I have is two minutes, and it takes far more than that for me to open up a WIP and re-engage with it so that I can write. Perhaps the tiny fragments of time will find a place here.
Whether or not this turns out to be worthwhile, thanks for visiting! As you know if you are one of my wonderful readers, I write because I must, but fan support is the reward I get for the effort. If you find these musings to be of interest, do please let me know.
— Frenulum
