The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus (3 page)

Many women who receive oral sex feel emotionally exposed as well, and this couples with the fact that cunnilingus requires them to be physically exposed, too. However, not every woman is going to feel vulnerable with your face between her legs; some will be empowered, and others are just going to feel that they are getting good head. Some women won’t feel exposed at all but will enjoy a pleasurable feeling of authority while deliciously pressing your mouth onto their vulva. And others will relish the fact that they can just relax, lie back, and let their fantasies run wild.

But for women who are in the process of growing out of sexual shame—the sexual shame that most women grow up with—having their partner up close and personal with their genitals is a little scary. For them, the idea of cunnilingus can bring up powerful body image issues or may ignite fears about how their genitals look, smell, or taste. Instead of thinking about whether she’ll get off from cunnilingus, such a woman might be worrying about what you think of her. Though the issues can run deep, women’s fears may follow a similar theme to yours: both of you are concerned about what the other thinks of you—to varying degrees, of course. Not everyone will feel this way. But for many people, the intimacy of cunnilingus speaks volumes, and when emotional trust is called for, you can cultivate it with communication and tenderness.

The intimacy and sexual closeness that cunnilingus provides is incredibly arousing for many people. When you’re with a new lover, going down on her can provide a rush of erotic intimacy that is a very powerful aphrodisiac. Couples in long-term relationships might discover that adding cunnilingus to their sexual routine opens up new channels of erotic play and deepens intimacy. If you and your partner play with cunnilingus like a new sex toy, it can ignite some pretty potent erotic sparks between you.

Enhancing Lovemaking

I discovered the clitoris early on, and when I was younger my lovers seemed to appreciate the fact that I knew where it was in the first place!

When it comes to cunnilingus, some people view it as an appetizer to the main course, while others would be perfectly happy if cunnilingus were the only thing on the menu. Whether you’re starting out in either camp or share a little of both views, oral play can add a wonderful new dimension to your sex life. Having a skilled and knowledgeable lover—someone who knows female anatomy and how women like to be licked—is a circumstance that many women dream of.

CHAPTER 2

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Getting Head

I love kissing guys after they go down on me. I like the way I taste and enjoy seeing the (usually surprised) look on a guy’s face as I pull him down to me for a big, extra wet one.

My friend Laurie is a very pretty, yet unassuming, woman. She wears no makeup, and she has a long pair of legs and a set of curves that set hearts racing. She’s outgoing, and at barbecues she’ll gang up with everyone’s kids to hurl water balloons at the adults. When she heard I was working on this book, she confessed to me that, until recently, she had hated receiving oral sex. “I was pretty uptight about it. I didn’t like having my boyfriends down there. I couldn’t figure out why they wanted to go down on me, except maybe they liked it, so I just kind of let them. I would just lie there and wait, and I could never figure out what was so great about it—you know, you read about all these orgasms from it in
Cosmo
. Then I tried going down on another girl and I liked it, and after that I’ve loved getting it.”

Laurie’s trip to the other side of her vulva may be a little more than most heterosexual women are willing to do—while, of course, many lesbian and bisexual women would be eager to sign up for the assignment. But the point of her story is not the destination but the journey. For most women, orgasm and erotic behaviors must be learned; they do not come automatically. Some women are lucky enough to “happen” into an orgasm; though even these fortunate gals must also learn to cultivate their orgasms and their individual styles of erotic behavior. So not only do we have to pay attention in class, but it seems that we didn’t get any class materials: no pencils, no books—not even teachers. Laurie arrived at a comfortable point in her sexuality by doing what she does best in her life: rolling up her sleeves and joining the kids in pitching a few balloons, adults be damned. And that is one way to understand why someone would want to go down on you—reverse the roles for just a minute.

While most lesbian and bisexual women would like nothing more than an invitation to taste another woman’s finest feature, if you’ve never considered sex with another woman, you may find the suggestion odd. And if the thought of going down on a woman makes you go “Eeeew,” don’t worry. The one thing we women do learn about our sexuality growing up is that our vaginas are dirty things, and millions of dollars go into douche and tampon commercials to prove it. Actually, the notion of female sexual organs being filthy (which is scientifically false, as you will see in chapter 3, “Anatomy for Pleasure”) has the theological backing of more than a few religions and cultural roots that run centuries deep. According to gynecologist Dr. Sharon Hillier at the Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, a healthy vagina is the cleanest place in the body, even cleaner than the mouth. But still, our discomfort remains, and for so many reasons.

The Four Fears

I remember that I had a low opinion of vulvas in general. I thought my own to be smelly and gross, and before I came out I remember feeling like lesbians were icky because they put their faces in pussies.

Maybe you are wondering why your partner wants to put their face between your legs, let alone kiss you there. Take a moment to think about why you feel uncomfortable—is it the way it looks? Smells? Because it’s a dirty thing to do? Is it too hairy, or not hairy enough? It doesn’t look like the ones in
Playboy
? Our collective discomfort with our pussies comes in four distinct flavors, and here they are:

1. I Don’t Look “Normal”

As it happens, we all have the following, more or less: hair, two plump outer labia, a set of unmatched inner labia, a clit, and a slit. There are variations on this theme, however. Mother Nature gets bored doing exactly the same thing twice, so no matter how much
Playboy
airbrushes us into sameness (the vulvas you seen in men’s magazines are airbrushed, waxed, and covered in makeup—some have even had plastic surgery), we all have sexy, perfect, unique, and priceless Picassos between our legs.

Sit down in front of a mirror, even just for a second, and take a look at your genitals. Vulval variations are many and delightful. Outer lips can be full, rounded and fat, delicately weighted like fleshy figs, or perhaps tight, trim, and flat enough against the vulva that the clit and inner labia seem to protrude. On some women the inner labia are hidden and nearly flush to the surrounding tissue; on others they can be very distinct, even long, or fluted, and they might rest outside the outer labia. The inner labia come in varying lengths and shapes; they might be heavier at one end than the other, one is often longer, larger, and shaped differently than the other, and they can be rounded or come to soft points. The clitoris has a myriad of guises: it can be substantial and thick as a thumb and reside outside the outer labia, or it can be a petite ridge at the top of the inner labia—or anywhere in between. It may be housed by the continuation of the inner labia, the lips right up to the tip of it with no glans in sight, or the skin surrounding it may be thin with the glans exposed. When it comes to appearance, difference is the norm—and your capacity for pleasure and response to stimulation have nothing to do with the way you look.

Illustration 2. Take a Look

Everyone has hair down there, and everyone has hair around their anus. There’s no getting around it, and if your partner has been with anyone before you, then they’ve seen it before—you can’t shock them. If hair is a concern of yours, one thing you can do is part your labia—and hair—with your hands when your partner goes down. Another option for many women is to lightly trim around the opening with a pair of small scissors, or to shave the area. Some women turn this into a task for their lover, and these lucky dogs often turn this task into foreplay—and take the responsibility very seriously. Shaving how-to’s are given in detail in chapter 5, “Tastes and Textures.”

2. I Might Smell Bad

Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but the truth is, of the several dozen women I’ve been with, none of their vaginas had any smell or taste whatsoever—certainly nothing offensive.

It’s hard not to worry about odor with all those annoying, virginal Summer’s Eve and Massengill commercials coded into our brains—and growing up with schoolyard cracks about albacore haven’t helped anyone’s self-esteem. But, gals, do we really stink? The natural, healthy vagina should have a slightly pungent, sweet odor, similar to that of plain yogurt: that’s because the same bacteria, lactobacilli, exist in both environments. These bacteria are the handmaidens of the healthy vaginal ecosystem, the good guys, the bacteria that regulate the delicate balance of the chemical and hormonal ebb and flow of our vaginas. But there’s ebbing and there’s flowing, and then sometimes there’s an odor.

I still have some issues with feeling like I’m extra hairy or smelly.

When the delicate pH of our undersea environment gets knocked askew, other, less-friendly, bacteria begin to outnumber the lactobacilli, and the resulting alkaline mixture produces odoriferous emissions. There are a good number of causes for the change in ranks, if you’ll pardon the expression, the two main ones being douching and sperm. Overwashing with regular soap, as well as not washing for a few days, will also do it. What each of these things does is change the vagina’s pH balance, and the odors are our vagina’s way of telling us to rectify the situation, send in the troops. You can do that by eating a lot of yogurt or taking acidophilus, which you can buy in health food stores. If this doesn’t help, the odor might be indicating a low-grade infection, in which case the next plan of action should be medical treatment.

If you are still nervous about “the scent of a woman,” you might want to wash up before oral sex. Taking a shower or bath beforehand is ideal, and if you’re even a little bit sensitive to infections you might want to switch to soaps with a lower pH Commercial soaps with low pH can be bought at drugstores. Look for brands such as Basis, Purpose, Cetaphil, Aveeno, and Phisoderm. Natural body soaps tend to have lower pH because they’re made with less harsh chemicals and usually less fragrance; soaps made with goat’s milk or natural vegetable oils are recommended. Low pH soaps don’t foam up as much as their high pH counterparts, so don’t overwash trying to get a handful of suds.

The genitally sensitive should avoid lubricants that contain glycerin, a kind of sugar, which when added to your vaginal ecosystem makes not a tart but a yeast infection. The same goes for other kinds of sugar, so skip the edible undies and chocolate sauce. Using oils such as baby oil or massage oil as lubricants makes your system work overtime to flush them out, and tweaks your pH in the wrong direction, too. More information about your vaginal pH can be found in chapter chapter 5, “Tastes and Textures.”

Once my girlfriend used some kind of douche. It was disgusting—I went down on her and felt like I was licking a bar of soap. I asked her never to do it again. Besides, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with her taste in the first place.

3. I Might Taste Bad

Just tasting her cunt makes me wet.

The stigma of the unclean vagina doesn’t stop at odor: there are countless adult products targeted at the flavor-phobic. Flavored lubricants come in every conceivable flavor (and in many that seem inconceivable), including peanut butter, piña colada, and champagne. These products cater to our sexual shame, but the ironic thing about them is that they taste terrible and have enough sugar in them to send your friendly lactobacilli running for the hills. They’re perfect for turning last night’s lovefest into today’s yeast infection.

In all the years I’ve been going down on women, I’ve never licked a woman’s vulva and had it taste bad. If she hasn’t taken a shower or bath for a matter of days, it certainly tastes stronger but still not bad at all. All the stuff you hear in the locker room about women smelling or tasting like fish or being gross “down there”—it’s all bullshit. Pussies taste great.