At Kink Weekly, we like to see things done well, and fellatio is no exception. An eager sub seeking to better her skillset deserves guidance, and after explaining things for the hundredth time, it dawned on us to put together a guide–not for the novice, but for the journeyman fellatrix, if you will. Let’s move beyond mere completion as a measure of proficiency, and instead look at what brings the receiver the greatest joy. What givers give, and what receivers want, don’t always align. How can we narrow that gap?
Every kinkster knows that communication and intuiting one’s partner is key. The issue we encounter here, however, is that good brain effectively neutralizes the speech portion of the, uh, brain. If a guy hasn’t been on the giving end before, he probably has no clue how to explain what he likes anyhow. Getting words out, much less being clear and timely, is fraught due to sensory overload. The opposite end of the problem isn’t much better. Gifted givers struggle to articulate in detail the movements they have internalized over time. Some even treat their methods as if they were trade secrets, preferring not to reveal too much.
KW to the rescue. We’ve taken a data-driven approach to the problem, by harvesting tips, lessons learned in the bedroom, and, yes, porn tropes, all to break down the common factors of good head. What makes an extraordinary one different from a good or bad one? And once you sort it out, how can you explain it in a way that is helpful? The eternal goal: teaching good girls how to be bad bitches.
You say it’s not about technique, it’s about attitude? Bull-fucking-shit. All the passion and dreamy eye contact in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to handle the dick. Passion and adoration can be faked. Skills can’t.
Our Oral Argument series aims to raise the bar in fellatio education. You won’t see any banalities here like “you have to love it,” “you have no teeth, only lips and a tongue,” “focus,” or “use your hands and your mouth together.” No, we’re going to give you stuff you can use, techniques described specifically enough that they may be repeated and assessed empirically, and why it matters, as only one with the hardware can.
Stay On It
We’re putting this one first since it’s so fundamental. If you want to bring this thing to its logical conclusion, you need to build forward momentum. Too much stopping and starting, even to check in with one’s partner, works against this, like a waiter asking every minute if you’re enjoying your meal. Distracting. Keep up one thing long enough for a guy to form an opinion. You know those “hands on” contests radio stations do, where you win a car by keeping your hands on it for a week or whatever? That’s the mindset–maximize the duration of dick-mouth contact.
Every time you take a break, or offer some self-conscious commentary with that hard cock right in front of you, that time span stretches out in the dude’s mind, as he wonders, will you get on with it? While you kneel there before him, taking in the scene or plotting your next move, the principle of evaporative cooling is applying to your saliva, causing his dick to cool off in a way that is unsexy (think shrinkage) and counter to both of your goals.
Sure, building tension is important–more on that later–and some delayed gratification will be part of that. But there’s a difference between doing so artfully, and simply hesitating out of self-consciousness or indecision.
Stay on it.
You, Me, and the DNP
Let’s talk anatomy for a second. The main nerve of the penis, the one that all of the nerve endings eventually connect to, runs along the dorsal face of the penis, i.e. the “top” for you liberal arts majors. The dorsal nerve of the penis (DNP) is the spinal cord of the dick, transmitting all of your nuanced hand and mouth ministrations to the receiver’s brain. And there it is, right under your nose, running from the base to a point just beneath the corona of the glans, where it dips down to connect to the glans and frenulum. It is invisible–don’t try to spot it–but it roughly parallels the visible dorsal vein and its course will be slightly different across specimens.
Stroke this line with your fingertips and the undersides of your fingers using about the same pressure as you would use to make a gesture on a touchscreen. Experiment with lighter or more aggressive sforzando strokes, linear or elliptical motion, introducing fingernails or grinding hair, timing the movement to sync or counter your mouth, and looking for particularly sensitive spots along the nerve.
This is not a G-spot, or some magical sex tip; it’s something you combine with other things because it enhances the experience, and you care about doing things well. It is the salt on the à point steak that is your blowjob: sure, you could do without it, and maybe no one would even notice, but tending to this detail makes the experience extraordinary.
The Circles
Lateral head motion, the sort when you shake your head “no,” is key to superior fellatio, yet for some reason it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. The tendency is to mimic the in-out quality of coitus–which is great, don’t get me wrong– but good “neck game” goes a step further by improving on it.
“The Circles” exercise illustrates this. Similar to how one might draw letters with the tongue during cunnilingus, here, the giver draws imaginary circles with her nose. The circles can be small or large, fast or slow. Experiment with tempos and mouth surfaces to create friction against the glans, which can then be repeated with precision or variety, as the situation demands.
For one who learns visually, and who does not possess the male anatomy, the motions up front, with the hands, lips, and head, might appear to be where all the action is. Don’t neglect what’s happening inside the mouth, with the highly-sensitive glans. This aspect can’t be picked up by aping porn star motions, and is difficult for the receiver to differentiate and coach through, yet no less important. True expertise is indicated by being mindful of this duality, stimulating the glans without neglecting the remainder.
Slurp
You know what grinds my gears? This comes up in porn all the time. It’s this facile assumption that if a little bit of something is good, then a lot is better. In a hunter-gatherer context, this is a good enough rule most of the time, but in the modern world, it ignores any balance or context. Oh, you like it when I jerk and twist your cock? Let’s make it super twisty! You like sloppy blowjobs? Let’s make it super sloppy with lots of superfluous gagging and drooling into a salad bowl of artificial saliva. This is the mentality of the pornbro-industrial complex we are living in. (See also, the music of Kanye West.)
Sure, slurping is awesome, but let’s make sure we understand why. It would be easy to focus on the spectacle: gagging, choking, slobbering, drooling, and the associated power dynamics. Some women see this and think: if that’s what you want, no thank you. But there’s more to it that an astute fellatrix would be wise to exploit.
You may be familiar with those vibrating dildos that have little beads inside? So when the motor runs, the beads bounce and resonate in a rhythmic, tantalizing way that ostensibly enhances the experience? That might be the best point of reference for our female readers. (I’m told those beads are a bit of a gimmick. Okay, but stick with me here.) When you coat that dick in rivulets of saliva and start applying turbulent suction forces, that spit gets whipped up into a squall, slapping his dick like little waves crashing on a beach, delivering sensations you simply couldn’t otherwise. This is a storm you control: its timing, intensity, locus, whether it lingers or roams.
Slurping is like training wheels for good head, by requiring that certain variables be aligned a particular way, all of which you want anyhow. If there isn’t enough saliva, it won’t work; if you’re applying too little or too much suction, it won’t work. For those with an aural fixation, it provides a novel, wanton auditory stimulus.
Don’t be dissuaded by the gonzo, heavy-handed porn portrayals; used deliberately, the effects can be toe-curling.
I Love You Like a Love Song
Good fellatio, like music, follows a structure. When hearing a pop song for the first time, you might not know exactly how it goes, but certain conventions are followed: a hook, a verse, a chorus, a bridge. Without structure, tension cannot be built and released, like a sax-blowing free jazz improvisation that goes nowhere. I’ll explain how to accomplish this using pop as an example, though one could take inspiration from other genres, or another model altogether.
A pop song starts with a hook to draw the listener in. By the same token, those first 30-60 seconds of contact between the dick and your hand-mouth complex are when you demonstrate your grasp of anatomy, cadence, and intuition, and establish a theme to follow. I choose this range of time for a reason. Guys can tell pretty quickly what sort of skill level they’re dealing with; rarely am I unimpressed at first and later find my mind has been completely blown.
With preliminaries out of the way, the theme is then developed through an alternating verse and chorus. Those verses are when you bear down, build that forward momentum we mentioned earlier, and explore your partner’s responsiveness. Find a groove. But you’re only human, and you need to take a break every once in a while to catch your breath, right?
The chorus is when you back off a little bit before picking up the theme again. This isn’t just break time–it builds tension. If you’re killing it, that dude is going to want you to get back to it, and when you resume, he’ll appreciate it that much more for the absence. You’re not stopping completely, rather applying a different sort of stimulation. Maybe just hands, work in some dirty talk, egg him on a little bit. Keep it up for too long though, and you lose momentum, that dick goes soft in your hand.
There’s an optimal span of time to keep up the “chorus” that is completely dependent upon physiology, circumstances, and what has gone before. Part of this also is driven by biochemistry. The neurotransmitters responsible for converting your touch into nerve impulses can saturate their receptors, requiring a span of time to degrade naturally and reset. Think seconds, not minutes. But when you’ve cracked the code, and develop an intuition for the balance between indulgence and hiatus, it’s like reading minds. You know what he wants before he wants it, because you’ve calibrated the optimal intensity and duration of stimuli he can tolerate.
Comparing fellatio to a musician playing an instrument, or to an orchestra conductor, may be obvious parallels that flatter the notion of “artistry” peddled by some fellatio-centered porn outfits. I prefer the more workaday role of a music producer putting together a hype track. You set a tempo, find a hook that works, zero in on what makes the song work, and trim the fluff. The value is not in the originality of composition, but in knowing your demographic, paring away extraneous elements and playing up the catchiest bits.
It will probably take more than 32 bars: here, the analogy breaks down. Whatever model you use, the principles are the same. Establish early on how you operate and show what you’re capable of. Develop that; then, it goes away briefly, creating tension. When you bring it back, the pleasure is more intense for the absence. But remember, more is not always better–drag it out too long, and it comes off as disorganized, inattentive, and you start to lose your audience.
Quit Staring
A common motif in artisanal fellatio is adoring eye contact, where the giver seeks to convey a sense of devotion, passion, even service. And then, because more is always better, the idea arises that the gaze must be constant and unbroken. Puh-leeze.
Eye contact is great and all, but making that item a project deliverable limits positioning and technique. Don’t tell me, with some contrived look in your eyes, how you feel–show me, with your mouth, your hands, be responsive, assiduous. If you have to choose between maintaining eye contact and really going to work on that dick, please, for fuck’s sake, choose the latter, unless otherwise instructed.
Grab it Like a Shot, Not Like a Beer
Every BJ guide ever talks about using a hand on the shaft to assist the mouth, like no one would have figured that out on their own. We’ll assume you’re there already.
The grip here is important–think of it like you’re holding a shot glass, with your thumb at six o’clock, index and middle fingers at twelve. Your pinky and ring fingers are splayed out of the way for the most part. The goal here is to create small points of contact that glide over the cock, not to grip with the palm and pull it up and down. This also naturally centers your fingertips along the axis of the DNP.
The hands–try it with one or both–serve to both assist and extend the mouth. If there’s more shaft than you can get your mouth around, those fingertips work the remainder. A slight twist to the wrist, tracing a helical course along the shaft, adds variety.
The Harmonica
A staple of sex educators everywhere. The idea is to run your lips up and down the sides of the cock, perhaps engaging the tongue along the underside while doing so, in the manner of one playing the harmonica.
Thing is though, notwithstanding the popularity of licking from the base to the tip, the underside of the shaft (excepting the frenulum/head complex) contains many fewer nerve endings than the top. Instead, try doing this to the DNP along the dorsal surface–doing so blocks the view, which is why you don’t see it done much in porn, but don’t let porn production values discourage you from doing things a better way.
Engage the Tongue
Engaging the tongue is key, and easy to overlook with all the hands and head bobbing. As a zesty counterpoint to the soft, wet, sometimes indistinct sensations applied with the lips and mouth, the tongue is your precision tool. Employed properly, it allows you to send a message directly to his brain, via the most sensitive part of his anatomy, indicating that you are engaged, attentive, not operating on autopilot, that you understand the need for balance between repetition and variety.
Trace circles around the glans (three orbits for starters), or explore the coronal sulcus, but do so sparingly at first, in between other techniques, lest you overstimulate an extremely sensitive part of the male anatomy. Stick the tongue out when taking the shaft in your mouth, smothering the frenulum with a broad, soft surface, or use it to sandwich the glans between the tongue and the bumpy, slippery hard palate to create an intense, compressive sensation. Timing is everything.
Cadence and Cocklengths per second (Cl/s)
How fast do you do everything, bob your head, stroke the dick, and so on? The standard sex educator response in this scenario is “it depends, experiment, communicate.” Not bad advice, but KW believes in giving our eager subs a bit better guidance than that.
It does depend, and one salient variable is the length of the meat you’re working with. If I give you an absolute unit of speed–let’s say, slide your hand and mouth up and down at 0.4 meters per second–even assuming you can estimate that reliably in the field, that might work for a well-hung porn star, but a more humble specimen is going to get friction burns. We need a unit of measurement that can be calibrated on the fly, and scales to the proportions.
Try this: say “Lord Octavius” to yourself while stroking the the dick. Did your hand go up and down once in about one second? That’s two cocklengths per second. Even if stroking less than the entire length, that pace holds true as a baseline tempo: sometimes slower, often faster. Easy to calibrate in the field and adjust. (If ever asked how you learned to suck dick so well, remember: Lord Octavius taught you.)
Cheater Dick
We conclude with an example of what not to do. The phrase “cheater dick” in male dominant-perspective erotic literature goes back years, if not decades. Some headgivers figure, if the glans is where most of the nerve endings are, why not focus on that? More is always better, right? They think they possess some rare secret of dick-handling. Their method is simplistic, consisting of short, brisk strokes seldom stimulating more than the distal third of the dick, as if the remainder of the male anatomy were superfluous. (This approach is common among entry-level sex workers and virtually a shibboleth for shortcut-seeking, achievement-oriented Jewish-American girls. I know it’s not just me; Louis CK did a joke about this.)
To be fair, it is effective in producing an orgasm, if that’s all you’re out to accomplish, but men with standards find this unacceptable, even insulting, as they should. It reduces the male orgasm to a lame binary, achieved/not achieved, by exploiting a quirk of neuroanatomy, giving no consideration to quality or depth, pandering to the notion that feminine sexuality is complex, while the masculine is simple. The man lie there in a post-ejaculatory haze, not in a position to voice complaint, while thinking to himself that was nice, but it’s better when I do it myself. The resulting release is shallow, insipid, like cheap ice cream on a hot day. Technically, that is what you wanted, but you’re left wanting more from somewhere else.
Some doms are on to this, and counter it by prohibiting the use of hands at all, which is an overcorrection, if you ask me. (This is the inverse of our loathed proposition: if a lot of something is bad, then none is best.) There is indeed something to be said for hands-free head, but if the proper groundwork hasn’t been laid–knowledge of anatomy, technique, communication, and so on–neither partner is going to have a good time.
Lord Octavius is an intellectual property attorney, an animal trainer, and a Daddy Dom.
© 2016 Lord Octavius