Although a human
activity may have a number of
complicated motives, some of which are
base and gross, it is the aspiration towards
divinity, the desire towards beauty,
which is its soul, its life,
and its reality.
Although a human
activity may have a number of
complicated motives, some of which are
base and gross, it is the aspiration towards
divinity, the desire towards beauty,
which is its soul, its life,
and its reality.
Pass by this oft-requested PSA if you’re prudish. Written long ago at Quora when I was asked how to properly give head to a woman, I hope it will do its small part in making Dr. Helen O’Connell’s landmark discoveries about the clitoris more widely known, understood, and thoroughly worshipped in every woman’s daily life.
My august and life-validating status as a Top Writer surely qualifies me to now address the most important question on Quora. May I be man enough, and woman enough, for the task! (If I’m not, blame Ben Fraser, who sent the A2A.)
1. Be a lifelong student. From magazines in the supermarket checkout line to popular books on sex tips to exquisite ancient Taoist techniques collected in books like Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics Including Women’s Solo Meditation Texts, there’s a vast garden of information available about how to be a more delicious lover. There are excellent websites and an endless array of weekend workshops. Elevate your understanding beyond what you learned in dorm rooms and from watching internet porn. Great sex is truly bottomless, and whether you want to rock someone’s world for a weekend or keep a lifelong marriage from growing stale in bed, it’s possible if you’re a studious scamp.
2. Liberate your inner whore. I mean it in the sacred sense, not the pedestrian one. There’s a lascivious love monster living inside all of us. This may be your one and only life! Give yourself permission — since you’re the only one who can — to let yours out and revel in the physical magnificence gifted you by the gods. (Conversely, accept responsibility for the fact that only you can deny yourself that privilege: if your life isn’t a sexual symphony, step up and become a better conductor.)
3. Release your voice. There’s an energy center in your throat. It’s as important to good sex as the one between your hipbones, the one in your ribcage, or the one between your ears. If you’re not using it to make requests, issue orders, create your own brand of erotic poetry, and emit soothing and startling animal sounds, you’re permanently operating at half-throttle. Accept the premise, open your lips, waggle your tongue, and your happiness level and that of everyone you’re intimate with will go up immeasurably over time. The all-important corollary to this is to open your ears: actively and regularly solicit, tease out, and pay careful attention to what your lover expresses through her own voice.
4. Be a good librarian. Maintain your collection of books, videos, and urls. Revisit them from time to time. You’ll forget things because you’ve gone through a quiet spell sexually or been in a relationship with someone who didn’t care for lingerie or your magical Three Finger Trick. You can keep from losing them forever if you have good habits.
5. Never forget that sex is a form of prayer (to whatever you imagine is most high). And a form of play. Both sensibilities are essential. Holding them simultaneously is ideal.
Those are generalities, if important ones. Now on to specific techniques:
1. First, banish the idea of specific techniques! This isn’t a cow you’re milking or a lawnmower engine in need of a rebuild. What lies before you is a woman, quite literally the source of everything. If you don’t have that attitude about your sweetums, perhaps you should address that before trying to worship her most sacred center. Are you doing this as part of a kiss-lips / tweak-nipples / lick-and-a-promise sequence designed just to get your cock wet? Don’t bother — it’s a shabby transparent lie, you won’t impress her, and you’re doing men everywhere a disservice by perpetuating this behavior.
2. Assume the proper position. Are you instead here, on your knees, before the Goddess Herself, with the genuinely grateful, profoundly humble desire to drink deeply of her heavenly nectar and please her in every way? This is the proper soul stance from which to proceed.
3. Communicate. This is essential at every step of lovemaking, in every relationship. It doesn’t always have to be verbal — a guiding hand, a guttural moan, a sharp intake of breath all convey information — but it often must be, and you should be skilled at both expressing your desires and soliciting free, easy, joyful input from your partner. Whether it’s before you ever get sexual, or as you’re peeling out of your Superman and Wonder Woman underpants, you should make this clear in your own words: “Baby, I want to make you happy here, and I want to be happy here myself, and I believe communication is a big part of that. So please tell me, without being shy, without editing yourself, what I can do, or do faster or slower or softer or harder, or stop doing altogether because I’m boring you to tears. Talk to me, early and often. I mean it.” And do.
4. Breathe. This is generally a good idea in life, but it’s critical in bed. Feed your body oxygen, relax it, expand it, in every moment. The more deeply you breathe, the more profoundly you can experience pleasure in your body and transmit it to another. Consciously breathe into every corner of yourself all the time. Notice that when you get closing to coming, you start holding and shortening your breath — if you reverse that, you’ll both last longer and get far higher along the way.
5. Inhale reverently as you approach the sea. Women can be subconsciously or consciously apprehensive about their scent. Let her know as you’re moving toward it that you want to be just where you are: that you’re homing in on something you love, worship, want to dive deep into. A woman’s sexual center is like the ocean in many ways — in its motions, its life-giving nature, and in its perfume. Barring a real medical problem like a yeast imbalance, women smell exquisite, just as does the sea. If you don’t appreciate this, you’re going to be bad at this and she’s going to know you’re only trading a cheap nod for a fuck. If you do appreciate this, make it plain as day: I’m in heaven, girl, and it’s the scent at the center of you that’s taking me there.
6. Be very gentle and respectful to begin. It isn’t just that there are 8,000 nerves in her clitoris, more than you have in your entire cock, though that’s so. It’s that this is a delicate moment for some women. She’s making herself vulnerable to you — especially vulnerable if it’s your first time together. If she’s like most women, she’s had some dark experiences in this department with men gnawing rudely on her clit, determined to make her come in a minute and a half. Use a light touch, brushing your lips here and there, settling a soft kiss on her mound, stroking her labia with sensitivity and love in your fingers, inhaling with a pleasurable sigh as you settle in. When you take her pussy into your mouth, think of it first as a spoonful of ice cream that you don’t want to melt — hold it that gently, suck it that sweetly, allow it to warm and flood and soften on your tongue. Take your time, and make it plain to her, verbally and otherwise, that that’s what you intend to do. This isn’t a way station, man, this is the main course. Unwind and enjoy the meal at length. If there’s a time for more aggressive sucking, licking, and fingering, she’ll let you know it when you get there — but you never will if you start out all aggro. That’s not lovemaking, it’s an assault.
7. Know the lay of the land. This is the actual structure of the clitoris (in yellow):
Were you aware of that? Most men aren’t. (That’s why you should have things like Sophia Wallace’s Cliteracy Project in your url library.) Astonishingly, this structure was discovered only in 1998 (shame on you, male scientists, where are your priorities?!). As you can see, vagina, labia, and clitoris are very thoroughly intertwined. The discoverer of this glorious architecture, Australian urologist Dr. Helen O’Connell, says that “the vaginal wall is, in fact, the clitoris” and that the female sexual structure is equivalent in size to the male penis. In any case, the clit isn’t just the little “man in a boat” — it’s a bird with wings and a tail, and the wonderful nub you’ve been thinking of as the thing itself is just its lovable beak. To give good head to your girl, you need to attend to every feather, and that’s going to involve not just your lips and tongue, but your fingers, palms, penetration, and pressure on and in her hips, mound, labia, vagina, and ass. There’s a lot to explore, it’s all alive, it’s all connected, and stimulating multiple areas at once is the path to pleasure. Which brings us to
8. The G-spot. Do you see that area, in the second diagram above, about an inch and a half into the vagina where the clitoris surrounds it? That general area is very sensitive — you’ll find that if you concentrate the attentions of the head of your cock there when you’re fucking, benefits will accrue. The same is true when you’re eating a woman’s pussy: gently (at first, and as a default until you’re instructed to do otherwise) introduce a fingertip into her vagina, and begin to caress, stroke, and massage every nook, cranny, and crevice of her entryway. (You will find within most women, especially younger women, areas which seem to be holding tension, which have a bit of rigidity about them. Without attempting to Rolf them, just be present to them with light, loving, tender, perhaps even completely still touch. This will draw energy there, which will soften and heal, and allow more sexual chi and happiness to flow.) Don’t get in a hurry to discover the depths. In time, if you focus your stroking on the interior, anterior wall of the vagina, you’ll discover great sensitivity there. She may wish for you to add another finger, perhaps even two. Ask, if it isn’t perfectly clear from her movements! With time and attention, this area will firm up and you’ll likely feel a raised spot, maybe the size of a quail’s egg, maybe the size of a small hen’s, there. Here’s an approximation from G-Spot Lover:
You may not feel a pronounced spot at all, in some women, but the nerves are there. You’re at the base of the clitoris, essentially, and stroking here as you lick, suck, circle, smooch, hum upon, fellate and — gently, lovingly, with ample lubrication! — thumb massage her outer clitoris will make magic happen. Pressure with your palm on her lower abdomen above her pubic bone will intensify the pleasure, if you’re handy and can do several things at once. Pressing there, while massaging toward the pressure from inside, while sucking, licking, and laving the outer clitoris — well, that can be a very good way to garden, if you’ve prepared the ground well beforehand.
9. Did I mention communication? I must’ve, but this is a good time to remind you: be regularly, verbally, in touch with your lover. Ask her if she’s feeling good, if she likes this, if she likes that, if there’s anything she’d like you to intensify or repeat or stop or settle into a focused rhythm on. Listen to not just what she tells you with her words, but what she tells you with her body, her breath, her moans, her pants, her sighs. If you aren’t eliciting any, don’t bear down, determined to drive them out of her. This is pretty much always counter-productive and can even result in her faking pleasure to get it over with. Instead, coax her sexual energy to rise to you. Don’t focus on making her orgasm; if you’re good at giving head, she’ll either do that a lot in time or she’s the kind of woman who prefers the process to the conclusion (they exist). Do every bit of this with open heart, loving lips, come-hither fingers, your happy breath on her loins. Tell her you love her, make her laugh, create an atmosphere of lingering joy, appreciation, prayer. If and when she wants you to manhandle her more, she’ll make it very clear.
10. There’s no #10. From here it’s off the chart and into the marvelous mystery. Remember that this isn’t a two-minute project. It’s a song you’re writing, maybe even a symphony, with your fingers and lips and tongue and, above all, your attitude. Be grateful, worshipful, and happy — if you’re fortunate enough to be praying in this most sacred of ways, the gods are directly telling you just how much they love you.