She Comes First (2 page)

When it comes to pleasuring women, keep in mind the ancient words of Taoist master Wu Hsien, “The man must keep the situation in control and benefit from the communion without undue haste.”

2. Don’t Mistake Her Subject for an Object:
namely, the clitoris. With its eight thousand nerve endings (twice as many as the penis), enviable ability to produce multiple orgasms during a single session of sex, and no known purpose other than pleasure, is it any wonder that Masters and Johnson proclaimed the clitoris “a unique organ in the total of humanity”? The clitoris has over
eighteen
parts, both visible and hidden, that participate in the production of pleasure. (Keep reading, and you’ll learn how to master each and every one of them.) Contrary to conventional wisdom—at least the kind that’s as common as Ben-Gay and mildew in the men’s locker room—the clitoris is much more than just a “love button,” it’s a sophisticated network of arousal that has more hot spots than a latent volcano.

3. The Tongue Is Mightier than the Sword:
especially when it comes to clitoral stimulation. Even porn star Ron Jeremy, in possession of the famous ten-inch member, observed, “More women have gotten off with my tongue than with my penis.” Shere Hite, author of the
Hite Report on Sexuality,
went so far as to suggest, “Intercourse was never meant to stimulate women to orgasm.” One of the reasons for this is that the clitoris is about 2 to 3 cm closer to the front of the woman’s body than the vaginal opening. During intercourse, the penis often misses the clitoris altogether.

In
Sex: A Man’s Guide,
the authors cite a study in which ninety-eight wives in happy, stable marriages kept a sex diary that noted the frequency of sexual activity and the level of satisfaction. Of all the activities they mentioned,
cunnilingus ranked as the most satisfying.
Eighty-two percent said having their husbands pleasure them orally was very satisfying; the next highest activity, intercourse, was rated very satisfying by only 68 percent. The women reported that during intercourse they reached orgasm about 25 percent of the time.
But they reached orgasm 81 percent of the time during oral sex.
As Dr. Alex Comfort wrote of cunnilingus in
The New Joy of Sex,
“One can give the woman dozens of orgasms in this way and she may still want to go on from there.”

4. Learn from Your Mistakes:
Unlike the adolescent boys of the Cook Island of Mangaia, who, according to author Shane Mooney, are trained in the finer points of breast stimulation, cunnilingus, and delayed ejaculation in order to guarantee the pleasure of their future partners, our Western education is, alas, an incomplete one. When surveyed by Shere Hite regarding their partners’ oral techniques, the vast majority of women complained that guys were too rough, too impatient; too fast, too slow; off target, or they changed rhythm at the wrong time. One woman even exclaimed, “It seems like he is trying to erase my clitoris.”

Yikes!

But what many women don’t know is that men yearn for feedback and guidance. They crave instruction, but communicating about sex is far from easy, and words often fail us in the heat of the moment. As author Sally Tisdale put it in her book
Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate Philosophy of Sex,
“We can’t really explain how arousal feels, what an orgasm is, and the closer we get to one, the less value words have, the less we can use language at all.”

So we turn to sex books and magazines or, worse, cheesy porno flicks, and locker-room banter. Most books take an encyclopedic approach to sexuality—a little of everything, not a whole lot of anything. They emphasize breadth rather than depth and,
at best,
cunnilingus is given equal attention with other subjects. When it comes to detailing technique, most offer a few scanty pages at most, and almost all write about cunnilingus as an aspect of foreplay
rather than as a complete process in its own right. They’re like big fat cookbooks that are limited to a few recipes in each category. But cunnilingus is a repast in and of itself, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of unique ways to partake.

While
She Comes First
will benefit anyone—straight or gay, male or female—who has an interest in learning about female orgasms and producing them consistently through inspired oral techniques, the book was written primarily for those guys of the world who crave the knowledge to become better, more sensitive lovers, and for the women in their lives who are eager to benefit from their education.

The truth is that men and women differ markedly in how they learn about sex.
The Kinsey Report,
a well-known survey of human sexuality, observed in 1953, “It is obvious that neither younger girls nor older women discuss their sexual experiences in the open in the ways that males do.” A lot has changed since then. In an updated 1990
Kinsey Report on Sexual Literacy,
the authors note that women aged eighteen to twenty-nine fared better than their male peers in terms of their knowledge of sexuality and attributed the differences to women’s “growing belief that they have a right to sex information and accessible publications about women’s health.” So it would appear that both the women’s movement and the safe-sex movement, with their emphases on clarity and candor, have done much to educate women about their bodies and sexuality in the last half century.

But what about guys?

In both my research and interviews I observed that the women were, in general, more knowledgeable about sex and tended to be much more willing to discuss sexual issues freely and candidly. In describing sexual activities, principally cunnilingus, women were significantly more aware of the qualitative aspects, as well as the
technical details, related to their sexual response. While emphasizing the importance of personal experience in acquiring knowledge, women also confirmed that much of their information on sexuality came from friends and parents, as well as books, magazines, and the Internet.

Men, on the other hand, were not as knowledgeable about sexuality, and tended to describe activities such as cunnilingus in more graphic, objectifying detail. Men also acknowledged that they relied more heavily on pornography and firsthand experience when seeking information regarding female sexuality and felt substantially less comfortable seeking “touchy-feely” advice from parents and friends.

So where is a guy to go when seeking specific, accurate information regarding how to stimulate the process of female sexual response? The media bombards us with sex, 24/7, but there is very little mainstream discussion about human sexuality, and even less that is targeted specifically at men. Ironically, some of the guys I spoke with said that the television show
Sex and the City
—with its candid discussions of oral sex, orgasms, and other issues—was a principal source of information about women’s sexual attitudes and desires. Still others confided that reading magazines like
Cosmo
and
Jane
in private was illuminating, and that there was a quality of information that couldn’t be found in men’s magazines.

One guy summed it up: “
Cosmo
and
Glamour
are much more specific about sex and relationships than men’s magazines like
Playboy
and
Maxim,
which constantly talk about sex, but not sexuality. They’re more ‘conquest-oriented’ than advice-oriented, and they also focus a lot on gadgets, weight lifting, and getting ahead in your job.
Men’s Health
definitely raises the bar, but that’s just one magazine, and even it tends to focus more on achieving perfect abs than on detailed sex advice.”

Unfortunately, both men
and
women end up suffering from this dearth of accurate information—with men flicking their tongues like porno stars, employing sexual positions that have little to do
with clitoral stimulation, and generally being clueless about the female anatomy and the process of sexual response.

When it comes to mastering the grammar of oral sex, we need more than just a handful of random tips gleaned from the latest copy of
Maxim
or
Cosmo.
We need that veritable “little rule book,” as
Elements of Style
has been so fondly dubbed: focused, concise, with techniques that make sense, explanations that illuminate, and routines that really work—a book that inspires us to develop our own unique voice and sense of style.
She Comes First
is that book.

So whether you’re just starting down the path of a
cliterary
life, or are already a bona fide member of the
cliterati,
get ready to learn the rules of grammar and to deploy them with style.

My own education as a “cunnilinguist” began with sexual dysfunction—a long-drawn-out battle with premature ejaculation (PE). I was hopeless, pathetic. Just the sight of a woman’s naked body could make me lose control, and foreplay quickly led to end of play. In the language of love, I couldn’t get past the first syllable. I was sure that on my gravestone, my epitaph would read, “He came. He saw. And then he came again.”

Later in life, I learned from my study of the pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that the typical male sustains penetrative thrusting, on average, for about two and a half minutes. That provided some small comfort, but at the time I felt terribly alone. I often wondered why I was “biologically cursed” to reach orgasm so quickly. Was it a vestigial remnant of the evolutionary battles of natural selection, when a man had to spread his seed quickly in order to ensure the propagation of his genetic material? Would Charles Darwin have told me that what I considered a grievous weakness was, in fact, a competitive advantage in the struggle for the survival of the fittest? Perhaps, but to me it felt more like the “barely hanging on of the unluckiest.”

Today, I am convinced that one of the main sources of PE is poor masturbation habits—how boys are taught, or rather
not
taught, to do it quickly, furtively, and shrouded in taboo and secrecy. It doesn’t take long for a young man to program himself to seek his pleasure quickly, and as we all know, bad habits are difficult to break. Perhaps if someone had told me early on to masturbate with a woman’s orgasm in mind, rather than my own, I would have been spared years of turmoil.

I was a sexual cripple, and oral sex became my crutch. If I couldn’t satisfy a woman with my penis, then I’d sure as hell satisfy her with my mouth! I can still remember all the fears, preconceptions, and blunders of my early experiences in college. My first forays into cunnilingus were not unlike many men’s—hesitant, tentative; going down here and there for a few licks. I learned through trial and error, but eventually came to realize that cunnilingus was much more than just an arbitrary, or optional, aspect of foreplay; it was
coreplay.
It was an essential process—with a beginning, middle, and end—for leading a woman through the many stages of arousal that eventually culminate in climax. Cunnilingus not only enabled me to pleasure a woman utterly and completely, it allowed me to stop worrying about sex and start enjoying it. In doing so, I was able to drop the anxiety, develop greater self-control, and become a better lover overall. Cunnilingus certainly saved my sex life, and when I think about all the depression and heartache I suffered as a result of my battles with PE, it’s not so far off to say that it saved my
entire
life.

I’ll never forget the first time I ushered a woman into orgasm with my tongue. It was a watershed moment. I felt as E. B. White did when, recalling his years as a young struggling writer in New York, he described how it felt to sit down for dinner at Child’s restaurant on Fourteenth Street and, going through his mail, discover his first check for a magazine piece he had written: “I can still remember the feeling that this was it, I was a pro at last. It was a good feeling and I enjoyed the meal.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Today, I’m happily married and able to make love successfully, but I still believe wholeheartedly in the “way of the tongue.” It’s simply the tool best suited for the job. More than that, I believe that cunnilingus is the most intimate, respectful, and rewarding sexual act a man can engage in. As Sally Tisdale wrote, “To submit to another’s belly, or another’s mouth. Oral sex may be the most potent of sexual acts. It is an act of power derived from the most vulnerable kind of intimacy.”

Some people refer to oral sex as mouth-music, and as a musician I guess you can say I’m well down the path of accomplishment. But it wasn’t until I met my wife that I found my Stradivarius—unique, beautiful, and priceless. If she is my violin, then I am her bow. I encourage you to find your Stradivarius. And when you do, protect, cherish, and remain constant to it, for then you will be able to play as a master.