Oral Arguments

As a heterosexual male who enjoys oral sex, I've never understood the "oral sex isn't real sex" concept. Perhaps you can enlighten me. And is it just guys in the oral-sex-isn't-real-sex camp?

—Jim

My friend Barbara called the other day to report on a "makeout" she'd had while on a fabulous South American vacation. In the midst of telling me how cute her Peruvian paramour had been, she let slip that mid-makeout, his tongue somehow wound up in her ass! What!?! Oh yeah, inadvertent analingus—that happens.

Now how does the definition of something as innocuous-sounding as a makeout (think hickey or hand up blouse at best!) get stretched to include a rimjob? She then primly assured me that while he'd enjoyed a box lunch (in addition to scouring her pooper with his taste buds), she hadn't returned the favor, so it wasn't really sex. I started to give her a hard time, until I remembered a Brit we'll call Colin.

Colin was a friend of a friend, and when he started lobbing charm my way, I giddily reciprocated in kind. I'm vaguely ashamed to admit I kept flirting even after our mutual friend leaned over to whisper that the object of my attentions had a live-in girlfriend waiting for him at home. Did I care? Yes. Did it stop me? Nope. (Did I live to regret it? Hell yes.)

The next morning I ran through the post-game via email with a couple girlfriends. I told them I felt bad about making out with someone else's boyfriend. Both ladies told me that while it wasn't a great idea to make a habit of swapping spit with a taken boy, it wasn't like I'd actually slept with the guy. I felt better about being a tawdry slut until I blithely dropped that I might've erm, kissed him on the pants and he may or may not have had his tongue all up in my business…

What!?! came the resounding response. My computer practically shook with their collective reproach. "That's sex!" they chimed in unison. So to answer your question, um, no, men aren't the only ones who try to weasel out of calling oral action "real sex" when it suits them.

Youngsters (a demographic I'm far removed from) of both sexes are also said to consider mouth-to-south contact somehow less-than-sex. In fact, a New York Times article talked to a psychologist who claimed that he knew of seventh- and eighth-grade "virgins" who considered oral sex "like a goodnight kiss." This and a flurry of other articles on the topic briefly made it seem as though every other 12-year-old had a cock in her mouth at all times. But as there is no hard (doh!) data on the topic, nobody really knows for certain if underage cock-gobbling is as rampant as certain news outlets would have us believe.

One interesting story I found was that a British study by the National Foundation for Educational Research discovered that children under 16 who were taught about oral sex were actually less likely to engage in full-on intercourse. Obviously this study would've never been done on these shores. Britain has the highest teen pregnancy rate in all of Europe, so encouraging kids to stick it anywhere but "there" certainly has its merits. It's also way more difficult—though not impossible—to spread HIV orally. (Though myriad other STDs happily move around through the mouth.) If Americans were less panicky about things like their children licking dirty bits, perhaps we'd have fewer pregnant teens.

So in conclusion, if giving a blowjob is going to keep some 13-year-old from becoming a knocked-up burden on the state, I say don't call it sex. But if a grown-up is trying to draw stoopid lines in the sand to keep them from facing facts, it's fucking.

For the past three years I've been involved with a man 15 years older than me. I have never met his parents, and he never tells me he loves me unless I ask him. He's told me we will never live together, and any vacation he takes is either with friends or alone. He's hurt me throughout the relationship by doing things like calling me naïve and telling me I haven't really lived yet.

Despite all this, I am completely in love with him. My friends won't even talk to me about it anymore because they're so sick of watching me cry over him. I don't want him out of my life, I just want things to change.

—Laura

I wanted the closet-case to be straight. I wanted the forensic scientist to love me back. I wanted the loser before him to like me better than booze. Did I get what I wanted in any of these cases? Nope.

Like you, I hung on for far too long, hoping against hope that boyfriend du jour would buck up and see the beauty that is me. He would quit drinking/fucking around/being gay and become my one and only. Eventually I got bored of my own patheticness and took action. I suggest you do the same.

Clichéd though it may be, the only person you can change is yourself. So I suggest you change yourself into a gal with a backbone, give this geezer the heave-ho and git yourself a sweet young piece. o