How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [37]
I’ve talked to liberal gay men who see Bill’s penchant for oral sex as reassuringly deviant. One man went so far as to say, “I feel that he is an honorary gay man, in a way.”
The glorification of the penis has long been a gay male thing. Or, at least, “nice girls” weren’t supposed to talk about how a penis looks, tastes, or feels. But thanks to a healthy cross-pollination between gay and straight cultures, women are now freer to objectify the organ, too.
In 1997, I was invited to an Easter-egg-dying party hosted by a gay friend. One of the guests had an advance copy of a film her brother had directed for HBO’s Real Sex show, which featured male strippers with penises more than twelve inches long. It was a strange but very merry party as we decorated our eggs and watched the guys whip out their giant cocks.
Layer upon layer of sexual audience and attitudes was involved.
First, our viewing audience at the party was made up of single men and women, both gay and straight, and of gay and heterosexual couples. Of course, no children were in attendance.
Within the short film we were watching, the audience was African-American women, who frequented the featured strip club in North Philadelphia. The well-endowed performers, said the woman who had brought the tape to our party, were widely known to be mostly gay men, although they were performing for straight women.
There we sat, clutching our female egg fertility symbols but glued to the screen as we watched the yang to our yin—giant penises dancing away in close-up. It was a strange confluence of gay and straight culture. For me it was a watershed moment in the millennial cult of the penis.
There’s an old, really bad joke that was told to me by my misogynist Uncle Bernie. A woman goes to the eye doctor, complaining that her vision is bad. The doctor holds up one finger, then two, and then his whole hand. The woman claims she can’t see the fingers or the hand. Then the doctor unzips his pants, and the woman says she can see his penis. Says the doctor, “Lady, that’s your problem: You’re cockeyed!”
The straight women and men of America have all gone cockeyed, if we can believe the anecdotal evidence. Being good in bed now requires a lot of oral sex expertise. In towns and cities all across America, heterosexual women have been making great strides in their ability to talk about blow jobs, and in their dedication to improving their fellatio skills. There are courses around the country in the art of the blow job, taught by gay men as well as by straight women. There are Tupperware-style parties in which neighborhood women sell dildos and vibrators.
Here’s a course description for Fellatio 101 listed by Joy Toyz, a woman-owned sex-toy shop in Montreal:
This course is a journey to explore the various male erogenous zones, focussing on the oral stimulation of the genitals. Study tried & true favourites, including “Classic Fellatio,” plus a host of assorted intermediate & advanced techniques. Discussions and exercises allow an awakening to a more diverse and playful stimulation of a man’s body. This course is offered in both English & French. A male sex artist caters his talents for this women’s-only class.
In 2003, a Queer as Folk episode on Showtime highlighted the gay man/straight woman fellatio connection. Sharon Gless, playing the middle-age mother/waitress Debbie, was unexpectedly asked out on a date. Realizing that she hadn’t had sex in quite a while, she enlists advice from her son’s gay friends. Ted and Emmett show up with a bagful of dildos and proceed to teach her everything they know about the perfect blow job.
When her new boyfriend, a conservative middle-age cop, comments that she must have had a lot of practice performing oral sex, she gets insulted and throws him out of the house. Her tutors, Ted and Emmett, eventually have to go down to