In the Moment: Or Why I Love Oral

Two sessions ago, my therapist asked me if I could identify circumstances in which I feel truly in the moment. There was only one thing that came to mind. I knew If I could quiet the clutter in my mind, I would answer for her in the form of a story from another time in my life.

What follows is a retelling of my response, in narrative form, to a similar question posed by a female friend who had become uber-curious about my psyche and its many quirks. We had never been intimate with each other, until I acted upon an impulse that told me there was only one way to answer her.

Here is that narrative of my reply to her:

"Let me show you," I told her, and I asked her to trust me. There was no other way to explain.

It would be accurate, but incomplete, to say I coaxed her to the bed and gently nudged her onto her back, fully reclined. I held her hand the whole way, and I made constant eye contact, looking only there until I believed I was willing her to follow my lead, and that when I believed, she would believe and follow. This was new for us; I had no sense of how she would react. But she seemed to really want to know, and she could tell I really wanted to explain. For some reason, when I asked her to trust me, she did.

This was summer, so the logistics were easier than if she'd been dressed for a walk in winter. We were going to a park later, and she wore shorts, flip-flops and a T-shirt. I don't think I would have chosen this way to answer her had the conditions been different. Not that I thought of any of that at the time. I was already narrowing my focus. I was getting there.

There was a point at which I was no longer just removing the second flip-flop and not quite fully massaging her left foot, but I'd bet neither of us could precisely identify it. One motion dissolved into the next, and they became part of some new thing, in part a design and in part a happen-upon, an accidental gesture of messy, awkward reality. I refused to believe anything but that I knew what I was doing, and again looking her in the eye, I communicated that belief with a silent confidence that came from some reserve long forgotten.

We had once laughed about people with foot fetishes, people who loved to have their toes sucked, and we giggled in the conspiracy of the self-restrained, the non-daring, the safe, the unwilling to explore. But after all, our relationship was hard to define, so on some level we were keeping a protective barrier standing — between us and what could possibly be, and between each of us and all of our unexamined possibilities. But here, on the bed, after the sound of flip-flop smacking the hardwood floor as it landed, my mouth wrapped itself around one toe, and then one more.

Nervous laughter, yes. Then, a long, breathless silence. Then, a protracted, deep inhale.

And I began working my way toward the point of it all.

The first time I kissed my way up a woman's legs, I didn't think about so many of the things that would occur to me later. That she'd shaved them that morning. That she shaves them most mornings. That she has to make time for that. That I don't. That, in essence, skin is skin, and what makes her skin different than mine, especially knowing it all ends up as dust, in this very room, and later we will wipe it away and vacuum it up, and then pieces of us again will leave us, and the process will repeat itself again and again until we've given our all. That under that beautiful skin is a dizzying list of blood and tissue and bone and so much biology that eludes me when I try to understand it all. That there is something about the contour of her thighs that is not like mine, and for that I am grateful and pleased. Oh, and so much more. So, I am glad when, all these years later, the part of me that is central to this whole retelling is able to be fully attentive to the present and not be distracted by echoes of those thought processes. I am glad that my intellect, such that it is, limited as it is, still does not get in the way in those times.

Which is exactly the point.

When I first tugged ever so slightly on her shorts, to pull them down and away, there was precious little give, because she did not raise her bottom off the bed. She hesitated, and I found her right hand with my left, and as fingers interlocked, I looked up at her and again silently asked for her trust. After a soft exhale, she pressed the bottoms of her feet against the bed for leverage, and she lifted from her hips, and her shorts easily slid down from my steady, but not rushed, tugging.

And we again were in uncharted territory together, as we would be with successive movement. We were, as they say, "just friends," and not the kind with benefits. But the benefits were about to kick in for her, and as she would find out after that, for me too.

I cannot say I remember the details of the time between removing her shorts and removing her panties, how many times I kissed and caressed her inner thighs, but what I remember most was the heat I felt coming off her as her panties became a compressed ball of fabric in my right hand. Musky and sweet, hot and with the raw honesty of the body and it's cues from the mind, or maybe the mind and its cues from the body. I can never remember which. Or is it both, in cycle?

Then it became a series of touches and teases, fingertips tracing imagined lines and circles, lighting up nerve endings and all of their power stores, small advances, then brief encampments — near the top of the thigh, far up the inside, then to that ridge that is no longer thigh but not quite the place in between the two. Each stop has a favorite sensation it wants to feel; every stop is on its way to becoming a start. I am moving toward something, and not just the answer to her question and the response to her curiosity.

Your imagination can fill in the gaps between specific remembrances. There were no surprises; the movements and touches were no invention of mine, nor anything discovered on that day, except that they had the benefit of being new to us, together, and perhaps the element of surprise lifted them to a place of what seemed like creativity and artistry but was really becoming hunger and desire. At that point, I was no longer trying to answer anything. I was ... deep in the act of answering, which is something quite different.

Yes, your imagination. Let it go where it will between the mental checkpoints of my arms wrapped underneath and around her, holding her hips in such a way as to convey to her that, without too forced a grip, she was now being held and would find just the right resistance to any necessary faux struggle, that playful attempt to flee on the way to surrender. Let your imagination take you where it will between that and my hands underneath her, holding her bottom firmly, and then more firm when her breathing told me that would be just fine, thank you. And when my breathing told her most tender folds of my nearness to kissing those glistening lips, pink and flush and swollen and unfolding, and when that kiss, the first of many, did happen, and then I used my tongue (because to answer her I didn't need it to talk; I had a better way to respond). And when fingers and tongue and mouth were each doing their thing and yet working in concert for her pleasure, but only after creating the tension necessary before the release.

And when I teased the very bottom of her belly with my hand, and when I took deep breaths that betrayed my hunger, and when my tongue made hints near the one spot I'd been avoiding, waiting for the right time, for the invitation, and when my tongue flicked nearby, and then closer, uncovering, playfully lifting the hood, teasing more, coming back, and then making a game of it. And when that game became me, with my tongue, supporting this tiny little part of her, like balancing a slippery ball atop something meant to keep it aloft, and that the game would be over and I would lose if the ball slipped and fell, and when it threatened to do just that, and how I had to keep moving my tongue to keep it underneath, and how the bucking of her hips made that more difficult, and finally impossible, and I had to let it come into my warm, wet mouth, for safekeeping, and when her twitches and full-body flinches popped it out of my mouth, and when my mouth brought it back in, and when those two things kept happening until a series of dramatic thrusts that shook the bed, and she moaned, or screamed, or called my name, or all of that, in wave upon wave, until I realized her hands had been on the back of my head for quite some time, holding me there, and doing so still, but now with a shaky, soft caress that felt like acknowledgement and thanks and stay right there and don't go anywhere just yet but stop because I can't ... I have to .... stop ... I have to catch my breath, so oh my god thank you but for now, stop ... but stay, stay right there. Don't go anywhere.

That's how her hands felt to me, on the back of my head.

And then rested my head on her left thigh, riding out the aftershocks with her.

"What was that all about?" she said when she finally could speak.

I considered addressing the fact of us crossing a line we hadn't before, but I answered her question as it related to the question that started me in that direction.

"Well," I said, "you've suddenly reminded me of something I once read about Beethoven, I think."

"Oh, and what was that?" she asked, her breath returning to something approaching normal.

"Supposedly," I said, "after he played a composition for someone, that person asked him what it meant. So Beethoven immediately played it again. The implication, I think, was the piece of music was its own meaning, its own definition of itself. There was no way to 'explain' it but to play it, again."

She looked at me and then opened her eyes wide.

"Ohh, if you think I am ready to go again ..."

And we both laughed. But the way she looked at me, I knew she was struggling to understand.

"No, let me try to put it into words, because you asked, and as much as I want what just happened to stand for my answer, you deserve a complete explanation. You just saw me, felt me, experienced me, as I went to the only place where I am in the zone you asked about. I wasn't thinking about work or bills or the future or the past or what I need to do later or worrying about what I did wrong last night or entertaining any of the countless thoughts that repeatedly get in the way of me feeling fully alive.

"No, I was focused on you, on what I was giving you, on your pleasure and pain and the deliciously elusive line between the two, focusing only on you, listening to your breathing, feeling your body language, seeing your nonverbal cues, wanting to be what you needed, and as totally invested in giving it to you as I could possibly be. Now you know the only time in my life when the clutter disappears, when things quiet down inside my head, when time slows down the right way and life no longer seems like random chaos but is more a peaceful, purposeful and maybe Zen-like act of giving and devotion, to you, to another, to anything but self-involvement and self-doubt and the many things that so easily provoke a veering off course from feeling alive. And what seems like a paradox to me is that with all of that said about being all about you and your pleasure, on some level it's the answer to my needs too — the need to quiet the noise, to find meaning, to give, to be tender, to love, to bring pleasure. As much as it feels like complete devotion and attentiveness to someone else, there is more to it than that. And yet, it is as close as I have ever been to what we are talking about.

"Now you know the only time when I feel truly in the moment."

And now you know, too.

— — —

Before I shared this with my therapist, a woman, I let a new friend, who is a writer and, yes, a woman, read it. I wanted to know if it was too much — too sexual, too clinical, too laborious. I wanted to know if it answered the question, my therapist's question, with the right tone. True, she's actually a sex therapist, and she's accustomed to graphic language and themes, but I wasn't writing this for any reason other than to illustrate for her why oral is my Zen, my yoga, my meditation, by sense of fully being in the moment with something, when nothing else I know will allow me to be so immersed.

I wanted to make it a narrative, and to walk her through each moment, so she could understand the attention to detail with which I give oral, so she'd know this was not some empty or prurient exercise, but rather, a virtual tour of my mind as I channel it toward the one liberating and peaceful focus I know.

When my new friend, S, finished reading this, she whistled aloud and then was silent for almost a minute.

"If," she finally said, "I were your therapist, as soon as I reached the end of this story, I would walk over to you and straddle your face — without apology. Holy fuck."

I laughed, a bit nervously, because I wasn't expecting that kind of reply.

"Do you know how much pussy you'll get to eat if you publish this story?" she said, grinning.

I hurriedly shot down that possibility.

"No, it's not for public consumption," I said. "It's simply an assignment for therapy, and a way for me to put my therapist inside my head for a moment, so she can help me come to terms with my oral obsessions."

She looked at me, perhaps to gauge whether I were serious.

"I get that," she said, "but you have to publish this. I'm betting you're not the only person who is like this. I know I love to suck cock for that reason, but I could never write it like you can. You put it in a way I could relate to, and I'd imagine lots of people can relate to it. I think they'd enjoy reading it, especially the ones whose panties will be wet after they read it."

But, I insisted, this is not meant to be a turn-on. Or at least that's what I would have said, had she not read my face and beaten me to the punch.

"It's okay to turn people on and also get your point across," she said. "Publish it. Somewhere. Anywhere. There's probably thousands of people who have this in their head, and you're going to articulate it for them. That's a gift, and you're a giver, right? Give, baby, give! Publish this bitch."

I nodded, and I started to take the pages from her hands.

"No fucking way!" she said. "This is my copy. I know you have another. Send that one."

I laughed.

"Yeah, this is going to come in handy," she said. "Thank you. And, you're welcome. And oh, if I weren't married, I'd make damn sure your face looked like a glazed donut every fucking day of the week. Holy crap, I'm keeping this bitch for myself."

I went home and found my other copy.

This one is yours.