Sexual Dominance, Virginity, and Do Vaginas Taste Like Pennies?

by A Dude

A friend once told me that vaginas taste like pennies. Do you think vaginas taste like pennies? If you could pick one thing a vagina tastes like, what would it be?

YOU’LL PUT ANYTHING IN THERE, AND ARE POOR
a play in one act by A Dude

Cast:

– A Dude whose mouth is full of pennies
 — Some Other Entity

The ENTITY enters a dimly lit room to discover A DUDE sitting at a table. An empty ZIPLOC BAG is on the table in front of the Dude.

ENTITY: Yo Dude, can you believe the latest shit outta Davo — [pause] Wait a second. Is your mouth full of coins from your pathetic little change bag?

DUDE: Mrrphhawlab.

ENTITY: Seriously?

A Dude spits pennies onto the table.

DUDE: I’m researching an advice column to women, to be published on the Internet…

The ENTITY sighs.

ENTITY: Lemme guess. Shit don’t pay?

DUDE: And someone wanted to know if pennies taste like vaginas.

ENTITY: So?

DUDE: I suppose I’d concede there is some resemblance. But the question of “how dat thing taste” is a really strange one, I’ve come to believe. Perhaps it’s a function of how this is a fascination that’s very much on the mind of newly-pubed middle school boys who have no empirical sense of the socio-erotic questions they should be asking … but the entire curiosity of how vaginas taste seems akin to inquiring about the size of a painting — a sort of irrelevant category to consider when evaluating the totality of the phenomenon. Obviously there are a range of canvas sizes that are acceptable in terms of appreciating a painting. Too big or too small and you can’t get a sense of the thing …

ENTITY: Hey look I’m retroactively getting pretty interested in this magazine story about social networking that I left in the other room, so if you could wrap …

DUDE: But as with the taste of any particular pussy, as long as the painting is in the big broad zone of the understandable/perceivable, its size is just not going to be the defining feature of the encounter. I think, speaking as a grown ass Oral-Loving Dude, one is much more interested in other specific-to-a-girl Aspects Of The Vagina like architecture and plumbing. Is gently nuzzling the inner vulva with the bridge of your nose a possibility when you’re really going for broke? Can you find a way to be cutely affectionate and really distinct in response to how she’s built while you’re going down? If she is very very wet, can you learn how to use that in some way instead of just choking, because gasping for air is not sexy? These are the things a Dude who is actually present for oral sex is thinking about, more than “hey, 12-year-old-version-of-me! does this taste like something completely removed from the experience of this all being somehow part and parcel of this amazingly alluring woman?”

ENTITY: I hate our parents for making you. And for not giving us trust funds.

SCENE

So I’ve been “seeing” (i.e. boning) this guy for a couple weeks. I haven’t gone down on him yet because I wasn’t sure he’d reciprocate and that pisses me off. So tonight, he said “you’re not too much of a feminist to go down on a guy, are you?” to which I responded truthfully that I’m not, DUH. I actually really enjoy it (but, I do have issues with people who feel it’s perfectly fine for me to go down when they find the reverse unappealing). Then he goes, “good, because I’m too masculine to go down on a girl.” UM, WHAT!? was my inner response although I’d sort of expected it since he hadn’t made any moves (but was still kind of hoping he’d come around; he’s a bit inexperienced/very young and I thought maybe he was just afraid to botch it). I told him that some dudes love it, at which point he told me some dudes are weird and asked if I’d ever done it (negative, for the record, which seemed to weaken my point in his eyes).

So here’s my question: this is what I want, but I feel weird/manipulative holding BJs hostage in return for something he clearly isn’t interested in/ready for. Is it unfair to pressure him like that? Plus, it’s obviously no fun for me if he’s gritting his teeth (so to speak) through the whole thing. But at this point I also don’t want to give him a free ride on my mouth. Should I lose this guy or is there an appropriate and effective way to approach this? Oh, also, we work together. Also, is he gay? I have never encountered this before.

WELL. First? Too much of a feminist? I like to think of myself as a “male ally” in really the most humorless of Dude-Feminist fashions. I also really like a blowjob now and again. And since I was wary of defensively mainsplaining around this particular topic, I wound up googling “feminist blowjobs” before answering this question. Thankfully, the feminist blogosphere gave up a post by the fantastic Jill Filipovic (one of the many smart feminist bloggers this Dude reads frequently).

Her post has to do with some kind of blowjob-related Internet blog controversy — the originating posts of which appear to no longer be online — but nevertheless is pretty independently cogent on the score of how mutually respectful partners can start a conversation about de-patriarching the oral. (If they want to! Choices for everyone!)

But back to like the advice I guess? I don’t even wanna execute a search for “too masculine to get face down in a vagina.” Essentially, this is because you say this guy is young. I have no idea how old you are, nor what “very young” means to you — but I think you should a) try not to take this personally and b) blame it on his age. He doesn’t know the gospel of vagina worship! He has not accepted the well-pleasured clit as his personal redeemer! That’s cool. It calls to different men at different times. But even an inexperienced dude is aware of the power and mystery of the whole god-shaped vagina-kissing-hole in his soul — and can be a little bit scared by that emptiness in his repertoire. For all I know, your guy may have just recently figured out how to get his dick-swerve on, and he might want to stay within the realm of the familiar and be feeling that power for a while. Presumably you’re into what he’s capable of doing on that level, and so there’s no immediate reason to boot him.

Still, his semi-hostile narrowness on the oral front obviously has the potential to bring you down in a comprehensive way over the long haul. Ultimately you’ll want him to trust you enough to bust through his comfort zone and get down. There are ways you can help him through this, instead of turning it into a blowjob-withholding fight straight from the drop — especially since it seems you’re significantly older, and since you like giving blowjobs. (SIDE NOTE: pretending not to like things that you actually do like will only make things more confusing for a young guy. Or hell, for lots of older guys, too. Avoid doing this, if at all possible.)

A guy who is told that other guys like things or can do things that he doesn’t do in the bedroom will often react by calling those other guys “weird.” Those other boys are the ones with the problem, got it? That’s natural, because he’s feeling inadequate. But you know what else is natural? Being sexually proud as fuck that you’re with an older chick who TEACHES YOU THINGS IN THE BEDROOM. If you can turn him into that character, psychologically, he’ll sign up for all the advanced placement tests. Has he met your older friends? Maybe he should! And maybe when you’re all out for drinks, one of them can casually tell your boy-not-yet-a-man how impressed she is that he can hang with you. How he’s really stepping up and being a man by vaulting from his age cohort and into yours. There are other ways to do this. You get the idea. You’re going to solve the problem of repertoire-fear long before you solve the problem of men being entirely too much in thrall to their egos. But one outta two ain’t bad.

I have always been curious to know whether all guys know that queefs are because of penis angle and that they aren’t just a thing that happens all the time. Like, women don’t walk around queefing all the time. I just want to make sure every man knows that.

Thanks, but I have also yet to meet a dude who cares about queefs. “Oh she hot, true — and that pussy tight — but you know it also be blowing like a factory whistle at 5, straight up and down” is a line of conversation that has NEVER EVER HAPPENED (even sotto voce, or within an internal monologue) in the history of men thinking about sex. Relax.

I am seeing a man who is funny, sweet, creative and treats me like a princess but when it comes to sex he’s just too…nice. I like it rough (very rough!) and need my men to order me around and hold me down, etc. I have been hinting around about this in and out of bed and responding quite appreciatively to any and every thing even approaching dominance, like even if he accidentally leans into me if we’re on a crowded line for the movies. Any thing. Well, he’s not really responding and I’m wondering how to drive the issue and the need home a bit more in a way that will not make him feel inadequate/will not scare him? Thanks!

The sad truth: there is a chance he is getting your signals. There’s a chance he’s also down to dominate. But the paradox is that it perhaps feels wrong — or just not authentically domineering — to respond to a prompt to dominate. This is an obviously frustrating and self-perpetuating paradox when it occurs. And it’s also just the fucking truth. The more you induce him to dominate, the more he may retreat — reasoning that he can only truly take control at a surprise moment of his choosing. But if every night you’re shredding your own panties mid-slumber — so desperate are you for him to rip every item of clothing you own from stem to stern! — his inspired moment may never, er, come.

If you feel VERY comfortable with this guy’s moral center — i.e., if you trust his Male Ally bona fides on the Feminist tip — you might consider playing a little bit coy while making out. The next time he wants to really start in with the deep kissing (and provided that you do too), maybe stop at artificially shallow peck-kisses. See if he’ll take the moment to grab your hair and bring you into a hotter, deeper thing. You want him to argue the point in his favor, with an assertive strength. If he does — and if you like the way he does it — that’s the moment to say something about domination. Don’t say “will you dominate me, right now? please? even better, put it on a calendar and think of it as a duty?” but rather: “oh, so you’re dominating me?” And do it in that voice women have, wherein a line of text that could read as simply observational on the page takes on several additional layers of desire and stuff when spoken. That’s incredibly hot when y’all do that.

If he wants to dominate you more after you say this to him, he will. If he doesn’t, well, you might need to have an initially very-unsexy but very adult “direct conversation” about what everyone wants and is comfortable with. Maybe all he needs to know is that he has a longer leash than he thinks he has as an Officially Slightly Over-Cautious-At-All-Times Respecter of Women. But if you can navigate each other there in an actually erotic moment, that’s even better.

One thing that guys could do, to be more attractive to women, is to be less cheap. If you know this could help you do better with women, why don’t you stop being so cheap?

Hoo boy. This one’s a wormhole of definitional relativity. If money is very very important to you, my advice is to not date poor dudes — and to be clear about that with everyone from the start. You will be called many bad things, but so is most everyone in the dating pool (at some point). And if we are talking about living and dating in an urban environment where things are pretty ridiculously expensive, you have to raise the definition of “poor” well above the official poverty index.

It is okay to care a lot about money, by the way, if you want. But it is cruel to have impossible-to-meet expectations while not being clear about them to yourself, or to your Dude. If, say, you are dating a dude who paid for half of his own college education and bridged the rest with loans he is still paying back — well, he may be a bad fit if all you want to do is go out and hit the clubs (i.e., if “not being cheap” means buying you lots of $13 cocktails in Manhattan).

A guy who never makes a move to pay for anything and quickly asks to borrow money isn’t just being cheap — he’s being unkind and probably isn’t awesome in a variety of other ways that should be easy to ID. The money won’t be the end of his cheapness, if you get my meaning! However, being responsible with money — even the little bit that you have — can be an attractive trait in adult relationships. If your dude is responsibly managing his expenditures by finding less expensive ways — really well-curated dates, say — to show you he cares, then I’m not sure he’s being cheap. Rather than running up credit card debt to take you here and there, he might actually be scrutinizing his capital outlay now in order to put himself in a position to feel responsible about starting a family with the woman of his dreams. Basically, “cheapness” (which we can all agree isn’t the most attractive trait) is probably tied to other behavior. Is he trying to “get over” on you in other ways? Is he generally selfish? Then there’s your problem.

Is he thoughtful and empathetic in many other respects? If so, then he might be too poor for your taste, but not cheap. Though really, no matter what you do: also avoid rich dudes who are intensely, unaccountably selfish. Because you will be sorry.

So I am approaching my 25th birthday and am still a virgin. Like, zero experience, at all… ever. I heard it brought up that Tina Fey lost her virginity at the age of 24, so I don’t feel too bad. But at least she is witty, and successful, whereas I only have good taste in online magazines. I am thinking that at some point the V-card becomes like the old maid card, something no one wants and you don’t tell anyone you still have. But the only way to get rid of it is to trick someone. Probably while we are both drunk. So when I find someone and get him all liquored up, would it actually matter if I didn’t say I was still a virgin? Because after if there is a problem I can just leave, right?

Or, how do you get a guy to sleep with you.

PS- this probably will require more balls than I actually have. Had I said balls, I might not be in this situation.

Oh, young woman who deserves a lot from life, take heart! The expiration date for the virginity-card is not 25. It’s not even 45. (Though the ovary-card is a bit cashed out at the latter juncture.) Anyway, please don’t feel time-pressure about losing your virginity as it applies to your sexual viability/desirability.

Can I be overshare-y for a second? I lost my virginity probably too early, at 13. I was proud of it a for a few years, until I realized that I had internalized some very immature ideas about how sex worked for me. Because I was 13 when it started, you see. A really great thing, though, is that you are not forever defined in the bedroom by the first steps you took to get there. The first time you have sex — let’s say this year, since it seems you really want to! — you’ll be the person who had sex for the first time when she was 25. Half an hour after it’s over, you don’t have to think of yourself that way first and foremost. You can be someone who wants to have sex with THIS PERSON WHO IS AMAZINGLY HARD ALREADY AGAIN half an hour after your first time. (It’s always fun for both people when that’s the way you are together.) Or whatever, the next morning, etc.

My wish for you? It’s that you’d find someone you really dig, and with whom you feel can be honest before the first time. This isn’t a strict prerequisite — plenty of people just get to it, sans excessive intro dialogue. If that happens organically for you, then great! But if you’re artificially being silent about where you’re coming from just because you’re insecure about that place (and maybe worried that it will just scare off a dude), then you are putting yourself in a dangerous place. I think terrible dudes are secretly attuned to women who are doing this sort of thing, because they know they will be able to get away with awful behavior, since the women who behave this way will also likely feel insufficiently comfortable calling them out on it — or telling anyone else. It’s disgusting. Besides, if you are feeling nervous about negotiating your way to a first encounter with someone you like, he’ll take notice of that if he’s not a total clod. He may even ask you about it. If that happens, that’s a sign you don’t have to lie, or get him lost in booze before he’ll sleep with you. The drinking thing? Yes, it is a strategy. But it’s not the only strategy available to a single person on this planet — believe that. Especially not for anyone who has so fine a taste in online magazines!

Previously: Asymmetrical Breasts, Strip Clubs, and Men Who Are Delicate Flowers.

A Dude is one of several rotating dudes who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Dude?