I could tell he was over it. I could tell that my once-endearing traits had become a nuisance — could practically hear the internal pep talks he’d give himself in anticipation of playing the field again. When Max Freeman finally dumped me three months later, I asked, “why’d you spend the summer with me only to bail come September?” Although Max did not reply, I suspect an honest answer would include “blowjobs.”There’d been a time when Max Freeman thought the world of me. A time when everything I said was so clever and amusing, a time when the sound of my voice was something like silk, but my time would soon be up. He’d begun to drift, and I intended to suck him back into my orbit.

I pride myself on being a blowjob expert. I consider it part of my package: “she’s funny, smart, pretty, and gives an amazing blowjob.” Being single is being a seller in a buyer’s market. The same is true of caring for someone more than they care for you.  Suppose he had been single during that season of humid hedonism. In which case, my darling Max Freeman would have been just another sweaty guy waving his sweaty meat around, a pushy salesman urging women pedestrians towards his so-called goods as they pushed past, avoiding eye contact. Luckily for him: there I was. Lovelorn, on my knees, eager to please my customer, prizing his street-market meat. (I know.)

I’d have seriously checked myself into a psychiatric hospital had I not been certain that men skillfully con women into this level of delusional devoutness all the time. Show me a (straight, cisgender) man, and I’ll show you his victims. I do not deny that women play similar cons on men. A woman will have a man wrapped around her finger while his friends discourage his devotion; call him a simp; remind him that he’s meant to wear the pants and that a fuck should be the sole reason for their removal. When a man executes this con on a woman, her friends offer tokens of recognition. “I understand,” we say, “I was this way over you-know-who, you remember.” We recall how awful our exes were and recollect how much we gave. We sit with our collective grief. Men remain aloof, and women remain suffering. Such dispositions are reflected in the way both parties engage with or are expected to engage with oral sex.

A vulva is a Rubik’s cube, a jigsaw puzzle, a gadget without a manual, so it is enough for a man to try. It is enough for a man to push a few buttons for a few minutes without any real payoff. Women struggle to get off, and we feel the struggle to get someone off. When a woman does get off, she goes bananas. We alert girlfriends. We keep count of our orgasms like prisoners keeping a tally of days till their release. (A friend of mine claims her boyfriend has made her cum a staggering thirty times in a row! In ONE session! I don’t believe this, but I’ll assume she merely miscounted. It’s hard to do accurate arithmetic amid extraordinary euphoria.)

Giving a blowjob is really quite strenuous. It’s a locked jaw and aching knees, and no one is faking anything – you can see and taste the proof of a job well done, and with Internet-sized porn addictions, it’s expected that the job is, in fact, well done. But I’ll admit, matters of sexual politics withstanding, giving head is generally as fun and sexy as my mother’s Cosmopolitans lead me to imagine. Maybe it’d be more enjoyable without patriarchal power dynamics. Maybe these power dynamics contribute to its enjoyment. 

My first time giving a blowjob was in a Honda Accord, bent over the gearshift — an additional source of discomfort. The recipient was the Honda’s owner, Andy Craus, my high school boyfriend. Andy and I got together at the beginning of my junior year. He lived six doors down and was a year older. We spent weekends driving around the city. Most trips ended at vacant parking lots in our suburb, where we’d climb into the backseat and make out. He’d press his erection onto me, and I’d coyly graze it with my palm. After two months of this juvenile ritual, I decided that at the end of our next ride, I’d grant Andy Craus’ penis the honour of being the first one I placed in my mouth. I’d make it a surprise. Catch him off-guard. I spent that week researching — analyzing pornographic videos like I was attending a MasterClass; I read every online article titled some variation of “How to Blow His Mind!”That Saturday afternoon, I slid into the passenger seat of Andy’s car, acutely aware that I’d slide out of this vehicle a sexually burgeoning woman.

 I should mention that my first time receiving head came several months after my first time giving head. In the span between these firsts of giving and receiving: trees shed their leaves, Andy applied to universities, and I’d started and finished reading Anna Karenina. All this to say that young women familiarize themselves with male pleasure far sooner and more extensively than men do regarding female pleasure. I have since learned that this is pretty much the fixed state of things. I bet even the outliers — male feminist types who love to discuss their dedication to a woman’s pleasure— got their first blowjob before they ever performed cunnilingus. As a society, we are far better acquainted with male desire than female desire. It’s why blowjob is this catchy term, while cunnilingus sounds like a Middle English moniker. 

I think of the days when Andy Craus would pick me up for our weekend joyrides. I’d press my face against the window and watch him swerve out of his driveway. I’d rush down the stairs and out the door as he approached my house. I’ve never been one for punctuality, but I’d be early for Andy. There’s something about a man waiting in a driver’s seat — idling car, his hand on the steering wheel — that’ll have you believing, any minute now, he’ll be away. I blew Andy Craus because I knew he wanted it. He’d ask, and I’d reply, “not yet.” He’d push my head down, hoping I’d give into the fervent moment. I blew Andy Craus because he was experienced and I was terrified. I worried he’d tire of my sexual inertia and leave me for someone less stunted. When I blew Andy Craus — cramped, bent over that gearshift, inevitable lockjaw, my left knee dug into the parking brake. With a fistful of my hair, Andy controlled the pace of my movements, my eyes watered, and I thought I’d heave. When I blew Andy Craus, I got an inkling of women as deviants, partial to suffering affairs of the flesh and heart. I blew Andy Craus because he was the closest my sixteen-year-old self had come to Prince Harry. I blew Andy Craus because I’d been eager to bring about my sexual coronation. I blew him again because the first time was a thrill and because he expected me to do it again after that first time. 

It’s approximately forty years since the end of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Forty years of sexually liberated Western women and sex has yet to become an egalitarian experience. Instead, the destigmatization of sex has made men increasingly entitled. In a world where women can and do fuck, men demand that women fuck them. If someone was to travel back through time and inform those twentieth-century feminists about incels and hookup culture, about endless scrolling on numerous dating apps, I guarantee hoards of them would be compelled back into their kitchens, preparing a meal for their man because — upon sudden epiphany — neither he nor their single-income household situation seems too bad. 

We’ve liberated women and destigmatized sex, but we forgot to — or perhaps we’re simply unable to — sanitize and reprogram our minds accordingly. How can we expect egalitarian sex when the last adjective anyone would use to describe their lurid sexual fantasies is “egalitarian”? How can we juggle our contrasting liberal, intellectual attractions and our most sexist, primitive passions? Don’t look to me for an answer. Answers aren’t a part of my package. All those years of Googling and flipping through women’s magazines, there isn’t so much as a hypothesis in my head. It appears that the only thing I’ve equipped myself to do is give head.