Blow Job Slut

When slut-shaming starts young, you learn to embrace it.

This story contains sexual content and material that may not be suitable for younger readers. Reader discretion is advised.

~

The first time I gave a blow job was in the backseat of a red sedan - a Corolla, or a Civic, typical - in the parking lot of Crescentwood Community Centre in Winnipeg.

I was teaching Sunday School that year at our church - part of my responsibility as a Good Catholic School Girl - because that’s something I was qualified to do at 14. That’s where I met him, a chubby Italian boy who was two years older than me and went to the all-boys equivalent of my private girls’ school.

He was cute — the kind of cute that you grow into after high school, with deep eyes that you could dive into, swim around, and stay awhile. His dark brown hair and crooked grin gave me butterflies in my panties, and suddenly you couldn’t tear me away from my Catholic Duty.

We flirted for a while, as teenagers do - awkwardly and with no real strategy -  and would talk about movies and music when he drove me home after class. 

Turns out the underpants flutters were mutual, so that’s how I found myself fumbling between the driver and passenger seats to join him in the backseat one sunny Sunday morning on our way home. 

The parking lot was bustling with parents dropping their kids off at hockey practice or gymnastics, or using the playground, but what did we care? We were in lust.

And suddenly we were making out, his hand clumsily grasping at my right breast as he moved his mouth against mine.

“I’ve never had a blow job before,” he gasped through tongue punches.

“I’ve never given one before,” I said nervously. “What if I’m bad at it?”

A coy little one, even then.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll be bad at it,” he said. “Just put it in your mouth and suck.”

(I never understood why they called it a ‘blow’ job when you’re actually sucking).

I’m not sure when he’d unzipped his pants, but he had, and when I looked down there it was: a penis. The little pink tip was shiny and shrouded in olive-toned skin that stretched as he released it from its dungaree dungeon, wobbling slightly.

He smiled as he reached his hand around the back of my head, pushing me down - in case I couldn’t find it? - and I put my hesitant mouth around the tip, a tiny drop of precum glistening in the high noon sun peeking through condensation lines on the now-fogged windows.

The taste of skin, sweat, and salt mingled on my lips as I stared at the forest of wiry black pubic hair before opting to close my eyes. The seatbelt buckle was digging into my ribs and my left arm was falling asleep from being crunched underneath me. I pushed back against his hand, still on the back of my head, trying to signal that my tender gag reflex wasn’t quite ready.

I’m not sure how long we sat there, my head pumping away in his lap, glasses knocking against his belt buckle. I lifted my palm to the window and let it squeak off, just like Kate Winslet in the car sex scene in Titanic. 

Before long his grip on the back of my head tightened, the muscles in his pelvis tensed up and he uttered that feeble warning that would come to signify the welcome end to my sexual and relational obligations to men as I struggled with painful sex later in life:

“I’m … I’m coming …!” 

It being my first time and us being in the backseat of his car and me not knowing what else to do, I reflexively swallowed. I tried not to gag, feeling the corners of my eyes water as the bitter liquid coated my mouth and throat. I made sure to get it all before detaching, sitting up beside him and wiping my lips with my sleeve.

“Whoa, that was amazing,” he breathed, giddy and flushed.

I smiled, adjusted my glasses, and leaned in for a kiss.

“Uhh, sorry but like … that’s kinda gross?” He shrugged. “But we should definitely do this again.”

He zipped up his jeans and opened the rear passenger door to get back into the driver’s seat, wiping my melting handprint from the window with his sleeve.

~

He told his friends, who told their friends, who told theirs until a few days later my best guy friend incredulously asked if I’d given a blow job in the Crescentwood parking lot.

And that was the first time I was slut-shamed.

As soon as the word got out, they all wanted to hang out with me:

Wanna come over and watch a movie?

We could go for a drive.

I heard you give the best blow jobs.

Prove it.

You’ll do it for him, but not for me?

It’ll be our little secret.

No one has to know.

I knew what people thought of me. Blow job slut. I heard the whispers and saw the stares. I fielded calls from boys a year, two years ahead of me in school, trying to come up with explanations for my sudden popularity that didn’t involve me putting a dick in my mouth.

The thing was, it made me feel powerful. I had something that they wanted and it gave me a degree of dominance over the high school boys who were desperate to get their dicks sucked. I was fully aware of what people thought about me. The girls who’d stand in the hallway and, when you walk by, freeze like raccoons getting caught in the bin; everything stops and their gaze follows you, creeping up your neck until they resume their conversation just in time for you to hear your name.

I oscillated between not giving a shit what people thought and literally wanting to kill myself from the shame of being a slut, of no one liking me. The Catholic Guilt was strong with this one. I hurt close friends with my loose lips and lost others.

But guys always liked me.

My oral and manual skills would come in handy over the years as I started navigating the rocky terrain of painful sex. I honestly don’t remember when it started to be painful - I do remember my first time having a penis inside me, being surprised that it didn’t feel like running into a tractor pussy-first as my friend Kristin delicately described it in ninth grade. I learned nearly two decades later when I reconnected with the first human who penetrated me that I’d basically destroyed his self-confidence when I asked, “Is it in yet?” because I was expecting the aforementioned tractor pain. What a jerk.

Later in life, I’d be so grateful I didn’t remember my first time as being painful because pain started to eclipse my sexual experiences to the point that I’d dissociate at times. The number of times I’d stare at the ceiling, begging for it to be over. It just became something that was part of the experience and I didn’t really know any different.

I was never taught how to communicate what I want or what feels good or what doesn’t. There was no class in high school that taught consent, safe sex practices, or even birth control aside from a bootleg 40 minutes with my ninth-grade science teacher. Heteronormative sexual scripts don’t really encourage a lot of communication — we’re supposed to want it when they want it, and be dripping and ready to go and if we’re not, we’re the problem.

Giving head was always easier than having to navigate painful penetration - at least that way they got off and if we didn’t make it to penis-in-vagina sex, I didn’t have to explain away or - more often - grit my teeth and bear it.

~

Once I had my endometriosis diagnosis in my early twenties, things started to make a little more sense. Sex wasn’t supposed to feel like I was swallowing a sword with my cunt?! I didn’t have to pretend that it didn’t feel that way?! (Fun fact: the word vagina literally means “sheath for a sword” in Latin. Can’t anything just be ours??)

I didn’t know what endo was, or that it was probably the root of a lot of my issues in 2011 when surgery confirmed it was infiltrating my body. (Also at the root of my issues was the glaring fact that I was queer and not admitting it). I was dating a cis dude ten years my senior who definitely didn’t give a fuck about it as evidenced by his dropping me off at the doors to the IWK in Halifax and picking me up in the same spot after said surgery.

I broke up with him a week later. And probably gave him an incredible breakup bj. Ugh.

He once wrote to me on Facebook Messenger years after we broke up (and after he was married) to say that he was never as spoiled as when we were together and he should’ve appreciated it more. I was young. I thought everyone gave their partner a blow job before work while they brushed their teeth. Guess I was wrong.

That was the box I put myself into for years - woman on her knees at the foot of a man. Yes, I wielded my incredible fellatio power over people when I had to - I won’t tell how many people from my past have reached out to me later in life to reminisce about my skills, thank you very much. There were many a blowie won, lost, and doubled down on over the years with my last ex, and it was all our sex life consisted of for a long time. I grew dependent on my mouth and hands to get through the hetero sexpectations of a relationship derailed by pelvic pain and chronic illness. (Making him orgasm without ejaculating is still a high point of my sexual history).

I don’t deep throat, not on the regular anyway. Tender gag reflex. But I don’t need to. I’d blow you so fucking good you forget that you’re desperate to fuck me too because you’re seeing stars. And that was the jig—if the foreplay was good enough I wouldn’t have to endure the ‘main event,’ which is such a sad state of affairs for someone who loves sex as much as I do. Yes, even penetration.

~

Staying single and embracing my queerness after my last breakup has reminded me that even though I let people shame me for years about my choices, only I can let them do that.

I am a slut. Who gives a shit? No one I want close to me, that’s for sure.

Someone recently asked me why I share such graphic, intimate moments from my life - aren’t I worried about people using it against me, what others will think, my future job prospects?

I’m not. Because it’s my story, and when I tell it myself it takes away the power others have over me. How can I be ashamed if I have no shame?

I don’t see a woman on her knees at the foot of a man anymore. I see a human stepping into their power and sharing intimate moments with people they trust (and who will kiss them after).

I don’t see an insecure slut giving blow jobs so people will like her. I see an ethical slut choosing whose dick (or pussy) goes in their mouth because they have agency over their own body and sexual choices.

I don’t see someone who should be ashamed of themselves. I see a shameless bad bitch who’s proud AF to be exactly who they are - slut and all.