by Kevin Keck
"Hey man, what's wrong? You think this is some sort of gay thing? The girls just like a good show, man. It's not a gay thing-- our wives are right here watching. We just like to wrestle and fondle each other because it gets them hot. There's nothing gay about this, and when they get hot we fuck them and we watch each other-- it's all good."
I was confused, but not by his reasoning: I believed what he said about this whole scene not being gay; sexuality is far too complicated to be defined by whether or not you love to stroke someone else's cock, and however poorly phrased his argument may have been, he was essentially right.
Be that as it may, none of this changed my own stance on the cock stroking issue: I like mine, and I don't like my own cock being stroked by anyone who has one. The thought neither repulses nor arouses me; it is the same indifference I have when I think of the "Style" section of the newspaper: who cares?
I was willing to sit through this portion of the festivities, feigning interest (but not participating), as long as I was fucking the hot wives shortly thereafter. I clarified this point to make sure there wasn't a requirement of involvement in the first act of the floor show:
"You mean you fuck each other's wives while you watch, but you don't have to--"
I didn't have a chance to finish my question before Harry stopped jerking on Greg's cock and looked at me grimly. "No, man. That's kind of fucked up. I got more respect for my wife than to let some other dude fuck her." He looked at Greg. "No offense."
"None taken. I feel you."
In the midst of this discussion I'd missed Lorraine's exit from the room; the wives were holding hands on the couch and sipping their drinks, bright-eyed with their husbands' declaration of spousal devotion. These were some coke snorting, Greek-wrestling, nut cases, and they also had drawn a line in the sand: it just happened to be a little further out than mine. I stood slowly and said, "Would you all excuse me for a moment?" I headed back up the stairs, scooping my clothing from the floor as I did so. Before I reached the top of the staircase I heard Harry's merciless pumping of Steve's member begin again as Harry said, "What a fucking dick." I wasn't confused at all by his meaning.
My brother was staring at the television not like a person who is actually watching TV, but like a person who is looking at the television in order to avoid seeing his brother naked. As I dressed I said:
"Where's Lorraine."
"Outside smoking." His answer was robotic.
"Get your shit together; we're about to leave."
"Man," he said. "I've had my shit together."
Outside, Lorraine was smoking with hurried puffs, trying to repress a small, smug smile. She and I stood in the aura of the porch light while my brother walked to the car.
"What the fuck was that, Lorraine?" I was more genuinely puzzled than pissed; marijuana has a way of doing that.
She inhaled deeply and then exhaled as she turned to me and said coolly, "I said to buy me a ring, fucker, and I'd do anything you wanted, and what did you do? You gave me a fifty dollar gift card to Target." She puffed her cigarette again. "Besides, I thought you'd like that shit."
I stared toward the sky but the streetlights obscured the tapestry of stars that I knew to be shimmering overhead. "Target has some nice stuff," I said, and I walked to the car, Lorraine not far behind me behind me.
Eventually Lorraine's urgent desire to be married would manifest into an unceasing passive/aggressive rage, the culmination of which was her revelation about sleeping with my neighbor, Brian. But it would be several months before that would happen. In the meantime, I accepted her anger, because she was hot and knew how to make me come. It all seemed completely worthwhile when I was in the thick of it.
But on that morning, my brother and I left Lorraine at my apartment and took off in his car on the pretense of getting some breakfast. We drove downtown and through the city; the barricades marking the party from hours before had been set aside, the streets mostly swept clean-- small bits of trash and confetti still clung to the sidewalks as a light dusting of snow. Aside from the few people who still were obligated to be at work the roads were empty except for the two of us. We drove past the bank buildings that towered toward heaven, the gleaming new apartments like mushrooms sprouting up around them, the churches that hunkered humbly in the city’s steel canyons, and we kept driving until the wide boulevards of asphalt dwindled into a trickle of ragged road that wound us to a fist of rock rising from the earth.
We left our car outside the gate to the park and took the shortest trail to the summit of Crowder’s Mountain; the sky was violet, and a thin ribbon of white buffered the edge of the horizon, broken only by my city standing erect and mute in the distance.
I looked for the brightest star in the sky, but was met with a band of shimmering satellites, and so instead of thinking of the dead stars and their light that continues to travel long after their collapse, I thought of the astronauts circling the earth at that precise moment in the Russian space station. Does the mania of fireworks sparkle beyond the stratosphere? And who do the astronauts kiss at midnight, and who cares anyway? I suspect that hovering above the earth, one ceases to be concerned about earthly things; the body begins to lose muscle mass when it’s in space, which is a beautiful concept: detached from the soil that holds us firm, we begin to disintegrate, to fade into the universe. I imagine the mind losing its sense of self, the disparity of fantasy and reality finally merging, until dreams sweep up the missing molecules of the body and the cosmos ripples as the surface of a still lake broken by the return of a stone.
Uncollected Essays*
* Technically I suppose these essays should be called, “Things I Couldn't Figure Out How to Wedge into My Previous Books.” However, while the essay about hand jobs was cut from Oedipus Wrecked because it stood out as stylistically different (and it was written with a more magazine sensibility in mind), the piece “Sleeping with Students” was cut from Oedipus Wrecked because the publisher didn't wish to risk wading into any murky legal waters. It almost made its way into AYTG?IM.K. but I cut it because it seemed tonally out of sync with the rest of the book. Besides, I thought it might make a book of its own someday. And someday, when the time is right, it probably will.
The Death of the Hand Job
In all the time I’ve spent engaging in sexual activity with other people, I have achieved orgasm via the blow job route only once. Some men (and women) see this as my tragic flaw: a man obsessed with his penis, and yet unable to benefit from one of the great joys of having one. And while I have been grateful to every woman who has declared with soulful conviction that she will be the one to fellate me with such professionalism that my head will pop off, it’s just really not my cup of tea. After thirty minutes of pointless head-bobbing, many women have raised up from my cock with a look of total failure (more like annoyance, actually). That is when I take their hand and explain to them the art that so many women have forgotten or lack completely: how to punch the bishop.
The first time I demonstrated this technique to a girl was in college. She seemed totally offended by my inability to come from the ministering of her mouth. When I clued her in on strange concepts such as “friction” and “velocity,” she barked, “Why would you want me to jerk you off? Can’t you do that yourself?” (It seems appropriate to point out that some men can actually blow themselves, and yet this apparently doesn’t abate their desire to have others do it. My own failure at this activity came after I witnessed it in a porn film someone had leant me: a guy was getting head from a girl, then at the point of orgasm he rolled onto his back and sucked himself off. This seemed like a novel idea, but lacking patience in my youth, I gave the maneuver it’s test run while working with “live rounds”—I wrenched out my back and developed a keen respect for keeping one’s seed out of a girl’s eyes.)
But it has been my experience that the college lass who protested against “manual operation” does not bear the burden of that sentiment alone. However, this takes up the position t
hat all hands feel the same. Any guy who approached the challenge of ambidextrous whacking in his salad days could expound on the mystery of difference between his left and right hand, but when that hand belongs to someone else… it’s almost as if you are discovering jerking off for the first time all over again.
Which is why my friend Andrea, who shares the self-bestowed title “Best Head” with many other contenders worldwide, won’t give a hand job. “That’s ridiculous,” she told me. “What am I? Some little dink in junior high who’s never seen a dick before? I’m not afraid to stare it in the face. I’m twenty-five for God’s sake.” Andrea, who is actually thirty-two, seems to have gotten part of it right. It does seem sort of juvenile to simply shake hands with the old hog—something you would do under a blanket when you were fifteen and your parents might walk in at any instant.
By that logic, though, it becomes puzzling why more women haven’t mastered this technique. With all the people that claim to enjoy sexual encounters in public places, surely not everyone is having intercourse or going down on someone? I mean, it just seems like someone would have to have developed a utilitarian appreciation for the stealth and simplicity of a hand job. (Of course, there is one truly great hurdle of the hand job: if you’re not used to that activity, it can old quite quickly. When I take the time to consider the amount of my life I have spent laboring over my dick, doing that stupid, international motion that everyone understands, it is a wonder that I don’t have the forearms of a gorilla. Or at least one forearm of a gorilla.)
Considering this, I remembered what my friend Joel told me in college after he had begun having sex with men in addition to women: “Keck, you think a woman knows what she’s doing, and some do, but get a bunch of boys together and naked and watch out.” Based on this, I called up another friend of mine, who is gay, to see if the gender most familiar with the genitals in question might have some insight.
“Skip,” I began matter-of-factly, “do you think gay men give more hand jobs than straight women?”
In the lengthy pause that followed I began to worry that Skip had hung up on me, but he eventually said, “I guess.” Thus, riddle solved: it is a straight-woman thing.
Which is an absurd generalization. I’ve had several relationships with women who seemed to like giving a hand job. Carol, whom I dated my last year in graduate school, would lie on her back and use a two-handed grip as I straddled her. She confessed that she liked to “see it shoot.” The same was true for Cathy when we dated as undergrads, but besides the visual appeal Cathy said she liked doing it because it made her feel more in control. (Although she could take this too far. In one aborted role-playing incident she said, “I’ll be the vet—pretend to be a sheep I have to collect sperm from.” I have had a distaste for wool ever since.) And Leslie preferred to do it because she claimed that giving head made her feel like a slut.
I feel this is an important distinction that ties to what Andrea said about feeling juvenile while giving a hand job: there is a level of sexual maturity that exists with oral sex that does not exist with manual stimulation. Hand jobs were probably far more common when adolescents were not targeted by marketers more concerned with profit than preserving innocence and decorum (I’m making huge leaps of logic here, so bear with me…). And not to suggest that there is anything indecorous about a lady deep-throating a gentleman, but it is certainly an activity more well suited for the experienced participant than the rookie. I’m sure most parents would be far more comfortable stumbling upon their kids experimenting with hands as opposed to mouths. But tales of oral sex amongst those as young as twelve and thirteen are not uncommon on the newsstand and day-time television. Headlines scream that is an epidemic, while researchers dig for answers that are ever elusive (although “teenagers are goddamned horny freaks” seems to be a tidbit of info often overlooked). The simple fact of hormones plus the internet is probably at the root of it all, if you want the simple truth.
And in this flood of information that permeates our culture about the ecstasy that awaits us in the chamber of “adult sexuality,” the simple pleasures are forgotten. The death knell of the hand job as common sexual play is perhaps signaled for us all as soon as we cross the threshold into a mouth, or vagina, or ass. Or some sort of large gourd.
When was the last time you and your partner kissed for hours, but without the follow-up of intercourse? Where did those teenage-tongues go? Don’t you remember that pleasure of little muscles in moist mouths straining against one another? And then, after days or weeks of fooling around, a hand strays below the waist, a zipper is drawn open, a bottle of lotion is fetched (although take it from a man with sensitive skin: be careful what you put on your penis, or any other area for that matter), and before you know it, you are about to soil your mother’s parlor sofa. And then your partner says, “You know, my arm is getting tired...”
Sleeping with Students
It’s 5:45 a.m. on Sunday, and I am lying in my bed, bald and scrawny and pale. I’m wearing boxers that hang loosely on me, and a t-shirt which says “Chicks dig scrawny pale guys.” I am blinded by the cruelest light, the covers are ripped from me, and my girlfriend stands at the foot of the bed glaring at me. She is standing next to my ex-girlfriend, who is dressed like a slutty Catholic school girl, wearing a halter top, pleated skirt, fishnet stockings, and the most sadistic high heels I have possibly ever seen.
My girlfriend says flatly, “You fucked up.” I am not sure what is going on, but I am grateful that neither of them are my students this semester.
I readjust my pillow and sit up in the bed, crossing my arms and legs and assuming a casual pose. My girlfriend, Jenny, does not let her menacing gaze drift from me. My ex-girlfriend, Belinda, lies down on the bed beside me looking hurt and alarmingly dangerous. I feel myself getting an erection, but it’s obvious that the three-way I have dreamed about since my sexually angstful adolescence will not happen this morning. I move my hands to shield my arousal from my girlfriend, who is probably well aware that her jeans and sweater ensemble have not elicited this response from my dick.
“What’s up?” I ask, but I am beginning to realize what is up, and I am not the least bit surprised by any of it.
When I first began teaching, as a graduate student at a quasi-Ivy League, upstate New York university, I made a vow to myself that I would never cross the line separating the student/teacher relationship. I made this vow shortly after a terrifying seminar on sexual harassment sponsored by the university (which promised a fate for violators that fell just short of a brief internment in some upstate New York version of a death camp), and just before I met my first class: it was packed solid with women brazenly bearing their flesh in the lingering heat of late summer. Because I was fresh in town, I knew no one, and so I spent my first weeks there on my knees on the hardwood floor of my apartment, like some masochistic monk, taking out temptation on my cock. I imagined one tutoring session after another that collapsed into a pornographic pile of teacher and student entwined in my own private version of what the University referred to ambiguously as the “spiral curriculum.” And one student in particular—Donna Berkowitz, a wonderful cliché of a Jewish girl from New Jersey—evoked such a deep desire in me with her ample bosom and well-sculpted nose lending her voice an erotic whine, I had to sit down whenever she spoke in class because of the monstrous hard-on she gave me. (She earned a less than favorable grade in my class, which I cavalierly altered two years later under the pretense that I might be able to seduce her with my generosity—this was not the case.)
Yet as much as the co-eds sent me home every evening in a most aggravated state, I never drifted across that boundary of unceasing desire. It was not until my third year as a graduate teaching assistant that opportunity presented itself in such a way that I was bound to seize it whether I was conscious of the prospect or not.
A requirement in my classes was that my students keep a journal. It is with some amount of shame that I admit I was wholly aware at the time that
my exclusive interest in their journals was to possibly learn those lascivious details of their lustful undergraduate years. My own college career was a deep disappointment (I started out to become a priest of all things, and contrary to the myth, few women I encountered were willing to risk the possibility of eternal damnation in order to live out their fantasy luring a man-of-the-cloth-in-training to temptation). Thus, I hoped that by having my students write about their own lives I would be able to reinvent my own, at least in my sexual imagination.
On my first read-through of the Spring semester journals, Cindy Lowell, a delicate, nineteen-year-old red head who seemed to have a perpetual runny nose and a tongue ring that caused her to lisp slightly, had written a note to me that she felt we’d get along quite well socially. However, she concluded that such an outing might be problematic as she wasn’t sure of the rules that governed such relationships. Since it was common knowledge that two of the philosophy professors were living with students with whom they were romantically involved, I didn’t think it would be such a disaster if Cindy sported her fake I.D. one night and joined me at a cigar bar downtown.
After only one beer Cindy and I retreated to my apartment where, as she reclined on the pool table I had purchased from Cher’s former road manager, she wriggled out of her hip-hugging jeans and revealed to me the first bald pussy I'd ever glimpsed in person. It was as magnificent as I had imagined it would be, and I felt as though I were finally standing face-to-face with the Mona Lisa’s curious smile after a lifetime of puzzling over it in books.
Cindy’s body was alabaster, and her nipples perked up as my fingers found their way softly around her small frame. It was the one and only time I ever had sex on the pool table (for some reason my fear of ruining the tournament quality carpet was temporarily assuaged that night), and it stands as one of the defining moments in my life. Up until that point I had lacked completely the ability to ejaculate with a woman during our initial intercourse, unless I took matters into my own hands, which never made any girl feel as though she was as sexy and as beautiful as I claimed. It was (sadly) the first encounter I had with a woman where I truly felt like a man.
