In Which I Give The World's Worst Blowjob

I sit on the dark faux leather couch on the top floor of my house and pick at my fingernails while I wait for Harris to finish up in the bathroom. I promised him, my boyfriend of a little over a year now, that we could make out after his baseball practice. I hear the shower trickle to a stop and I shift in my seat, trying to prepare myself for our scheduled make out time. When he finally enters the room I smile at him, like the girls in movies when they’re about to engage in a sexual act with their boyfriends. He smiles back, like a real person whose smile is not scripted, and trots back over to the couch to meet me like an excited puppy.

“How was your shower?” I need some small talk before we can get started.

“It was good babe,” I cringe a little at the pet name. I don’t like it when he calls me babe unironically. He plays with my hair which is getting much too long. I always tell him to run his hands through it, but for some reason he just pets the top layer, like a toddler patting a dog. His palms are sweaty and they stick to my hair.

He leans in a little bit to kiss me, but waits for my signal to move in all the way. “Is this ok?” He asks, like always. I nod and kiss him back. A few fumbling seconds pass and I’m on top of him, straddling him on the couch. We kiss and I move my hips like I know he likes and he grabs my ass like he thinks I like and my hands are trying to find some sort of rhythm or placement that does not feel forced and awkward. He lets out a little moan that tells me I’m doing something right. I can feel him underneath me. He presses his hips upwards a little bit. I can feel it underneath me. I’ve touched it before, my wrist twisted backwards under his waistband, but I have never dared look at it. He makes another noise and I am filled with confidence.

“Harris, take it out,” he looks back at me, trying to hide his excitement.

“Are you sure?” I nod before I lose all of my courage. He hesitates, then asks again. I do not answer, instead, I grab jerkily at his waistband and begin to move it down.

In a moment the whole thing is out and staring me in the face. It is ugly and gross and my stomach flips but not in the excited way it is supposed to. I do not want to see it anymore, but I’ve crossed the point of no return. So I close my eyes. I move to the floor. And I put it in my mouth.

It tastes like sweat, despite the shower he has just taken. The scratchy carpet stings my knees. I move my head up and down and Harris lets out a sharp inhale and squeezes my shoulder. I try to go deeper but gag and jerk back. Maybe just the tip is ok for the first time. My heart pounds in my chest so fast it hurts and I struggle to breathe with this thing in the way and I realize I still have my gum in my mouth and all of the sudden Harris tells me to stop. He can tell something is not ok before he even sees the tears on my face.

“Look at me” I do not look at him. “Hey, babe, look at me” I cannot look at him. He wipes a tear off my cheek. The sweat from his hands burns my face. His hands are even bigger than mine. He could fit my entire face in his palms. He could crush me if he wanted to. He doesn’t.

“I’m so sorry. It’s nothing really I promise. It’s just I’ve built this thing up in my head and I’ve been so worried for so long about how it would go and these aren’t sad tears this is just how I process emotions.”

“It’s ok,” he says slowly, “let’s just watch The Office.”

“I’ll be fine again in a minute”

“No Davis,” he’s firmer this time, “let’s wait. We don’t have to do this.”

“But I love you” and this is what you do when you love somebody.

“Don’t say it like that. I love you too but I don’t need you to do this to know it.” But I know that’s not true. Even if he believes it himself, that’s not how the world works. Love alone isn’t enough if I can’t prove it to him somehow.

“Davis,” he speaks again, cautiously this time, “even if you’re never ready, that’s ok too.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I finally look at him.

“I just mean, you can love somebody without loving that part of it… you know?” I do know. It’s not the first time he’s mentioned it. “Let’s just drop it.” He puts his arm around me gently.

“I’m not gay Harris.”

“I know Davis”

“I want to try again.”

“Ok Davis. But not right now.”

“I’m not a lesbian.”

A little over a year later, I lay in my twin bed in my dorm and run my fingers through my girlfriend’s hair. I broke up with Harris before I left for college and came out as a lesbian shortly after. After all we’d been through, I didn’t really expect him to be surprised. He wasn’t. When I look back on the whole experience, the things he said to nudge me in the right direction and the little rainbow colored trinkets he gave me as presents, I think he was just waiting for me to realize myself.

“I know what I’m gonna write about for my personal essay class.” My girlfriend, Bridget Anne, looks up at me with her big eyes.

“What?” I take her hand and begin playing with the rings on her fingers.

“I’m gonna try to write a comedy piece about that time I tried to suck Harris’s dick and I started crying” I laugh to myself at the thought.

“Is that a funny story?” She hesitantly laughs with me.

“It’s hilarious. Lesbian who does not think she’s a lesbian tries to suck dick, cries mid blowjob, and somehow still does not think she’s a lesbian. The jokes should write themselves.” She smiles at me. “I just can’t decide how to talk about his penis itself. Like what do I even call it? Penis? Cock? Schlong?”

“Babe, you cannot use the word Schlong in a college essay,” I laugh and my stomach flutters at her use of the term of affection.

“You know his name for it was Atticus.” She almost chokes.

“Did you call it Atticus?” Her eyes widen in disbelief.

“Sometimes.” Atticus has always been much easier than what it actually was. It was a lump in my throat. It was the monster under my bed. It was a naked mole-rat. But I can’t write a piece about sucking a naked mole-rat. “The other thing I can’t figure out is how to talk about how big it was. Like it was huge.”

“Yeah maybe don’t mention that. It could come out sounding like a cringey fanfiction.” I smirk at the thought.

“I see the enormous, throbbing member in his pants. And I start crying.” I laugh at the wording, but something in my sentence sticks in my throat. I swallow the truths of the traumatic experience and keep joking around. “At least I think it was huge. But I’m also a lesbian who had never seen a penis before so maybe it just felt really big.” Bridget Anne can sense my hesitation, but she laughs to ease the tension building inside me. I smile at the sound and kiss her forehead.

“I think that sounds very funny, just make sure you don’t erase the parts that hurt for the sake of the joke,” I know she’s right. The humor is there in abundance, but so is the taste of sweat in my mouth and the stinging of the tears on my face and the fear in the back of my throat. I smile at my girlfriend.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too,” I reply, then go back to making jokes so I can see her lovely smile some more. I love this woman. And I don’t need to prove it to anyone, including myself. I just lay with her and laugh, like a real person, because that’s what you do when you love someone.