Hitch on the BJ
In Praise of the Blowjob by Christopher Hitchens http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060607fege05
VANITY FAIR: As American as Apple Pie
Ten years ago this spring, an intern named Monica Lewinsky was
transferred
out of the White House, and the nation became obsessed, once again,
with the
subject of, well, fellatio. From the Wild West to the wild White
House, the
author explores the blowjob’s long and storied history—and its
emergence as
the nation’s signature sex act
[…]
Acey told me she was at a party and she said to a man, What do men
really
want from women, and he said, Blowjobs, and she said, You can get
that from
men. —From “Cocksucker Blues,” Part 4 of Underworld, by Don DeLillo.
admire the capitalization there, don’t you? But I think Acey (who
in the
novel is also somewhat Deecey) furnishes a clue. For a considerable
time,
the humble blowjob was considered something rather abject, especially as
regards the donor but also as regards the recipient. Too passive,
each way.
Too grungy—especially in the time before dental and other kinds of
hygiene.
Too risky—what about the reminder of the dreaded vagina dentata (fully
materialized by the rending bite-off scene in The World According to
Garp)?
And also too queer. Ancient Greeks and Romans knew what was going on,
all
right, but they are reported to have avoided the over-keen fellators for
fear of their breath alone. And a man in search of this consolation
might be
suspected of being … unmanly. The crucial word “blowjob” doesn’t come
into
the American idiom until the 1940s, when it was (a) part of the gay
underworld and (b) possibly derived from the jazz scene and its oral
instrumentation. But it has never lost its supposed Victorian origin,
which
was “below-job” (cognate, if you like, with the now archaic “going
down”).
This term from London’s whoredom still has a faint whiff of contempt.
On the
other hand, it did have its advocates as the prototype of Erica Jong’s
“zipless fuck”: at least in the sense of a quickie that need only
involve
the undoing of a few buttons. And then there’s that nagging word, “job,”
which seems to hint at a play-for-pay task rather than a toothsome
treat for
all concerned.
Stay with me. I’ve been doing the hard thinking for you.
[…]