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
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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.
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