Today’s topic: coitus vs. fellatio. Fucking vs. blowjobs.

I’m coming (sorry) at this from a specific (heterosexual) angle; let me lay it out:

When I was in high school in the ’70s, getting sex from a girl was hard to come (sorry) by. Perhaps I just wasn’t a very good closer, or maybe I preferred the company of “good girls,” but in order to, in our lexicon, “ball a chick,” you pretty much had to date a girl for awhile, have said the L-word and perhaps even hinted that you were considering a long-term future with her.

Then the girl might let you “make love” to her — usually in pretty uptight, unimaginative ways. (Not that we complained.) Let me stress that these were the experiences of me and most of my friends — rarely, in high school, did a guy come rollin’ up with a story about how he scored with some chick he just met. It may have been different elsewhere, but I get the sense that this is a pretty fair depiction of the sexual mores of teenagers during my late adolescence.

So with enough diligence, you could get laid. Blowjobs, on the other hand, were a different matter. That was a major leap, and a young man would be very proud indeed if he was able to procure such a service (from his girlfriend, of course). By and large, the high school girls we knew and dated were of the I’m-not-putting-that-nasty-thing-in-my-mouth mindset. Blowjobs were dirty.

That script seems to have flipped. From anecdotal data I’ve picked up from some of my younger friends and colleagues, blowjobs have become a sort of social currency. No big deal. One friend of mind, who’s now 30, remembers having first dates with girls in high school whose stance was, more or less: I won’t fuck you, but I’ll give you a blowjob.

I’m a little envious, I guess.

This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 3, 2009.