Here’s a secret: I’m quite insecure about my ability to go down on a girl.

There are a few clear reasons for this.

The Ex, from the infamous LBD relationship, didn’t get off. I used to go down on her for hours, and … nothing.

Since she & I split nearly two years ago, I’ve been fucking around, and in my efforts to practice safer sex, I’ve only gone down either when we were fluid-bonded (rare), or with protection (also rare, actually).

And I hate to be “That Guy,” but going down on someone with protection just isn’t as fun. It’s hard to be detailed, hard to feel the right pressure or wetness or subtle, small ridges in the delicate tissue, which makes it all the more frustrating.

Going down on a girl, I think, is actually one of the most intimate sex acts. I will do all sorts of things before I’d go down, partially because of the fluid/safer sex issue, and partly because it takes a lot of vulnerability – for both giver and receiver – to have someone so completely focused with her face between your legs, your face between hers.

I also have a tongue piercing, and while I would like to think that it makes me more skilled at things like kissing and going down, but I don’t really have proof of that.  sometimes I am paranoid that I don’t really know how to use it, or that really it’s just getting in the way. I’d like to think it enhances what I do with my tongue, but I’m not really sure.

So because of these things, because it’s an intimate act for me, because I’ve been fucking around, because my ex couldn’t get off that way at all, I actually don’t have a lot of practice at it. No one’s ever told me I’m actually bad at it, don’t get me wrong – and once I know how to get a girl off, I can usually reproduce it in various ways: fingers, cock. It should extend to tongue, too, right?

But I’m insecure about it.

(I actually picked up Tristan Taormino’s DVD Guide to Cunnilingus at her launch party for her book Opening Up, but haven’t watched it yet. I should do that.)

So, on Sunday – after a lovely date with Penny on Saturday night where we watched the Sex and the City film, had dinner, drinks, dessert after, went to my place and kept each other up until 3am – we were lounging, satiated from a morning of breakfast and sex, talking about her plans to move to San Francisco.

Penny was lying tucked under my arm on the couch, and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

“Going down on you,” I said. I felt her body pulse in response.

We talked. Safer sex, my history, hers, why I don’t go down, that I wanted to with her. This conversation, inevitably, led to kissing, my mouth on her neck, clavicle, nipples, which was suddenly such a heightened sensation because we were both so aware of the idea of her clit in my mouth.

Pushing her into the bedroom, I stripped her bare swiftly, laid her out on the bed. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me to her in the sweetest gesture of vulnerability and desire; it was one of the strongest moments of the weekend.

“I want to taste you,” I murmured into the skin of her neck and cheek. “I want your clit in my mouth. I want to get you all wet, then fuck you, get my cock out and slide it in deep …”

(This was actually my backup plan in case I couldn’t get her off with my mouth. I had no idea if it would be easy or hard, if I was any good at it, if I could get her off this way at all. But at least I’m pretty good at getting her off with my fingers on her clit while fucking her, now, so that was the backup.)

Her back arched in response, pressing against me. Mouth opened, breath thick.

“You’re going to have to wait.” I said, pulling myself up and hovering over her. “Just for a minute, so I can get up and put my cock on.” She nodded, a tiny gesture, eyes wide and liquid and full, a look I see rarely on her. So sexy.

I rinsed my cock, fast, still sticky from fucking her that morning, and strapped on. She pulled me to her again, eager, kissing me open-mouthed and supple in a way that made me melt.

Softly, I slid my fingers inside her. Maneuvered down her body to touch my tongue to her clit. Light and soft with a wide tongue. I hadn’t had that close of a view of her cunt before, and she was beautiful.

She moaned. Whispered, “oh baby,” and I kept going. Looped my arm under her thigh and brought my hand to her pubic bone, pulled her cunt open with my fingers from above, leaving two fingers of my right hand inside, gently curled, light pressure and thrusting but not heavy. Just a little, just so she could feel it, just so she could feel stretched and full.

Her clit strained in my mouth, so clearly, so subtly but I could feel it, and I hardened my tongue and began moving it back and forth quicker. Pursed my lips around it to push the flesh away and let my tongue touch that one spot, that tiny spot, pulling back the hood and balancing her every nerve on the tip of my tongue.

Nude and strapped on, legs half-on and half-off the bed, I attempted not to let my hips shake and thrust involuntarily, but once she started pressing against my hand and mouth in rhythm I just couldn’t help it, my body responded accordingly. I wanted inside her, I wanted to fuck her, hard.

Of course, I didn’t move. Kept my mouth just where it was.

She tightened on my fingers and I pushed my fingers faster, a little fuller. Steady and thick with pressure against her gspot, pubic bone, the underside of her clit, I could feel it between my fingers – inside – and tongue.

And she came. Shuddering, gasping. Quickly, in fact. Sooner than I’d expected, thighs shaking, then her fingers around my wrist of the hand that was inside her and I pulled out slow. She pulled me up to her breast, pulled me to her.

I didn’t want to stop, not yet. I wanted her over and again, and again.

She laughed that little laugh that sounds like joy, the one that echoes in my mind after she’s gone. “I didn’t like that.” All sarcasm.

I laughed too. “I didn’t think so. Well good, because I didn’t like doing it.”

“I’m like a teenage boy,” she said, eyes open, skin bare, feeling exposed, referring to how fast she came. I pulled a soft throw blanket over us.

I kissed her again, soft, deep, she was so supple in that way that only a long day of sex makes you, and I could’ve done anything, for hours, could’ve done whatever she wanted, felt a superhero strength, an inexhaustive dominance that could’ve gone on and on.

Then there was my mouth back on her skin and neck and soon my hand back between her legs, the eager way she parts. Between her legs I gathered lube for my cock, but she was sore, a little hesitant when I slid inside her.

So I brought my mouth to her again instead. Slight tongueful of lube in the beginning, but I didn’t care. I caught her clit between my tongue piercing and the tip of my tongue and flicked it, kept it taut.

After a minute, I nearly panicked. What if I couldn’t get her off again? What if that first time was just a fluke, what if she was already bored? What if I actually wasn’t any good at this? What if I was being cocky thinking I would do it again, just like that?

And then I heard her moan again, baby, ohhh baby, which she rarely says, rarely calls me, and I worked my fingers inside her again, not too much but a little pressure, gently, sweet, tongue hard against the soft folds of her, eager, lapping, the ball of my tongue piercing tracing her hood, sucking her into my mouth.

So sweet.

And she came again. Pelvis and spine rolling on the bed, thrusting against me, thighs clenching around me and shaking, stomach contracting. I wished I could see her from far away, all of her, observe, watch the way her body builds and releases.

I wrapped myself around her again, kissing her, fingertips feather-light along her body, bare skin flushed and heated.

“I’m going to have to practice that some more, I think,” I said. She laughed and sighed, rolled to her side as I pressed against her back, cradling, and she pulled my arm around her, held it against her chest.