Often times, at night I lie awake and consider the only questions that really matter in this world. Will I be happy? Will I find success in my life? Do I have true friends? Do I give toothy head?
I’ve always been the type of person who has all the answers, but I get stuck on the last one.
Over my four years of sexual activity, I have had my fair share of partners. That’s been great. Like really fun. I mean you go out and you go to a party and you come home and you touch each other. It’s great. Getting frisky with saucy co-eds is the best part of college. What consumes me, what leaves me unable to sleep at night (besides ALL the sex), is that even with all my experience, even with the knowledge that the only place I might ever be in the top tenth percentile in my life is sex-having, I might still not be very good at it.
Picture this: I’m going down on someone. Ostensibly, they like it. They’re having a good time and they’re really getting into it. But what if my front teeth, which are admittedly enormous, drag a little on the way up or down? Certainly, I can’t help it. I’m sure plenty of porn stars have gotten veneers in order to avoid this problem, but I’m a natural sort of girl who prefers to work within my own bodily constraints.
Another picture: I’m on top. I’m doing my thing, going some direction or another, or just sort of bouncing around aimlessly, looking up at whatever these people decided to decorate their rooms with (why does every fraternity male have the same Chance poster?). How could I possibly know if they’re enjoying it? I mean, I know they are, but this is Cornell. I don’t need to be the best they ever had, but I want to come in at a respectable #11 on the annual rankings.
I guess the issue is that I have no idea what my sexual Yelp page would look like. And this absolutely terrifies me. To be a little more serious, this kind of chatter echoes through absolutely every “locker room” type space here. What was she like? Was she hot? And everyone knows, if you do something weird, that will be your epithet. You’ll be Weird Tongue Girl, or Thumb Sucker Girl, or the worst of all, Toothy Head Girl.
In my formative years, I watched a movie called John Tucker Must Die. In the movie, one character asks, “am I a good kisser?” to which the other replies, “do guys tell you you’re a good kisser?” Is the immediate affirmation the only way to know?
I thought about opening an anonymous comment box or handing out a feedback form. But guys who hit it and quit it aren’t going to be willing to put in the time and effort it would require. While I would love to see the results of my INTERcourse evaluations, I might never get to.
And that leaves me right where I started, wondering about the quality of my head-giving.
So to those out there who worry about their toothy head like I do, or maybe about the lengths of their members or whether they pull ponytails a little hard or whether they are able to please their partners at all, I feel you. I am you. And I don’t have any sort of answer for you besides maybe, just once, during sex, think about yourself and your own satisfaction and go from there. That might be the only thing that makes sex worth having anyway.
Hillary Cliton is a student at Cornell University. Sex on Thursday appears alternate Thursdays this semester.