Girl on the Net

Before I suck dick, I take out my lip ring. I haven’t always done this – some guys used to enjoy the extra sensation, so I’d leave it in. Others felt it made very little difference – a blow job’s a blow job, right? – so I wouldn’t bother taking it out before I began. But my current partner prefers his blow jobs au naturel, so I take out my lip ring. And in doing so, I’ve inadvertently managed to achieve a bizarre sexual ambition.

Pavlovian sexual response

It’d be cool, wouldn’t it, if someone fancied you so much that when you walked into the room they immediately started sliding off their chair? Or if just a picture of your face grinning at them on their iPhone gave them such a deep kick of lust that they got instantly, satisfyingly hard?

Or perhaps you could ring a bell.

Pavlovian responses – sometimes called ‘classical responses’ – involve tying an external stimulus to a biological response. In Pavlov’s case, he would ring a bell when it was time for the dogs to eat, and over time he trained them to associate the bell with food. Even if he rang the bell and didn’t feed them, the dogs would salivate, having learned to associate ‘bell sound’ with ‘dinner.’ Bit harsh on the dogs, but you get the idea.

What if instead of ringing the bell before he fed the dogs, Pavlov rang the bell before vigorously wanking them off?

Ew. OK. You get the idea, though, right?

Conditioned sexual response

Every time I suck my partner off, I remove my lip ring. It’s now a standard part of our routine. Snog for a bit, do some touching, then if I fancy giving him a blow job I’ll pull away from the snog and take out my lip ring.

Three or four years ago I told him just how much I would love it if this became a Pavlovian response. No snogging required beforehand, just me looking him dead in the eye with my sexy face (basically the same as my normal face only I try my best not to smirk), and then slowly removing my lip ring.

I think there are certain things that give me twitches of this response. Smells are a big one: the otherwise-awful Joop! aftershave, enjoyed mainly by teenage boys circa 1999, is tied to such strong memories of fumbling with my first boyfriend that if I sit behind a guy who’s wearing it on the bus, I often get aroused without being quite able to work out why. The Joop! hits my nostrils and my brain immediately starts playing a tape of my first boyfriend scrabbling in the pocket of his ripped jeans for a condom, or me giving him awkward yet desperate head behind a bush at a community centre disco.

There are places, too. A back alley behind a park that I used to visit as a youngster: I cannot walk past it without my knickers getting at least a little slick at the memory of the first time a guy got his hand up my top. A song by Green Day. The taste of Lambrini. OK, they’re not genuinely Pavlovian. But they’re close: non-sexual things rendered hot by association.

Most of the sex triggers I have are tied to youth, so I can only assume it’s easier to develop a sexual response when your brain is fresh and malleable and you’re a randy ball of hormones. Back then, it wouldn’t take many Joop!-scented fucks to establish Joop! as a sex trigger. But now I’m older, these triggers take longer to establish: I can think of only two that have formed since I was 20 or so, neither of which I’m telling you because we all have to have some secrets.

But more importantly than my own sexual triggers is the fact that I reckon with enough time it’s possible to build that association for someone else.

Pavlov’s blow job

The other day, two minutes after I’d swallowed his spunk, he grinned at me and said:

“Did you notice?”

At which point obviously I started rolling back through the blow job I’d just finished. The way he twitched just before he came, the noises he made. The way he grabbed my hair and held me down so I’d choke on his cock for a count of 10 – that bit’s my favourite. But I couldn’t remember anything either of us had done noticeably differently. There weren’t any special new tricks or different words, or even moans that reached a higher or deeper pitch than I’d expect from a man who was getting his cock sucked.

Then he explained: there’d been no build-up. No pre-fuck snogging. No faffing around getting undressed. Just me staring him dead in the eye and slowly removing my lip ring.

I’d literally watched as his dick got hard in his jeans, purely as a result of me taking out my lip ring. According to him, that’s the closest we’ve ever come to achieving the lip-ring-Pavlov’s-blow-job response that we’d talked about so long ago.

Naturally, we high-fived, and were generally pretty pleased with ourselves. But of course once you’ve achieved one Pavlov’s blow job, you can’t help but wonder what the next trick should be. He reckons we should literally copy Pavlov and introduce a bell, but I suspect that’s less to do with sexual experimentation than it is to do with the fact that he wants to have suck jobs on demand at the ring of a bell. Personally, I’d like him to condition me to get wet at the smell of roast potatoes. Not only will I get loads of hand-jobs, in order for the response to work he’ll have to cook me roast dinners a minimum of once each week.

After dinner, I’ll let him ring the bell.

If you like the combination of [Scientist name] + [sex act], you might also enjoy my blog post on Schroedinger’s Wank.