Brian Kennon and Bobbi Woods at Fourteen30 Contemporary

Artists: Brian Kennon and Bobbi Woods

Exhibition title: Blowjob

Venue: Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, US

Date: May 22 – July 5, 2015

Photography: images courtesy of the artists and Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland

Words by Andrew Berardini

Know has you would be known, blow as you would be blown Sharon Olds, “Blowjob (Vulgar Slang),” 2011

Each blowjob is a gift.

I can write this because I am not currently getting a blowjob. There is some sadness in this.

“How to Give a Good Blowjob” Look it up online. The results are disappointing, nothing a decent porno couldn’t teach one just from simple observation. Though the most helpful seeming advice, besides don’t bite his cock off, are in regards to lubrication and joy, slather with as much spit as possible and be sure to have a good time doing it, as well as appear to be having a good time doing it, the visuals fundamental to fellatio’s singular joy. For the one being blown, participating while at the same time being able to watch from a distance, is the best of both worlds.

Eating pussy requires dexterity, timing, trust, and zeal as well. An artform in its own right, of parallel importance, or sole importance depending on your proclivities, but this is about blowjobs.

Blowjobs require a little bit of trust. The supposed submissive has a man’s manhood between his or her teeth. The lucky receiver can decidedly detach and concentrate on the sensation and the submission, but to paraphrase Francis Bacon, faces are but a gallery of pictures where there is no love. Blowjobs joyfully given are only truly submission if you consider gifts a weakness. Such attitudes miss a pleasure deeper than a deepthroat.

(When the Supreme Court of the United States struck down sodomy laws, including the blowjob under many definitions, only poor, perhaps tragically unblown Clarence Thomas dissented.)

The perfect blowjob is done with gentle but fulsome ardor. An engorged cock slapping an unblushed cheek, a tongue gliding along the head with precision and grace, sloppy as hell, slobberingly joyful, a ballet of hands and mouth. You can always speed things along with a friendly tug. Each sucker of dick does it with particular skill, speed, rhythm. Each mouth has its special pleasures and perils, even a bad blowjob (excepting injurious ones) isn’t all that bad. Talking about mouths and cocks alone misses the whole body attached to either, but once both parties have granted trust, it’s true there’s something of pure sensation, desire, lust that is as simple and obvious as a creamy sunset in its pleasure.

It’s a special pleasure to fuck the face of someone you love. As it is to have them fuck yours.

The blower controls their lover with each subtle shift, teasing till cum spurts into an open mouth, across a grinning face, pearl-necklacing down a dripping throat.

Getting a cock to cum, except for particularly picky lechers and whiskey-limp bummers, isn’t the most difficult act in the world. But despite this perceived ease, giving a good blowjob is very hard.

Ask any cock-owner and they’ll tell you with a glimmer in their eyes, the best blowjobs of their life. Those who know they suck cock with skill understand the power of this singular act like sorcerers.

Though easily a stand alone kindness, blowjobs quite often preamble or epilogue fucking. An appetizer and a dessert. Mouth music primes and teases or tongues a kindest finishing move after other orifices have been all fucked out.

Raunchy and ethereal, totally natural though regularly labeled “unnatural” (humans aren’t the only animals with mouthfuls of cock and cunt), currently commonplace but no less special for being so, that hot hunk of flesh and its spurting conclusions is entirely visceral and no less mystical for being so.

To all those kindest souls who with desire and skill fellate their lovers: no words could fully encompass the enormous gratitude, but I’ll say them here and everytime past and after: Thank you.