First of all, I should say that my experience was that of an eighteen-year-old girl with a much older man, which makes my experience different than others and specific to me, but I think my advice will be helpful to anyone considering having oral sex for the first time.

The first time I gave a blowjob, I felt like a rock star, a porn star, and a princess all rolled into one. Although it was my first time, I had practiced and studied for it like an SAT. I had read Oral Sex For Couples - The Art of Cunnilingus and Fellatio and Guide to Licking and Sucking - How to Impress Him with the Best BlowJob - The Best Illustrated Guide to Oral Sex. I took notes. I made index cards. I copied diagrams and committed them to memory. If I could get a five on the AP Literature test, it had seemed to me, I could teach myself to suck a cock.

Along with my book learning, I had also created "labs" for myself. I had tentatively explored with bananas and cucumbers, mimicking the diagrams in the books, and watching myself lick and suckle them in the bathroom mirror. I had touched the back of my throat with the handle of my toothbrush every single night for two months to diminish my gag reflex. At first, I nearly retched, but I made slow but steady progress, and it got easier and easier, but I had to be committed, tapping my tonsils with the intensity and single-minded focus an Olympic gymnast practicing backflips. After sixty straight days, I had been able to drop the whole length of the handle down my throat, and I felt I was ready to swallow swords.

Or rather, one sword in particular. Since I had met the man, for whom I was preparing, online, and based on our extensive cam sex, I knew exactly how big he was (6.1 inches long, 5.1 in girth/circumference) and I knew its peculiar shape and curve. With empty toilet paper rolls, electrical tape, duct tape, cotton balls, foam weather stripping, and a ten-inch beeswax candle, I had fashioned a perfect facsimile of his cock. First I had warmed the shaft of the candle to give it the perfect bend. Around the narrow candle, I had wrapped rings of the quarter-inch foam tape, giving it spongey-fleshy thickness. I had cut and spliced the toilet paper tube to an exact 5.1-inch girth (or rather just a millimeter thicker) to act as a guide. I had used cotton balls to sculpt a head, and then I wrapped the tube in duct tape. Lastly, I had used black and yellow electrical tape to give it black and yellow stripes like a bumblebee.

With my bumblebee in hand, I had knelt down naked (to set the mood) in front of my bedroom mirror, and watched myself stroke and suck, mimicking the extra research I had gathered on pornhub, (at this point I was just working on visual presentation) and taught myself to deepthroat like a porn star.

So, when I actually, finally got together with him, and we finally, after a six-month internet flirtation, got down to business, I did it just like I had practiced in my room at home. I was enthusiastic, I made eye contact, I used lots of tongue but no teeth, I knew to use my hands, both of them, and I could take him all the way in without a problem. After he finished in my mouth, I opened wide, showed him the pool of his spunk on my tongue, swallowed, and smiled like a Disney mermaid. He was, forgive me, blown away.

The only thing I wasn't prepared for was the taste of semen, which was a little worse than my first taste of coffee, but not as bad as my first taste of gin. (I like all three now... but only with cream, tonic, and Diet Coke chaser, for each respectively.) I remember thinking right after I swallowed, "Smile, don't vomit," and luckily, I did and didn't.

Moments later, he said, looking stunned and spent, "That was the best blowjob I ever had in my whole life. No way that was your first one. It's not possible." Like a nerd bragging about her study plan, I told him about all my training. He looked at me like I was a strange bird, but he also looked warm, loving, and grateful. "I feel like I should give you some sort of trophy."

If only more boys took the time to read a book before going down. Most only know what they learn in porn, and they think they are only required to receive rather than give, and even when they do, they just make me want to sit them down in front of a whiteboard and draw diagrams, with arrows and color-coding. By contrast, that older man to whom I delivered my first blowjob had read She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman (Kerner).

And I DID come. Over and over...like a girl winning trophies.

Study up, boys and girls. It makes a difference.