Let me describe a few positions, body arrangements, possible for two people during fellatio. There are two standard positions that are easy and satisfying. In both the person being fellated lies flat on his back. In the first, his partner lies at his side, facing head to feet. This allows for mutual fondling. In the second position, the partner sits or lies on his stomach between his friend's legs, facing him. This gives the fellator more movement and also puts his tongues against his friend's fraenum (this may or may not be important).

There are many other positions possible. Some allow mutual genital stimulation, or more body tension, or body contact. There's a few:

You're sitting, standing, or leaning against a wall or tree trunk. Your friend kneels in front of you to suck you off. This can be really fun in the shower.

If you're on your back with your friend kneeling or sitting on your chest, you can easily reach up to fondle him and adding rimming if you like.

For an unusual experience, you can be lying upside down in a chair or car seat, so that your head is down and your knees bent over the back. Your friend, meanwhile, stands in the back seat and bends way over on his stomach between your legs.

In general, fellatio can be done with either one of you lying, on your side, sitting, or standing, in or out of doors. If you want to go exploring, there are lots of possibilities. Remember that you aren't restricted to the top of a bed. By using imagination and hand pieces of furniture, pillows and rocks or trees if in the forest, you can get into some intriguing and usual experiences. Be creative and mobile and see what happens.

PROBLEMS

Now I'd like to talk about a few problems that can happen while you're fellating someone. The first thing is gagging. This is a spontaneous, unwilled muscular defense of the throat when bumped against foreign objects. It's just a natural reaction, like jerking your hand away from fire. But often it's a source of embarrassment and confusion in one or both partners, during fellatio, ironically implying the dislike or rejection. You can control gagging by not going too deep. Also, if you become very excited, the reflex is not likely to happen. If you're doing mutual fellatio (sixty-nine) you might have an exciting time and not even notice that his penis is going way back in your mouth.

Fortunately, the whole gagging reflex will decrease with experience. If you start out slow and calm, you'll see that it's not so scary, If you want, gently explore the sensations of his penis touching the inside and back of your mouth, over time.  Experimenting with depth while doing the slide activity is a good way Another way to help condition yourself is, while brushing your teeth, use the back of the toothbrush to explore around in your mouth. Be playful-try brushing your tongue, moving the brush a little farther back each time, to see how far down you can go.

Another possible problem is taking semen in your mouth. Cum is a curious thing. It's taste varies from person to person, mild to tangy. It's good stuff nutritionally, being mostly protein and minerals; it's the minerals that give the unique flavor. Take it or leave it, there's nothing wrong with it, and it can turn out to be quite a nice treat.

If you want to swallow it without hassle, take the climax deep in your mouth, and remember, "in each and every case, the faster it is swallowed, the less time the taste remains." Vomiting, noisy hawkings, or dashing to the bathroom can be very rude and demeaning to someone who's just climaxed, so if you don't want to swallow it, remove it quietly afterwards, into a handy towel or handkerchief. Or of you like, things can always be switched from fellatio to masturbation or something else beforehand, but don't do this too close to orgasm.

A third possible problem is genital odor. All people have a natural smell. There's little connection between smell and venereal or other diseases; it's solely a matter of cleanliness. Some people enjoy a hearty smell, others can't tolerate even the slightest whiffs. Genital odor is one of the more intimate facts about a person, and can be the delight and turn-on to the warm closeness of fellatio. If not, it can often be ignored. Or you can escort him to the bathroom and wash him yourself.

A fourth possible problem is muscle fatigue. This is to be expected during fellatio-the mouth can get tired being stuffed full, and actions of the tongue and neck also take a lot of energy. It's a natural part of the sex-play pattern, and calls for a change of pace and/or position. It's probably not such a good idea just to stop and sit there panting or making nasty comments. If communication is easy between you can your partner, it will be understood and OK for each to do what you have to do, without being an irritant. Sometimes you might get tired just as he's getting ready to come, since this is a likely time for being energetic and lively. You can always slow down if it's not too close to orgasm, or switch to something easier. Also, this problem
will happen less often as you become more used to fellatio, as you become more confident in yourself and your friend.

The last possible problem is rising fear of even panic as he comes to orgasm. This can be caused by one or all of the problems I just mentioned, or just by the force and drive of impending orgasm, or by your current mood. Inexperience or distaste can be big contributors. You begin to feel like you've lost control, or something very bad is going to happen, and then the activity suffers, often at just the wrong moment.

There is a point at which the momentum towards climax is so strong that it will go ahead even if you slow down, and if you do stop just before the orgasmic experience may be very second-rate. If you start to panic at his orgasm, there's not much you can do about it but maintain as best you can. Afterwards you'd best deal with it unless you want it to happen again.

The important thing is to feel safe. Part of it is trusting yourself and your friend. Another part is to know what's coming. Often the first spurt of semen will trigger the gagging reflex, and cause panic. Knowing that this might happen and that you can still continue sucking can keep you from freaking out. For a long time, I had a lot of trouble panicking before orgasm. Now I feel much better about it, through trust, experience, and by breaking down my problem into its parts (gagging, fatigue, etc.) and dealing with each. Talk about any problems with your partner and your friends. Just saying what you feel is often very helpful. Ask them if they experience these things and how they handle them.

Also remember that your current mood has a lot to do with your experience, and mood can shift a lot through time. One day you might feel quite happy to eat sperm, and the next thing it's awful. It's important to respect your mood, and realize that it may change later.

And also, I'd like to say a word about letting go. In the kind of fellatio I've been talking about so far, one person is doing things with his friend's penis, while the other person just lies back and experiences. If your friend is sucking your penis, he, in a sense, has control which you, in a sense, have given to him (you always keep control over your own choices). This sense of not being in control can be frightening sometimes, the person feeling like he's losing himself, his power, security. He's not safe. If you start
feeling this way, don't try to force yourself to be strong: this gives more strength to the fear. Instead, just be aware-note your fear. And be aware that you've let someone else stimulate you through his mouth and body. If you don't want this, don't let it continue; switch to something else. If you do want it, talking will help. Tell him you feel uneasy. Often it turns out the person was afraid of coming too soon, or felt like he was hogging all the attention. Getting upset like this isn't a glaring fault or a horrible failure, but a part of being human. Problems are normal just like good times. Being yourself, opening up to your bad parts as
well as good, will encourage others to be themselves too, and can lead you to new levels of sharing, growing, and being.

Also, unless you want to have a standard passive/active couples role with your partner, where one always sucks and the other always get sucked, you'll have to work on sharing control, and directing activity. This is a beautiful equalizing factor. It's a great challenge and also a great potential in the gay relationship.

THRUSTING

So far I've been talking about fellatio where one person lays back and gets sucked off. There's another kind too, where one person slides his penis in and out of his friend's mouth. The Romans really liked this kind of fellatio, and called it irrumatio. It gives a different experience to the person being fellated, because he's the one moving. He's more tense and active, he's controlling his experience much more so than in the other style, and he's moving his penis in an action called thrusting, which in itself can be a different and enjoyable sensation.

If you and your partner want to try this, have him lie down on his back with a pillow under his head. Then you straddle him with your hands and knees so that your crotch is over his face, and your head is above his. Move around until you can easily fit your penis into his mouth. He should make his mouth wet and form a snug ring with his lips around your shaft, as he'd do for the sliding action described earlier. He should suck on your penis, and otherwise keep still.

Now you want to slide you penis in and out. This thrusting is learned, and the only way to learn is by doing. Without moving your knees or using your hands, move your penis with your hips. Ask him to be patient and just experiment. Ask yourself, how in the world can I get myself to move in and out, and try out your muscles. Imagine a point at the base of your penis, and you want to cause this point to push out and up through your penis, and them pull back again. Everyone free of paralysis can do thrusting, if they want to. Just take you time and explore. Follow you sensations-see what feels good and do it again. Having an
experienced guide or helper can be very useful too.

That's basically all there is to it. You can add things like rocking your pelvis from side to side or circularly (called "grinding"). Or your partner can rock his head from side to side, or move it up and back to meet your strokes, or use his tongue if he likes.  Also, there are lots of different positions, standing, kneeling, and so on. Many couples like to work out there own ways. I'm saying, here are possibilities; there you are- explore, take what you want, and enjoy!

Some people can get into this second kind of fellatio, others don't like it. A frequent complaint is that the mouth-partner felt abused, that he had no control and the other thrust too deeply or violently, causing gagging, fear, or other troubles. This needn't happen if the two people can talk freely, and respect their own and each other's wants and needs. You might be able to work something out with the following suggestions:

Awareness: if you're thrusting, you can be aware of your friend's comfort level, and with a little care, regulate the depth and strength of your thrusts.

Pausing: try pausing for a moment between thrusts.

The Stopper Technique: if your friend is thrusting in your mouth, you can have some control by wrapping one hand around his lower shaft, to use as a stopper, allowing only as much as you like. If your hand is at the base, this also adds a pleasurable pressure against this body. You (or your partner can use the hand to masturbate the lower part of his penis as the top part slides in and out, moving the hand down to the base as the penis slides in.

Mutuality: in irrumatio, the mouth-partner is likely to get bored, and this contributes a lot of feeling abused. There are some positions that allow mutual fondling, where he can caress you, and in others the mouth partner can masturbate himself.

SIXTY NINE

Sixty-nine is mutual fellatio, the two of you sucking each other at the same time. It's called sixty-nine because the body positions are like the number 69. There are two positions. In the first, one person lies flat on his back and his friend kneels over him, head to feet. From here, you both can roll over on your sides to for the other.

the special delight of sixty-nine comes from the mutuality, doubling pleasure and warmth-it's an equal sharing, feeling the same joys, given to each other, at the same time, in the same position, at a very intimate level.

You can even go deeper with simultaneous orgasms, coming at the same time-but a cautionary note: this takes some care.  Mutual orgasm can be meaningful, or also a confusing hang-up. When people get really excited, toward orgasm, they tend to lose control and awareness. But sucking takes some attention and care. So, sucking and coming may not always mix well. As people have said, "What's being done to me distracts me from what I'm doing."

You'll have to work this out for yourself. My opinion is, it's no big deal; it's nice to come together, and it's nice if we don't.  Some couples like sixty-nine to simultaneous orgasms, and make it because they've learned to "fit" together. Other couples try hard but miss the point because they pay too much attention to the simultaneity and not enough to themselves. Getting orgasms together is not usually an easy thing.

Some people like to do sixty-nine for a while, and then alternate with one person and then the other resting. Others like to suck each other alternately until very turned-on, and then finish off with a sixty-nine. For myself, I find that mutual orgasm is nice, but I usually can't suck and be sucked at the same time for very long. So I might have sixty-nine for a while and then switch to other things. You can experiment, and see what happens. Also, if you feel relaxed, sixty-nine is a good way to work on problems like gagging