COCKSUCKING

used to be
the province
of the pro
or whore
when I was coming
of age late fifties
early sixties.
You'd hear the whispers,
knew it existed,
but also knew you'd have to travel
far and wide
(and probably have to have cash
in your pocket), to see, let alone,
experience those special angels
of mercy
who bothered to learn
this technique of pleasure.
Even the gangster ethics
of my Jewish father
and his Italian wise guy friends
wouldn't allow their wives
to suck cock--
(not that my mother wanted
to touch a dick,
much less suck one),
that was for their mistress to do:
I couldn't kiss the wife, ya know
what I mean, if I knew her lips
wrapped around a cock,
even mine. I let the other one
take care of that.

Sure, there were French decks,
titty magazines and stag films
for us kids,
passed around from time to time,
but not often, or often enough,
for a young man's molecules.
And if the little girls knew
about this stuff
they didn't let on;
sucking a dick
during those years
was about as romantic
as appearing with a used condom
stuck on your body
after coming out of the Coney Island
surf.

But pleasure
like death
marches to its own beat
brokered, and played with,
by a cultural imperative:
bucks.

The artists and cultural
pimps pushed against
a now flimsy foe, god,
and by the mid-sixties
the only thing that was optional
was swallowing.
Suddenly,
men had to eat pussy
and not in that Tom Sawyer
painting a picket fence way
but with style and verve
or had better learn
and develop both--
the goose and gander thing.
Yet,
at some point
it was not a surprise
but expectation.

Now,
you can't read a book,
see a movie or TV show,
hear a comic,
without someone going down
on someone else.
It's an orator's madhouse.
Everyone's a poet;
everyone's an artist;
everyone's sexy,
and smart,
and attractive.
Every joke is risque,
or has a double entendre,
late night
is early night,
and early night
is every night.

I have no right
to complain
about cocksucking;
I've gotten more
than my fair share
by mouths beautiful
and educated.
And for all I know
the young boys
still look with astonishment
on their luck
the first hundred times or more.
But I don't think so.
The easier something is to cop
the less value it has. Things
work like that.
If you don't believe me,
try writing
a poem
like this.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2012