The Face as Personal Space

Ron, one of my future clients, made a comment on my post about the GFE vs. PSE that he “…want(ed) kissing in addition to anything else” when he paid for sex.  He’d made reference to a thread on TER about an escort that billed herself as “95% GFE.”  The fact that she didn’t kiss was why she wasn’t a “true” GFE.

For many people a kiss is a much more intimate experience than even vaginal or anal penetration.  I know some folks have trouble grasping that concept.  After all, you kiss many people throughout your life, and perhaps only rarely allow someone to penetrate your cunt or ass, so how could it be “more intimate” to kiss someone?  If you think about it, it makes sense.  When you kiss someone, you not only make physical contact with them with your lips, an intensely erogenous zone in and of itself, but you also smell them, taste them, see them very up close and personally; you hear their breathing.  It’s one of the few things you can do where all of the senses come into play simultaneously.  Everything is right there!  It’s so…intimate.

For most people, the face is their most personal space, and it takes a considerable amount of trust to allow someone to invade that invisible protective bubble that surrounds it.  You’ll let someone touch you casually on most other parts of your person, but the instant someone reaches for your face without invitation, you jump back.  You nuzzle faces with a lover to share moments of intimacy.  And a slap to the face is perhaps the most grievous physical insult one person can inflict upon another.

So it should come as no surprise that many prostitutes refuse to kiss their clients, or at best dislike it.  This has always been true for street-based workers, where interaction with clients is much more itinerant and there’s little time to form any kind of bond.  And, of course, most street workers will see a significant number of clients on any given night, usually without breaks to clean up or reset one’s self.  I’ve seen discussions where clients have made the point that they don’t want to kiss someone who’s had their lips around the cocks of multiple partners that evening, so there’s usually a mutual distaste for kissing in these kinds of encounters.  The very rushed nature of these types of assignations also tends to preclude any kind of non-essential groping or face mushing in favor of bringing about the paid-for release.

But this dislike for kissing often extends to the off-the-street escort as well, as obviated by the thread Ron referred to.  And she is hardly alone.  Some providers just believe that is too personal to do with someone who’s paying them for sex.  But, a girlfriend who refuses to kiss?  I don’t know too many people (from any position on the relationship continuum) who’d support an argument that someone who refused to kiss you was a boyfriend/girlfriend, professional or otherwise.

To me, someone claiming to provide a “girlfriend experience” without kissing is akin to offering the sale of a car without an engine.  In fact, one of the central components of the original concept of the GFE was that the provider would kiss the client.  Otherwise, there’s not much to offer that you can claim to be girlfriendish.  There’s snuggling, I suppose. 

I know, for myself, kissing establishes the foundational erotic connection necessary to build a good sex session.  I find fucking someone else’s mouth with my tongue, biting and chewing their lips, exploring their oral cavity with my lips and tongue to be quite revealing.  I can tell simply by how well someone kisses (regardless of gender) how much enthusiasm they’re going to bring with them to bed.  I don’t ever recall being wrong about that, either.  To me, sex without kissing is just too mechanical (of course, some prostitutes prefer it that way).

The personal space of the face also comes into play in many other sex acts as well.  Take the facial, for example.  The ejaculation onto the face of another person is seen by many as degrading, humiliating, or worse.

Many people believe the facial was “invented” by porn producers.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The practice has been around since people began documenting their sexual escapades.  Of course, most people didn’t even know it existed until they saw it in porn.  That point is inarguable.  But it has now entered the collective sexual repertoire of a great many people.

Not everyone agrees about the “meaning” of the facials, however.  Amanda Marcotte, one of the most cogent feminist writers of our time, made the assertion in a thread on Frisky¹ about facials that:

If you like it because it is demeaning, and you like to be dominated, well, okay. Do it to your heart’s content, but don’t deny that it’s an act that is done to dominate and demean.

Now I do believe that receiving a facial is a submissive act, and therefore its performing counterpart would certainly be a dominant act.  By default, being on the receiving end of anything is submissive.

But inherently demeaning?  Please.

While I generally agree that the original context in which the porn facial developed was misogynistic, and intended to appear to degrade the female in the video, I don’t believe most people take that from pornos today.  The facial in today’s context is the ubiquitous ending – the 21st Century “money shot” if you will – what withdrawal and ejaculation on the actress’s ass or cunt was in the porn of days gone by.  I think Amanda, and others of her generation, see the act in the context it was originally constructed, while those of my generation do not.  At least, not as a universal truth.  So I could see why she’d have a hard time dissociating the act itself with misogynistic or demeaning intent.

People often refer to the pornification of our society, and one excellent example of this is the (relative) ubiquity of the exploration of facials as a part of sex play, especially by younger people.  I’m not suggesting that many of the facials, as they’re presented in porn today, are not intended to degrade the female.  Not at all.  What I am saying is that, generally speaking, today’s younger generation doesn’t see it as a demeaning act by default.

To many of us, it’s just another sex act, and a great majority of us are perfectly capable of enjoying that sex act devoid of the political baggage that older generations find necessary to attach to it.  In fact, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of young adults my age (and younger) don’t even understand the original context of how the facial came to be in porn to begin with.  So they don’t even have a basis upon which to see it as demeaning; it’s just another sex act they’ve seen in porn and want to try.  Period.

I’ve lost count of the number of discussions I’ve been in, and the number of forum threads I’ve participated in where the female is just as likely, if not more so, to want to experiment with facials.  And they often have a hard time getting their guys to participate – it’s the guys who often believe it is degrading.  So while many older women may believe it demeaning, clearly, those of the younger set do not.  There’s more that could be said on this subject, but I won’t belabor the issue here.  I’ve previously written about how erotic I find facials to be, if you’re curious and don’t know.

I have clients like that have philosophical issues with facials as well and, not ironically, they are almost invariably the guys in their 40s and 50s.  They, too, grew up with porn facials being seen as an inherently demeaning act.  The younger guys, however, don’t see it that way and are almost universally excited when they find out that I am willing to allow them to splatter my face with semen.  Not once have I felt as though they were doing it to “demean” me, make me feel worthless, or anything with a remotely misogynistic air about it.

So, yes, I do specifically deny that it is universally intended to demean anyone or any group of people.

Slapping is another one of those acts that has become a bit more prevalent in the sex play of many people.  This, too, has begun to show up in porn, but, again, it’s been around for far longer than porn movies have been.  And of course there’s the assertion that slapping someone is an act intended to dominate.  I don’t think you can construct a reasonable argument against that.

I think just about everyone’s played with ass slapping from time to time, or at least, they’re familiar with it as a part of sex play.  Some people are even into boob slapping – what a unique sensation that is.  But for many, the cut off point is at the neck – no impact play above that imaginary anatomical Maginot Line, to include the face.  Again, once you start touching the face, you’re invading that intensely personal space.  And not only are you invading it, you’re doing so with the intent to cause pain, something most people prefer to avoid, especially those who don’t enjoy a bit of pain with their penetration.

I happen to enjoy being slapped during sex – the adrenaline and endorphin rushes that come about as a result are intense, and when added into what I’m feeling as a part of being fucked, the sex reaches a new level.  But I have to develop some modicum of trust with you to let you go there.  Not so much because I need an emotional connection with you so much as it takes some time to to learn how hard to slap someone without hurting them.  The more I get to know you, the more I’ll allow you to hit me in previously off-limits places, and I’ll do so such that you start weakly and build intensity.  Over time you come to learn how hard you can hit me and make me cum, rather than piss me off.

This is one reason why I won’t let clients or random hook ups slap me on the face.  Someone who’s never done it before won’t know how hard they can do it without causing bruises, or where to do it to avoid inflicting permanent damage (to an eye socket, ear canal, or even some of the bony or cartilaginous structures of the face).  By the way, if you’ll recall, Penny Flame’s rough sex DVD offers instruction on appropriate slapping techniques.

And then there’s spitting in someone’s face during sex.  This, too, has started to make its way into porn of late.  If you ask why, it relates to porn’s need to push the limits one step further.  Once spitting has become mainstream (if it ever does), I’m not sure what they’ll interject next.  I don’t know that I’ve seen anyone make the assertion that spitting has been around long before porn, though I know it’s been present in the BDSM scene for quite a while to one degree or another.  So people have played with it to one extent or another.

In our society, spitting on someone is almost universally seen as highly demeaning, and I’m not going to argue that spitting on someone while fucking them doesn’t reek of degradation.  I think someone who enjoys being spit upon is occupying submissive space and getting off on being degraded, whether they consciously realize it or not.  There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as it is done in a consensual environment and all the participants know where everyone else is coming from.

I went through a period where I wanted to be spit on.  In fact, when I was seeking someone to give me my first facial, I indicated in the Craigslist post I made that whoever I selected to ejaculate on me could spit on me as well.  There was an almost universal questioning of my motive behind that by the guys who responded to the ad.  It wasn’t overtly complicated; I was just in a place where I wanted to explore that feeling as a part of the sex I was participating in.

This extended into my relationship with Nikki as well.  She prefers to stay near the sexual center more so than I do, while I like to push my boundaries past center – to explore movement toward the extremes (on either end) from time to time.  So when I told her I wanted her to spit in my face when she was fucking me at one point, she freaked out, even though we’d watched porn together and gotten off to women being spit on during the sex.  About a month before I left to come to California, she “raped” me one night, and spit in my face a couple of times as a part of that.  Afterward, she told me she’d never do that again.  I wrote out the story of that experience right after it happened, but it’s just too emotional and personal for me to share, even this far removed from it.

And finally there’s the debauched act of allowing yourself to be face fucked.  Face fucking is passive – you’re allowing your face, your mouth, and sometimes your throat, to be used as if it were your cunt.  It convolutes your body, so to speak, such that your cunt now resides in that most personal space.

I’m not sure at what point face fucking was constructed as a unique concept with its own cultural context.  To an extent, it, too, has gone on perhaps since recorded history.  Even my first boyfriend, who had no idea what “face fucking” was (nor did I), would often thrust himself into my mouth when I was sucking his dick if he thought I wasn’t going fast enough (I was 14 – what did I know?).  It’s not too far of a reach to turn that into a face fuck – all I needed to do was stop and let him go at it.  I wonder how I’d have reacted if I’d been face fucked the first time I gave head.  How would that have colored my thoughts about it today?  Would I have grown to dislike sucking dick, or would I have become the slut I am today much sooner?

In my personal experiences of late, I often get into sub space when someone’s cock is penetrating my mouth forcefully, especially when my head is upside down, allowing for full, unhindered penetration.  It’s almost as if my mouth had literally become my cunt and all those little nerve endings down there have temporarily relocated themselves above my neck so that I now feel in my mouth what I normally feel in my cunt when it is being penetrated. It feels as if my cunt is superimposed over my mouth, if you will.  I have yet to actually orgasm from being throat fucked, but I’ve come awfully close (without touching myself).  I know people can cum from having their nipples twisted, so it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility.

I suppose there are people who argue that face fucking is demeaning or degrading.  I don’t know anyone who does.  At least, not any more so than basic oral sex (and some people do argue that the simple act of a woman sucking a cock is demeaning to her).  You will see porn where the guy is forcing his cock down the woman’s throat, gagging her, or making her vomit.  I’ve seen women say they enjoy the gagging (not so much the vomiting, of course).  This is one of those subjects that depends so much on context, though.  But, like the subject of facials, I’ve long since lost count of the number of times I’ve seen girls/women say they enjoy being face fucked.  As one woman said on a forum I’m in:  It’s the most intensely submissive sensation ever.

So there are a variety of sex acts that people engage in involving the facial area, from basic kissing on one end to having someone spit in your face or power fuck your mouth on the opposite end.  How one reacts to any of those depends on how they construct their sexual experiences involving that personal space.

Let me close this out by stating that I fully understand why some people find these acts degrading or demeaning.  But while each individual can make those determinations for themselves, neither you nor I can make a global assertion that any of these acts is universally anything to everyone.  Each person, with their own unique background, experiences, and perspective has to decide if these are activities they wish to participate in. I certainly make no value judgments about anyone and their decisions in these realms (though I often ask them to explain their rationale, purely to satisfy my own interest in sexual psychology).   I will make judgments about those who believe they can opine globally about what others must think or how they must experience something, however.  That’s a horse of a different color.

So how do you feel about it? Do you kiss random hook ups (if you have them)?  If you use the services of sex workers, do you want them to kiss you?  If you’re an escort, do you kiss your clients?  How do you feel about facials, or face fucking?  About being slapped in the face or spit on in the face during sex?  Are those hard limits for you, or open to negotiation?

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Tagged as: clients, face fucking, facial, gfe, intimacy, kissing, prostitute, slapping, spitting