I am aware this sounds a bit privileged (shut up and enjoy your fucking blow job!) old-fashioned, and squeamish. And it is. But what can I say?I once told a friend about my insecurity, and he fell to the ground in a fit of laughter. It made me feel stupid, though I did appreciate that he was laughing, because I think he thought it was a joke. I felt like I was in high school or middle school again, though, when that happened. Seventh or eighth grade was around the time blow jobs — or at least the mention of them — started to make their way into my social orbit. Not that I ever got one then, or wanted one — I could barely bring myself to kiss the girl I'd been going out with for seven months, let alone show her my penis — but there were people I knew who said they'd received blow jobs (or fingered their girlfriends).We were supposed to admire them for their sexual success, but I always wondered silently about the logistics. Did he pull his pants all the way down? Or did he just unzip his fly? Perhaps he took his pants all the way off. In that case, did he take his shoes off first? And if so, did he keep his socks on? Perhaps they were completely naked. But they didn't have sex, so why would they do that? Did she compliment his penis when she first pulled it out? Or did he pull it out himself? And did he thank her after? Or did they just do the deed and move on?I will admit that I’ve never found anybody else, aside from Johnny Fontane in The Godfather , who’s copped to the blow job blues, fellatio-phobia, or whatever else you want to call it. So, I turned to the internet. The Web abounds with message boards on which male commenters nervously pose some form of the question, "Is it weird that I don’t like blow jobs?" and their partners wonder why these men don’t enjoy blow jobs as much as they think they should. In my experience, there are several things men worry about that might turn them off or bring them down, so to speak: penis size (Does he or she think it’s big enough?), sensitivity (Will I last long enough?), and smell (Is it dank down there? Probably)."TEETH," wrote one Reddit commenter named wild-tangent , who seems to have read The World According to Garp one too many times. "They almost ALL USE TEETH. And it's terrible. Even the best and most patient amount of instruction cannot overcome the laws of physics, and teeth sooner or later get involved, and it fucking hurts."That’s not something I’ve ever dealt with, but I sympathize. The presence of extra foreskin isn’t the only reason my penis often shrinks like a frightened turtle at the possibility of fellatio. There are other distracting things to worry about, like, should I groan? I’ve never been good at dirty talk, but lying there silently always feels awkward.Then, there are practical concerns, such as ejaculation. I don’t really like ejaculating. It’s messy, and it’s wet, and it smells weird. (It grosses me out, in the springtime, when the pear trees start to blossom and they smell like semen. Have you noticed ?) I have never tasted my semen, and I never want to. I can’t imagine why anyone else would, which is why it strikes me as strange that the women who have given me blow jobs in the past — there aren’t many — have not stopped to discuss beforehand what we should do about the oncoming eruption. (Maybe I’m supposed to address that first — it’s complicated , I guess.) I also can’t help wondering whether or not my "spunk" is "funky," as Samantha describes Bobby Cannavale’s character’s "joy juice" in Sex and the City. That would be embarrassing.Despite these worries, over the past year or so, I’ve made a concerted effort to just let them all go, as much as I can, and to feel more confident. It’s working, to an extent. I now have a girlfriend who says she likes giving blow jobs. For a while, I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I have chosen to trust that she wouldn’t lie about something like that. She’s opened me up a bit.Blow jobs still make me uncomfortable, but these things take time, I suppose. I’ve spent so many years worrying about them that it feels unnatural not to, much in the same way that it’s hard for me to accept that my pediatrician, as much as I loathe his shaky hands, isn’t responsible for the way I feel about myself.In Foreskin’s Lament, Shalom Auslander’s disturbingly funny memoir on leaving the Orthodox Jewish community, he grapples with the prospect of circumcising his as-yet-unborn son. "I wondered if there was a place where the foreskins could go," he writes , "a place where they could live together, peacefully, loved, wanted, a nation of the foreskins, by the foreskins, for the foreskins."Lately, I’ve been trying to live in peace with my foreskin — what’s left of it, anyway.