Title: The Lowdown on Going Down: How to Give Her Mind-Blowing Oral Sex Author: Marcy Michaels, with Marie DeSalle Publisher: Broadway Books Publish Date: 2005 Pages: 144 Genres:: How-To Guide,Reviewer: Jerome D'Angelo

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Admit it, guys: When it comes to cunnilingus, you’re about as useful as a spork. You’re clueless. You couldn’t find the clitoris if Dr. Ruth drew you a map. You think a G-spot is a place where rappers hang out. The only thing you can lick properly is the back of a stamp. You suck at giving women head, pun intended.

Well, buck up you sexually inept losers! There’s great news! Speech pathologist Marcy Michaels and author Marie DeSalle have finally grown tired enough of hearing about how bad you all are at getting your women off that they’ve written a marvelous how-to for oral sex. The Lowdown on Going Down: How to Give Her Mind-Blowing Oral Sex is 144 pages of hairy, salty, soft pink fleshy fun. For all you guys who can’t envision a sexual act not involving your penis and couldn’t tell mons pubis from Mars Volta, this book is sure to become your oral sex bible. And if you’re not an oral noob, they’ve included a few tricks for you vulva veterans, too.

As informative as it is well written, Michaels and DeSalle outline both exercises and techniques for cunnilingus. These involve some practical strengthening and stretching exercises for your tongue, most of which are simple and fun to practice. Michaels and DeSalle claim many men are bad at performing oral sex because of the physical strain it creates for them, and also because of stigmas about the practice. If you want to get good at something, you have to want to do it in the first place. They conclude that practice is needed to prevent symptoms such as lockjaw or soreness of the tongue, and more importantly, to get the giver to look forward to going down on their partners as much as their partners do.

The techniques demonstrated in the book go way beyond the simple “locate vagina, flick, repeat” methods that most men might use. Michaels and DeSalle detail a myriad of tongue motions useful for pleasure, and encourage use of fingers and toys and teasing to variegate the approach, making the act much less formulaic and much more spontaneous. G-spot and clitoral stimulations are both musts, as well as the many varied positions and angles that can be used. The likely erogenous zones on a woman’s body other than the vagina are illustrated as well, as Michaels and DeSalle emphasize the need for the “build up” of stimulation necessary for achieving orgasm.

Occasionally, the book veers into the impractical and superfluous. It makes sense that certain breathing techniques are mentioned, but the extensive detail of the exercises seems unnecessary. Attempts to further de-stigmatize the practice certainly could have replaced some of the suggestions made to enhance the act. If your lady friend enjoys watching porn while you go down on her, all well and good, but its inclusion in the book seems more like filler than fundamentals.

Nevertheless, between the illustrations, the techniques and the tongue workouts, this book is as necessary to your erotic literature collection as The Kama Sutra and last month’s issue of Hustler. The Lowdown on Going Down should be required reading for everyone, essential for those both giving and receiving the truly sublime act of cunnilingus.

So if your girlfriend’s rabbit vibrator’s been buzzing around the apartment like it owns the place, it’s time to break out your own weapons of mass contraction. Stop making her throw you out of bed just so she can finish herself off, already! Read The Lowdown on Going Down TODAY and remind her that orgasms don’t just come in double-A battery form. Unleash that slippery red monster hiding behind your teeth, and give your lady-lover a chance to tell you, honestly for once, how good you are in bed. Just read this book, train your tongue in the art of whirl, and you’ll have her waking the neighbors with her ecstatic swearing in no time.