Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Given the seemingly endless human imagination for sexuality in every conceivable variety, the idea that there might still be a few unnamed sex acts would have struck Miss Poubelle as implausible till recently. And then she heard about oystering.

Miss Poubelle's friend Sig was at a sex club a while back, engaged in sex play with a cute boy. There was passionate kissing and sucking. A quick tongue explored his armpits, his neck, his ears, and then went... up his nose. Sig says, "I was completely unprepared for it. Nobody had ever stuck his tongue in my nose before, and I couldn't believe how hot it was." Miss Poubelle can readily believe it. A tongue is hot and wet-- a nose is extremely sensitive; the erotic potential is undeniable.

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An informal survey of friends revealed that the practice is not nearly so unusual as one might expect, a number of gay men and at least one straight man admitted to having enjoyed it in the past. A somewhat larger number were appalled that anything so perverse could take place!

That is to be expected-- erotic attractions aren't a rational process. We can't just decide to be turned on by diapers, or spanking, or nipple play. Mostly we simply discover that we are aroused by something without being able to explain why. Different strokes, as they say.

Miss Poubelle suspects that the origins of our fetishes and turn-ons often lay deep in early childhood. A favorite uncle wears rubber boots one day while cleaning the gutters, a little switch clicks in a four-year old boy's brain, and a boot fetishist is born. And this fits with the fact that so many fetishes-- diapers, spanking, piss-- involve the most intimate parts of the life of young children. From this perspective, it shouldn't be surprising that the nose and the functions associated with it could be the locus of a fetish. After all, children are frequently reminded that they must wipe their noses, that they must not pick their noses, that boogers are nasty, and so on. Why shouldn't some kids start to think of their noses as taboo, and then derive huge erotic satisfaction when someone violates that taboo?

What is more surprising is how completely absent nose-licking is from available pornography and from the vocabulary of sex. Miss Poubelle could find essentially no discussion of this as an aspect of either gay or straight sex anywhere on the Internet. Given that it is relatively easy to find pictures of toe sucking, erotic amputation, shit eating, sex with farm animals, men in diapers, insertion of objects into the urethra, and fist fucking, the lack of any pictures of a relatively tame practice of nose-licking is really surprising.

The linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf was famous for the idea that the words we have in our language limit our ability to talk about and conceptualize the world. That is, it is hard for us to talk or think about things that have no names. Being somewhat sympathetic to Whorf's position, Miss Poubelle suspects that the lack of images or discussion is largely because we don't have a standard way of talking about it. Nose-licking doesn't quite describe it, because that could equally well describe licking the outside of the nose. What she is trying to describe is the nasal equivalent of rimming-- the process of having a tongue probe and press into one of your sensitive orifices.

Ever eager to fill a linguistic void, Miss Poubelle suggests that we call it oystering. Oystering is formed on analogy to shrimping, a term now frequently used to refer to sucking toes. Miss Poubelle believes that shrimping originates in the idea that the toes are curled up like little shrimp, which the shrimper delicately feasts on. In the same way, one might think of the nose as rather like an oyster-- filled with a salty, moist liquid, plus the occasional pearl.

As for the safety of oystering, Miss Poubelle is no doctor, but it would seem likely that you could catch a cold this way. It could hardly be as risky as bare-backing or rimming, both of which have ample devotees, but there is presumably a health issue that those intrigued by oystering might think about.

The few people Miss Poubelle identified who would admit to oystering seemed rather evenly divided between oysterers (those whose tongues are involved) and oysterees (those whose noses are involved). It would not surprise her to learn that some people are top-only in this game, while others are ambidextrous. She can imagine that just as there are different degrees of rimming, there might be some people who go beyond mere licking. All of these distinctions might be elaborated when the oystering scene better developed.

And the first step to that is naming it. Dear readers, ask your friends about oystering. Who is disgusted by it? Who is secretly thrilled by the idea? Call it by its name, and in that way perhaps oysterers will discover the pleasure of the company of others who share their secret vice.

And we will have created a new word together!