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How We Got You to Pick Up 'CL' This Week

Oral. Music. History.

Mark Kemp Nov 8, 2017 4:00 AM

Sex. Just the word all by itself is an attention-grabber. Oral sex. Even more so.

Some of you may have picked up this week's Creative Loafing solely because you saw "oral sex" on the cover. You may not regularly pick up CL (which would be your loss), but you did this week because you saw big lips and sex on the cover and you just had to see what was inside.

Sex sells. That's a cliché, sure; but as with most clichés, it's also generally true.

So let's thrust right into this great oral sex discussion. We've done a lot of reader surveys at Creative Loafing over the years, the most notable being our annual Best of Charlotte poll. We've also done our share of focus groups, where we've invited groups of you into the office for pizza so we could pick your brains about what you'd like to see more of in our pages and on our website — and what you'd like to see less of.

In a nutshell, our consistent findings have suggested that you like beer, you like to party, you like to dance, listen to music, go to sporting events, eat fried pickles. Basically, you like to live free and have fun.

But what about sex?

That's an area we haven't explored enough in our surveys. Oh, we've written about sex — about sex-positive parties, toys, strip clubs, burlesque, erotica, good-vs.-bad porn, stuff like that. (Remember our old Bangtown columnist Mustang Sally? There was nowhere she would not go.) But we haven't polled you on specific sex topics.

Until now. A couple months ago our newest sex writer, Allison Braden, who pens the Modern Erotic column, decided to survey your oral sex habits. She told you about it in her September 6 column "The Great Queen City Oral Sex Survey," cleverly subtitled "Hold my crown while I go down" (which got a good chuckle out of your humble editor in chief). Allison's mission: to get a little TMI on how often y'all are going down, and what you like to do when you're down there.

"One thing that's pretty normal and unites sex aficionados up and down the Kinsey scale is oral sex," Allison wrote, citing National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior statistics showing that "more than 50 percent of men and women between the ages of 18 and 49 had received oral during the previous year," and that it "seems most popular among respondents between the ages of 25 and 29."

Voila! That's you. In the survey, Allison asked a number of questions: your age, gender identity, orientation and, most importantly, descriptions of your first oral sex experiences, your worst, your most memorable, etc.

You responded well, and this week we're reporting her findings and including a few quotes from the essay portion of the survey.

Oh yes, we are. How could we not include gems ranging from "I feel like giving oral sex is just gross" to "I'd rather be the giver than the taker"? We couldn't. Of course, we also couldn't print everything you wrote. (Some descriptions were too raunchy even for CL.)

Here are few more tidbits we learned about you and oral sex (other than that some of you like it, while others of you don't): Some of you could be porn writers, while others of you are more literary; some of you like to involve toys in your oral, while others of you keep it all natural; and while some of you started oral at an early age, others of you are late bloomers.

So check out the results and learn more about what your neighbors and peers like to do when they go down there. You know you want to know. And if you haven't yet filled out the survey, it's not too late. It remains active. Just go to tinryurl.com/OralSurvey. We may come back with a follow-up.

And speaking of late bloomers — that's the name of a kick-ass post-punk band from Charlotte. In the music section, I talk to the members of Late Bloomer — including drummer Scott Wishart, who also happens to be the owner of the coolest record store in town, Lunchbox Records — about the band's upcoming new album. It's a big one. Late Bloomer, which recorded two earlier LPs for tiny local indie labels, will be releasing its new one on the SoCal label 6131 Records, home to several amazing national indie acts including Touché Amoré, Culture Abuse and singer-songwriter Julien Baker, all of whom have moved on even bigger indies like Epitaph and Matador.

And in the news section, Ryan Pitkin tells the story the Siloam School, a tiny one-room schoolhouse for African-American students dating back to the 1920s. Not many Charlotteans know about the place, which is tucked into a wooded area next to a parking lot in the university area. Some local advocates are looking to move the school to a location where more people can see it and learn about its history.

So even if you picked up this week's Creative Loafing just for the sex, that's OK. You're only human. But keep picking us up for the news, music and arts stories you won't find anywhere else. You are now a member in good standing of the CL family. Welcome.

Sex

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