Review: Rock Candy Suga Daddy 8″

Kate Sloan

When Rock Candy reached out to me offering me a toy to review, I was immediately entranced by their toys’ aesthetic. They’re all pink or blue, look vaguely like candy, and made to satisfy size queens (and other size royalty). These things are very up my alley. And now a Rock Candy dildo was gonna go up my “alley” as well. *rimshot*

They sent me the 8″ Suga Daddy, a big blue dildo with a suction cup base. I thought it would be good for pegging, but when it arrived on my doorstep, I immediately realized it was probably too big for my partner’s ass to take. My vag, however, is a different story.

This dildo, as its name implies, is 8″ long, though the insertable length is only 7.25″. This makes it long enough to hit my A-spot with some room to spare – yay! It doesn’t hit the spot with any particular intensity, being flexible and curveless, but it does nudge it gently, which is sometimes enough for me. The diameter of the toy tops out at 1.875″ – pretty big, but not unmanageable for most vaginas and some butts. I feel nice and filled up when this toy is inside me.

The best thing about this toy, IMO, is the ridges along its shaft. It has a glans and coronal ridge, much like a flesh-and-blood penis, but those ridges/bloops/bumps continue down the length of the toy and feel like one coronal ridge after another, popping pleasantly over my pubic bone one by one with each thrust. This can be intense but sometimes that’s exactly what I want.

The silicone, I should note, is fairly firm and unyielding. This means that the Suga Daddy will stand up well in a strap-on, jutting out merrily from the body. However, for my purposes, it’s firmer than I prefer a silicone toy to be. It doesn’t bend to the will of my vagina, and often leaves me with a slightly bruised-feeling vag and urethra if I’ve been pounding away for a while. A good, thick water-based lube helps with this issue, but doesn’t solve it entirely, especially since the texture of the silicone is a little draggy.

I wish the 8″ Suga Daddy had a slight upward curve for targeting erogenous zones with more precision, and that its base was thicker and heftier so I could thrust quickly with it more easily. But it’s a really good dildo for when you just want to be stuffed full of whimsically-colored silicone. It’s firm and formidable, and if you enjoy the sensation of being gently and slowly stretched open, you’ll love the girthy and gradually-widening shaft of this toy. Its ridges are like a roller coaster for the vagina, and while sometimes I want my A-spot or G-spot targeted more directly, sometimes a resolute massage of my vaginal walls is exactly what I want, and the Suga Daddy can certainly do that.

 

Thanks to Rock Candy for sending me this toy to review!

Intimate Intercourse: Dating a Sex Writer (Part 3)

Kate Sloan

Hello again! Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. This week we’re discussing hypnokink! This is the final part of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here and part 2 here. In this instalment, we discuss the upsides and downsides of dating a sex writer, and his advice for anyone considering it.

KS: What are some of the things about dating a sex writer that are hard or weird?

SS: Okay, this answer is sort of like answering the “What is your biggest weakness?” job interview question, because it’s a problem that isn’t really a problem, but – if you’re dating a sex blogger that’s reviewed a lot of toys, and they have, like, 200, 300 sex toys, deciding what toy to use is actually kind of hard! There’s a lot of choices. There’s a lot of things to fuck you with, a lot of things to hit you with, and also stuff you haven’t reviewed yet that you might wanna use, even if you don’t like it or know you might not like it, because you have to. So that decision is a very frequent decision that I have to make, especially ‘cause I’m your dominant, and also there’s so many options. It’s a “paradox of choice” type of thing sometimes.

KS: [giggling] We mostly stay within a relatively small group of things, because it makes it easier to make those decisions.

SS: Exactly. I don’t have to, like, go pull up your toybox page every time we have phone sex, to be like, “Okay, let’s see here…”

KS: But I do think, like, I say a relatively small group but it actually isn’t that small, all things considered.

SS: No. It’s bigger than most people’s entire collection!

KS: Right. And you have an impressive grasp of not only the toys that I have but also kind of the function of each one and when it would be right for any particular moment, which I find really impressive.

SS: Yeah. What else is hard about it? There’s a difficult-to-ignore extra layer of minor anxiety about something going wrong. Stuff goes wrong in sex all the time – you’re tired, there’s boner issues, there’s whatever – and there’s a part of me that’s like, “I don’t really want to fuck this up.” But it’s not rational. I don’t think you’re trying to write about a particular person’s one-off boner issue. That’s not interesting.

KS: No.

SS: So I don’t know. It’s just a thing. I don’t know, is there anything else that I’ve said was hard in the past, or that you think makes it hard for you, as a sex blogger, to date people?

KS: I mean, it pisses us off when people try to involve themselves…

SS: Oh, yeah, it really does. When people are sort of trying to insert themselves or make non-complimentary comments about us, that is kind of rough.

KS: The problem with that is that, yes, I’m a sex writer, yes, part of my skillset is making private, intimate experiences palatable and comprehensible for outsiders, but inherently, I’m not writing about every detail of everything that happens, and my readers don’t have all the context of our relationship because they aren’t in it, and so you can’t assume that you know everything about somebody just because they write about their sex life. And likewise, you can’t assume they’re going to be willing to open up about everything. We’ve had people ask us really inappropriate questions and just be gross about it, and it’s like, “Guys. Just be chill.”

SS: How do you feel about the thing where people say, like, “I love him,” or “I’m so into your partner,” or whatever?

KS: I mean, I am only made uncomfortable by it to the extent that you are – except when people are, like, hitting on you, which is kind of rude, to me.

SS: Yeah, it is kind of weird. I’m very flirty, so it doesn’t usually register as weird to me; it usually registers as like, “Oh, yeah. Okay, cool.” But sometimes it crosses that line.

KS: I just get very protective and very, almost like, “mama lion energy” around that, because I feel this sense of responsibility for what happens to you in my spaces, because I brought you into this…

SS: Totally. That makes complete sense.

KS: Yeah, I’m just like, please stop. Because my worry – not just with you, but with past partners when this has happened also – is that someone will experience too much of that and will decide it’s too much and will have to end the relationship. So that’s always kind of where my mind goes.

SS: Oh, how has that happened?

KS: None of my other partners have really been out as my partner who weren’t in the sex industry already, but if I wrote something about someone that was very flattering or complimentary and people were saying gross, objectifying things about the person based on that, then I would try to keep those people from seeing those comments sometimes, or just try to protect them from that, because I didn’t want them to feel like dating me was a liability.

SS: Yeah. Makes sense.

KS: Yeah. What are some of the best or most fun things about dating a sex writer?

SS: Seeing yourself from another angle, especially an angle of somebody who’s really into you or in love with you, is a gigantic self-confidence boost. I’d recommend it to anyone! Even if it’s private, even if you can just get your partner to write a thing that is never published that they can share with you, or vice-versa, I think it’s great. Hell of a drug! What else? Being able to meet tons of other people in this industry, that I really enjoy their work and think they’re making a big difference in terms of sex-positivity and stuff, is really cool.

KS: Were you starstruck when you met Epiphora and Lilly?

SS: Yeaaaah. A little bit.

KS: [laughing]

SS: Also, getting to see you do your thing. I’ve been in relationships with people where I can’t see them doing their work and being really competent at the thing, and that is a huge turn-on, I think, for both of us, so being able to watch you do panels and listen to your podcast and read your writing, being able to consume all of that competence is also great. And the toys. Yeah. Yes.

KS: Yeah, it is a fun perk that I am able to acquire toys for you to use and for us to review.

SS: Yeah.

KS: And I appreciate that you take that task so seriously, ‘cause I’ve had partners in the past who just sort of would give me very vague, brief thoughts on the toy, and I would always be like, “Hey, I need more than that.” So you’re a good partner for me in that respect as well.

SS: Mhm.

KS: One more thing… What would you tell someone who was thinking about dating a sex writer but was kind of unsure about it or scared about it?

SS: A couple things. The first thing is, I think that a lot of people who’d be thinking about dating a sex writer are thinking about dating a sex writer’s public persona. They don’t actually know that person… yet. So, don’t assume that they’re gonna be having sex all the time, or that they’ll be exactly who they are in their sex writing. That’s just one side of them.

KS: Yeah, I’m frequently depressed or giggly. I’m not always a Sex Person.

SS: [laughing] Yes. And then, maybe you’re flirting with that person or you’ve met them at an event or whatever, and you think it’s more of a real possibility, not just a thing that you’re fantasizing about, like, you might actually get to go on a date with them – don’t make it entirely about that, either. If I was a sex writer, I wouldn’t want to be dated for my job, or for the clout or whatever. I’d want to be dated for who I am. So it’s just, again, it’s just one facet of this person’s life. And for some people, it’s just a job, it’s just an income source. So, be aware of that. And then, the last thing I would say is, think past just the next week or the next month about whether you are okay being public. Don’t be like, “Oh, that’s a problem for later,” or, “I don’t have to worry about that,” because if you can’t [be public], you really need to be upfront that it’s not going to happen. And if you think it’s a possibility, discuss that with the person that you’re dating as you’re working through that process. I would say that if you have worries about coming out and you want to talk about it ever, DM me, because I could talk about that forever. And I will try to convince you to do it.

KS: [giggling] That’s so cute. You’re an evangelist.

SS: Yeah.

KS: Okay. Thank you, I love you, I’m very glad we’re dating.

SS: I love you too, little one. You’re a very good sex blogger and I am glad we’re dating.

Intimate Intercourse: Dating a Sex Writer (Part 2)

Kate Sloan

Hi again! Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. This week we’re discussing what it’s like to date a sex writer! This is part 2 of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here. In this instalment, we discuss his decision to “come out” as my partner last October, why he made that decision, how he did it, and what’s happened since.

KS: So you were anonymous to my readers and followers for the first several months that we were dating…

SS: Yeah.

KS: How did you start to feel that you didn’t want to be anonymous anymore?

SS: I started to feel like I didn’t want to be anonymous anymore over a period of a few months. It was like, mostly me thinking about how it would feel if we were in the reversed positions – if I was a sex writer and the long-distance partner of somebody who couldn’t be out about dating me. I think that that would hurt me, and even though you said that it was okay, and that it wouldn’t necessarily hurt you, I felt like it might start to. And it was starting to. So, even before I had made the decision to definitely do it, I was talking to people about it from a risk-assessment perspective, of like: “I’m feeling [like I want to come out], I don’t know if this feeling will grow or shrink or what, or if it’s New Relationship Energy, or what direction it’s gonna go, but if I did this, how would you feel about it? Would you support me doing this? Does this seem like a dumb idea to you?” And people were really supportive of it.

KS: Yeah. I had thought I was okay with it for several months, and I think it was just that New Relationship Energy thing where everything seems perfect and great – and then when that starts to dissipate a little bit, you have to start thinking about real-world, real-life things. And I was noticing that there were a number of different ways that I was feeling like a secondary partner, one of which is the distance, one of which is being a fairly new relationship, and a major one was being a secret. Or feeling like I was being kept a secret, in that you weren’t talking about me publicly anywhere.

SS: And we’re both people that talk about a lot of things publicly. Maybe if I didn’t use social media at all, or that wasn’t as important a thing to both of us as it is, it might’ve felt different, but me being able to talk about other things, and wanting to talk about other things, and [being unable to] talk about you publicly, or even post a photo of you, or anything, was really bizarre, in terms of my life. That’s not a thing that I’m used to having.

KS: Yeah, and I would try to CBT myself out of feeling that way. I would go, well, look at all this evidence, privately, of you loving me and valuing our relationship. But it was this cognitive dissonance that I found really difficult to overcome, because I’ve been in so many relationships where people would say, “Yeah, I love you, I value you, you’re very important to me,” and then their behavior was just very different from that, because I think it wasn’t actually true.

SS: Yeah.

KS: And so I started to react with this sort of anxiety and fear that you were lying about it, in some sense, because you hadn’t made yourself vulnerable enough to go public with it. Some part of me felt like, if you really, truly loved me and cared about me, you would do that – which I recognize is shitty if it were an ultimatum, because not everybody is able to do that.

SS: Yes. Right.

KS: But I did get to a point where… I don’t think I would’ve broken up with you over it, at least not right away, but I was kind of like… This is important to me. I need you to at least start thinking about this.

SS: Yeah. What strikes me is that we were both kind of wrestling with that question in our own ways, and it only got better and easier when we started talking about it more, instead of just trying to deal with this in our own brains. That’s how we were able to solve it.

KS: Yeah. It was weird because it hit me kind of all at once, very quickly. I remember someone asked me on Instagram, I think a month or two before we started talking about this, “Will we ever see your boyfriend? I’m so curious about him!” and I wrote, at the time, what I honestly felt, which was: “No. He’s anonymous and I choose to respect that, and I hope that you all will too.” At the time, I remember feeling really confident, like I really believed what I was writing – and then, only a month or two later, I started to feel like, “Actually, this is like, ‘emergency’ levels of distress. I don’t actually think I can do this.” Because I also had the realization, around the same time, that this had been a recurring pattern in my relationships, and that it was just sort of slowly eroding my sense of self-worth, and my sense of deserving to have a partner who was proud of me.

SS: Yeah. It also makes me think back on some of the other sex bloggers that I’ve read for a long time, or read a long time ago, where they had many many many anonymous partners in a row – you know, ten, twenty anonymous partners that their audience never really got to know – and how they must have felt, or how they could’ve felt about that. I haven’t really read a lot of writing about that, about the feeling of not being able to talk about who your partners are.

KS: Yeah, because I think the assumption is that that’s just how you do it, that that’s just how sex writing works.

SS: Right, it’s a convention of the genre.

KS: And a lot of sex writers themselves are anonymous, so maybe they have less of a problem with it, because they understand it directly. But I have been not-anonymous for… almost 4 years now? So I’m just not in that world anymore, and I’m kind of past wanting my partners to be in that world too.

SS: Mhm.

KS: I remember being in the NoMad with you and we were waiting for an Uber that was gonna take us wherever we were going next… Oh, we were going to the Hippo Campus concert. And you were like, “Should I just do this now?” and you took out your phone and you had written this tweet draft where you called me your girlfriend. And we chose a photo to go with the tweet, and you sent it out, and then I had this intense sense of exhilaration, like: we just did this really important thing together.

SS: Yeah. Yeah, I remember that moment too, and I remember pulling to refresh a lot of times.

KS: [laughing]

SS: …Because, even after talking to my other partner, and my friends, and my business partners, and random people in my industry, and my family, I still had this sense that at least one person was gonna be really mean.

KS: Yeah.

SS: I didn’t think it was gonna be the primary reaction; I didn’t think it was gonna be a big deal, and I knew how I wanted to handle it. But I was like, “Okay, where is the mean person? Where is the troll?” And they just never showed up.

KS: Yeah, that was kind of how it was for me too, when I came out and started showing my face and using my name. For a short period of time, I lived in terror. I was like, “When’s the other shoe gonna drop? What’s gonna happen?”

SS: Exactly.

KS: And nothing happened. Everybody was perfectly lovely. It was more surprising than it would’ve been if people were awful.

SS: It’s super surprising, because we see so much negativity online and sex-negativity in culture, and it’s just expected that if you’re admitting to being a sexual person, having a bunch of stuff about your sex life online, that something bad is going to happen, but it doesn’t necessarily happen.

KS: Yeah. So you’ve been out now as my partner for five-ish months. What has the reaction been like?

SS: Let’s see. We went to a party together with a bunch of my friends, and apparently, before we arrived, people had been reading and discussing a bunch of your posts about me, and saying stuff like, “Oh, I could never do that sex act,” or whatever, and then when we got there, it kind of just vanished. I only heard about it later. [laughing] So I think there’s probably a decent amount of that going on – people just reading stuff quietly, not saying anything to me about it. Or waiting for me to bring things up, instead of bringing them up, which I think is a really respectful way to approach that.

KS: Yeah.

SS: There’s no way to prevent people from reading this stuff. You can say, “Hey, I’d prefer if you don’t read it,” or you can say, “I’ll send you the stuff that I want you to read,” but that’s really not workable. People are curious, especially about the sex lives of people they know, even if they don’t admit it publicly, and so I’ve kind of just said, “Hey, if you want to read it, read it. If you want to talk about it, talk about it.” But people have been pretty reluctant to do that, I think. What else? People were really excited to meet you. My sister, when I told her about it, I was like, “[Kate’s] a writer, she writes about sex,” and she asked, “Where does she write? What’s her site?” and I was like, “Well, I could tell you that, but I don’t know that you necessarily want to read it.” And she was like, “Oh, yeah, I just realized after I said that that I probably don’t wanna read it.”

KS: [laughing] My brother doesn’t follow me on Snapchat, for the same reason.

SS: Yeah. What else? I have gotten, lately, one or two kind of “off” comments about it. Just things that struck me. Not from friends, but… I’m thinking of one comment from somebody who said, “On Twitter, it seems like your life is pretty complicated.” And like, that just strikes me as either someone who’s uncomfortable with polyamory or someone who’s uncomfortable with being public about sex, or whatever, but who doesn’t want to go so far as to say what makes them uncomfortable – and that’s kinda sad.

KS: Yeah, that sounds like it’s probably a poly thing.

SS: It could be, yeah.

KS: What about your own feelings on it? How has it felt to be out as my partner?

SS: Great! It feels great. It’s just a thing that I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I was talking about it in therapy most weeks, and it was causing me a decent amount of consternation internally, of like, “Can I like this Instagram photo? Will someone look at all the likes and figure out the New York app developer that is in there?” It was causing me to behave in ways that I don’t want to have to think about. I want to be able to just talk to my girlfriend online and post about my girlfriend if it’s our anniversary or whatever. So, it’s great!

KS: Did it feel different from how you were expecting?

SS: The major difference was just that people weren’t mean. The positives were as positive as I was expecting. It’s great. How did it feel for you? Not just the moment of it, but how has it felt since?

KS: It has made me feel like our relationship is a lot more real and important to you, and also to me, which is something that I was struggling with. It has made me really happy to be able to show you off, not only to people in person but also online. It raised a lot of questions for me about, is it shallow or shitty or wrong somehow to glean enjoyment from this sort of exhibitionistic mode of expressing my love externally? But I think the conclusion I’ve come to on that, ultimately, is that that’s the age we’re living in, and that is a way that people express their love now, and that is valid even if it maybe seems kind of weird or unnecessary to some folks.

SS: Yeah, I feel that way too. It’s just another one of the consequences of living in a super connected, very online world, is that ways you might’ve been seen with your partner before are augmented by seeing people with their partners online. And it generally makes me really happy to see people in love and enjoying each other online. The times that it doesn’t are when I’m going through really hard romantic stuff myself, and then I think it’s kind of on me to moderate that.

KS: Yeah. I also have found it really satisfying and uplifting to watch how you have become more confident and relaxed about your kinks and your kink orientations since coming out – which I didn’t anticipate because I already think of you as a very confident person and someone who is very relaxed about your own kinks. But I did notice a marked difference in your willingness to accept identities like “dominant” or “sadist” or “hypnokinkster” very casually, and in some cases publicly, and that’s been really nice to see.

Check back on Friday for the last instalment of this interview, in which we’ll be talking about the upsides and downsides of dating a sex writer, and his advice for anyone considering it.

Intimate Intercourse: Dating a Sex Writer (Part 1)

Kate Sloan

Hello! Intimate Intercourse is a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. Previously we’ve talked about phone sex,Daddy Dom/little girl kink, and erotic hypnosis; this time we’re discussing what it’s like to date a sex writer! I’ve split this interview up into 3 parts, which will go up over the course of this week. In this first part, we touch on his history consuming sex media, how he felt about my work when we first started dating, how we initially navigated consent in my writing, the perils of dating people who don’t want to be written about, and how he feels now about the stuff I’ve written about him. Hope you like it!

Kate Sloan: We’re gonna talk about dating a sex writer. Me! That’s me! I’m a sex writer.

Super Sleepy: You are a sex writer.

KS: So, you have a long-standing history as a consumer of sex writing.

SS: It’s true. I have been reading sex writing as long as I have been interested in sex, because I was a kid that had access to the internet, and when I started thinking about wanting to have sex or masturbation or whatever, I naturally gravitated toward it. So I’ve consumed lots of different types of sex writing. I always remember having a category in my RSS reader of sex blogs, sex webcomics, sex podcasts, and erotica.

KS: Did you ever envision yourself dating or fucking a sex writer?

SS: In fantasy, yes. Definitely when I would read some of the more erotica-heavy sex blogs, I would jerk off to, and fantasize about, dating/fucking the authors of those things. But never thought about it as a realistic thing.

KS: Why did it appeal to you?

SS: I think because I was somebody that was interested in sex not just from a perspective of “I’ll have it and then it’s over and then I’ll never talk about it” – I was, and am, somebody who wants to talk about the sex that my friends and partners are having, and want to talk about it beforehand and afterward, and want to know more about it from a scientific perspective and experiential perspectives… I think the fantasy of fucking somebody that was really good at it, knew a lot about it, and would be able to write really eloquently about it was just hot for me.

KS: Yeah. I think that the fact that you and I are similarly analytical about sex is one of the things that makes you a good partner for me, because I don’t feel like I’m bugging you or inconveniencing you by asking you really weird detailed questions about the sex and kink we do together for posts and stuff, because you’re always happy to talk about it.

SS: Yeah. Yeah. You’re not at all inconveniencing me. In fact, that’s a really important part of the experience for me. When I talk about what I need in terms of aftercare, it’s mostly the recapping and talking about it is the most important thing.

KS: When we went on our first date, were you conscious of the possibility that I might write about it?

SS: Let me think about that… In the back of my head, I suppose. There was a lot going on that day. I was not 100% sure if it was a date. I thought it might be. [giggling] It was in the middle of the day, so I didn’t think that there would be very much worth writing about. And, from following your tweets and reading posts on your blog, I didn’t get the sense that you would write about it without talking to me about it first, so I wasn’t nervous about that.

KS: And then we got to the Breather and I, for some reason, was like, “I wanna take pictures of this.” Did I say “for a post”? I don’t remember.

SS: You said they “might come in handy for something someday.” I don’t think you said “for a post” but I intuited that that’s what it would be useful for.

KS: Did that seem weird to you?

SS: No, that didn’t seem weird to me at all.

KS: [laughing] Okay. But you still didn’t want to be in the pictures.

SS: No, I didn’t want to be in the pictures, because, if you were gonna use it for a post, I didn’t want to be outed by it.

KS: Right. Yeah, I know. We’ll talk more about that in a bit… Do you remember the first thing I wrote about you?

SS: The first thing you wrote about me was that post. “Slow Burn.”

KS: Yeah. How did you feel about that?

SS: I was elated. I was over the moon when I read it, not just because it was about me, although that helps, but because it was so well-conceptualized and executed and it was beautiful. It made me smile really big and I wanted to send it to everybody in the world, but I had to pick and choose at that point. And everybody else that read it felt the same way.

KS: I was very careful about having you read it before I published it. I was very nervous about it, at that point, that you might feel uncomfortable about it.

SS: Yeah. Do you remember what you said to me?

KS: I think I said that I wanted you to check, in particular, the direct quotes, because it would be bad to get those wrong.

SS: Yeah.

KS: Yeah. Do you remember our conversations about consent around my writing?

SS: Yeah, I do. I remember us talking about it first in the abstract – like, how do you approach this? As a curious consumer of this stuff, I wanted to know how you approached this, just in your life, not assuming that it would be super relevant to me, necessarily. And then, as we got more into it, figuring out, oh, this might actually be a thing that applies to me, so I should think about how I feel about it. What am I comfortable having written about me? I remember I said that I don’t want you to only write positive things about me. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t write negative, true things about me – which I think some people might struggle with. But I think it doesn’t feel real to me if you’re only writing the good stuff.

KS: Yeah. I appreciated that a lot, because I’ve had so many people in the past who would be mean to me and then say, “Don’t write about that,” which feels insulting on many levels, one of which is like… I kinda feel like they knew what they were getting into. Not to victim-blame… but at this point, I only want to be with people who understand what I do and are at least somewhat on board with it and with being part of it.

SS: So at this point, you don’t think you would date somebody that said, “I don’t want you to write about me”?

KS: I think that even if I said okay to that initially, the amount of resentment that that would gradually breed would be too much.

SS: I think so too. I mean, maybe there’s a person who it’s not under their direct control, and they would want you to write about them, but they would get fired, or whatever, where it’s more of a grey area, and I don’t know how that would go.

KS: That, I feel, is a different issue, because that’s an issue of me identifying them, which I do with hardly anyone. But if they just didn’t want to be written about, even in abstract or anonymized terms, then that would be an issue for me.

SS: Yeah. Good point.

KS: Do you think that when I write about you, I capture you well and accurately?

SS: Yeah! I do. I think the mode in which you capture me the most accurately is actually on Twitter [laughing], because you get these little tiny slices of how silly I am and how my sexuality works. Slices of my dirty talk, but also slices of my silliness and my desire to make you laugh and make you smile and take care of you. If you read all the tweets that mention me, I think you get a really good sense of all the interesting parts of my personality.

KS: Yeah. I enjoy live-tweeting you. It makes me happy. Have I ever written anything about you that you felt was unfair or untrue?

SS: No, I don’t think you’ve ever written anything about me that’s unfair or untrue, but sometimes… so, I have tweet notifications on for you, and sometimes I get a tweet of something and I have an immediate “Uhhh, I don’t know if that’s quite right” reaction, but usually it’s just a momentary thing while I re-read it and am like, “Okay, I see what she’s going for here.” It’s like a flash of insecurity about it. But I can’t remember of those in particular, because it fades so quickly, and I’m like, “Okay, I get it.”

KS: Yeah. And I would delete things if you thought that they were wrong or bad.

SS: Yeah. I think I’ve asked you to delete one or two things. It was very early on, but I don’t remember what they were.

KS: Yeah. I don’t remember any. When we go on dates or have sex or do kink things, are you thinking about how I might write about it, and does that make you self-conscious about it?

SS: It doesn’t make me self-conscious about it. I think about it sometimes as another reason to push into new areas, another reason to explore things I haven’t done before, or things you haven’t done before, because it might make a good, interesting experience and a good thing to share. But I think about that in terms of, like, going to new cities and trying new restaurants… Everything in my life is sometimes looked at through the lens of, “What’s a thing I haven’t done before that might be cool, that I might wanna try?” Like, if I’m looking at a menu and there’s a bunch of things I’ve had before and something that sounds good to me that I’ve never had, maybe I’ll pick that thing this time. And we also plan our sex more than maybe most people might. [laughing] So there’s some thought that goes into that, too. Like when we’re trying to decide how we want to fuck each other on a particular weekend – like, “Let’s do some stuff that we know we like, let’s do some stuff that we’ve never done, or let’s do that thing that we did a while ago but you haven’t written about yet, to see if we can find a new angle of it.”

KS: Yeah. This is one of the reasons that you’re such a great partner for me in particular. I’ve had partners in the past who either clearly were uncomfortable that I might write about them, or that wanted it, in a way that made me uncomfortable. I could see that they were sort of playing up their sexual persona or their romantic loverboy persona because they knew that I might write about it, and that artifice is really easy to pick up on. It also makes me feel sort of like, “Oh, you don’t like me enough to do this for me, but you like the attention or the thought of how you’ll be perceived by my readers, and so that’s why you’re doing it,” and that’s sort of gross to me.

SS: Oh, yeah, no, I don’t feel that way at all. What is an example of a time that you noticed that, or a thing that tipped you off to that?

KS: If someone who doesn’t ordinarily do a lot of dirty talk suddenly says something really dommy, in a way that almost feels scripted or rehearsed, that’s always weird to me. And I understand it. I think, honestly, that if I was dating someone who wrote about sex, that I would have a hard time shutting off that self-critical part of my brain that’s like, “Oh, is this good writing fodder?” So I get it. But I think it’s one of the reasons that you’re a good match for me, because you’re just more relaxed about that stuff.

SS: Yeah. I know that if we’re in a good relationship and having good sex, then the stories will come out of that. You don’t have to invent them.

KS: Yeah. I think a lot of people who I’ve dated wanted to seem really interesting in my writing, and the thing is, if sex or kink are really good, then they are interesting. They’re worth writing about. They don’t have to be wacky to be worth writing about.

SS: Right. Exactly.

KS: You mentioned earlier, showing my writing to your friends, which I find really interesting. What is your motivation for doing that?

SS: It’s similar to the feeling that I get when, like, I was interviewed on a podcast, or somebody quote-tweeted something I said on Twitter and it got a lot of likes. If I’m close with people, I want to share those types of accomplishments and appearances and stuff with them, so they can see where I’m at and what I’m up to. Texting a friend a new piece that you put out, that includes some stuff about me or is entirely about me and what we’ve done together, is a way to give them a window into a more private and vulnerable side of my life, and connect and discuss the things that happened in it, also, which is nice. Instead of just texting somebody, “I hypnotized my girlfriend the other night,” and then forcing them to figure out what that means and come up with all the questions, I’m like, “Here’s this beautiful thousand-word essay about it.” It gives you a million jumping-off points, you know?

KS: Yeah. It makes me happy that you do that, because I feel like a lot of people would be inclined to actively try to keep their friends from seeing stuff like that, and you’re just like, “Here, check it out!” It makes me feel like you’re proud of me and my work.

SS: I am!

To be continued on Wednesday, when we’ll discuss his decision to “come out” as my partner last October, why he made that decision, how he did it, and what’s happened since.

Monthly Faves: Cocksucking & Caretaking

Kate Sloan

May was a nice month! Here are some of the sexy things I’ve been enjoying lately…

Sex toys

• We-Vibe sent me their new product, the Moxie, a panty vibe that attaches to your underwear with a magnetic clip. It’s an ingenious concept and I’m looking forward to testing it out in both long-distance and local encounters with my partner!

• I’m super enamored with the Bodywand Midnight plug-in massager, which Bodywand sent me this month. Full review to come, but for now, I’ll say: give me more vibrators that have a dial rather than buttons! It makes a huge difference!

• My partner acquired a Fun Factory Manta – one of the best-reviewed penis vibrators on the market right now – and I enjoyed using it on him during a blowjob. He seemed to love it a lot. I imagine it feels a bit like what I would feel if there was enough real estate on my clit to fit both a rumbly vibrator and a mouth, i.e. pretty great.

Fantasy fodder

• Sometimes being extra depressed gives me even more caretaking-related fantasies than I normally have… like my Sir bringing me soup, petting my hair, and later going down on me, all part of taking care of his little girl. 😍

• I’ve been working on an erotica story to submit to an anthology, and it’s about velvet fetish, so I’ve been thinking about all the various ways one could work velvet into one’s sex life. Currently I’d love to get fucked on top of a velvet blanket, or while wearing a velvet slip.

• This amateur cunnilingus clip continues to be a fave. Dat technique, tho.

Sexcetera

• I guested on the A Touch of Flavor podcast, answering some questions about DD/lg. It was a fun time!

• If you’ve ever wanted to see me give a blowjob, you’re in luck… I have a new scene on MakeLoveNotPorn that depicts just that. (I asked Bex – who curated the scene – whether his gagging phobia kicked in at the parts where I gagged on dat dick, but he said it didn’t bother him as much as it usually would because he knows I’m into gagging in that context and it’s even kinda romantic for me. Aww.)

• This month in my newsletter, I wrote about polyamory and introversion, hookup culture and responsive desire, some sexy memories from my Montreal trip, and the romance of being trampled. Subscribe, why don’tcha?

• Sextistics: this month I had in-person sex 10 times and phone sex 19 times, totaling 29 sessions.

Femme stuff

• I bought a new pair of Lotta from Stockholm clogs; I already had yellow ones and navy ones so this time I got red ones. These remain my favorite summertime shoes – they’re cute and comfortable, able to straddle the line between casual and fancy. Love you, Lotta!

• I’ve been leaning hard on my sample of Euphorium Brooklyn’s Suédois perfume lately. Containing notes of sandalwood, spiced suede, wildflower, raspberry, and Bavarian cream, it’s a gorgeously androgynous scent that always lifts my mood.

• Shout-out to the sensuality of napping in a sundress in the afternoon with the window open. I mean. Can you even imagine anything more luxurious and relaxing. Bonus points for a delicate little eye mask to keep the light out.

Media

• This month I got to read an advance copy of Jessica Pan’s new book, Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come, which is about a shy introvert’s attempt to live like an extrovert for a year. I found it howlingly funny and deeply relatable, as a total introvert myself.

• I’ve been reading Dr. Liz Powell’s book on non-monogamy, Building Open Relationships. It’s an absolutely invaluable resource for anyone exploring non-monogamy of any kind, and I’m loving it so far!

• I’m entering a full-blown Queer Eye obsession. Late to the party, for sure, but damn, what an uplifting show. It’s been in heavy rotation for me along with The Adventure Zone when I need to cheer up.

• Raven Kaldera’s anthology on submissives with mental illness, Broken Toys, is full of useful tips for both mentally ill subs and their dominants. I think a lot of you would find it illuminating and validating!

Little things

Planning layouts for my new room. Perfect margaritas at Northwood and Founder Bar (and introducing my friends to new cocktail bars). Singing Nick Jonas at karaoke. Being interviewed by smart people who know their shit. Working on a secret project with Brent. My extremely sex-positive psychologist. My new computer case and keyboard cover in my signature colors. Playing sweet ‘n’ sexy ukulele tunes at Bed Post. Going to see Next to Normal by myself from the very back row. Solo dinner dates. Trading sex toys for booze and 420 on Bunz. Gregory Prest. Gender-neutral bathrooms at the Bad Dog Theatre. Hello from the Magic Tavern. Long, lazy afternoons spent simply getting high and having sex. Listening to Hippo Campus and the Softies on rainy days.