Review: Le Wand Petite

When I emailed Pleasure Delights a list of toys I’d like to review, I secretly hoped they’d send me the Le Wand Petite. I’m always looking for a good mini-wand these days, now that I’m in a long-distance relationship and have a lot of sex in far-flung hotels. I don’t always want to schlep my Magic Wand Rechargeable across national borders or through TSA – so I’ve been looking for a smaller wand whose size doesn’t preclude it from serving up strong vibrations.

I wasn’t thrilled with the only other Le Wand product I’ve tried, their regular-size wand, because it was 1) too loud, 2) too buzzy, and 3) too obviously a complete Magic Wand ripoff, down to the identical button shape and same charger. But my friend JoEllen loves her Le Wands and I trust her taste, so I decided to give this brand another shot.

It helps that the Le Wand Petite is very, very pretty. Pleasure Delights sent me the rose gold one, and it gives me the same femme joy I reluctantly suppressed when I opted against getting a rose gold iPhone. Le Wand founder Alicia Sinclair set out to make wands more elegant and feminine-looking than the bulky, androgynous Magic Wand and its ilk, and I think she achieved that goal. Of course, that means that masc-of-center folks might not resonate with the Le Wand Petite’s aesthetic, especially since the only other color option is a luminous purple.

So what’s the deal with this rechargeable dynamo? It’s about two-thirds the length and half the width of a standard wand vibe, so if you want something small enough to throw in your carry-on, this could well be it. It even has a travel lock function, since they’re obviously trying to work the “jetsetter-approved” angle (I feel directly pandered to and it’s great). It’s very light for a wand, at only 0.47 lbs (versus the 1.3-lb MWR), which adds to its travel-friendliness and also makes it a more workable solution for people with strength/mobility issues (my chronically achy hands thank you, Le Wand). It even comes in its own little zip-up case, which is big enough to fit the wand, its charging cable, and another toy or two (I’ve been stashing my Fucking Sculptures Pussywillow in there when I stay away from home overnight). If you want a wand to accompany you on adventures, this is one of the best I’ve found for that purpose, along with the mechanically flawed Doxy #3 and the awkwardly shaped Jimmyjane Iconic Wand.

One of the major selling points of the whole Le Wand line is the flexibility of each toy’s neck, but I’ve always thought this was kind of an overrated feature. If someone is pressing a vibe firmly enough against their body to make the toy’s neck bend, probably that person likes pressure – and a flexible neck just lessens the toy’s ability to provide that pressure. But if you’re into that, for whatever reason, this toy’s got it.

The body-safe silicone head is smooth to the touch, but unfortunately it can’t be screwed off for cleaning, the way the top of the Doxy #3 can. The Le Wand Petite isn’t waterproof, so you have to be careful when you clean it – which I need to do often because this particular silicone formulation is an absolute lint magnet.

There are a lot of features of this wand that I enjoy, but ay, here’s the rub… While the toy’s marketing copy repeatedly asserts that its many patterns and speeds are “rumbly,” rumbly it is not. Its rumbliest speed is its lowest one, which can make me come on a very sensitive day, but it becomes progressively buzzier as you crank up the power. Due to the numbing effects of buzzy vibrations, sometimes turning up the Le Wand can make it feel like I’m actually turning it down, as the sensation slowly drains out of my genitals. This wand accompanied me on a sexy weekend in New York, and several times, I found myself grabbing the rumblier Tango mid-session instead, because… I can’t get off if I can’t feel my bits, y’know?

Granted, my threshold for acceptably rumbly vibrations is pretty high, seeing as my fave vibes are the MWR, Tango, and Eroscillator, all thrumming powerhouses. I think the average person would be plenty happy with the Le Wand Petite if it otherwise fit their specifications. But if you’ve ever gotten annoyed with a vibrator for making you numb, it’s likely you need something rumblier than this toy. I would suggest the aforementioned Doxy #3 and Iconic Wand, as well as the reportedly rumbly Inspire wand. You deserve orgasms you can actually feel.

Oh, and if you’re curious about the noise level – since that was one of my major complaints about the original Le Wand – this one is definitely audible from across a room, but not nearly as loud as its predecessor, and also quieter than the two highest settings on the MWR. So I’ve got no beef with it on that front.

I’m sure I’ll still reach for the Le Wand Petite from time to time; it’s stronger than most vibrators of its size, and I like how it looks and feels in my hand. But it’s not the ideal travel companion I hoped it’d be; when I’m out of my element especially, I want something reliably rumbly, not a toy I have to eke a tricky orgasm out of. I hope Le Wand will keep listening to customer feedback and making better products, because if this toy’s motor got a makeover, I’d be in love!

 

Thanks to Pleasure Delights for sending me this toy to review! This post was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex on Stage & Consent in Comedy: An Interview with Hookup Director Paul Bates

Photo via the Bad Dog Theatre

Y’all know how much I love improv, and you definitely know how much I love dating and hooking up – so, needless to say, I got excited when my favorite improv spot, the Bad Dog Theatre, launched a show a few years ago called Hookup.

The premise is simple: the cast says, “Raise your hand if you’re single!” and then picks two random people to talk to. They ask these volunteers about their lives, jobs, personalities, friends, hobbies, and what they’re looking for in a romantic partner. And then – with occasional input from these singled-out singles – the cast does an improvised one-act play about what might happen if those two people met and hooked up.

The show sells out week after week, and for good reason: it’s one of the best things on any Toronto stage anywhere right now. The cast – which includes, among others, the show’s director Paul Bates and his wife Christy Bruce – is incredibly hilarious, whip-smart, and always compassionate. The stories that unfold are wacky, unpredictable, and full of heart.

I reached out to director and cast member Paul Bates to interview him about the sexual and romantic aspects of the show, how he deals with sex and consent on stage, and why the show’s become such a runaway hit. Hope you enjoy reading our chat!


Photo via Paul Bates

Kate Sloan: Thank you for agreeing to chat with me! I know it’s a little bit weird for me to be like, “I have this sex blog; I want to talk to you about your improv show!” but…

Paul Bates: Yeah! I think that’s great. I think it’s fun. When we’re backstage, we’re often talking about the improv aspect of the show, but we’re rarely thinking about the sex point of view – other than the imperative that people have to have it in the show, you know?

KS: Yeah! Well, I think about and reference improv all the time in the work that I do because my improv training has been so helpful to me in things like conversational skills, but also dirty talk, roleplay, that kind of thing. So I always tell people they should take an improv class.

PB: Oh, great!

KS: Okay, so – I love the show so much. I’ve gone to see it like 6 or 7 times. It’s maybe my favorite improv show I’ve ever seen in like a decade of going to shows.

PB: Oh, wow. Thank you!

KS: The cast is incredible, it’s so well-structured, it’s consistently really really funny. Can you tell me a little about the conception of the show and where the idea came from?

PB: Yeah. Julie Dumais Osborne, the woman who runs the Bad Dog, invited me to come pitch her some ideas. I tried to think of a few, but this one was easily the most compelling one. It just felt like the easiest, simplest and cleanest idea. I don’t know if you know the game “Day in the Life,” but it’s a game that goes over really well in most improv shows, where you meet somebody in the audience, you talk to them, you ask them about their day and their lives and “What is an average day for you? What do you have for breakfast? Where do you go to work? How do you get there?” So I thought about that, and I was like, “How can I apply that to something a little more universal? Is there a way to talk to more than one person about their lives?” At first, hooking up just seemed like – well, that’s something everybody does! It felt like a very accessible and easy game to play. And after that, the question was, how does it fit together? The one thing that I didn’t want to do, and that nobody in the cast wanted to do, was make it a romantic comedy – a thing where everybody winds up happy at the end. So that was our big difference: this isn’t romantic at all! It’s gonna be a hookup, and what happens after that. There’s no imperative that anybody has to stay together. It’s probably, more often than not, better if they just go their separate ways. So, not trying to be cynical, but also not trying to be formulaically romantic about it.

KS: Yeah. I love that about it. It kind of takes the pressure off.

PB: Yeah, totally. We love the casualness of it, and when we’re trying to steer the show the way we want it to go, we’re always trying to push for however many casual hookups we can produce in the same show – and then, what will each one lead to?

KS: Yeah. I always love the romances between the secondary characters. They’re so much wackier, usually.

PB: Yeah, that’s my favorite, all the way. It’s hard to find somebody who wants to play the main characters. Everybody always wants to play the secondary characters. They’re the most fun.

KS: Oh, really! That’s interesting. Whenever I see the show, I always wonder if people ever get offended by how they’re portrayed in the show, ‘cause they’re kind of being caricatured.

PB: Yeah. It’s a fine line, and we always try to make jokes involving them and have fun with their lives, while still celebrating them and not just having fun at their expense. There’s only been a couple of times where we did do that, where we did have fun at the expense of people that we talked to, but each time, they kind of deserved it, and the audience was on our side. [laughing] One time, there was some guy who was just too self-assured, who kept talking about all the media projects he has going, and he was kind of bragging and boasting, and it was just too easy. But the audience was kind of like, “We get it. We get this dude’s vibe.” And then there was another guy… He put his hand up, and we talked to him, and we were like, “Who are you here with? How do you guys know each other?” and he was like, “Oh, we’re on a date.” Or, “We’re dating.”

KS: Yikes!

PB: So, you know how we say, “What’s a word to describe this person?” When we asked his date to describe him in one word, she said “douche.”

KS: Oh my god!

PB: So, already, I was like, oh man, has this date completely gone off the rails? But we basically played him as a complete douche, always dating someone all the way through. We gave a lot of power to the character of his girlfriend, and the audience loved it. I don’t know if he loved it. But by and large, I don’t know if we’ve ever really offended anyone. The closest may have been not too long ago: we did a show where there was someone involved in the world of finance who we were talking to. I can’t remember the exact job she had, but it was in the world of venture capitalism, where you’re buying companies, restructuring them, and selling them – which sounds to me like you’re laying people off. And so, the more we went into the show, the more we were critical of her line of work. We were making it sound like she’s destroying people’s lives. So it’s a pretty actor-y take on somebody’s Bay Street job. That might’ve been the closest, but we really try to avoid doing that. There was one guy who was on a first date that we wound up talking to once, and he was like, “Ahh, I’m on a first date,” but I totally got where he was coming from, because you can’t just say, “Oh, I’m not single” if you’re on a first date…

KS: Right.

PB: So it was a bit of a no-win scenario for him.

KS: Just don’t volunteer!

PB: Yeah, he shouldn’t have volunteered. But, you know, we also don’t exactly say what they’re volunteering for when we get them to put their hands up, so I totally understood the trap he was in.

KS: Yeah, true.

PB: But everybody played into it really well, and the audience was on his side, and he had a really good time. The strangest thing about it is, like, we might go off the rails in our caricature of some of these people, and then when we meet them afterwards at the bar, they’ll be like, “Oh my god, that is exactly my life!” and we’re like, “Really?!” Maybe it’s a case of people seeing what they want to see, but they usually, 99% of the time, walk out having had a really good time.

KS: That’s great. I guess maybe you wouldn’t know this, but, to your knowledge, have any of the couples ever actually hooked up?

PB: There was once where I’m pretty sure… Like, they definitely talked for a long time at the bar, and I think maybe they left at the same time. Usually, we’re watching. Especially Natalie [Metcalfe]. Natalie loves it. She stays and keeps an eye out. And if ever they’re talking, everybody’s just like, “Oh, what’s gonna happen!” We really want it to happen. We want to be responsible! But more often than not, there’s chatting done and then they kind of go their own ways. I don’t know if numbers have ever been exchanged. There’s often been cases where one person is more into it than the other, which is heartbreaking for me.

KS: Yeah. I feel like, someday, someone’s gonna come to your show and be like, “We met here and we’re getting married.” It’d be the best marriage toast story.

PB: I hope so. I’ve been in that situation before, where people have come up to me and said, “Hey, man, my first date was to your improv show,” and that always makes me feel good when the relationship works out.

KS: I’m really curious about how you to decide to handle sex during the show. Usually, it seems like sex things start and then you edit and go to the next scene. I did see one where Kris Siddiqi was, like, rubbing his head on someone’s ass, and this was his signature sex move, and that was one of the only times I’ve seen actual representation of sex in some form on stage. But how do you handle sex in the show?

PB: That’s a good question. I saw the pictures of Kris with his head in a butt – I wasn’t there that night – and as soon as I saw the pictures, I was like, “I wish I was there.” But sex, yeah… It’s interesting. Sex usually gets edited away and implied, for what feels like a couple of reasons. One is that sometimes the sex is gonna be funny – like with that example you cited, and there’ve been other ones as well – and then sometimes it feels, not gratuitous, but if we’re just simulating sex acts on stage, are we doing good comedy? We have to be like, “What’s the best joke here?” and I think we’re more likely to engage and act it out if we know that there’s gonna be a comedic payoff to the sex scene. Definitely there’s been other cases where something really acrobatic got going, where we were up against a wall or something… I remember pinning Christy [Bruce] against a wall and simulating sex with her for some reason, but I can’t remember why!

KS: [laughing]

PB: And then, the other reason is – everybody’s pretty good about physicality in the show, but if you’ve done improv, you probably know that physicality is one of the first things to go out the window. People are generally averse to touching a lot in an improv scene. It’s a tough habit to break, and it’s a good habit to break, because physicality is so important in a scene. But then you also enter into the question of what’s safe for everybody, what’s acceptable. We’ve actually gotten in the habit backstage of checking in with everybody in terms of, “How safe does everyone feel? Is anyone injured? Does anyone not want to be touched tonight?” It’s probably something that should happen before most improv shows. It’s a habit I’m happy everyone’s gotten into. But yeah, I think for the most part, to answer your question, it’s a narrative thing. I think it makes more sense to not feel like we owe a sex scene, but if there’s potential for a sex scene, then people are usually happy to jump in.

KS: I think that that’s really great that you have conversations about consent. I feel like I’m hearing more about that in the comedy community over the past few years, which is really nice.

PB: I know. It’s a little shocking that it took this long! But yeah, especially with our show, I can’t remember who first mentioned it, but oh my god, yes. There’s a lot of comfort to deal with, especially when you’ve got somebody coming in who doesn’t do the show every week. It would be weird to have a guest come in and be brought into this world of intense physicality. So they have to be given a heads-up beforehand.

KS: Yeah. So, the show is constantly sold out. I’ve been to the Bad Dog a lot; I think those are definitely the most crowded times I’ve ever seen it. I’m wondering: is it easier to sell tickets to shows that are about love and sex? What do you think it is about the show or the format that makes people go so crazy over it?

PB: Yeah. It is a little bit of a mystery. This is easily the most popular thing I’ve ever come up with. I think there’s a few really clear and good reasons, and one is, the content is universal. You could take it to every corner of the world and the themes still make sense. The title is clear; you get what the show’s gonna be about, it’s about hooking up. And then on top of that, the game that gets played, in terms of what improv is going on, is also very clear, very easy to understand and explain to your friends. “They talk to two single people in the audience and then they act out their lives and they show a story of what it would be like if those two people hooked up.” It was smartly marketed around Valentine’s Day when it first came out – like, “the Valentine’s show for singles” – so it got marketed towards a lot of singles, and I think the fact that it has a very clear idea, a very accessible, universal idea, made word-of-mouth very easy. I think word-of-mouth is basically what is making the show sell out. People see it and they bring back their friends and want to share it with their friends, and then that multiplies and multiplies. And then people come up and they want to be picked. Like, “Oh, it’s my friend’s birthday, pleeease pick my friend!” People literally showed up with Price is Right-style signs once, a couple years ago, with reasons they should be picked. I think almost all the improv at the Bad Dog is really really good; I think the difference is that this show has a hook that is easy to relate to people who haven’t been there. It’s a marketable show – not by design. We just kind of made a show we thought would be fun. And obviously, also, its success depends mostly on the fact that the cast is superb. It wouldn’t be there without the people in that cast.

KS: Yeah. I’ve brought so many people to see it. People get very excited about the concept, like you said.

PB: Oh, thank you! That’s great.

KS: So, you mentioned Christy, and – if this question is too personal, feel free not to answer, but – I’m just so curious what it’s like doing a show like this with your spouse.

PB: It’s very fun. Christy loves to play over-the-top characters. She likes to get into the seducing scenes, and she likes to get physical. She likes to get melodramatic. So it’s always fun to play with her. I think she has license to go over-the-top and go a little farther in this show, which is great. It’s fun to be able to do a scene with your wife where you don’t have to worry about wondering what the other’s boundaries are, I suppose. We kind of know. We’re able to have an intimacy that might be a bit much to ask of a partner on stage otherwise. That said, I’ve also seen her be just as intimate with other guys on stage, and that’s also kind of funny and fun to watch. So yeah, I think it’s really cool to have her in the show, and it really helps that she gets the show so well, and that she’s been doing it for so long, and that she has an energy that really works in the show. It’s nice. It’s become something that we enjoy doing together. Other couples, I guess, do pottery or whatever, and we get to go do this improv show. It becomes kind of a couples’ recreational time, in addition to a professional thing we’re both performing in. There’s no uneasiness about it or anything.

KS: She is just unbelievably funny.

PB: Yeah. She’s very funny. She’s great. She’s wonderful.

KS: This is a really big, broad question, but – have you learned anything about human relationships or sex or romance from doing this show?

PB: That’s a really good question. Yeah, a little bit. I’m not really somebody who did a lot of hookups or one-night stands or whatever, and through doing this show, I’ve become more aware of the wide spectrum of tastes and levels of comfort and approaches that everybody has, and I think that’s pretty cool. You really do talk to a bunch of different people, and you get a wide variety of styles and personalities and views on the subject from meeting people, which I think is really cool. It is almost more about the actual meeting people and communicating and negotiating that portion of it than it is about the sex in the show, now that I’m thinking about it. But it’s funny that you reached out about this interview at the time that you did, because at exactly the same time, I was trying to seek out a lot of sex-positive blogs, just to educate myself more on that term, because it was kind of new to me. I’ve started thinking about Hookup in terms of what it means to be a sex-positive show. I think it makes sense that it is one. I suppose something I’ve learned is to look at this show in the sense that, everything is celebrated, nothing is weird, and the show is about what everybody’s into. You have to do that, because you’re basing it on the people in the audience. They’re the heroes, and you’re not in a position to judge what they do. I like a show that’s super positive, super celebratory, and okay with everything. Part of that, also, was that right from the beginning, we were like, “We wanna make this show gay, we wanna make it straight, we wanna make it bi.” And now I’m like, gee, what else can we do? Can we make it polyamorous? Can we have a polyamory show?

KS: That’s so interesting, ‘cause me and my partner are polyamorous, and every time we go, I always kind of wish we could volunteer, because we’re available to date people, we’re just not single. It’s an interesting situation to be in.

PB: I was thinking about it after we agreed to talk. We’ve had a show specifically for a queer audience, a queer Hookup. A show specifically for a full polyamory audience would be a really interesting show, I think. I’m gonna float it around. But yeah, that’s what the perspective of the show has opened my eyes to.

KS: That’s really interesting and well-put. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I think you’re right, that is part of the reason I love the show: it isn’t sex-negative. I never feel like people are being shamed. It’s really nice.

PB: At the same time, it’s totally goofy – like Kris’s head in somebody’s butt. That might be how somebody has sex, or it might not. We are ready to do whatever on stage, and make it cool and normal and funny. I’m on board with that.


You can (and should) check out Hookup at the Bad Dog Theatre every Saturday night at 9:30 p.m. for the foreseeable future! Thanks so much to Paul for his candor and for creating a show I love so much. This interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Review: VixSkin Bandit + Fleshlight Go Torque Ice

As I’ve said here many times before, sex toys are not – and are not meant to be – replacements for human partners. In fact, they can enhance sex with a partner, sometimes by a lot.

I have two toys to review today which perfectly illustrate that principle. They’re both ostensibly meant to replicate human genitals in some sense, and yet – if you so desire – they can make you feel closer to your partner, rather than farther from them. Let’s talk about fake dicks and fake vaginas!

The VixSkin Bandit is a formidable silicone cock by Vixen Creations, still one of the biggest names in the realistic-dildo game. It’s perhaps best known as a favorite dildo of Erika Moen’s. Prior to Just Mindful sending me the Bandit to try, it had been over five years since I last acquired a new VixSkin toy. Between the G-spotty Mustang and its thicker cousin the Maverick, I just didn’t feel I needed another big, squishy dick in my life… but then, the more that I looked at the Bandit online, the more I thought, Maybe I do need one after all.

With its 7″ of insertable length and 1.75″ diameter, this dildo is – to quote Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled – “big… not, like, practical-joke big, but, you know.” It’s what the McElroy brothers might call a “beefy boy.” It fills me up without testing my vag’s limits, and that’s a surprisingly hard balance to strike.

It’s long enough to hit my A-spot – joy of joys! Vixen’s dual-density silicone formulation is softer than I generally prefer in an A-spot toy, so the blended orgasms it produces aren’t as intense as they might be if something firmer was rubbing against that spot, but that’s a minor quibble.

Here’s what I mean, though, when I say that this dildo can enhance partnered sex. As I’ve mentioned before, penis-in-vagina sex can give me a lot of anxieties, ranging from “Am I taking too long to come?” to “Is he getting tired?” to “Does my face look weird?” But to my chagrin, PIV still features prominently in my fantasy life. There are few things hotter to me than getting fucked deeply and thoroughly – and few things that make me come as hard. So you see my predic(k)ament. However, if and when I have a partner who’s cool with using a realistic dildo on me, I can reap many of the benefits of PIV, without nearly as many weird fears chipping away at my arousal. This is especially true if – as with my current partner – the person wielding the dildo is open to talking about it as if it were their actual cock. It’s a known fact that my boyfriend talking dirty about fucking me can get me off, no problem, and that becomes even more true when he’s slamming a silicone dick into my A-spot just right, again and again.

He enjoys fucking me with the Bandit, too, for similar reasons. Apparently when you use a dildo on someone that roughly matches your skin tone and, ideally, your cock’s dimensions, it’s easy to imagine that it is your cock. Many men have anxieties about not lasting “long enough” or staying “hard enough,” and I wish more of them would believe me when I tell them using dildos is a great way to deal with this. You can give someone exquisite pleasure with a toy – and you can also fuck them with parts of your actual body, before or after using the toy or even while you’re using it. (DP, anyone?) Not to mention, sex’s psychological and visual aspects are a big deal for many people, and you can derive a lot of those joys just as much from a dildo as you can from your dick.

Along similar lines… the Fleshlight Go Torque Ice is a masturbator that plays into exhibitionistic/voyeuristic desires and can make a solo act into a spectator activity. I requested it for my boyfriend because, as the “Ice” in its name denotes, it’s see-through. I’ve watched many amateur porn scenes where men jerked off into one of these things, and it always turns me on, for very simplistic reasons: I like dicks, and I like watching dicks experience pleasure and orgasm.

Granted, watching a cock through this Fleshlight isn’t like watching it through a plate glass window; it’s textured, so it visually distorts and obscures the dick to some degree. But you still get a better view than you would get if its user were using an opaque masturbator or even just their hand.

My partner reports that this toy fits his bigger-than-average cock well without feeling too tight (the same can’t be said for the Tenga 3D Spiral he previously bought and had to retire after several futile attempts to make it work). This is true in spite of the fact that the “Go” size is 7″, compared to the 9″ length of a standard Fleshlight. He likes the internal texture and says it works well for stroking, twisting, or both at once.

This toy has all the usual downsides reported by Fleshlight users, most annoyingly the need to dissemble and clean it pretty much immediately after use. You must always do this, and let it air-dry before reassembling it, unless you have a kink for getting mold on your dick. (Personally, I’d rather blow a fun guy than fungi.) My partner also notes that the plastic casing feels cheap, the “SuperSkin” material (thermoplastic elastomer) smells slightly weird, and air escaping from the toy creates an off-putting wheezing noise during use that can be distracting.

But overall, it’s a fave. He comes reliably hard using it, and says he reaches for it when he wants an orgasm that feels more like a mouth or a vag than his own lubed-up hand can approximate. That’s exactly what a masturbator aspires to achieve. Plus, in this case, letting me watch cum shoot out of my partner’s dick.

 

This post was sponsored, and Just Mindful sent me these products for my honest and unbiased reviews. Check out their masturbator collection and their realistic dildo collection for more like these! As always, all writing and opinions are my own (and, in this case, my boyfriend’s).

How to Turn a Hook-Up Into a Friend With Benefits

Damn, why’s it so hard for a girl to find a fuckbuddy around here?! A lot of paid dating sites are relationship-focused, while the free hookup sites that are actually free focus primarily on one-off fucks. There’s not a lot of recourse for those of us who want something in the middle: a reliable and enduring connection, without the potentially draining heaviness of a new romantic relationship. Where do you even go to look for a sweet and dedicated fuckpal these days?

Back when I was actively trawling Tinder on the regs, often my “holy grail” was the hope of turning a one-night stand into a FWB. I viewed these low-stakes dates as “auditions” and sought chemistry I thought could translate into something more lasting. And I indeed picked up some terrific bang-buddies in the process, so I guess I know what I’m talking about. Here are my best tips for morphing a fuck into a fuck-friend…

Be upfront about what you want. Some people treat Tinder as essentially Grindr for straight people (…or gay people or bi people or pan people or whatever the case may be) and make it clear that they’re only looking for one night of magic, not an ongoing connection. Since that’s pretty much the norm, you have to make your intentions clear if that’s not where you’re at. Even something brief like “ideally looking for a FWB situation” in your bio can attract the right kinds of people while scaring off the ones who want something else.

Showcase your awesome personality. For me, the difference between someone I want to bone once and someone I want to keep boning is primarily how I feel about just hanging out with them when we’re not having sex. If I can’t stand their brain, why would I wanna keep fucking their body? By that same token, someone smart and hilarious will definitely creep up my “dream FWBs” list faster than a boring clod. So don’t turn into a sex-focused cyborg: let that sparkling personality shine!

Give a shit about your partner’s pleasure. One-night stands aren’t exactly known for conjuring the heights of ecstasy. It’s tough to get to know someone’s body well enough that quickly to really knock their socks off. But if you demonstrate a passion for pleasing, you’re likelier to get a callback. You may be on the hunt for something casual, but that doesn’t mean you get to slack off in the sexual generosity department!

Appeal to their kinks and fantasies, and share yours. Granted, not everybody gets into a sexual psychology discussion on the first (or only) date, but if you do, remember what they tell you! If they’re a burgeoning sadist, secret submissive, or humiliation glutton, you may not be able to work that stuff into a first-time bang sesh, but it could give you material for future sexting and lascivious invitations. Sexual chemistry isn’t just about how your bodies fit together – it’s also about how well your fantasies mesh, and to what extent you’re able to stimulate each other’s minds. Hinting at compatibility in this area can make you seem like a more alluring FWB.

Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Okay, they can still refuse it, obviously, ’cause consent. But inviting your hookup to an event – like a theme night at a local sex club – can be a cool way to follow up after a one-night encounter. You could also invite them over for a particular sexual purpose: “I’m craving that cock in my mouth again,” for example, or “I’m curious about those rope bondage skills you mentioned last time.” The specificity of these offers makes them more appealing, and easier to say “yes” to, than something more nebulous like “Wanna hang out again sometime?” Enough of these repeat encounters and you might just parlay your one-off into an ongoing thing.

Have you ever transformed a one-night stand into an open-ended copulationship? How did you go about it?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Obsessed & Distressed: Reflections on Rabid Love

I learned what love felt like from someone I couldn’t bring myself to love.

She was a close friend in high school whose harmless puppy-love toward me darkened into something deeper over our sophomore year. Try as I might, and try though I did, I couldn’t conjure the caliber of crush in return that she shone on me like fervent floodlights. Love can’t be forced, and she knew that, but I’m sure it made her sad anyway. I’m sure it also made her sad that we had a sexual relationship for over a year that remained only one-sidedly romantic. Look, tenth-graders don’t always make the most rational decisions.

I’ve spent ten years processing that relationship, and I guess she probably has too. We’ve made amends for the ways we fucked up, each trying to squeeze the other into an ill-fitting box. But what’s stuck with me most from that relationship was how obsessed with me she was.

(A note worth noting: this post will throw around the words “obsessed” and “obsessive” in their colloquial senses, and not the sense used in mental health diagnostics – although I and at least some of the people I’m describing have mental illnesses that feature some degree of invasive thought-loops one could consider obsessions.)

My tenth-grade paramour wrote me long emails and romantic poems. She kept up with my foibles on Facebook and Twitter, both relatively new and uncommonly-adopted technologies at that time. She mined me for minute trivia, plumbing my lore like I was my own cinematic universe. After a while, she knew everything from my favorite flavors of ice cream to my top 5 favorite Regina Spektor songs to my darkest fears. When our English teacher gave our class carte blanche to do a deep-dive on a topic of our choosing for our final project, she did her project on… me. Those documents are still tucked away in my Google Drive somewhere, curious little remnants of a love that once was.

It is, of course, flattering to be someone’s top priority and main focus – assuming this attention doesn’t frighten you or make you uncomfortable. But I think the reason her love comforted me was that it felt familiar. My crushes had always taken on a similarly obsessive tone: when I pined over pseudo-celebrities of the local comedy or theatre scene, I Googled them late into the night, memorized their answers to interview questions, gave them more real estate in my brain than perhaps they deserved. So when I felt that similarly laser-focused love being aimed at me, I recognized it for the love that it was. Though she was the first person ever to fall in love with me, it wasn’t hard for me to believe or accept; I knew what it was because it looked how I expected it to look. It looked like how I would love someone, if I ever did.

Almost a decade later, the shadow of that old love filtered through my consciousness again – because I fell in love with someone who wasn’t obsessed with me. And it hurt.

I wonder, in retrospect, if I was drawn to him because he was everything I’ve never been able to be: chill, cool, aloof. Aside from initiating our relationship by asking me out on Twitter, his expressions of enthusiasm toward me were scant. Maybe that just made me want him more. (Is this a lesson we all have to learn at some point? That the chase is fun but also exhausting? I hope I’m done learning that one.)

I felt – to partly dilute a word that maybe I shouldn’t be diluting – gaslighted. He told me over and over again that he liked me, loved me, wanted to be with me, but his behavior was comparatively devoid of evidence he wanted me around. He’d ignore my texts for hours at a time, neglect to keep his promises, back out of plans at the last minute, and pull away coldly when I wanted closeness and warmth. I don’t know that he was doing this intentionally, as the “gaslighting” label would suggest – but the net effect was, regardless, a sense of emotional whiplash. I kept reminding myself to listen to his words, because they no doubt were truer than my anxiety-warped perception of his actions – but actions, as you well know, tend to speak louder. His were drowning out his words.

I brought this to his attention only once, and came to regret it. We were looping the same argument we’d been having for basically our entire relationship: I resented that he wouldn’t give me the assurances I felt I needed, and he resented that I needed them. Grasping at straws, I tried to explain: “It’s hard for me to recognize love as love when the person isn’t kind of obsessed with me, because when I like someone, I want to know everything about them, I want to see them as much as possible, and I think about them almost all the time.”

Some part of me hoped he would counter with what I wanted to hear: that he did think about me constantly, that he was obsessed with me; how could I not have noticed? Instead, he replied, “I don’t really get obsessed with people. I never have. That’s just not how I operate.”

Wise and level-headed people in my life, like my therapist and my best friend, would probably tell me to just accept a lower level of attention and devotion from partners. Just because someone doesn’t pine over you nonstop, they might tell me, doesn’t mean they’re blasé about you. If you broaden your view of what love can look like, you expand your ability to be loved, to feel loved.

That’s true, I guess. But I wanted love I didn’t have to do cognitive backflips to understand. I wanted love that was more joy, less compromise. I wanted love that mirrored my own, that matched me in my wild zeal. So when that boy broke up with me, although I was crushed, part of me was relieved. It felt more peaceful, more pleasant, to know for sure that no one loved me romantically, than to beg for scraps of affection that never quite felt like enough.

When I met my now-boyfriend, then-Twitter-crush, one of the first things he told me about himself is that he’s obsessive. I thrilled at the possibility of familiarity.

It didn’t take long for me to discover how right he was, how core this quality is to who he is. Intrepid Googling and curious research have left him well-informed on a broad range of topics. He can tell you the top 5 best cocktail bars in any neighborhood in New York, off the top of his head. He geeks out about etymology, psychology, philosophy. Once, during a conversation over drinks about whether or not our D/s dynamic is technically 24/7, he said, “That reminds me of this quote from SM 101…” and pulled it up on his phone in seconds. I swooned.

As we got to know each other, he’d casually reference old videos of mine, tweets, blog posts. He got embarrassed each time I called him out on it, backpedaling and blushing audibly over the phone, but my screeches of “How do you know that?!” were never accusatory – only excited. For me, combing through a crush’s internet presence is par for the course; it had been years since anyone had made me feel spotlighted that way in return.

He commissioned me a custom perfume based on a list of preferences he cobbled together from research. He devoured my sex toy reviews so he’d know what I like to be fucked with, and worked his way through my podcast so he’d know how I like to be fucked. When he sends me flowers or brings me treats, his selections are educated guesses – or sometimes, exactly the right thing.

The more I think about it, the more I doubt that “obsessive” is the right word. The essence of romance, and indeed of love, is focusing on your paramour: giving them your attention, putting effort into them, demonstrating your enthusiasm for them over and over. That sharp passion is what was missing from so many of my past relationships, which is why it feels especially good in this latest one. I spent years making desperate excuses for aloof partners, twisting their apathy until it looked like love. I settled over and over for paltry affection that barely warmed my skin, let alone my insides. I gave up on thinking of myself as someone worthy of obsession, even as I continued to furtively memorize my crushes’ likes and dislikes by the dim glow of my laptop in the dead of night.

I’m so happy now to be loved in the way I’ve always craved, and so happy to have discovered that love doesn’t have to be a compromise at its core. Sometimes it can just be exactly what you want.