Author: Kate Sloan

Intimate Intercourse: Hypnokink (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 hypnokink! This is part 2 of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here. In this instalment, we discuss the difficulties of disclosing a hypnosis kink, our first hypno scene together, what makes someone a good hypnotic subject, trance triggers, hypnotherapy, and some of the sexy things we like to do with hypnosis. Enjoy! Content notes for this post: hypnosis (obviously), anxiety, consensually “drugging” someone’s drink, bondage, face-slapping, addiction, bullying, medical play, and doing kink in public.

Kate Sloan: Were you nervous to tell me that this was a kink of yours when we started dating?

Super Sleepy: I am always nervous to tell people that, yeah.

KS: Why?

SS: I’m always nervous about it because there’s a lot of misconceptions, and the first time I told a partner about it, they didn’t react very well, so I think, because of that, I’m extra cautious. But even if that hadn’t happened, I know about the misconceptions, and I know that a lot of people, especially people that aren’t that experienced with kink, might not know how to take it.

KS: Yeah. You told me pretty casually. I think I said something about how you were staring into my soul on our first date, and you were like, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about my hypnosis kink.” And I thought you were joking, ‘cause you said it so casually. I was like, “Wait, really?”

SS: [laughing] Why did you think that was a joke? Like, why would that be funny?

KS: ‘Cause, I dunno, we were just casually talking about how you were staring me down, and we had been texting about our kinks and stuff already, so… I also don’t think I had met anyone before that who was into it, to my knowledge, so I wasn’t sure whether or not to take you seriously.

SS: Yeah, that makes sense.

KS: And then we did our first trance scene over the phone, by accident. How did that make you feel?

SS: Uhh, a lot of ways. So, what happened was, you have a winking kink – I think people that read your blog probably know that, if they’re paying attention! – and I had been practicing winking at you and sending you lots of videos of that, because I was very into you. Still am. And for some reason, you decided to open those all in QuickTime Player and have them all open at once, in little video player windows, and then one night you were experimenting with turning the loop mode on and playing them all at once, and we were talking about how that could potentially be hypnotic, or we could do a scene with that. And I guess I dropped a little bit into a hypno-toppy kind of voice while I was describing what I would do if we were doing that, hypothetically. And then… what happened from your end?

KS: I got really trancey, but I didn’t really have any experience with that, so I knew what it was, but I was like, “Ahh! What do I do? Is this okay?”

SS: Yeah. So I felt a little weird about that, because we hadn’t specifically negotiated it, and I didn’t want to be unsafe and I didn’t want you to go to a place that you didn’t want to go to, but at the same time, I felt like, I don’t want to make your first experience of this thing a scary thing. So I felt like the right thing to do would be – ‘cause we’d talked about it a little bit – to guide you into it, and out of it, calmly and safely, without panicking. So that’s what I did, and didn’t do any suggestions or anything, just really in and out of it, and then we talked about how it felt.

KS: Were you surprised at how easily I went into trance?

SS: Yes, very.

KS: Is that uncommon?

SS: I don’t know. I’ve only done trance in person with 4 partners. That’s not a very large sample size, so I don’t really know how common it is. Especially when you’re playing with another person’s kink and looping video, like, it was the first time I’d done any of that, so I don’t know. But I was definitely surprised that you got trancey so fast, and without a lot of pre-talk and without a lot of the other setup that I would normally do.

KS: Yeah. I wonder… I have been in flow state a lot of times, because I’m a musician and a writer, and that’s a large part of how I do that, so I wonder if that played into it at all.

SS: Yeah. From what I know about it, people who are more imaginative, creative, intelligent, capable of flow state, are easier subjects in general, because their brains are practiced at going there.

KS: And I’m also just… I go into subspace really easily, and I go into little space really easily, so maybe that’s just a thing about me. I don’t know why.

SS: Right.

KS: I feel like, when you wanted to give me a trance trigger, it was almost like when you wanted to give me a collar. It was equivalent in some ways. So tell me about that. Why and how did you want to do that?

SS: I gave you a trance trigger that I can use to make you trancey whenever I want, and it was a similar decision to collaring you or deciding on honorifics or stuff like that. Putting something in someone’s brain, semi-permanently, that will let you control them is a pretty big decision. It’s a pretty big mutual decision, ideally. And I wanted it, not because I didn’t want to do inductions anymore – most of the time, we still do inductions, even though it’s not technically necessary. I wanted it because I wanted the ability to drop you whenever I wanted to. I wanted that comfortable level of control over you. As a dominant-leaning person, and a very hypnokinky person, it means a lot to me.

KS: Yeah, I like it. I like that it feels like it proves our trust in each other.

SS: Yeah. How did you feel about it when we discussed it?

KS: I remember being surprised that you hadn’t brought it up earlier. But I think that I didn’t know enough about hypnokink to know that that’s kind of a big deal, at least for some people, so to me it was just like, “Why didn’t you do this before?” but I mean, it makes sense that you waited.

SS: How long did I wait? I don’t remember.

KS: I don’t know. I don’t think I have any journal entries about that.

SS: I think a couple months?

KS: Yeah, two or three months. So, you mentioned being dominant-leaning, and you’re switchy, and you’re switchy in this kink as well. Do you prefer trancing people, or being in trance?

SS: Uhh, they’re both great. Such a fuckin’ switch! They’re both really good. When I started exploring this kink, I read primarily male-submissive fantasy stuff. That is because I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it, so, as a fantasy, being controlled and having my mind be taken away, or my thoughts be taken away, was very attractive to me, because I think a lot, and I’m very in my head, very cerebral. But once I started exploring real-life kink communities and online kink communities with real people instead of just fantasies, I was almost immediately on the other side of the slash. The nights that I would try to be a subject [on Omegle] never went very well, and the nights that I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna study up and try to be a top tonight” were much more satisfying, sexually and in terms of what I actually got to talk to people about and experience. I don’t know; it’s very good either way, but in terms of my real-life experience, I’ve been a top far more.

KS: You mentioned being cerebral, and that, I think, is a large part of why I enjoy hypnosis, now, too. I have anxiety and depression and stuff, so a lot of times, I have thoughts that I don’t want to be having.

SS: Yeah.

KS: And I find it really helpful in that way. So I guess I want to know how you view it as a tool, not just for sexy kink stuff but for the more lifestyle-kink side of our relationship.

SS: That’s an area that I’m still not 100% comfortable with, because a lot of people in the erotic hypnosis/hypnokink community – like a lot of kink communities – are like, “This can be therapeutic, but it’s not therapy.” And hypnotherapy is an entire field. There’s a lot of training involved in it, and it’s very complicated. There have been some books written by people that have seemed to take concepts from hypnotherapy and try to apply them to sexy things, which included age regression and other stuff that a lot of people consider far too risky to do in kink contexts, and I consider a lot of things that would be used by hypnotherapists to be far too risky to do in kink contexts. If you’re manipulating and playing with somebody’s body, you can see what you’re doing, in a lot of ways. You can see and feel and sense what you’re doing. If you are messing around inside of somebody’s brain that is not your brain, you really don’t know what you’re doing, and so there’s a lot of psychological risks in this kind of play if you don’t limit the kinds of suggestions that you’re doing and the kinds of places that you’re taking somebody when they’re in a suggestible state. So, for me, I think I’ve kept the lifestyle, non-sexy suggestions to very simple, positive, affirmation-style stuff, like, not anything involving re-experiencing or regressing into specific memories, because I know that there are risks to that, or behavior modification and addiction are kinks for some people, and I’m nervous about those… I’m nervous about any permanent personality changes… All of that stuff, I don’t know enough to mess around with it.

KS: Yeah. I was thinking of stuff like, when I’m having a bad anxiety day and you tell me I’m safe, which, in some ways, is like foreplay for me, because my anxiety is a huge part of what Emily Nagoski would call my “sexual brakes,” so I find that helpful for both sexy and non-sexy reasons – which is true of most of my kinks.

SS: Yeah. I think that’s pretty low-risk. I think hypnotizing someone and telling them that they’re safe, or that they’re okay, or that it’s okay for them to be happy, or that they’re comfortable, is pretty low-risk. I think modifying somebody’s personality, or telling them in trance that they’re getting more and more addicted to you as a person, or even the feeling of you being together, is a lot riskier.

KS: I always appreciate how conscientious you are about this stuff. It makes me feel much safer doing it.

SS: Thanks!

KS: Okay. What are your favorite things to do with me that are sexy in hypnosis?

SS: Hmm. Okay. I like making you really blank, like your brain is just this total empty blank slate that I can fuck, because I also have a sleepy kink, and I also just like when you’re compliant and useable for me. So if your brain is blank, and your body is splayed out, and I can use it however I want, that is very good. I like the times that we’ve done anything involving hypnotic drug play stuff – so like, a couple of times, I’ve tied a food item of yours, or water or something, to some kind of post-hypnotic response, like having your water turn you on more the more of it you drink, because it’s been drugged. That’s very good. I like the few times that we’ve played with amnesia a lot. It’s not overtly sexy to have somebody forget something, but there’s a lot of sexy things you can do with it, like making somebody forget that they’re naked, or forget that they’re wearing clothes, or make somebody forget their name, or your name, and then tease them about that in a D/s way… Arousal triggers are incredibly useful; that’s probably the most common thing we do, is having some word or phrase or set of numbers turn you on more and more, and then less. Like, occasionally I’ve used a 1-to-10 scale to turn you on, and then I’ve teased you by turning it down when you really wanted to be turned on more. It’s frustrating and useful. One of the things that we also do a lot, because we’re long-distance, is what is often called I guess like a guided-meditation style of trance, or a guided-roleplay style of trance, where you’re in trance and, because you’re in trance, your brain interprets words in a different way and can create sensations from that, so you can do sensation play where, because we’re far apart, I can tell you that I’m touching parts of you, or that you’re feeling certain touches on your body that you’re not physically feeling, but you can feel them in a more real way than normally if we were just having phone sex. So I like that a lot.

KS: Yup. Hypnosis is very good for long-distance. It’s a handy kink to have.

SS: Yeah. What are some ones I didn’t mention that you’ve really enjoyed?

KS: Bondage.

SS: Oh, yeah. Fuck yes.

KS: Yeah. It took me a really long time to realize that I have a bondage kink, because it just seemed so basic and obvious, and also I was often pairing it with other things that I also enjoyed, so I didn’t know where the arousal was coming from, but it’s become increasingly clear that I’m turned on by even just the sensation of being restrained, even if nothing else is happening. So it’s been fun to play with that. It makes me feel really submissive, which is nice.

SS: Hypnotic bondage is sort of like, telling somebody in trance that parts of their body are immobile, or feel like they’re tied down or restrained, and a brain that’s in trance is usually very cooperative with that. So if you tell somebody in trance that their arms are tied down and they can’t move them, and you ask them to try, it’s very likely that they won’t be able to move those limbs.

KS: Yeah. I also really like fractionation, which is not really a sexy suggestion, like what we’re talking about, but being pulled in and out of trance really fast makes me feel like you’re literally fucking my brain.

SS: Yup.

KS: It’s really disorienting, in much the same way that getting slapped across the face can be, which is nice, ‘cause I really like being in subspace, and you really like when I’m in subspace.

SS: Yeah. The sounds you make when I fractionate you are as good as the sounds you make when I fuck you.

KS: [giggling] It’s always the same sounds, too.

SS: Mmhmm!

KS: I can’t even change them. We’ve also occasionally enjoyed mixing hypnosis with roleplay – like, hysteria stuff and other types of roleplay.

SS: Yeah, there are certain roleplay scenarios where it’s even more exciting if the person roleplaying the dominant or toppy role also knows how to hypnotize you. So like, a school bully that pushes you into a closet, that also can hypnotize you to give him your homework, or a doctor that is trying to get you to come because it’s part of your treatment plan, but also can hypnotize you to make you feel a little more comfortable spreading your legs. You know?

KS: [giggling subbily] Yeah. I know.

SS: Aww.

KS: We also, in the past few months, have been playing with doing hypno stuff in public – which is really interesting, because I think there are very few kinks that you could do in public and be reasonably confident that no one’s gonna know what you’re doing, and you’re not gonna rope anyone into it without their consent. ‘Cause it can really just look like two people having a conversation, or one person taking a nap in the other person’s lap. It looks very innocuous. And I know you really enjoy doing that. What do you like about those public scenes?

SS: Yeah. I don’t really think I have an exhibitionism kink at all. I just like the totality of the control of that. I like that I can be out with you and I can use your trigger, or I can induce you quietly by looking at you or touching your shoulder or your hair, and make you fall asleep on me. Once, we played with hypnosis in addition to a remote-controlled vibe in your cunt, and that’s just a very discreet, very hot fucking thing, to be able to whisper in someone’s ear about how they’re feeling like you’re fucking them, and also have something on their clit. I mean, I don’t know. If people don’t get why that’s hot, I don’t know, I don’t get it.

KS: [laughing] Yeah, that’s fun. We should do that more.

SS: Yeah.

KS: It’s getting cold now, though. We’re gonna have to go to, like, a mall or something.

SS: Okay.

Check back on Friday for the last instalment of this interview, in which we’ll be talking about combining hypnosis with other kinks, how to ensure ongoing consent in a hypno scene, hypno aftercare, resources we recommend, how to cultivate a hypnotic voice, and the role intoxication plays in our hypno play!

Intimate Intercourse: Hypnokink (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 and Daddy Dom/little girl kink; this time we’re discussing erotic hypnosis! I’ve split this interview up into 3 parts, which will go up over the course of this week. This first part is about how my partner got into hypnosis, what he finds hot about it, and the basic components that make up a hypno scene. Hope you like it! P.S. We’re not getting into the basics of hypnosis very much in this series, and we would recommend that you read the book Mind Play by Mark Wiseman if you want to know more about how to actually hypnotize someone. Content notes for this post: hypnosis (obviously), brief mentions of bondage and impact play.

Kate Sloan: Are you excited to talk about hypnokink?

Super Sleepy: Yes, always! It’s my fave kink!

KS: Okay. So, what is hypnokink, and how does it differ from erotic hypnosis?

SS: Oh, gosh. I don’t know that it does. Hypnokink, erotic hypnosis, recreational hypnosis, are all phrases that are thrown around by similar communities, and there’s a Venn diagram of overlapping people that participate in each of them. It seems to me, from what I’ve read and participated in, that “recreational hypnosis” generally refers to people who do hypnosis for fun, not for therapeutic reasons, but it’s not always sexual. “Erotic hypnosis” is obviously sexual; people doing it for sexual reasons. And then “hypnokink,” I think, is pretty interchangeable – but the distinction between erotic hypnosis and hypnokink seems to be that some people identify with erotic hypnosis as somewhat of a vanilla sex act, and people who identify as hypnokinky, or hypnokinksters, tend to recognize that it is a kink.

KS: Interesting. Tell me about how you originally got interested in it.

SS: Okay. Happily! When I was a kid, I would watch cartoons and movies and stuff, and there’s a lot of ‘80s and ‘90s cartoons and Disney movies – like Scooby-Doo and Aladdin and The Jungle Book – that have hypnosis as a plot device. And always, during those moments – I remember it the most with Aladdin – I would feel very, very intensely interested in those things. Like, I didn’t have the vocabulary for “I am getting turned on,” and I don’t think my dick was necessarily getting hard, but I was very interested: leaning forward, paying attention to that shit. And I remember, in 5th grade, there was a policy in my school where, if you got done all your work, you could pick up any encyclopedia and read whatever you wanted…

KS: [giggling]

SS: What?!

KS: That’s so cute!

SS: You could read whatever. Read the dictionary, or the encyclopedia, or any of the books on the shelf. And I found myself drawn to the “H” one, and to the “HY” one… I was like, “Oh, wow, hypnosis! Weird! What’s up with that?” And then I was incredibly hard and incredibly turned on in the middle of class, and I was like, “Oh, shit, fuck. Close that!” And that’s about the time that I started Googling stuff and trying to figure out why hypnosis, and the idea of mind control and controlling people’s thoughts/minds/bodies with words, was such a hot idea to me.

KS: And you told me that for a while, you didn’t think that it was real, or that you could actually do it, and then eventually you learned how to do it. Can you tell me about that?

SS: Yeah. When I started Googling it, one of the first things that any baby hypnokinkster will likely come upon is the Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive; that’s the big site and it’s been around for a long time, and on the front page of that site, there’s a statement about how it’s all fantasy and it’s not real, and I think that that, combined with probably stuff from Wikipedia and stuff from Penn & Teller’s show Bullshit!, all of which I was consuming at that time, was like, “Okay, well, this isn’t a real thing, and you can’t do it, but it’s still really hot to me, so I’ll read this erotica and I’ll fantasize about it and masturbate to it but it’s probably not something I’ll ever be able to do because it doesn’t exist.”

KS: And then how did you learn how to do it?

SS: Good question. I think a couple of years later, in my late teens/early twenties, I started branching out a bit more – not just reading erotica but finding communities of hypnokinksters on websites like Tumblr and Sleepychat and Hypbook and FetLife and Omegle. People were spread out all over the place, but these places were all overlapping, and if you used the same terms, you could find community in all these places at that time. In spaces like that, in live-chat spaces and on Tumblr where people were posting scene logs and stuff, it was very obvious that people were doing it for real. It wasn’t just fantasy. I think one of the first people that I read was H-Sleepingirl. She posted a lot of scene logs from parties in New England and New York, and the New York hypnosis group on FetLife was constantly posting about how they were doing parties or trancing people. And also, on Omegle, it’s a chat website where you can flag what terms you want to chat about, and I was flagging with “erotic hypnosis,” “hypnokink,” all these terms, and there were people on there that clearly wanted to do scenes, and that’s how I learned to do it, is by chatting with people, and trying stuff I had read about on Tumblr and in other places, and seeing what worked and what didn’t.

KS: That’s gotta be different, doing it in text chat versus doing it in real-time.

SS: It is! It’s super different, yeah. There are people that are more susceptible to being hypnotized in text versus audio versus in person, based on their modalities, essentially, and there are people that can’t go into trance in any of those various things, or for whom it’s less likely.

KS: Tell me what is sexy to you about me being in trance, or about putting me into trance.

SS: Sure. The hot thing about hypnotizing you is that it is a form of control, but it is control of your brain. It’s really hot when I strap you down, because I have more control over your body, or when I hit you, because that puts you into a more submissive place, where it’s easier for me to tell you what to do… but with trance, it’s bypassing, a lot of the time, the conscious mind or the critical factor, so it’s hot because I can suggest that you do things and you’ll respond much more quickly and without a lot of questioning of the commands that you’re given. Also because I can make you do things with your brain that you wouldn’t think to do on your own, or that you would think were ridiculous if you were fully conscious.

KS: This is a basic question: can you explain the components of a hypno scene?

SS: Yeah. Not every scene will have these components, but this is probably generally relevant; most scenes will have them. You’re gonna start with a negotiation of what’s allowed, what’s acceptable. Some people don’t want to be touched during hypnosis, some people do; some people have existing triggers that they don’t want used, some people have existing triggers that they do want used; et cetera. So, a normal BDSM-style negotiation of, like, “What are you consenting to? What is okay? What’s not okay? How are we going to get out of this if we need to? What will you need after this?” That’s step 1. Once you have that, there’s often a concept in hypnosis of something called “pre-talk,” which is talking to your subject, as a hypnotist, about what it feels like to be in trance. So, talking about what that state feels like, giving them – before you’re in the scene – a sense of the fact that they’ve probably been in the state before, and a reference point for what being trancey and being hypnotized feels like. If you don’t do that, it’s much harder to get somebody to that place, if they don’t know what they’re going for, if they don’t know where they’re trying to get. So, in a lot of people’s pre-talk, they’ll talk about “highway hypnosis,” like, “Remember a time when you’ve been driving, and you got to your destination, but you don’t remember all the steps?” or flow state, like, “Remember a time when you thought you were never gonna finish a paper, and then you wrote for hours and hours and got it done, and all of that time in between sort of melted together into this very focused place?” So that’s pre-talk.

KS: Cool.

SS: Once you’ve got somebody comfortable with that, and agreeing that they recognize that place, it’s a lot easier to start an induction, especially if you’ve never done that with them before. Let me just define what that is first: an induction is when you take somebody from an awake, alert state into trance, usually a light trance at first, and then we’ll talk about how to deepen that in a second. Inductions vary pretty widely; there’s a lot of different kinds. Progressive relaxation is the one that a lot of people are very familiar with, which is like, talking about relaxing somebody, muscle by muscle, or muscle group by muscle group, their eyes, their shoulders, their chest, their feet, whatever, every muscle group is getting more and more relaxed, and as their body gets more relaxed, their mind gets more relaxed. The other ones that are pretty commonly used in erotic hypnosis contexts are the Elman induction, which is a multi-stage induction that does some progressive relaxation and some fractionation and an arm-drop and some other stuff… There are rapid inductions, which are commonly used by stage hypnotists or magicians, which are like, handshake inductions, butterfly inductions, stuff like that. There are confusion inductions, which are when you overload the brain with too much information or too much input to process, and in that moment of too much information and input, you can give the brain a suggestion, which is just to let go of all of that, and a lot of people will follow that and just sort of drop. There are others, but those are some examples of inductions.

KS: Okay.

SS: So you have the pre-talk, the induction, and then deepeners, usually. Deepeners are techniques that will take a trance that already exists, a light trance, and then deepen it. There’s a lot of ways to do that. There’s countdowns, there’s deepening patter, there’s fractionation, which is bringing someone up and then down rapidly many times, and every time that you go down, you can drop deeper. And then, when you have somebody who is in a trance and has been deepened, you can do suggestions. So there are short-term suggestions and long-term suggestions. You can install post-hypnotic triggers: things that, after the person is out of trance, will make them react in certain ways to certain stimuli. You can do amnesia play, you can do immobilization, all kinds of different things as triggers or suggestions. You can play with people who are in trance, and you can install suggestions and play with people who are not in trance. Those are both things that are fun.

KS: Yup!

SS: And then there’s an awakener after that, which is bringing somebody out of trance, whether that’s to play with those post-hypnotic suggestions, or even after you’re done playing with them while they’re in trance. And then aftercare, after the scene. Those are the main components.

KS: Thank you.

SS: You’re welcome!

To be continued on Wednesday, when we’ll discuss the difficulties of disclosing a hypnosis kink, our first hypno scene together, what makes someone a good hypnotic subject, trance triggers, hypnotherapy, and some of the sexy things we like to do with hypnosis!

When Your Partner Comes Out As Your Partner

Kate Sloan

It all started when a friend kept referring to my boyfriend’s other partner as his “primary partner.”

Granted, this friend isn’t super schooled in the technicalities of non-hierarchical polyamory. He didn’t fully grasp, I think, that it’s possible to be equally romantically devoted to more than one person at once – or that it would be hurtful for me to hear myself implicitly referred to as the secondary partner. The less-important one. The sidepiece.

See, this type of language just fanned the flames of fears I already harbored. Despite my boyfriend always treating me as a priority, and making it clear that I wasn’t less-than in any way, I still felt like the “side” girlfriend moreso than the “main” one. As we discussed this in a tearful phone call, it became clear that there were three factors contributing to this impression: I felt inconsequential next to my partner’s other relationship’s longer history and future plans; they live together, while he and I live 500 miles apart; and they each publicly acknowledge their partnership, on social media and elsewhere, while he and I do not – because I am a sex writer.

“Well, the last one’s the easiest one to fix,” my boyfriend said, “so let’s fix it.”

I was floored, though I shouldn’t have been. He had been telling me for a few months that he eventually wanted to be “out” as my partner – which meant, in turn, being “out” as kinky. He’d already come out to friends, family, and colleagues as bisexual and polyamorous over the years – so why not this, too?

As we talked, it suddenly occurred to me – like the lid being ripped off a paint can and spilling bright pigment every which way – that I’ve never really had a partner publicly acknowledge being my partner for the whole time I’ve been a sex writer, except for those who also already worked in the sex industry. A couple of short-term boyfriends didn’t mind being associated with me on Twitter and such, but usually they had nothing in particular to lose, and sometimes they even had something to gain: they were porn or camming hopefuls, and I felt that they wanted to use my following to help launch those ambitions.

Needless to say, it provokes a pretty creepy-crawly feeling when the people who will happily admit to dating you are mostly people for whom doing so would be a tactical advantage more than an intimate celebration. All these feelings spilled out of me during that conversation with my boyfriend: I’d realized, in one fell swoop, just how much damage had been done to my psyche over the years by partners wanting to hide in the shadows, deny our connection in public, and treat me essentially as the “secret” girlfriend. Of course I always felt like the least important one when my beaux had multiple partners; I was usually the only one conspicuously missing from their Facebook posts, their Instagram selfies, their smitten tweets.

The thing is, I completely understand why someone wouldn’t want to associate themselves with me publicly, even if they love me. Being as loudly pervy as I am is a risk not everyone can afford to take, and I’m immensely privileged to be in a position where my absurd kinks and sexcapades don’t (usually) harm me or limit me. This is my career, this is the life I have chosen, and not everyone who dates me or fucks me has made that same choice, nor should they necessarily have to. My boyfriend owns a company, so in managing his own public image, he’s making decisions not only for himself but potentially also for his business partners and his employees, not to mention the other people in his life who might be affected by this disclosure. We all deserve privacy, and no one should have to give that up just because of who they’re dating.

But I also know now, after much reflection, that I don’t think a serious relationship is sustainable for me if I’m made to feel like my partner is ashamed of who I am and what I do. It may be kinder to them to downplay my own needs and insist they can hide behind a veil of anonymity, but it is, in the long-term, gravely unkind to myself. It digs me deeper into a preexisting negative self-image, and furthers my feeling that my relationships are somehow illegitimate or unimportant to the other people in them, no matter how big and beautiful they may feel to me.

It was difficult to phrase this to my partner in a way that didn’t make it sound like an ultimatum – which it isn’t really; I could keep dating him if he wanted to stay anonymous, albeit not altogether happily – but fortunately he didn’t take it as such. He understood immediately why it would be painful for me to publicly pretend my partner is a Man of Mystery, instead of acknowledging the marvelous man he is in reality. Like me, he grew up on the internet, so he grasped that if something doesn’t exist online, in some ways it doesn’t fully exist at all. It has always been hard for me to see my non-sex-industry friends posting cute selfies with their partners, or tagging their sweethearts in tweets about date nights and romantic adventures, believing I would never be able to do that. I am so grateful that my boyfriend understood that particular pain and decided it wasn’t worth putting me through.

He is careful and thoughtful in everything he does, and this endeavor was no exception. He spoke to his therapist, his business partners, his other girlfriend, his friends, and even some casual business acquaintances, trying to get a read on whether coming out as a kinky sex blogger’s boyfriend and dom would be a disastrous error. Most of them knew he’d wanted this for a while and seemed surprised he hadn’t done it sooner. Few of them expressed any reservations, and the few they brought up were risks he had already considered and decided he could accept.

I kept telling him, whenever we discussed this, “You know you don’t have to do this, right?” – to which he would always say, “I know. I’m not doing it because I have to. I’m doing it because I want to.” Invariably I would start crying so hard as to become unintelligible. Being a loud-and-proud sex writer, I’d sort of just accepted that no one would ever want to be linked to me by anything more solid than a false name or a censored selfie. I’d assumed that no one would ever love me enough to be visibly mine, and that belief was slowly poisoning my self-worth from the inside out. And here was this man, telling me that not only did he love me, but he wanted to shout it from the proverbial rooftops.

Though he got all his ducks in a row a few weeks ago, we agreed we should wait until we were together in person to actually pull the trigger. “I’m going to want to touch you after that,” he told me, which is the same thing he said when we discussed whether we were ready to say “I love you” for the first time. In a way, it feels like the same act, just shifted and magnified: this is him showing me he loves me in a way that feels even more impactful than the words themselves. He’ll dash off a tweet, casually-but-not-casually mentioning that I’m his girlfriend, and it’ll change our relationship and our lives. I can’t think of anything more romantic.

All this to say: my Sir’s name is mb. He wanted me to let you know.

5 Incredibly Gorgeous Femme Cocks

Kate Sloan

I’m thinking a lot about the concept of the “femme cock” lately, because pegging is an increasingly significant part of my sex life. Recently my partner mentioned wanting to be fucked with something bigger than my usual go-to – the pink glittery Godemiche Ambit, pictured above – but he emphasized that his top priority was my comfort. He knew that my cis femme identity is sometimes at odds with my desire to rock a cock, and that it gives me Weird Gender Feelings sometimes to strap on something that looks too realistic. So we started pondering non-representational, hyperfemme options.

With the disclaimer that all dildos are genderless and anyone of any gender identity and gender presentation can use any dildo, here are some of my top picks for femmes who want to fuck with flair!

The Fuze Wilde is a long-time fave of mine for strap-on play. It has a hefty-but-not-unreasonable 1.75″ diameter at its widest point, and two delicious ridges just under the head for optimal G-spot/prostate stimulation.

Best of all for tops who want to get off, the Wilde (like many Fuze dildos) has a ridged base that rubs against the clitoral region in pleasing ways during sex, and a hole where you can stick a bullet vibe like the We-Vibe Tango.

Fuze’s purple silicone is slightly iridescent and absolutely beautiful. I feel like a violet vixen wearing this cock.

Suggested harness pairing: complete your slightly Violet Beauregarde-esque aesthetic with the Aslan Jaguar harness in “Prince” purple. I swooned so hard when Aslan came out with this colorway in tribute of Prince. It is glorious.

The Funkit Toys NoFrillDo B is short and squat, though still long enough to target hotspots during strap-on play. I love that the bumps on the head of this dildo are smoothed out; they feel much better than ones that jut or poke out awkwardly. The one I have is a pretty shade of robin’s-egg blue, though I also adore this lemon yellow. Imagine painting your fingernails and toenails to match this dildo, or complementing it with a pair of purple cowboy boots or a red leather jacket!

The great thing about the NoFrillDos – and, indeed, the reason they were developed – is that they’re body-safe toys at an astonishingly affordable price point ($24 USD). Thanks to the ingenuity of dildo-makers like Funkit Toys’ Kenton, you don’t have to spend a mint to get a cute cock to fuck your sweetheart with.

Suggested harness pairing: I think this yellow beaut would look splendid jutting out of a bright red harness, like the cherry Aslan Jaguar or the SpareParts Sasha. Wear a blue accessory if you want to complete the primary-colors motif of your ensemble!

The Vixen Creations Leo comes in a bunch of different colors, but I especially like this pearly white one. It’s even sparklier and shinier than this photo indicates, and sort of makes me feel like a vampire from the Twilight universe (but, y’know, sexier, and more consent-conscious).

The Leo has a scrunchy faux-foreskin situation goin’ on just under its coronal ridge, which creates some pleasing friction that’s truly unlike any other dildo I own. I wouldn’t call it painful or uncomfortable at all, just mildly scratchy, like how it can be nice when a partner scritches your scalp with their nails. Mmm.

The Leo is mainly made to target the G-spot, but I also find it can hit my A-spot if I push it in deep enough. Hooray!

Suggested harness pairing: this pearlescent shade of white would look gorgeous against the rosy pink of the SpareParts Theo. Your junk will look as delicious as strawberries and cream!

The VixSkin Bandit in “Tie-Bright” is an explosion of orgasmic rainbow delights. I don’t know how else to describe it. Just look at this fucker! I sadly don’t own any Tie-Bright toys yet, but the very sight of them perks me right up. Nothing says “I am a magical queer pixie” quite like a technicolor dick swinging between your thighs.

At 7″ long and 1.75″ wide, it’s fairly meaty, though the squishiness of VixSkin makes this toy easier to take. I would imagine it’d be great for A-spot stimulation, with all that lovely length. And it has balls, which I don’t have any strong feelings about either way but which I know many people find adorable.

Suggested harness pairing: I think you probably wanna go with something understated with this dildo, so its stunning colors really shine. The black Aslan Jaguar and SpareParts Joque are simple classics, and should be sturdy enough to support this behemoth of a dildo.

I had to include the Blush Avant D6 Electra, because it’s my two favorite colors: pink and turquoise! If my blog had a dick, it would look like this…

The shape is a little odd, but I wonder if that tapered tip might make it great for A-spot stimulation. I’ll have to give it a shot, if Blush ever hooks me up with one.

Suggested harness pairing: my harness of choice, the limited-edition Aslan Nicki Jaguar, is a must-have if you’re a femme who loves pink. The bright raspberry shade would look perfect next to the colors of this dildo!

What’s your favorite femme cock?

Upgrade Your Magic Wand With These Neat Accessories

Kate Sloan

The Magic Wand – formerly produced under the Hitachi name, now still manufactured by Hitachi but distributed and branded by Vibratex – is, it must be said, a legend. You know a sex toy has truly reached “indispensable” status when other companies start making accessories to go with it! I don’t know very many other toys besides the Magic Wand for which that has happened.

The lovely folks at Betty’s Toy Box sent me a couple of Magic Wand accessories recently, and I wanted to talk about them and some of their many uses!

The Wand Assist Adjustable Gooseneck Hands-Free Wand Holder (phew, what a mouthful!) is a clamp designed to hold your wand for you so you can use it without clutching onto it for dear life. Straight out of the box, it requires assembly, but my boyfriend was able to figure it out pretty quickly (naked, I might add). It comes with two differently-sized ends, so you can use it with bigger wands or smaller ones. The other end can be affixed to “any flat, appropriately-sized edge,” like the side of a desk or chair. It’s a simple but surprisingly versatile product, and I’m glad to own it! Here are a few potential uses for this wand holder…

• First and foremost, it’s crucial to note how useful this product could be for disabled folks, or anyone with mobility or strength issues that make it difficult to hold onto a wand. Even I, with my occasional and relatively mild chronic pain issues in my joints, sometimes don’t love having to grip a vibe in my sore fingers, keeping my sore wrists and elbows bent, while I jerk off. With a clamp like this, masturbation can become a “set it and forget it” activity. Hallelujah!

• As we’ve discussed before, wand vibes are an ideal prop for forced-orgasm scenes, and this clamp could take that to the next level. Imagine tying your sub to a chair and then lowering a buzzing wand onto their bits so you can watch them squirm and scream. You could even (with proper safety precautions and measures for monitoring ongoing consent) leave the room for a bit, and the wand would keep on truckin’. Amaze.

• I think this clamp would be brilliant for hypnokink scenes. You could stick your sub in front of a spiral gif on a screen and mutter inductions and deepeners in their ear while a wand buzzed faithfully on their bits. It can take a lot of coordination to get someone off with sex toys while also getting inside their head; this clamp could do some of that work for you, allowing you to focus fully on trancing your blank little toy.

• No post about wand vibes on this blog would be complete without a mention of lazy masturbation. (#LazyLyfe 4everrr!) Set up your wand in this clamp, arrange it on your junk, sleuth out some porn online, lean back, and enjoy.

The Liberator Axis Magic Wand Mount is similar to other Liberator positioning aids, except that it has a slot where you can insert your wand. I love that it has a little clear plastic window, so that (depending on what wand you’re using) you can still operate the buttons on your vibe even while it’s tucked inside. It can also be used without a vibe, as a standard positioning toy, to help elevate your hips or butt to make certain sex positions easier and more comfortable. Here are some suggested uses for this clever little product:

• I mean, you could just keep it simple and lie on top of your wand-impregnated Axis while you get fucked from behind. Hands-free genital stimulation is a real treat.

• If you like pleasure with your pain, try lying on the Axis while getting a spanking. Each hit will press you more firmly against the wand. I don’t come from spankings but I imagine it might be possible with this toy and some determination.

• Depending on your level of flexibility, you could lie face-up with the Axis under your ass, insert a butt plug, and angle your hips so that the wand makes contact with the base of the plug. This’ll make the toy vibrate, while tilting your hips to make any additional genital stimulation easier to administer.

What are your favorite uses for wand accessories like these?

 

Thanks to Betty’s Toy Box for sending me these products to try!