Author: Kate Sloan

Review: Piph Lube

Kate Sloan

(Edited to add: this was an April Fool’s Day joke, y’all! Don’t you wish this lube existed, though?!)

If you want a sex product designed right, get a sex toy reviewer to do it. That’s what I’ve always believed, and SheVibe has finally done it, enlisting queen of the sex toy reviewers Epiphora to develop her own lube. It is a thing to behold. I present to you: Piph Lube.

Now, you might be wondering: if I want a reviewer-endorsed water-based lube, why not just grab a bottle of Sliquid Sassy? Well, there’s more to it than that. This lube contains some additives which make it – to quote its tagline – “radically stimulating.” (Sounds like a fingerbanging class taught by a sandy-haired surfer bro, I know, but read on.)

The additives? Cannabis, caffeine, pinot grigio, catnip, and a mysterious force identified only as “queer magic.” These are a few of my favorite things…

Now let’s be clear before we proceed: this isn’t a lube for a quick, get-‘er-done kind of wank, just as a “special” brownie isn’t the ideal snack for when you’re running out the door to go write your SATs. (Well, depends on what kind of brain you have, I guess.) You’ve gotta settle in with this one. Clear your schedule. Light some incense. Take the phone off the hook, you archaic landline-possessing cutie, you.

I was involved in the early testing process of this lube, and skewing the formula created some amusing results. Too much cannabis and my vagina just wanted to squeeze on the dildo inside it, too slowly and too reverently, because it just felt so cooool. Too much caffeine and I’d clutch my Magic Wand in frantic T-rex hands, pressing it against my lube-smeared vulva in a mad dash toward orgasm. Too much pinot grigio and I’d fall asleep midway through my testing session with a dildo lazily sliding out of me and a boozy blush overtaking my cheeks. Too much “queer magic” and I’d get distracted from masturbation by the imminent need to scissor to a Tegan and Sara album. And let’s not even talk about what happened when there was too much catnip…

But the formula is finally exactly right, I’m thrilled to report. When I smear it all over a dildo or a butt plug for a luxurious wank sesh, I know I’m about to have an experience. The first time I tried this final formulation, I had three theatrical orgasms in a candle-rimmed bathtub while intermittently wailing along to Ani DiFranco and giggling like a six-year-old at a birthday party. The next time I tried it, I channelled my inner Rosie the Riveter and got most of my own fist inside me while chanting, “We can do it! We can do it!” The time after that, I squirted so hard I thought I was gonna pass out, and when I looked at the puddle on my bedsheets, I swear to god it was shaped like a unicorn. Hey, don’t ask me, I can’t explain the hows and whys of queer magic.

When I brought Piph Lube to a Tinder hookup’s house and explained what was on offer, he eagerly agreed to give it a shot. Five hours later, we finally collapsed in a heap of glitter and sweat – me scratched up and sated, him wide-eyed and whispering piously about how a communist, matriarchal society would reshape our sexual culture. I gently shushed him, closed his laptop to silence the Crash Pad scene we’d been looping in the background of our romp, and fell into a luxuriant sleep. He told me to tell you this lube “like, absolutely, unironically changes lives, okay?”

The additives are blended together in a base of filtered Portland rainwater, incase you want to “keep your orifices weird,” I guess. I keep wondering what Candace and Toni would think of this lube. They could probably use it to grease the wheels of their rolling book carts, in any case.

Although ingesting too much of any one additive in this lube could fuck you up pretty bad, the lube itself is totally body-safe. And it’s a good thing, too, because I want to use it a lot. Like, all the time. It’s hard not to love a product that makes your vagina feel like it’s flying through the cosmos holding hands with Cher and Prince.

I recommend pairing Piph Lube with a hyper-textured or visually stimulating toy to take full advantage of its sensual effects. Smear some on a heart-shaped butt plug if you just wanna feel more in tune with the love energy of the universe, y’know? Drip some on your BS Is Nice Rainbow dildo if you’re like, “Hey, I’m pretty gay, but I want to feel even gayer today.” Squirt some in your Tenga 3D Spiral if you want your dick to feel like it’s trapped in an Escher painting.

Many thanks to Piph and SheVibe for developing this lube. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll be in my bathtub, crying happy tears, coming too many times, and fucking myself into a sparkly stupor.

Monthly Faves: Southsides & Sweet Sadists

Kate Sloan

March was kind of a weird month for my mental health but I still managed to get fucked real good a bunch… Here were some of my fave things this month!

Sex toys

• SheVibe sent me a Neon Wand a little while ago after I mentioned being curious about electrostimulation (thank you, sweet angels!) and I finally got to try it out with a partner this month. M’boyf strapped me down using my under-the-bed restraints and then proceeded to zap me all over various tender body parts until I turned into a subspacey mess. Full review to come!

• I requested a Liberator Axis from Betty’s Toy Box and I’m even more into it than I thought I would be. It’s a sexual positioning aid, much like the Liberator Wedge or Jaz, except it has a slot where you can insert your Magic Wand. Ideal for hands-free clitoral stimulation while getting fucked from behind or spanked!

• Did y’all know that it’s really fun to fuck someone with an Njoy Pfun plug while you’re blowing them? Well, it is.

Fantasy fodder

• I mentioned hysteria kink last month but I’m gonna talk about it again, dammit. One night in mid-March after a tipsy date at Northwood, my darlin’ was kissing and spanking me in bed when he suddenly said, “I want you to take off your panties and be my patient.” I knew immediately that he meant he wanted to enact the kind of medical-play scene we’d sexted about on many an occasion. Swoooon. I’ve fantasized about this type of play for a long time, so it felt especially magical to have him expertly pull an orgasm from my body with the Eleven and Doxy #3 while mumbling darkly about what a good patient I was and how much better I was going to feel after the procedure.

• Welp, you can file bootblacking under “things I liked in fantasy that I ended up liking even more IRL.” After plenty o’ sexting about it, my Sir and I finally gave bootblacking a shot this month, with him in a comfortable armchair and me on a leash at his feet. I got waaay more subspacey and trancey than I was expecting; it was meditative and lovely. And his shoes looked fucking great afterward.

• I’m experimenting with dominance a little these days. I’ve played with it before, but usually only with people I was exclusively dominant over; it’s rare I attempt to switch with people who normally dom me. But it’s been fun. I like roleplaying as a withholding mistress or a bratty blackmailing schoolgirl. (And I love that one of my favorite subby kink honorifics, “princess,” works just as well for me in a dominant role if we spell it with a capital P…)

Sexcetera

• Check me out on the Bed Post podcast! Erin and I had a great chat about hypnokink, DD/lg, sex spreadsheets, and more.

• I was so proud of my friend Suz this month when she relaunched her website and held a rad party to celebrate the occasion. There was a delicious signature cocktail called the Sex on the Peach, genitalia cupcakes, porn screenings, “CUM” balloons, a spanking booth, and more. I had so much fun dancing the night away to ’90s pop in a super slutty outfit. Congrats, Suz!

Femme stuff

• I bought sequinned leggings from the Gap and they’re so good. I used to own a pair like these in high school and I wore them so much they literally fell apart. Looking forward to going dancing in these; I’ll be a walking disco ball!

• My Sir ordered a couple custom pieces for me from L’Amour-Propre this month: a leash in the same blue suede as my collar, and a silver heart-shaped lock with “Daddy’s” engraved on it. We’re still feeling out exactly what the lock is for and under what circumstances I’ll wear it, but I’ve been wearing it on a silver chain and treating it as basically a fancier collar, and it’s so pretty!

• I bought a Dildorks shirt. It’s cute as fuck. You can order your own here!

Little things

Dinner and a comedy show with my bruddy. The boyf staying up with me on FaceTime til 2:30AM, helping me with a research project and making me laugh. Ukulele jam sessions. Making money doing what I love. Seeing Stacey Kent in concert after loving her music for like 15 years. My new tattoo, still. Giggling at Flo & Joan songs with Zoe over gin and tonics. My new roommate’s two cats (I have befriended… one of them). My sweet Sir asking if he could call me when I was having a bad mental health night by saying, “Are you sure you don’t just wanna hear my voice be silly and stuff? You don’t have to do anything; I can just be entertaining and complimentary.” Watching the hot bartender at the Crow’s Theatre make me a wonderful old-fashioned. My two favorite songs of the month, “Like or Like Like” and “Kidnap Me.” Pizza and wine with Rosaline, as per usual. Sir visiting me in Toronto, and getting to take him to my fave places. The breakfast special at Dooney’s. Crossing things off to-do lists. Sipping a Southside with my daddy while talking about D/s semantics.

What Makes Bad Sex So Bad?

Kate Sloan

I’ve been a sex nerd for a long, long time, y’all. One of the ways this manifested early in my life was subscribing to the Bad_Sex community on LiveJournal.

At the time, I didn’t give much critical thought to why these stories fascinated me so much. But in retrospect, I think they gave me a sense of perspective about sex that I was missing at that time, as a naive virgin whose main understanding of sex came from flowery erotica stories and slick MMORPG cybersex. When the sex media you consume is all smooth ‘n’ hot, it’s easy to overlook how often real-life sex is boring, confusing, unsatisfying, or straight-up bad.

Let me be clear here: I am not talking about sex that’s bad from a consent perspective, i.e. rape, coerced sex, and so on. That is a whole other kettle of fish, obviously hugely problematic in different ways and for different reasons. I am talking about sex where consent is freely and mutually given, that turns out to be bad due to other factors. It happens, and I think we don’t talk about it enough, leaving the young or inexperienced among us with unrealistic expectations of sex as effortlessly perfect and magical.

So I was excited when Lily Wilson reached out to me to tell me about her new book, In the Glow of the Lavalamp: Stories of Bad Sex and Other Misfortunes. It’s a series of short, funny bad-sex tales. Flipping through Lily’s book inspired me to reflect on some of my own memories of bad sex…

The first time I ever had penetrative sex was a mess. Me and a cute lesbian FWB decided our foreplay should be scissoring, since that’s, I guess, the quintessential girl-on-girl act. (Or at least, it was, in the minds of two 16-year-old baby queers who watched too much The L Word.) She’d just purchased some blueberry cheesecake-flavored lube and, having never used lube before, decided one full handful each was the proper amount. We anointed our vulvas with this sticky elixir and then rubbed them together until our muscles ached and the slippery squelching sounds made us giggle so profusely we had to stop.

Next we attempted the centerpiece of our evening: strap-on sex. She suited up in her new harness and slipped a smallish grey silicone dildo through the O-ring. We tried one position, and then another, and another, but no matter what we tried, we couldn’t figure out how to get the dildo into me without hurting me. I’d already used a bigger dildo on myself plenty of times so the hymen hypothesis didn’t check out; it was seemingly an issue of angle and awkwardness.

Finally, we settled on the “cowgirl” position: me on top, astride my pal. I ground down against her for many minutes, looking for an angle that would give me any pleasure whatsoever, but I couldn’t find one. She seemed to be enjoying it, though, so I kept at it… for half an hour. We bucked and writhed in near-silence, just breathing and grunting and sweating. So much sweating. I literally dripped sweat onto her. I felt disgusting. But I couldn’t stop, because she was… into it? Maybe? I couldn’t tell.

When I finally collapsed in exhaustion beside her, I asked, “Did you come?” and she replied, totally mystified, “No. Did you?” Of course, I hadn’t. And the window for any further pleasure had closed, both of us being too overexerted to move, let alone get each other off. We fell into a deep, unsatisfied slumber, in a puddle of sweat, saccharine lube, and bemused disappointment.

The last truly bad sex I had happened last summer, 5 days after a breakup, which should’ve been my first clue it was ill-advised. A beardy Tinder bro talked my ear off at a bar for an hour about his career ambitions, his creative vocations, places he’d been, girls he’d fucked. He mocked the food I ordered, expressed zero sympathy when I mentioned I’d just been through a difficult split, and asked me literally nothing about myself.

And yet, somehow, I decided to go back to his apartment with him. I am not proud.

We smoked weed in his humid attic apartment and launched into messy makeouts, no romance or pretense whatsoever. He awkwardly tried to pin me down because I’d mentioned being submissive, but it felt hollow, perhaps because I’d dated an ardently dominant kinkster so recently and was still sad about it. He went down on me and unleashed a pointy, flicky tongue on my hypersensitive clit, causing me to squirm away and offer breathy suggestions like, “Can you do that slower and softer?” or “Can you focus on the side of my clit instead of right on it?” but he seemed confused by these directives and just kept at it.

After a few more minutes of this, I gave up and tried to transition things into good ol’-fashioned fucking, but neither of us seemed that enthused about his dick being inside me. Finally, he finished himself off on my chest and belly while we kissed. As we laid there in the smoky darkness afterward, he asked, “Did you come?” and I narrowly resisted the urge to exclaim, “LOL, nah, bro.”

Unsurprisingly, what both these bad-sex stories have in common is a lack of assertiveness and communication. There are good reasons for that: the culture we live in encourages us to keep quiet about sex, and also encourages female and feminine folks, in particular, to downplay our needs and focus on making other people happy. I don’t regret these experiences, and my other forays into bad sex, because I’ve learned a lot from every one of those encounters – but I like to think I’d be better at avoiding situations like these nowadays.

Alana Massey once wrote, in an essay about bad first dates, “This life is short and wild and precious, and people are spending way too much time on first dates that they need to skedaddle on out of as soon as they know things are heading south.” I think this sentiment applies to bad sex, too – though leaving any romantic or sexual interaction midway through is, obviously, easier said than done.

Bonus: here’s an interview I did with Lily Wilson, the author of In the Glow of the Lavalamp: Stories of Bad Sex and Other Misfortunes!

Kate Sloan: What made you want to write a book about bad sex?

Lily Wilson: I’d written a story about an incident that was hilariously bad. When I shared it, people began coming out of the woodwork saying, “OH! You won’t believe what happened to me!” They’d tell me their own stories. Many of these were funny. Bad sex happens more frequently than most people imagine; in fact, there’s a universal aspect to it. But we don’t often talk about it. An activity that involves so many complex interactions, so many things that can’t be controlled, is bound to go wrong some of the time. I began to collect the stories and get permission to write them down. They aren’t always funny, but I do love the humor – that’s what makes the disasters bearable.

KS: Assuming we’re talking about sex that is consensual and not coerced, what makes sex “bad”?

LW: Two categories of things can make it bad: 1) stuff that is out of the control of either participant, and 2) choices the participants make. Category One includes things like disasters: the roof falling in on top of you, a giant rat pouncing on the bed… Also in this category would be like illness, accidents, interruptions, that sort of thing. These stories are usually funny, at least in retrospect.

Category Two is more complicated; it covers choices the participants make. Mismatched desires and expectations are behind a lot of bad sex. If both people are not honest about what they want, there’s a strong possibility the sex will be lousy. If person A wants roleplaying, costumes, and trapezes, and person B wants something more basic, and either person fails to communicate, this is not going to go well, probably for either of them. Sometimes people want connection so badly they stifle their needs and desires and attempt to settle for whatever is on offer. Like, OK, I will do y and z, and hope that I can at least have a minute or two of j and k. This approach generally does not produce a happy ending.

Category Two also includes the degree to which each partner cares about the experience of the other. Most of us have been with someone who was completely oblivious to or unconcerned with how the sex was for us… It is very difficult to have a good experience with such a person.

KS: What’s your #1 piece of advice for avoiding bad sex?

LW: Communicate! Make sure your expectations are compatible. Two people don’t have to want exactly the same thing, but it’s important that your expectations don’t nullify theirs, and their expectations don’t make yours impossible to fulfill. Make sure your partner cares about how the experience is for you. That sounds almost too basic to bother stating it, but there are an astounding number of people in the world who seem to be unaware of/uninterested in what their partner experiences. You get to say “No, thank you” to such people.

Thanks so much to Lily for doing this interview and for writing such an interesting book! You can buy it on Kobo or check it out on Amazon here.

Heads up: this post was sponsored, and as always, all opinions and writing (save for Lily’s answers to my questions) are my own.

6 Big Things I’ve Learned From 6 Years of Sex Blogging

Kate Sloan

Oh wow: this blog is six years old today. That is unbelievable to me. When I started Girly Juice, I thought it’d be a fun summer project. I never envisioned it’d still be going strong years later, a major source of professional opportunities, social connections, income, and glee.

It’s been a major source of self-revelation, too. Here are six big things I’ve learned about myself, my sexuality, and my approach to relationships in the years I’ve been writing here at Girly Juice dot net…

1. I’m kinky as fuck. When I started blogging, I identified pretty squarely as vanilla. I had submissive fantasies occasionally, but figured they were just fantasies – not anything I’d want to try in real life.

However, two and a half years into writing this blog, I ended my very vanilla long-term relationship, and started exploring other avenues – at first, just in fantasy, and later, in reality. I tried things out with a couple of domly FWBs, dated some doms who helped me see in myself the submissive cutie they saw in me, and learned more about what being a “good girl” means to me.

I still suffer from “impervster syndrome” from time to time, feeling like I’m too kinky for vanilla folks and too vanilla for (some) kinky folks – but for the most part, I feel secure in my kinky identity. And I’m looking forward to exploring new kinks for a long time to come!

2. I’m non-monogamous. At the start of my blogging journey, I was in a long-term monogamous relationship, and was very happy and in love. But as time went on, I started noticing twinges of dissatisfaction. It had nothing to do with my partner – I adored him, felt blissfully supported by him, and was satisfied with our relationship in all but one dimension. Monogamous strictures made me feel owned and confined – and not in the fun, kinky ways!

Though we experimented with low levels of don’t-ask-don’t-tell non-monogamy in that relationship, it was clear that we were both compromising past our comfort levels, and that it wasn’t going to work long-term. We parted ways amicably, for this reason among others, and I started pondering what I wanted from my future relationships, vis-à-vis non-monogamy.

In the years since then, I’ve experimented with lots of different relationship structures: open relationships, hierarchical and non-hierarchical polyamory, solo poly, casual sluttiness, less-casual sluttiness. Right now, I feel like non-hierarchical poly is the best fit with my approach to dating and my interpersonal ethics. But, as with most of this stuff, I’m open to seeing how that evolves in the future.

3. A-spot stimulation makes me come a lot. I’ve written plenty about the A-spot (a.k.a. anterior fornix) over the years, after discovering – mostly through the use of sex toys – that it’s fairly key to my orgasmic process.

It’s been fun to teach various partners about this spot, and watch them light up when they figure out how to stimulate it. It’s been even more gratifying, however, to receive countless emails and tweets from people who didn’t know they liked A-spot stimulation until they read my articles about it. I never shut up about this spot because I don’t want anyone to feel like their body is broken or weird, like I used to!

4. You gotta ask for what you want. I’m great at telling other people to ask for what they want. I’m great at journaling about what I want, telling my friends what I want from my partners, and whining about how I don’t have what I want. I have historically been less great about actually asking partners for what I want.

This can be anything from “I want you to fuck me deeper and harder” to “I want you to answer my texts in a more timely manner.” Asking for things can feel embarrassingly unchill, but really, it’s the only way to get the satisfying romantic and sexual relationships you desire and deserve. I keep learning this in new ways all the time and it serves me so well when I manage to do it.

5. I prefer quality over quantity when it comes to sex and relationships.

Okay, some caveats here. First off, it’s possible to be slutty and/or dating lots of people and have all of those connections be high-quality, healthy, and wonderful. I know people who manage it. Kudos to them! Secondly, for some people, having lots of partners is their idea of a high-quality romantic/sexual life, and that’s A-OK too. If your sex life makes you happy, I applaud you and celebrate it with you!

However, I went through a “slut phase” and came out the other side realizing having a lot of romantic/sexual connections at once isn’t really a good fit for my particular brain and relationship style. Same with casual sex and one-night stands. The way those types of connections have functioned in my life, they don’t offer me the depth, support, and consistency I’ve discovered I crave. I’m suuuper glad I went through a slutty chapter of life, because it taught me a lot, but that’s not where I’m at anymore, and that’s fine!

My current poly situation looks like this: a long-distance boyfriend I talk to every day and have a super intimate relationship with; a local, casual, somewhat romantic partner I see on occasion for rope bondage and giggles; and a highly casual but still much-adored friend with benefits who I fuck about once a month. My emotional and sexual needs feel pretty well taken care of, and it’s so nice!

6. Anything can change at any time. You can develop new kinks, or lose interest in old ones. You can have a sudden, radical shift in what you want out of your relationships. You can learn new ways to orgasm, and get bored of your former failsafe methods. You can notice strong feelings for a new person, or abruptly lose interest in someone you thought you’d love forever. You can think you know what you need, and then realize you need something totally different.

I have “this too shall pass” tattooed on my inner wrists to remind me that everything is ephemeral. When you truly, deeply know and believe that, you develop a Zen-like appreciation for the good things in your life at any given time, knowing full well that they might not always be there. It sounds bleak, but it’s actually liberating – uplifting, even. There are things that bring you pleasure and joy now, and there will be more things like that in the future, and they might not always be the same things, but that’s fine. Pleasure springs eternal. Isn’t that lovely?!

What have you learned about your sexuality and approach to relationships in the past few years?

Review: We-Vibe Sync

Kate Sloan

There comes a moment in any sex toy nerd’s life when they discover a non-standard use for a toy, and feel like a goddamn genius. Epiphora conjured hands-free orgasms with the Dusk; Bex first told me about putting an inside-out Tenga Egg over the head of a Hitachi for some added texture; and as for me, I’ve used the We-Vibe Sync for kink. (Hey, it even rhymes!)

How, you ask? Let me explain by first taking you back to a night sometime in late 2015. I’m pinned beneath my domly then-fuckbuddy in his big soft bed. He’s fucking me, and it feels fantastic, but without some clit stimulation, it’s not gonna get me anywhere. I snake my hand down between us to rub my clit, but he barks, “Did I say you could use your hand, little one?”

It’s true, he didn’t. And it’s frustrating for both of us that I have to use my hand: kinks-wise, I’d rather have my arms pinned over my head, and he’d prefer us in that pose, too. But without clit stim, orgasm is a sad impossibility for me. We eventually settle on a compromise: we squish my We-Vibe Tango between us, so it stays put beside my clit as he holds me down and fucks me. It works well enough – okay, it works great, and I come all over his cock, panting and mewling – but it’s a flawed system. Neither of us can easily or quickly adjust the vibration strength, and our pelvises have to remain perfectly flush to keep the vibe where it needs to stay.

Enter the We-Vibe Sync. It’s been over two years and I’m not seeing that fuckbuddy anymore, but other domly princes have come along, and the Sync has been there for us. It’s my hands-free solution to the problem of the princess who needs clit stim to come, but wants to feel hopelessly trapped beneath her darling.

The Sync boasts another feature ideal for kink: the app through which it can be controlled via Bluetooth. Whether you and your beau are oceans apart or they’re sitting beside you on the sofa, they can control your We-Vibe using their phone. The app allows you to manipulate several pre-programmed modes, raising or lowering the strength of the two individual motors with a swipe of a finger – or you can create your own modes, set the vibe to respond to the bassy thrum of music or sound, or use the “touch” mode to tap and swipe your partner into ecstasy.

The novelty factor of this app cannot be oversold. You can deny your partner clitoral stimulation while thrumming on their G-spot to tease them into a frenzy. You can rub your phone screen like you’d rub their actual clit, and coolly watch them squirm from across the room. You can send them a message in Morse code via vibration on their bits. The possibilities are infinite, and could be very, very evil, in the best possible way.

You could also – I suppose – use the Sync in the way We-Vibes are traditionally meant to be used: to provide extra stimulation during presumably-vanilla peen-in-vag sex. Its internal arm is more flared and textured than that on the Unite, so it stays in place better. And the Sync has two hinges between its internal and external arms, allowing you to adjust it to fit your body, unlike any other couples’ vibe in history. Amaze!

I find those hinges useful when I’m using the toy solo, too. Some days, my clit wants more pressure; some days, it wants less. I can widen or tighten the Sync’s angle to get the exact right amount of clit pressure at any given moment, and to make sure the clit arm actually stays on my clit. It’s genius.

Beware, though, that these hinges are prone to breaking if you drop the toy or pull it wider too harshly. I’ve worked at two different sex shops and the Sync floor models at both were broken by overzealous customers and/or salespeople by accident. When the hinges snapped, so, too, did the connection between the two arms’ motors – so not only did the toy flop uselessly like a deflated boner, but it also no longer vibrated in the internal arm. Be careful with your Sync!

Getting back to this toy’s good points, though, here’s the major thing that makes the Sync better than any other couples’ vibe on the market: DAT MOTOR. For years I’ve wondered why We-Vibe’s flagship toys’ motors were so weak and buzzy while their solo vibes were satisfyingly rumbly. Now, at long last, they’ve put a Tango-esque motor in a couples’ toy. The internal arm is still buzzy and kinda useless to me, but that clitoral arm is every bit as rumbly as I need it to be. It brings me to deep, satisfying orgasms, and doesn’t leave me numb.

Though the We-Connect app is designed for couples to use together, it can also be used alone. It acts as a remote control for the toy, and I like it a lot better than the actual remote the toy comes with. There is something so futuristic and cool about controlling my vibe from my phone. I don’t even have to take my pants down at any point; I can adjust the vibe’s position using my pelvic muscles and its vibrations with the app. Perfect for lazy orgasms at my desk, watching porn, reading erotica, or fantasizing.

Aside from the aforementioned fragile hinges, I only have a few quibbles about the Sync, and they are as follows. First off, the ridgy texture on the vaginal arm makes this toy impossible to clean without a small scrub brush (so, y’know, get a small scrub brush, or an old toothbrush). Secondly, if I’m using the Sync by myself, sometimes I get so wet that it starts to slide out of me and I have to continually readjust it. This isn’t nearly as much of an issue when a partner’s dick is in me, though. And thirdly, the internal arm’s motor is much weaker and buzzier than the one in the external arm. This only bugs me when I’m in the mood for strong G-spot stimulation, which isn’t often, but if you like your internal vibes robust and relentless, you might not be pleased with the Sync.

When I tell sex-nerd friends who haven’t tried the Sync that I’m reviewing it, they’re often disappointed or confused. “Don’t you hate couples’ vibes?” they say, perhaps flashing back to me screeching at the tangled panties of my FixSation, gnashing my teeth while mashing the remote of the We-Vibe 3, or throwing the Lelo Ida on my bedroom floor in an anguished rage.

It’s true that I’ve never loved a vibe of this style before. My former favorite from this category was the Lelo Noa, because it was the only one simultaneously unobtrusive enough not to bother my partner but strong and rumbly enough to get me off. But even that was not love – it was a paltry and resigned “like,” similar to how I’ll begrudgingly pick Wendy’s over McDonalds or Burger King if those are my only choices.

But I actually love the We-Vibe Sync. It does what a couples’ vibe should do: stays in place, doesn’t get in the way or interrupt the proceedings, and gets me off – whether I’m being fucked by a vanilla darling or a darkly dominant beau.

 

The We-Vibe Sync is available at Come As You Are ($237 CAD/about $180 USD), SheVibe ($199 USD), Peepshow ($199 USD), or from We-Vibe direct ($249 CAD).