Author: Kate Sloan

The Glory of Period Sex (+ a Bloody Good Giveaway)

Kate Sloan

“I don’t think I can bring myself to send her tongue-spelunking through my bloody cave,” muses the first-ever mention of period sex in my years’ worth of journals. It signals an apprehension I still sometimes feel.

I was sixteen. My partner at the time was achingly enthusiastic about my vulva in its every known state: musky or clean, shaved or stubbly, swollen and aroused or flat and demure. But “bloody” felt like another thing entirely; we had not discussed that.

As it turned out, she was more than fine with bloody tongue-spelunking. But having that initial conversation with a new partner still feels edgy to me, all these years later. There’s a strong chance they’ll wrinkle their nose and shake their head in barely-concealed horror, but it’s just as likely they’ll be blissfully blasé about blood taboos and dive right in.

My go-to approach to this conversation, therefore, is a bit coy. Typically I’ll say, “By the way, I’m on my period, so…” and simply watch what happens. In one case, at a threesome, the boy smiled and replied, “What would you like me to do?” (“DING DING DING, right answer!!” Bex and I yelled when we gleefully revisited this moment over dinner that night.)

Another time, I took home a hookup who would later become my fave fuckbuddy. He wields my favorite BJ dick so I would’ve been content just to blow him and say goodnight – but when I mentioned being on my period, he replied, nonchalantly, without missing a beat: “You know, I also have blood in my body.” He absolutely, 100% deserved the stellar blowjob I then gave him.

This particular FWB has the most exemplary attitude on period sex I’ve ever encountered in a dude, so I asked him to contribute some thoughts on the topic for this post. Here’s what he had to say:

“Period sex can be a lot to handle at first. Maybe you don’t normally see a lot of blood and it feels weird. Maybe it just seems gross because so many people are squeamish about it. But to me, period sex is just a matter of different preparation. An old partner of mine and I had a dark red towel that we put down and folded when Aunt Flo was in town. Periods are natural. Let’s not forget that those of us with penises squirt out a weird body fluid EVERY TIME we come. So if you need to ask your partner to take a shower, do what you need to do. But making a partner feel gross for being on their period is shaming their entire biological makeup. It’s not cool, and it will not win you any points. Instead, you can think of period sex as an opportunity to show your partner that you fully accept them. Additionally, I find that the viscosity of vaginal fluids during menstruation can make sex feel AMAZING. So don’t knock it till you rock it. And remember: You’ve got blood in your body too.“

Likewise, I knew my current boyfriend was a keeper when he “earned his red wings” the very first time we had sex. In our initial negotiation, I set a boundary that I didn’t want anything to happen to my genitals during that session, because “it wasn’t a good day for that” – but as I got turned on from makeouts and blowjobs and spanking, that line I’d drawn in the sand began to waver. I went to the bathroom to make sure my menstrual cup was still doing its job, and then I came back to his sunny bedroom and asked for what I wanted. He was happy to deliver – for at least half an hour.

I don’t know if most cis men really know how deeply their attitude on period sex can affect a menstruating person’s self-esteem. While I understand why someone might not want to stick their face in blood, it makes me feel so sad and rejected to have a partner who finds my bits distasteful one week out of every month. Even the smallest step toward gaining comfort with menstrual sex – pressing a Magic Wand against me through my underwear, say, or talking dirty in my ear while I masturbate – is better than eschewing it altogether (although, of course, consent and boundaries are of utmost importance, so if you don’t want to do it, you never have to!). I crave intimacy and sexual enthusiasm all month long, and that one week each month is the time when a partner can demonstrate these things most readily, most deeply, most impactfully. It’s a small thing but it can change everything.

Of course, loving period sex doesn’t mean I also love the mess that accompanies it. It’s fine when I’m free-bleedin’ in a bathtub (Kennedy Ryan calls this “Lady Macbeth time“), but recklessly sullying my bedsheets and clothes with blood is a bridge too far for me. That’s why I keep a dark towel near my bed, and a few packages of wet wipes within reach. Before I started doing this, I once got fingerbanged by someone who then looked around for somewhere to wipe his bloody hands. I was wearing black thigh-high socks, and said, “Just wipe ’em on these.” It worked in a pinch, but, y’know, wipes would’ve been preferable.

The afterglow is one of the loveliest parts of sex – it’s a shame to have to ruin it with clean-up. I’m a lazy princess and hate having to throw on a bathrobe and waddle to the bathroom on my post-orgasmic jelly legs for a washcloth wipedown. With the right tools by my bedside, I can do a quick-‘n’-easy spot-clean, pop my menstrual cup back in, and resume snugglin’ ASAP. When the person you’re fucking makes you all swoony and starry-eyed, you don’t want to miss out on even ten seconds of precious cuddling.

In the spirit of mitigating mess so you can get back to the fun stuff: I have a giveaway for you today! It’s ideal for those of you who partake of period sex, or other forms of messy sex – or are interested in trying. Aftercourse Wipes has generously offered up a month’s supply of wipes for two lucky winners: one in the USA and one anywhere in the world. These wipes are alcohol-free and use natural ingredients like tea tree oil, aloe, chamomile and lemongrass to get your bits clean after sex. The giveaway will run for two weeks; entrance details are below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Whether or not you decide to enter the giveaway, you can still get a discount on your Aftercourse purchase with the code “GIRLYJUICE.” Enjoy!

 

This post was generously sponsored by the folks at Aftercourse Wipes, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own. Feel free to follow Aftercourse on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!

10 Questions About That Time I Sat on a Cake

Kate Sloan

Q. So… Why?

A. A friend invited me to a birthday party her mom was co-hosting. The group of people who would be in attendance are, by and large, queer kinksters, some of whom have an interest in cake-sitting and other forms of “wet and messy” kink play (“sploshing“). I am a sex nerd and a perv so of course I accepted this invitation.

Q. Why are people into cake-sitting?

A. I can’t speak to this from personal experience, because this isn’t a kink of mine – but I asked around at the party, and most folks cited the wet-‘n’-messy quality of the act and its taboo nature as the main draws to this kink.

I also wonder if it maybe has to do with the fact that cakes (and, in particular, birthday cakes) are some of the most exciting objects many of us encounter during childhood: they’re the sugary, candlelit trophy at the climax of every joyful birthday party. A lot of common kinks seem to be related to sources of childhood fear, shame, and/or joy – so it makes sense to me that cake could become a locus of kinky lust, as could the act of destroying such an illustrious symbol by crushing it with your ass.

Q. What did you wear?

A. I wanted to wear something fun and celebratory in colors that reminded me of birthday cakes. My outfit consisted of a hot pink bandana, a turquoise Tarina Tarantino heart necklace with an Alice in Wonderland illustration on it, a pink Gap bralette, a translucent pink striped tank top from Ardene, a pair of turquoise zigzag-striped MeUndies boyshorts, and some pink kneesocks from the now-defunct American Apparel. On my way to and from the party, I threw on some black shorts and a black leather jacket over this ensemble, to make it a little more subdued.

Q. If it’s not a kink of yours, why did you do it?

A. I thought it would be fun. I’m a big believer in the idea that you should make at least some of your life choices based on what will make for the better story – even moreso since I became a professional writer – and this seemed like it’d be a good story to tell. Plus, I was curious whether I would have sexual feelings about sitting on a cake. There are a few minor kinks of mine that I genuinely didn’t know were my kinks until I tried them for the first time.

Q. How did you select what type of cake to bring?

A. I’m not culinarily inclined so I just dropped by a grocery store to grab a cake before the party. I thought a smallish round one would probably be best, since I could crush the whole thing with my ass. My decision was also, admittedly, partly based on what I would most like to eat (and, indeed, my friend and I each had a small slice of this cake before I sat atop it).

I deeply wish I had not chosen a chocolate cake! As you can see, the whole effect is a bit fecal, to say the least. (And I ruined my underwear. Whoops.)

Q. What makes for a good cake-sit?

A. I don’t really know, to be honest. While sitting on this cake/posing for these photos, I was being directed by my friend, who is a photographer, and a pal of hers who was spectating, who is also a photographer but has an actual kinky interest in cake-sitting. As a result, I’m not sure which of the directions they gave me were for the sake of better photos and which were for the sake of a better cake-sit. They told me to face away from them and lower myself down onto the cake in a straddling position, as you can see, but I think that was more for visual appeal than, uh, butt-feel.

I will say that drawing out the cake-sit into a long, slow lowering seems to be the way to go. I’m sure there are people who are into smashing cakes fast and hard with their butt, but for your first attempt, you probably wanna be able to feel every achingly slow nuance of the experience.

Q. Doesn’t sitting on a cake give you a yeast infection?!

A. This was my concern, too. I’m still not quite sure how people do this without getting vaginal infections left and right, especially if they don’t wear underwear like I did.

I’m relatively prone to vaginal infections and didn’t get one after doing this, which I chalk up to 1) wearing underwear, 2) sitting mostly on my ass and not on my vag, 3) washing up almost immediately afterward, and 4) dumb luck.

Q. What did it feel like?

A. You know that feeling when you sit on the ground outside (say, at a park picnic or a kids’ baseball game) and slowly realize you’ve sat in some mud? It’s a cold, gooey, creeping feeling. Cake-sitting reminded me of that, except with an added squishing/crushing sensation as the cake deflated under the weight of my ass. It was a bit like someone with a cold, squishy dick was ineptly trying to fuck me but drastically missing both of my holes.

It made me wonder what it would be like to sit on some kind of warm pastry, like a recently-baked cherry pie. I suspect that would be a more pleasant feeling, though it depends on what you’re going for.

Q. Did you like it?

A. I think I was more into the spectators’ reactions than I was into the sensation itself – which is fine and makes sense, if you think about how many kinks are more about people’s reactions to them than the activity itself. (Spanking and sexual exhibitionism come to mind.)

The wetness/messiness/”grossness” of the experience just kind of stressed me out. I wonder if that would have been less true if I had been wearing underwear I didn’t care about ruining! But overall, I had fun, and I’m glad I did it.

Q. How do you clean up afterward?

A. My friend gave my butt and thighs an initial scrubdown with a damp washcloth. (True friendship, folks.) Then I went into the house and stripped out of my underwear in the bathroom so I could give my butt and vulva a more thorough going-over, also with a damp washcloth. There was more cake/chocolate on my bits than I had expected there to be, but I managed to get it all off pretty easily. Unfortunately, my panties were not so lucky: I washed ’em thoroughly with soap and cold water (hot water locks in stains!) but they still have permanent chocolate stains. So sad.

Have you ever sat on a cake or engaged in other forms of food play or “sploshing”? Is this something you’d be interested in doing? Got any tips for me if I ever attempt it again?

Book Review: Everything and a Happy Ending

Kate Sloan

Sometimes the point of literature is to give you a glimpse into a world you’ve never known, a life you’ve never led, some feelings you’ve never experienced. But other times, the point of literature is to mirror your feelings back at you, to remind you of what you’ve been through, and to show you that you’re not alone.

I went through that when I read Tia Shurina’s memoir, Everything and a Happy Ending. Though I went into this book knowing essentially nothing about it, I saw myself reflected back to me in its pages. And it felt weirdly affirming to see that the intense unrequited love I’ve experienced over the past couple years is both a common human experience and a valid one.

In her book, Shurina tells the story of her relationships with three men who played key roles in her life: her father, her ex-husband, and (wait for it) actor and comedian Ray Romano. (She refers to him as “Emilio” throughout, a code name, but is open about the fact that Emilio is really Ray.) I was interested in this detail because Romano kinda fucked me up as a kid. On his show Everybody Loves Raymond, a recurring gag shows him trying to initiate sex with his wife, only to be rebuffed with a sardonic “No.” This instilled in my young brain a belief that women are sexual objects to be pursued, not sexual agents capable of desire and initiative. While I don’t necessarily fault Romano for restating an already-rampant cultural trope about sex, I was curious to read about his inner romantic and sexual workings. (Spoiler alert: there’s no sex with Romano described in this book, and what little sex there is is mentioned only obliquely in passing.)

Everything and a Happy Ending chronicles – among other things – Shurina’s reconnection with her dad after a long period of distance, the pain she went through when he died, and her difficult decision to separate from her husband after decades together. It’s a poignant study on how our relationships are all interconnected and feed into each other: when you have a more satisfying connection with a parental figure, for example, it can give you the strength and courage you need to bravely leave a spouse.

But by far, the strangest and most emotional part of Shurina’s story is her romance with Ray Romano. She knew him when she was in college and they worked together at the bank where he also met his eventual wife, Anna. The way Shurina tells it, Romano made a pass at her in the form of a starry-eyed poem he gave her when she quit the bank. Though she didn’t tell him so for many years, his sweet poem boosted her self-confidence at a time when she really needed it. I was reminded of the first boy who ever called me beautiful – a friend of a friend, in an MSN Messenger conversation, when I was about 13 years old – and how much that one small action impacted me for years afterward. It’s funny how our choices can affect other people for far longer than we ourselves even remember them.

Decades after losing touch with Romano, Shurina reconnected with him on a trip to Vegas, by which time he’d risen to fame as a comedian. She describes an intimate, emotional affair they subsequently had via email, sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings on weekly electronic “dates.” Though he eventually cut off contact with her in order to preserve his marriage and remain true to his wife, Shurina fell deeper and deeper in love with him, and came to view this love as a turning point in her life.

I recognized these feelings as I read them. The powerful love for someone who cannot return it in the ways one wishes they could; the aching and hoping for closure that will never come; the irrational and extreme things one does when one is in love. Shurina continued to email Romano and even hand-deliver gifts to his workplace after he ceased contact with her, which frankly is scary and worrisome behavior.

But part of me understood the feelings that might drive that level of obsessiveness, even if I can’t and don’t condone what Shurina did. I remembered the time I bought the same deodorant as a crush because I wanted to be able to smell him whenever I wanted, the time I picked up a receipt a crush had dropped because I wanted a glimpse into the mundanity of his life, the time I kept a dime on my bedroom floor for a year because a crush had left it there and it reminded me of him. Not all the things we do in the name of love are ethical or even forgivable. Sometimes it feels like we can’t help it.

Structurally, Shurina’s book is all over the place: she’s always digressing on mini-monologues about spiritual epiphanies, happenstance meetings, and “winks from the universe.” But it’s charming, in its own way – like listening to your kooky aunt tell you the story of the love of her life. Though sometimes her thoughts felt repetitious or brought out my inner skeptic, I still wanted to keep reading. I wanted to see Shurina get her happy ending.

And happily, she does. As the book comes to a close, its offbeat protagonist has shaken off her toxic marriage, successfully grieved her father’s death, taken at least some steps toward letting go of Romano, and met a man who wants to be with her – in real life, not just in “reel” life. It felt fortuitous for me to read this book at a time when I, too, have just recovered from an unreturned love. It served as a reminder that life can and will go on, and that there are happier adventures awaiting me.

 

You can buy Everything and a Happy Ending on Amazon! This review was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror

Kate Sloan

As amateur porn legend Heather Harmon slurped down her husband’s dick on my laptop’s tiny screen, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “This is weird.”

“Why?” he asked, reasonably.

The porn itself wasn’t weird. In fact, if anything, my inner erotic rhythms feel tuned to Heather’s, after adoring her porn for at least half a decade. I’m well used to the mischievous twinkle in her eyes, the slick facility with which she swallows her man’s entire dick, the pleasingly predictable sounds he makes as she brings him closer to orgasm. What felt weird was sharing this all-too-familiar experience with another person – albeit a person whose dick has been in my throat. “I dunno, it’s just, you’re here, and I’m having private-time feelings,” I attempted to explain.

My darlin’ snuggled a little closer to me and our eyes drifted back to Heather’s eager mouth on-screen. “It’s okay,” he said, over Jim Harmon’s formulaic moans, “because I’m right next to you having private-time feelings too. And later, you’re gonna put that BJ mirror on me and suck my cock.”

A shiver went through me. Had he planned this on purpose? A perfect evening of weed-smoking and blowjob-ogling, all in the service of making me more comfortable with the Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror I had to review for my blog? If so, apparently my boyfriend was a fucking genius.

The mirror scared me, you see. Don’t get me wrong, I had requested it to review, because it scared me in the same way as certain edgy kinks like knifeplay do: they’re a little hot and more than a little terrifying. What worried me about the mirror was being literally face-to-face with myself during a BJ, after fearing my own sexytimes visage for my whole adult life. I don’t like eye contact during sex, or being aware that my face is someone’s erotic focal point, or feeling my face twist up into aroused contortions when a partner can see. The whole idea makes me incredibly, inexplicably anxious – to the point that I’ll often wear a blindfold during sex on bad anxiety days, to limit the amount of my face a partner can see, and to free me from being expected to watch them in return.

We kept putting off testing the mirror – me because it made me anxious, and my boyfriend because “the thought of it didn’t do anything for him.” I found this surprising, because, months earlier, he’d told me, “The most intensely arousing thing for me is to force my lovers to do things I know they want to do, and have previously consented to.” I thought it would turn him on to watch me do something he knew made me consensually uncomfortable – in this case, watching myself give a blowjob.

After a few more Heather Harmon scenes and a little more weed, my mouth was sufficiently horny that I did something I rarely do with my mega-dominant boyfriend: I got bossy. “You should take your pants off,” I said, in a tone of voice that was closer to begging than commanding.

“Okay,” he said, laughing. “I can do that.” I watched as he shed all his clothes, smiling at me all the while, all chest hair and strong muscles, my toppy masculine angel.

And then he slipped the hole of the BJ mirror over his half-hard dick and I burst out laughing.

Even after he laid on the bed and I set to work, I couldn’t control my giggles. Sometimes laughter is how my body responds when I’m enjoying myself in bed, and sometimes it’s a nervous response to discomfort; in this case, it was decidedly both. The tactile pleasure of his dick in my mouth, coupled with the visual assault of my own face devouring his cock in up-close-and-personal HD, felt so sinfully sexy to me that I was almost uncomfortable being that turned on in front of another person. These were, once again, “private-time feelings,” and my partner was watching me have them. And I was watching me have them. From inches away.

My boyfriend, who is prone to mid-beej dirty-talk, cleared his throat and began to speak. I steeled myself for a filthy missive, but instead, he said, “If you deepthroated me all the way, you could kiss yourself!” It was more a gleeful proclamation than a salacious jibe. I laughed around his cock until I couldn’t breathe, and then I took it out of my mouth and laughed some more, nose tucked into the warm crease of his thigh. Some doms try to cut you down with critical jeers, and here mine was, essentially encouraging me to love myself. Through BJs.

I eventually caught my breath and returned to the task at hand. It was at this point that I began to notice how much I was drooling. Sloppy BJs are increasingly my jam – especially since I read Aerie’s blowjob guide where they advocate “drooling uncontrollably and making a giant mess” for the lubrication and visual appeal – but this was on another level. I have never gushed this much spit during a beej before. It reminded me of when you see a commercial where someone takes a big bite of a juicy hamburger and your salivary glands immediately kick into gear – except in this case, the burger was a dick, and the commercial was my own fucking face. It was absurd, and delightful, and wet.

It helped that my boyfriend was holding the mirror in place, and moving it back into my sightline whenever it slipped off to one side, as if to demand, “No, seriously, look at yourself.” I imagine that the mirror would stay put better if it was draped over a huge dick – the hole has a diameter of 5.5 centimeters or about 2.2 inches – but it might also dig in uncomfortably if used on a dick of that size. It didn’t bother my boyfriend to have to hold the mirror still, except that he couldn’t fully relax.

I snuck peeks at myself from time to time, but mostly my eyes remained closed, as they usually are during BJs. It allows me to concentrate on the sensations in my mouth, and keeps me focused on the steady rhythm that’ll get my partner off. Every time my eyes drifted open for a moment, though, I felt seized with a strange blend of arousal and guilt: seeing myself give head was unbelievably hot, but it felt arrogant for me to enjoy the sight of myself that much. And it embarrassed me to imagine my boyfriend watching me watching myself, as if he’d think I was being arrogant, too – even though he told me later that it turned him on to see me viewing this act from a different angle than I would normally get to.

The mirror didn’t just induce arousal and embarrassment in me, though – it also made me competitive. With my damn self. Seeing myself give head from the angle at which I’d usually watch porn stars doing the same, I saw that what feels like intense deepthroating to me isn’t actually that deep. That real-time view made me want to do a better job: go deeper, faster, harder, put on a better show for my love (and for myself). I could see I was bringing my A-game, but it didn’t feel effortful – it just felt fun.

When my darling started to come, he grunted, “Deepthroat me,” just like Heather Harmon’s husband does in all the porn clips I like best – and I did as I’d been told. Though it would’ve been hot to watch my own face at that crucial moment, doing so didn’t occur to me; I squeezed my eyes shut with the effort of keeping that dick as deep as it needed to be, and enduring the intense contractions of muscles against my tongue and throat. I swallowed, and swallowed, and kept on swallowing, and I couldn’t breathe for a while but it didn’t matter.

When it was over, I pulled myself up and gently slid the mirror off my boyfriend’s dick. He lay there panting and raised one finger as if he had something to say, but couldn’t get it out quite yet. I curled up beside him and waited patiently for him to catch his breath.

“That was the best blowjob you’ve ever given me,” he said finally.

You know that silly adventure-movie trope where the hero uses a powerful artefact to beat the bad guy, only to discover afterward that “the power was within them all along”? I feel that way about the Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror. Like a good coach, it brought out the best performance of my career thus far – but it did so by pitting me against myself, challenging me to meet my own standards. It literally reflected my own capabilities back at me, and made me better in doing so.

And y’all, I looked hot.

 

Thanks so much to Stockroom for sending me this product to review!

Links & Hijinks: Leather, Smoke, & Buttholes

Kate Sloan

• When it comes to sex, you’re doing great.

• “Uptalk” – the classically millennial practice of ending sentences in a tone that suggests you’re asking a question – may actually have a conversational purpose.

• A couple big pieces about Pornhub user data: “Pornhub is the Kinsey Report of Our Time” (what a bold and fascinating claim!) and “What We Learned About Sexual Desire From 10 Years of Pornhub User Data.” God, I love this shit. #SexNerdLyfe

• More sex science: a Canadian researcher is trying to build a better female orgasm by studying what turns women on.

• Advice for a woman whose 49-year-old boyfriend has never performed oral sex before, but wants to.

• Media images of sex and relationships shape the way we understand these things, and the way we pursue them. So we should pick our media influences carefully, if we can.

• The “French girl” as a style icon is a notion with a long and interesting history.

• “Who cares what straight people think?” asks the delightful Brandon Taylor about writing queer narratives.

• Clementine Morrigan explains how to accept emotional labor ethically. Important stuff!

• Could adding kink to your morning routine make it more enjoyable?

• Here’s how Tinder helps people come to terms with their bisexuality.

• Suz has some excellent advice on going to a sex club for the first time.

• Of potential interest to leather kinksters: the ladies of The Dry Down wrote about their favorite leather fragrances. (I am enamored with Leatherstock, ideally worn in combination with something girly like Demeter Raspberry or Tobacco Vanille.)

• Gotta love a tender, romantic story that includes repeated usage of the phrase “cum dump.”

• My friend Caitlin unpacked their smoking fetish. I find it so interesting that they have a negative physical reaction to smoking (as do I, as an asthmatic) but fetishize it nonetheless.

• When you write about sex for a living, you inevitably get flooded with messages from dudes who take your career choice as a personal invitation to be creepy. Sex columnist Maria Yagoda wrote about some of the “bizarre, horny messages” she’s received over the years.

• Is missionary secretly the kinkiest sex position?

• On learning to enjoy receiving cunnilingus after finding it stressful and embarrassing for years.

• Here’s a basic primer on consent in BDSM.

• Is Instagram the new “little black book”?

• A new study found that drinks dates have better outcomes than dinner dates do, in terms of leading to a second date. Sam Dilling explains why drinks have replaced dinner as the go-to first-date activity.

• Here’s a video about why it’s probably silly to worry that you’re “bad in bed.”

• I loved this piece about women who write about the men they date/fuck/desire, and the nuances and ethics of doing that.

• A cultural history of autofellatio. My favorite thing about this article is the 14th-century statue of the Archbishop of Cologne blowing himself. Who the fuck authorized that?! And how can I be their friend?!

• Are people always interrupting you? (Spoiler alert: this is far likelier to happen, statistically, if you are a woman talking to a man.) Here are some tips for dealing with chronic interrupters.

• Writing advice that is also good sex advice. I howled with laughter over this one.

• Eight women helped John McDermott craft the perfect Tinder profile. I agree with lots of the advice therein. “Every time a dude has group photos, he’s always the least hot guy in the group. So I’d steer clear, honestly.” “Take a shower and change your sheets, but also mentally prepare for going home alone. Either way, you’ll have clean sheets!” “Do your best to come up with a conversation starter that will, y’know, actually start a conversation.”

• Holly tried a new kinky dating app and it was terrible. (Where are all the good kinksters hiding?!)

• Speaking of good kinksters… Here are 8 ways to tell if your new dominant partner is consent-conscious and respects boundaries.

• Here’s what a 12-year-old boy genetically predisposed to friendliness can teach you about making good small talk.

• This article about non-monogamy made me burst into tears in public when I read it, soooo… yeah. Feelz!

• Why aren’t female orgasms depicted in movies often enough or diversely enough? (That cunnilingus scene in Blue Valentine sure is fantastic, though…)

• Epiphora reveals the secret truth about sex toy reviewing. This post is so real!!

• I love the way internet culture shifts our use of language. Here’s a piece on the tilde as a sarcasm indicator. ‘Cause linguistics are ~ever-evolving~!

• On insecurities, attraction, and buttholes. “If we have been wildly turned on by you, then we have been wildly turned on by your butthole. If we have loved you, then we have loved your butthole. If we have married you, then by God, we have married your butthole.” (Apparently MEL faced a lot of backlash for this piece and I’m not sure why; I think it’s lovely!)

• A Glamour reporter interviewed a doctor, an astrophysicist, and NASA (!) about what it’s like to have sex in space. Amazing.

• “Psychological halloweenism” – the practice of imagining you’re someone else – can make you more creative.

• Two data-based revelations from the OkCupid blog: weed helps you get off and kink is becoming more popular.