Author: Kate Sloan

Review: Liberator Wedge

Kate Sloan

I am always looking for the next sex product that will Change My Life. It’s a silly criterion, since so few toys actually manage to significantly increase my quality of life – the Eroscillator comes to mind, and perhaps the Fling, but that’s about it. i’m glad to tell you, however, that the sexual positioning aid called the Liberator Wedge is one of these life-improving products.

When the Wedge showed up in a giant box from Sex Toys Canada, my dad saw the size of the package and asked me what it was. I nervously stammered, “It’s a fancy pillow,” which is a partial lie, partial truth. The Wedge is sort of a pillow, but as someone who’s spent a year using pillows as under-ass sex aids, I can tell you that the Wedge is far better than a pillow for most purposes.

My Wedge is blue – a deeper, navier blue than the promotional photos indicate – and it’s the “original” model, so it’s 24″ wide, 7″ tall, and covered in microfiber. What does this mean in terms of practicality? It means that the original Wedge will be a good fit for you if your hips and ass measure anywhere up to 48″ around at their widest point. I’m a hippy size 12 and I can fit my juicy booty on this thing easily, with several inches to spare. Additionally, the combined weight of my boyfriend and I is about 300 lbs, and isn’t enough to crush the Wedge – it holds its shape beautifully, no matter what we’re doing on top of it.

The Wedge’s innards are made of firm foam, and it’s wrapped in a microfiber skin that you can zip on and off for washing. The firmness of the foam is fantastic for providing support, but it’s not always the most comfortable thing in the world; I sometimes like to put a pillow on top of it to make it feel plusher. The microfiber is pleasant to the touch, like a thin velvet, but collects a lot of lint. For this reason, it’s convenient that Liberator includes a zip-off storage case, though I have to admit I can never be bothered to put it on the Wedge when I’m not using it.

The boyfriend and I both love our Wedge for oral sex. When he’s got it under his ass during a blowjob, there’s much less strain on my neck and back, and the angling makes it a hell of a lot easier for me to look up at him as I blow him – always a plus. As for cunnilingus, my man says the Wedge is like a “serving platter for the genitals” (actually, this is a phrase from a Liberator promotional video that I told him about, which he apparently found funny enough to start saying regularly). Again, it reduces neck strain for the giver, and it also frees up a ton of room for his arms and hands if he wants to use a toy on me while eating me out. Anything which improves the oral experience gets an A in my book!

The Wedge is great for intercourse, too. It holds up my hips in missionary position, which results in deeper penetration, more direct G-spot stimulation, and less strain on my ab muscles from holding my legs in the air. It works well for the “lazy dog” position, too, and lessens the back pain I sometimes encounter in that position. The Wedge is even helpful for solo penetration, because it gives me a better view of what I’m doing.

Oddly, one of my favorite applications for the Wedge is a non-sexual one: using it as a regular bed pillow. It’s way too firm to sleep on, but if I put a soft pillow on top of it, it props me up very well if I want to read or write in bed. It’s become a permanent fixture in my bed area, used in myriad ways on a daily basis. I think that’s probably the best compliment you can give a product of any kind.

It’s surprising how much a few extra inches of support can improve one’s sex life. If you find yourself using multiple pillows as sex furniture, or wishing you could get your ass just a little higher, or leaning over uncomfortably far when going down on your partner, the Liberator Wedge could be the missing piece in your sexual toolbox.

Thanks, Sex Toys Canada!

 

For more info about the Wedge, check out this review of Liberator Wedge by Furnpeak.com. This post contains a sponsored link; as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex Toy Haikus

Kate Sloan

In lieu of doing individual follow-up posts, I think I’m going to start writing haikus to express how I currently feel about toys that I’ve reviewed before. Because sex toys are worthy of poetry.

Lelo Mia:
Sorry I haven’t
touched you in ages, Mia.
You’re not that special.

California Exotics Waterproof Jack Rabbit:
My first and only
jelly toy. I weep for my
burning vagina.

Eroscillator:
My clit is in love.
It’s a love that oscillates
from lust to worship.

Lelo Ella:
Warm-up toy supreme.
No one else opens me up
as sweetly as she.

Blossom Organics Natural Moisturizing Lubricant:
All lubes should be as
vag-friendly and simple as
this bedside staple.

Happy Pride!

Kate Sloan

For those of you who celebrate Pride, I hope it is/was/will be a fantastically fun time for you this year.

I wish that you get covered in rainbow glitter, that somehow rinses off easily when you want it to. (Easily rinsable glitter is a myth, but a girl can dream.)

I wish you lots of hot strangers of the gender(s) you find attractive, looking you up and down as you sashay past.

I wish you plenty of roadside booths stocked with T-shirts with silly slogans, sparkly cowboy hats, and hand-blown glass dildos in Pride colors.

I wish you epic dance parties in dark sweaty clubs, and exactly as much physical contact from strangers as you desire, whether that’s none at all or a whole lot.

I wish you a reverential experience that reminds you of why it’s so crucial to feel outrageously proud of who you are.

I wish you total self-acceptance and, in fact, self-adoration.

Happy Pride, darlings! I’ll see you tomorrow for more sex toy talk.
-G.J.

Progress Report: G-Spot Orgasms (Take Three)

Kate Sloan

When I first wrote about my G-spot here, I had figured out how to make it feel good and swell up, but that was about as far as I’d gone. When I wrote an update a couple weeks later, I had given myself a seemingly “blended” orgasm by using a very intense G-spotting dildo in conjunction with a reliably excellent clit toy.

This time, I’m checking in to let you know that, for the first time I can remember, I managed to achieve a seriously intense, blended orgasm during intercourse with my boyfriend.

It started out innocently enough. At around 4AM, we dragged ourselves to bed, wanting sleep but also wanting to fit in a little “intimate time” before nodding off. We agreed that it would have to be slow and lazy sex, because neither of us had the energy for the hard ramming that is usually my preference.

Earlier that day, I’d been reading Deborah Sundahl’s book (yes, still – I’m a slow reader, okay?!) and she mentioned that it’s sometimes helpful for a man to concentrate on rubbing his coronal ridge over the G-spot with every thrust. I told this to my boyfriend and he accepted the challenge.

I was on my period, and feeling slightly self-conscious about my ladybits, so we skipped our usual foreplay and cut right to the chase. My man condom’ed and lubed his cock, I grabbed my Eroscillator (my clit’s best friend, and a perfect choice for those times when I’m too exhausted to rub myself during sex or just can’t be bothered), and we got down to business.

Normally my G-spot needs a good amount of prep and warm-up before it becomes sensitive enough to register pleasure, but as Ms. Sundahl predicted, my spot seems to gain sensitivity the more I use it and the more I focus on its sensations. So when my man slid into me, there was vaginal pleasure almost immediately.

Using a vibrating (or oscillating) toy during sex presents an advantage over using my hand, which is this: I don’t have to think when I’m Eroscillating my clit. I just have to turn it on and hold it there, and maybe increase the speed after a while. This makes it ideal for trying to induce internal orgasms because it allows me to focus all my attention on my G-spot.

And focus, I did. As the Eroscillator trembled faithfully against my clit, I directed all my awareness onto the feeling of my man’s cock sliding over my G-spot again and again (he is very, very good at locating my spot, and seems to only get better as time goes on). I was in another world; normally I’m mentally present enough to be aware of how I’m moving, the sounds I’m making, the way my boyfriend might be experiencing the interaction, but this time, the pleasure was so great and so deep that I didn’t notice any of that stuff. I probably looked like a total lunatic, but who cares?

After less than five minutes (very uncharacteristic for me when there’s no foreplay involved, and especially when I’m tired), I was suddenly hit with a super-strong, profound, internal, indescribable tidal wave of an orgasm. I let out a cry which my boyfriend later told me was loud enough to make him worry it’d wake the neighbors.

It was a different quality of orgasm than I’ve ever experienced before. Not only was it deeper and stronger, but it left me with a feeling of utter exhaustion and satisfaction that I only very rarely get from clitoral-only orgasms (after an hour-long cunnilingus session, for example). It was so all-consuming that I felt like I could barely move afterward. It was difficult to even sit up in bed for long enough to put my menstrual cup back in. And I fell asleep seemingly within seconds after lying back down.

We’re going to experiment more with this combination of techniques to see if it’s a reliable way to give me these splendiferous blended orgasms. I’m going to attempt to lower the amount of clitoral stimulation (for example, by keeping the Eroscillator on its lowest setting) so I’ll be forced to rely more and more on the G-spot stim to get off. I think this could be a very important step toward my eventual ability to get off with my G-spot alone. (And honestly, if that never fully happens, I won’t even care. Just let me have more of those glorious orgasms!)

Readers: If you can have G-spot orgasms, how did you first learn to do so? Any tips for a n00b like me? If you haven’t yet mastered your G-spot, what methods have you tried? What methods have you yet to try?

Review: PicoBong Kaya

Kate Sloan

Lelo is one of my very favorite sex toy companies. They make beautiful, rechargeable vibrators that could satisfy any luxury-loving vibration fan. In their efforts to expand, they released a cheaper, lower-end line of toys, marketed toward younger people with less money to spend on “luxury erotic lifestyle objects” – people like me, I suppose. The line is called PicoBong and it’s been effectively torn apart by the sex toy reviewers of the world.

Judging by the awful-to-middling descriptions of PicoBong’s toys, which cite flaws ranging from insufficient vibrations to badly-placed seams, I wasn’t expecting much when I received my bright turquoise Kaya in the mail. But I soon learned that Kaya is from PicoBong’s newer line of products, and is therefore a significant improvement on the items reviewers were rightfully complaining about. Still, though, it’s far from perfect.

If I could design my ideal rabbit, it would look similar to the Kaya – slim-to-average shaft, flexible curved clitoral arm, body-safe silicone, simple controls (up, down, change mode) – but my rabbit would have a twirling shaft, not a vibrating one. Why? Because most G-spots, including mine, respond better to stroking and pressure than they do to vibration. I think a vibrating rabbit shaft is something of a cop-out: an easy way to design a toy, but not the most effective design for the majority of users, at least from what I can tell.

Kaya’s power is far better than I was expecting, given how many people lamented the pitiful vibration strength of the previous PicoBong products. Turned all the way up, it’s comparable to the upper speeds of my Lelo Mona – strong enough to get off the average user, but not enough for a power queen. The clitoral arm thrums impressively, and as ambivalent as I feel about the internal motor, it’s not bad, either.

Kaya is waterproof. I successfully used it in the bath without any problems. It’s not the quietest of toys, but it’s certainly not the loudest – a bedmate would hear you using it, but someone down the hall probably wouldn’t.

The Kaya really shines when you start cycling through its vibration modes. Most of them just switch back and forth between the two motors, but they do so in varied and creative ways. There’s one pattern in particular that I really like, where the clitoral arm hums steadily while the internal motor goes up and down in a roller-coaster-like way, feeling almost like it’s stroking my G-spot. Sadly, this mode is useless to me when I want to reach orgasm, because the up-and-down buttons control the internal motor in this mode, while the external motor stays at the same medium level no matter what I do. If I want to get off with this mode, I have to press the outer arm into my clit or rub it up and down – and that sort of defeats the purpose of using a sex toy, doesn’t it?

The Kaya’s shape is good, its vibrations are adequate, and it’s easy to use. However, I can’t give it my seal of approval, because it costs $89.95. For a battery-powered vibe that will only work for some users, that’s way too much money. I’d be willing to say this toy was worth the price if it was rechargeable, or if the shaft rotated, or if each motor could be controlled independently, but that’s not the case.

Get Kaya if you really, really want a cute-looking, battery-powered, waterproof, dual-stimulation vibrator with cool modes and a medium amount of power. But if that doesn’t sound like exactly what you’re looking for, I’d recommend that you spend a few extra dollars and spring for a toy from Lelo proper, or get a cheaper rabbit vibe from a different brand instead (as long as it’s made of a nonporous material). The Kaya is good, but not nearly good enough to warrant its high price tag.