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My Best Friend Bex: A Dildorky Love Story

Kate Sloan
Photo via Clitsta Anne.

If you listen to Erin Pim interviewing me on the Bed Post Podcast, you’ll hear her ask me: “Do you have a primary partner?” And you’ll hear me stammer through my nervous answer: “Not right now. Probably my steadiest sexual relationship is a fuckbuddy who doesn’t even live where I live, and is occasionally visiting. He’s my favorite person to bang. But like, right now, I’m not dating anybody.”

It’s a deflection, a half-truth. At the time, I was deep in unreturned love with said fuckbuddy, and struggling with the lack of a romantic label on our relationship – or on any of my sexual relationships.

In contrast to this noncommittal answer, though, toward the start of the podcast, Erin asks me about my friendship with Bex – and I elaborate with enthusiasm. “They’re my best friend in the world,” I declare. “Our friendship is, weirdly, one of the great love stories of my life.”

I have never had trouble defining my relationship with Bex. We’ve been best friends ever since we threesomed with a mutual friend at the Playground Conference in 2015. I’ve never felt so certain about a friendship so fast. It’s their 26th birthday today, so here are a few of my favorite moments from our almost-two-years of best-friendship thus far.

December 30th, 2015. Bex makes the impulsive decision to drive all the way to Toronto to spend New Year’s Eve with me. I scream.

At the New Year’s party at Round Venue, we dance up a storm, drink too much, make out with drag kings. As the clock ticks midnight, someone pops a balloon full of silver confetti over our heads, and we hug – like the platonic (and, frankly, superior) version of a romantic New Year’s kiss. This bodes well for the year ahead.

I ride a bus for 3 hours to go see a boy I have a crush on. We spend that night in his bed, drinking red wine, giggling, and kissing. The next day, I while away my entire 3-hour-long return trip texting Bex every detail of what happened.

The following week, that same boy comes to a party I host, and we flirt all night long. He invites me to have dinner with him the next day. We kiss goodnight, and I panic at the friend who co-hosted the party with me: “Is he going to ask me to be his girlfriend?! Doesn’t it seem like he wants to date me?!”

She thinks so, yes, but she isn’t sure. I grab my phone and type some all-caps concerns at Bex, who’s away from their phone because they’re at work. I know they won’t see my messages for hours – maybe not even until tomorrow – and that feels unthinkable. I need to know their take on this.

“I feel like half my brain is missing,” I whine miserably at my friend. She’s one of my best pals, and I love her. But she isn’t the other half of my brain. Bex is. I need Bex.

On our way to Caitlin‘s house to watch the new Spit porn scene, Bex and I stop in at Starbucks for coffee and snacks. “What are you two up to today?” the barista asks us brightly.

“Uhh, we’re going to a friend’s house,” I hedge.

“Oh yeah? What are you gonna do there?”

Bex and I look at each other nervously. “We’re going to watch a movie.”

“What type of movie?”

We laugh. “We don’t know yet,” I lie. “We’ll decide when we get there, I guess.”

I watch my best friend practically giggle half a scone out their nose, and we shuffle out of the Starbucks, barely containing our guffaws.

I attempt to double-penetrate myself with two giant dildos – while livetweeting, obviously. Bex coaches me through it via text, reminding me when to put a vibe on my clit, add more lube, or move on to the next warm-up toy. Meanwhile, we’re also carrying on a side conversation about movies we love and TV shows we recommend. None of this feels unnatural. All of this feels on-brand. This is true love.

We go out for lunch at 7 West with my new boyfriend. I know he’s kinky, but I’m not totally sure yet how kinky, or in what ways. In the midst of a theoretical discussion of kinks, Bex rattles off some examples: “Teacher/student roleplay, or doctor/patient, or Daddy Dom/little girl…” Boyfriend doesn’t say anything, but noticeably perks up, like an eager little dominant puppy.

Later, I comment, “That was funny, how he reacted when you mentioned DD/lg.” Bex scoffs, “Oh, I 100% did that on purpose to test his reaction, and he 100% passed the test.”

I wish everyone could have a best friend who wants a fulfilling sex life for their friends as much as Bex wants one for me.

In one of our many, many, many conversations about our various internet crushes, Bex and I decide we’re going to have a four-way wedding someday. This seems like the natural conclusion of our strange, incestuous-yet-nonsexual relationship.

It’s a slow day at my customer service job, so I muck around on my iPad and manage to calculate the exact average location between the four cities in which Bex, Bex’s current crush, my current crush and I each live. I scroll around the map and notice the magic spot is right near a town called… Dorking. “It’s settled. We’re getting married in Dorking,” I announce, sending Bex a link.

“Holy shit. Yes. Perfection,” they reply.

Bex never calls the men I kiss/fuck/date by their names – only by nicknames, which are often a bit cruel. Men don’t get names until they’ve earned them by being not-terrible, which most don’t.

The guy I’m interested in around the time Bex and I first become friends is called Good-Dick Garbage Human, because, well, his dick is great but he’s kind of awful. This naming convention becomes a recurring motif in our nicknames for boys: we are both forever questing for the fabled Good-Dick Good Human. Occasionally we meet a Good-Fingers Good Human, or a Good-Dick Okay Human. One step at a time.

We go to visit my fuckpal-du-jour at the store where he works. After some pleasantries and semi-flirtations, we say goodbye, and he shouts after me, “Don’t be a stranger!” We’re barely three steps out of the store when Bex turns to me and says, “That means he wants his dick in your mouth again.” That particular fuckpal is known simply as “Weird Dude” in the Bexicon forever after.

When I start dating a 5-foot-tall dominant, Bex christens him Napoleon, “because he’s short and thinks he’s in charge.”

Bex and I start using a hashtag in some of our text correspondence: #ThingsIdOnlyTellYou.

Some of the secrets chronicled therein: TMI missives about butts and vaginas, petty complaints about my metamours (#Pettymour), arrogant self-praise, suicidal ideations, creepy shit about crushes, slutty accomplishments, and stuff like this: “Help! I sucked off a Mustang while jerking off today, and it helped a lot with BJ cravings. #ThingsIdOnlyTellYou #INeedToGetLaid”

We joke that these confessions should be published in a book someday when we’re both dead, but dear god, no, don’t do that.

As I’m getting ready to go visit sex shops in Minneapolis, my phone buzzes. It’s a text from Kidder. I burst out laughing, a high-pitched giggly shriek.

From two rooms away, Bex calls, “What did Kidder say?”

“How did you know it was him?!” I inquire, mystified.

I can hear the self-satisfied smirk in their voice. “That was your surprised/funny/turned-on sound,” they attempt to explain. Best-friend mind-reading on point.

I find out Bex has never smoked weed before, and offer to guide them through their first time. One night on one of their many trips up to Toronto, we hole up in my bedroom with a vape, a grinder, some bud we just acquired at a dispensary, and a few blowjob porn scenes on tap, because we will need entertainment once we are blazed.

Bex isn’t much of a lightweight when it comes to booze, so they’re not sure how weed will affect them. “I don’t think I’m high,” they say, wrinkling their nose at me quizzically.

“Touch your leg,” I suggest, drawing from my own experiences of what being high feels like. “See if your skin feels weird.”

They run their hand along their calf. “Oooh, furry! No, I don’t think I’m high,” they chirp, and I laugh. They are definitely, definitely high.

Bex and I smoke a bunch of weed before heading out to see a show at Comedy Bar. On the way to the subway station, we both hear – clear as a bell – the sound of a coin dropping. We spend five minutes looking around on the ground, trying to find the missing coin. We never find it, and reach the conclusion that we must just have both hallucinated the same exact sound at the same exact moment. As best friends do.

At Comedy Bar, we run into my ex-boyfriend, a comedian. We’re both way, way, way too high to navigate this interaction, so it goes horribly. After he leaves, I turn to Bex and say, “Did that actually just happen?”

They look just as bewildered as I feel. “I think so,” they say. We laugh nervously.

Trying to come back home from New York in January, I miscalculate my subway route on the way to the airport, and accidentally miss my flight. Rather, I get there an hour before takeoff, but that’s too late – they won’t let me fly.

I break down in the departures hall, leaning against my suitcase for strength, crying, hyperventilating. I was already descending into a post-travel mental health drop, and this development just kicked it into overdrive. I panic. I freak out. I want to die. I text Bex.

They calm me down, like they always do. Slowly and carefully, like they’re addressing a child (because right now, they kind of are), they talk me through the process of investigating other ticket options, finding out what can be done about my situation. When the answer is “nothing,” they go online and buy me a ticket for the following morning. Then they text me detailed instructions for how to get back to their house on the subway, and insist I update them regularly as I go along.

Suicidal ideations gnaw at me even harder as I drag my suitcase back into the subway system. I feel like a senseless failure, a pointless waste of space. I’ve long since exhausted the limited supply of tissues I keep in my purse, and I text Bex, amid scary confessions and depressed rambles, “I want to go to the CVS and buy more Kleenex. Like, so much that I will never run out. I want my next boyfriend to be made of an absorbent material.”

Dissociating from my body a bit, as I often do when severely depressed, I tell Bex, “I might be a ghost. A wet ghost.” Always witty, even at the toughest of times, Bex calmly responds, “Then you can haunt me and make me a better writer.” I write back, “This sentence is too woooordyyyy!” They quip, “Use less commaaaaas!” I laugh a little on the subway and type back, “Fewer commaaaaas!”

When I finally, finally reach the subway station closest to Bex’s apartment, I lug my suitcase down the endless stairs, hollow and empty and dead inside. At the bottom of the stairs is my best friend, my angel, my knight, wearing a Batman pajama onesie and a leather collar, and holding a brand-new bright yellow box of Kleenex just for me.

They put their arm around me and we walk to the CVS, where they make me buy some food I don’t want to eat, and then we go back to their place, where they make me eat the food because I need to. Then they set me up in front of their computer and let me watch whatever YouTube videos will make my bone-aching depression lift even the slightest bit: McElroy brothers clips, Goodbye Honolulu music videos, John Mulaney stand-up. I feel a little better.

Early early early the next morning, Bex wakes me up and helps me to an Uber. I get to the airport hours early for my new flight. I sit in the departures lounge silently, profoundly awed that I have found such a wonderful friend, of whom I often feel unworthy but without whom I simply cannot imagine going through life.

5 Times Kink Helped Me Love My Body

Kate Sloan

One of kink’s many magical qualities: you have to keep talking about it. All the time. There are no assumptions, no scripts, nothing for which consent is presupposed. At least, not the way I prefer to do it.

My first dominant fuckbuddy teaches me this. Our sext exchanges have consent conversations built right in. “I like restraining partners with chains,” he says. “I’m not a fan of being choked,” I say. “Teach me how to make you come with a toy,” he pleads. “I think I want to sit on your face,” I hypothesize.

I get good at asking for what I want. In the throes of subspace during my BDSM hookups, sometimes I lose my words, unable to form sentences longer than “Yes,” “No,” or “Harder” – but the more I try, the easier it gets. Though power exchange often leaves me literally gagged and silenced, it also makes me better at speaking up when I need to.

So after my fuckpal makes one too many vagina-shaming comments in my presence, I decide I don’t want to see him anymore. He’s not into period sex, he’s not into “excessive” wetness, he’s not into falling asleep next to me unshowered after sex – and while it’s fine for him to have his boundaries, it’s also fine for me to have mine. I want sex while I’m bleeding, wet, and/or dirty. My sexual menu just doesn’t feel complete without those things. A partner who can’t unabashedly adore my body in all its various weird states is not a partner I want to give myself over to.

So I tell him. “I don’t think I want to do sex/kink things with you anymore. I’d still like to be friends, though.”

He’s a little taken aback, but fine with it. My sigh of relief is immediately followed by a rush of pride: I identified an unmet need in my life and did something about it. I owned my desires and asserted them. And now I’ll no longer have to bang someone who makes me feel, in the smallest and saddest of ways, like my body is to be tolerated and not to be devoured.

I’m wearing nothing but lingerie in front of a crowd at a sex club. A photographer is snapping pictures. It’s terrifying – but I’m less scared than I thought I’d be, because a hot, brassy babe is bossing me around.

“Bend over and show the crowd your ass,” she barks. “There you go. Good girl. Doesn’t she have a great ass, folks?!”

The crowd bursts into applause, whoops, and yells of affirmation. Apparently they agree with her. I grin and laugh and blush and laugh some more.

I’m midway through a blowjob when my one-night stand starts to get antsy. “Come here,” he growls. My eyes flick upward, quizzical. Can’t I just… stay down here?

I climb up his body to kiss him. “No. Higher.” I straddle his belly. Is he really asking me to…? “Higher,” he commands again. Yep, I guess we’re doing this. I slide over his chest until my vulva is settled over his mouth. He wraps his big strong hands around my thighs and hips and pulls me toward him. My clit has no choice but to tangle with his tongue. I gasp and clutch at the headboard. Fuck, he’s good at that.

I’ve never sat on someone’s face on a first date before. Usually I date someone for months before I let them invite me onto their face. It’s just a lot: they get a mouthful and noseful of pussy, plus an eyeful of belly and underboob and double chin. I worry I’ll crush them with my chubby body, drown them in my juices, embarrass myself with unladylike sounds. I need to believe someone 100% wants me, in all my weird and overwhelming glory, before I’ll feel comfortable giving them that. This requires at least a few months of dating… or, apparently, a well-placed command from a one-off hookup.

See, when you command me to do something, I have to assume you want that thing. Maybe this is part of why I’m submissive: my irksome sexual anxiety insists I’m unattractive, unless and until someone cute is there to insist on the opposite. So, while “I love your body and find you gorgeous” is a highly effective line, “Come here and sit on my face immediately” achieves more-or-less the same purpose.

Sometimes there’s no time to worry about whether I’m “attractive enough,” because I’ve been given an order and I have to do what I’ve been told immediately. It’s important, after all, that I be a good girl.

We’re hours deep into our second date, lying on his bed in the hazy afternoon sun, stoned as fuck. The weed, as per usual, is working its magic: I am craving pain, knowing it will permute into pleasure. I turn to this boy I only met three days earlier and say, slyly: “I want you to spank me.”

I see his reaction in slow motion, because weed does that. He bites his lip, smirks, breaks into a grin. And then he says it: “With what?”

Everything else is slow and so too is the spread of goosebumps over my entire body, from my shoulders down my arms and all down my back. His question outs him as a true kinkster, one experienced with impact play and potentially owning a collection of implements. But what really excites me about this question is the tone of voice in which he said it: dark, rough, and absolutely dripping with want. I can tell he cannot fucking wait until I’m over his lap. And I don’t want to wait, either.

“Your hand, please,” I reply, and hitch up my skirt.

I’ve always hated my butt. The jiggly cellulite, the amorphous shape. I grew up on a steady diet of SuicideGirls and vintage pinups, and coveted those perfect, round butts. Mine did not look like theirs.

I didn’t know, when I got pretty pink bows and the words “good girl” tattooed on my upper thighs, that they would unravel years’ worth of insecurities in one fell swoop. Overnight, I went from trying to orient my body so partners couldn’t see my butt during sex, to openly showing it off and asking gleefully, “Do you like my tattoos?!” It felt odd to go back and look at photos of my backside pre-tattoos – not only did I dislike how it looked, but it also simply didn’t seem like it was mine.

One summer evening, I’m hanging out in an upscale Toronto sex shop with my friend Taylor. He’s teaching an impact play class, and I am the demo bottom. After the introductory preamble, it comes time for me to get spanked. “Should I take my dress off now?” I ask, and Taylor nods. I pull my simple cotton dress off over my head, revealing a matching set of lingerie underneath, and bend over the shop’s grey sofa to show off my ass to the crowd. Taylor explains how to wield a paddle, and then demonstrates. I smile through my grimace of pain, because I know I can handle this.

“You looked so confident tonight,” my boyfriend tells me later when I’m tucked into his bed, “just wearing lingerie in front of all those people.” He’s running his hands all over me and it’s hard to focus on his words, but when I do clue in to what he’s said, I feel proud.

“It wasn’t hard,” I say with a nonchalant shrug. It would’ve been, five years ago, or even one year ago. It would’ve made me cringe and blush and doubt myself. But tonight it was easy. Because I love my body and don’t care if other people don’t.

Just as long as the people I’m dating/kissing/fucking think I’m hot. And judging by the way my boyfriend is groping my ass and nibbling my neck, I would say that he does.

 

This post was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own!

3 Sexual Fantasies I Hope to Act Out Someday

Kate Sloan

One of the best things about working in sex media: you’re constantly exposed to new kinks and scenarios, and therefore, if you’re lucky, you’re constantly coming up with new sexual fantasies to lust after.

I know what my main kinks are – the basic building blocks of my psychosexual makeup – but I’m always adding new things to my peripheral list of “hmm, maybe someday” kinds of kinks. Whether I’m reading fanfiction or classy erotica, watching art porn or raunchy amateur clips, discussing friends’ recent sexploits or telling them about mine, I’m always filling my head with new ideas for my “fucket list.”

Here are 3 fantasies I’m slightly fixated on lately…

An MFM threesome. I’ve had several threesomes, but all were with a man + either a non-binary person or another woman. They were all absolutely delightful, but gosh, I’d love to be the focus of two dudes’ focus at once. Maybe a dominant guy would tell a submissive guy what to do to me; maybe one dude would worshipfully go down on me while the other fucked my face; maybe we’d even work our way up to double penetration. (Ambitious!) Whatever the situation, I bet I’d love being the centre of attention.

Professor/schoolgirl roleplay. Maybe I’ve watched too much dialogue-heavy situational European porn, or maybe it’s just my inner teacher’s pet showing, but I’ve always had a thing for sexy teacher/student dynamics. I fetishize red apples used as ballgags and wooden rulers thwacked against nubile butts. I feel sexiest and sassiest in short thigh-baring skirts, and I get a little weak in the knees for tweed blazers with elbow patches. Someday I hope a well-dressed domly person (consensually) bends me over a wooden desk, tells me I’ve been a bad girl, and gives me an opportunity to earn some extra credit…!

Erotic massage. For as long as I can remember, I’ve eroticized the idea of someone deftly and expertly getting me off, like it’s their fuckin’ job – and in this fantasy, it is. Depending on my mood, sometimes I picture the masseuse actually finding me attractive and getting turned on in a highly unprofessional way – or sometimes I just want them to be stony and stoic, stroking me on autopilot until I fall apart. Either way, it’s a fantasy so hot that I tense up from arousal… and probably need a good massage to work out those kinks, if you know what I’m sayin’.

What fantasies are haunting your sex-brain recently?

 

This post was generously sponsored by the folks at PornDoe, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own!

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!

It’s Different With You

Kate Sloan

The first time anyone slapped my face, it was because I asked for it, and it was an experiment.

He was an ostensibly vanilla man I’d met an hour earlier, at a sex club. His posh British accent and shy befuddlement set me immediately at ease: this man was no threat to me. He could fuck me, maybe, but he could not fuck me up.

Face-slapping had been on my mind lately. I had no idea if I’d like it. I liked certain types of pain, but getting hit across the face seemed like it’d be uniquely disorienting and extra risky, physically and emotionally.

Normally I like to try new kink things with a safe, trusted, established partner. But I had no such partners available to me. It had been a while since I had. That was starting to feel disheartening. I tried not to think about it too much.

So when this nice English boy had his fingers deep inside me and his lips on my lips, I leaned back and said, “Can you do me a favor? Can you slap me across the face?” His expression, then, was shock muffled by politeness. “Not too hard,” I clarified. “Like, a 4 out of 10.”

To his immense credit, he did not balk. He was vanilla as fuck (or so I assumed from how he later repeated the phrase “good girl” at me like it was a magic arousal spell in and of itself), but he was nonetheless willing to do this for me. Good boy, I thought, as he wound up his batting arm.

The slap landed. It hurt. It shook me. But it did not turn me on.

Huh, I thought. Guess I’m not into that. We did not speak of it again, he did not attempt it again, and the evening progressed in an otherwise vanilla but quite enjoyable way. And that was that. Or so I thought.

The first time you slapped my face, I had also asked for it. But it felt entirely different.

We’d been dating for a few weeks, and having kinky sex in massive quantities. All traces of vanilla had been flushed from my system, it seemed. I thought about going on Tinder dates with other boys, letting them put their hands on me gently and fuck me in entirely standard ways, and the whole idea just bored me to death. Sex with you felt exciting not only because you were rough with me, but also because I trusted you to be rough with me. I wanted to show you how much I could take. I wanted to be good for you. I cared.

We hadn’t talked about it yet, but I felt strongly enough to bring it up nonetheless: “I think I’d like you to slap my face.” You got that devious domly smile on your face I like so much, the one that means you’ve got some mean tricks up your sleeve and I’m gonna like ’em. “I don’t know if I’ll enjoy it, but I want to try,” I added. You nodded and I saw you file this info away for later.

Later came. Long minutes into hard makeouts, you climbed on top of me, straddling my thighs in bed, and grabbed my hair by the root in one hand. “I’m gonna slap you across the face now,” you muttered against my mouth, and I nodded.

My eyes are normally closed during sex; it’s how I process sensations best, and one way I manage my sexual anxiety. But the moment stretched out and I wanted to see. I opened my eyes just in time to see your hand cocked back, ready to strike. A split-second elapsed and you hit me, hard but not so hard it scared me. I felt jolted. Grounded.

My eyes had fallen closed, and after a moment, I opened them again. I did a thing I almost never do during sex: I looked up at you – coyly, through my lashes – and smiled.

You smiled back, and then you hit me again.

Some vanilla people can talk all day long about how romantic their sex can be, how intimate, connective, sweet and life-affirming. That’s fine. I’m glad they experience it that way. But kink can be those things, too. That moment where I’m smiling up at you, knowing you’re about to hurt me, and then you go ahead and do it? That’s the safest and the sweetest. I feel romantic toward you when we’re cuddling or kissing or holding hands in public; I feel it even moreso when you’ve got me pinned and you’re about to leave a handprint on my cheek.

The first time anyone fucked my mouth, it was an accident and I hated it.

He was a submissive boy – which, fine, whatever. Banging other subs isn’t my favorite, but I can deal with it, if it’s only an occasional thing. Submissive guys can still enjoy receiving BJs, after all, so at least there’s some overlap between our tastes.

Reclined on a soft hotel bed, he moaned and mewled as I bobbed up and down on him. I was doing a great job and I knew it. If this was the only fun thing we could do together, I’d be okay with that. It was pretty stellar, as far as BJs go.

But then he started thrusting into my mouth, and I froze.

My gag reflex is off the charts. I have, more than once, accidentally thrown up from scrubbing a toothbrush too far back on my tongue. I like BJs where the recipient is lying on their back, in part because it gives me optimum control over the depth of the dick. When I lose that sense of control, sometimes I gag. Sometimes I panic.

I tried to be chill about it. But after a few minutes, I could not. “Hey, can you stop that?” I mumbled during a pause, pressing my hand against his hipbone to still him. “You’re gagging me.”

“Oh. Sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to stop.” He tried. He didn’t really succeed. I get it; sometimes thrusting isn’t entirely voluntary. But I spent the rest of that BJ trying to get it done, instead of enjoying it for what it was. My throat didn’t trust him anymore.

The first time you fucked my mouth, it was highly negotiated, and I was ready.

A few days previous, I’d mentioned – in one of our many chats about desires and boundaries – that my skittish throat was a frequent buzzkill for me. “It’s why I don’t really like choking or face-fucking,” I said, “even though I’m totally obsessed with deepthroat porn and find it so hot.”

The conversation meandered in a different direction, but a few minutes later, there was a lull, and you mused, with a soft smile: “So no face-fucking, hey?”

The way you say “hey” instead of the more familiar-to-me Canadian “eh” is somehow so endearing to me; it sneaks into your dirty-talk when I fantasize about you, a signature feature of your vernacular that puts an instant smile on my face. With anyone else, I probably would’ve just said, “Yep, no face-fucking,” and moved on. But you – your pressureless demeanor, your easy handsomeness, and that gentle little prod of a “hey” – gave me pause.

“I meeeeean,” I began, in that way I begin sentences when I know I can be swayed. “I haven’t liked it with previous partners. Maybe I’d like it with you.” You grinned. I grinned back.

Later, after embroiling me in subspace in all the pervy ways I like best, you arranged me on the bed so my head hung off the edge. You placed my hand on your warm upper arm and said, “I want you to tap my arm if you want me to stop, okay?” And then you slowly slid your cock into my throat.

There was an ease to it I had never experienced with this act before, an instant and eager facility. I could feel myself getting wet as I thought about you using my mouth, fucking all my holes like I was your personal sex toy.

At some point, I started to gag, and tapped your arm. You stopped immediately, made sure I was okay. But I wasn’t scared or shaken. I was smiling. I wanted more.

The first time anyone choked me, I was fucking furious.

“I told you I don’t want to be choked,” I practically shouted. His hand had snuck onto my neck too many times. He knew what was up. This was the last straw.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he babbled. “My other partners all like being choked. I keep forgetting that you don’t.”

I rolled my eyes. He had used this excuse more than once before. I had no idea whether to believe it. It did seem that his memory was genuinely bad – he’d often tell me a story he’d already told me, or stare at me blankly when I referenced an anecdote I’d relayed the week previous – but it also seemed like a half-assed attempt to eschew my boundaries.

He was the first polyamorous person I’d been involved with, and the whole situation made me doubt that poly was right for me. If mixing up your partners’ sexual preferences was an occupational hazard of poly, could I ever really trust a partner? Could I ever truly enjoy myself, knowing someone could badly fuck up at any moment?

Months after I stopped seeing him, I talked to another former partner of his. She told me he was always “forgetting” her boundaries, too. Maybe that’s not a thing poly people do, I thought; maybe it’s just a thing abusive shitheads do.

The first time you choked me, we had – again – talked about how I’d never liked it before, but thought I might like it with you. You tend to have that effect on me.

“I’m going to put my hand on your throat,” you told me, your face so so close to mine, “but I’m not going to choke you.” You were true to your word. It didn’t scare me. Instead, weirdly, I felt safe.

“When you go home tonight,” you continued, “I want you to masturbate thinking about my hand on your throat. I want you to think about how small and defenseless it makes you feel – and how happy it makes me.” When I relayed this episode to my journal later, I wrote, Damn, he’s good. And indeed, I jerked off thinking about what you’d told me to think about. And it made me really fucking wet.

The first time you actually put pressure on my throat, I squeezed my eyelids shut from the intensity of the sensation. It didn’t feel bad, it was just… a lot. “Open your eyes. Look at me,” you commanded sternly, calling me back to earth. I did as you’d asked. “Hey. It’s okay. You’re okay.” And I knew you were right, and I was safe.

You released the pressure slowly, and I wanted to cry. Never knew I could feel like this, I thought, a love song from Moulin Rouge echoing in my brain. It was a strange thought to have immediately after being choked, maybe, but it was what came to mind.

See? Kink can totally be romantic.