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Nude, Lewd, Screwed, & Tattooed

Kate Sloan
Photo by Taylor J Mace

The day before I got my first tattoo, someone on Twitter told me to take a break from sex for a while, and I laughed.

See, my sex life at that time was not exactly hoppin’. I’d only just broken a year-and-a-half-long dry spell, and the person who’d broken it for me had gone back to the far-away city where he lived. So my sexual future didn’t seem bright. This well-intentioned Twitter warning felt like when I got my wisdom teeth out at age 17. As I drifted out of my anaesthesia cloud and back to earth, the dentist told me, “You should probably avoid drinking, smoking, and exercising for a while.” And 17-year-old me – neither a partier nor an exerciser – burst out laughing, to the mixed embarrassment and amusement of the dentist and my mother.

It felt like a moot suggestion. Just like someone telling me to intentionally avoid sex, when it felt like I’d been unintentionally avoiding sex for a long-ass time.

And yet, the very day after I got that tattoo, I found myself cuddled up with a cute boy on his couch, his face so close to mine that my cheeks glowed red-hot.

“Wanna see my new tattoo?” I asked excitedly, two or three hours deep into one of those intense, confessional conversations that make you want to bang someone real bad. (Or maybe that’s just me.) “Yeah!” he confirmed, and I lit up. I pushed my skirt a little lower on my hips, tucked my thumb into the waistband of my panties, and tugged.

To our mutual horror, the underwear stuck to the healing heart, pulling the mushy top layer of skin along with it. “Eeeeuuuugghhh,“ me and Cute Boy both intoned. (Tattoo enthusiasts, worry not: I went for a free touch-up at my tattoo parlor a month later, so the damage was not permanent.)

It was a gross moment, but apparently not gross enough to scare him off; we had sex less than an hour later, in his cozy basement-apartment bed. After teasing me for long minutes – his hands and lips and tongue all over every part of me but my genitals – he paused and observed, “Normally, at this point, I’d take your underwear off, but I’m gonna ask for your help this time, ’cause I don’t wanna hurt you.” I giggled and obliged.

It was my introduction to an experience I would come to adore: Having Sex While Tattooed.

There are certain phrases that come out of my mouth a lot when I’m having sex. Some pertain to logistics: “Can you go a little deeper?” “I would really like to go down on you…” Others are hallmarks of my anxious brain: “Are you getting tired?” “Do you want to stop?” Still others are just stock phrases I blurt when excited or nervous: “Sorry I’m giggling so much; I do that.” “Aaah, words are hard!” I like to imagine listing these phrases to a room full of my past sexual partners. They’d all laugh and say, “Yep. She says that a lot.”

One such phrase, since I first got inked, is: “Do you like my tattoo?”

Without the benefit of hearing my inflection or seeing my face, you might have read that and assumed I ask this question out of insecurity or a need for validation: “My tattoo is cute, right? Please tell me you think it’s cute.” But that’s not how it feels when I ask it. It usually crosses my lips coquettishly, a sly grin on my face. It’s not really a question. The subtext is: My tattoo’s goddamn excellent, isn’t it.

One such incident happened on a chilly night in March. It was the type of first date I didn’t expect to end in sex: our rapport unfurled leisurely but delightfully over drinks, and I thought, I would like to have sex with this boy, but probably not tonight. But one thing led to another and he ended up in my bed with me – ostensibly just to cuddle and sleep.

“Do you like my tattoo?” I asked as I shed my skirt and tights and climbed into bed beside him, tugging my panties a little lower on my hips so he could see the little red heart.

“Yeah! It’s so cute,” he said, with genuine enchantment in his voice. “Can I kiss it?”

I laughed a little to hide my surprise, and said yes. This sweet, gangly boy slid down the length of my bed til he was eye-level with my pelvis. I felt his warm breath on my lower belly. He pressed a firm kiss to my heart tattoo. All that heat and pressure and careful attention, just inches from my clit. It would be an understatement to say that I swooned.

I hadn’t meant to have sex with him. But like… after that… how could I not?

My boyfriend in the summer of 2016 was covered in tattoos. They each meant something different and magnificent. When I confessed I wanted more ink but worried I’d regret it years later, he told me, “Tattoos are just a snapshot in time. They don’t have to represent who you’ll be forever; they just represent who you were at the time that you got them.”

He was one of the first people I told about the tattoos I wanted to get on the backs of my thighs – two pink bows with the words “good girl” above them. “They’re gonna look so sexy on you!” he declared. Sometimes he’d even talk dirty about my hypothetical tattoos while we fucked. “You’re such a good girl,” he’d grunt against my shoulder while I was pinned beneath him. “Soon it’ll be on your skin so everyone’ll know it.”

Ironically, though that boyfriend was more excited about my “Good Girl” tattoos than anyone I knew, he never got to see them on me; we broke up before I actually got them. But it was fitting: I was not a good girl with him. I was in love with someone else, constantly half-distracted, one foot out the door. He was excited for the good girl I would become, though he’d never get to meet her.

Three days after I got my thighs tattooed, my fave fuckbuddy bent me over in a park at 2AM and fucked me like the world was ending. We were drunk and nothing else mattered. He felt deliciously thick inside me and noises bubbled up from my throat unprompted. All I knew was that I didn’t want him to stop.

But he stopped. “Oh, shit,” he said suddenly, stilling inside me. “Am I hurting your tattoos?”

This possibility had literally not occurred to me. But then, of course, alcohol numbs us to such things.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, but by then we were no longer fucking, and instead, messily kissing, because drunk sex makes one activity blur into the next in a way that feels retrospectively picturesque.

He zipped his pants back up, I smoothed my skirt back down, and we caught a streetcar back to his neighborhood. He bought Subway sandwiches for both of us, because he is a goddamn gentleman. When we arrived at his place, I realized I had forgotten to bring moisturizer, and my flaky, healing tattoos felt dry and achy. “Hang on a minute,” he called from the bathroom, as I whined tipsily, face-down in his bed.

When he returned, he was carrying a bottle of fancy face moisturizer. “Shh, just stay still,” he instructed me, so I kept my face planted in his pillow as he rubbed cool wet lotion on my blistering thighs. His touch was warm and tender, and felt somehow more intimate than his dick had felt buried in me mere minutes earlier. “There. That’s better. That’s good.” That’s a good girl, I whispered in my own ear.

A few days after that, I met a cute boy at a sex club and went home with him. He made me laugh and I felt safe around him; that was all there was to it, and that was all I needed.

When we arrived at his apartment and I flopped face-first on his bed, I heard his voice from behind me: “Oh my god.” I didn’t know what he was reacting to: my curvy and excellent ass, the spanking bruises on my skin from earlier that evening, or my adorable new tattoos. Frankly, I didn’t care. The reason for the reaction mattered less than the reaction itself. It was the reaction I wanted.

Tattoos, I realized, are the only femme trappings I can never take off. My carefully-constructed outfit will be shed, a blowjob might erase my lipstick, my perfume will fade into the atmosphere, but my tattoos are forever. Never again will I be reduced to a blank human canvas, devoid of the markers that make me me. I am perpetually emblazoned with these images: one red heart, two pink bows, and the words “good girl.” No one can take these things from me. They are mine, for always, forever.

“God, your tattoos are so hot,” this cute funny stranger said to me as he laid down beside me and began to kiss me, and I thought, Yes, they fucking are.

You’re Vanilla. I’m Not. But I Love You.

Kate Sloan

It’s a giddy-hot summer in Toronto and I am out having lunch with my new boyfriend (soon to be ex). My collar is chafing my neck in the sticky heat, so I unclasp the buckle and slide the leather off my neck and into my purse.

Boyf looks up from his menu. “You took it off,” he comments softly. “You should’ve asked first.” A wicked grin creeps over his boyish face.

I giggle and blush, but it’s perfunctory. When he says dom-y shit to me, it’s like I’m watching a porn scene: it turns me on, in an abstracted sort of way, but it doesn’t thrill my innermost subby self because it doesn’t feel like it’s happening to me.

Because he’s not my dom, not really. You are. And you don’t even know it.

I am a kinkster who loves a vanilla person, and it feels like this:

I plunge my hand between the bones of my chest until I find my heart. Closing my fist around it, I pull it out of me til it’s freed from my body with a sickening pop.

With the gingerest touch, I reach out and place my heart in your open palm. We both watch it, beating, twitching. My blood drips between your fingers and onto the floor. When at last I feel brave enough, I drag my gaze up to meet your eyes… and you look horrified.

“What the fuck,” you mutter under your breath, and toss my heart into the gutter. “Gross.”

I know you don’t mean to make me feel that way. But you do. It’s no one’s fault you make me feel that way. But you do. You didn’t choose to be the vanilla-est vanilla boy in all the land. But you are. And I didn’t choose to be collar-over-heels, sweetly-starry-eyed, dreamily-devoted in subby love with you. But I am.

I notice it first in the way I always sit below you if I can help it. The night we met, you sat on my piano bench and I sat cross-legged at your feet, staring reverently up at you like I was six years old and you were telling me a story (you probably were). It becomes a pattern with us: at your place or mine, in the bedroom or the kitchen, surrounded by friends or just the two of us, if you’re on a chair then I’m on the floor. It just feels… right.

You’re barely taller than me, and when we crunch down crowded streets together, we look like equals. I don’t want to be your equal, have never felt like your equal. Sitting at your feet restores a natural equilibrium I can feel but you can’t. I know you can’t feel it because you always ask me, “You sure you don’t wanna sit up here? You’ll be more comfortable.” You don’t get it. I’m comfortable when I’m where I belong: on the floor, looking up at you.

We trade sex secrets and carnal confessions over pints in the brew pub. Your eyebrows knit together in that way they do when you’re trying to understand something incomprehensible. In this case, it’s my kinks.

“I just kind of fall apart when someone calls me ‘little one,'” I tell you. What little nonchalance I can muster is being channelled into keeping my voice steady, trying not to betray how much this means to me. “If I’m having trouble coming, sometimes that’s The Thing that finally makes it happen.”

You stroke your chin in a broad gesture of thoughtfulness and reply, simply: “Interesting.” I wonder if you are filing away this piece of information to be used at a later date. But probably, you’ll just forget. You never call me “little one.” You never call me “princess” or “babygirl” or “sweet darling.” You just call me my name, sometimes. And never in bed.

Names are important to me. Names frame my understanding of a sexual situation. Names are the real-world manifestation of the archetypes and roles floating around in my white-hot kinkster brain. Names matter.

When you’re fucking me – with your fingers, a toy, or your cock – sometimes I want to call you names. They float at the periphery of my awareness; sometimes they ghost across my lips. My mouth forms the syllables “Oh, Daddy” or “Please, Sir,” but no sound comes out. I’m ashamed. I hide these silent pleas in the crook of my elbow, bury them in the warmth of your shoulder. I don’t want to ruin the moment or make you uncomfortable.

It’s agony that the words which would flip your switch from “on” to “off” are the same words that rev my internal motor. Sometimes you ask me, “How can I make you come? What would you like me to do?” and I list physical acts I know will work on the mechanical level, because I don’t dare ask for the mental-emotional-psychological stuff that might scare you off.

You ping my teacher’s-pet kink without even realizing it. One night I send you a draft of something I’m writing, wanting your feedback, and your critique jokingly begins, “Well, if you want to earn an A+ from me…” Of course I fucking do. I make all the changes you suggest, even the ones that conflict with my own taste and voice. I feel that old familiar sense of surrender I’ve experienced while tied up or getting spanked: the deep belief that someone else knows what I need even better than I do. When I show you the finished piece, you tell me it’s perfect, and I feel a rush of something halfway between “just got a 95% on my philosophy exam” and “just gave the best blowjob of all time.”

On bad mental health days, I feel like a useless, unsalvageable failure. Friends remind me I’m smart, funny, talented, kind, and valuable – but I don’t fully believe it until I hear it from you. Earning your A+ makes me feel accomplished, whether you’re complimenting my sexual skills, my writing, or my overall value as a human being.

One night, I’m anxious as hell about an impending deadline. It feels like an end-of-the-world emergency: if I don’t get this article done in time, or if my editor hates it, all will be lost. My head is swirling with panic; I hyperventilate at you via text. “You’ll get it done and it’ll be great,” you tell me, with more confidence than I have ever felt about anything. And suddenly, I know that you’re right. In the hours that follow, I get it done. It’s great. It’s all for you, and you’ll never know.

“Service submission” has never particularly resonated with me. I’ve occasionally fantasized about it, but I’ve never done it with a real-life partner, because I’ve never wanted to. Until I met you.

When I show up at your place with the exact kind of beer you like, or accompany you to events you’re nervous about, or ask a waitress to move us because a wobbly barstool is hurting your bad back, you tell me, “You’re a good friend.” But that’s not really what this is about. I’m not being generous; I am serving you. Being your good girl. Of course, you don’t see it that way, and I’ll never tell you.

When you go out of town to attend a work conference, I sit at home fantasizing about how I’d serve you if I was your plus-one. I picture myself bringing you your coffee first thing in the morning, made exactly how you like it. I would organize your schedule, prepare the documents you needed, choose and press your outfits. At the end of a long day, I’d kneel in front of you, slip your shoes off, and ask you if a nice blowjob would help you relax. I’d suck you off and then bring you a beer, and watch you drink it from my favorite vantage point on your floor.

Service-submission feelings toward a vanilla person are essentially a deep, carnal desire to be their unpaid personal assistant. I’m a feminist and so are you, so I get the sense you wouldn’t accept my “help,” even if you knew what it meant to me. We speak different languages; my word for “purpose and fulfilment” translates to “heartless exploitation” in your native tongue. This can never work. But I still sometimes think about shining your boots.

It occurs to me one day, as I’m walking home in a shirt you let me borrow because I misplaced my dress amid your bedsheets somewhere, that you’ve never left a mark on me. Other partners smack bruises onto my ass, bite toothmarks onto my fleshy hips, carve crimson hickeys into my neck – but you’ve never left so much as a friction-burn on my thighs. It’s ironic, I think, as I pull the sleeves of your shirt down over my chilly hands, that you’ve marked my heart more deeply and irrevocably than anyone else I’ve banged, and yet signs of you have never shown on my skin.

My one souvenir of you – which embarrasses me to even contemplate – is a dime on my bedroom floor. It fell out of your jeans pocket the first time we made out in my bed, and after you left in the morning, I just… kept it there. For the better part of a year. Friends who knew me well would visit and say, “So that dime’s still there, huh? When are you gonna move it?” I’d respond, “It makes me happy to look at it. I’ll move it when that’s no longer true.”

The day I decide to get over you, I text my best friend: “I picked the dime up off the floor.” They reply with a blue heart emoji. There’s nothing else to say, really.

Once, we’re out to dinner, and the subject of kinks comes up. (It always fucking does.) “I just feel like you could be such a good dom if you tried,” I lament for like the twentieth time. I’ve had too much rice wine and am being an asshole.

“Being dom-y makes me anxious,” you tell me through half a mouthful of sushi. I know this. You’ve told me this before. I hate myself for not wanting to accept this answer.

“I dunno, a lot of things used to make me anxious before I got good at them,” I counter. “Maybe if you practiced more, you’d feel more confident about it.” The conversation stagnates and we switch gears.

I’m wracked with guilt for days afterward, and text you: “Hey, I’m sorry I got kinda pressure-y the other night. You said taking charge makes you uncomfortable and I should just respect that. I won’t ask you about it again.” It’s the only decent thing to do, but it feels like giving up on the thing I want most in the world.

“It’s okay,” you text back. I sigh, from relief, or sadness, or something.

Here’s Why I’m Not Setting Sexual Goals For 2017…

Kate Sloan

I’m a sentimental person and I don’t like to break traditions. They’re both grounding and buoying to me. Every year in the first week of January, I write about my sexual goals for the year, and then I go through the rest of the year trying to achieve those goals.

But these past few weeks, my gut has been telling me to back off of sex and dating, and to do less of those things, not more. Here’s a journal entry I wrote about my swirling thoughts on this subject recently; I present it by way of explanation. I only have one “sex goal” this year and it’s more of a resolution, an intention, a self-care-oriented promise.

I have been rejected twice in one week. [Redacted: a detailed explanation of what happened, and how sad I was about it.]

This kind of bullshit is EXACTLY the reason I want to prioritize dating/sex less highly in 2017. I have what sometimes genuinely feels like an unhealthy addiction to romantic stimuli. It lifts my mood and my self-esteem, but at what cost? I just end up feeling like I can’t possibly feel happy or valuable or successful in life if I am not actively flirting with/dating/banging someone. And that leads to dating people who are wrong for me, pining over people who don’t want me like that, having bad sex with people I barely like, and leading people on with false flirtations I have no intention of following through on.

Yes, it is exciting to want and be wanted, but it is not everything; there are plenty other potent and viable dopamine triggers available to me. Spending time with friends, working on creative pursuits, even reading good books. I am SICKENED by how much I’ve relied on men to somehow magically solve my mood troubles this year. I am better than that. I have not spent 9+ years working on my radical self-love only to give away my personal power to other people.

There’s this moment in High Fidelity when, after Rob’s been persistently pursuing his ex Laura to try to get her back for ages, his sister Liz asks him, “WHY do you want Laura back so badly?” You see the confusion spread across his face as he ponders this question. He’s never even considered it before. He’s pursuing Laura because he’s never entertained alternate possibilities, and because Laura has been in his life for years so what else would he do? I feel like that about men. I need a sad-eyed Joan Cusack to shake me by the shoulders and ask me, “WHY do you want men to like you so badly?” And I don’t know how I would answer. “It makes me feel good about myself. It makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.” But those feelings are temporary. And I can conjure them without men’s assistance.

This week has felt to me a lot like that week in February when [a boy I liked] left town and [another boy I liked] rejected me on Valentine’s Day: a compound whammy of sadness, insecurity, rejection, the fear that no one will ever want me and I’m destined to be alone forever. In February I believed that story, and it led me into one misguided romance after another, because I felt so desperately and fundamentally unlovable that I jumped on any and every opportunity to see that myth disproved. But this time I will not react that way. When the universe sends you versions of the same challenge again and again, it’s because there’s a lesson in there somewhere that you still have not learned. I think the universe is telling me to nix my addiction to love-or-the-idea-of-love. This year has sometimes slammed that lesson over my head like a frying pan, and other times gently slid that lesson in front of my face like a note passed in class. I have not been listening. I have not been paying attention. I want to apologize, to repent, to fix it. I can’t believe I let myself treat myself this way.

It almost feels like I need to go cold-turkey… No sex, dating, flirting, or sexting for maybe the first 3 months of 2017. That feels unreasonable, impossible, but it’s not. In all honesty, I may not need to impose strict rules on myself for them to get followed: I’m not currently seeing anyone, I’ve promised myself no more one-night stands in 2017 because IMO they’re always bad, and I’m currently feeling so wounded that I can’t imagine wanting to flirt with anyone for quite a while. Maybe I’ll read this over in a few weeks and laugh at myself, I don’t know. But for now it feels good and right and manageable and necessary for me to take some time away from the thing I’m addicted to, so that hopefully eventually I can come back to it healthier and better-adjusted. I don’t want to have a toxic relationship to love and sex; I love those things. In 2017 I want to pursue them much more mindfully, less desperately, and LESS overall. That’s hard and good and good and hard.

Have you ever taken a break from dating/sex/etc. for mental health or self-care reasons? How did it go?

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12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

After I chickened out on going down on a girl during a threesome this year, my male fuckbuddy – the other participant in said threesome – commented, “I wish I could hack your brain and cut your anxiety out of it.”

I could’ve been offended. I could’ve interpreted this as him wanting to circumvent my resistance and artificially coerce me into doing something I didn’t want to do. But I know him well, so I knew what he meant. He wanted to rid me of my sexual anxieties, not only because it would be more fun for him, but because it would be more fun for me.

I can’t argue with that. There are, no doubt, a lot of fun activities I could enjoy if I didn’t psych myself out of doing them. But we can’t control the mental illnesses we’re saddled with, and we can only do what we can do. So I try not to beat myself up for the hurdles I’m not yet strong enough to jump – and I try, instead, to celebrate the hurdles I have leapt over with flying colors. Here are two such hurdles I cleared in 2016.

Doing porn. I don’t even like my partners to look at me during sex. I don’t know why I thought I could handle porn, where the eyes on me would total not only my partner’s but also the cameraperson’s, any other crew members’, and those of the eventual viewing audience. But it sounded fun, to some deeply buried and uncharacteristically brave part of me, so I gave it a shot. It helped that I have a lot of friends who are involved in porn – most notably Caitlin of Spit and Taylor of Feisty Fox Films – so I knew I’d be safe and supported.

I kicked off 2016 by shooting a scene for Spit with the devastatingly handsome Dane Joe, who bent me over a coffee table in Caitlin’s cozy downtown apartment and spanked an epic bruise onto me with a paddle while I stared at a bowl of oranges artistically placed in front of me. And then I got to eat a cupcake for having been such a good girl. (This scene was later screened at Smut in the 6ix in front of dozens of people, to my blushy glee.)

A few days later, I got naked in the Glad Day Bookshop for Taylor’s camera, posing with goofy props gathered from around the store. The manager pumped Justin Bieber tunes through the stereo at my request and I wore an unshakeable smile as I sidled around the shop in my skivvies, still bruised from my last shoot.

Photo via Spit.

In February I performed in one of Spit’s live porn shoots at Oasis Aqualounge: Dane Joe bossed me around and fucked me with various toys for the crowd’s amusement, until I had a surprise orgasm while she pounded me with my Eleven.

In May, I skipped over to Taylor’s house with a tote bag full of sex toys and masochistic implements. He and his photographer pal Caroline Fox trained their video cameras on me, and I didn’t feel nervous at all – instead, I came alive, perked up, put on a show. I smacked myself silly with my stone crop, then fucked myself with toys until my body burst into climax.

In June, I showed up at Riverdale Park in full rockabilly garb. Caroline, shooting for CherryStems this time, helped me sleuth out a relatively secluded area in the middle of the park, and I saucily stripped off my clothes while she snapped away. Then she handed me an ice cream cone and I fellated it with the juicy joy of someone who loves sugary treats as much as she loves blowjobs. (A lot.) Being photographed for CherryStems felt like the fulfilment of a very old wish: I’d longed to do pinup modeling since I was a wee lass poring over SuicideGirls.com before I was legally allowed to view such materials.

Mid-year, I complained on Twitter that I’d never shot blowjob porn and wanted to – and to my surprise, I got a DM from the owner of one of my favorite dicks, volunteering his gorgeous cock for me to suck on camera. I contacted my friends at Spit and managed to organize things so both Bex and I could shoot scenes for them while Bex was visiting Toronto that month. Bathed in soft light and the giggly glow of a happy little princess, I knelt on the floor between my fuckbuddy’s knees and Spit’s artistic director John Bee shot us in a stunning POV BJ scene. Weeks later, me and my co-star huddled together in my bedroom with boozy ciders and watched the scene on my little laptop. “Do I look pretty?” I asked him, and he replied, “You look very pretty. And sexy. And determined.”

Porn has never been a career ambition for me, never something I took very seriously – I’ve always done it for the fun and thrill of it, more than for money or glory (both of which there is little of, in Canada’s small porn scene). So I don’t know if I’ll do much more of it, now that I’ve basically achieved what I wanted to achieve by gettin’ sexy on camera. Maybe in 2017 I’ll shoot a solo scene for MakeLoveNotPorn.TV, or spank a pretty girl for Taylor’s camera, or co-blow a handsome person for Spit. Only time will tell…!

One-night stands. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate fear from regular ol’ dislike. Prior to this year, I’d always theorized that one-night stands would not be my jam (peep this old post where I wrote, “I’m soooo not interested in sex where the partner and I know nothing about one another… Boring!”), but this year I finally delved into them a little bit. I had one in Minneapolis and a couple more back home in Toronto.

Those experiences were okay, but they also confirmed for me what I’d already suspected: that one-night stands are not my preferred type of sex, not at all. I didn’t have an orgasm during any of those three encounters, and it wasn’t a coincidence: sex with a brand-new partner who’s a near-stranger is rough on my anxiety, making it hard for me to relax into pleasure, plus my genitals’ preferences are so specific that someone really needs to bang me a few times before they’ll learn how to get me off. With one exception (a porn shoot at a sex club, using amazing toys), all the orgasms I had during partnered sex this year were with steady romantic partners or consistent fuckpals – people who knew my body, and who I felt comfortable bossing around til they learned what worked.

Another factor that makes one-night stands not-so-great for me: there’s often alcohol involved! It isn’t necessary for us to drink before boning, of course, but it just shook out that way a lot of the time: either we went on a Tinder-borne pre-bang drinks-date, or we met at a bar or party where there was some boozin’. Alcohol numbs sexual sensation, which – for me, during one-night stands – just compounded my already-extant orgasm troubles in those situations.

It’s interesting how sometimes conquering a fear introduces you to your new favorite thing (that’s what happened for me with improv!), but other times, it just shows you how much you dislike the thing you once feared. It’s still always better to know than to suspect, though, so I’m glad I did the legwork and learned one-night stands aren’t for me. Sexual empowerment is a process, and part of that process is learning what you like and what you dislike.

I think in 2017, I’ll avoid one-night stands. (To the best of my ability, anyway. Sometimes you can’t predict when a sexual encounter will be a one-off.) The only reasonable exception I can imagine is if I’m desperately craving a dick in my mouth – in which case, I won’t be especially concerned with getting off, so it won’t matter if the non-BJ parts of the experience are subpar. I’m hoping my sexual situation in 2017 will involve some more consistent, longer-term sexual partnerships – but if not, I think I’d rather just double down on masturbation than risk terrible sex with a stranger!

What fears did you conquer in 2016?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2016: 3 Fave Encounters

Kate Sloan

Today’s “12 Days of Girly Juice” instalment sums up my three favorite bang sessions of the year, and I have an embarrassing secret to confess: unlike last year’s diverse trio of fucktimes, all three of these encounters were with the same person.

It’s embarrassing because it implies that he’s the only good partner I’ve had all year, out of the 12 partners I had in 2016, and that none of the others were worth remembering or writing about. That’s not true at all; I had so much good sex this year and all of it was worthy of celebration!

But there are emotional factors at play which affect how I think about all those encounters. Many of those people have peaced out of my life, after messy break-ups, painful rejections, and/or shocking betrayals – and that drama retroactively mars the memory of the sex I had with those folks. What was amazing sex at the time just feels sad in retrospect.

The following three stories are about a fuckbuddy I’m still friendly with, one who doesn’t make me feel sad, resentful, angry, or betrayed. As such, my memories of sex with him have been left untouched by chaotic emotions, so I’m free to recall these memories in their full splendor. They seem every bit as hot, fun, exciting and transformative now as they did then.

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I snapped this selfie for Bex before embarking on my BJ date. “Do I look pretty?!”

Impromptu blowjob date

On the evening of February 11th, I sat in a lukewarm bath, realizing my sex life was about to change.

A few days earlier, I’d blown a fuckpal whose dick just jived with my mouth. Craving blowjobs was a completely new thing to me, so it’d taken a few days to sink in: not only did I enjoy blowing him, not only did I want to do it again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about doing it again. This was, for me, unprecedented.

In a sudden fit of impulsive bravery, I leapt out of the bath, grabbed my phone, and tapped out this DM to the aforementioned good-dick’ed dude:

Apologies if this comes across as crass or un-“chill,” but I have been thinking a lot about going down on you and would 100% be down to do that again sometime soon. Just lemme know. Sincerely, girl who is totally not this much of a BJ perv with most people but just had to speak what’s on her mind(/vag).

His reply was, shall we say, enthusiastic. We hammered out details, I threw on some clothes, and then I ventured out into the icy Toronto evening, en route to dat dick.

I gave him two blowjobs that night: one when I arrived, amid giggles, blushing, and R&B slowjams – and one later, after we’d gone out for drinks and dinner, when he muttered darkly into a kiss, “I’m thinking about your mouth…”

Sexual tastes take time to shift; it’s rare for a kink to spring up, fully formed, overnight. So maybe my descent into the Blowjob Fandom was more gradual than I realized. But for me, this is the night I’ll always remember as The Beginning of My Blowjob Obsession. Some dicks are so good, they make history in your life. Some dicks are so good, they rewire your brain. Some dicks are so good, they conjure desire where before there was only distaste.

Some of the toys I brought with me to our hotel-buttsex date (and a bottle of gin).
Some of the toys I brought with me to our hotel-buttsex date (and a bottle of gin).

Anal sex in a sketchy hotel

When we went out for dinner and drinks between Blowjob One and Blowjob Two (which sounds like a duo of Dr. Seuss characters I’d dearly love to meet), we discussed the possibility of him being the first person to fuck me in the ass.

It hadn’t occurred to me before that night in that Distillery District pub, but this particular fuckbuddy was really the perfect person to usher me into the world of anal sex. I liked and trusted him, we had good sexual rapport, and he had experience with butt stuff from both sides of the dick. He outranked me in the realm of Butt Wisdom, and I trusted him to guide me through the experience.

We booked a cheap hotel for the following Monday night and met up there, both nervous as hell and self-medicating with weed (him) and gin (me). We set the scene by cuddling, talking, and joking around. And when we were ready, we started into a sex sesh that lasted about four hours in total. Four languid hours of messing around, laughing, and trying things out. My butt got fucked at some point during the proceedings, but it didn’t feel like the Main Event; everything else was so much fun that the actual butt stuff felt very low-pressure and almost like an afterthought.

This night confirmed what I already knew: that goofy, relaxed sex is my favorite kind, that a shared sense of humor and rapport is vitally important to my sexual enjoyment with a partner, and that – yes! – I like getting fucked in the ass.

I don’t know that it’s always useful to agonize over who should be “your first” when it comes to a particular sexual act. I’m endlessly picky about who I want to fist me first, for example, whereas the first person I ever had sex with was just a friend, for whom I didn’t have sexual feelings. I think the importance of the person really depends on the specific act – and because anal sex is highly intimate, emotionally risky, and physically tricky, I’m super glad I held out for someone I deeply trusted and adored. The experience could not have been any better, truly. I think back on it with immense fondness and gratitude, and I hope my butt gets fucked more in 2017!

28042689031_dbf0210c7d_oBAMF threesome

One night in April, my then-boyfriend was over an hour late to meet me. I complained to Bex, who said, “You know who’d never be late to meet you?” and then they said the name of my fuckbuddy, who, at that time, I hadn’t seen in quite a while and missed a lot.

Bex was joking about my FWB being better for me and nicer to me than my boyfriend, but they were also right. That boyf was disrespectful, unfeminist, and made me feel terrible about being a sexual person. He always wanted me to “warn him” in advance if I wanted sex, acted like it was a favor he’d begrudgingly do for me, and talked about my body less like a hot piece of ass and more like a mildly distasteful science experiment. Though I didn’t want to admit it, I missed having sex with people whose approach to sex was spontaneous, enthusiastic, and joyful. Like that far-away fuckbuddy.

After tweeting about Bex’s remarks, I went to bed, because I had work early the next morning. By the time I woke up, Bex had a) had a conversation with said fuckbuddy about my tweet, b) explained that my boyfriend was basically the worst, and c) established that me, Bex, and the FWB should totally have a threesome. Bex makes dreams come true. They hadn’t gotten the go-ahead from me to set this up, but they didn’t need to: months earlier, on a streetcar, I’d randomly turned to them and said, “Hey, hypothetically, would you ever want to have a threesome with [my FWB]?” to which Bex immediately said, “Yeah!” So there was a precedent. And now that plan had been set in motion.

Over the next six weeks, we planned, brainstormed, sexted, and negotiated. I booked a bus ticket to New York and wrote a decidedly sex-centric packing list. We titled this landmark event “the BAMF threesome” – “Bean (Agender)/Male/Female threesome” – or, alternatively, “The Great Threesome of 2016.” I broke up with my boyfriend, in part because I realized I’d never been half as excited about him as I was about this threesome.

We wore matching rainbow socks, 'cause we knew the dude liked 'em.
We wore matching rainbow socks, ’cause we knew the dude liked ’em.

I took a 10-hour overnight bus from Toronto to New York, and then trekked from the bus station to Bex’s Queens apartment with my little suitcase and backpack full of sex toys. When I arrived, I found that we were wearing the same shirt, which just reiterated the whole “we are gonna sexually team up on a dude tonight” vibe.

The threesome itself was fucking adorable. Dude came over, showered, and the three of us nervously cuddled on a couch for an hour or two, talking and catching up. Then we semi-awkwardly transitioned to kissing, moved to the bed, and took some clothes off. What followed was a blurry mess of blowjobs, fingerbanging, spanking, fucking, biting, dirty-talking, and laughing. It was a magnificent synthesis of two people I love very much and all my favorite aspects of sex. So, basically: the best.

Despite all the threesomes I’ve been involved in, they’re not really my jam – I prefer the unbroken focus and intensity of one-on-one encounters. But sometimes the stars just align, and a magic threesome materializes from the ether like a stroke of genius. This was one of those. More than a sexual encounter, it was a bonding experience, a true test of friendship, some serendipitous playtime. I felt so lucky to know both of those people.

When we were done fucking, we ordered Mexican food, ate it while sitting unselfconsciously naked on Bex’s bedroom floor, and then climbed into bed for a cuddly three-way snooze. I’ve rarely gone to bed so happy, comfortable, and satisfied in my life.

 

What were your favorite sexual encounters of 2016?