Personal

My Sex Toy Drawers

Kate Sloan

Today I’m going to take a leaf out of Epiphora’s book and show you how I store my sex toys. This is something I’m always curious about with other people, so I thought I’d share some photos for those of you who obsess over toy storage as much as I do!

When I first started reviewing sex toys, I cleaned out this old stack of plastic drawers that had been holding miscellaneous papers and objects in my bedroom for years. I had previously been keeping my sex toys in a vintage hatbox, but my collection was already starting to outgrow that method, so I knew it was time for an upgrade.

On top of the drawers, I keep my external hard drives (there’s no other place for them to go, so whatevs!), a bottle of antibacterial toy cleaner, and a washcloth for wiping off the cleaner once it’s done its job. I also usually keep newer toys on top of the drawers as a reminder to myself that I need to use them so I can review them.

The top drawer holds all my frequently-used favorites, with the exception of the Eroscillator which I keep plugged in at my bedside. This drawer contains the Fling, Pure Wand, Tsunami (review coming on Friday!), Lelo Mona, Turbo Glider, and Amethyst. I’ve also stuffed in some Tantus stickers that I don’t know what to do with, and my original Eroscillator attachments, which I never use now that I have the fingertip attachment.

The second drawer holds anal toys like the Ripple and Joe Rock, vaginal exercisers like the Eclipse balls and Magic Banana, and couples’ toys like the Tiani and FixSation. I’ve also filled this drawer with toy wipes, small bottles and packets of lube, unneeded bullet vibes, flavored condoms, and latex gloves. This is basically a drawer of miscellany. As a side note, I keep all the silicone toys wrapped in plastic bags so that they don’t touch each other and have chemical reactions.

My third drawer is deeper than the others, so it can fit more stuff. I use it to hold all the dildos I use sometimes but not too often, like the Ella, Adam, and Echo. Once again, I keep the silicone toys wrapped in plastic bags (which are kept in this drawer for easy access), and I try to wrap all the glass toys in some kind of padded covering, like a scarf or some packing materials.

The bottom drawer doesn’t get used very often. Currently it’s where I keep extra condoms, porn DVDs, erotica books, and random instructional booklets that came with some of my toys.

As for the toys I own that I rarely or never use anymore, those get stashed in my hatbox, where I can remove them to show them off to friends but don’t actually have to look at them or deal with them. I keep condoms in a little easy-access basket right next to my bed, and lube just adjacent to that.

How do you store your sex toys? What would be the ideal storage system for your toy collection?

You Get to Choose How You Identify

Kate Sloan

The more I learn about queer and trans issues, the more I notice the prevalence of one particular truth in those spaces: you get to decide what labels you want to refer to yourself by.

This applies to many aspects of one’s identity. Sexual orientation is the obvious, glaring one. A woman might have sex with exclusively women, but if she identifies as primarily straight, you have to accept that. A young kid may tell you he’s gay, and you’re not allowed to say “But you don’t know yet!” because most people do know when they’re kids, even if they can’t articulate it or understand it. A person’s sexual identity may be the polar opposite of what you’d expect from them, but ultimately they are the ones who know best about who and what they are.

By that same token, I believe you get to choose whether or not you identify as a virgin.

Hear me out. Virginity is such a loaded topic. Some folks think it depends on the size and state of a membrane of skin embedded in your genitalia. Some think your virginity can be “taken” from you in nonconsensual situations, that people who are sexually assaulted, no matter their age, are no longer virginal. And still others think you can lose your virginity to a sex toy or your own fingers.

Here’s my own rough timeline of potentially lost virginities, according to various opinions that exist on the topic:
Age 6: Started touching my own genitals for pleasure.
Age 9: Reached my first orgasm, with the help of a bath faucet.
Age 12: Experimented with penetrating myself with my fingers.
Age 15: Used my first sex toys, both penetrative and not.
Age 16: Participated in oral sex with another girl.
Age 16: Was penetrated by another girl’s strapped-on silicone dildo.
Age 18: Participated in manual and oral sex with a guy.
Age 19: Was penetrated by a real, live, flesh-and-blood penis.

Here’s the thing, though… I didn’t feel that I really lost my virginity until I was 18. And that has nothing to do with the fact that it was with a dude, and everything to do with the fact that I was emotionally connected to him, unlike the girl I’d slept with who was my friend but not my passion. I still felt like a virgin when I was 17, but not when I was 19. My personal definition of my virginity is my choice to make, and I can do that by any criteria I choose.

I’ve never believed in virginity as a physical trait. Part of this came from growing up in communities and religions where there wasn’t much emphasis placed on the hymen: my parents, teachers, and doctors were more likely to lecture me about the emotional stresses of having sex than the physical changes that might occur. I was aware that I had a hymen, but I didn’t care about it. I even attempted to break it myself with hairbrush handles and shampoo bottles, because I wanted it gone. I didn’t want it to stop me from enjoying my first time having sex.

The first time I remember really pondering the concept of virginity was when I had my first kiss. I was twelve years old and we were playing Spin the Bottle in a deserted playground after our sixth-grade graduation. I was forced to kiss a boy for whom I had no romantic feelings whatsoever; we both closed our eyes and our friends shoved us toward each other, culminating in a “kiss” that lasted less than a second. I remember thinking, even then, that that was not a satisfactory event to be forever branded My First Kiss. I wanted a different one.

And so, when, four years later, I shared my next kiss with my first girlfriend, who filled me with teenage lust and wonder, that felt like my first kiss. And I decided to refer to it as such, from then on. When people ask me about my first kiss, I tell them, “My first real kiss was on my first girlfriend’s porch.” Very rarely does anyone ask for details about the kisses that came before that, the “not real” ones.

So what’s my point in all this? I believe in our freedom of choice when it comes to defining our own identities, and our own landmark moments. I believe that part of true independence is having the liberty and bravery to tell your own story from a perspective that makes sense to you. I believe in wearing rose-colored glasses if that’s a way you can fill your life with meaning and lift yourself up.

Readers: How do you choose to self-identify? Was your first kiss or first sexual experience different from the one you think of as your “real” first?

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?

Story Time: My First Girlfriend

Kate Sloan

There’s nothing quite like being freshly out of the closet.

Once the smoke has cleared and you’re no longer dealing with a daily onslaught of reactions to your announcement, you can see the enormous horizons in front of you. You can see all the people who you now have permission to date and to fuck. And it’s a freeing, though incredibly terrifying, feeling.

I came out as bi when I was fifteen, after I realized that a raver chick who’d been flirting with me was actually pretty attractive. Not just in an “Oh hey, I like her outfit” kind of way, but in an “I wouldn’t mind if she pinned me against a wall and kissed me til my lips bruise” kind of way.

The raver girl got a boyfriend just before school let out for the summer. I remember being crushed when, on the last day of ninth grade, I stood by the front doors and watched her walk out, hand in hand with her new man (or should I say, boy). I had this sense that she was the only girl in possession of the key to my bisexuality, and I’d have to give up on girls forever now. It was silly, but it was how I felt.

But when we got back to school after the summer of my first Pride, I noticed a new girl. A charming, awkward, witty, intelligent girl who loved Edward Albee and potato latkes. Her gender presentation veered toward androgyny, and she proudly self-identified with the word “dyke,” but she was nowhere near butch. To this day, I still have a thing for girls who are boyish as hell but still very much girls (which I realize is hard to conceptualize and visualize – it’s more of a “vibe” thing, I suppose).

She wrote to me online to tell me she liked something I’d written, some story I’d read aloud in the English class we’d shared in the previous school year. We sent messages back and forth after that, rarely encountering each other at school but encountering each other multiple times a day in our online haunts. We talked about books and films and strange societal phenomena.

I remember standing at the sinks in the girls’ bathroom with my best friend at the time, and telling her, “I think I have a crush on that girl I’ve been talking to.” My friend said, “You should ask her out!” Like it was so simple. Like I was that brave. Like I was ready to take on my first relationship, period, let alone my first queer relationship.

It took me an entire month to build up a sense that The Girl actually liked me, in some way beyond just admiring my writing and my taste in horror flicks. But she did. I was almost certain of it. The way she looked up at me demurely when I walked by her group of friends at lunch, the way she snuck out of detention just to talk to me for a few short minutes, the way she kept mentioning her gayness and my biness as if to confirm the compatibility of the two. It seemed almost like an invitation.

Once, on the subway, I leaned forward to hug her just as the train was pulling into my stop, and it suddenly jerked, causing me to fall right into her. Body contact. Words caught somewhere in my esophagus. I gasped and giggled and rushed off the train, euphoric.

So it was finally time to do something about it.

I wrote her a letter, though “assembled” would probably be a better word, since it was actually just an annotated collection of excerpts from my journal. The excerpts explained that I really, really liked her, that I wanted to be with her and thought she was wonderful and thought about kissing her. Mushy crap that I figured she would like.

After shoving the letter nervously into her hands at the very end of a party, I said goodbye and rushed home. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her when she read that thing. I wanted to be far enough away that she could completely ignore me if she wanted to.

But she didn’t want to. My phone rang shortly after I arrived home.

“Hello?”
“Hi.” It was her.
“Hi.” I felt like I’d been dunked in ice.
“Hi. So… we should date.”

And so began the most gutwrenching and romantically titillating few weeks of my life thus far.

To be continued…?

Readers: Have any romantic stories from your youth to share? Did your first boyfriend/girlfriend live up to your expectations of relationships? How have you grown since then?

The Charm of Cunnilingus

Kate Sloan

Sometimes I ask myself why I’m so obsessed with cunnilingus. The word, the concept, the act, all loom large in my sexual fantasies and my sexual life. When I filled out compatibility questions for OkCupid, I made it mandatory that all potential matches “love performing oral sex.” That’s how into cunnilingus I am.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s a proclivity that developed due to the fact that my first sexual relationship consisted almost entirely of cunnilingus… but when I’m honest with myself, I know that the preoccupation dates back further than that. I remember writing oral-soaked fan fiction when I was a wee thing. I remember masturbating by rubbing my teddy bear’s face against my vulva. I remember imagining that the bath water cascading onto my clit was the tongue of an attentive lover.

Some time ago, I started a cunnilingus-themed blog, its aim to collect a whole bunch of images, text, and videos on the topic into one area, for fellow enthusiasts to enjoy. I was proud of the blog, and treasured the feeling that I was filling a void where there had been very little before. But as proud as I was, it was still difficult for me to tell my boyfriend (who, at the time, I’d only been dating for a month or two) about my blog, because I worried he’d think I was some kind of oral sex addict. I didn’t want to come off as sexually selfish.

After he started going down on me regularly, though, I felt like the taboo was lifted. He was clearly a fan of it too (hell, we’d met on OkCupid, which I’d set up to guarantee this for me) and I felt able to open up about my sexual obsession. I told him about my blog, and we discussed what made cunnilingus such a magical, beautiful thing.

Here’s my theory:

Penises want warm, wet things to surround them. That is their goal in life. So whether it be a pussy or a mouth or a well-lubed ass, that need is being met fairly regularly for the vast majority of men in sexual relationships.

The clitoris is analogous to the penis, so it stands to reason that it would crave the same warm, wet sensations – but it doesn’t get them in most typical forms of sex and masturbation. Doesn’t matter how intense the vibrator, how fast the fingers, or how well-angled the pubic bone – it’s not warm, it’s not wet, it’s not entirely fulfilling (at least in my case).

In that way, I feel that it would be 100% reasonable and expectable for a woman to consider cunnilingus mandatory in all of her sexual relationships. Naturally, not every woman likes receiving oral sex and not every partner is interested in giving it, but no woman should ever be shamed out of asking for oral if it’s what she wants. It’s every bit as valid, important, and wonderful as a blowjob could ever be.

I also feel that, as women, we are constantly being told that there’s something wrong with our genitals – clit too big, labia too long, pussy too loose, too tangy, too smelly, what have you – and so there’s something incredibly powerful about someone being willing, even wanting, to take all that into their mouth. True, there are also men who feel ashamed of their junk, but I don’t think it’s as systematic and pervasive as vagina-hate.

To this day, cunnilingus is still the fastest way to get me going. I would almost consider it a fetish (though, arguably, “standard” sexual acts can’t really be “fetishes,” since they aren’t exactly deviant or different) because I pretty much have to be either receiving it or thinking about it to be able to reach orgasm.

I’m lucky enough to have a lover who loves the whole concept of pussy-eating as much as I do. It’s a part of our experience almost every time we have sex, because it’s something we mutually enjoy very much. And it helps get me primed so I can come much easier during intercourse – always a plus, for both of us!

I wish I could go back in time and talk to my younger self. After giving her a loving lecture on the importance of self-acceptance and not giving a damn what anyone thinks, I’d add, “You know how you love the idea of someone going down on you? Yeah, that’s going to happen a lot when you’re older. Just wait it out.” I know she’d be totally stoked.

Readers: What’s your relationship with cunnilingus? What are your thoughts on how it’s depicted in porn and mainstream media? Got any recommendations of must-see videos, images, or text for a cunnilingus enthusiast?