All Reviews

Review: Zumio

Kate Sloan

Immediately after trying the Zumio for the first time, I texted the person I was dating, “This thing is intense. I think it would be good for a forced-orgasm scene.”

“Oh yeah?” he replied, and my fate was sealed.

The reason this idea occurred to me is that the Zumio feels like it’s inducing not-entirely-voluntary orgasms even when I use it by myself. It’s like stepping into a shower that’s just a little too hot, getting close to static electricity without being zapped, running just a little faster than your lungs can handle because it’s exhilarating. It’s pleasure that’s just slightly uncomfortable.

Let me clarify. If I was to hold the Zumio’s extremely pinpointed tip directly on my exposed clit, it would certainly be uncomfortable. I know because I’ve tried. This toy oscillates rather than vibrating, much like my beloved Eroscillator, but unlike the Eroscillator, all the oscillation is focused into a tiny, hard tip. It is not cushioned, diluted, or spread out at all. You will only like the Zumio if you like your clitoral stimulation very focused and very intense.

This is why I wanted a partner to use it in a forced-orgasm scene. Giving him control of this toy was an act of pure, deep trust. That’s exactly the shit I love most about kink.

Knowing my tastes, and how ridiculously sensitive and picky my clit is, he held the Zumio lengthwise so its oscillating shaft just barely grazed the side of my clit through one inner labia. He kept it on the lowest speed. That was enough, honestly. Paired with a great dildo stroking my A-spot, this thing got me off in less than ten minutes – a feat for me when it comes to partnered sex.

Image via MyZumio.com

The timeframe is worth noting, because Zumio first entered the consciousness of many sex toy reviewers by making the ostentatious claim that it can make you come in 60 seconds. I hate this prescriptive nonsense – it makes slow masturbators feel broken and fast masturbators feel rushed – so I put it to the test. The Zumio has pretty reliably gotten me off in 10-15 minutes each time I’ve used it, making it slightly slower at this than many of my other clitoral toys. I think this is because it’s so stimulating that I often have to take breaks or back off for a while before I can ramp back up. I don’t have a problem with taking my time, but I do think it’s worth noting that there’s nothing wrong with your junk if Zumio’s ridiculous one-minute promise doesn’t hold true for you.

When using the Zumio solo, I prefer to apply it to my clit through panties. Used directly, it’s a little too intense for me, even on the lowest speed, especially toward the start of a session. As I get more turned on, sometimes I can handle a little more, but I’ve still never gone past the third speed out of eight.

As vibrators and oscillators go, the Zumio is quite quiet. It’s waterproof, and has a travel lock – both important features for me, a bath-lovin’ jetsetter. It recharges in a little plastic induction cup, which is easy to use but takes eighteen fucking hours (I leave mine in the cup between uses so I don’t have to worry about this silliness). The handle, happily, barely vibrates even when the tip is oscillatin’ up a storm.

I wish the handle design was more ergonomic. It’s designed so you can hold it between thumb and forefinger like a pen, but then you have to reach awkwardly far down the shaft to operate the buttons. This is sometimes a little tricky when the chronic joint pain in my wrists and knuckles is acting up, so often I end up pressing the buttons with my other hand, for which I have to momentarily abandon whatever other toy(s) I might be using. A small quibble, but one worth knowing about.

The main factors that will make or break this toy for you are the pinpoint tip and the intensity. You have to really love both of those qualities to love this toy. If you want something broader, get a Magic Wand. If you want something that has some lower speed options, get the Eroscillator. If you want a clit toy but you’re not sure you want to spend $140+ on it, get the We-Vibe Tango.

But if you absolutely must have a leg-shakingly, breath-catchingly, mild-discomfort-inducingly strong and pinpointed clitoral stimulator, get the Zumio. To my knowledge, there’s nothing else quite like it.

 

Thanks to Zumio for sending me their product to review! You can buy it at SheVibe ($140), Ignite ($140), and Peepshow ($140).

10 Reasons the We-Vibe Tango is (Still) My Favorite Clit Vibe

Kate Sloan

I’m moving to a new home next week, and while I’ve packed up almost all the sex toys I’m planning on bringing, there were a few items I just had to leave out incase I needed them sometime before leaving. Among this group of exceptional outliers is my duo of We-Vibe Tango vibrators.

I got my first Tango just over five years ago, and it was love at first orgasm. I’ve owned a total of four Tangos in my masturbatory career – due to, it must be said, these toys’ one major flaw, their less-than-stellar battery that tends to give out after 2-3 years. But the Tango is one of those rare toys that I’m happy to keep re-buying every few years if I have to. The orgasms it provides are so deep, delicious, and consistent that they’re worth shelling out for.

Here are the 10 biggest reasons the Tango remains a bedside staple of mine, all these years later…

It’s strong. Like, shockingly strong for such a small vibe. There are only a few other bullet-sized vibes this strong that I can think of: the Jopen Lust L2, Swan Wand Mini, ScreamingO Charged Vooom and VeDO Bam. There’s also We-Vibe’s other mini-vibe offering, the Touch, though it’s made of soft silicone instead of hard plastic so it doesn’t conduct vibration as well as the Tango. Suffice it to say, the Tango is easily one of the strongest vibrators you can get at this price point or this size.

It’s rumbly. This is a different consideration from vibration strength; it’s the quality of the vibrations. The Tango rumbles, thrums, pounds against your body; it does not cause near-instant numbness like buzzier vibes do. What’s remarkable about the Tango is that it remains rumbly even at its higher speeds. This is ultimately what makes the Tango indispensable to me: almost nothing else is this strong and this rumbly, and certainly nothing else of this size.

It’s small. The Tango is my most-used toy during partnered sex. This is partly because it’s one of my most-used toys overall, but also, it’s particularly well-suited to partner play because of its size. It slots easily between bodies during intercourse, can be tucked into a pocket or purse at a moment’s notice for a sex-date, and doesn’t get in the way if I’m pairing it with a dildo or a partner’s fingers.

It’s waterproof. As a diehard fan of the bathtime wank, this is an important consideration for me. What’s more, being underwater doesn’t seem to dampen the Tango’s vibrations much, if at all.

It’s rechargeable. This is pretty much a requirement for me; I don’t fuck with battery-powered vibes anymore if I can help it. The Tango’s finicky charger used to bug me, but a We-Vibe rep taught me a trick to make it easier to use, and now I have zero issues with it. Yay!

It has a versatile shape. I most often press the Tango’s flat tip against the right side of my clit, but there are tons of other ways to use it. You can play with the pointed tip or the broad rounded side; you can lay it against the whole length of your clit or just one specific spot. So many options!

It’s quiet. Particularly for a vibe this strong, the Tango is uncommonly quiet. It’s still audible, yeah, but it’s certainly no Le Wand.

It can be used in other toys: anything that has a hole/slot/sleeve for a bullet vibe. This includes, for example, some vibrating cock rings, butt plugs, harnesses, and dildos. Throw out the shitty, buzzy bullet that comes with these toys, and grab a Tango instead. It’s strong enough that you’ll be able to actually feel the vibrations through the toy.

It can be used hands-free. We-Vibe’s own Dusk attachment allows for hands-free orgasms, as Epiphora first chronicled in her review. Depending on your anatomy, you may also be able to pull off this neat trick I do sometimes: I can tuck the Tango between my outer and inner labia, and it’ll more-or-less stay put while I scroll through dirty fanfiction, click around porn sites, and so on. Magic!

Are you a fan of the We-Vibe Tango? Why or why not?

Book Review: Everything and a Happy Ending

Kate Sloan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Review: Stockroom Cocksucker’s Mirror

Kate Sloan

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

“Why?” he asked, reasonably.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And y’all, I looked hot.

 

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

Review: Le Wand

Kate Sloan

Y’all, I’m so angry about the Le Wand. SO ANGRY. It has been a long time since a sex toy has pissed me off this much. But I have some Opinions and Feelings about this one and we are going to talk about them.

This rechargeable wand vibrator – sent to me for my honest review by the lovely folks at Peepshow Toys – was designed as an upgrade to existing wand vibes like the Magic Wand and Doxy. In a braggy interview about her product, designer Alicia Sinclair says, “I’ve always found the aesthetics and design of wands rather unappealing, industrial and masculine… In my humble opinion, Le Wand satisfies this need in the market by offering a refined classic wand massager with upgraded features and gorgeous design.”

It’s definitely good for companies to keep trying to outdo the Magic Wand, reigning queen of the wand vibe genre. Innovation and improvement are important, and perpetual forward motion in the market is one of the only good things about capitalism. But here’s the thing: if you claim to be innovative, you need to actually innovate. The Le Wand does not. In fact, in many ways, it’s a massive step backward for wand vibrators.

First, let’s talk aesthetics. Sinclair says her wand’s design is “elegant,” “sensual,” “fresh” and “stylised.” But let’s be real: it’s essentially a re-skin of the Magic Wand Rechargeable. Seriously, they look like fraternal twins. The product names are printed in the same spot, the number of buttons is the same and they are located in exactly the same place on the body of the toy, the bases of the toy are the same shape, and they even use the same charger! For a toy that claims to be so groundbreaking, the Le Wand sure seems like a straight-up ripoff of the Magic Wand.

It’s not an improvement vibrations-wise, either. Though Le Wand’s ad copy repeatedly claims its vibrations are rumbly, it’s one of the buzzier wands of this size that I’ve tried. The Magic Wand, especially on its two lower speeds, is so delightfully rumbly that you can actually see its head thrumming back and forth during use, and feel it rippling against you. The Le Wand, comparatively, stays pretty stationary and its vibrations are much more surface-level, leading to numbness far more quickly. My clit gets bored and blasé instead of staying engaged and excited.

And the noise! The Le Wand is one of the loudest vibrators I’ve ever encountered. Even on the lowest speed, it sounds like an angry robotic cow having a mooing tantrum. Its lowest speed is just as loud as the Magic Wand Rechargeable’s highest speed, though not as strong or as rumbly. In testing my Le Wand, I was reminded of that time a partner fucked me with a toy while my best friend shot porn in the next room; I had my Magic Wand on my clit, set to the lowest speed, and it was quiet enough that we didn’t even have to worry about fucking up the porn happening nearby. There’s no way that would’ve been true if I was using the Le Wand. (It wouldn’t have gotten me off anywhere near as quickly, either.)

The Le Wand’s head is more rounded than the angular, squarish head of the Magic Wand. For many people, this won’t be an issue, but for me, it has a marked effect on my ability to get off with this toy: I prefer relatively pinpoint stimulation on my clit, so I always hold my Magic Wand slightly angled so as to get that focused corner right on my clit. That isn’t possible with the smooth, rounded head of the Le Wand, though they do sell attachments separately which can narrow the vibrations into a slimmer shape.

Additionally, one of the most-advertised features of the Le Wand – its bendy neck – isn’t actually as effective as the toy’s promotional copywriters seem to think. As with the Magic Wand, there’s a little flexibility in the neck, but you have to press pretty hard to get it to bend. This is a good thing for people who like pressure on their clit, but seems to me like false advertising.

The Le Wand has 20 different vibration patterns, and unlike most patterns, some of them are actually good. My complaint about patterns is usually that they’re too slow or that there’s too much space between bursts of vibration, so they act as a tease without really getting me closer to orgasm. But many of the Le Wand’s patterns are continuous vibration moving up and down in waves or fast pulses, so I can actually get off using them. This toy’s vibrations are still so aggressively buzzy that I don’t like using it on my bare genitals, because of the numbness and slight itchiness that ensues – but the Le Wand’s patterns, applied to my vulva through panties and/or pants, can be kind of nice sometimes.

But for a vibe that costs $170, the Le Wand should be way better than it is. It should be rumblier and quieter, and it shouldn’t be an obvious Hitachi clone. The Magic Wand Rechargeable costs only $125 and is superior in every way that matters to me. Get that one, or the also-wonderful (but electric, not rechargeable) Doxy Wand for $120. You’ll be much happier with either choice than you would with the shrill, buzzy bleating of the Le Wand.

 

Thanks so much to Peepshow Toys for sending me this vibe to review!