12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Today’s 12 Days of Girly Juice post highlights the 7 selfies I took this year that really tell the story of my 2018, which was… a difficult call, to say the least. Also, yeesh, it was hard not to make these just 7 great pictures of me with my boyfriend, BUT I REFRAINED. (Partially.) Enjoy…

I spent many, many hours on the phone with my Sir this year. If we conservatively guesstimate 2.5 hours a night, every night – keeping in mind that most of our phone calls last about 4 hours, but we skip nights here and there – that adds up to over 900 hours on the phone. But, as I reasoned to myself every time I wondered if this is excessive: if we weren’t a long-distance couple, it’s likely we would have spent at least that many hours together over the course of the year. So. Maybe it’s slightly less ridiculous viewed through that lens.

In any case, this is a photo I took while on the phone with Matt, and it captures a joy I rarely manage to depict in my selfies. I’m relaxed, I’m subby, I’m collared, I’m little, and I’m talking to someone I love. Last year’s selfies roundup also included a gleeful moment on the phone; I guess long, intimate, giggly calls with beaux have brought out some of my happiest times in the past year. And I’m fine with that. Some naysayers criticize technology for encouraging social detachment and isolation, but for me this year, technology – like FaceTime and Apple Calendar and Google Docs – served mostly to make me feel closer to my loved ones, not further away from them. Any technology that brings forth a smile this gleeful can’t be all bad.

The most important aesthetic decision I made this year was getting a new tattoo. Big, beautiful flowers framed by a bold, unmissable message. Shout-outs once again to Tender Ghost for the original idea and to Laura Blaney for bringing my vision to life in her signature gorgeous style; I’m happy with this beaut every time I look at it.

I took lots of selfies in the days and weeks after getting this image inked on me. Like all the best tattoos, it helped me feel more connected to my appearance, like I had more of a stake in it and more control over it. Even on days when I otherwise felt unattractive, seeing this art on my arm made me feel like I was, myself, a work of art. So I took selfie after selfie, showing myself – proving to myself – just how deeply pretty I really am.

Another moment of unadulterated glee. We snapped this on a sunny day in July, during one of Matt’s many visits to me in Toronto. We had just done an impromptu hypno scene in a nearby parkette, hence the mutual post-kink glow. I love looking for hints of our D/s dynamic in photos of us: the shyness of my submissive smile, the “watchful proud daddy” vibes in his face and his posture.

Also notable: our matching outfits. A mantra in our relationship is “We match”; I like to say it when one or the other of us is worried that our feelings are excessive, unprecedented. If one of us is feeling “too” in love and panicking about it, or missing the other “too” much and feeling guilty about it, it’s helpful to be reminded that we’re almost always on the same page, feelings-wise. We love each other a lot. We have no chill. We match. It’s for this reason that Matt started choosing coordinating ensembles for us when possible, and I love it. Especially when we’re both in blue, because, well… we have a history with that color.

It’s impossible to write about my 2018 without writing about travel, since I did so much of it – and it’s impossible for me to write about travel without complaining about it, because travel stresses me the fuck out. (Extremely #FirstWorldProblems, I am well aware.)

This is one of those photos taken automatically by a machine in the customs area of an airport – “Remove your hat and sunglasses; look at the camera; we are now taking your picture” – and, while they’re never very flattering, this one takes the cake. I had never before seen a photo of me that so perfectly captures how I feel about traveling.

It’s strange that someone with so many airport-related anxieties, someone prone to fainting on buses and crying on trains, would end up in a long-distance relationship. But maybe it’s actually perfect. Maybe being reunited once again with my beloved is one of the only things capable of pushing me through those fears to the other side.

That said, I definitely prefer when he comes to visit me and I can just meet him in the arrivals area and then go home. There are, after all, no TSA agents or grumpy entitled men or bureaucratic nightmares in my home – and there is a comfy bed where I get to kiss my boyfriend and don’t even have to show anyone my passport in order to be admitted.

This photo was taken impulsively during a jaunt to a local sex shop with a few other sex-blogger babes, just after the Playground Conference here in Toronto. I was, and am, stunned that this career and this community have enabled me to make friends from literally all around the world: the ladies pictured here come from areas as wide-reaching as Hamilton, New England, and (wait for it) FINLAND. Amazing!

When I was a baby sex nerd reading erotica anthologies in my childhood bedroom and illicitly listening to sex podcasts in math class, I never dreamed that one day my sex-nerdiness would lead me not only to an incredible career but also to friendships that cross national borders and lift me up every day. What a beautiful life I’ve carved out for myself, and what wonderful people I’ve found to share it with.

No post like this would be complete without a selfie taken with Bex, my best friend. We didn’t take many this year, but hopefully that just means we’ll take more next year.

This smiley selfie was snapped at a sexual science symposium. (I like alliteration!) We got together with my ex-sugar daddy and his wife – quite an odd crew, to say the least – and went to this big gorgeous science center in New York to chat with dildo-makers, sexual psychologists, strap-on experts, and more.

When this photo was taken, Bex and I were extremely high from some pre-event tokin’ and smokin’. It was around Valentine’s Day so the whole joint was littered with little heart-shaped candies, which we kept munching because weed. With Bex giggling next to me, asking the speakers pertinent questions, and occasionally producing candy from their jacket pocket to appease me, I knew that he was truly the best friend I need and deserve.

I’ll close on another happy note. Matt took this picture of us in our hotel bathroom on our first night at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit – one of the first events we’d ever attended together as a couple, and the first time I was introducing him to many of my friends in the blogging community. I’m visibly proud to be at an industry event, representing my business and my brand, with someone I love so much.

And once again, we match. Blue and pink: my blog-branding colors, my two favorite colors, and also two of the bi pride colors (we’re both queerdos!). Someone noticed our coordinating outfits, and asked Matt, gesturing at his shirt, “Did you do that on purpose?” He smiled a proud-daddy smile and replied, “Of course.” I felt as brightly happy as the pink flowers bursting open on my dress.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 8 Classic Tweets

Kate Sloan

I hit 9,000 followers on Twitter recently! Hoping to get to 10K in 2019. My crew on there is such a beloved part of my day and I enjoy sharing my weird thoughts with them. Here are 8 of my favorite things I tweeted this year…

I still cry with laughter whenever I think about this exchange, honestly. Bless my FWB.

My Sir really knows what I like to hear.

This was one of my most popular tweets of the year. Lots of replies mentioned that this multi-cake feast would involve a lot of Google Calendar scheduling. #polyjokes

Some of my favorite tweets this year were conversations between me and my Sir, or just hilarious things he’s said – see, for example, these classics about bottoming skills, lube in butts, wax play, sext grammar, stand-up comedy, and croissants. This Johnson/Dodson joke really cracks me up, though, because it is exactly the kind of joke that only someone I adored would make: a silly pun necessitating nerdy niche knowledge. I love this boy.

I am probably as cynical about casual sex these days as I have ever been in my life, and this joke really captures that.

“My boyfriend trash-talking shitty men” is one of my favorite genres of comedy.

I want this printed on a T-shirt and I want to wear that T-shirt all of the time.

This is what I aim for with most of my writing. It’s what I hope to continue to aim for in 2019. Auld wang syne, am I right?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 9 Best New Sex Toys

Kate Sloan

Today is one of the most exciting instalments of 12 Days of Girly Juice: I’m picking my top 9 favorite sex toys I acquired within the past year! These toys stood out from the slush pile, and are worth hyping up. Let’s start from the bottom of the list…

9. Liberator Axis. I already have plenty of Liberator products so I wasn’t expecting this one to change my life too much, but it turns out I don’t have anything quite like it. For something that seems so simple – it’s essentially a slanted piece of firm foam you can stick your Magic Wand into – it has many exciting uses. From spanking to doggie-style sex to jerking off with my head buried in a pillow, I’ve enjoyed each and every way I’ve used this neat little accessory. (Available at SheVibe, Peepshow, and the Smitten Kitten.)

8. Kronic Sensations turquoise and pink flogger. I hemmed and hawed over whether to get this when I saw it at Kink, because… how many impact toys does a girl actually need?! But after both a friend and my boyfriend said “You have to get that,” I succumbed, and I’m glad I did. It’s made of thick, heavy suede in my two favorite colors, it looks great hanging in my room, and it provides a reliably thuddy thwack that satisfies me as both a top and a bottom. Ya nailed it, Kronic Sensations geniuses. (Similar floggers available via the maker.)

7. Funkit Toys NoFrillDo B. I bought this late last year; I remember that I trekked home after the exhausting New York trip where I first met my Sir, and my new NoFrillDo was waiting for me when I arrived. I took a bath with it, and shortly thereafter, it became the first toy I ever used while sexting with my Sir – so it holds a special place in my heart! But beyond sentimental value, this is a sturdy silicone workhouse of a dildo that strokes my G-spot with precision and is girthy enough to feel really good when my vag clenches around it. (Available at SheVibe, Peepshow, and direct from Funkit Toys.)

6. We-Vibe Anniversary Collection. I only received this recently but it’s already one of my fave acquisitions of the year. It contains sparkly purple versions of what I think are We-Vibe’s two best vibrators – the Tango and the Sync – packaged in a travel-friendly carrying case that doubles as the toys’ charger. These vibes have thrillingly rumbly motors and look and feel beautiful in use. Thanks, We-Vibe! (Available at SheVibe and Peepshow.)

5. Viktoria Torments leather-wrapped baton. I bought this at a tradeshow late last year and it’s become one of my favorite impact toys. It’s possibly the thuddiest implement I own, and – uncharacteristically for this type of toy, in my experience – it also bruises nicely. If you ever want a stingy sensation at a moment’s notice, you can also flip the toy around and hit someone with the smooth wooden handle. What a dream! (Available at Kink.)

4. Neon Wand. I figured, before I tried electrostimulation, that I’d either love it or hate it; the reality is somewhere in between. Judged purely on its immediate physical sensations, it’s not my favorite type of pain – but it undeniably takes me down into subspace more quickly and effectively than lots of other sadomasochistic activities. Perhaps because I don’t fully understand it and thus am always slightly scared of it, it brings me into a helpless headspace with alarming efficiency. My sadistic boyfriend loves this, of course. (Available at SheVibe and Come As You Are.)

3. Doxy #3. As with many Doxy products, this one has some mechanical problems, which I outlined in my review and which have actually led to many shops ceasing to stock this wand. But I’ve basically learned to work around these issues, as one does with a beloved cardigan that’s missing a button or a TV that only works when its antenna is contorted just so. This miniature wand vibe’s travel-friendly stature and thrumming motor have made it a favorite companion when I travel to see my boyfriend. It’s also one of the first gifts he ever got me – an impromptu Christmas gift, a mere 12 days after we met – so I love it for that reason, too. Thanks, Sir. (Available at SheVibe.)

2. Uberrime Night King. My pals at Peepshow Toys sent this to me and I love it way more than I was expecting it to. It’s long enough to target my A-spot astonishingly well, and the shape is dick-like enough to allow me to fantasize about cocks but still has all that unique texture to keep things interesting. My Sir says I make good noises when I use this toy! Review to come in the new year… (Available at Peepshow.)

1. Weal & Breech purpleheart truncheon. Whoops, my #1 sex toy of the year is an impact toy; guess I’m kinky! I bought this at the Playground Conference in February, at my Sir’s behest, and it became a near-instant fave. The hefty wood feels thuddy, but the smooth finish gives it some sting, too. It’s easy to swing, and looks sexy as hell. I’m so looking forward to seeing what Weal & Breech come up with next – and hopefully trying one of their butt-punching mallets! (Similar products available at Come As You Are and from Weal & Breech directly.)

What toys did you love most this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 10 Perfect Sex Songs

Kate Sloan

Welcome back to 12 Days of Girly Juice, my year-end celebration of all things sexy and beloved! Today I’m writing about 10 of the best songs I enjoyed for sensual (and adjacent) purposes this year… (As ever, you can listen to all these songs – and most of my picks from previous years – in my 12 Days of Girly Juice playlist!)

Cruisr – Kidnap Me

So, uh, as you might have intuited from the title of this song, it’s kinda kinky. I don’t know if that was the band’s intention – to write a love song that is at once adorably sweet and ruthlessly perverted – but that is what they have done. “Shackle me up and lock it; I can live in your pocket. When you gonna kidnap me?” the lead singer chirps. “Tie me up to a chair; I could live in your hair. When you gonna kidnap me?”

I’m sure a vanilla person would listen to this song and think it satirical, like montages in horror movies where a killer dismembers somebody to the stylings of ’80s pop. But when I listen to it, I just hear pure, deep, perverse romance.

Say Anything – Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too

Making playlists for each other (or perhaps mix tapes, depending on your era and your level of dedication to the analog arts) is sort of a millennial-romance rite of passage. It’s a way to show your beloved both how you feel about them and how brilliant you are. A double-whammy of confessional hotness.

My Sir and I engaged in this time-honored ritual way back in February. I remember I was running around the Playground Conference, ducking in and out of panels and workshops and podcast recordings, while receiving many a text from this new beau about the epic playlist he was making me. I listened to it on my way home from the conference and cried… a lot. It had Imogen Heap and Feist and the Beach Boys and the Beatles, musical theatre and bubblegum pop, classically millennial love anthems like “Such Great Heights” and “I Really Like You.” It made me feel cradled and appreciated and seen.

One of my faves in the playlist, though, was this Say Anything song, which is about phone sex – something my Sir and I had done a lot of at that point and would continue to do a lot of. “I called her on the phone and she touched herself,” the lead singer whines in the chorus, and maybe it doesn’t sound especially romantic, but to me, it was.

Hippo Campus – Warm Glow

After my first-ever knifeplay scene, Dick asked me what I wanted to listen to during aftercare, and I told him to play some Hippo Campus. They’re my favorite band, so I didn’t even really care which songs we listened to – I know all of them practically by heart. But when he hit shuffle on their discography, this song, “Warm Glow,” was the first one that played, and it was absolutely perfect.

Longer and slower than the Hippo boys’ usual fare, “Warm Glow” has been called “a perennial anthem of positivity,” and that’s part of why I love it as an aftercare song. But I also love that it’s comfortingly repetitive, full of beautifully soothing sounds, and takes its sweet time to build up to an emotional climax. It’s exactly what I need from an aftercare song. (Want more like this? Check out my Aftercare playlist.)

The Japanese House – Saw You in a Dream

This came up in one of my Spotify Discover Weekly playlists and I was immediately hooked. Dream-pop is my jam (thanks, Spotify, you know me all too well) and this song epitomizes my favorite qualities of that genre. It’s loopy and lazy and hauntingly beautiful and sweetly wistful.

I think most of us have had the experience described in this song, of seeing an ex-lover in a dream and feeling shaken up beyond reason by seeing them again, even just in unreality. People can seem so much lovelier in retrospect than they did when they were in your life, and sometimes it’s painful. “You were the sweetest apparition, such a pretty vision,” the Japanese House’s lead singer Amber Bain croons in verse 2. “There was no reason, no explanation: the perfect hallucination.” Sometimes reminiscing about an ex can be too agonizing to bear, but other times it can be a mollifying meander down Memory Lane. Maybe it can even turn you on.

P.S. If you can’t get enough of this song – and I can’t blame you – listen to this a cappella rendition. Ideally while blazed.

Ought – Beautiful Blue Sky

This song is sexy in the way that it’s sexy to fuck someone who is almost robotically dominant: “We do this my way, we do it efficiently, and we do it now.” The driving drums and mechanical guitars forge a rhythm that builds and builds, and then there’s Tim Darcy shouting erratically on top of it all. At times, he seems to be making fun of the whole concept of small talk – “How’s the family? How’s your health been? Fancy seeing you here! Beautiful weather today!” – and the effect is of someone who desperately wants to fuck you, and will do a good job if he does, but doesn’t quite know how to get there from here.

I want my G-spot pounded to the beat of this song. It just feels right.

Ben Rector – Paris

This song is the purest distillation I’ve found of what it feels like to be in New Relationship Energy – or to be in an established relationship that still lapses back into an NRE-esque mode, raw and fresh and sweet. “I haven’t seen her for a month or so,” Ben sings; “Young love feels like finding buried gold.”

I listened to this a lot while falling in love with my Sir. Ben sings in the second verse, “I feel sixteen while we are making love,” and that’s how I felt, too: transported back to a youthful mood where everything was warm and hopeful, and nothing could touch me because I was in love! That’s not always an explicitly sexy feeling – I could write a whole essay about how NRE makes me feel a bit like a haggard zombie running on endorphin fumes – but sometimes it is, and that’s what this song feels like to me. Lust, love, and silly optimism.

John Mayer – Love on the Weekend

My brother showed me this one first. We share a long-standing love of John Mayer – his problematic qualities notwithstanding – and when this song dropped, Max said, “You’ve gotta listen to this one.” Max is usually right about such things, so I did, and damn, the boy knows me: this track is very up my alley.

Like “Paris,” “Love on the Weekend” is definitely an NRE anthem. John sings, “I’ll be dreaming of the next time we can go into another serotonin overflow,” capturing the clinical reality of love’s early days without diminishing its effects. I found this song relatable as my Sir and I fell into a more-or-less monthly routine of one of us visiting the other for a long, luxurious weekend. “It’s a Friday; we finally made it. I can’t believe I get to see your face. You’ve been working, and I’ve been waiting to pick you up and take you from this place.” Oh, John. I’ve loved you for almost two decades and you still manage to sing what my heart is thinking.

Sufjan Stevens – Movement II: Sleeping Invader

This is a standout track on Stevens’ gorgeous instrumental album The BQE, which I’ve loved for years and listened to most memorably through noise-canceling headphones during a sensory deprivation scene with my Sir this year.

Sensory deprivation – like some drugs – can have the effect of amplifying the sensations you can feel. Listening to music while high or sensory-deprived (or both) can cause my brain to organize the input it’s receiving into a narrative that fits with the music I’m hearing. So as my Sir did painful/pleasurable things to my restrained, blindfolded, high little body, I found that those sensations mapped themselves onto the orchestral swells and pulses and pings of The BQE. The album wasn’t just background noise for the scene; to me, it guided the scene, echoed it, co-created it, fused with it.

This felt like a natural continuation of my relationship with this album, which I had once listened to while high and gotten so turned on from the beauty of it that I almost came, untouched. Music is strange like that.

Alina Baraz – Yours

Alina is on this list every year, and not just because it’s tradition at this point: she creates some of the sexiest music I’ve ever heard.

I got a little misty-eyed the first time I heard this song, because in the chorus, Alina sings: “Love me like I’m never gonna leave. Love me like I’m yours.” It reminded me so much of my Sir’s dependable assurances that he has no plans to break up with me, despite my anxious brain always fearing I’m about to lose him. There is something so sexy about simply feeling safe, especially when you go through your day-to-day life never being entirely convinced of your safety. I am skeptical of the whole concept of “lovemaking” – that ooey-gooey brand of hyper-vanilla sex that’s overrepresented in mainstream media and makes my skin crawl – but the arguably romantic act of my Sir murmuring “You’re safe” while he spanks me and steps on me and fucks me is nonetheless as hot and rejuvenating to me as a shot of cinnamon whiskey. It warms me from the inside out. So does this song.

The Esbjörn Svensson Trio – Eighty-Eight Days in My Veins

I can’t believe this song hasn’t made it onto this list before! I’ve loved it for at least ten years, since the days when I’d listen to JazzFM when I couldn’t sleep and take diligent notes on my favorite tracks if the announcers remembered to mention their names (this was pre-Shazam!). I remember hearing the intense, complex lead piano part on this track and feeling transported to another dimension, somewhere icy and angry and full of longing. (My love for this song, and this trio, deepened even further when I found out years later that Esbjörn Svensson had tragically died in a scuba-diving accident at age 44, with decades of beautiful piano-playing still left in him. Rest in power, you Swedish god.)

This song’s been in my aftercare playlist for a while, because it’s so familiar to me as to be soothing – I can sing along with the piano part as it skips erratically all over the musical map (what a nerd). But it’s a sexy song in its own right. One memorable evening this year, my Sir connected my phone to the Bluetooth speakers in the hotel we were staying at so I could pipe my aftercare playlist throughout our room after sex, but by the time we got to this song, we were already fucking again. He came in my throat sometime around the intense, syncopated climax of “Eighty-Eight Days.” It was for that reason that I texted him gleefully to announce when our relationship turned 88 days old. We are nerds and we are in love.

What sexy songs did you love this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 11 Favorite Blog Posts

Kate Sloan

I wrote over 125 blog posts this year. It’ll be 137+ if you count this 12 Days of Girly Juice series. That’s 2.63 blog posts a week, for the whole year. Uhhh. I wasn’t joking when I said that sometimes my hypomania makes me more productive than is actually good for me…

Choosing my favorite 11 blog posts of the year was a tough task, but these are the ones I enjoyed working on the most and have loved looking back on since. They’re also, in many cases, some of the posts my readers seemed to resonate most with. Yay!

“Slow Burn“ was the first post I ever wrote about my Sir, back when he was just my crush, occasionally my Sir or my daddy, but not yet my boyfriend or my partner or my love. It featured – weirdly, and incomprehensibly to anyone who is not us – a photo of the room we were in when we kissed for the first time. It’s a “romantic screed” about wanting to fuck someone, but not being able to yet, and the ways that repeated recollection and rumination can re-write a memory into a legend. I sent this piece to Matt before publishing it, to make sure he was comfortable with it; he devoured it and replied immediately, “Wow wow wow, wow that’s good. I consent to all of it. A lot.” Later that night, on the phone, he asked if he could read it out loud to me, thus beginning what would become one of our most treasured traditions. Suffice it to say that this post holds an important place in my heart.

I wrote “Do You Want It Too?“ in the very early days of my relationship with Matt, when we were still negotiating, experimenting, and working out the kinks (so to speak) in our new D/s dynamic. I was amazed by how asking for something you want, sex-wise or kink-wise, can be incredibly vulnerable and scary, but tends to pay off if you’re doing it with a kind, open-hearted person. I wrote about some of the manifestations of that in our early courtship: cocktails, honorifics, iron pills, sadomasochism, makeup, and more. Our New Relationship Energy was amplified by the constant rediscovery that he, indeed, wanted what I wanted.

Next, predictably, we fell in love, and that’s what “How Did You Know You Were In Love?“ is about. I became obsessed with this question from the moment Matt texted me from a London hotel room to let me know he’d been Googling “love” and reading its Wikipedia page to try to figure out if it fit what he was feeling (what a nerd). We talked about how both of us had been in love a few times before but it was hard to know if that word also applied to our present feelings, simply because it all happened so quickly, so intensely, from a distance of 500 miles. But through much self-reflection – including writing this post – I eventually realized that yep, I was very much in love.

Matt’s fave thing I’ve written about him is “Little Girl Blue,” so I couldn’t leave it out. It was directly inspired by the first gift he ever bought me: a copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Our relationship was haunted by the color blue, especially in its early days – a blue app, a blue button-down shirt, a blue book, a blue collar, blue cells in a spreadsheet, two gorgeous blue eyes. This is a post about how everything can seem beautiful and meaningful when you’re mired in new love – everything is heightened, from feelings to words to, yes, colors.

“8 Strategies For Taking More (Consensual) Pain“ was definitely my favorite how-to post I wrote all year. It highlights some of the cognitive, linguistic, and logistical methods I use to increase my masochistic limits in kink scenes. I hope folks found it useful!

I’ve long been captivated by the idea of revisiting emotionally significant locations from your past to imbue them with new meaning, and that’s what “This is the Place“ is about. I wrote about romantic interludes in playgrounds, parkettes, and parking garages – and what happened when I returned to those locales at less tumultuous times.

While I had previously written about our first date, I think “A Second Date in a Golden Room“ is my favorite thing I’ve written about a specific date with my Sir. It was definitely the most nervewracking date of my life, because of the amount of build-up that preceded it and hopes I had charged it with. I interwove the story of the date with excerpts from our actual texts that day, seeking to recreate the adrenaline high that seized me and wouldn’t let go. Peppermint tea and peppery pasta, a black velvet dress and a blue wool suit, a warm hand in mine and warm lips almost kissing me – these are some of my sense memories from one of my most exciting nights on this earth.

Matt and I collaborated on a lot of posts this year – most notably our Intimate Intercourse series of interviews – but I think my fave collab we worked on was “Cocks & Cocktails: Drink Pairings for Sex Toys.” I threw a bunch of sex toy names at him and then made frantic notes while he extemporized on which drinks best suited those toys. Synthesizing the brilliant thoughts of someone I love is always a fun challenge, and I love the way one of my interests and one of his came together to make this post.

Let’s get sappy… “10 Thoughts on a Long-Term Relationship Out of Left Field“ was my love letter to the whole idea of established, settled love, something I hadn’t really experienced for years. It wasn’t always my decision to end relationships so soon after beginning them, but nonetheless it still felt like my fault: the result of a personal failing, an embarrassing inability to sustain anyone’s interest. So, needless to say, I had a lot of Feelings about finally finding someone I wanted to stay with for a while, who wanted (and wants) to stay with me for a while too.

One of the most fun (yet most complicated) posts I worked on all year was “A Month’s Worth of Phone Sex,” which is exactly what it sounds like. I made scattered notes after every phone-sex sesh we had all month – which, as it turned out, totaled 19 times in 30 days – and then tried to write about them, though, as I’ve learned over and over in my years of being a sex writer, it’s very tricky to write about sexual encounters in a way that adequately translates the magic of them to someone reading from the outside. I did my best, though!

Finally: “When Your Partner Comes Out As Your Partner“ was definitely one of my most emotional and meaningful posts all year long. Reading it still makes me cry. Whoops.

What are your fave things you’ve read or written this year?