50 Things To Do When You’re Single on Valentine’s Day

Kate Sloan

It’s taken me a long time to get here, but I think, at this point in my life, I actually find Valentine’s Day more fun when I’m single than when I’m dating someone.

See, when you’re in a relationship, the dreaded V-Day can feel like an obligation. But when you’re single, it’s an invitation. An invitation to step up your self-love and look for the potential fun in the day. Here are 50 suggestions for how to do that…

Take yourself out for dinner at your favorite restaurant. Make a reservation if you want; you’ll probably need one. Solo dinners out are a scary thing to do on any ol’ day, let alone one of the busiest days of the year for restaurants, but this is exactly the kind of self-love challenge Valentine’s is perfect for. Bring a book to read or your journal to write in, order your favorite dish, and revel in your own company!

Alternatively, order your favorite takeout and eat it someplace cozy. Your best friend’s living room. A blanket fort constructed in your own bed. A secret hideout you happen to know about on your local university’s campus. All of these are excellent places to eat delicious food, alone or with a friend.

Re-read your favorite book from when you were a teenager. The twists and turns of a familiar plot are so comforting in their predictability. And you may get a visceral glimpse at that idealistic kid you used to be, and how you can be more like them now.

Go out with your single friends. A bar, a movie, a party, an impromptu scavenger hunt… It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as you’re with people who make you laugh and feel like you belong.

Do a witchy love ceremony, whatever that happens to mean to you. For me, it’d probably involve meditating in a pink bubble bath while clutching pieces of rose quartz, slithering into a pink negligée, slicking on some red lipstick, and yawping some loving affirmations at my beautiful reflection in the mirror. What kind of romantic magic feels most needed and nourishing to you now?

Soak in warm water, whether that means your bathtub or a local heated pool or a friend’s hot tub. Pondersome soaks relax the body and allow the mind to wander. Bonus points if you pull an Oprah and accessorize your bath with scented candles, a glass of wine, a bath pillow, or whatever other little luxuries bliss you out.

Masturbate elaborately. Use as many toys as you want. Make as much noise as you reasonably and pleasurably can. Do all the things you can to yourself that you wish partners would do to you.

Choose a quality you miss about one of your exes and figure out how to embody that quality yourself. I often wish I was as funny as some of my exes; I could work on that by upping my comedy podcast intake and learning a few good jokes to tell! If you admired well-read exes, check a few new books out of the library. If you miss an ex’s kind, supportive heart, look for ways to support and help a friend today. You get the picture.

Write a love letter to a future partner. I love any mental exercise that helps me focus on what I want without making me feel bad about not having it yet, and this is one such exercise. Tell your future lover all the places you want to take them, the stories you can’t wait to tell them, the things they should know if they plan to love you. Let yourself get excited by the knowledge that there are so many hot, interesting people out there with tons of love to give, and some of them will give it to you.

Try something drastically different with your look. Sometimes a new makeup technique, clothing silhouette, hair color, or tattoo can be just the thing to remind you of what a babe you are.

Take a nap while cuddling something – a pet, a stuffed animal, a friend who consents to cuddles. Hell, I’ve even cuddled my Magic Wand before. A mid-day nap is such a lovely gift to give yourself.

Do an at-home spa routine. Yes, even if you are not normally the type of person who does stuff like this. You can give yourself a manicure (with clear nail polish, if you insist), slather on a face mask, soak and pumice your poor neglected feet, or just moisturize your entire body. Anything that makes you feel nourished and cute.

Journal about your feelings. Valentine’s Day is a perfect day to check in with yourself about your attitudes, beliefs, and hopes around relationships and sex. Sit somewhere cozy with your journal and pen (or a writing-centric web app, if you prefer), and ask yourself: how are you feeling about being single? What would you like your next relationship to be like? What do you need to work on or do differently to make that possible? What have you learned from your past relationships? How important is sex to you? What kind of sex do you wish you were having? Dig deep and follow the feelings that come up. Afterward, you’ll feel better and clearer.

Watch your favorite rom-coms. My recommendations: Hysteria (vibrators! science! a flustered Hugh Dancy!), Just My Luck (so stupid, and yet, Chris Pine is charming in it), High Fidelity (John Cusack’s snobbish mopeyness is counterbalanced by Jack Black’s silliness and it’s wonderful). Bonus points if you yell at the TV every time something sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, etc. happens, or if you devise an (alcohol-optional) drinking game to go along with the movie.

Watch dramatic romantic tragedies. Okay, comedies are great, but sometimes you just need to have a cathartic cry. Try The Notebook, Titanic, The Great Gatsby, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Settle in with a box of tissues and some comforting snacks and get ready to weep.

Invite some friends over and take turns dramatically reading dating-themed articles aloud. Cosmo and Glamour are excellent source material for this activity. Sometimes mocking the silliness of dating can make you feel better about your singlehood.

Do a Tinder experiment. Look, I’m not saying the people browsing Tinder on Valentine’s Day will be the cream of the crop, but that’s not the point. Change your profile or your approach, for science, and see what happens. Some examples: Change your first photo to a picture of you winking and see if it affects the messages you get. Instantly delete any messages that don’t specifically reference your profile, and only respond to the ones that do. Put a line in your bio that asks matches to tell you the funniest joke they’ve recently heard.

Write or read fanfiction about your favorite pairing. Yes, even if you’ve never delved into fanfic before. It’s fun! It’s also a way to get into a romantic headspace without stressing yourself out about your own romantic situation. If you’re not sure where to start, look up some of your favorite movies, books, or TV shows on Archive of Our Own and see what’s out there.

Finally get rid of your ex’s stuff. You know, those old T-shirts they left behind, stuffed animals they gave you, framed pictures of the two of you together, and so on. Only keep these things if they actually “spark joy“; otherwise, donate ’em or toss ’em. You’ll feel better without that psychic clutter clouding up your space and your brain.

Get extremely high. If intoxicants are your jam, that is. Choose something that’ll perk you up rather than drag you down (so, if weed is your substance of choice, probably a sativa strain). Then do whatever High-You wants to do: eat delicious snacks, lie in bed watching that show you love and have seen six times already, masturbate furiously, or just ponder the universe.

Visit a sex shop and pick something out, even if it’s just a small thing like a bottle of good lube, an erotic novel, or a pair of nipple clamps. Be pleasant to the salespeople; they are probably overwhelmed by desperate, haggard customers making last-minute purchases, and you being sweet and reasonable could brighten their busy day!

Listen to your favorite music. Really get into it. Maybe wail along to Elliott Smith by candlelight, or have a dance party with your dog to the dulcet tones of Walk the Moon. Listening to music is a visceral, often joyful experience, and is actually good for your brain, so this is a good thing to do any day of the year but especially on a day when you need a lift!

Try on clothes that make you feel babely as hell. You can go to the mall to do this, or shop your own closet, or peruse a friend’s wardrobe (with their permission, obviously!). It’s amazing how much good lingerie/shapely dresses/sharp-lookin’ blazers can tune up your self-image sometimes.

Engage in a platonic sexual activity, if you have a friend you’d like to do this with who would enthusiastically consent to such things. I have been known to spank and be spanked by my friends, cuddle and kiss ’em, and sometimes even masturbate side-by-side. It’s a way to find some intimacy and sensual pleasure even when the societally sanctioned avenues for those things (i.e. romantic relationships) are not immediately available to you.

Go to a local cultural event, like a gallery show, a theatrical production, or a stand-up comedy night. Bring a friend, if you like.

Hire a sex worker, if you can afford to. This could be a really lovely treat to give yourself today.

Contact someone who might be lonely today – your widowed aunt, your recently-dumped friend, or anyone else you know who’s going through a tough time. Chat with them and try to inject a little cheer into their day.

Dress up and take selfies. I am particularly partial to pink-and-red outfits on Valentine’s Day. They make me feel romantic and adorable. Bonus points for plentiful heart-shaped accessories!

Make yourself an elaborate, nutritious, comforting meal. It feels good to put effort into taking care of yourself and then feel that effort reflected back at you in the form of increased energy and overall well-being. Some of my favorite meals to cook for myself include risotto, steamed broccoli, and pasta salad.

Work toward one of your goals you’ve been putting off. Write some of that book proposal you’ve been meaning to get to, set up that Etsy store you’ve been hoping to start, research that city you’ve been wanting to move to… When you put time into what you want to achieve, you feel so good and accomplished, and that feeling is a great gift to give yourself on this day.

Re-read your old journals/blog entries/emails, etc. This can be a charming way to spend some time with your younger self. And when you reflect on how you used to be, it can make you feel grateful for how far you’ve come.

Tidy and reorganize your space – your whole house, or just the room you spend the most time in, depending on how much ambition and freedom you have! – so it contains fewer things that stress you out and more things that make you smile.

Go to the movies. If being alone in public at a certified “date activity” makes you anxious, a movie theatre is one of the better options you could choose, because you’ll be swathed in darkness so few people (if any) will even notice you’re by yourself. Ideally, pick a movie that appeals to your inner quirkiness so deeply that you probably couldn’t even drag a date along if you tried. Revel in the weirdness of your own tastes!

Write love letters to your friends, whether publicly on social media, or privately via email, or even in the form of a literal (snail-mail) letter. Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a celebration of love, right? So celebrate the love in your life.

Tell someone you admire that you admire them. Email that indie musician who fills your earbuds with glee on the regs, leave a comment on a blog that lights you up, compliment that bookstore employee who knows everything about everything whenever you ask them for help. Spread some love and happiness around!

Clean your selfie mirror. (Idea via Durga Polashi.) Selfies are an expression of, and sometimes a boon for, our self-love and self-acceptance. You owe it to yourself to have a squeaky-clean mirror that helps you capture yourself in all your glory!

Imagine what your heroes would do if they were single on Valentine’s Day, and then carry a little of their flair and panache into your day as well. I suspect Jane Lane would order a pizza and watch bad TV with her bestie, Alex Franzen would hole up with a mug of tea and write sexy fiction all day, Rosa Diaz would drink whiskey at a biker bar and make out with a scruffy leather-clad stranger, and Sara Quin would obsessively write and re-write a quirky new song until it was both catchy and devastating. What would your heroes do?

Donate money to a cause you believe in, like you’re giving a Valentine’s Day gift but your “valentine” is good nonprofits doing good work. Some recommendations that are especially important in our current political climate: the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. (More options here and here.)

Declutter your digital systems, as a favor to yourself. Go through your hard drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox, and delete some shit you don’t need. Run a virus scan and/or a defrag. Organize files into folders. Ahhh. Doesn’t that feel better?

Give yourself a long, slow genital massage without the expectation of orgasm. Think of it as an experiment in pleasure and mindfulness. (Coconut oil and natural oil-based lubes are great for this!)

Teach yourself a new skill with the help of the internet. Few things make me feel more accomplished than learning to do something new! Think of some things you’ve always wished you knew how to do – leather boot care, page layouts in InDesign, spelling in sign language? – and get thee to Google, stat.

Get clear about your “hard yeses and hard nos” for future partners. It’s good to have a list like this to refer to when you’re in the throes of infatuation with someone new, to make sure your beau is actually aligned with what you want and need. My hard-yes list says, “Feminist, makes me laugh, thinks I’m funny, at least as smart as me, libido and kinks roughly equivalent to mine, vocally enthusiastic and optimistic, creative in some way(s), socially competent, loves and supports my blog/writing.” My hard-no list says, “Doesn’t believe in oppression/privilege/racism, etc., noticeably not as smart as me, humorless, low or no libido, negative/jugmental/pessimistic, anger issues, wants only monogamy now/ever, toxically masculine, staunchly religious.” What would yours look like?

Go on a mini creative retreat. This can be as simple as turning off your phone, closing your social media tabs, and choosing to focus on one beloved creative project for an entire afternoon – or it can be as elaborate as booking an Airbnb in another town for a few days to work on your passion in an unfamiliar environment. What a blissful gift to give yourself!

Spend an hour or two in a bookstore or library. Preferably one with ample seating, and which lets you bring in your hot beverage of choice to sip while you peruse and read. I can imagine few things cozier than an afternoon at Indigo or Glad Day, flipping through glorious tomes over coffee.

Cull your social media lists. Unfollow the people whose tweets add no value to your life, and unfriend the people who make you feel stressed out or indifferent. Life is too short and too precious to fill it (even just digitally) with people who add no brightness to your days, or actively sap your emotional reserves.

Put together a file of the best compliments you’ve ever received. I’ve done this for years, in various forms: I have a “flattery” folder in my Gmail account, a list of meticulously copied-down compliments in a notebook, and sometimes I document my best compliments in tweets or Tumblr posts. It’s a fantastic favor to do for yourself, because on days when your mood and self-worth are frighteningly low, you can refer to your compliment file and remind yourself (even just theoretically) of your value. If you need help building up your collection o’ compliments, ask your ten closest friends and family members what they think your three best qualities are (and then tell them theirs!).

Bedazzle or jazz up something you use regularly. Plaster your journal in sparkly stickers, put some cute pictures on your fridge, give your desk a new paint job, etc. You deserve beauty and comfort in your life!

Stay offline. Unhappiness often stems from comparing your insides to other people’s outsides (to paraphrase Anne Lamott), and social media facilitates this bad habit all the damn time. Valentine’s Day is a day when we’re particularly susceptible to envying other people’s situations, so maybe avoid the internet (or just social media) today, to the extent that you can. While I don’t begrudge anyone who finds comfort and joy in their online life (I certainly do!), sometimes taking an internet break can be affirming and recalibrating.

Use your body in ways you normally don’t. Yoga, stretching, sports, swimming, walking, running, hula-hooping, dancing, having an orgasm in a ridiculous athletic position… Challenge your body and see what it can do.

Give yourself permission to do nothing, if you want to. You are inherently valuable and loveable, regardless of what you do or don’t do on Valentine’s Day or any other day. Don’t forget that, babe.

 

How are you spending Valentine’s? Tell me all about it in the comments!

Review: Lelo Heaven Scent Pleasure Set

Kate Sloan

A Lelo candle and a Lelo vibrator, both purple

Lelo wants you to feel ashamed of your junk. There’s no other possible explanation for this abomination. You don’t create a scented vibrator unless you believe genitals are inherently smelly and gross. You just don’t. So that is what Lelo must believe. Or, at least, it is what they must want you to believe, so you’ll buy their products.

People were understandably upset when Lelo released their revamped Lily vibe with “aphrodisiac” scents in 2015. “Just what every girl wants: a vibrator that smells,” Twitter users deadpanned. “There’s still no credible scientific evidence that aphrodisiacs, y’know, work,” Diane Kelly pointed out. “JUST MAKE A FUCKING VIBRATOR, LELO,” Lilly begged.

Some concerns were reasonably aired about whether the toy’s fragrance is actually “body-safe” as Lelo claims. They posted a “how it’s made” blog post which explained the aroma comes from “scented pellets” mixed in with the regular plastic pellets that are melted down to make the Lily. They say the vibrator is “sealed and sterilized” in the final step of production, so theoretically the scent should be locked inside, rather than leaching out to fuck with your vulva’s pH. But I’d still hesitate to recommend this toy to anyone with infection-prone parts. (After all, Lelo is the same company that somehow claimed it’s a safety feature that you can’t tell when their condoms are punctured.)

Lelo sent me the Lily 2 as part of one of their special Valentine’s Day offerings, the Heaven Scent Pleasure Set. In addition to the vibrator, the set contains a scented candle – to continue the theme of “Let’s cover up your icky body smells with perfumey fragrances!!” – and a bottle of Lelo’s own lube. I’ll talk about each in turn.

a purple scented candleFirst, the candle – which is, admittedly, the main reason I requested this set over any of the other Valentine’s sets Lelo recently came out with. I am a bit of a scented-candle fiend; Bath & Body Works is a staple of my mall trips, and I’ve been known to stand around in shops inhaling deeply from candles long past when my friends would’ve liked to leave. My thought process was, “Well, it’s a Lelo set, so I probably won’t like most of what’s in it, but at least I’ll have a scented candle to enjoy.”

They kinda fucked up the candle too, though, because of course they did. It’s supposed to smell like “bordeaux and chocolat” (yes, chocolat, spelled the French way, as only über-pretentious Lelo would). To my nose, it smells more like artificial raspberry candy – which, fine, but I wouldn’t exactly describe that scent as an aphrodisiac. The wick on mine was also placed weirdly off-center, so that only about half of the wax actually got used, halving the burn-time of the candle. Boooo.

a bottle of Lelo lubeAs for the lube – Lelo makes a big bragadocious deal out of telling you their lube is paraben- and glycerine-free (great!), but it still contains propylene glycol, a known irritant that can cause vaginal infections. I will concede that the futuristic-lookin’ pump-top bottle thrills my inner fancyperson, and the lube sticks around pretty well and has a good consistency. But though the packaging claims this lube is fragrance-free, it smells like rubbing alcohol and tastes like bitter chemicals. And in this, 2017, the Year of Our Lord Sliquid, I should not have to use any lube that carries any risk of vaginal infection. Better options exist, and they don’t even taste gross.

Now onto the vibe itself. The Lily 2, I will admit, is a pretty awesome vibe. The motor is noticeably stronger than that in the previous iterations of this toy. It’s rumblier than your typical external vibe – not quite so rumbly as the Tango, say, but certainly closer to that end of the spectrum than many other clit vibes. My clitoris is a certified snob and I still find the Lily 2 plenty powerful and rumbly enough to get me off when combined with a great dildo.

The shape isn’t my favorite. When the tip of the toy is nestled on my clit the way I like it, the buttons are planted in my mons, so I have to lift up part of the vibe to change the speed (which I do a lot). However, that’s because I prefer to place vibrators on the shaft and hood of my clit, rather than the head; I’m sure there are plenty of people who will find the Lily’s shape more intuitive and comfortable. It certainly curves nicely against my body and gives me placement options both pinpointed and broad.

the purple Lelo Lily 2 vibrator on a turquoise background

I also like the Lily’s silky, matte plastic coating, its well-crafted and prettily-lit buttons, and the fact that it’s waterproof. It’s quiet, sturdy, locks for travel, and comes with a cute storage bag. There’s a lot to like about this vibrator, actually. Which is why it’s so disappointing and so typical that Lelo loused it up by adding a scent for no goddamn reason. (A scent which, by the way, I can barely smell when the toy is pressed against my nose, let alone when it’s pressed against my clit.)

There was a time when Lelo made consistently good, standard vibrators that everyone loved. But in recent years, they’ve gotten into a bad habit of adding offensive gimmicks to everything. They made a cock ring for bankers, a We-Vibe ripoff, a lacklustre cunnilingus simulator, a tuxedo for your dick. They made shitty, probably-unsafe condoms and hired known abuser Charlie Sheen as their spokesperson. In short, they’re a mess. Most of my blogger friends refuse to support them anymore, and I have to agree that I won’t feel right recommending Lelo to anyone unless and until they apologize for the Hex condoms and their various sexist missteps. On top of all this, it somehow makes me even angrier that Lelo had a perfectly fabulous clit vibe which they chose to taint by adding a gimmicky scent no one asked for.

If you want a great rechargeable clitoral vibrator, get a Tango, Lust L2, or Form 2. If you want some lube to use with it, pick up some Sliquid. If you want a scented candle, grab one by Jimmyjane. If you want to spend $129 (!) on a better Valentine’s Day gift than the Heaven Scent Pleasure Set, consider a night’s staycation at a local Airbnb, a big gift card to your sweetie’s favorite bookstore/makeup company/repertory theatre, or – hell – a Magic Wand Rechargeable. (Everyone needs one of those.)

But don’t give your money to Lelo, especially not for Valentine’s Day. There’s nothing less romantic than abusive spokespeople, bitter lube, and genital-shaming.

 

Disclosure notice: Lelo provided this product to me in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Lube-Savvy Lovers and Slick Sexcapades

Kate Sloan

It’s 2011, I am at a sex shop buying lube for the first time with my first love, and I have no idea what I am even looking at. “Can I help you find anything?” asks the sweetheart of a sales associate. My boyfriend and I both jump at her approach; we’re nervous to even be inside a sex shop, let alone actually buy something. (Yes, kiddos, I am unabashedly sexual today, but in 2011, not so much.)

“Umm, we’re looking for a lube that’ll feel natural and won’t give me an infection,” I manage to squeak, through layers of debilitating shyness.

The shopkeep reaches for a bottle of Blossom Organics and hands it to me, rattling off a shpiel about its natural ingredients and vagina-friendly formulation. Then she leaves me and my boyf to peruse.

We test a little of this mysterious new substance on our hands, and exchange silent, confused glances. At last, my darling murmurs, “I like this one. It feels like your actual vag juices.” I blush, but this time it’s with glee; this soft-hearted moment between us is the most comfortable and least distressed I’ve felt since setting foot in the shop. Because I know that regardless of how much shame I might be feeling, none of it is coming from my boyfriend, and that is what really matters.

We walk up to the cash counter, bottle of lube in hand. “We’ll take this one,” I say, not quite proudly but getting there.

For years, I think of lube as a product for my comfort and pleasure alone, and therefore something I have to specifically request if I want it used. Boyfriends and hookups slide fingers, toys, and cocks into me at my behest, and lube must be applied at my behest too. One partner learns what my “Ouch, I need a little more lube” face looks like, and begins to take it upon himself – but aside from that one perceptive outlier, everyone I bang requires me to be assertive about my own lubrication needs.

I continue thinking of lube this way until, in the winter of 2016, my fave fuckbuddy becomes my fave fuckbuddy, and flips my whole concept of lube on its head with a single comment.

“I want your fingers inside me,” I purr contentedly as he strokes my clit, mid-makeouts, in my big cozy bed.

“You got it,” he replies. “Think you need any lube?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I say. It’s sometimes difficult for me to determine my juiciness level without physically checking, but based on the situation I’m in and the person I’m in it with, it seems likely that I’m soaked.

He kneels between my legs for leverage and pushes two thick fingers into me, finding my A-spot quickly and with ease. I’ve already floated halfway to the heavens when he pauses and says, “Actually, can we use some lube? I want a little more room to move around in here.”

I laugh, having never encountered this request before, and hand him a bottle of Slippery Stuff. The seconds stretch out languidly as I watch him squeeze it onto his fingers and spread it around, coating their full surface. It’s the first time I’ve ever thought of lube as sexy.

He slips his fingers back into me, and I immediately understand what he was talking about. It does feel like he has more room to move around. The slicker environment gives him more freedom for fine movements, fingers building speed in minuscule motions over the exact right spot. He is a manual maestro, a vaginal virtuoso. The sensation reminds me of how much more sensual your own skin feels in a hot bath: the damp granularity of arm hairs, the shiny squeak of wet legs tangling underwater.

I come so hard, I soak his fingers, rendering the lube superfluous. But it was the tool that got us there. The lube he asked for, and the fact that he asked for it.

I regard teaching straight men about lube as a public service I perform. It imbues my sluttiness with noble purpose. Sometimes I daydream that I school all the men of earth on the evils of glycerin and parabens, and in doing so, eradicate a broad percentage of vaginal infections worldwide.

I’ll never forget the crush who, upon getting me naked in his king-size hotel bed, pulled a bottle of lube from his suitcase and said, “It’s no Squillid, but…” Naturally, his mispronunciation of “Sliquid” made me laugh so hard I nearly fell off the bed. The lube he then handed me was chock full of glycerin and propylene glycol, so I passed it back to him and said, “I’m not putting this in my vagina, but I appreciate the gesture.” We spent longer on warm-up before delving into penetration, and it was fine. Perhaps he’s upgraded his lube of choice by now.

I’ll also never forget the night last summer when I told Bex my new boyfriend didn’t own any lube. “WHAT?!” Bex shouted. “We should bring him some! Like, right now!!” They were high, and were therefore perhaps more emphatic about this subject than they would be while sober, but not by much. I brought the boyf a bottle of Sliquid Sassy the next time I saw him, and he put it to good use immediately.

Another day, another night shift at the sex shop. I’m new to the retail scene and trying to soak up as much knowledge from my coworkers as possible. I know a lot about vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, floggers… but about selling these things? Not so much.

Keeping a wide berth so as not to freak out the customer, I listen in on my babely coworker giving a lube pitch. “These lubes are the best ones on the market,” he announces with the utmost confidence, and gestures sweepingly at the Sliquid section. “They’re hypoallergenic, organic, tasteless, and fragrance-free. This one is my favorite.” I watch with scarcely-concealed glee as he picks up the Organics Gel, my all-time fave, my right-hand man, my nightstand essential.

If I could go back in time and tell my 18-year-old self that one day she’d swoon over a dude because of his taste in lube, she’d probably laugh in my face. But it makes perfect sense. Caring about lube is caring about partners’ comfort, health, and pleasure. What could possibly be sexier than that?

 

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

5 Bruises I Loved and Lost

Kate Sloan

Heads up, babes: this post deals with bruising and other visible signs of (consensual) injury, as well as self-harm. If that’s tough subject matter for you, please feel free to skip this post!

 

“I’ve never spanked anyone before,” Dane mentions offhandedly as we’re hanging out before our porn shoot.

“Oh,” I say, and my stomach drops. “Um, that’s fine, it’s not too hard to learn. I trust you.” I take my Tantus Pelt paddle out of my bag and show her how it works: the momentum, the swing, the snap. It’s been a few weeks since a partner’s used this mean little thing on me and I’m excited to bend over for my hot new friend in front of a rolling video camera.

What I don’t say, and later wish I had: Start slow, and work your way up. Warm up the area with gentle smacks til it’s red and glowing, before you progress to harder wallops. Spread out the impacts, instead of focusing on one spot. Rhythm and consistency are good, but give me time to breathe. I think these things but don’t communicate them. I said I trust her, and I do.

The scene goes better than I ever hoped or expected, given how nervous I was when we began. She teases and spanks and fucks me over a wooden coffee table in the airy afternoon light. But that paddle. Oh, that paddle.

There is a point, somewhere during most spankings, when I cross the threshold between safe, tolerable pain and pain so intense it scares me a little. This threshold is the reason I can’t spank myself effectively: I’ll never leap across that line myself. I need someone to push me.

Dane is bossy and authoritative and mean, and gets me crying within minutes. The silicone paddle rains down relentlessly on my reddening ass. And then she picks a spot on my right cheek and just wails on it. One hit after another, til the pain is a white-hot emergency alert in my brain. I think, I can’t take much more of this. Then I think, No, really, this has to stop. And then a deeper, stronger voice in my head says: No. You can take it. You can take just a little more.

I do. And eventually it ends. I’m left with the best bruise I’ve ever had, a crimson emblem of what I faithfully endured. A blotchy splotch that proudly announces what a very, very good girl I am.

Dane cuddles me on the couch. Caitlin brings me a cupcake. I’m grinning, glowing, good.

Depression comes in waves, arcing over the shoreline of my mind so ominously that I usually see it coming from yards away. I can arrange my schedule so the worst of it will hit when I’m alone, sobbing in bed, shoulders shaking, self-worth crumbling in polite privacy. I mask these desperate spells from my friends whenever I can. But sometimes I can’t.

One night in July, I’m at a party with Bex, Georgia, and a few other friends. But it’s the saddest party I’ve ever been to – even sadder than the surprisingly jovial secular shiva we held when my grandmother died – because I can’t stop crying.

Depression tells you lots of lies, the most pervasive one being that you are unendingly sad, have always been, and will always be. It tells you the tears you cry are justified, because everything is terrible and life is pain. It tells you the glimmers of happiness you once knew have been extinguished and were illusory anyway. It wrings the light from your spirit. It takes everything from you, most crucially, your hope.

So as I cry in front of my friends and they attempt to comfort me, none of it really works. “We love you,” they say, and my depression-brain says, Yeah, but the people you WISH loved you still don’t love you. “You’re a good person,” they say, and depression whispers, Bullshit, you’re garbage, they’re just humoring you. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” they predict, and depression insists, You will never feel good again.

What I need, when I’m like this, is to cry very hard for a while and then to be jolted out of my sad, salty rut. I need a distraction, a shake-up, a gear-change. So when Georgia says, “Do you want me to hit you?” some part of me perks up because I know that has worked in the past and it might work again.

I bend over the end of the sofa like a good girl, and Georgia – armed with my KinkMachineWorks Lexan paddle – begins to knock the sadness out of me via my ass.

When I’m sad and I don’t want to be sad anymore, sometimes I think of the saddest thoughts I can possibly imagine, in an effort to push the sadness through my veins faster so I’ll be rid of it sooner. If I’m crying over a boy, for example, I might force myself to think, “He doesn’t love me, he’ll never love me, he doesn’t want me the way I want him and he never will, I’m not good enough for him, I’ll be alone forever, and it’s only going to get worse from here.” Crying harder speeds up the process so I can get on with my life sooner – and spanking can serve a similar function for me. The pain gives me a tangible reason to cry, so I cry harder, feel my feelings deeper, and move through them quicker.

“I love you, babe,” Bex says to me while Georgia spanks me. “You’re being such a good girl,” Georgia says between hits. One friend holds my hand; another strokes my hair. I keep my face planted in the sofa’s upholstery and I cry and cry and cry.

And when it’s all done, I feel a bit better. And I have some epic bruises to remind me that I helped myself by letting my friends help me.

One night by myself in my room, depression sneaks up on me. I didn’t see you come in, I tell it, and it hisses back, That’s because you’re a stupid, silly girl who doesn’t know anything. I can’t argue with that.

Sometimes my depression comes alongside a restlessness: I know I need to do something to alleviate the uncomfortable feelings in my body and brain, but it’s not immediately clear what. When I’m coping well, I get out my journal, cry in a hot bath, go see a friend, or curl up with snacks and an episode of Sherlock. When I’m coping less well, I think about hurting myself.

The jury is out – by which I mean, my therapist is unsure – whether my self-spanking counts as self-harm. I don’t really do it to punish myself, to feel more alive, or to enact suicidal ideations, all common reasons people self-harm. I think I do it because it distracts me from the “bad” thoughts and feelings in my head, and because I know spanking has historically alleviated my mental health symptoms. It’s a last-ditch effort to snap myself back to stability.

On this particular night, crying numbly in my desk chair, I just start smacking my thigh with the back of my hand because it feels like the right thing to do. I do it so hard, and for so long, that I worry I might break my hand. I switch hands, and do it some more. I keep going until I’m sufficiently bruised, and the dark whispers in my head have calmed.

The bruise I’m left with is a chaotic mass of speckles, and I instantly hate it. It’s ugly, but I know I wouldn’t think that if a partner had given it to me. Each time I catch sight of it, I’m reminded of how I failed myself, how I let myself down by coping poorly with the feelings that rain down on me. I try to forgive myself, but in the meantime, I wear boxers around the house instead of my usual bikini briefs, so I never have to see the evidence of what depression wrought on my body.

When I was younger, I thought I’d hate one-night stands because sex felt too intimate to share with a near-stranger. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned so much: sex doesn’t have to be intimate, and there are other valid reasons to hate one-night stands (which I kinda do). But it turns out that for me, kink feels too intimate to share with a near-stranger. It feels like an infringement, a mild violation, an incongruent aberration.

One cold night in December, I go out for drinks with a passably smart-‘n’-sweet Tinder boy. Our hours-long conversation brings out the details of my life that usually emerge on dates like these: I’m a sex writer, I review sex toys, I write about my kinks, and those kinks include spanking.

When I invite him over to my place after drinks, he makes a logical leap that any reasonable person could make: I like spanking, therefore, I want him to spank me. During our lukewarm hookup, he lands a few hard smacks on my ass, and I make noises of delight – because, physically, this feels like something I’ve enjoyed before. Emotionally, less so. He is nobody to me. I don’t care if he wants to punish me, or thinks I’ve been bad, or wants to make me feel good, or wants to give me what I want. I give zero shits what he thinks of me, and therefore, with him, kink feels irrelevant.

In the morning, we chat a bit via text, and he asks, “Is your butt even in the least bit sore?” It’s a vanilla-dude question, designed to determine whether his untrained hand even made a dent in my seasoned-kinkster ass. I look in the mirror and there is, faintly, the outline of a handprint. Red finger shapes against my creamy white skin. I text him a picture, though I doubt he even cares.

The bruise is mild, and only lasts a few days. So I spend those days thinking about how gross it feels to be bruised by someone I barely know. One-night stands are okay if I can hop in the shower afterward and wash away their sweat, their spit, their cum. But a bruise stays, and remains both mine and theirs until it fades. I love bruises when they make me feel “owned” by someone I want to own me – but a random-ass stranger from Tinder does not own me and should not bruise me. I glower furiously at the handprint for days, wishing it had come from someone else’s hand.

My fave fuckbuddy is extremely vanilla, but he’s also what Dan Savage calls “GGG“: good, giving, and game. He doesn’t “get” the whole spanking thing, but he’ll still do it if I ask – often quite enthusiastically – and I love that about him.

One night in a New York hotel room, we can’t figure out how to open the bottles of apple-ginger cider we brought with us – and we’re high, which makes this quandary even harder. “Let’s go to the front desk and ask if they have a bottle opener,” I suggest, reasonably, to which my FWB replies: “Okay, but you have to do the talking, because I am way too high to talk to a stranger right now.”

We make a giggly pilgrimage to the front desk; the attendant there doesn’t have a bottle opener either. So it’s back to the drawing board (after a meandering journey through the hotel lobby, mezzanine, and basement, laughing maniacally like the stoned delinquents we are). Once we find our hotel room again, we scour it for any and all objects that might function as a bottle opener: a pair of tweezers, the edge of a countertop, a thick bedsheet crumpled in a palm.

Eventually, grasping at straws, my gentleman-friend opens the wardrobe in the corner and pops out the silver metal bar holding up the clothes-hangers. “Oh no, you broke it!” I chirp, my high-brain momentarily unable to process that he did this on purpose. He grins at me in that roguish way he has, and jokes, “Those were load-bearing hangers.” I collapse into ganja giggles on the bed.

The metal bar works. He’s able to push the gaping end of it against the ridged edge of a bottlecap until the cap pops clean off. He hands me the bottle and gets to work on opening one for himself. I sit cheerfully, sipping my cider, one leg dangling off the bed and one draped over his thigh. We clink our drinks together and sip in the comfortable silence of two people who like each other – two people who just simply, uncomplicatedly, happily like each other.

And then I pick up the hanger bar and start whacking myself on the thigh with it, because of course I do.

He laughs darkly in his throat, because he knows me and he knows what’s coming. “Oh, you kinksters and your pervertables,” he says out loud, or maybe just in my memory because that’s the sentiment I sensed from him in my periphery. I take another swig of my cider and put the silver bar in his hand. “You should hit me with this,” I say.

He does. The cool metal lands stripes of pain along my thigh, still hitched over his. His thwacks are more earnest than I’ve ever felt from him; I think he’s finally figured out that when I ask to be hit, I want to be hit. Stoned, tipsy, gettin’ beat, and sitting beside one of my favorite people, I can’t recall many moments as purely, perfectly happy as this one, right here.

a thigh bruise“I want you to give me a bruise,” I tell him, but he’s vanilla and probably needs a little more instruction, so I continue. “Pick a spot. Hit that one spot again and again, starting soft and building up til you’re wailing on it.” I wrap both my arms around the one of his that’s not holding our impromptu impact implement, and press my face into his shoulder. “I might scream, but it’s okay.”

He does exactly what I’ve asked him to do, just like he always does; it’s one of the reasons he’s my favorite FWB I’ve ever had. As the bar slices through the air and onto my thigh again and again, my man-friend mutters in my ear about the way jazz drummers hold their drumsticks. He’s playing me like an instrument. His tone of voice reminds me of a doctor who tells you a cheerful story about elephants or fairies to distract you while he sets your broken bone. I don’t want to be distracted from the pain being rhythmically administered to me, but I like the sound of his voice, the closeness of it, how completely and totally safe I feel with this man who is hurting me at my request.

“There you go,” he says, and stops. “Look at that. Wow!”

I glance down at my thigh and see a thin streak of red, set in beautiful relief against the paleness of my skin. I’ve never seen my thigh look so gorgeous. In the days that follow, I keep hitching up my skirt to take a look, running my hand along the slightly raised mark, pressing the painful spot through my leggings on the subway to remind me that it’s there.

It makes me feel owned, and small, and safe, and happy. It fades, and I want it back. I want it to last forever, like a tattoo. But the nature of bruises is that they don’t last. Like the tumbling petals of a dying flower, they are perfect in their life and in their death. I am always sad to say goodbye to a bruise, and always happy to have had it at all.

The Bipolar Blogger: Productivity Tips From a Manic Mess

Kate Sloan

“I have cyclothymia,” a friend casually mentioned over dinner, halfway through an anecdote about his therapist. “It’s sort of like a milder form of bipolar disorder. I have mild manic phases and mild depressions but nothing too serious.”

It would be a cliché to say a lightbulb went off for me, or alarm bells sounded in my head, but both of those well-trod metaphors feel entirely true. I had a ping of recognition. A sudden, crystalline revelation: That is what I have. That is why I’m like this.

I didn’t quiz my friend for additional details, but in a therapist’s office a few months later, I dropped the word on the table between us like it was a treat I’d brought him. Cyclothymia. We examined it, talked about it. I explained how my storied life had been punctuated with depressive spells, yes, but also episodes of unpredictable juicy joy. When previous therapists witnessed my gleeful, giggly monologues, they’d often say, “Is it possible you’re having a manic episode right now?” and I’d always laugh it off. This isn’t a mental disorder, I’d think, about those hyper-productive, ecstatic interludes. This is just my personality. I’m a happy, positive person.

In the years since then, though – and in the wake of two recent therapists who can’t agree on whether I have cyclothymia or bipolar affective disorder, type 2 – I’ve come to accept that these ups and downs are part of my personality and are also a mental illness.They’re a part of me, and I try to honor them more than hate them. They make my life harder, my emotions wilder, and my art better.

Blogging and journalism, my main vocations, appeal to me in part because they’re compatible with my mental illnesses. As an independent freelancer, I can set my own schedule, and arrange my obligations according to where my head’s at. Of course, sometimes a deadline unavoidably lines up with a depressive spell, but I do my best to avoid snafus like this. Below are some productivity tricks I’ve picked up from nearly five years of blogging while bipolar… for better or for worse.

Drink up from the rain, as Nellie McKay would say (or “catch water while it’s raining,” like my friend Brent says). When I’m manic*, I often want to work for 10-12 hours at a time, writing blog posts/sending emails/pitching stories/cleaning my room/whatever – and while that’s a long stretch to put my body and mind through, usually manic-me can handle it without complaint. So as long as I’ve still got the energy and desire to continue, I usually do. Might as well.

*I’m using the words “manic/mania” interchangeably with “hypomanic/hypomania” in this article for brevity’s sake, even though technically my mental illnesses are mild enough that my hypomania never crosses into full-blown mania. More on this distinction here.

Queue stuff in advance. After a manic episode, I’ll typically have more content than I know what to do with: two or three days of hypomania can easily yield five or six blog posts for me. While mania can imbue you with an urgent need to get your work in front of readers’ eyes ASAP because it’s all so damn exciting, it’s smarter to rein yourself in and queue up some of that content for the days, weeks or months to come.

I publish new posts on this blog twice a week, and that steady schedule is super helpful to my bipolar brain. I use the WordPress Editorial Calendar plugin to map out my future content. I’ll slot in two posts a week, and rearrange them so there’s enough variation in subject matter and format from week to week. A hypomanic episode can inspire enough content to last me for weeks, so that if a depressive spell comes on, I’ll be able to take a break from working without interrupting my regular blog schedule.

Batch-process tasks. This is a term and concept I learned from the Blogcademy. The idea is that you get more done if you group similar types of tasks together. So, instead of writing one blog post at a time, then shooting photos for it, then queuing tweets to promote it, I might write 2-3 blog posts at a time, or shoot photos for several posts in one session, or spend a whole afternoon queuing tweets for upcoming posts.

This principle is compatible with my bipolar brain. When I’m manic, it can be hard to pry my attention away from the task at hand – so if I’m writing rabidly, I might as well brew another cup of tea and write another post, and another, until I run out of steam. Batch-processing is easier when I’m depressed, too: it takes a lot of mental energy to switch from one task to another, so if I can muster enough strength to take out my camera and set up a photo, it won’t be too hard to set up another photo afterward. It’s a simple principle and it works!

Have start-of-day and end-of-day rituals. While my writerly rituals are pretty much always the same, they feel like uplifting self-care practices when I’m depressed and calming, grounding rituals when I’m manic. In the morning, I make a cup of tea and drink it while sitting in front of my SAD lamp and catching up on my emails and tweets. Once I’m feeling awake and ready to start my workday, I make a list of 3-6 things I need to get done that day, and start on the one that feels most pressing and/or most fun. This helps me ease into the day feeling nourished and purposeful.

My end-of-day rituals aren’t as solidified yet; maybe if they were, I’d spend fewer manic days hunched over my laptop for twelve hours. But when I’ve been working for way too long and need to force myself to take a break, I’ll often smoke some weed (the resulting blurry brain makes further work unlikely), take a hot bath, crawl into bed with an engrossing book, or settle in for a luxurious masturbation sesh. Admittedly, sometimes my manic workaholic ass ends up in front of my laptop again before the night’s out, but I mostly try to respect these arbitrary boundaries I set for myself. In a perfect world, I’d have evening plans with friends or beaux most weeknights, as those would make it compulsory for me to step away from my computer and back into the world.

Keep a filing system for unused ideas. When I’m manic, I have ideas galore – so many ideas that I couldn’t possibly make them all into fully-fledged blog posts right away, though I may want to. The important thing is to make a note of all those great ideas, and to do it in a way which maintains the juiciness those ideas held when you first thought of them. If a blog post comes to you in a flash, don’t just jot down the title and expect yourself to remember the rest; include details, examples, sample sentences, so your note will retain the fire extant in that white-hot idea.

My massive backlog of yet-unused post ideas helps me both when I’m up and when I’m down. Manic Kate might feel brilliant in an unfortunately unfocused way, unsure what to do with all that raw energy pulsing through her brain – in which case she can glance at a list of old ideas and instantly have specific new assignments to work on. Depressed Kate, meanwhile, might be on deadline for an article but lack the clarity and chutzpah to even think of a topic – in which case she can pull out her notebook of old concepts and choose whichever one feels doable.

I jot down ideas in notebooks, the Notes app on my phone, or scraps of paper on my desk. When Manic Kate gets excited about hyper-organization, I use that impulse to methodically transfer all my idea-notes to a central repository in Evernote.

Work on what feels doable and/or exciting. I find my hypomania is best harnessed if I write the thing I’m most excited to write, which is often different from what I’m “supposed to” be working on. The blog posts of mine that have gotten the best response from readers – like Blowjob-Friendly Lipsticks For Every Budget and You’re Vanilla, I’m Not, But I Love You – were brought into the world in obsessive flights of mania. The manic energy with which they are imbued is probably what made them so good.

For similar reasons, if I try to write something light and peppy while I’m depressed, either it’ll come out lacklustre or I just won’t be able to do it. So when I’m feeling that way, I try to view it as an opportunity to work on boring, mechanical tasks – answering emails, organizing my editorial calendar, putting affiliate links into post drafts, sending out interview requests, and so on. Or sometimes I’ll wade into my sadness and write something heavy and emotional, if I can muster the energy.

Know how chemical stimulants affect your body and brain. Sometimes when I’m manic, I’m tempted to drink tons of coffee, because it helps me ride the wave of mania and get even more done than I ordinarily would – or so I think. In reality, the combo of coffee + mania often sends me off the rails into unfocused zippiness that makes it hard to actually get anything done. Similarly, if I drink alcohol while depressed, it usually just depresses me further.

But sometimes, boozin’ while manic can slow me down just enough to enable good writing (I wrote Nude, Lewd, Screwed, & Tattooed while quaffing white wine at my kitchen table), while caffeine can sometimes counteract the physical heaviness of my depression so I can get work done. I also find weed helpful in both states – it can cheer me up when I’m sad and calm me down when I’m manic – but I don’t have much follow-through once I’m high, so it’s not a productivity booster for me (with the exception of CBD-heavy strains).

Take care of your physical health. When I’m manic, I’m at risk for eye strain and back pain, because I end up spending all day in front of my computer, pounding out blog posts. There are apps and tools which can remind you to take a break every so often, and I’d do well to use ’em! I’d also like to implement a system wherein I’ll keep a post-it note somewhere on my workspace that says “How are you feeling right now?” to remind me to notice my body. If I’m manic and get hungry, thirsty, achy, or burned out, I might not always notice until I take a moment to specifically assess how my body is feeling. And then I can make self-care decisions accordingly.

I also try to keep ingredients in the house that are easy for me to throw together into meals, because both depression and mania can sap me of my desire to cook and eat. And when I do take meal breaks, I try to make them actual breaks: I’m not allowed to work while I eat, and I’ll typically put on a funny video or podcast to give my brain a brief vacation.

Fellow folks who deal with bipolar disorder, depression, and/or (hypo)mania: what are your productivity tips ‘n’ tricks?