We’re Having a Spanking Party (and You’re Invited!)

Kate Sloan

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My best friend Bex is turning 25 this month, and what they want for their birthday is to get spanked. A lot.

I enjoy hosting parties, and I enjoy spanking people. Before this, I’ve never had the opportunity to do both at the same time. I’m excited!

We combed Airbnb for an apartment to rent, and found a cute one with a great location, ample space for party guests, and plentiful surfaces to bend Bex over. We’ve invited a small group of sex-positive babes, including Taylor, Suz, and Rosaline. Each guest may give Bex 25 smacks (one for each year Bex has been alive) with an implement of their choice. Those who don’t want to participate can just hang out and chill – it’s a birthday party as much as it’s a spanking party!

I think it’ll be an interesting opportunity to observe the different spanking styles of my various friends. You can learn a lot about a person by how they smack an ass!

Here’s the really exciting part: you can join in on the fun, even if you live far far away. We’re going to livestream the spanking portion of the party via Google Hangouts On Air. The broadcast will get started on Saturday, September 17th at 9:30 p.m. Eastern time. You can buy your ticket by sending $8 (U.S. dollars, please) to Bex through this link. (Make sure to write your email address in the “notes” field, so we know where to send the link to the broadcast.)

The money will largely go toward Bex’s travel and accommodations expenses, enabling them to be with some of their best pals for their birthday. So it’s a double-whammy of deliciousness: you get to watch a cute babe get spanked, and you get to do a good thing for the aforementioned cute babe!

For bonus fun, you’ll be able to “virtually spank” Bex. During the broadcast, you can pay an additional $5 for 10 smacks, or $10 for 25. You’ll get to choose which party guest does the hitting (as long as they consent, obviously), and which implement they use. Fun, right?!

We’re all about social media, so if you want to live-tweet while you watch, you are more than welcome to! The hashtag for the event is #BirthdayBruises. If you feel like hyping us up and cheering us on, before or during the event, Twitter’s a lovely way to do that. You can also tweet the image above, if you want to invite your followers to join the party.

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I’ve already started packing my bag of spanking implements and accessories. Here’s what I’ve got up my sleeve:

• The Tantus Pelt and Wham Bam. These silicone paddles are stingy as hell and pack some snappy momentum into each stroke. I’m a bit sentimental about the Pelt because it’s the first implement I ever spanked Bex with, back in the early days of our friendship. Aww.

• A stone crop I bought at kink-themed café Leather & Latte on our road trip to Minneapolis. It’s very stingy, very mean, and very bruisey.

• A leather paddle made by by Peri Plunders. This is a cool multi-use tool: the flat leather surface is really stingy, but turn the paddle sideways and its thick edge becomes a thuddy bludgeon. I wonder what kind of marks it’ll leave.

• A Lexan paddle from KinkMachineWorks. It’s gorgeously thuddy and has quickly become one of my all-time favorite spanking implements. And it’s clear, so you can see the recipient’s butt smoosh as the paddle hits it. Swoon.

• A wooden spoon and a small bamboo rice paddle. I ordered these from Amazon in preparation for this party. The rice paddle is wide and thin, so it’s very surface-stingy, while the spoon has a bit more of a thud to it.

• Arnica cream! Bex’s poor butt will be pretty sore by the end of the evening. I want some pain-management solutions on hand incase they start to get genuinely uncomfortable – although, let’s be real, they’re a trooper and a pain-slut and I bet they’ll be fine.

I look forward to seeing you in our Google Hangouts chat when the party gets started! Don’t forget to buy your ticket for $8. See you there, friends!

8 Things Nobody Tells You About Getting the Backs of Your Thighs Tattooed

Kate Sloan

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I love my new tattoos more than I can possibly express. It gives me great joy on the daily to spot them peeking out of my skirts or shorts in the mirror, or to hear the squeals of delight when someone notices them for the first time. They are exactly what I wanted and look even better than I had hoped.

However, the healing process has been an ordeal, y’all. I took good care of my tats, washing them once or twice a day with Dove soap and moisturizing obsessively with unscented Lubriderm, so I didn’t get any infections or complications, knock wood – but infections aren’t the only thing you have to worry about when you get tattooed. The body part you choose can affect your life in lots of areas. Here are some things I wish someone had told me about getting the backs of my thighs tattooed…

You won’t be able to sit properly for a while. For some reason, when I pictured getting my upper thighs tattooed, it didn’t occur to me that that’s what I sit on when I sit down. My thought process was, “The tattoos won’t be on my butt, so I’ll be fine.” Nope. Your thighs are directly implicated in the sitting-down process. Some of this issue can be dealt with by just sitting less, e.g. working at a standing desk, which I did. But in my day-to-day, I didn’t want to subject my fresh or healing tattoos to scratchy couch cushions, filthy bus shelter benches, or fancy theatre seats – so I adopted a sitting position for the first few days post-inking that involved pulling my knees up so my thighs wouldn’t touch the surface below me. Not only does this look super weird (especially in more conservative environments, like the theatre), but it also started to feel not-so-great after a while: my bad knees didn’t appreciate being bent for that long, and I needed to take pain pills to get through those first few days. Yikes.

Using the toilet is risky business. Time for some real talk! What I just said about your thighs being involved in the sitting process? That’s true for sitting on the toilet, too. I experimented with sitting really far forward (often resulting in spraying the bathroom floor), sitting with my knees up (effective, but requires flexibility and impeccable aim), and even straddling the toilet so as to pee into it from above (hard on my knees, hard to aim, and looks goddamn ridiculous). This isn’t so much an issue at my own house, where I know the toilets are more-or-less clean; it was more a concern in public bathrooms, which are, as you know, a festering cesspool of bacteria. If I had this process to do over again, I would invest in a stand-to-pee device.

Spanking is off the table. I don’t think I fully realized just how integral spanking is to my sexuality until I got these tattoos. I took a spanking hiatus that lasted from a week before getting the tattoos to a week after, and that felt like forever. During that time, I read books about spanking, watched spanking porn, researched spanking physiology, sexted with beaux about the spankings they would give me once they were allowed to… I was a girl possessed. And in fact, I wish I’d waited longer to get spanked again after getting inked, because the people topping me, while well-intentioned, didn’t always have the best aim and sometimes smacked me right on the tattoos. I found, oddly enough, that spanking other people scratched that particular kink-itch for me – not completely, but enough that I could get through those spankless weeks without going off the deep end.

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Your sex positions are limited. Do what I say, not what I do: avoid getting doggy-styled for at least a couple weeks post-tattooing. I am an idiot and got fucked from behind three days after Tattoo Day – in a park, no less – because I was drunk and just wasn’t thinking about the health implications. I’m extremely lucky I didn’t scratch or irritate my new tattoos on my partner’s thigh hair or pubes, and that I didn’t get any dirt, dust, or lube in there. When I got inked, I initially intended to take a break from any kind of sex involving my genitals (BJ Week, woooo!), but I have zero self-control and that didn’t happen. Still: if you must get boned after getting your thighs tattooed (and trust me, I understand), just be careful, choose your positions accordingly, and wash your tattoos after, just incase anything got in there that shouldn’t have.

Dudes think they’re extremely sexy. I guess I knew this on some level. My tattoos are explicitly meant to be sexual, after all. But, wow, I still managed to underestimate just how much attention they would attract. Whether I’m in a sex club or just walking down the street, fully flashing my tats or just letting them poke out the bottom of a skirt, they certainly get me noticed. Sometimes this level of attention is welcome, and sometimes, less so. I think I’ll be careful from now on to keep my ink covered if I’m in a “please, nobody touch or talk to me” kind of mood.

You will end up showing a lot of people your butt. Your tattoo artist, for one. Your friends. Your partner(s). Your relatives. Pretty much anyone who’s heard about your new tattoos will want to see them, and if you oblige what they ask, that will involve turning around, bending over, and pulling up your skirt/pulling down your pants to show ’em what you got. I’m not normally too bothered by showing people my ass, but I did have a couple of close calls – for example, the time a conservative family member wanted to see my tats and I accidentally gave her an eyeful of fresh spanking bruises along with the ink. Whoops.

They’re hard to get pictures of. This is not a joke: you should probably buy a selfie stick if you’re about to get the backs of your thighs tattooed. I consider myself fairly skilled at taking butt selfies – it involves a lot of spine-twisting, arm-reaching, and clever angling – but your thighs are even farther away from your hands and your eyes so there is even more contortion involved. Do yourself a favor and pick up a selfie stick, because even if you don’t intend on taking “sexy” photos, you’ll probably at least want some pictures of the healing process for posterity. (Posterity… Posterior… Get it?!)

You can’t really even see them. Wow, I didn’t expect this! Without the help of a mirror or a smartphone’s selfie mode, I literally can’t see my tattoos at all. No amount of twisting and rubber-necking allows me to see any part of them. That might be due to my particular body (thigh size, lack of flexibility, and so on), but still: if you want tattoos you’ll be able to see all the time, the back of your thigh is a bad spot. As for me, I’m okay with it – I don’t mind looking in the mirror to see my ink, and I suspect I’d get sick of a tattoo faster if it was in my sightline all the time.

What do you wish someone had told you before you got a tattoo?

Monthly Faves: Pink Dildos, Pink Lips, & Pink Butts

Kate Sloan

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This was my sluttiest month to date, if you use “number of different sexual partners” as your metric for sluttiness, and I’m having a lot of complicated feelz about that. Cultural messages tell us promiscuity is the domain of the love-starved, fucked-up, and emotionally empty. Vindictive slut-shamers tell us promiscuity is unethical, hurtful, and harmful. It’s hard not to take those messages to heart.

But when I get real quiet and listen to my own feelings, I get a glimpse of the truth. Sure, sometimes my sluttiness is a ruse to bolster my self-esteem and fill my oft-depressed days… but mostly, it’s not. Mostly, my pursuit of sex is a joyful one, rooted in self-love, excitement, and freedom. I’m always safe, I’m not reckless, and I maintain my emotional integrity in sexual encounters as much as I can – so it’s a happy part of my life, generally. It’s easy to forget that, but writing my Monthly Faves post at the end of each month is a way of reminding myself just how much delight is brought into my life by sex, in all its many forms. Gratitude rewires your brain and I think it’s good for your sex life, too. So here are some of the sexy things I treasured most in August…

Sex toys

• Eroscillator sent me their Top Deluxe model and my clit is smitten. (“Clitten,” you might say.) I’ve loved my standard-model Eroscillator for over four years (!!) so it feels good and right to have finally upgraded to the fancier, more powerful version. I’m going to review it soon, but suffice it to say: holy hot damn, this thing makes me come like a mofo.

• I special-ordered Godemiche‘s new Ambit dildo in glittery pink silicone, and it makes me deliriously happy. It’s my dream femme cock. I can’t wait for the day I get to slide it through the O-ring of my pink leather harness and fuck someone cute with my sparkly dick.

• All of us bloggers got plenty of freebies at Woodhull. One of the treats I went home with is a little bottle of Sliquid Soul, a natural lube that’s primarily made of coconut oil. It’ll never be a go-to lube for my partnered encounters because I usually use latex barriers (and oil breaks down latex), but for solo fun or non-penetrative pleasures, it’s soooo sensuous and lovely. I love oiling up a glass or steel dildo so it’ll slide into me frictionlessly, and I love how moisturized and happy my vulva feels afterward!

Fantasy fodder

• I am an all-purpose spanking enthusiast. Whether I’m topping or bottoming, there is just something electrically hot and exciting to me about the impact of hands or implements on gorgeous butts. Sometimes there’s not even a particularly sexual element; I can spank or be spanked by totally platonic friends and I still get some kind of emotional satisfaction out of it. I try not to question it too much – who can tell why we like what we like? Spanking’s just something I enjoy, for whatever reason, and I’m glad I get so many opportunities to participate in it. (Check out the bruises I gave Suz. Yeesh. That lady is a champ.)

• You know, I don’t think of myself as much of an exhibitionist or sexual thrill-seeker, but I had two different sexual encounters in public places this month and enjoyed ’em both a lot. On one occasion, I got kissed, held down, and slapped around by a dom-y partner in an alley after a drinks date. Just a couple days later, I was out with another partner at night, and we walked through a deserted parkette and got a little handsy… and then a little more-than-handsy, naw’m sayin’? I’m not into involving spectators nonconsensually in my sexytimes, so I would only ever do this if I was pretty certain no one would see – but with that caveat, public fucktimes can be a rare treat!

• My kinks have shifted and changed a lot over the years, but one of the things that consistently and abundantly turns me on is when a partner knows my body really well. Maybe it’s my sex-as-a-service kink, but fuck, I love it when someone knows exactly how to get me off. My current longest-running sexual relationship is with an FWB who I’ve known for a year, and his expert grasp of my body’s erogenous zones and rhythms is so hot in and of itself.

Sexcetera

• It was so much fun attending my first Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit this year! I got to commune with several of my blogger pals, soak up sex-nerdy knowledge from smart folks galore, and feel like a renowned and respected maven. It feels so, so good to have a community of fellow sex bloggers to rely on for emotional support, professional advice, and commiseration. I’m so grateful that the internet has enabled me to connect with like-minded folks and build these friendships that matter so much to me. 💖

• I got to do a lot of sex-related writing on other websites this month! I wrote about introducing sex toys to a partner, alternative uses for sex toys, and buzzy vs. rumbly vibrations for Ignite, and I expounded on A-spot toys for Peepshow. (Did you know I’m always available for writing projects? Click here for more info!)

• I bit the bullet and launched a Patreon! Now you can support my work financially if you want to. Each reward level comes with perks – for example, for $1/month, you get to read regular behind-the-scenes journal entries about what’s going on in my life; for $5/month, you get to read each new blog post a day before it launches; and for $10/month, you get access to my Snapchat. Patreon is a lovely way for fans to support creators directly, so if my work is meaningful to you and you’ve got some money to chip in, I’d love for you to come join my crew!

Femme stuff

• Hot pink lipstick is a signature of sorts for me, and I’m always looking for that next life-changing pink. I recently bought Bourjois liquid lipstick in the shade “Pink Pong” (ugh, quelle terrible pun!) and it’s the exact type of cool-toned bright pink that gives me femme heart-eyes. Plus it smells good (sort of like pink grapefruit?) and the texture is smooth. Just don’t expect to be able to make out with someone or give a blowjob in this lipstick; whenever I try, I inevitably leave a pink residue all over my beau. (Luckily, I mostly date the kind of person who just finds this cute.)

• The beautiful Hedonish gave me an orangey-red Bobbi Brown lip pencil at Woodhull and I wore it obsessively for the rest of the trip (and then the rest of the month). I don’t normally like orangey lip shades on myself, but this one is weirdly flattering.

• My main femme obsession this month was my new tattoos! They make me so freakin’ happy every time I see them. At the time of writing, they’re still healing and a little itchy and sore, but I can tell they’re going to look incredible once the skin’s done regenerating. I used to be insecure about my chubby thighs, but it’s really hard for me to hate a part of my body that’s emblazoned with adorable pink bows and my favorite kinky term of endearment!

Little things

Lifestyles Tuxedo condoms, “the dressiest condoms on the market.” Woodhull inside jokes, like “Damn, he’s got a dick!” and #Dildough. Smoking weed in the parking lot like a bunch of teenage degenerates. Everything Joanna Thangiah makes. Meeting Nina Hartley. A smart, handsome boy calling me “a cool cute cinnamon roll.” The Adventure Zone, always. Coffee shop work-dates with friends. The feeling of accomplishment when I successfully navigate an airport by myself. Blogging on a plane. Stranger Things. My wonderfully kink-positive and poly-positive new therapist. Beer Doms. “I want to go somewhere quiet with you and just talk for hours.” Allison Moon’s inspirational talk on “self-publishing for radicals.” Tough-but-kind romantic advice from Epiphora and Lilly. Dungeons & Dragons. Carly Rae Jepsen. Goldilocks spankings. Mango smoothies. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because it’s a very good thing: your boobs are the boob equivalent of Mario in Mario Kart. They’re middle-of-the-road; they offer something for everyone.”

What’s in a Name?

Kate Sloan

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“What do you want?”

He’s got me backed up against a fence, in one of the many residential alleys that crisscross through the Annex. The fence is painted bright turquoise, and it must make a beautiful backdrop for this foreground: a pale and blushing babe in a blue dress. Me.

His hand is on my ass. He knows what I want, but he’s still gonna make me say it. “I want you to spank me, sir,” I choke out, his lips so close to mine that he must feel my words as much as he hears them.

He chuckles. I can tell he likes it when I call him that. “I don’t have a name for you yet,” he replies, like this only just occurred to him.

I am more than prepared for this eventuality. “I like to be ‘princess,’ or ‘little one,’ or ‘babygirl,'” I list off. These names are well-traversed in my life, but they still feel fresh and important. They’re heavy on my tongue and hot in my ears.

“Okay, princess,” he says with a dark smile. “You gonna be a good girl for me?”

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“Princess” was my first kink honorific, the first name I remember loving being called. A dominant fuckbuddy casually mentioned it one day while we were discussing my burgeoning DD/lg kink. It felt right to me when he said it, in the same way it felt right when I discovered other words that describe me, like “femme,” “queer,” and “submissive.” I sexually identify as a princess.

Not a literal princess, you understand. I don’t have a kingdom to rule over, royal subjects, a family of other monarchs. I am a princess in the way that Veruca Salt and Angelica Pickles are princesses: a treasured and perhaps slightly spoiled little girl whose daddy unflinchingly loves her and dotes on her. A dainty little thing, with a bratty streak that comes out when provoked or challenged. A precious but ultimately powerless little gem of a person, revered but not really respected. I’m that kind of princess.

Though I’m enamored with the “Daddy Dom/little girl” dynamic, I almost never call partners “daddy.” It feels wrong to me, and not just because it’s taboo. I’ve never used that word with my actual dad either; it feels babyish and saccharine in a way I don’t particularly enjoy. I don’t say that to shame anybody’s kinks; if you like that word, that’s fine and good for you! But for myself, I gravitate more toward “sir.” It communicates what I want it to, without making me cringe. And, if I’m honest, calling partners that makes me suuuuuper wet.

“Little one” was introduced to me by the aforementioned dom fuckbuddy, too. He dropped it into our dialogue mid-fuck one day and my reaction far surpassed what I could have predicted. He was the exact same height as me, probably even weighed less than me, and yet, with those two simple words, he made me feel inescapably smaller than him. Diminutive and defenseless. A mere insect under his boot heel.

My relationship with this title is fraught with guilt, because I worry it’s related to patriarchal size-shaming. I’m a chubby lady so maybe it makes me feel better – sexier – to be literally told that I am small. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Smallness is associated with traditional femininity, sure, but it’s also connected to powerlessness, a state of being that I eroticize deeply. When someone calls me “little one” and I get wetter and hotter, I think it’s more about the condescension and coddling than the physical littleness being evoked.

“Babygirl” is more ambiguous. Vanilla partners call me “baby” sometimes; it’s a common epithet, in this world of Biebers and Backstreet Boys. But there’s patriarchy baked right into it: this name infantilizes its subject in the most literal sense. My inner feminist struggles to accept my affinity for being called patronizing names. My inner sex-positive feminist, however, knows it’s okay for me to like whatever I like, as long as I don’t replicate those power injustices in my actual life.

Names, labels, identities: these things are important, regardless of what the “Labels don’t matter!” crowd says. Labels help us organize ourselves, understand ourselves, understand who we’re attracted to and what we want. Not to mention, they can be really fucking hot.

One night I was at a party, and several people were sporting tiaras. A domly friend of mine made a paper crown for Bex, since their gender identity isn’t always tiara-friendly. “How is the king?” he asked Bex later, when their makeshift crown was atop their head. And then, looking at me: “And the queen?”

“She’s not a queen, she’s a princess,” Bex retorted, before I could even respond. And they were right.

“A Casual Fuck Can Only Bring Bad Luck…”

Kate Sloan

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I’ve gotten better at casual sex in the past year. “Better,” you understand, but still not “good.” When I fuck someone, however casually, I still tend to Google them afterward. Maybe creep their Facebook photos a bit. Tell all my friends how cute they are. And then, usually, I’m done obsessing and can move on with my damn life.

But I didn’t always have that ability. I wrote this song, “Casual,” a year ago, when I was struggling with a crush on someone who only wanted to see me occasionally and only between the sheets. It was a major adjustment for my brain to learn that sex and romance don’t always have to be connected. And in the interim before I figured that out, I was sad for a while.

I hope you like the song! The lyrics are below for you to read. If you want to keep this song while also supporting me, you can buy it on Bandcamp and it’ll be yours forever, so you can listen to it on loop while crying over your unrequited love… Er, I mean, so you can listen to it while going about your totally normal, emotionally well-adjusted life. Yep.

“Let’s keep things casual,” you said
My heart exploded cold with dread
I don’t have the strength
To keep you at arm’s length
I fall for all callers to my bed

A casual fuck can only bring bad luck
‘Cause I’ll end up stuck on you
For no-strings-attached, we’re so badly matched
And I’ve got a crush on you

Give me some credit, if you please
I’ve put all my feelings in deep freeze
This isn’t romance
It’s not my one big chance
It’s just a blowjob on my knees

A casual fuck can only bring bad luck
‘Cause I’ll end up stuck on you
For no-strings-attached, we’re so badly matched
And I’ve got a crush on you

We still stay perfectly polite
But we never got this thing quite right
It makes me feel dumb
That you can make me come
But I can’t even make you stay the night

A casual fuck can only bring bad luck
‘Cause I’ll end up stuck on you
For no-strings-attached, we’re so badly matched
And I’ve got a crush on you