12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 5 Savvy Superheroes

Kate Sloan

Especially since the onset of the pandemic, the strangers I follow on social media and the online creators whose work I consume have come to feel like part of my (para)social sphere. There’s a reason I’ll sometimes half-jokingly say “I want to see my friends!” when sitting down to watch a beloved TV show, check out a favorite YouTuber’s latest video or pop into an Instagram Live of someone whose life I follow from afar.

So it feels as appropriate as ever this year to highlight some people I think are doing heroic work, whether artistically, ethically, intellectually, politically, or some combination thereof. Here are my 5 picks for the year.

 

Hannah Einbinder

When my spouse and I attended a Pride Week comedy variety show in New York this past June, we were there primarily to see the ever-hilarious Jes Tom and didn’t know many of the other acts – so when the awkward-yet-confident, androgynously-styled Hannah Einbinder strutted onto the stage, we had no idea who she was. All we knew was that we were immediately captivated by her dry wit, zany jokes, and disarming stage presence.

The emcees had mentioned that Hannah was one of the stars of a TV series called Hacks, and when we started watching it, it was hard not to immediately fall in love with Hannah’s character, Ava. Ava is a down-on-her-luck comedy writer who lands a gig ghostwriting jokes for a famous fiftysomething comedienne, Deborah Vance, who’s fallen from her former glory. But what’s most striking to me about Ava – and about Hannah too – is that she’s loudly out about being bisexual, and she’s neither a stereotyped caricature of a bisexual nor a sugarcoated figurehead of “good bisexual representation.” Ava is a flawed, messy person who can be gregarious and generous one minute and anxious and selfish the next, just like a real human – and Hannah plays her with warmth and whimsy.

As a fellow bisexual Jew with a penchant for dark jokes (and messy behavior), I find both Hannah and her character Ava very relatable, and am so glad to see someone like Hannah out in the world making people laugh. She certainly made me laugh a lot this year.

 

Paul “Photie” Photenhauer

Paul is the author of the books Natural Harvest and Semenology, both cookbooks where cum is the featured ingredient in every recipe.

I have no idea what Paul is up to now, and wish I did. I attempted to get in touch with him for an interview when I wrote a piece about Semenology this year, but he didn’t reply and hasn’t tweeted since 2012. (Hope he’s okay.)

Wherever he may be, his cultural impact is undeniable. Natural Harvest is the second-most mentioned book on all of Reddit, and I’ve yet to find any other works that dive as deeply into cum cuisine as Paul’s do. As I noted in my article, not all of the recipes are winners, and one wonders what menu a professionally trained chef or bartender (of which I gather Paul is neither) would build if given the same prompt – but Paul’s work gave me a lot of delight this year, and I think that’s worth celebrating.

 

Dr. Dick Schwartz

I would be remiss not to mention Richard C. Schwartz, Ph.D. on this list, because his work had a transformational impact on my life this year.

As I’ve chronicled in a few blog posts, I dug deeply into the therapeutic modality known as Internal Family Systems this year as part of my trauma healing process, and it is one of the only tools I’ve come across in 15+ years of therapy that has actually shifted things for me. I still struggle, for sure, but I’m much stronger and more resilient now than I was at this time last year, in large part because of the techniques and paradigm I’ve learned from Internal Family Systems.

Dr. Schwartz invented IFS by applying to individual therapy similar techniques as those he’d used with couples and families in his practice, under the assumption that each person has different sides of their personality (known as “parts”) which can be in conflict with each other, and that these parts can be soothed and taken care of by the Self in order to relieve them of their difficult emotions. It sounds super “woo” but it’s actually just a useful lens through which to look at the internal tensions between different motivations and trauma responses you may have amassed over the years.

I really feel that Dr. Schwartz’s IFS model helped turn my life around pretty dramatically this year, and I’m so very grateful to him (and to my excellent IFS-practicing therapist) for that.

 

Joel Kim Booster

Happily, there was a lot of fantastic queer media this year. To name just a few faves: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Bros, The L Word: Generation Q, Heartstopper, Tár. A couple other major standouts were Joel Kim Booster’s Netflix stand-up special Psychosexual and (even moreso) the film he wrote and starred in, Fire Island.

Fire Island is a gay rom-com, and the world sorely needs more of those. But beyond that, it’s also just a really fucking good movie. It’s a modern-day, queered adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, set on the titular queer oasis that is Fire Island in the summertime. A gaggle of gay friends shows up for their annual weeklong vacation, and romantic hijinks ensue.

Booster’s sense of humor is sharp and biting, deeply millennial, distinctively queer, and shot through with relatable mental health struggles (he has bipolar disorder). He tackles tough topics like sex, race, and civil rights with ease and style. I think he’s hilarious and brilliant and am excited to see what he does next!

 

Jonathan Mann

Upon issuing myself a songwriting challenge this year, I started looking into the work of people who had issued themselves similar challenges – and pretty much immediately stumbled across Jonathan Mann’s “Song a Day” project.

As its title suggests, Jonathan writes and records a song every day for this project, which would be amazing enough on its own – but the fact that he’s kept it going for nearly 14 years now is even more mindblowing. That’s over 5,000 songs, and counting.

In addition to this staggering daily achievement, Jonathan also works on other projects, including a podcast about his songwriting process that I really enjoyed. I find him wildly inspirational as a creator. I read an interview with him this year where he said something like, “I decided to do this because I noticed that I felt better on days when I wrote a song than on days when I didn’t, and I wanted to feel that way every day.” I am in total agreement with him, and aspire to commit to a daily practice of creativity the way he has, for reasons that go beyond the practical and ascend into the spiritual, the existential, the universal and the eternal.

 

Who were your biggest heroes this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

Dear friends, I didn’t write in my journal much this year; one of the occupational hazards of being someone who writes for a living is that sometimes you don’t have enough time/energy to write for yourself. A lot of the writing I did do in my journal was the many many pages of notes I tend to take during solo shrooms trips; usually I put on a movie (or sometimes 2-3 in a row) and sit in front of it with my Moleskine and pen, noting all the thoughts and feelings that come up as I watch Hercules or A Bug’s Life or Cats Don’t Dance or whatever.

So, some of the journal entries I’m sharing in this post are extremely condensed/curated excerpts from those trip notes, and some are just regular journal entries about thoughts and feelings I was having at the time. A lot of these entries also contain reference to the trauma healing work I’ve been doing this year in Internal Family Systems therapy. I hope you enjoy, and that you’re having a good December.

 

March 12th

Some notes from a solo shrooms trip:

All of us (all the “parts” of me) can rally together inside. Working collaboratively on a big task (like healing trauma) inherently builds intimacy. And hopefully trust. Like how Chuck Nolan (in the movie Cast Away) needed to be the guy looking for rope and also the guy who sent him to look. It can save your sanity to be multiple selves.

No one’s there to care for you if you’re just alone. You have to be able to split yourself, see yourself and your life from two angles at once, yours and hers (your inner child’s). It’s the only way you both can be cared for, protected and healed. The way I “trip-sit” myself is such good training for being simultaneously the passenger and the captain. It needs to become almost instinctual, like psychological muscle memory, for me to separate from and care for my inner bbgirl like this.

The hardest part is realizing: as a kid, you thought adults had all the answers and were never afraid, but in reality, you can be afraid and only know what you know and still decide to helm the ship. Having to calm her helps summon the most adult, nurturing parts of me to the surface. I never need to worry I’m a bad “parent” to her as long as I am listening to her, affirming her feelings, and helping her do what she wants to do next.

I spent a lot of time alone in my room as a kid because I wouldn’t trigger myself, wouldn’t monitor my own behavior for badness, or yell at myself. It was very resourced of me to be in my room alone with books, journals, dolls/teddies/stuffed animals, music, my tape recorder, my cute clothes. I found peace in solitude. But crucially, this strategy REQUIRES that I only be nice to myself, and not be the exact kind of terrorizer that necessitated my self-regulating alone time.

 

April 14th

Free-writing because Matt told me to:

[My high school] was a place where queerness of all definitions was accepted and encouraged. It was in some ways a culture shock after 2 years at [my middle school], where social hierarchy mattered so primally, so fundamentally. What is it about middle school that brings out the meanest, darkest streaks in young people’s psychology? Is it the underformed prefrontal cortex, the impulse control issues, the lack of emotional experience that turns pimply dweebs into monsters?

There are two girls I regret having shunned and gossiped about rather than befriended in middle school. One was [N.], widely regarded as the sluttiest girl in school. We were all 12-14 years old, and there were constant rumors that [N.] dated men in their late teens or early twenties. I wonder now if she was okay, if those men were taking advantage of her; any way you slice it, they almost certainly were.

The other girl we were mean about was [K.]; she was meek but deeply funny when you got her going. She was into anime and other “nerdy” stuff like that. There were also constant rumors that she was a lesbian, and the popular girls would sometimes claim that she had been staring at them or making them feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, the homophobic anxiety was off the charts at that school, which made [my high school] seem even more utopian by contrast.

[My therapist] says it makes sense that I would latch onto the structure of “popularity” in order to prop up my damaged self-image after the emotional mistreatment I’d endured elsewhere. We naturally look for ways to feel more empowered when we go through a disempowering trauma – that’s how shame first evolves, as a way of coping with unpredictable dangers by positing that we can theoretically protect ourselves from those dangers if we behave a certain way because the problem is that we are bad – to believe otherwise would be to have to accept the terrifying truth that danger can strike at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

So I can see why I got so obsessed with winning/maintaining the approval of [B., the most popular girl at my middle school] and her cronies, even though I didn’t even like them that much or want to be their friend for reasons other than social status and avoiding loneliness + ridicule. There were rules I could follow – I thought – that would help me stay safe: wear this brand of clothing, carry this type of purse, talk this way, mock these girls, express derision toward the “right” things (gayness, nerdiness, fatness, etc). I was trying to follow all the protocols and even that wasn’t enough, ultimately, to keep me safe from having my social status destroyed. But it was a lesson I needed to learn.

 

July 27th

Part of why this songwriting challenge has been so good for me is that I always wanted to do more gigs but so much of my best material (especially the more crowd-pleasing stuff) was from when I was in high school or my early twenties, and I feel like a pretty different person now, with different things to say and different feelings and stories I want to express (though some of the same ones as well). I’m really proud of the songs I’ve been cranking out this year and excited to have so much more stuff I can perform whenever that becomes a possibility again.

I’ve also loved observing how naturally well-suited my brain is for songwriting: little melodic, lyrical or conceptual ideas come to me all the time, like a tumbleweed blowing on down the road, and my job is to pick them up, examine them, shine ’em up and make ’em sparkle. My songwriting process now is much more adult and fleshed-out than when I was in high school, because 1) I’m a better writer now in general and 2) my spiritual beliefs around creativity now are less about accepting and reproducing exactly the rudimentary or strange ideas I hear in my head and more about using them like whispers from the universe, as a jumping-off point, an improv scene suggestion, a nudge in the direction I need to go in. I’m fascinated by the process of honing a metaphorical block of marble into a beautiful, compelling sculpture.

 

September 10th

Some notes from another shrooms trip:

3:07 p.m. Have to once again remind myself: you don’t need to narrate this or explain/describe your experience to ANYONE later, just enjoy it – BUT if imagining a future audience/listener is useful as a framing device or narrative theme, of course you can still use it when and if you want to.

3:15 p.m. Keeping grounded during scary scenes [of the movie I’m watching, Hercules] by writing about them. But is this always what I do? Distancing myself from the experience by documenting it? The loss of control/connection to reality that many people fear from drugs (myself included) is noticeably lurking around the edges but I am comfortably holding it off – the movie and writing about the movie are both pleasant.

3:26 p.m. Reality is bending and becoming less sure to me but in a way that’s still comfortable. Indeed, narrating this as if for a future reader (even if it’s only me) is a helpful organizing principle but also something I wouldn’t even know how to turn off in myself. What notes am I supposed to make in a NOTEbook if not for a future reader? Why am I shaming myself, bullying myself for a natural human impulse that has existed since the beginning of time itself? I am a creator, that is very core to who I am, and so parts of everything I do will be done creatively or as if they are meant to function as fuel or fodder for further creation. To pretend otherwise would be kidding myself.

4:12 p.m. Literally have no idea how many pages I’ve written this trip. The writing is less about its output and more about the actual action of it – it’s a guiding principle, a way of steering the ship, but also it is the ship.

 

October 29th

Some notes from yet another shrooms trip:

5:47 p.m. Watching [the YouTuber QuinBoBin] play Twilight Princess. I love him he’s so funny and wholesome. I’m laughing so hard that there are tears rolling down my cheeks.

Quin has taught me a lot about HOW TO ENJOY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES! This connection to my nerdy childhood. It’s like I was too scared of social self-judgment for being nerdy and I didn’t even let that path of my life develop. Reclaiming video games and other nerdy shit I was shamed out of. Being that nerdy boy I always wanted to impress and connect with.

5:57 p.m. VERY emotional. Shrooms is not easy or passive; do not expect it to be. But nothing is scary when I know Quin is here with me and we’re fighting the big boss together. I have to let the gay nerd inside me out. How much of my personality and style have I let [my middle school bully] shape? Who would I be without her laugh aimed at me in my own head? I’m mourning wasted time and who I could have been.

In the game Link transforms and I can transform too. I can be anything I want. My life is mine to craft now. Slicking my hair back with my tears lol.

I always used to run from Lynels [a difficult enemy in the game Breath of the Wild] or chip away at their ankles and Quin showed me I can fucking mount them and slap their cheeks til they’re dead. Nerdy boys showed me a way out of the hell of social hierarchy and I chose to swim away. I chose the hierarchy. Every mean thing I’ve ever done has been in service of trying to look cool and disaffected and like I had the upper hand. That was all an act, a crutch. I know that now.

6:21 p.m. What a wild drug, lol.

 

November 21st

Was just looking at some of Gaby Herstik’s incredible selfies and felt a strong sense of wanting to lean back into the side of me that would post provocative thirst traps on Twitter, dress slutty and weird every day, flirt with randos, etc. I think I have lost touch with that girl partly for reasonable reasons (fibro, pandemic, concerns about being kicked off PayPal/Instagram etc. for being too porny) and partly for dumb reasons (wanting to “seem more professional” and “be taken more seriously”). The disembodiment of trauma has also played a role.

But I wonder how much of feeling embodied and deliciously sensual is about making the effort to feel sexy by any means necessary: wearing lipstick and perfume to bed, posting late-night lingerie pics, upping my heart rate by telling cute people they’re cute.

Through therapy I have become aware of the aspects of my former sluttiness that I felt pressured into by society and people I’ve hooked up with, or felt lured into by my own trauma-borne desperation to be liked and wanted. But I wonder if now it’s time to let the pendulum swing back in the other direction a little, in the hopes of finding a happier medium. I want to feel even sexier in my thirties than I did in my twenties, and when I do, I will have earned it. This body, this confidence and this proud sexuality were hard-won for me and I intend to enjoy them. But in a way that respects my demisexuality, my trauma history and my boundaries.

During fibro flare-ups I feel so disconnected from my body even as the pains and discomforts of my body are all I can think about. I want to feel in touch with my body again and that includes being in touch with its softness, its sexiness, its allure to others and to myself.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Would you ever do something so self-indulgent as to write a blog post about your favorite selfies you took over the past year?! No, me neither.

Wait, that’s not true. I’ve done exactly that for several years running now. Whoops.

Anyway, without further self-effacing lampshading, here are 7 of the most meaningful selfies I took this year, with a bit of context for each. Look, I’m cute!

 

January 1

Despite writing a song around this time called “Alone on New Year’s Eve,” I was not, in fact, alone on New Year’s Eve. I went to spend it with my parents.

There was a time when that last sentence would have made me feel like I wasn’t cool enough or social enough to line up other plans. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become less and less interested in listening to the “mean popular girl” voice inside my head that judges me for such things. A girl like that hasn’t had power over me since I was a preteen, except within my own mind. Instead of taking her criticisms to heart, instead I can just ask myself in any given moment: What is it that I most want to do? And then I can do that.

And truth be told, it’s been years since I’ve wanted to spend New Year’s out at a dance club, bar, or party. I’ll swig some midnight champagne and yell a countdown at the TV, sure, but from the comfort of my own (or a loved one’s) home. New Year’s is a hugely self-reflective time for me (as this blog series makes clear), a time when I like to think back about who I’ve been that year and who I want to be in the coming one, and I find it easiest to be introspective when I’m operating from home base.

Anyway, I chose this picture because my mum and I look super cute in it, and because she’s so sweet and funny and delightful and a really important part of my year every year. Love you!

 

February 3

To the extent that I had any kind of defined personal style this year – which is dubious – a lot of the time it fell into what could be termed “lovecore.” This is a style of dress in which “romantic” colors like pink and red are emphasized, and in which the (non-anatomical) heart symbol plays a big role.

I truly would dress like this nearly every day if I had the energy to do so. And frankly, maybe that just means I need to transition my loungewear and sleepwear wardrobe into a more lovecore-y vibe by gradually phasing out all colors but red, pink, and black. Who knows what the future may hold for my look.

In scouring the internet for lovecore-centric inspo images, I kept stumbling across pictures of this heart-print sweatsuit. Megan Fox famously wears a jacket like this one in Jennifer’s Body, and it’s a showstopper. After going back and forth on it for a while, I eventually sprung for a duplicate of the full sweatsuit made by a random Etsy shop.

It’s certainly not what you’d call sophisticated or understated. It is LOUD, and it hugs my curves in ways that would have made me feel uncomfortable and insecure just a few short years ago. But I love it. When I took this selfie the first time I wore it, I actually liked the photo so much that I put it into my Tinder profile almost immediately. It’s always been important to me to be fully forthcoming about what my body looks like in my online dating profiles, because I don’t want to risk ending up on a date with someone who isn’t chill about me being adorably chubby, and this photo feels like one of the best ways to do that. It’s where romance meets sexiness, baby.

 

February 13

When a reader of mine asked me to write a blog post about her jeans bondage fetish, it occurred to me that I’d need some photos to go with the post. Originally I was just going to take some normal arm’s-length selfies wearing jeans in bed, but I tried that and they just didn’t come out looking the way I’d hoped.

It was then that I realized I needed to do something I’d only done one other time before: a solo photoshoot in the corridors of my building, complete with tripod and self-timer. The risk was high – a neighbor could walk out at any moment and witness the whole denim-clad scene – but I knew the pictures would be much better than those I’d half-assed in bed.

The lighting in those hallways is creepy, and the whole vibe is very The Shining, albeit with less glamour and less blood. But I liked how the photos came out, not least because they were meant to emphasize the tightness of the jeans moreso than whether the jeans were “fashionable” or “flattering” or any other such dirty word. I saw the denim squeezing my thighs and hips and, instead of feeling ashamed or like I needed to fire up Photoshop, I simply thought about people who are into jeans bondage and how much they’d relish the constrictive look of this pair of skinnies.

I also like that there’s something a bit lonely about this photograph. Standing alone in a long hallway, with a KN95 mask underlining my hopeful upward gaze. It has a “trapped” feeling that makes it feel very 2022-appropriate.

 

February 16

I think my Honni Music electric baritone ukulele might be my favorite thing I bought this year. I was debating between this custom-made instrument from Australia and a much more generic, off-the-rack acoustic baritone. I asked my spouse and my brother what they thought, and they both said roughly the same thing; in mb’s words, “I think the electric one will bring you more joy and spark more creativity.”

I don’t know how or why, but the artisanal luthier behind Honni Music only charges about $300 (CAD) per instrument, despite the fact that he makes them all by hand to the specifications of each customer. But I decided to treat myself, and ordered one. It didn’t even take very long to arrive all the way from Australia!

I took this picture the day I received the uke in the mail. My face here is genuinely reflective of the excitement I was feeling. There is something so special about an instrument that has been hand-crafted from scratch. This one is stunning.

I had never owned an electric guitar or electric ukulele growing up, because they were too loud with an amp and too quiet without one, and they didn’t really fit into the style of music I was interested in making then. But I always secretly sorta wanted an electric guitar, because they were the epitome of cool, and I thought that owning one could usher me into a whole new way of making music.

So it felt deeply nourishing to my li’l music-lover heart to buy this for myself, and to play it, plugged into a tiny practice amp I bought from some rando on Facebook Marketplace. It felt like a gift to my younger self, the one who’d stood in front of her bedroom mirror playing air guitar to Aerosmith and John Mayer. And it’s inspired me to write a lot of great songs since I got it, too.

 

July 9

My roommate Sarah and her boyfriend Dan (who I’ve actually been friends with for even longer than I’ve known Sarah) have been two of my closest pals for years, but especially so during the pandemic, when we made a regular ritual of gathering in Sarah’s room to play Jackbox games and Use Your Words over cocktails and ciders. It felt so important and healing to have an outlet for the kind of casual socializing we lost out on when self-isolation became the new normal.

I took this photo with the two of them on the night we went out (yes, went out! To an actual bar patio! Wow!) to celebrate Sarah’s birthday. She is a mega-femme whose signature color is pink, so I always wear pink for her birthday festivities, whatever and wherever they may be.

While writing this just now, I couldn’t recall the name of the bar we went to, but remembered that all the drinks were themed around various nerdy, sci-fi and/or cult-y media properties (Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Beetlejuice, etc.) so I googled “nerd bar gay village Toronto” and the name of the place popped right up: Storm Crow Manor. Gotta love any place where the drinks glow and the waiters wear short-shorts.

Shout-out to these two pals for being there for me in a major way these past few years!

 

September 19

Matt and I are both so accustomed to posing for selfies that it can be hard to take “candids” of either of us. So I love that this picture captures us genuinely laughing together in a way we do constantly but not often on camera. I don’t know what we were laughing about, but we look cute and in love.

The night that this was taken, we headed out for a drink at Martiny’s, a very dark and serious bar that serves (as you’d expect) fantastic martinis, among other things.

I don’t have much more to say about this one except, like, look how adorable we are!

 

October 29

Appropriately to its almost-Halloween date, this is probably one of the weirdest and most chilling selfies I took all year. But it’s kinda great, too.

I did solo shrooms trips several times this year, partly recreationally and partly for the drug’s potentially trauma-healing effects. (One day I’ll write all about how shrooms are helping me heal my inner child, but I don’t think the time for that is right just yet.)

This picture was taken around 5 p.m. after a full day of shroomy goodness. In glancing through my trip notes for that day (which I think I’ll be diving into more in my “favorite journal entries of the year” post later this week), it seems that some of the things I did during that trip included watching Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, drifting in and out of trance, and weeping profusely while watching a funny video of a guy playing Zelda games. (It’s a long story, idk.)

After being high for around 6 hours – by which time I’m usually feeling somewhat sober-er but reality still feels a bit fuzzy at the edges – I opened up the camera on my phone and looked at myself in the selfie-cam. There was something about this sight that seemed almost mystical to me – the way my hair was arranged like a peacock’s tail or a lion’s mane in a Renaissance painting, the way my slip dress’s spaghetti strap sagged off one shoulder, the way my makeupless face told a tale of peace and tranquility that was somehow also haunted. I snapped a few shots. This was the best one.

 

It’s been a weird year – although I probably say that every year – and I’m glad that I have these photos to remember it by. What were some of your fave selfies you took this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2022: 8 Brilliant Books

Kate Sloan

Ever walked into a really great bookstore and felt a chill go up your spine that was almost erotic? Yeah, me too.

Gosh, I love books. I don’t know if I agree with John Waters’ famous quote on books, “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em,” because people consume the written word in so many different mediums now – but I know that I’d be hesitant to date someone who couldn’t at least converse with me about the books we each enjoyed.

Goodreads tells me that I read about 31 books this year, and as is tradition, I’ve picked 8 of my favorites to tell you about. Here they are, in the order that I read them:

 

Missing from the Village: The Story of Serial Killer Bruce McArthur, the Search for Justice, and the System that Failed Toronto’s Queer Community by Justin Ling

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

I remember how it felt to be a member of Toronto’s queer community a few summers ago, when there were vague rumblings of a serial killer on the loose amongst us. Several people had disappeared mysteriously at gay bars and other areas in the Village, many of them queer men of color. The police didn’t seem to be doing anything about it, unsurprisingly. My queer friends and I would tell each other even more emphatically after nights out, “Text me when you get home safe, okay?” because we just didn’t know what was going on, and we were scared.

Through a series of events which are diligently described in this book, it was eventually discovered that the serial killer walking among us was a landscaper and former mall Santa who was targeting queer men of color, particularly those who were immigrants and whose far-away friends and family might not notice they’d gone missing. While the killer is in prison now, and will be until he’s at least 91 years old if he even lives that long, the damage he had done to our community, to his victims and to their friends and family was insurmountable and could never be taken back.

Justin Ling is a Canadian investigative journalist who took an interest in this story, and in this book he digs into what exactly happened, why police were so negligent in this case (hint: racism and homophobia were big factors, as you’d expect), and how the killer was identified and apprehended. It’s a fascinating and harrowing look into crimes that should never have been swept under the rug.

 

No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

I really can’t overstate how much Internal Family Systems therapy has helped me this last year. I had struggled for over a decade with managing the torrential emotions that would sweep over me whenever I got triggered, and IFS is the only modality that has given me tools which have actually helped with this problem. It has helped me learn to be more compassionate towards myself and others, and to comfort myself when I am upset in addition to asking for what I need from the people in my life.

Richard C. Schwartz is the inventor of Internal Family Systems. Trained in family therapy, he took his knowledge of dynamics amongst groups and couples and began using those same paradigms on the individual self, seeing each person as being made up of “parts” which have conflicting desires, fears, motivations and tactics. What all of these parts have in common, though, is that they all ultimately share the goal of keeping you safe and protecting you from difficult emotions – it’s just that they sometimes do this in ways that seem baffling or counterproductive. The “parts” inside a person who’s endured trauma, Schwartz says, are essentially just children, frozen in time at the point in your history when you experienced that trauma – so if you notice yourself feeling like a snivelling 6-year-old girl or a tantrum-throwing 8-year-old boy when you’re triggered, what is needed is the care and compassion you would show to an actual child of that age who was having that level of emotional response.

No Bad Parts is one of several books Schwartz has written about IFS, and it’s a good introduction to the model. I’d still recommend that beginners to IFS see a therapist trained in this modality if they’re at all able to, because it can be extremely helpful to have a calm, wise person steer the ship through your tumultuous emotions with you when you haven’t learned how to do so yourself yet. But even if you can’t access therapy, I still think this book could be transformational for many people. It certainly has been for me, by helping me understand better what my therapist is actually doing when they implement certain IFS techniques, and how I can implement those techniques myself when I’m alone.

 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

I picked this up because several people I follow online had mentioned that they “couldn’t put it down” once they started reading it. I literally didn’t know anything about it going into it, and that’s probably the ideal way to consume this book.

So how do I explain why I loved it so much, without giving spoilers? All I can really say is that if you’re a fan of old Hollywood – the movies, the celebrity culture, the glamour of it all – and are a romantic, you’d probably enjoy this, especially if you’re queer.

It made me want to wear a green satin ballgown every day. It made me want to pursue the things I want, and the people I want. It made me want to be the loudest, boldest, bravest version of myself, if just in honor of the people who came before me who weren’t able to do that. I loved it and cried through most of it, which (coming from me) is a huge compliment.

 

You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships by Richard C. Schwartz

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

I wasn’t sure whether to include another book I read by the Internal Family Systems founder about his therapeutic model, but honestly both of these books have changed my life so much that it would be weird not to mention them!

You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For is much more relationships-focused than No Bad Parts. In particular, a lot of it is about how trauma can make us more susceptible to viewing certain people as our “redeemer,” someone whose love will somehow “fix” us and make it so that we’re never sad or lonely or rejected ever again. This can be a highly damaging way to view your relationships, both for your loved ones and for yourself, and yet it’s how a lot of people think about love. It’s even how our culture encourages us to view love, if the many many media depictions of “romance = happily ever after” are to be believed.

This book discusses the ways that IFS techniques can be used to heal negative relationship patterns, like always trying to change a partner so they’ll be who you want them to be, or always trying to change yourself to fit what you think your partner wants. And although this book wasn’t written with polyamory or other forms of non-monogamy in mind, I think it dovetails nicely with a lot of resources on polyamory and trauma, because it can help you address the root causes of your strong reactions to jealousy, rejection, and the threat of abandonment.

 

Tampa by Alyssa Nutting

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

Someone described this book to me as “a gender-swapped Lolita” and I was intrigued. Lolita is one of my favorite novels, not just because the writing is beautifully lush and witty, and not just because it launched a thousand erotic tropes, but because of how skilfully it makes powerful statements about consent and control via its unreliable narrator Humbert Humbert. While often interpreted by critics as a defense of pedophiles and their crimes, I see Lolita far more as a warning to the world about what can happen when we trust “unreliable narrators” just because they’re male/white/well-to-do/[insert other markers of systemic power and privilege here]. Much like Missing from the Village, Lolita points out the ineptitudes of authority figures whose unexamined biases lead them to ignore, dismiss and belittle the disempowered people most in need of their help.

Tampa is indeed, in many ways, a gender-swapped Lolita. It’s a novel about an adult woman who is sexually fixated on young boys, and the lengths to which she will go to scratch her pedophilic itch. Like Lolita, it forces the reader to grapple with their own notions of consent, control, agency, desire, and justice. And also like Lolita, it encourages us to understand the problem of pedophilia from a more humanizing angle, without letting abusers off the hook for the terrible things they do.

While obviously quite disturbing, Tampa was a compelling read. I especially found it interesting to note the ways that women who abuse their power can so often be viewed as less of a threat than men who do the same, for obvious reasons, even though they can behave just as horribly and can be every bit as morally bankrupt as their male counterparts.

 

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

Since I enjoyed her previous book The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo so much, I decided to check out Taylor Jenkins Reid’s newer novel, Carrie Soto is Back. It’s about the comeback tour of a fictional female pro tennis player – why she decides to return to the game after some time away, and what happens when she does.

I’m not a sporty person at all, but some of my few forays into the land of athleticism have been into racquet sports, including tennis, badminton, and volleyball. So, while I found the athletic aspects of this book mildly interesting, mainly what pulled me in was the relationships between the characters, and the way that Carrie is so driven by her desire to be the best that she often ends up pushing people away and hurting herself in the process.

I think this story is instructive for anyone who measures their value by their professional success. I’ve certainly been there, and it was affirming to see those struggles reflected in these pages, even though Carrie is a world-famous tennis star who tours the world, and I am a freelance writer who reviews dildos from my bedroom. (One thing we have in common, at least, is that we both know a thing or two about balls.)

 

On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

Oliver Sacks is one of my all-time favorite writers. He was a neurologist, and rose to fame for his gorgeously-written case studies compiled in many books, which examined the relationship between neurology and the human condition. I loved, for example, his book on how music affects the brain and vice-versa, Musicophilia, and his tales of visual and ocular disturbances in The Mind’s Eye.

On the Move is quite different, though: it’s one of his memoirs. It was published the year that he died, and shows him reflecting back on his life and the wisdom he’s accrued from it. In particular, this is one of the few Sacks books where he discusses in detail the fact of him being gay, and the ways that homophobia shaped the course of his life. But there are also lots of fun stories in here, tales of zooming across the country on a motorbike, playing chess on LSD, and falling in love for the first time. It’s a beautiful book, written by a beautiful man, and is one of the most intimate glimpses available into one of the great minds of the 20th century.

 

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price, Ph.D.

Available at Bookshop.org and Amazon.com

I haven’t even actually finished reading this yet, but it’s already changed my life, so I feel compelled to mention it.

The provocative title of this book is indeed its central thesis. Laziness does not exist. Read that slowly, word by word, and notice the resistances and arguments that start coming up immediately in your mind. Do they sound like you? Or do they sound like your dad, your 4th-grade teacher, your first boss, or the disembodied booming voice of capitalism itself? More than likely, those voices aren’t coming from you – and more than likely, those voices are wrong.

In this book, social psychology professor Devon Price makes an incredibly persuasive argument for the idea that “lazy” people always have their reasons for being lazy, whether those are related to depression, anxiety, chronic illness, neurodivergence, trauma, burnout, or some combination thereof. But this book isn’t just theory – it’s packed with advice on how to materially change the circumstances of your life so that you will have more energy and take more initiative in the areas that actually matter, while also forgiving yourself for needing rest and making sure you get enough of it.

 

What were your favorite books you read this year?

Review: Lovegasm Multispeed Tongue Vibrator

Kate Sloan

I keep reviewing different cunnilingus simulators – can’t stop, won’t stop, baby! – because I’m always looking for that holy grail: an oral-inspired toy that actually feels like oral.

It’s hard to find, partly because the textures of a tongue and lips are difficult to replicate, partly because mouths are self-lubricating and toys are not, and partly because the motions involved in good head are deceptively complex, compared to what a toy can do. Licking, sucking, adapting to fluctuating levels of arousal and sensitivity – many toys can do one of these things effectively, but I’ve yet to come across (or come on) a toy that really nails the varied sensations of good cunnilingus.

But the Lovegasm Multispeed Tongue Vibrator looked like it might be a viable contender, so I was excited to test it out. Let’s discuss.

 

Pictured with thighs & tattoo, for scale

What is the Lovegasm Multispeed Tongue Vibrator and what does it do?

Sent to me by the folks at Lovegasm, the Multispeed Tongue Vibrator is large – just over 12 inches from end to end. The reason the toy needs to be so big is that its makers have crammed several different functions into one toy, to make what is essentially a genital-safe Swiss army knife. (It’s, um, not sharp, though. And doesn’t have a bottle opener on it, as far as I know. Maybe this was an unwise metaphor to choose…)

At one end of the toy is a “mouth,” consisting of a silicone tongue that moves up and down, inside of what is colloquially known as a “pussy pump,” i.e. a plastic cone that generates suction on the clit and labia. The tongue has a pre-warming function as well, to lend it more realism. In theory this reproduces the sensations that a tongue and lips working in tandem can provide.

On the other side of the toy is essentially a rabbit vibe: a dual-stimulation toy with a penetrative part and an external clitoral part, both of which vibrate. It feels incorrect to call this toy a two-for-one, because really it’s more like a four-for-one!

 

dat tongue tho

Things I like about this toy

  • I think it’s a really cool idea, considering that a lot of people like to receive oral sex as “foreplay” for penetrative sex, and this toy can provide both. In my testing sessions I was always glad to have a penetrative object at the ready, on the other side of the toy, once I got worked up enough from the “mouth” to want something inside me.
  • The combo of suction and tongue-flicking felt really good, once I had lubed the entire area and found an optimal position for the toy. The suction is rhythmic, rather than being steady, which creates an effect that feels more like an actual human sucking on my clit, while the tongue gently flicks against the tip or underside of my clit (depending on how it’s positioned). There was one testing session when I had planned to test several other toys after this one and actually started to bargain with myself about why I didn’t need to test any other toys and could instead get off from this one, because it felt that good 😂
  • As with many well-designed suction toys, this one is quite effective at encouraging bloodflow to my clit/vulva, prompting physical arousal which can easily translate into mental arousal too. I could see this being a good “foreplay” toy to generate arousal toward the start of a masturbation/sex session.
  • A lot of clit-focused toys end up feeling too intense for me because they target the head of my clit, rather than where I prefer to be stimulated (the clitoral hood area, for a more indirect sensation), but I had success moving this one around to find a position that worked for me. This was also great because I was able to move it further toward the tip of my clit as I got more turned on (but had to momentarily disengage the suction function in order to do this, because otherwise it would have been suctioned onto me and thus hard to move).
  • The internal part of the rabbit-vibe end of the toy is long enough to hit my A-spot and has a nice curve that lets it arc right up into that spot. It feels pleasurable when thrusted against that spot.
  • While the buttons’ placement and lack of labeling are confusing (more on that below), each button lights up with a different color when its function is enabled, which makes it easier to (eventually) tell them apart and remember which button does what.
  • The pump part of the toy can be removed for easier cleaning between uses.
  • The toy comes with another pump cylinder that you can swap in; it has a flat rim, as opposed to the vaguely vulva-shaped rim of the original cylinder, and is meant to be used on breasts/nipples, which is cool. This toy’s commitment to having multiple different uses is unparalleled.

 

Things I don’t like about this toy

  • Ultimately I just didn’t find any part of this toy stimulating enough to get me off (though the mouth felt, at times, like it could get me off, on a highly sensitive day). The pump’s suction didn’t have a consistent enough rhythm, the tongue didn’t deliver strong enough stimulation, and the vibrations in the rabbit-vibe part of the toy are so hilariously weak, buzzy, and buried that they’re almost imperceptible on lower settings and just kinda “meh” on higher settings.
  • The buttons are not marked/labeled in any way. With some vibes this would be acceptable, but this one has several different functions and four different buttons, none of which are placed in a particularly intuitive way. I had to keep referring to the instruction manual to figure out which was which (so don’t toss your manual!) and ended up hitting the wrong buttons several times anyway.
  • When I’m using the “mouth” side of the toy, the buttons are facing away from me, unless I flip it around and hold it in a way that feels awkward and un-ergonomic. Since (as discussed above) the buttons are hard to tell apart even when I’m looking at them, this makes it almost impossible to change settings during use – something I do a lot of, since “close-to-orgasm” me has very different preferences and needs, stimulation-wise, than “barely-aroused” me.
  • The amount of suction produced by the higher settings of the sucking function is sometimes kinda scary. I don’t have the medical background to know whether it’s actually dangerous, but it’s a lot, and there’s no quick-release mechanism. Suction toys should always have a non-electronic quick-release button in case of malfunctions or emergencies, etc.
  • I prefer clit-focused suction rather than full-vulva suction. That’s just a personal preference. The pump on this toy is sliiiightly too big for me to position between my outer labia to allow for a more clit-centric sensation.
  • The tongue actually slows down when you press the button that ought to make it speed up. I found this infuriating when I was on the precipice of potentially coming.
  • The clitoral arm on the rabbit-vibe end of the toy is too short for my anatomy. When I get that arm into a pleasurable position on my clit, it throws off the angle of the internal portion so that that’s no longer pleasurable, and vice-versa. This could be solved with a longer and more flexible clitoral arm.
  • The mouth part of the toy is loud and distracting. The suction function sounds like a robotic truck backing up and the tongue function sounds like a shopping cart that needs its wheels oiled. The rabbit vibe portion of the toy is very quiet, though.
  • As with most toys involving suction and/or a tongue-like object, this one requires a lot of lube to feel good – not just on my clit but on my entire vulva. Could be an issue if you’re on a budget and/or just have limited access to lube.
  • The tongue’s heating function takes 3 minutes to work, during which time you can’t use any of the toy’s other functions. This is fine if you have the time and patience to let the toy sit there for 3 minutes while you do other stuff (like perhaps watch porn, read erotica, or touch yourself with your hand), but otherwise kind of annoying. It also barely works; the tongue just gets mildly warm, not even as warm as it would get from a few minutes of being pressed against my genitals.

Final thoughts

I really wanted to like the Lovegasm Multispeed Tongue Vibrator, because I think its concept is interesting and I haven’t seen many toy companies attempt to combine suction with tongue-like flicking in one toy, for a more holistic oral-like experience.

However, in execution, this toy could really use some work. When it comes to sex toy design, usually it’s best to focus on doing one or two things really well – and instead, this toy tried to do 4-5 things well and ultimately all of them are kind of mediocre. Not to mention, the ergonomics and controls of this toy are somewhat inscrutable and highly distracting during use.

Lovegasm carries lots of other vibrators and suction-based vulva toys that are worth checking out, especially if you’re in search of an oral sex simulator, as many of them have tongue-like features and/or combine suction with vibration. But this one just didn’t work for me, although at several points during testing, I felt hopeful that it might.

 

This post was sponsored, meaning I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this toy. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.