Monthly Faves: Sparkles, Silk, & Cinnamon

Kate Sloan

 

Media

• Some sexual misconduct scandals broke at my old high school recently (more on that soon, I think), so I’ve definitely been Processing Some Difficult Feelings. When that’s the case, sometimes it helps me to consume media where characters experience problems similar to my own – so this month I enjoyed watching Notes on a Scandal, a 2006 thriller where Cate Blanchett plays a teacher who gets caught having an affair with a student, and reading Being Lolita, Alisson Wood’s striking memoir about a predatory creative writing teacher who viewed Lolita as a blueprint for life rather than as a shocking character study about a pedophile.

• My old friend Kathleen Gros wrote a graphic novel loosely based on Little Women, updated for a modern (and queer!) audience. I flew through it soon after it arrived in my mailbox, and loved its depiction of a positive queer coming-of-age.

• My long-time guitarist crush Nathan Stocker (of my favorite band, Hippo Campus) has a new album out under his solo project name, Brotherkenzie. It’s called Big What and it’s been haunting my days lately with its moody/contemplative lyrics and its sweetly sad instrumentations. If the idea of a bluesier Phoebe Bridgers or Elliott Smith sounds divine to you, I think you’d dig this album.

• Watching speed-builds of houses in The Sims 4 has been oddly soothing to me lately. It’s just so satisfying to watch someone build an entire home from scratch. I particularly like LukeyDean’s videos.

• It’s been a few years since my last New Girl re-watch, but this month I revisited season 2 and was struck anew by the sense that it’s probably one of the funniest TV shows that’s ever been made (at least, for my weird sense of humor!). The writing, the acting, the ad-libbing… These chaotic thirtysomethings are always a delight to watch.

 

Products

• As I’ve mentioned, the Magic Wand Plus is rocking my world lately – and my internal clitoral network!

• A few weeks ago I tried to go to Northwood to sit on their patio and sip a cocktail, because I was craving one particular item from their house menu, a rum-based sour called the Black Walnut – but when I got there, they were closed, even though they said they’d be open! Disappointed, I later made it my mission to learn to make a passable substitute for this drink at home – and with the help of my cocktail-genius partner, I learned how to do it. It involved infusing a bottle of white rum with walnut tea and making cinnamon demerara syrup in a sauce pan, so it was definitely the most labor-intensive cocktail I’ve ever made, but damn, it is delicious.

• I don’t often paint my nails, but when I do, I want ’em colorful and glittery as fuck. To that end, I firmly believe that Essie’s “Set in Stones” is the best thing to layer over just about any base color. Seeing silver sparkles splashed across my nails every day is almost enough to make me want to stop biting them forever…!

• As part of a financial domination scene recently, my partner sent me some royal blue lingerie from Agent Provocateur. It is incredibly sexy and pairs very well with my beloved pink silk robe.

• My brother recently started a clothing line called Pop Star Dress-Up, and I have to say that their hoodie (coming soon to the shop) is one of the coziest I’ve ever owned. I’m definitely gonna need something like that as the colder months start creeping up on us!

 

Work & Appearances

• This month on the Dildorks, Bex and I talked about subspace and topspace, crying as kinky catharsis, and vetting potential partners. We also interviewed psychotherapist Jessica Fern about her new polyamory book Polysecure, and I interviewed my partner mb about our recent forays into chastity play.

• In my newsletter, I wrote about the quiet desperation of long-distance relationships, answered some questions from the AskWomen subreddit, recounted some of my relationship rituals and routines, and explored some feelings about nail polish, gender, sexuality, and identity.

 

Good Causes

• The news this month about the lack of accountability for Breonna Taylor’s murderers was heartbreaking and disheartening. You can donate to her family’s GoFundMe if you like; the money is now being routed to the Breonna Taylor Foundation, which is working to empower women, encourage more people to get their EMT training, and advocate for police reform. This “Justice for Breonna” T-shirt is also donating its proceeds to the foundation.

• On that note, donating to the Louisville Community Bail Fund would be a great move right now, as protests continue (and police continue to crack down on them) where Breonna lived.

• Since this is such an especially hard time for Black women and girls, you could donate to the Loveland Foundation’s therapy fund, which provides financial assistance to Black women seeking therapy services.

5 Fun Things You Can Do With a Penis Pump

Kate Sloan
Pictured: the Max Width Penis Enlarger.

I only worked in sex toy retail for a few months, but I can’t even tell you the number of people who came in searching for penis enlargement products. In fact, it was explicitly part of my training to learn which products actually work on a long-term basis (answer: almost none of them) and which are basically bullshit – although, of course, being in retail, we wouldn’t have phrased it quite like that!

Penis pumps, I have learned, are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum – they offer some temporary enlargement by way of suction encouraging bloodflow to your dick, but that’s not their main or most effectual purpose. Penis pump results are usually more about engorgement, arousal, and pleasure than they are about size – and if you use them with that expectation held firmly (heh) in your mind, I think you’ll have a much better time with them. (Just make sure to read about the risks of using them, and maybe even discuss ’em with your doctor before you do, okay?)

To get you started, here are 5 ways to play with penis pumps in your sex/kink life…

 

Size play. I know I just said these pumps do other things much better than they do enlargement… BUT… they do create a temporary and usually minor enlargement of the penis that can be really thrilling, especially if you in any way fetishize “big dicks,” “monster cocks,” “raging boners,” and so on. (I mean, in our phallus-obsessed culture, it’s hard not to have internalized some of these ideas of hotness, even if you’ve later learned to reject them for the body-shaming beliefs that underlie them.) Whether the dick being pumped up into immensity is a partner’s or your own, it may be exciting to see it become bigger, veinier, and more intimidating for a few minutes. It might even change the penis-wielder’s sense of self (and/or their partner’s sense of them) enough that they’ll feel inspired to do some kind of roleplay scene that takes advantage of their newfound cartoonish hugeness.

Press a vibrator against it. I saw someone do this in a porn clip recently and now I can’t stop thinking about it… The combination of suction and vibration can be terrifically overwhelming, and if the chap in the video I saw is anything to go by, it seems like trying to wring an orgasm out of this method would be a long, slow, teasing process, potentially resulting in a climax half-ruined by the indirectness of the stimulation. If you’re into that, hey, I’m not gonna stop you.

Chastity/denial. It’s amazing to me that I’ve read so many screeds over the years about how “blue balls” are so painful that those tormented by this sensation should be given sex out of pity (oh, boohoo, Chad, go jerk off like an adult), given that there are tons of people who enjoy and actually seek out that sensation. Not just blue balls, either, but sometimes the overall sense of intense arousal with no resolution in sight. I think it would be especially cruel to take someone out of chastity for the first time in days or weeks, shove their dick into a penis pump, use it to crank up their arousal, and then… not let them come. Back into the chastity cage you shall go! (Just as soon as your boner deflates, that is… which, let’s face it, could take a while…)

Put on a show. Most penis pumps are transparent or translucent, making them the perfect prop for an exhibitionist moment. This could be particularly useful if, due to current global circumstances, you find yourself separated from the person/people you love to fuck. I have found few long-distance sexual experiences more intimate and bonding than watching my partner try out a totally new-to-them sex toy in front of their webcam for my viewing pleasure.

Medical play. If I’m into the fantasy of a Victorian-era doctor administering clitoral stimulation by hand in order to cure me of hysteria, I have to assume there are people with penises out there who relish the thought of a sexy doctor pumping up their dick to address erectile dysfunction. As a roleplay, this could be a small penis humiliation scene if you’re into that, packed with devastating jibes about your dick’s inability to function – or it could be an ASMR-style calming experience involving focused attention and caring concern. Sounds great either way to me!

What crafty ideas come up for you when you contemplate adding a penis pump into your kinky repertoire?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Magic Wand Plus

Kate Sloan

When I interviewed Shay Martin – co-owner of Vibratex, the company that legendarily saved the Magic Wand from extinction when Hitachi wanted to pull the plug on it – for a story I was writing in 2015, she said something that sex toy makers never say. She said that in updating and modernizing the toy, she was doing her best to keep everything the same, with the exception of the problems the redesign was trying to fix (mostly, the porous foam head and the overworked motor). She said she knew she was going to receive phone calls from Magic Wand purists regardless, claiming the new toy felt different or sounded different or just was different in ways that mattered to them – so it made sense to change only what absolutely was not working – a head all too easily stained by menstrual blood or cum, a motor known to occasionally burst into flames – and leave almost everything else the exact same.

This is rare in the sex toy biz. The We-Vibe Nova 2 is a recent example of a sex toy re-release that kept the best and tossed the rest – but in general, sex toy updates tend to add bells and whistles nobody asked for (*cough* Lelo) without making the improvements that would actually excite customers (*cough* also Lelo). So, needless to say, I’ve been wanting to try the Magic Wand Plus ever since it was announced – and thanks to my pals at TheVibed.com, I finally got to!

For context, there are already two major Magic Wands to be aware of (not counting the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of knockoffs and wannabes out there): the Magic Wand Original, a plug-in 2-speed behemoth essentially identical to the original Hitachi Magic Wand except for the minor motor updates as outlined above, and the Magic Wand Rechargeable, a contemporized version that no longer chains you to an outlet and that boasts 2 extra speeds and some vibration patterns. The MWR is the better choice for the vast majority of users, because its added 2 speeds are on the lower end of the intensity spectrum, bringing it down from “HOLY FUCK” territory into something more approachable, even for a vibrator novice – but, notably, the MWR is more than twice the price of the MWO. So it’s no surprise so many horny hopefuls on a budget would go for the MWO; it was the best option that existed for them – until the Magic Wand Plus.

The MWP is the best of both worlds: it has the MWR’s nonporous silicone head and wider variety of speeds, but is only a little pricier than the MWO: $65 versus $55 on TheVibed. The trade-off is that it’s plug-in rather than rechargeable, and it doesn’t have vibration patterns. That’s it.

The more that I think about it – and the more that I use the MWP instead of my well-worn old MWR – the more I realize that those trade-offs are no big deal for me at all. I almost never use vibration patterns, and I almost never use wand vibrators anywhere that doesn’t have electrical outlet access (especially in, y’know, pandemic times). Sure, it’s great to have a travel-friendly vibe I could whip out in a bar bathroom or back alley if need be, but generally I need those vibes to be small. I can literally only think of one time that I used a wand in a situation that lacked nearby outlets, and that was during a porn shoot at a sex club – not exactly a normal set of circumstances for most people.

The combination of laziness, depression, and chronic pain also renders me chronically reticent to plug in my vibes when they run out of juice – so, despite the modernity and convenience of wireless toys, my most-used vibrators these days are ones that plug into the wall. I am just not organized or on-top-of-things enough to habitually remember to charge vibes before I need them, so electric ones are, oddly enough, often the best choice for me. (That said, though, the MWR has a brilliant feature a lot of other rechargeable toys lack: you can use it while it’s charging. The more you know…)

So, that being the case, I cannot think of a single thing I love about the Magic Wand Rechargeable that the Magic Wand Plus doesn’t also have. And it’s about half the price, which is a pretty fucking big benefit, especially right now when many people’s sex toy budget is – to say the least – constricted.

The lack of vibration patterns on the MWP freed up some space in the control panel, so Vibratex added a “minus” button. This means that you can quickly move back to the previous speed if you so desire, instead of needing to cycle through all 4 like you do on the MWR. This is a pretty small difference, unless you like to move up and down the intensity scale a lot during sessions like I do, in which case it might actually be super convenient.

I do not have Princess & the Pea-level genital discernment skills, so in discussing the more minute differences between these toys, I will defer to my friend Epiphora, who does. She says the MWP is slightly buzzier and stronger than the MWR – possibly owing to differences in motor weight – and when I really strain to pay attention, I can detect this too. But, as she also notes, the difference is most notable between the 2nd and 3rd speed, so if (like me) you tend to hang out on the lower 2 speeds, this won’t be an issue for you. (For reference, I always max out when using smaller vibes like the Tango, but the lowest 2 speeds of the MWR/MWP are more than rumbly and strong enough to get me off.)

Perhaps as a result of the minor differences in buzziness/strength, I also notice that the MWP is louder and rattlier than the MWR. But both quiet down significantly when pressed against skin and flesh, where (presumably) they will spend most of their time.

I sort of wish the MWP’s wire was a bit longer – it stretches 6 feet – but I also know that the 12-foot length of my beloved Eroscillator‘s cord gets tangled more than I would prefer, and can be more of a hindrance than a convenience at times. If your preferred sexytimes zone is more than a couple feet away from an outlet, I would suggest throwing an extension cord into your cart alongside the MWP if possible, but it’s not a huge deal. The wire also gets in my way occasionally when I’m holding the toy, but I just rotate it around until the wire juts out away from me and the annoyance is neutralized.

So what’s my verdict? The Magic Wand Plus is a genius invention. Vibratex found a way to make a blessedly more affordable version of their absolutely magnificent Magic Wand Rechargeable, without compromising on any functions that matter to me. If you care a lot about portability or patterns, then disregard this – but if all you want is beautifully strong vibrations at a decent price, I think the Magic Wand Plus is absolutely the best bang for your buck.

 

Thanks so much to TheVibed for sending me this toy to try! This review was sponsored, which means I was paid to write an honest and fair review of this toy. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Look at Meee!: A Product Wishlist for Exhibitionists

Kate Sloan
From a recent striptease set I shot at a customer’s request.

Oddly enough, I’ve done more sex work than usual since the coronavirus swept the world. I guess it makes sense: lots of people are stuck at home, bored, and battling a stress-inflamed libido. Of course some of them would slide into my email inbox to inquire about purchasing nude pics, lingerie shots, or sexy videos. (Pro tip: if you do this, state your intentions upfront, have your credit card at the ready, and do not under any circumstances ask me for a “free sample.”)

This being the case, I’ve been thinking lots about various upgrades I could make to my arsenal of exhibitionistic equipment to boost the quality of my output. Here are some items I think would drastically improve your nudes, clips, and/or cam shows, whether you’re performing for beloved partners, regular customers, random strangers, or even just for yourself.

 

A selfie stick. These are fairly cheap and are sold all over the internet, so if you want to try your hand at some exhibitionism, they’re a great starting point! You can use them to shoot selfies, of course (they’re particularly useful for taking full-body shots or butt pics), and you can also use them to lend different angles and degrees of distance to sexy videos or mobile livestreams.

A lighting setup. Some people go the whole nine yards, with multiple lights and diffusers/reflectors; some people just spring for one ring light; some people get by with just a small bedside lamp. It depends on what effect you’re going for – but generally, more lighting is better than less. On the best cam sites, you’ll sometimes see people getting creative with lighting colors and effects, but as long as you’re well-lit enough to be clearly visible, there’s no need to get super fancy.

A non-distracting backdrop. You could keep things simple by just performing in front of a blank wall, or a wall you’ve draped with a bedsheet or blanket. You could also look into the more pro-level backdrops preferred by professional YouTubers, etc.

A tripod. If you have to choose between a selfie stick and a tripod, choose a tripod every time – it’s more versatile and forgiving. Standard tripods are terrific; however, these days I’m also lusting after a suction-cup iPhone holder, because it enables you to affix your phone to any hard surface (like a wall, floor, or even ceiling if you can reach it) at the exact angle that you want.

A camera remote. Whether you’re shooting with a phone, a webcam, a point-and-shoot, or a decked-out DSLR, there’s likely a remote-control option available to you somewhere. It’ll make your life so much easier, especially when taking a lot of pictures at a time.

Suction cup dildos. These make it easier to create content where you’re “riding” a dildo, maybe for a POV scene or maybe just for the fun and pleasure of it. Affix the suction-cup base of your dildo to a wall or floor before playing (hard, smooth surfaces work best, like tile or lacquered wood), or – if no viable surfaces are available to you at the moment for whatever reason – use a hardcover book or other rigid, flat object instead. (Yeah, it might look a little strange if you’re riding your old geography textbook in bed, but anyone watching will likely be too distracted by your bangin’ bod to notice.)

See-through sex toys, like a clear glass dildo or anything from the Fleshlight Ice range. These give the viewer a peek at the inner workings of your sexual response, almost as effectively as if they had X-ray vision!

Lube. I recommend this for any sexual activity, as you no doubt already know if you read this blog, but it can be particularly handy during exhibitionistic play – especially if your session goes on for a long time (gotta get all the shots you need!) and/or you get nervous in front of the camera and find that your nerves affect your natural lubrication level. When making content related to “creampies” and other forms of cum fetishism, you may want to go with a lube that looks semen-esque, such as Sliquid Silk.

Face powder. I’ll leave your other makeup decisions up to you, but powder is a must-have. It gets rid of the pesky shine that can crop up on the oily areas of your skin. (Some kinds of shine are hot – like the glisten of wet, excited genitals – but a shiny face is often just distracting.) If you’ll also be doing makeup for other models whose skin tone differs from your own, look for a translucent setting powder so you don’t have to worry about tone-matching (although some of these still create a light cast on darker skin, unfortunately). Don’t forget a puff or brush to apply it with!

A robe or dressing gown. Not strictly necessary, of course, but it is nice to have something glamorous to slip in and out of between shots – particularly if it’s cold where you are, or you’re in a location where people might randomly walk by at any moment. (Abandoned stairwell, anyone?)

Photo/video editing software. Crucial. I mostly keep it simple with iMovie and the other built-in editing functions on my various Apple devices, but there’s a whole world of applications out there to explore. They may be less or more useful to you depending on how intense you want to go with your editing. Final Cut Pro and Adobe Lightroom are two popular choices.

 

What do you consider must-haves for a burgeoning exhibitionist or sexy content creator?

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

In Defense of Wearing Socks During Sex

Kate Sloan

Recently, I asked my partner to write mini reviews of some lewd self-portraits I shot in Agent Provocateur lingerie (yep, I’m needy as fuck) and, in one of the shots, it became evident that I had teamed this very expensive, sexy ensemble with a pair of blue calf-high socks. Rather than do what most people would do and either wish they weren’t there or not even notice them, my partner noted that the socks “show me that you want to come, and they’re the only thing that will be left on you once I get my hands on you.” I giggled, blushed, and nodded. Exactly.

If you’d be mystified receiving a sext like that, let me explain. A study done in 2003 in the Netherlands, on the neural processes that contribute to orgasm, found (among numerous other things) that wearing socks increased female participants’ rate of orgasm from 50% to 80%. Innnteresting.

This makes sense to me, given what I’ve learned from sex researcher Emily Nagoski about how women can be more sensitive than men to the presence of “sexual brakes,” i.e. factors that inhibit sexual arousal both physically and psychologically. (For the record, I’m not really sure how this information relates to trans women or nonbinary people, or whether gender-non-conforming people were included in any of the relevant studies, although my past experiences reading sex research lead me to believe they probably weren’t sampled significantly or at all.) Having cold feet in the literal sense could give women cold feet in the metaphorical sense about having sex, because in some cases it’s a distraction significant enough that it prevents or slows down the arousal process – at least, for me, and seemingly for other women as well. This is likely compounded by the fact that women’s extremities, on average, run colder than men’s. (Again, I assume the research here refers only to cis people, but would be pleasantly surprised if that was not the case.)

In the many years since I first read about the socks study, I’ve cited it to multiple sexual partners when asked why I tend to keep my socks on during sex, or (in the cases of a few foot fetishists) when lustily asked to remove my socks. It’s interesting how just explaining “My feet get cold,” like I used to do before I knew about the science, was typically met with more resistance than the more recent and more airtight “Studies show wearing socks during sex helps with having orgasms.” It’s almost as if… people trust male scientists more than they trust women about women’s own bodies?! Gee, who’da thunk.

I should note here that many people have a legitimate aesthetic issue with the whole idea of socks during sex. Either they think it looks silly and weird (which is their prerogative – I know even ultra-busty pouty-lipped sex dolls would look kinda odd wearing woollen hiking socks and nothing else) or they’re turned on by feet and/or full nudity. When I fuck someone who feels this way, my partners’ orgasms may be inhibited almost as much by me wearing socks as mine would be by me not wearing socks – so I’m sometimes willing to bend my policy and work a little harder for my orgasms, knowing I can wriggle back into my nice warm socks when we’re done. I do, after all, want my partners to enjoy having sex with me!

But luckily for me, I’ve had about as many paramours who loved socks as ones who wanted to ban them from our bedroom. This, I think, can be attributed mostly to my interest in DD/lg – there are a lot of visual tropes within that fetish, and knee-high and thigh-high socks are high on the list for many kinksters. I still remember the time I settled into bed for a nice long phone-sex sesh with a daddy dom years ago: he asked me what I was wearing, I told him “a T-shirt, underwear, and some knee-high socks,” and he moaned/growled/grunted with such ferocity that I knew I had made the right choice even though he couldn’t even see my outfit.

Sometimes when I talk to other women about wearing socks during sex – and, yeah, my life is sufficiently weird that this topic does come up in conversation with friends sometimes – they seem slightly mystified by my decision to put my comfort first in a sexual scenario. I think this is sadly emblematic of our sexual culture. Mainstream porn, for example – while I adore much of it and think it is necessary and important – is full of messaging which suggests that hot sex and comfortable sex are basically mutually exclusive, especially for women (can you IMAGINE doing reverse cowgirl, while standing, for 20+ minutes straight?! I simply cannot). And indeed, there are some sex acts I enjoy greatly which could not be considered “comfortable” by any stretch of the imagination (getting paddled and getting throat-fucked come to mind), so it’s not like discomfort is incompatible with arousal for me. But for some reason, socks are one place where I draw a line. I’m rarely up for being uncomfortable in this particular way even though I’ll happily be uncomfortable in various other ways during sex from time to time.

I will say, too, that this has sometimes been a litmus test of sorts for how a new partner reacts to boundary-setting or mid-bang communication. Are they really so committed to their porn-borne sexual scripts that they’re going to insist on full nudity at the expense of my comfort? Are they really going to argue with me about this perfectly reasonable boundary I have set for my own body? Or are they going to say “Huh,” shrug it off, and move on like nothing is wrong (because nothing is)?

Despite being a foot fetishist, my current partner is so devoted to and interested in my pleasure and my orgasm that they’ll often encourage me to keep my socks on during sex. And this makes it all the more delicious for both of us when – after giving me a partly socks-enabled orgasm or two – they crawl down my body, rest their hand gently on my ankle, and ask so so sweetly, “May I take these off and look at your feet?”

Respecting sexual partners’ boundaries is so, so important, even if those boundaries don’t totally make sense to you. Every time a partner respects one of my boundaries without question, it becomes easier and more fun for me later on to bend my more flexible boundaries in the name of pleasure. Heeding my “no” now is likely to get you a “yes” later, for something else. I’m glad science exists to back me up when I set this particular boundary, but the truth is, I shouldn’t need a scientific citation to state what I want and have that be respected.

So when my partner compliments the socks I’m wearing in nudes ‘n’ lewds, I know it’s more than just a compliment. It’s an affirmation that my choices are valid, my boundaries are important, and I am beautiful regardless of which clothes I do, or don’t, remove.