12 Days of Girly Juice

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

Kate Sloan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What toys did you love most this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 10 Perfect Sex Songs

Kate Sloan

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

Cruisr – Kidnap Me

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

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

Say Anything – Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too

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

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

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

Hippo Campus – Warm Glow

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

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

The Japanese House – Saw You in a Dream

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

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

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

Ought – Beautiful Blue Sky

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

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

Ben Rector – Paris

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

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

John Mayer – Love on the Weekend

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

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

Sufjan Stevens – Movement II: Sleeping Invader

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

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

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

Alina Baraz – Yours

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

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

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

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

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

What sexy songs did you love this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 11 Favorite Blog Posts

Kate Sloan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 12 Femme Essentials

Kate Sloan

Hello! Today kicks off 12 Days of Girly Juice, my yearly 12-part wrap-up of the things I loved most throughout the year. Over the next month, I’ll be sharing my fave sex toys, events, sexual encounters, and so much more from 2018! Today’s edition, however, is about something much simpler: femme delights! Read on to find out which fashion and beauty items I most adored in 2018.

Aimanté

Last year I waffled about my preferred perfumes, writing about 7 different ones instead of picking One Scent to Rule Them All. This year, however, there is a clear choice topping my list of fragrance faves: Aimanté, the bespoke scent my boyfriend commissioned Stephen Dirkes of Euphorium Brooklyn to make me for my birthday.

Dirkes described the scent thusly: “The rich fragrance of ripe blood orange and brilliant red geranium create a feminine opening. Middle notes of sweet honeyed balsams and sparkling amber are given texture with a hint of dark cocoa and patchouli. The earthy roots of vetiver provide a dark grounding for the accord.” My nose isn’t sophisticated enough to pick out the individual notes; all I know is that it’s an impossibly feminine and sexy scent. It feels more “me” every time I wear it, and I’ve worn it a lot.

It feels like a miracle that I am the only person in the world who gets to wear this exact formulation and that I love it so much. It also feels like a gift, each and every time I spritz on some Aimanté, that someone in the world loves me enough to have given me this beautiful thing that brightens my days.

MeUndies lounge pants

These are the real MVP of my freelance-writer wardrobe. I own two pairs – one in basic black, and one in a Christmasy red plaid – and I wear them all the time when I’m bummin’ around the house. They are divine.

I must say, I’m not a fan of pants as a category, so I balked a bit at the idea of spending $60 for a pair. (It should go without saying that I was never a Lululemon or Adidas girl!) But I’ve worn these so much that they’ve become worth it to me on their cost-per-wear ratio alone. The modal is super soft, the cut is lovely and flattering, and each pair has FOUR POCKETS. (As a hyperfemme, I am always thrilled by pockets.) The holy grail of lounge pants, truly!

L’Amour-Propre collars

I would be remiss not to mention one of my most-worn accessories of the year, my collar. Strangely, I already owned a L’Amour-Propre collar before I even met my Sir – a turquoise one – but we decided, upon meeting and becoming serious about our D/s dynamic, that we wanted one that would be just ours. So we settled on a royal blue suede one, and later upgraded to a royal blue leather one.

These collars are lovely, simple, eye-catching, kinky-looking but not too over-the-top to wear in everyday situations, and comfortable enough for all-day wear. They’re everything I want and need in a collar.

CowCow dresses

I discovered this affordable brand on Amazon this year and was quickly smitten. They make flattering A-line dresses in a myriad of wacky prints and a wide range of sizes, for reasonable prices. Some of my favorites: a purple one with pink and purple kiss-prints, a rainbow one, and one in my signature turquoise and pink.

When I was younger, I resisted adopting a “style uniform,” because I wanted every day’s outfit to be eclectic and unexpected. But I’ve come around to the practice of dressing more-or-less all the time in a way I know flatters me and makes me feel great. No matter what’s going on in my head or in the world, a fit-and-flare dress and a pair of kickass boots are a combination I feel stellar in.

Coach Mercer satchel

I bought this late last year as a little self-care treat during the brief window of time when I had a sugar daddy and thought I might continue having one for the foreseeable future (womp womp). It’s a wee little open-top leather satchel, just barely big enough to fit my laptop, wallet, journal and pen – the exact right size, therefore, for my purposes.

I love the robin’s-egg blue color; it’s ladylike yet fun. I love the softness of the leather, always one of my favorite qualities of Coach bags. And I love that it’s a little piece of luxury I bought myself when I was able to. Sometimes you just gotta treat yourself!

Wythe Hotel T-shirt

I bought a commemorative shirt from the hotel where my boyfriend first told me he loved me, because I am a sap. I didn’t know, however, when I ordered it, that I would end up wearing it at least once a week. It’s soft and comfortable and it reminds me of a very happy memory. What’s not to love?

Lotta From Stockholm peeptoe clogs

I bought these on the advice of a foot fetishist, who is, shall we say, biased. They are yellow and sexy and comfortable and perfect. They are my new go-to summer shoe. Thank you, Lotta, whoever you are.

Sugarpill liquid lipsticks

I have a couple of these – one in hot pink, “Girl Crush,” and another that is equally bright pink but laced with gold glitter, from a limited-edition set Sugarpill issued this year. Both are packaged adorably and make me feel like a sparkly megafemme when I apply them.

Unlike many liquid lipsticks – and I’ve tried lots, being a blowjob lipstick aficionado – the formula of these makes them feel feather-light on the lips, so much so that I sometimes forget I’m wearing one. They’re not quite friction-proof enough to have passed the blowjob test, and they don’t even hold up that well through food and drink, but I don’t mind reapplying them in public. I mean, have you seen the cute packaging on these?!

Maybelline SuperStay Matte Ink in “Pioneer”

This was a recommendation from Rae and I’m so glad I listened to them. I’ve been looking basically all my life for a perfect red lipstick, one that’s bright and cool-toned and opaque and actually stays on, and this is it. As with many liquid lipsticks, it’s dry and drying, and takes a little while to dry once applied, but those are my only complaints about it. If this lipstick was a person, I would give it lots of kisses.

Gap cashmere cardigan

I’ve searched for the perfect black cashmere cardigan for a long time; it’s a surprisingly tall order. I prefer V-neck ones, because I usually wear cardis unbuttoned and don’t like how a high collar looks that way. I also need my cardigans to have long sleeves (though I often roll ’em up) and I like a classic, feminine, curve-hugging cut. Almost no one makes this type of thing!

However, the Gap made one briefly last year, and had a sale that made the $150 price tag slightly more palatable to me, so I bought it. It’s actually perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted. It goes with every outfit. Living in a cold climate calls for cashmere, IMO, and I usually get mine vintage ‘n’ cheap, but I was happy to spend more than I normally would on such a flawless, indispensable basic.

IT Luggage turquoise suitcase

Okay, you might not think a suitcase counts as a femme accessory, but when you travel a lot and/or are in a long-distance relationship, it does! Bored of the basic black one I’d been hauling around for years – and of squinting in vain at the luggage carousel post-flight, trying to figure out which bag was mine – I snapped up this one by IT Luggage, in my favorite shade of vivid turquoise. Upon receiving it, I immediately tied a hot pink bandana to the handle, making it truly mine.

This suitcase is light, roomy for its size, and aesthetically delightful. I get supremely stressed out when I travel, but this bag makes the whole experience about 12% more fun, so I consider it to have been a worthwhile investment.

Frye engineer boots

These are – it must be said – immensely kinky-looking. I feel like a lithe domme whenever I wear them: like someone should be kneeling in front of me, cleaning and shining my boots while I page through a glossy magazine.

My long-beloved Frye harness boots finally kicked the bucket this year – a cobbler pronounced their soles unsalvageable – so I’ve been wearing these engineer ones a lot instead. They’re more grown-up-looking than my usual style, but maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe this scrappy kinky femme is finally becoming a sophisticated kinky femme.

What fashion/beauty items did you love this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2017: 1 Fantastic Toy Company

Kate Sloan

“Wow, you really like We-Vibe, huh?” my boss asked me shortly after I started a stint working sex toy retail earlier this year.

I looked at her blankly. Of course I like We-Vibe. We-Vibe makes high-quality, body-safe vibrators with strong, rumbly motors and some of the best-honed technology on the market. What’s not to like?

Choosing a company to profile in this year-end feature has sometimes been tricky for me (previously: Fucking Sculptures, Aslan Leather), but this year it was so, so easy, because I use We-Vibe’s products more than those by almost any other company. They fit into my sex life seamlessly, whether I’m alone or with a partner. They just… do what they’re supposed to do.

The We-Vibe Tango remains the real MVP of my toybag. I own two of them now, and frequently exhaust their batteries from jerking off with them several times a week. In fact, the Tango was far-and-away my most-used vibrator of the year, facilitating a whopping 93 of the 333 orgasms I had this year (that’s 27.9% – more than any partner I had this year, certainly!). It just works well. The vibrations are rumbly and powerful, the shape jives with my clitoral preferences, and I know I’ll reliably have an orgasm with this toy. It’s also magnificent for sliding between bodies during partnered sex, whether a partner is fucking me, fingerbanging me, or using other toys on me.

I also keep a We-Vibe Touch at my parents’ house for my use when I sleep over there, and it serves me well. The shape isn’t my favorite but with dat motor, it doesn’t really matter.

Speaking of motors, We-Vibe’s made one of the only existing couples’ vibes with an actually good one: the We-Vibe Sync. This is my #1 recommendation for people looking for a couples’ vibe or a toy that can be controlled long-distance. With their We-Connect app and Bluetooth connectivity, We-Vibe has perfected this functionality in a way other companies have failed to. The toy stays connected, does what it’s supposed to do, and is controlled via an intuitive and exciting mobile interface. As someone who’s had multiple long-distance beaux this year, this toy has been an important one for me!

Some other favorites of mine from the We-Vibe catalogue: the rumbly and usefully-shaped Gala, the G-spot-targeting Rave, and the dually-stimulating Nova. To be fair, they also released a few toys this year I’m not as fond of – like the Wish, with its finicky motors, and the uncomfortably-shaped Ditto – but, for the most part, they are always pushing themselves to make better products, and seem to take customer feedback into account. When a new We-Vibe product comes out, even if I’m skeptical, I’m always at least curious.

I knew my We-Vibe love had become part of my brand when, the other night, after some thoroughly unraveling phone sex, a long-distance beau asked me, “What vibe were you using? The Tango?”

“Yep. I love it,” I said. “I have two.”

“Alright,” he countered. “No need to brag.”