12 Days of Girly Juice

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 5 Sex-Savvy Superheroes

Kate Sloan

Hello, friends! I’m back with another instalment of 12 Days of Girly Juice. Today we’re talking about the 5 people who have had the biggest impact on how I think and feel about sex and relationships this year. Let’s jump in!

Clementine Morrigan is doing some truly incredible work. Their zines, workshops, and books are always profoundly thought-provoking, but it seems like the most popular thing they made this year was Love Without Emergency, a zine based on their constantly-sold-out workshop on trauma-informed polyamory. As Clementine thoughtfully notes in the zine, there are almost no resources out there for people who want to be polyamorous but struggle with it due to mental health issues and/or a history of trauma. Too many poly resources assume we’re all “sane” and “in good working order” mentally and emotionally – and that’s just not realistic or fair. We need more people like Clementine out there creating a model for what polyamory can look like for those of us who are anxiously attached, trauma survivors, or both. I’m so appreciative of the work she did this year to bring more attention to this issue.

Jimanekia Eborn is a force to be reckoned with, and a constant inspiration. Her podcast miniseries Trauma Queen focuses on healing from assault and trauma; the frank conversations therein are always refreshing and illuminating. More recently, she’s been raising funds for Tending the Garden, a retreat for women of color who are survivors of sexual assault. She also collaborated with Tango to design an Art of Healing kit, full of sexy and sensual items aimed at promoting sexual mindfulness. The work Jimanekia does is so, so important and I’m so glad she’s doing it.

Raven Kaldera has written, co-written, or edited about a zillion books, but this year, one in particular came to my attention and rocked my world. Kneeling in Spirit is about submissives with disabilities, and the ways they manage to pursue power exchange and kinky sex despite physical difficulties. I picked up this book because my chronic pain has been getting worse by the year, and so has my anxiety about whether my pain will one day make it impossible for me to have the kinds of sex I like to have. Raven’s book contains stories from many different kinksters about how they work around their disabilities – or sometimes actively incorporate their disabilities – in pursuit of their preferred types of sex and kink. I found it deeply inspiring and comforting. Along similar lines, Broken Toys is Raven’s book about submissives with mental illness, and that one’s a great read too. I’m so grateful to Raven for creating these resources, and for all the other education work he does.

Sleepingirl is a hypnokink genius; there’s no other way to put it. Her podcast Two Hyp Chicks delves into ultra-nerdy sub-topics within the world of erotic hypnosis, all backed by her many years of extensive research on how hypnosis works in the brain. Earlier this year she released The Brainwashing Book, a high-level tome on how to combine hypnosis with classical and operant conditioning to achieve your kinky brainwashing goals. Her other writing about hypnokink is less technical, more romantic: she elucidates the intimacy of hypnosis better than anyone I’ve ever read. I’ve learned so much from her this year about what hypnosis is and what it can be.

Dr. Liz Powell‘s book Building Open Relationships is, as far as I’m concerned, the best existing book on non-monogamy. It gave me immense comfort this year many times over, and I still pick it up now and again when I need a kernel of poly wisdom. This year, concerns were raised about the misconduct of a co-author of one of the most popular polyamory books out there, so I felt extra grateful this year for Dr. Liz’s compassionate, open-hearted, inclusively-written book. I’m sure I’ll be recommending it to poly newbies and veterans alike for years to come.

Who were your sex-savvy superheroes this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 6 Journal Entries

Kate Sloan

I didn’t journal as much in 2019 as I usually do, in part because I was super busy and seemingly constantly traveling… That said, here are 6 of my fave journal entries from the year. They’re all, um, mostly variations on a theme, you could say…

January 1st

Late one night I got a bit panicky and started to feel derealization-y, like I might not be real or Matt might not be (hello, irrational delusions borne of insecurity, my old friends), and they were so good: they had me tell them the story of how we met so I’d remember we are real, and then they gave me a long, thorough, skillful, cathartic spanking while I wept it all out.

We stayed up until 4 a.m. after getting home from the New Year’s Eve party at 1 a.m., having sex and talking and laughing and basically trying to stretch out the last remaining hours before we had to check out of the hotel and say goodbye. They told me, at one point, that they feel like we “fit” together so well – “sexually, intellectually, emotionally, comedically” – that we understand each other and just “get” each other. “It’s not even blind optimism anymore at this point,” they said. “We’re a year in. It’s real.” I didn’t want to go to sleep. I wanted to stay there, giggling with them in the liminal space that is a hotel bed at 3 a.m. on New Year’s with someone you love in a city that isn’t your own.

Today, close to goodbye time, I cried, and they licked my tears off my face and told me how cool it would be to rim a drink with their submissive’s salty tears (what a perv). I said, “I don’t want to be without you,” and they told me I’m not without them; we’ll still be together even when we’re apart, like always. On New Year’s Eve they ordered two glasses of champagne for us at Augustine and raised a toast to “an amazing year, and many more” – so certain about it, in a way I’ve never been able to be, and it made me cry, just like it does when they sense my fear and grab my face and stare seriously into my eyes and say, “I’m not going anywhere.” I cried in the taxi and said, “We match, right?” – our code-phrase for “We are both feeling these intense feelings for each other, right?” – and they said, “Oh, 100%.”

February 15th

I had the mini-revelation recently that part of the reason I’ve been semi-unconsciously drawn to unrequited love dynamics my whole life might be that they provide me what seems like a socially acceptable justification for my ever-present melancholy. It’s, in some ways, even harder to accept my depression now that I’m in essentially my dream career and my dream relationship, because evidently nothing is causing this sadness but my own damn brain.

May 30th

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why I have such fucked-up abandonment/anxious attachment issues when I wasn’t abused or abandoned as a kid and was actually really loved and sheltered and protected. I don’t remember when exactly these feelings first surfaced, but I know they’re related to S___, G___, and C___. From those relationships, I learned that someone can abandon you:

  • unexpectedly and totally out of the blue
  • very expectedly
  • for things you can’t change
  • for reasons you’ll never know
  • even after promising they wouldn’t
  • even knowing you have abandonment issues
  • even if you’ve known them for a long time
  • for someone else
  • for no one else
  • even if they seemed to like or love you

It feels like there’s not a single condition under which I’m safe from being abandoned. And the work I need to do is becoming okay with that reality, and being able to trust enough to function in relationships even with that possibility being present. My fears of abandonment are just trying to protect me, the emotional thought process being that if I can see the hurt coming before it hits, I can spare myself the heartache. But that’s false because, even in relationships where I constantly suspected I was about to be dumped, the dumping hurt just as bad. It’s going to hurt whether you forecast it or not.

I jump a lot to catastrophizing – “They’re going to leave me and therefore I’m not safe” – and I need to moreso encourage the thought, “What if they’re going to stay with me and I’m safe?” There’s much more evidence of that. It’s just hard to convince a traumatized brain of these things.

August 2nd

I’ve probably written this before but I feel as if my life has been tugging me toward New York since I was about ten years old. I wanted to live there for a long time, first to become a musical theatre performer and later just because I liked it there. But as I got older I came to understand that the immigration process and the expense of the city probably would keep me here. I love Toronto, after all, and my life here, and my friends and family, and the Canadian healthcare system, and this city’s largely positive attitudes toward queerness and kink and multiculturalism. I could stay here and be happy, except that I wouldn’t be with Matt.

A person I’m in love with is pretty much the only force that could drag me to another country at this point, and it almost feels like Matt was sent to me to (among other things) usher me into that city I’ve half-wanted to live in for so long. They’ve told me that if and when I decide to move there, they will make it their number-one project to figure out how to make that happen.

The problem of trying to get me there is the biggest and scariest thing in my life right now, but it’s a good problem to have. And I know that in Matt I have a partner who is willing to go basically to the ends of the earth to unite us on a more permanent basis.

September 2nd

Having kind of a dissociate-y day where it’s difficult for me to grasp that Matt is really my partner. They’re so beautiful and perfect that often in the early days of our relationship, and still sometimes even now, I had the sense that my life wasn’t really my life but was actually a movie I was watching, perhaps through the slitted eyes of a mask, perhaps in some kind of virtual-reality simulation that inserted me into someone else’s story like a Mary Sue in a piece of fanfiction. It’s odd to hear someone gorgeous, brilliant and accomplished describe you in those terms too when you don’t, to your core, believe them about yourself. For these nearly 2 years my life has felt sort of like a wrong classroom I walked into accidentally and just never left.

October 18th

It’s 2019 and I have been dating Matt for 22 months and I am still sometimes convinced I’m going to wake up from this dream. This life is not dreamy in the idyllic sense – I fight off psoriasis and chronic pain, I struggle sometimes to make my rent, I fight with friends and cry in bed and spend too much time on Twitter – but this one part of it feels like a dream, my connection with Matt. I feel like two kids stacked inside a trench coat, pretending to be a competent adult who’s good at relationships, pretending this relationship is just a normal and expected thing and not an earth-shattering inferno that exploded my life into something bigger and better. I keep waiting for my beloved to find me out or leave or disintegrate. But they ruffle my hair and say “I’m not going anywhere, kiddo,” and I can breathe for another few hours.

Together we regularly interrogate the concept of “deserving” love, deserving this relationship. Love isn’t transferrable like money or a contest prize: I don’t have to deserve it to have it. I have Matt’s love because they want to give it to me and specifically me, and that’s true even on days when I feel utterly undeserving. Telling them I don’t deserve them isn’t nice, is actually mean: it’s saying I doubt their taste and dismiss their agency, pushing them away, telling them one of their biggest and most central feelings is irrational and ill-informed. I should learn to accept their love like a compliment: say “thank you” and smile, even if you don’t agree, even if you don’t believe. They are entitled to their opinion and their opinion is that I’m worth loving. Somehow.

Got any favorite journal entries from 2019 to share?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 7 Bangin’ Selfies

Kate Sloan

Ah yes. It’s time for what is possibly the most self-indulgent instalment of 12 Days of Girly Juice: the one where I highlight some of my favorite and most meaningful selfies of the past year. Read on for lots of my cute face, and the cute faces of people I adore…

December 18th, 2018

Is this my favorite picture of me and Matt ever? Quite possibly!

This was taken in the Fairmont Royal York hotel the morning after we did a roleplay scene in the hotel’s beautiful Library Bar. Our room had excellent selfie lighting, and we, as Very Online millennials are wont to do, opted to take advantage of that.

I love how much this picture captures our genuine excitement and joy to be together. Long-distance relationships remind me a lot of my bipolar disorder, in a way: there’s so much euphoria during dates, and then sometimes periods of melancholy and despair when you’re apart.

It’s often difficult, but just the same as my mental health issues, I usually feel that the lows are worth enduring for the highs. It’s a relationship style that sort of forces you to really focus on your partner and be present when you’re with them, inviting you to take no moment for granted. This isn’t always easy in a world of smartphones and the capitalist grind, so I appreciate that my LDR provides me with an opportunity to live (and love) this way!

I also love that our outfits match… We’re obnoxious like that.

February 14th, 2019

Let me tell you a not-so-tall tale…

When placing an order from JetPens early in the year, I took a look at the rulers section, purely because I am a pervert and frequently enjoy the transgressiveness of using office supplies for impact play, à la “teacher/student punishment scene.” What can I say – I’m an ageplay fanatic through and through. I hurriedly chose one that seemed heftier than a standard ruler – even potentially thuddy?! – and threw it in my cart, alongside the fancy pen and ink refills I was also buying.

When the package showed up, however, I took the ruler out and immediately started laughing hysterically. It was SO MUCH TINIER than I had expected. (“What is this, a ruler for ants?!”)

It was especially hilarious because, as one person on Twitter pointed out to me, a ruler is the one object whose size you can easily tell just by looking at it in a photo online. EXCEPT… I had misread the description and thought the ruler was laid out in inches, when it was actually marked with centimeters. Tooootally different ball game!

Anyway, I love this selfie because it captures my genuine, laughing-out-loud amusement at my own fuck-up. I could barely hold the phone straight for giggling so hard. Moments like that are rare and worth savoring!

February 14th, 2019 (yes, again!)

On Valentine’s Day, I did one of my very favorite things: took myself on a solo date.

Both of my partners were spending the night with their other partners, which, y’know, happens sometimes in poly. I had foreseen this as a potential problem for my emotional stability (how many Valentine’s Days alone can one person endure??) so I’d bought myself a ticket to a musical for children, because I know myself pretty well, evidently.

The night of, I got thoroughly dolled up and then schlepped across the city to the Soulpepper theatre. It’s down the lane from this “Love Locks” installation, a common destination for Valentine’s, weddings, and other romantic milestones. I couldn’t help myself, and posed for a selfie in front of the word “Love,” neon and unignorable.

I look bewildered, in the way one does when one is self-conscious about taking a selfie alone in public. But I love this picture because… I went on this adventure even though I was bewildered. I sat in the front row and drank a beer and laughed and cried and then took myself home on the subway and took good care of myself. You don’t need a partner to be present – or to have a partner at all – to feel loved, and to be loved.

July 18th, 2019

This is a sad one. *takes a deep breath*

My parents moved out of their house this year, after living there for 26 years, i.e. my entire childhood and then some. It was a big, sprawling house, which was one of the things we loved about it, but its bigness had also grown redundant what with me moving out in 2017. So we begrudgingly began the process of putting nearly 3 decades’ worth of stuff into boxes, in preparation to move them to a newer, smaller house.

On our last day at the old place, we ran around cleaning and inspecting and corralling. I walked through the whole house taking pictures and videos of the details I most wanted to remember. And then I found a quiet moment to myself up on the third floor, in the now-empty bedroom I’d grown up in.

I’d lost my virginity in this room, started my blog in this room, said “I love you” to a romantic partner for the first time in this room. I’d cried and laughed and gasped in this room. I’d written thousands of pages there, and read thousands more. I’d stared out the big window at the lonely lights in the apartment buildings opposite, in the middle of the night when sleep wouldn’t come. I’d written songs on 4 different instruments in this room and then sang them for hours, warbling and raw. Every feeling I’d ever felt had been felt first and most intensely in this room.

So I laid on the floor, and snapped a sad selfie, and soaked it all in one last time. And then I walked out the door and said goodbye.

July 30th, 2019

My brother Max is one of my favorite people on the planet. On this night, we went out together to attend a John Mayer concert at a big stadium, after munching hot dogs in front of Union station. We’ve both loved JM for many, many years, through many, many missteps and weird musical choices. He’s still, I think, one of the best songwriters in the biz.

After the concert, Max insisted on walking me home, because he’s a good brother and a good pal. We encountered a bike taxi that was blasting Michael Bublé’s “Haven’t Met You Yet,” a song we love, and we started walking faster to try to keep up with it, all while singing along with the song at top volume. No alcohol had been consumed but we were still sort of high from a night of good music and good company.

We snapped this selfie in the middle of downtown Toronto at an hour when I would’ve been too freaked out to be there if I was by myself. It’s my fave selfie of me and Max from the whole year ’cause we both look so happy and silly. He’s my best bruddy and I’ll love him forever!

September 21st, 2019

There was a Bi Arts Festival going on and I invited my friend and roommate Sarah to attend the arts and crafts fair portion with me, because that kind of event is extremely our shit. We walked all around the ballroom of the 519 community centre, cooing at handmade leather kinkwear, embroidered patches, enamel pins, queer-as-fuck paintings, and other masterworks. I spent far too much money on gifts for various bi babes in my life.

Afterward, we wandered through the Village back toward the subway and happened upon this very queer wall mural; I’ve walked past it a zillion times but I don’t think I’d ever taken a selfie in front of it! So we took some happy smiley femme pics in front of all these powerful symbols of queer history and queer causes.

I feel really grateful to live in a city where there are such vibrant queer communities – and I’m also super grateful to have pals who make me feel free to be myself. 💖

October 14th, 2019

My friend Bex did something really difficult and meaningful this year: he got top surgery!

He asked me to be with him on the big day (what an honor) so I flew down from Toronto and we left at Extremely Early Morning O’Clock to meet up with Bex’s dad at NYU Tisch hospital. (Much coffee was drank that day. By me, I mean. Bex doesn’t like coffee and also probably would’ve been too nervous to drink it even if he did!)

This selfie was taken on the subway on our way downtown, and the excitement is palpable! Later, after surgery, a hospital employee who was wheeling Bex’s gurney into a different room looked at our happy faces and asked, “You were getting a good surgery, right?” We nodded. Yes, very good.

It’s been a pleasure to watch Bex grow and change as a person over the 4+ years we’ve known each other, and I’m honored to have him as a friend (and a podcast cohost). Here’s to lots more years of friendship and growing up together!

 

What were your fave selfies of the year and why were they so meaningful?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 8 Brilliant Books

Kate Sloan

This instalment of 12 Days of Girly Juice used to highlight my favorite things I tweeted all year, but you know what? I’d rather talk about books. (However, if you were wondering, my favorite tweets of the year were definitely this one and this one.)

I read 40+ books this year and loved lots of them, so this is hard – but here are my 8 top picks!

You Know You Want This by Kristen Roupenian

From the author of the viral story “Cat Person” came this tour de force, a collection of short stories about the complexity of consent. Within these pages are several tricky fictional situations centering around sexual sadism, relational autonomy, erotic humiliation, and more. Several times while reading this book, I had to put it down and ponder: What do I think this character should have done, ethically? What decision would I have made in this situation? This book is so timely, what with the concept of consent being debated and dissected all over the place due to the #MeToo movement, and I think these stories are useful thought exercises for those of us concerned with parsing what consent and non-consent really mean, and what their limitations might be.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

When I first read Esmé’s essay “Perdition Days” years ago, I thought it was one of the most striking things I’d ever read. It chronicles her time living with Cotard’s delusion, a belief that (in her case) one is dead, and that the people in one’s life are merely purgatory’s facsimiles of their living counterparts. Esmé painted an incredibly affecting picture of what this delusion felt like from the inside, and how it impacted those around her. She went on to write The Collected Schizophrenias, a collection of essays (including “Perdition Days”) which discuss her life with chronic mental and physical illness, and the various dilemmas and struggles therewith. I found myself crying on the subway while reading Esmé weigh the decision to have kids or stay childless; I marveled at her reporting on chronic lime disease and the way its sufferers are frequently dismissed and disbelieved; I revelled in the bravery it must have taken for her to write about these things, and the artfulness with which she has done so. This book has stuck with me in ways I can’t even articulate, and I’m so glad it exists.

High Heel by Summer Brennan

You won’t read a more thorough history of the high heel than this – but this book is so much more than that. It discusses the iconic shoe in relation to politics, gender, sexuality, pain, music, film, fashion, and more. I notice people’s shoes a lot more now than I did before reading this book – and I’m more intentional about my own choices in that regard, too. I like Summer’s nuanced conclusion that high heels aren’t necessarily oppressive and evil like many feminists argue – they can instead be a freely chosen expression of identity that many people find affirming and uplifting.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

I saw this book retweeted onto my Twitter timeline and my interest was immediately piqued. A gorgeously illustrated story about queer high-school heartbreak? Yes please! I cried multiple times while reading this immensely beautiful graphic novel, because the feelings of rejection, insecurity, unworthiness, and ultimately resilience were so familiar to me, from both my queer relationships and my “straight” ones. The pleasure of reading this book was equal parts emotional, intellectual, aesthetic, and tactile – a rare thing!

Building Open Relationships by Dr. Liz Powell

If you read only one book on non-monogamy, make it this one. Dr. Liz lays out all the common pitfalls of this relationship style and how to deal with them. Their book is written with compassion and vulnerability, and is full of useful stories from Liz’s own dating life that illustrate the principles they teach. I feel much more equipped to handle non-monogamy after reading this book, and I’ve recommended it to countless people. It’s just that good.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

I love a good murder-mystery, and that’s exactly what this novel is. An investigative journalist sets his sights on figuring out why and how the daughter of a prominent horror movie director died. In the process, he picks up a couple of sidekicks, wanders through revered movie sets, chats with a drug-addled movie star, breaks into abandoned buildings, swans around Manhattan penthouses, sneaks onto an estate in a canoe, and basically just gets up to some good old-fashioned hijinks. Marisha Pessl is a gifted (and often hilarious) writer, and I was captivated by this story from beginning to end.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

This book got a lot of attention around its launch, and for good reason. Tolentino’s painstakingly constructed essays dive into precarious topics like the wedding industrial complex, the absurdity of reality TV, activewear as capitalist fetishwear, and more. Every piece in this book is incisive, witty, evocative, and meticulously researched. Reading it probably made me smarter, and definitely made me feel smarter.

The Wagers by Sean Michaels

I’m biased because Sean is my cousin, but this novel is really extraordinary. It’s primarily about luck – what does it mean to be lucky, and how can one become moreso? – but is also about love, and family, and fame, and privilege, and the grocery business. I love a twisty plot, and this one frequently made me shout “OH SHIT” while reading in cafés or on the subway (whoops). I fell in love with the characters of this strange novel, and couldn’t wait to find out what would happen to them next.

What were your favorite books you read this year?

12 Days of Girly Juice 2019: 9 Best New Sex Toys

Kate Sloan

Ah, sex toys. What would I ever do without them? (Answer: have unsatisfying orgasms and a worse relationship with my body, probably.)

I like to reflect at year’s end on my favorite newly-acquired sex toys of the year. Whether you’re reading this looking for gift recommendations (for a loved one or yourself!) or just out of curiosity, I hope you’ll find something of interest here!

 

9. Zumio S (available at SheVibe)

This teensy oscillating vibe is an updated version of the previous Zumio, and this time around, it’s designed to be more suitable for folks with ultra-sensitive clits. The whole Zumio line is more intense and pinpoint than I tend to prefer, so they’re never gonna be nightstand staples for me, but I like this one for forced orgasm play or when I’m in the mood to overwhelm myself with sensation.

 

8. We-Vibe Moxie (available at SheVibe and the Smitten Kitten)

We-Vibe’s one of the few companies I would trust to make a decent panty vibe, considering how often toys in that genre tend to be total garbage. The Moxie is, by contrast, a treasure: strong, rumbly, well-designed, and cute as hell. I wish the Bluetooth functionality was a little more reliable, but for my money, if you need a discreet vibe to wear in your underwear for public play or just to liven up a visit to the grocery store, this is the best one you’ll find.

 

7. Honour Steel Dragon Claw (available from Honour)

I requested this on a whim and it’s gotten more use than I ever expected it to. Dubbed “the weird scratchy thing” in my household, this elegant, ergonomic metal claw is great for sensation play, and the hefty handle can even be used for impact. It’s rare these days for me to encounter a type of toy I’ve never tried before, so this was a refreshing product to get my kinky little hands on.

 

6. Uberrime Jellyfish (available at SheVibe)

My vagina’s not a texture fiend, unlike those of some of my sex toy reviewer friends, so I wasn’t expecting to love this veiny, ridgy dildo. However, Uberrime did a brilliant thing by making this toy in a gorgeously soft and pliable silicone, which makes the extreme texture much easier for me to handle. Despite its obvious unreality, when I squeeze on this dildo, it feels weirdly… cock-like? #DildoMagic!

 

5. Bodywand Midnight (available at SheVibe)

I’m verrrry skeptical of new wand vibrators – hell, new vibrators in general – because so many of them are atrocious or just boring. Bodywand’s been making good stuff for ages, though (along with a fair amount of so-so stuff), so I figured this all-black electric wand of theirs would be worth a shot, and it was! I love the precise control offered by the dial, and the just-rumbly-enough vibrations topped off with some satisfying buzz.

 

4. KinkLab vampire gloves (available at Spectrum Boutique)

(Content note for this one: blood!) Okay, these are technically my partner’s, not mine. (We do intend to eventually combine our sex toy collections, however, if you know what I’m sayin’.) But they have come into contact with my blood, which – as risk-aware blood-play aficionados know – means that they now must be reserved only for use with me, for hygiene reasons. Vampire gloves are leather gloves with little metal spikes pointing out of the fingers and thumb; you can use them for scratchy sensation play, extra-intense impact play, and various other activities. These ones are well-constructed and super sexy, and I’ve enjoyed every scene we’ve done with them.

 

3. Dame Kip (available at SheVibe)

I love a cute, travel-friendly vibe! This one hasn’t quite edged out my other long-time faves, like the Tango, but I like it very much – it has a good motor and its design is well thought-out. The sunny yellow color makes me smile, too!

 

2. Vixen Creations Bandit (available at SheVibe)

Realistic dildos can seem a bit boring when contrasted with all the neon-colored dongs and ridged dragon dicks on the market, but sometimes classics are classics for a reason. This one has gotten a ton of use for me, mostly because it’s long enough to hit my A-spot and squishy enough not to ram my cervix into oblivion. Good job, Vixen.

 

1. Weal & Breech purpleheart mallet (commission your own from Weal & Breech)

This was an anniversary gift from my partner, custom-made for us by the utter geniuses at Weal & Breech, and it’s hands-down my favorite impact toy I’ve ever owned. It’s the thuddiest thing ever, feels and looks elegant as hell, and totally intrigues every kinky friend of mine who sees it. It’s a treasured possession, the kind of thing I would save in a fire alongside my computer and old journals. Get your hands on one if you love thuddy impact!

 

What were your favorite sex toys of the year?