fleshlight

As I’ve said here many times before, sex toys are not – and are not meant to be – replacements for human partners. In fact, they can enhance sex with a partner, sometimes by a lot.

I have two toys to review today which perfectly illustrate that principle. They’re both ostensibly meant to replicate human genitals in some sense, and yet – if you so desire – they can make you feel closer to your partner, rather than farther from them. Let’s talk about fake dicks and fake vaginas!

The VixSkin Bandit is a formidable silicone cock by Vixen Creations, still one of the biggest names in the realistic-dildo game. It’s perhaps best known as a favorite dildo of Erika Moen’s. Prior to Just Mindful sending me the Bandit to try, it had been over five years since I last acquired a new VixSkin toy. Between the G-spotty Mustang and its thicker cousin the Maverick, I just didn’t feel I needed another big, squishy dick in my life… but then, the more that I looked at the Bandit online, the more I thought, Maybe I do need one after all.

With its 7″ of insertable length and 1.75″ diameter, this dildo is – to quote Brendan Fraser in Bedazzled – “big… not, like, practical-joke big, but, you know.” It’s what the McElroy brothers might call a “beefy boy.” It fills me up without testing my vag’s limits, and that’s a surprisingly hard balance to strike.

It’s long enough to hit my A-spot – joy of joys! Vixen’s dual-density silicone formulation is softer than I generally prefer in an A-spot toy, so the blended orgasms it produces aren’t as intense as they might be if something firmer was rubbing against that spot, but that’s a minor quibble.

Here’s what I mean, though, when I say that this dildo can enhance partnered sex. As I’ve mentioned before, penis-in-vagina sex can give me a lot of anxieties, ranging from “Am I taking too long to come?” to “Is he getting tired?” to “Does my face look weird?” But to my chagrin, PIV still features prominently in my fantasy life. There are few things hotter to me than getting fucked deeply and thoroughly – and few things that make me come as hard. So you see my predic(k)ament. However, if and when I have a partner who’s cool with using a realistic dildo on me, I can reap many of the benefits of PIV, without nearly as many weird fears chipping away at my arousal. This is especially true if – as with my current partner – the person wielding the dildo is open to talking about it as if it were their actual cock. It’s a known fact that my boyfriend talking dirty about fucking me can get me off, no problem, and that becomes even more true when he’s slamming a silicone dick into my A-spot just right, again and again.

He enjoys fucking me with the Bandit, too, for similar reasons. Apparently when you use a dildo on someone that roughly matches your skin tone and, ideally, your cock’s dimensions, it’s easy to imagine that it is your cock. Many men have anxieties about not lasting “long enough” or staying “hard enough,” and I wish more of them would believe me when I tell them using dildos is a great way to deal with this. You can give someone exquisite pleasure with a toy – and you can also fuck them with parts of your actual body, before or after using the toy or even while you’re using it. (DP, anyone?) Not to mention, sex’s psychological and visual aspects are a big deal for many people, and you can derive a lot of those joys just as much from a dildo as you can from your dick.

Along similar lines… the Fleshlight Go Torque Ice is a masturbator that plays into exhibitionistic/voyeuristic desires and can make a solo act into a spectator activity. I requested it for my boyfriend because, as the “Ice” in its name denotes, it’s see-through. I’ve watched many amateur porn scenes where men jerked off into one of these things, and it always turns me on, for very simplistic reasons: I like dicks, and I like watching dicks experience pleasure and orgasm.

Granted, watching a cock through this Fleshlight isn’t like watching it through a plate glass window; it’s textured, so it visually distorts and obscures the dick to some degree. But you still get a better view than you would get if its user were using an opaque masturbator or even just their hand.

My partner reports that this toy fits his bigger-than-average cock well without feeling too tight (the same can’t be said for the Tenga 3D Spiral he previously bought and had to retire after several futile attempts to make it work). This is true in spite of the fact that the “Go” size is 7″, compared to the 9″ length of a standard Fleshlight. He likes the internal texture and says it works well for stroking, twisting, or both at once.

This toy has all the usual downsides reported by Fleshlight users, most annoyingly the need to dissemble and clean it pretty much immediately after use. You must always do this, and let it air-dry before reassembling it, unless you have a kink for getting mold on your dick. (Personally, I’d rather blow a fun guy than fungi.) My partner also notes that the plastic casing feels cheap, the “SuperSkin” material (thermoplastic elastomer) smells slightly weird, and air escaping from the toy creates an off-putting wheezing noise during use that can be distracting.

But overall, it’s a fave. He comes reliably hard using it, and says he reaches for it when he wants an orgasm that feels more like a mouth or a vag than his own lubed-up hand can approximate. That’s exactly what a masturbator aspires to achieve. Plus, in this case, letting me watch cum shoot out of my partner’s dick.

This post was sponsored, and Just Mindful sent me these products for my honest and unbiased reviews. Check out their masturbator collection and their realistic dildo collection for more like these! As always, all writing and opinions are my own (and, in this case, my boyfriend’s).