phone sex

Phone Sex Every Day? Sure, Why Not

Kate Sloan

One of the weirdest things about being a sex writer is the cognitive dissonance between the sexual person your readers think you are and the sexual person you actually are.

It’s important to keep in mind, always, as you’re scrolling through your social media feeds and your RSS reader (if you still use one of those antiquated things like I do), that comparing yourself to people you see on the internet is comparing your insides to somebody else’s outsides. You’re never getting the full picture, even if you think you are.

And that’s not as bad a thing as some people would have you believe, either. “Authenticity” and “transparency” are only useful up to a point; y’all don’t need to know about the chin hairs I pluck or the ins and outs of my fibre intake. I mean, maybe some of you want to know that stuff (I know plenty of my readers have unusual fetishes!) but I am by no means obligated to share it all with you. The people who make me the most uncomfortable in this business are the people who insist that my openness and honesty in certain areas mean I’m required to be open and honest in every area. Nope. Fuck that. Fuck that forever.

All this to say: I’m probably not as horny or as sexually adventurous a person as you might imagine. In fact, if not for phone sex, I think these days I’d only jerk off 2-3 times a week, tops, if left to my own (vibrating) devices.

That caveat – “if not for phone sex” – is what I want to talk about today. As you might know, I keep a sex spreadsheet, so I have stats on my IRL sex life for the past several years and my phone-sex sex life for the past year and a half. My partner mb – who is delightfully chill about the whole “recording detailed data on our intimate encounters” thing – recently pointed out to me, as we were totalling up our sex numbers from the 4 months they spent quarantined with me, that despite having phone sex nearly every night when we’re apart, we didn’t have sex every single night we were physically together. We had sex 84 times in the 121 days they were here – so, about 69% of those nights (nice). I had noticed that too, and had been pondering the possible reasons.

When we discussed it, we came to 2 overall conclusions about why we’re more prolifically horny over the phone than IRL:

  1. Sometimes the “point” of sex (or one of them, anyway) is to establish intimacy and connection. When we’re together IRL (especially when quarantining), we’re already getting a lot of that throughout the day – not to mention throughout the night, when we cuddle and touch and kiss and can smell each other and feel each other’s warmth all night. Sex isn’t less appealing, necessarily, but it doesn’t feel like as urgent a need when part of its “purpose” is getting fulfilled elsewhere.
  2. In-person sex takes more energy. Phone sex is comparatively chill.

That second one is really the crucial one for me, I think. As a person with depression and chronic pain + fatigue, sometimes I just don’t have the energy for sex, despite knowing it would almost certainly improve my mood and my pain status. It’s not only the physical motion involved – which can be reduced or almost entirely eliminated when I’m fucking a capable and enthusiastic top, like mb – but also the mental energy involved. No matter how comfortable I am with a partner, it still saps some of my energy to constantly wonder if my sex faces look weird, or if my body is actually as attractive as my partner claims it is, or if my roommate can hear the impacts when I’m getting spanked.

It’s a lot like how Zoom video calls can be utterly draining for me (I’m sure many of you can relate) while audio-only calls are comparatively blissful. I just don’t have enough brain-spoons to simultaneously manage not only the conversation we’re having but also how I look while we’re having it. Let’s turn our video off so I can forget, briefly, just how ugly I secretly worry I am.

Phone sex with mb is so good that I’ve pondered many times whether we can continue having it when we’re eventually living together. And fortunately, they’re the type of inventive, considerate, GGG partner that I honestly feel like we might. I can imagine us residing together in a tiny one-bedroom New York apartment and me saying at the end of a long day, “Hey, I’m super worn out. Can I go to the other room so we can have phone sex?” I’d bring some sex toys with me and slip back seamlessly into that pleasantly agitated headspace I so often inhabited when we had just started dating and our romantic nighttime phone sex sessions were the fuel that propelled me through my difficult, depressed days.

I’ve had a wide range of opinions on long-distance relationships over the course of my life, but I never really thought I would prefer them, or at least prefer elements of them. Maybe it’s a bad sign about my relationship with my body that non-corporeal forms of sex seem to appeal to me more, and rev my sexual engine more consistently, than types involving my actual fucking body – but honestly, the world is a mess right now. “Whatever works.” That’s the phrase I keep saying to friends on the phone and via text when they tell me about some supposedly “weird” coping mechanism or distracting hobby they’ve picked up since the coronavirus swept the world. “Whatever works.” Whatever makes you feel happier and more at ease and more functional is worth at least considering.

I’m so blessed to have a partner who understands and accepts all of my limitations, and not only knows how to work within them but also actively gets excited about finding new ways to work within them. I am so lucky to be in love with someone so good, so kind, so accommodating. And I am so lucky to have access to a type of sex that bridges gaps, raises my self-image, requires very little energy on my part, and makes me feel like a scintillating stunner even when I’m lying in bed with day-old pajamas on and a cavalcade of unsexy pillows cradling my aching body.

 

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

Sextistics: An End-of-Year Sexual Stats Breakdown (2019)

Kate Sloan

Once again this year, I kept a sex spreadsheet – and once again, I have lots of stats to share! Gather ’round and let me tell you about my 2019 sex life…

 

Overview

  • In 2019, I had partnered sex 204 times.
  • That works out to an average of 17 times per month, 3.92 times per week, and 0.56 times per day.
  • I had 174 orgasms from partnered sex (not including phone sex, which has its own section below).
  • My partners had a total of 211 orgasms from sex with me.
  • An incomplete list, in alphabetical order, of the kink activities I incorporated into partnered sex this year: bimboification, biting, bondage, bootblacking, choking/gagging, cock and ball torture, DD/lg roleplay, electrostimulation, face-slapping, financial domination/sugar dating (simulated), forced feminization/gender play, hypnosis, impregnation (simulated), intoxication, knife play, medical roleplay, pegging, public play, punching, rimming/analingus, roleplay, sadomasochism, scratching, sensory deprivation, sleepy sex, spanking, squirting, trampling, watersports, wax play.

 

Compared to last year…

  • I had 38.8% more sex.
  • I had an orgasm in 85.3% of the sex I had, versus 98% last year. A large part of that is because I’ve been leaning more toward the ace end of the spectrum and becoming more comfortable with respecting my body’s wishes when it doesn’t feel like receiving genital touch.
  • My partners’ collective orgasm rate with me was 103.4%, ’cause I’m a sex genius, I guess.
  • I had 2 partners, versus 3 last year.

 

Partners

  • My 2 sexual partners this year were 1) my romantic partner and 2) a friend with benefits.
  • 100% of my partners this year were non-binary people, making this the first year since 2010 that I’ve had zero sex with cis men. Wow.
  • One of my partners is 1.33 years older than me while the other is 8.42 years older than me, so they are, on average, 4.88 years older. The trend of me fucking predominantly or exclusively people older than me has continued for my entire adult sex life.
  • I met my 2 partners on Twitter and at our mutual workplace, respectively, which makes me feel pretty bleak about online dating.

 

Locations

  • I had sex in a total of 9 different locations this year, versus 12 last year.
  • These included: my current apartment in downtown Toronto, my old apartment in the west end of Toronto, my partner’s apartment in Manhattan, a sex club, and 5 hotels (2 in New York, 1 in Montreal, 1 in Portland, 1 in Toronto).
  • The locations likeliest to facilitate orgasm for me were the Heathman Hotel in Portland (100%), my current apartment (94.2%), and my old apartment (92.1%), continuing the pattern of me orgasming most easily in locations that make me feel comfortable. (Also locations where I have easy access to weed.)
  • The locations least likely to facilitate orgasm for me were the Oasis sex club (50%), the Gramercy Park Hotel (62.5%), and the Broadview Hotel (66.7%).
  • Of all the cities I had sex in this year, I was the most orgasmic in Portland (100%) and the least orgasmic in Montreal (68.8%). My hometown of Toronto’s orgasm rate was 91.6%.

 

Highs and lows

  • My most sexually active month was August (31 times) because I was with my partner for the longest stretches of time that month (totaling 14 days).
  • My least sexually active months were February, May, and June (all tied at 10 times) because those trips were shorter (4-5 days each) and also, in the case of those latter months, I was prepping for two moves and was very stressed and busy.
  • The day on which I had the most sex was June 22nd, at 5 times. I have no explanation for this silliness.
  • The most orgasms I had in a partnered sex session was 2, which happened 5 times.

 

Correlations

  • The sex acts most correlated with orgasm for me were using a vibrator and a dildo together (100 times), receiving oral sex sans penetration (25), and using a vibe while being fingerbanged (23).
  • Less common ways I got off were receiving oral sex while being fingerbanged (14 times), receiving oral sex while being fucked with a dildo (5), and using a vibrator during PIV (2).
  • The main thing that sticks out to me about these numbers is that I came more often from oral sex this year than any year since about ~2013 (wasn’t keeping a spreadsheet back then!) because of being with someone skilled and attentive for a long enough time that they could learn my body.

 

Sex toys

  • My most-used vibrators with partners this year were the Eroscillator (96 times), Magic Wand Rechargeable (35), and We-Vibe Tango (7).
  • My most-used dildos with partners were the VixSkin Bandit (34 times), Njoy Eleven (25), and Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble (19). It’s worth noting here that my partner and I each own our own Bandits and Double Troubles, so these dildos get a lot of use partly because it’s convenient that we don’t have to transport them on every trip we take to see each other.
  • My most-used kink toys with partners were my Weal & Breech purpleheart mallet (7 times), a candle for wax play (6), and my Weal & Breech purpleheart truncheon (6).
  • Some “pervertibles” that got used a fair bit this year were tweezers (for sadomasochism), high heels (for shoe worship and trampling), ice cubes (for temperature play), knives (for knife play), and Tarina Tarantino heart necklaces (for hypnosis).

 

Phone sex

  • In 2019, I had phone sex 246 times. (This was the first year that I kept track of this, so I don’t have any stats from previous years to compare it to, unfortunately.)
  • That works out to an average of 20.5 times per month, 4.7 times per week, and 0.67 times per day.
  • That means phone sex was 54.7% of my sex life this year.
  • I had 241 orgasms from phone sex. In cases where we had phone sex and I didn’t come, the reason was almost always that I was falling asleep. (Sometimes we stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning on these calls!)
  • The total amount of sex sessions I had this year (IRL sex + phone sex) was 450.
  • That works out to an average of 37.5 times per month, 8.65 times per week, and 1.23 times per day. Yeesh.

 

Did you keep a record of your sex life this year? What were your most interesting findings?

 

Extra links you might find useful:

My Phone Sex Setup

Kate Sloan

I talk a lot about phone sex on here, but I’ve said almost nothing about the actual logistical tools I use for this particular lascivious act.

And that stuff’s important! The wrong phone sex setup can make you feel farther from your partner when you want to feel closer. You don’t want to be stuck fiddling with Bluetooth settings and charger cables when you could be focusing on your paramour’s pretty moans.

My partner and I have had phone sex almost every night for over a year (YEESH) so I have ample experience and opinions in this arena! Here are some of my phone-sex must-haves…

The phone itself

My current phone is an iPhone XS; it was a Christmas present to myself, because my old 6S was barely functional after being thrashed for 3 years. I love the XS! It’s sleek and sexy, and it sounds great.

My only real beef with this phone is Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack and force you to use the Lightning port at the bottom for both headphones and chargers – which could be impractical for phone-sex purposes, but I’ve found workarounds, which I’ll explain below…

On occasion, I’ve used other WiFi-enabled devices, like my iPad, to talk to my partner. It’s good to know I have a backup incase my phone ever needs to be repaired or something.

Phone accessories

Call me a basic bitch if you must, but my #1 must-have iPhone accessory for phone sex is just a pair of those basic white earbuds that come with the phone. They have a little remote on one side which lets you control the volume level and even answer calls with one click, and there’s also a little microphone on that remote. Occasionally I’ll switch to my big noise-canceling headphones if I want to hear additional depth and richness in my partner’s voice – like if we’re doing a hypno scene – but for the most part, those standard Apple earbuds work just fine. (I have to use a Lightning-to-headphone-jack adapter when I mix up my choice of headphones, unfortunately. What are you doing, Apple.)

Speaking of that fucking Lightning port… I got tired of having to choose between wearing my headphones and plugging my phone in, so I bought a wireless charging pad for my nightstand. Initially this seemed like a frivolous expenditure, but I use it ALL THE TIME and it comes in handy when my phone battery dwindles while my partner is whispering sweet hot things at me.

On that note, regardless of what type of phone you have, I would recommend getting a super-long charging cable for it (AmazonBasics makes the ones I like). Trust me, you might not think you need a 10-foot-long charging cable right now, but the extra mobility and convenience are worth the $10-20 you’ll spend on it.

Software

My partner and I use FaceTime audio for the vast majority of our aural communiqué. It sounds way better than a normal phone call, and you can hear things like breathing and soft moans more clearly, which, as you might imagine, matters. We’ll also occasionally use FaceTime video if we’re in the mood to see each other (or, y’know, each other’s junk). If I’m having WiFi troubles and FaceTime starts turning me into a low-res robot, we’ll switch to a regular phone call – but it’s definitely not preferred.

When we want to watch something together, we use Rabb.it – which I mention here only because sometimes we indulge in some porn as foreplay of sorts. This app has its problems (it always seems to take us a good few minutes to figure out how to join the same room, because the interface is unnecessarily complicated), but I haven’t really found anything else that does what it does.

Very occasionally, my partner instructs me to look at something – like, say, a spiral or some looping wink videos during a hypno scene – in which case I usually open it up in QuickTime or Preview on my MacBook.

Miscellaneous equipment

Speaking of watching spirals/gifs/porn while talking on the phone – if I want to do that in bed, rather than at my desk, I’ll pull out my lap desk from IKEA (this one is similar) and prop up the computer on that. You don’t want to worry about your laptop overheating while you’re trying to, um, get overheated yourself!

Clothing-wise: this might seem silly, but I love my MeUndies lounge pants for the early stages of phone sex, when we’re mostly just flirting and saying mildly suggestive things. (Clothes start to come off after that point, although sometimes I wish they wouldn’t!) I love these for simple reasons: they are comfy as hell, they’re loose and stretchy enough that I can get a hand or even a vibe inside them without needing to take them off, the fabric is thin enough that I can easily use a vibe through it if I want to, and – best of all – they have FOUR pockets, each of which is big enough to fit my phone. So if I have to get up during phone sex – say, to wash a sex toy or go get a snack – I can just tuck my phone in there while my headphones remain on. Perf.

As with any kind of sex, it’s good to have lube somewhere nearby and easily accessible. I keep a bevy of options on my nightstand. It goes without saying, surely, that my favorite sex toys are also always close at hand, and my Eroscillator is always plugged in.

Finally, I try to always have snacks and water available if I’m gonna have phone sex. You’re saying a lot of words and making a lot of sounds; you should keep your voice lubricated! The snacks come in handy for aftercare; sex across vast geographical expanses obviously doesn’t allow for cuddly, body-based aftercare, so we double up on the verbal kind (compliments, jokes, contented sighs) and yummy treats to bring our bodies and brains back to normal.

What are your must-have tools and supplies when you have phone sex?

Sexting, Spanking, Stroking: What “Counts” As Sex?

Kate Sloan

In the 12th grade I took a psychology/sociology/anthropology class, the first day of which was spent debating what constituted “sex.”

Our teacher said it was a useful exercise to get us thinking about the nuances of the class’s subject matter – and he was right. The ensuing discussion was psychosocial and sociocultural, surprisingly thoughtful for a roomful of horny teenagers.

One person suggested sex could be defined as a physical act meant to invoke sensual pleasure in oneself and one’s partner, but someone else pointed out that under this definition, holding hands could be considered sex. Another person thought orgasm should be part of the definition, but of course that leaves out all the perfectly valid sex that doesn’t involve orgasms, whether by choice or not. We debated whether sex had to involve romantic feelings (no), penetration (no), mutual pleasure (no), genital touching (mayyybe?). Despite feeling fairly certain we knew what sex was, we couldn’t agree on a definition that we felt included all the things it ought to and excluded all the things it ought to.

This was years before the “galaxy brain” meme became popular, but damn if that wasn’t a galaxy-brain moment for me. If I didn’t know what sex was or wasn’t, then could sex be… almost anything? Could I experience sexual pleasure from… almost anything?

I’ve been writing about sex online for the better part of a decade now, and my understanding of what “sex” is has only become broader and murkier as time has progressed (not to mention, as acts like sexting and phone sex have become a bigger and bigger part of my life). I’m not sure I know what sex is. I’m not sure I ever knew.

I’m playing Scrabble and drinking wine with a cute, toppy enby at their house. It’s our second date. They’re really, really good at Scrabble; they beat me spectacularly. And then I ask if they want to beat me in another way.

They are amenable, and I sprawl over their lap, face down and ass up, like a good girl. They warm up my ass with light swats and then transition into more substantial smacks. The impacts get louder and the pain gets worse and I almost want to cry and it’s so so good.

When we mutually decide we’re done with impact, I sit in their lap and kiss them, our hands roaming lazily along each other’s skin. I feel like a sweet, petite princess under their gaze. The kisses fade out like the end of a pop song, and they gesture at the Scrabble board. “Wanna play again?”

Does this count as sex?

Kink, as you may well know, makes everything more complicated.

Where previously I might have said that a sexual activity had to involve genital touching for me to consider it “sex,” the deeper I’ve waded into my kinky identity, the less certain I am that that’s true. When you’re a spanking fetishist, for example, your butt basically is a genital region, or at least, your brain and body respond as if it were (and isn’t that the whole point?). Does that make the feet a sexual organ for foot fetishists? Is the brain a sexual organ for hypnokinksters?

I keep a sex spreadsheet, and currently my threshold for including an encounter there is:

  1. At least one person’s genitals must be touched by at least one other person
  2. The purpose of the interaction must be for sexual pleasure
  3. It must “feel like sex” to me

Of course, that last point is the most nebulous, and probably the most important. Some spankings leave me panting and dishevelled, satisfied and wrecked, like good sex; others just feel like a few fun swats from a pal. Some sexting sessions feel obscene and all-encompassing; others just feel like typing words into a phone. Maybe it’s okay for your definition of sex to be subjective. But then, what happens if someone thinks they’re fucking you, deeply and fully, and to you it just feels like a bit of rollin’ around?

My fuckbuddy is looking particularly cute tonight – but I swear I think that every time I see him. He’s naked in the pool at the sex club, sipping a cider, not a trace of self-consciousness in his body. We’ve been chatting for a good few minutes, but suddenly the cadence of our conversation shifts. I set my drink down by the side of the pool and he starts kissing me and it is the most natural thing, the most familiar treat.

His hand is in my hair and his other hand is on my back and his legs are pulling me closer and I’m tugging on his chest hair and his beard is scraping my cheeks. There are so many sensory details I associate with him and basically no one else: a splash of chlorine, the squeak of wet skin on skin. He is also a certified master of dry-humping: his hard cock finds my clit underwater with perpetually startling precision. Our most sensitive spots slide against each other as our kisses get deeper and more frenetic.

After languorous minutes of this, I am turned on – but tired. It’s been a long day. Normally at this point we would progress to sex, but I want to stop here; this was enough. I explain, and he understands, and we kiss goodnight. I get out of the pool and towel off, feeling glowy and gorgeous.

Does this count as sex?

I hate the narrative that sex without penetration isn’t sex at all. This myth is rampant, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, and so many other things that make me shudder. In Laurie Mintz’s book Becoming Cliterate, she reports – based on a survey she did – that while two-thirds of women consider it “sex” when someone goes down on them, only one-third of men consider it “sex” when they go down on someone. The clitoris is the anatomical equivalent of the penis; it’s absurd that when the latter is stimulated, it’s widely considered sex, while the same isn’t true for the former.

And yet… when my clit is merely grazed, or lightly rubbed, and there’s nothing inside me, often it doesn’t feel to me like sex. It feels like something that could’ve happened accidentally, if I was squeezing past strangers on a train or enjoying a particularly deep kiss.

Have I internalized the concept that “foreplay” alone isn’t real sex? Or do I simply know what I like? Is it okay to build one’s own definition of sex based on what one finds subjectively sexual, or does that inherently exclude people who experience sex differently? Maybe it’s inevitable that humanity can never agree on a universal definition of sex. Maybe that’s okay.

My boyfriend calls me up, as he does almost every night. After a few minutes of catch-up conversation and goofy giggles, some particular piece of flirty repartée makes his voice drop an octave into a distinctly dommy register. We’ve been sexting on-and-off all day; we want each other, and on the phone, we can almost have each other. The game is on.

Dictating my every move, he guides me through gentle touches, a satisfying spanking, and a deep hard fuck with a dildo and vibrator. My body provides motion while his voice provides direction, excitement, encouragement. My eventual orgasm feels collaborative, like a canvas we both slung paint at until it was beautiful.

Does this count as sex?

I thought I was at peace with my (lack of a) definition of sex, and then I got into a long-distance relationship.

Sexting and phone sex are hugely popular endeavors, as the plethora of free sexting sites and phone sex operators on the internet will attest. But are they sex?

For a long time, I didn’t think so. I didn’t record these encounters on my spreadsheet; I didn’t say “We fucked,” but rather, “We had phone sex.” Meanwhile, my partner was viewing those late-night phone calls as sex with me, which was a bit of a weird disconnect. It was like that scene in Down With Love when a smitten Ewan McGregor tries to get Renée Zellweger’s blasé, love-wary character to sleep with him: “So I can make love to you – heartfelt, passionate, worshipping, adoring love – and you can still have meaningless sex with me, right?” It’s strange to have a vastly different conception of sex from the person you’re having it with.

So I stayed open to the idea that sexting and phone sex could feel like sex, could be sex. And after a year of getting lascivious on the phone almost every night (why are we like this??), I can now report that it indeed feels like a sexual act to me. I look forward to it like sex; I get fully engrossed in it like sex; it satisfies me like sex; it brings me and my partner closer like sex. And it’s upwards of 70% of our sex life together, so it would feel odd to write it off as “illegitimate” in some way. I still don’t record it in my spreadsheet alongside IRL encounters, only because it doesn’t pose a risk as far as STIs and pregnancy, so I have less of a need to track it. But maybe someday I’ll start doing it anyway.

As our culture goes deeper down the rabbit hole of stuff like sex robots and teledildonics, we’re going to have to broaden our definition of sex. And that, I think, is a very good thing.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2018: 2 Fears Defeated

Kate Sloan

I’ve conquered a lot of fears in the past few years, or at least attempted to. Hell, life with an anxiety disorder is basically just a long process of battling fears, like walking through a brambly underbrush with a machete in each hand. In 2015 I upped my blowjob game and delved into threesomes; in 2016 I fucked on camera and navigated casual sex; and last year I explored polyamory more deeply and got better at tactful rejection. That’s a whole lotta scary things, and I’m proud of myself!

Here are two things I’d previously feared, that I managed to face head-on in 2018…

Long-distance relationships

I swore, when I was younger, that I would never fuck with an LDR. “I need a lot of attention and physical affection,” I reasoned, “and that just isn’t practical if the person lives far away.” What I had neglected to plan for, however, is that sometimes you fall in love with a geographically distant person even if you had planned not to – and that distance does not have to preclude the exchange of attention and affection.

Knowing full well about the hurdles long-distance couples face, my partner and I approached our relationship with thoughtfulness and intentionality. We built systems and routines that helped bolster our burgeoning intimacy: good-morning texts, near-nightly phone conversations, FaceTime calls whenever convenient, selfies and tweets and emails. We crafted a sex life from sexting and phone sex (more on that in a sec) that feels as real, enjoyable, and important to me as any in-person sexual connection I’ve ever had. We made it clear to each other, day by day by day, that we are committed to making this relationship work and making it last. We look for new ways to do that all the time.

We’re also deeply privileged to live not terribly far from each other – a 90-minute flight or an ~11-hour bus ride – and to be able to afford to see each other about once a month. It’s funny: when we first started dating, we agreed that 2 months was about the maximum amount of time we’d ever want to go without seeing each other, but we’ve never actually waited that long. The longest we’ve spent apart at a time is about 5 weeks, but we average around 3 weeks between each visit. Sometimes it’s hard, but it’s always doable.

Ultimately I’ve come to realize that long-distance relationships – if they’re as conscientiously intimate as this one – may actually be better suited to how my brain works than local ones, in some ways. I’m an easily-overwhelmed introvert, so being able to talk to my partner while pajama-clad in my bed at the end of the day is often preferable to, say, going out for drinks or schlepping my stuff to someone’s house in the cold. When a local partner is too busy to see me for a while, my anxious brain takes it as a personal affront – but somehow it still feels like a treat every time my long-distance partner spends time with me over the phone. Our in-person visits give me something to look forward to, like a life preserver to cling onto when I feel depressed, and also give me motivation to deep-clean my room at least once a month. It’s pretty ideal, actually.

I’m not saying long-distance relationships are something I’ll continue to look for in the future – it’s my hope that they’ll be a rare exception in my life, rather than a commonplace thing – but I’m not nearly as put off by the prospect of them as I used to be. And that’s nice, because it means more opportunities for love, sex, kink, and joy are open to me now, all around the world.

Phone sex

Another thing I thought I’d never like! Weird.

When I was a teen, my beloved friend-with-benefits would sometimes call me up and read erotic Harry Potter fanfiction to me over the phone. If I got turned on enough, occasionally I would touch myself while she breathed these fanciful words into my ear. I liked listening to her struggle to get through each sentence while straining to hear the changes in my breathing, the slide of skin against wet skin.

That was my only experience resembling phone sex, until about 9 years later, when a prospective sugar daddy emailed me asking if he could pay me for the pleasure of my company over the phone. The price was right and he was charming as hell, so we fell into a pay-to-play arrangement that culminated in a couple nights of him whispering filthy things to me while I moaned and purred and held a vibe on my clit.

I had always imagined that phone sex would require an equal give-and-take, a 50:50 exchange of dirty words and ideas back and forth, and indeed, I’m sure that this is how it works for many people. But I am a bottom, and a sub, and I go pretty nonverbal when subspace kicks in, so I knew I wouldn’t be well-suited to talk someone to orgasm. What I had overlooked, though, is that lots of tops and doms prefer to be the person driving the action, not only in person but over the phone too. That’s what my sugar daddy was into, and when I started dating my current boyfriend, I discovered that he was into it, too. He calls himself a “phone-sex top”: someone who says most of the shit and is more than happy to do so. It’s my reactions he gets off on: my moans, my squeals, my subspacily slurred responses to his questions. In this regard (and several others), we are perfectly well-matched.

It’s funny how I went from abhorring the idea of phone sex to it being easily 80% (or more) of my sex life this year. It’s a near-daily routine for us now, and as such, we’ve developed our own patterns, techniques, tropes and styles within our phone play, which you can read about in the interview series we did about it. Just like in-person sex with a consistent partner, our phone sex gets better and better the more that we learn about each other, and strives for a balance between reliable old favorites and exciting new explorations. It makes me so happy and doesn’t feel, at all, like a consolation prize for the “real thing.” Phone sex with my partner is real, deep, romantic, exciting, and a wonderful comfort.

What fears did you overcome this year?