roleplay

Monthly Faves: Strangers, Bimbos, & Ghostbusters

Kate Sloan

It was an offbeat month in my sex life, full of strange kink insights and trippy adventures… Here are some highlights!

Sex toys

• The biggest news in my toy drawer this month was that my precious Eroscillator Top Deluxe BROKE while I was in Portland! After 3 years of loyal service, I guess it decided I had dropped it one too many times (sorry, pal), because two different segments of the body of the toy fell right off. I tried in vain to piece it back together, and then eventually gave up and ordered a new one. It really is that good; I considered whether I could live without it and determined that I could not.

• I got an email from Dame, a sex toy company from whom I didn’t own anything, offering me a toy of my choice. The Kip clitoral vibrator was an obvious selection for me; it’s vaguely Tango-esque and BRIGHT YELLOW! I will probably review it in full at some point, but for now, just know: this adorable little vibe is rumblier and stronger than its small stature would indicate, and it has a lot of features I’m always yelling at sex toy companies to implement, like an up AND a down button, and a travel lock. Well-played, Dame.

• To continue to give Dame kudos: their new aloe-based lube, Alu, is pretty damn good. The ingredients list is impressive (no glycerin, parabens, or propylene glycol) and you can even order a $4 silicone sleeve called Grip that goes around the bottle to prevent you from dropping/throwing it when your hands are lubey. So smart.

Fantasy fodder

• My partner and I have wanted to do a “strangers at a bar” roleplay for a long time and this month we finally got around to it. On one of our free days in Portland, I took a book to a cocktail bar near our hotel, ordered a daiquiri, and sat alone reading – one of my favorite solo date activities. Sir came in a few minutes later, sat a stone’s throw away, and started chatting me up after a little while. One thing led to another and we ended up back in “my” hotel room… This was a super fun roleplay that I would highly recommend, and apparently my vagina agreed, because (uncharacteristically for me) I had an orgasm during PIV – whoa!

• During one of our many late-night phone calls, my Sir asked me what I’d been fantasizing about lately, and I mentioned enjoying the thought of someone going down on me because it’s their job – like a sex worker or an unconventional masseuse. Because my Sir is a genius, they quickly conjured a roleplay in which they, my daddy, had hired a male escort to give me head for my birthday, which he would do while Sir gave him moment-by-moment instructions. This scene pinged so many of my kinks – and also made me laugh a lot, when Sir said the escort was “setting up his supplies” and I couldn’t imagine what “supplies” someone would need for plain old puttin’ a mouth on a vulva!

• I’ve been thinking a lot lately about mental blankness. It helps that I’ve been reading a lot of Sleepingirl‘s hypnosis stories, but more generally, I’ve been pondering the ways intoxication, trance, and subspace can each help me float away inside my own brain during scenes when that’s what I want. For someone like me who’s constantly anxious and overanalytical, sometimes nothing is sweeter or more necessary than just shutting down the ol’ brain and receiving pleasure in absentia. Sir and I did a scene exploring these themes recently through hypnosis and “bimboification”; it was really fun, in a way, to feel my faculties draining away from me.

• Speaking of Sleepingirl: I commissioned her to write me a short story about a sub getting through the airport security line with the help of their hypno-savvy dom. It’s so cute and emblematic of how romantic hypnosis can be.

Sexcetera

• This year I got to attend the XOXO festival for the first time, and it was phenomenal! Some highlights for me: going to a social meetup of language nerds and playing a loud word game led by Gretchen McCulloch, hearing Harry “Hbomberguy” Brewis talk about raising money for Mermaids by live-streaming himself playing Donkey Kong, seeing Amelia and Emily Nagoski talk about the perils of burnout, the entire live podcast lineup, and meeting some readers of my blog (hi)!

• I participated in the Smutathon on Saturday, sex writers’ attempt to write for 12 hours straight to raise money for the National Network of Abortion Funds. My final word count for the day was 13,336 – that’s 11 blog posts (many of which will go up here over the next couple months), 3 newsletters, and 4 poems. The fundraiser has pulled in almost $3K so far – we’d still love to get that up to $5K!

• My Sir and I guested on the Off the Cuffs podcast together this month! It was really fun to sit down with two of my favorite people, drink cocktails, and chat about kink. We covered erotic hypnosis, sleepy sex, long-distance relationships, coming out as kinky, and more. Matt also guested on Question Box; we competed to see who could answer the most personal questions. You know what they say: the couple that podcasts together, stays together… or something…

• Sextistics: This month I had in-person sex 13 times and phone sex 21 times, totalling 34 sessions.

Fashion & beauty

• XOXO gave out adorable pronoun pins to its attendees and I’m so into mine. If we’re gonna normalize sharing our pronouns by default, which we absolutely should, we might as well do it in style.

• I ordered 3 new lipsticks from Sugarpill and they’re all great, though Bliss is disappointingly almost my exact natural lip color (plus glitter), so I doubt I’ll wear that one as much as the other two. My favorite of the bunch is Hijinx, a berry shade overlaid with blue glittery iridescence. Incredible.

• I have a mega-crush on model Alexa Chung (I mean, upon seeing her, who doesn’t, frankly), and lucky for me, she has a YouTube channel now where she does makeup looks, hair tutorials, and more. It’s very good and she is very pretty.

Media

• You owe it to yourself to check out this episode of Punch Up the Jam about the Ghostbusters theme. I was present at the live recording and have honestly never laughed that hard during a live podcast before. You’ll learn a lot about this iconic song and you might also wonder what the hell Ray Parker, Jr. was thinking at times.

• I kept hearing good things about Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino, so I tore through it, and it was great. I’ve been thirsting for more essays from introspective women ever since devouring Esmé Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias, and this hit the spot. It touches on reality TV, “late-capitalist fetishwear,” the beauty myth, Southern hiphop, drugs as a gateway to the divine, and more.

• Current song obsession: “Favorite Show” by Great Grandpa. I keep waking up with this tune lodged in my head lately, so I’ve been groovin’ to it a lot.

Little things

Sleeping together over the phone. Our incredible guests on Question Box. Laughing with Max in his sunny back yard. Getting a window seat on planes. The Multnomah Whiskey Library and their fancy bartenders. Going to the rose garden while really high (um, would recommend). The photobooth machine at the Ace Hotel. When you can tell who’s the dom and who’s the sub in a photo. Hanging out with Epiphora and her wonderful cats. Wandering through Powell’s for hours. Matt bringing me coffee in the morning. “I just want everyone to know that I’m very gay.” Serendipitously sitting next to actors I admire at the theatre. Client projects that fascinate me. Sir sending me ramen when I was sick (and then, later, watching this video of a pastry chef attempting to make gourmet instant ramen from scratch). Seeing Lane Moore and DeAnne Smith do Tinder Live at Comedy Bar, from front-row center. Attending the Bi Arts Festival with a queer femme friend. Going to see movies by myself. Shopping with friends. Solo cocktails-and-reading dates at the Library Bar.

Monthly Faves: A Sparkly Dildo & A Smoky Eye

Kate Sloan

It’s been a rough month for my physical and mental health, but as per usual, I managed to find some comfort and joy in sex. Here’s some of what I loved in February…

Sex toys

• I mentioned it briefly last month, but: the VixSkin Bandit is rocking my vag’s world lately. It’s comparable, dimensions-wise, to one of my favorite flesh-and-blood cocks in the known universe, so of course I love it for that reason – but it’s also a knockout in its own right. Vixen Creations is always killin’ it. (Their latest, the Gambler, is hilariously massive; maybe I’ll manage to fit one into me someday.)

• If you’re in need of a new water-based lube, I can’t recommend Sutil Rich highly enough. It’s luxuriously thick and long-lasting for a lube of this type, and I love how elegant the bottle looks on my nightstand. I’ve gotta restock mine soon!

• I’ve been wanting a Crystal Delights Star Delight glass dildo for years, and it’s always been way out of my price range – but they were having a sale around Christmastime, so I bought myself one as a holiday gift and had it shipped to my boyfriend in New York to save on postage costs. It’s quite a simple shape, and it’s made of borosilicate glass rather than the fancier and weightier soda lime glass, and both of those facts make me doubt that it’s worth its ridiculously high price tag. But it’s become one of my favorite toys to have inside me while I’m receiving oral sex. It’s surprisingly hard to find toys that work well for this purpose, but this one fits the bill. Here’s my partner on why this toy is genius:

When I’m going down on you, and I want to fuck you with a dildo, it’s nice to have something that won’t jab me in the face. The Crystal Delights dildo is perfect for this because after it’s inserted, it has a wide/thin base that I can easily press on with my hand, but that doesn’t bump my chin while I’m licking and sucking on your clit. Pressing one or two fingers against the gem in the base allows me to find the center of the toy just by touch and control the angle more easily. And It stays in place really well because of the texture and length, so I never worry about it coming too far out right as I get close to making you come. Also it looks gorgeous sliding into your cunt, and when I take a moment to breathe and give your sensitive clit a break, I have a pretty glass cock to look at.

Fantasy fodder

• (Content note for this one: incest roleplay.) Older brother/younger sister roleplay is something my partner and I experiment with occasionally. It’s an interesting dynamic because it allows for both nurturing-based and humiliation-based styles of dominance; I can be both bullied and loved, in the same scene, by the same person. Basically what I’m saying is that every way m’boyf ever dominates me is hot as fuck and I want more of it…

• (Content note: intoxicated sex, faux-“drugging.”) After a visit to a local dispensary, my partner and I found ourselves in possession of a weed-infused Nanaimo bar, which of course we immediately used for sexual purposes. High sex is great; high sex specifically on edibles is, in my experience, especially great. More giggly kink 2k19!

• A recurring fantasy for me lately is a scenario where a dommy dude fucks me and commands a subby dude to go down on me during the proceedings, purely so I’ll be tight and wet for his pleasure. (Uhh, writing porny shit like this still embarrasses me even though I’ve been chronicling my sex life online for nearly 7 years.) I enjoy that this fantasy makes me feel simultaneously objectified and prized, both useful and unimportant in one fell swoop. The breadth of the human sexual imagination is a trip!

Sexcetera

• The Voices of the Walrus podcast read my piece on asexuality and also interviewed me about it on live TV. I thought their questions were really smart, and I hope I answered them well!

• This month was the five-year anniversary of Tell Me Something Good, my local sexy storytelling event. It was lovely to spend the evening with whip-smart sex-positive folks, sharing stories from our wacky-‘n’-wild sex lives. I told the story of my recent Library Bar roleplay with my partner and it was fun!

• Sextistics: This month I had in-person sex 10 times and phone sex 22 times, totaling 32 sex sessions.

Femme stuff

• Despite owning a zillion already, I bought a new red lipstick this month: Rouge D’Armani matte lipstick in “Lucky Red,” the matte version of my favorite red. (I don’t think they make the glossy version of this shade anymore?! Or at least, Sephora doesn’t seem to sell it.) It’s classic and luxurious and makes me feel like a movie star, which is exactly what a red lipstick should do.

• Many many months ago, I tweeted lustfully about Coach’s collaboration collection with Keith Haring. My very sweet boyfriend evidently filed that information away, because 10 months later, on our anniversary, he surprised me with the blue Rogue bag from that collection – engraved with my initials and a little blue heart, natch. It’s astonishingly beautiful and well-made, and I feel so sophisticated and vibrant every time I carry it anywhere.

• My best makeup look of the month was the navy smoky eye I did for a long-distance date celebrating our “collarversary.” Sir and I each went to a hotel bar in our respective cities (our first I-love-you was uttered in a hotel bar exactly one year earlier) and talked on the phone while sipping cocktails and snacking. It was romantic AF and I felt very glamorous!

Media

• If you’re at all interested in the subjective experience of mental illness, run – don’t walk – to buy Esmé Weijun Wang’s new book, The Collected Schizophrenias. It’s getting a lot of attention since its launch, and for damn good reason: the essays in its pages depict the sometimes-grim, sometimes-poetic realities of living with schizoaffective disorder, from stigma to self-care to death delusions. I loved every moment I spent reading this book.

• I absolutely tore through Raven Kaldera’s anthology on submissives with disabilities, Kneeling in Spirit. It’s a lovely and affirming resource. If you’re a submissive with physical limitations, or the dominant of someone like that, you should pick this up.

• At one point this month, I experienced an intense and random urge to listen to one of my favorite Missy Bauman songs, “Natalie.” Resultingly, I started listening to Missy’s music pretty much on loop for weeks. She has a new EP out – go take a listen!

Little things

Karaoke night with treasured pals. Selfies in bisexual lighting. Getting pitches accepted at dream publications. Seeing my bruddy perform live. Highly aesthetic peppermint tea. Using D/s as a tool to help keep me healthy. My new fancy pen (a recommendation from my pen-nerd boyfriend). Oysters and Manhattans. Hitting 10,000 Twitter followers! A tiny ruler I bought for impact play before I realized how tiny it was. Ridiculous over-the-top Valentine’s outfits. Spending V-Day evening at a children’s musical in the Distillery District by myself. Beauteous flowers from my beau. Hanging out with cats. My new rainbow menstrual cup. CXBO chocolates. Matching MeUndies. Really immersive hypnotic inductions. Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse. My Sir’s insistence on finding pancakes for me when I was craving ’em. Renewing my Soulpepper subscription. My sparkly new phone case. My new assistant (it’s a long story).

Monthly Faves: Squishy Silicone & Lipsticked Loves

Kate Sloan

Whoa, I haven’t done one of these in a while! Happy new year, babes. Here’s what was thrillin’ me, sexually and otherwise, in January…

Sex toys

• SheVibe sent me the Uberrime Jellyfish (full review forthcoming) and I’m really enjoying the squishiness of the silicone, the thrillingly exaggerated head, and the lovely texture along the shaft. Between this dildo, the Uberrime Night King, and the VixSkin Bandit, I’m suddenly more into silicone toys than I’ve been in years…

• For our anniversary, my boyfriend gave me possibly the most beautiful impact toy I’ve ever owned: a bespoke mallet from Weal & Breech. It is stunning, and is also so remarkably thuddy that getting hit with it feels like getting a deep tissue massage on my ass. Ideal. (Full disclosure: I’m doing some copywriting for Weal & Breech at the moment. That doesn’t affect my fondness for their company, which long predates this current project, but I thought you should know, nonetheless!)

• Not technically a toy so much as a sex product, but: I acquired a bottle of Slippery Stuff’s silicone lube and I’m surprised by how much I love it. Normally silicone lubes aren’t my fave, but this one is thick and gel-like, making it a great choice for a wide variety of applications. Yay!

Fantasy fodder

• I’ve thought for a while that I might have a premature ejaculation kink. All those late-night porn searches for “surprise orgasm” and “he comes too quick” were hard to ignore after a while… Something really turns me on about the idea of a dude struggling not to come because the person he’s fucking is just too hot and whatever thing they’re doing to him just feels too good. My partner is remarkably good at pinging this kink, often telling me during phone sex that he’s close to coming but will hold back for me, and variations thereof. What a prince. (P.S. Did you know there’s a “premature cumshots” subreddit? You’re welcome.)

• Recently my Sir and I were showing each other old selfies from high school (would recommend; seeing your partner in an earlier, dorkier chapter of their life can be incredibly endearing) and he mentioned he would’ve wanted to date me if we knew each other back then. I don’t know if that really would have worked out – I was pretty gay in high school, and he claims to have been pretty obnoxious – but it’s fun to fantasize about and do roleplays of!

Sexcetera

• A New Year’s sex tale: I have a long-standing tradition of wearing red underwear on New Year’s Day, because I read somewhere, long ago, that this practice is supposed to bring you good luck in love and sex for the coming year. (I don’t know if I strictly believe this, but I’m a bit superstitious and “woo” and also I like tradition. Fight me.) I was in New York over New Year’s and forgot to pack red underwear, however, so my boyfriend – a gem, a saint – accompanied me to H&M to pick some out. Once we had what we were after, he asked me, “What do you wanna do now?” and I sheepishly replied, “I know I ‘should’ want to do touristy things or whatever, but I really just wanna go back to our hotel and make out with you in our bed. Sorry if that’s boring.” He said, “That’s what I want too, but I didn’t want you to think I was boring either.” Man, I love dating fellow earth signs…

• Wax play is a new fave activity for me and my partner. We both weren’t really expecting to like it that much but we really do. We’ve done two wax scenes now; both times, he strapped me down with my under-the-bed restraints, put on relaxing music, and slowly and methodically dripped hot red wax all over my body. It puts me into a different type of masochistic subspace than I’ve experienced before with anything else; probably the closest thing I can compare it to is E-stim. Gosh, I love trying new pervy shit with people I trust.

• Sextistics: this month my partner and I had in-person sex 11 times and phone sex 25 times. So… 36 sexual encounters in 31 days. Absurd, as per usual.

Femme stuff

• So I’m not really sure where to put this and this section seems as good a place as any: my partner and I did a feminization scene this month! He sat patiently while I did his makeup, and I chose an outfit for him from my wardrobe (I found it inordinately hilarious to put my daddy dom in my super-femme “daddy” tank top). Then we went out to our fave local cocktail bar and had a few drinks. It was fascinating to observe how his body language, mannerisms, and even voice changed when attired femininely! Then we went back home and I gave him a dommy handjob and we fell asleep both still wearing our eyeliner. Aww.

• Sir got me a pink Hippo Campus hoodie and it’s sooo cozy and cute. I own more Hippo Campus merch than… anyone I’ve ever heard of. Girl, stahhhhp.

Media

• My BF and I watched the entirety of Netflix’s new show You this month and we loved it. Penn Badgley is brilliant as a creepy-yet-deceptively-charming stalker, the storytelling is well-paced and compelling, and uhhh can we talk about how Peach Salinger is obviously a femme daddy? (Spoilers at that link.) I’ve started reading the book it was adapted from, and it’s great, too!

• This month I devoured the new short story collection from Kristen Roupenian (of “Cat Person” fame), You Know You Want This. As its title would indicate, one of its major themes is consent; Roupenian seems especially interested in areas where consent is ambiguous or questionable, an important topic to delve into in this #MeToo era. I’m still haunted by a lot of these stories; the weird situations and quirky characters therein keep bouncing around in my brain.

Little things

Awesome clients who know what they want. Returning to the scene of our second date. My mom somehow getting our theatre seats upgraded from row S to row E just by being charming and persistent. Carly‘s suicide intervention workshop (life-changing, honestly). Introvert-friendly spaces. Getting dolled up as a form of self-care. Making new friends at Comedy Bar. Weird conversations about consent ethics in the sex club swimming pool. Trekking through snow and ice with my beloved. Eccentric Uber drivers (“Just so you guys know, this car is only 3 months old!”). Nerding out with sex toy makers. Rooftop restaurants and raspberry brambles. The best pancakes in Toronto.

Roleplay and Rapport at the Library Bar

Kate Sloan

Maybe I shouldn’t have arrived so early. Why do I always do this? I glance over my shoulder at the door again. Maybe he’ll show up in five minutes. Maybe he’ll show up now.

I always get nervous before interviews, even though I’ve been doing the whole professional-sex-journalist thing for going-on-7 years now. It’s just stagefright, harmless jitters, but it happens like clockwork. It’s why I rolled up to the Library Bar 10 minutes early. It’s why I keep sneaking peeks at the door.

Is that him? He’s wearing a dark button-down shirt. He’s looking my way. He’s smiling and waving. (He is my partner.) He’s coming over to sit next to me. (He is my partner.) He’s shaking my hand and saying, “Hi, I’m Matt.” (I know who he is. He is my partner.)

Let me back up for a second. Months ago, when discussing potential roleplay scenarios, my boyfriend and I struck upon the idea of a journalist/source roleplay. I am a journalist, after all, and he is a semi-frequent media interviewee, being a tech fancyboy in New York, so we’re already comfortable in these roles.

Initially we envisioned it as a scene of strategic outsmarting, psychological manipulation, me trying to get info out of him for an investigative exposé and him trying to keep me at arm’s length. But the more we thought about it and discussed it, the more we wanted it to be a different type of scene entirely. We still wanted to play ourselves – me, a reporter; him, a tech CEO – but our focus shifted more toward the flirtation and chemistry that could naturally develop during an interview.

Storytelling dynamo Claire AH has talked often about how roleplay – which she calls “sexy improv” – can be an opportunity to explore ways you and your partner didn’t meet, but could’ve. She sometimes envisions, for example, having met her musician husband by being a groupie of his band, rather than on OkCupid. I love this idea, and how it allows you to re-access a state of charged unfamiliarity with your partner, flirting in double entendres and meaningful glances in ways you can’t do as readily when you’ve been dating for months or years.

Having defined our goals for the scene, BF and I started emailing back and forth, the way we would if we were actually setting up an interview with a stranger. My character needed to speak to an app developer for a story – and his character, it so happened, would be in Toronto for a “conference” soon. We settled on a day, time, and location. I started prepping my questions. It all began feeling very real.

Back to the Library Bar. “Hi, I’m Matt,” this ridiculously handsome man says, grabbing my hand in a firm, CEO-appropriate handshake. “I’m Kate,” I reply. “Nice to finally meet you!”

He sits down next to me at the bar. (Was the bar the right spot to choose? Is it more professional to sit opposite a source, at a table?) He asks me what I’m drinking. (A Bulleit bourbon on the rocks. One of my fave orders when I’m trying to impress a dude who probably knows more than me about such things.) He orders an old fashioned. We small-talk about how he’s enjoying Toronto, what he’s been up to, what he thinks of his hotel.

Then he asks me what my piece is about, and I brighten. “So… It’s for Playboy. Ever heard of it?”

He laughs. “I only read it for the articles.”

“Well, great, ’cause I’m writing one of those articles! It’s about how I think nerds are better in bed.” I watch his eyes widen. We didn’t discuss this in our pre-interview emails. Sometimes I prefer to take sources by surprise. “I spoke to a web dev; I spoke to a game dev; I needed to speak to an app dev. So, thanks for agreeing to talk to me!” He is immediately on board, engaged and listening hard. I flip open my notebook to my list of questions. I begin.

“Do you think nerds are, on average, better in bed?” “Which subsets of the tech community do you think would be especially sexually skilled?” “What sexual acts do you think programmers would tend to be good at?”

His answers are measured, thoughtful, yet enthusiastic and off-the-cuff. He posits theories, tells stories from his own life, and cites thinkers he admires, like Michael Lopp and Evie Lupine. His blue eyes flash with intelligence and wit. Occasionally, when I ask him something, he gives me this pure-of-heart little smirk and says, “Good question!” I wonder if he can see how much it melts me when he compliments my competence, even though I’m a grown-ass journalist who knows her shit and knows her worth.

The thing about being a sex writer is, there will be opportunities for interviews to get flirty. In 99% of cases, I neither want this outcome nor think it’s smart to pursue it; it’s unprofessional, usually unwanted (by one or both parties), skews the story, and can get messy.

But this app mogul on the barstool next to me is… very cute. And he has been essentially selling himself to me as a promising hookup for the past hour. And he keeps reaching out to gently shove my shoulder to make a point, or holding my gaze a little too long while describing skilful fingerbanging. At one point he loses his train of thought mid-sentence and says, “Sorry, that dress is just… really good.” It’s a new one, vintage Betsey Johnson. “It’s kind of a ‘professional reporter lady’ dress,” I say, blushing, and he shoots back, “More like a ‘turning on a source’ dress. Wow.” I laugh and hide my warm face behind one shy hand.

I’ve asked all my questions, taken all my notes, and closed my notebook. “Want to get another drink, now that you’re off the clock?” he offers, so easily, and we order two more cocktails from the busy bartender. Flipping the script, this articulate interviewee asks me about my work – what I like about it, what I don’t – and I mention, in passing, that it can get complicated when a source wants to fuck me and I’m not into it. Or when I want to fuck a source, but my editor isn’t into it. “So is this the type of assignment where you might sleep with a source, or no?” he asks innocently, and I practically choke on my drink.

As the alcohol plies us further, we get to talking about FetLife: neither of us use it much, and he knows some nerds who are trying to build a better alternative. “What’s on your fetishes list?” he wonders, and I wrack my brain for the answer least likely to freak out this near-stranger. “Uhh, spanking?” I try, and he bites his lip like a sadistic Cheshire cat. “I actually have some impact implements up in my hotel room,” he mentions, so casually, and that room is now the only place I want to be.

He offers me a sip of his martini. “Ooh, that’s a daddy drink,” I say when I try it. “What does that mean?!” he asks with a quizzical smile. “Oh, you know, like something a daddy would drink.” I hide behind my glass when he intuits effortlessly, “Oh, so you’re into DD/lg, then.”

He’s getting closer and closer to me, as we’re getting tipsier and flirtier and farther off the path of our initial conversation. He’s got his arm draped over the back of my chair, and is gazing into my eyes like nobody else in this crowded bar exists. I lose my words, lose my breath. “Kiss me,” he says, out of nowhere, and I do, because I need to.

At some point we decide that yes, I will go up to his room with him – and I will disclose this key information to my editor when I file the story. We settle up and amble to the elevator. Inside, he pushes me against a wall and kisses me, like he’s wanted to do that ever since he first saw me from across the bar.

If you’re interested in trying a roleplay like this – in person, out in public, pretending not to know each other – here are some tips I took away from our first attempt that I think might be useful to you too:

• Define your intentions. As with any kink endeavor, it’s good to make sure you and your partner are hoping to get something similar out of the scene, or at least that your hopes for the scene are compatible. My partner and I are both into flirting, and knowing that that was the primary intention of our roleplay allowed us to focus on that aspect fully and enjoy it even more.

• Set the stage. Whatever the scenario you choose for your roleplay – meeting someone new at a bar; striking up a convo with the stranger beside you at the theatre; going on a first Tinder date – prepare for that situation however you normally would. It’ll help get you into the appropriate headspace. For this roleplay, for example, my partner and I exchanged businessy emails weeks beforehand, and I prepped and researched just as I would for an actual interview.

• Dress the part. Clothes and other self-presentation details can help you get into character, even if your “character” is just an alternate-universe version of yourself. This can be especially helpful if you and your partner hang out earlier in the day and then go do a roleplay; my partner changed his shirt before our interview, for example, and it was a small thing that nonetheless made him feel like a slightly different person to me. You can also change stuff like your perfume, jewelry, and hairstyle, to set your character apart from your regular self.

• Do something, dammit. Decide on a concrete task or interaction that the roleplay will center around; don’t just show up at the location and stand around awkwardly. Our roleplay hinged on an interview, and I did an actual interview, because I knew it would make me less nervous and would lend some purpose and direction to the scene. Even if your roleplay is pretty straightforward, like a chance meeting with a cute stranger at a bar, have some idea of what you want to do: bring a book to read, or have a specific drink you want to try, or a specific occasion your character is celebrating, or something.

• Commit to the scene. The #1 question I got from my Twitter followers about this roleplay was essentially, “How do you stay in character?” and the answer is… just decide to stay in character. As with dirty talk – not to mention improv, which roleplay essentially is! – you will actually seem (and feel) sillier if you half-ass it. Hopefully your partner is someone you trust not to laugh at you for wholeheartedly throwing yourself into the scene – because if that’s all they want to do, why do the roleplay at all?!

• Making mistakes is okay. A few times during our roleplay, my partner and I accidentally referenced some of our real-life inside jokes, or responded to things how we ourselves – but not our “characters” – would respond. Slip-ups are bound to happen, especially if you’re not accustomed to this type of improvisation. That’s fine. There is nothing wrong with laughing for a moment at the mistake you’ve made and then moving on with the scene. The entire narrative doesn’t have to fall apart just because you screwed up for a second.

• Debrief and discuss afterward. You should do this when you try any new kink activity. Talk about what went wrong, what went right, what you want more of in the future, and what you want less of. Talk about what was hot, what felt weird, what surprised you. My partner and I have already figured out some other roleplay scenarios we want to try in public, having learned more about our desires and fantasies from this first one. This experience has opened up a whole new avenue of play for us, and we can only continue further down this path because we’ve thoroughly compared notes about this first scene.

Have you ever done a roleplay like this before? Would you like to?

Intimate Intercourse: Hypnokink (Part 2)

Kate Sloan

Hi again! Welcome back to Intimate Intercourse, a series where I interview my boyfriend/Sir/daddy, who goes by Super Sleepy Dude, about various topics related to sex and kink. This week we’re discussing hypnokink! This is part 2 of a 3-part interview; you can read part 1 here. In this instalment, we discuss the difficulties of disclosing a hypnosis kink, our first hypno scene together, what makes someone a good hypnotic subject, trance triggers, hypnotherapy, and some of the sexy things we like to do with hypnosis. Enjoy! Content notes for this post: hypnosis (obviously), anxiety, consensually “drugging” someone’s drink, bondage, face-slapping, addiction, bullying, medical play, and doing kink in public.

Kate Sloan: Were you nervous to tell me that this was a kink of yours when we started dating?

Super Sleepy: I am always nervous to tell people that, yeah.

KS: Why?

SS: I’m always nervous about it because there’s a lot of misconceptions, and the first time I told a partner about it, they didn’t react very well, so I think, because of that, I’m extra cautious. But even if that hadn’t happened, I know about the misconceptions, and I know that a lot of people, especially people that aren’t that experienced with kink, might not know how to take it.

KS: Yeah. You told me pretty casually. I think I said something about how you were staring into my soul on our first date, and you were like, “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about my hypnosis kink.” And I thought you were joking, ‘cause you said it so casually. I was like, “Wait, really?”

SS: [laughing] Why did you think that was a joke? Like, why would that be funny?

KS: ‘Cause, I dunno, we were just casually talking about how you were staring me down, and we had been texting about our kinks and stuff already, so… I also don’t think I had met anyone before that who was into it, to my knowledge, so I wasn’t sure whether or not to take you seriously.

SS: Yeah, that makes sense.

KS: And then we did our first trance scene over the phone, by accident. How did that make you feel?

SS: Uhh, a lot of ways. So, what happened was, you have a winking kink – I think people that read your blog probably know that, if they’re paying attention! – and I had been practicing winking at you and sending you lots of videos of that, because I was very into you. Still am. And for some reason, you decided to open those all in QuickTime Player and have them all open at once, in little video player windows, and then one night you were experimenting with turning the loop mode on and playing them all at once, and we were talking about how that could potentially be hypnotic, or we could do a scene with that. And I guess I dropped a little bit into a hypno-toppy kind of voice while I was describing what I would do if we were doing that, hypothetically. And then… what happened from your end?

KS: I got really trancey, but I didn’t really have any experience with that, so I knew what it was, but I was like, “Ahh! What do I do? Is this okay?”

SS: Yeah. So I felt a little weird about that, because we hadn’t specifically negotiated it, and I didn’t want to be unsafe and I didn’t want you to go to a place that you didn’t want to go to, but at the same time, I felt like, I don’t want to make your first experience of this thing a scary thing. So I felt like the right thing to do would be – ‘cause we’d talked about it a little bit – to guide you into it, and out of it, calmly and safely, without panicking. So that’s what I did, and didn’t do any suggestions or anything, just really in and out of it, and then we talked about how it felt.

KS: Were you surprised at how easily I went into trance?

SS: Yes, very.

KS: Is that uncommon?

SS: I don’t know. I’ve only done trance in person with 4 partners. That’s not a very large sample size, so I don’t really know how common it is. Especially when you’re playing with another person’s kink and looping video, like, it was the first time I’d done any of that, so I don’t know. But I was definitely surprised that you got trancey so fast, and without a lot of pre-talk and without a lot of the other setup that I would normally do.

KS: Yeah. I wonder… I have been in flow state a lot of times, because I’m a musician and a writer, and that’s a large part of how I do that, so I wonder if that played into it at all.

SS: Yeah. From what I know about it, people who are more imaginative, creative, intelligent, capable of flow state, are easier subjects in general, because their brains are practiced at going there.

KS: And I’m also just… I go into subspace really easily, and I go into little space really easily, so maybe that’s just a thing about me. I don’t know why.

SS: Right.

KS: I feel like, when you wanted to give me a trance trigger, it was almost like when you wanted to give me a collar. It was equivalent in some ways. So tell me about that. Why and how did you want to do that?

SS: I gave you a trance trigger that I can use to make you trancey whenever I want, and it was a similar decision to collaring you or deciding on honorifics or stuff like that. Putting something in someone’s brain, semi-permanently, that will let you control them is a pretty big decision. It’s a pretty big mutual decision, ideally. And I wanted it, not because I didn’t want to do inductions anymore – most of the time, we still do inductions, even though it’s not technically necessary. I wanted it because I wanted the ability to drop you whenever I wanted to. I wanted that comfortable level of control over you. As a dominant-leaning person, and a very hypnokinky person, it means a lot to me.

KS: Yeah, I like it. I like that it feels like it proves our trust in each other.

SS: Yeah. How did you feel about it when we discussed it?

KS: I remember being surprised that you hadn’t brought it up earlier. But I think that I didn’t know enough about hypnokink to know that that’s kind of a big deal, at least for some people, so to me it was just like, “Why didn’t you do this before?” but I mean, it makes sense that you waited.

SS: How long did I wait? I don’t remember.

KS: I don’t know. I don’t think I have any journal entries about that.

SS: I think a couple months?

KS: Yeah, two or three months. So, you mentioned being dominant-leaning, and you’re switchy, and you’re switchy in this kink as well. Do you prefer trancing people, or being in trance?

SS: Uhh, they’re both great. Such a fuckin’ switch! They’re both really good. When I started exploring this kink, I read primarily male-submissive fantasy stuff. That is because I didn’t think I would ever be able to do it, so, as a fantasy, being controlled and having my mind be taken away, or my thoughts be taken away, was very attractive to me, because I think a lot, and I’m very in my head, very cerebral. But once I started exploring real-life kink communities and online kink communities with real people instead of just fantasies, I was almost immediately on the other side of the slash. The nights that I would try to be a subject [on Omegle] never went very well, and the nights that I was like, “Okay, I’m gonna study up and try to be a top tonight” were much more satisfying, sexually and in terms of what I actually got to talk to people about and experience. I don’t know; it’s very good either way, but in terms of my real-life experience, I’ve been a top far more.

KS: You mentioned being cerebral, and that, I think, is a large part of why I enjoy hypnosis, now, too. I have anxiety and depression and stuff, so a lot of times, I have thoughts that I don’t want to be having.

SS: Yeah.

KS: And I find it really helpful in that way. So I guess I want to know how you view it as a tool, not just for sexy kink stuff but for the more lifestyle-kink side of our relationship.

SS: That’s an area that I’m still not 100% comfortable with, because a lot of people in the erotic hypnosis/hypnokink community – like a lot of kink communities – are like, “This can be therapeutic, but it’s not therapy.” And hypnotherapy is an entire field. There’s a lot of training involved in it, and it’s very complicated. There have been some books written by people that have seemed to take concepts from hypnotherapy and try to apply them to sexy things, which included age regression and other stuff that a lot of people consider far too risky to do in kink contexts, and I consider a lot of things that would be used by hypnotherapists to be far too risky to do in kink contexts. If you’re manipulating and playing with somebody’s body, you can see what you’re doing, in a lot of ways. You can see and feel and sense what you’re doing. If you are messing around inside of somebody’s brain that is not your brain, you really don’t know what you’re doing, and so there’s a lot of psychological risks in this kind of play if you don’t limit the kinds of suggestions that you’re doing and the kinds of places that you’re taking somebody when they’re in a suggestible state. So, for me, I think I’ve kept the lifestyle, non-sexy suggestions to very simple, positive, affirmation-style stuff, like, not anything involving re-experiencing or regressing into specific memories, because I know that there are risks to that, or behavior modification and addiction are kinks for some people, and I’m nervous about those… I’m nervous about any permanent personality changes… All of that stuff, I don’t know enough to mess around with it.

KS: Yeah. I was thinking of stuff like, when I’m having a bad anxiety day and you tell me I’m safe, which, in some ways, is like foreplay for me, because my anxiety is a huge part of what Emily Nagoski would call my “sexual brakes,” so I find that helpful for both sexy and non-sexy reasons – which is true of most of my kinks.

SS: Yeah. I think that’s pretty low-risk. I think hypnotizing someone and telling them that they’re safe, or that they’re okay, or that it’s okay for them to be happy, or that they’re comfortable, is pretty low-risk. I think modifying somebody’s personality, or telling them in trance that they’re getting more and more addicted to you as a person, or even the feeling of you being together, is a lot riskier.

KS: I always appreciate how conscientious you are about this stuff. It makes me feel much safer doing it.

SS: Thanks!

KS: Okay. What are your favorite things to do with me that are sexy in hypnosis?

SS: Hmm. Okay. I like making you really blank, like your brain is just this total empty blank slate that I can fuck, because I also have a sleepy kink, and I also just like when you’re compliant and useable for me. So if your brain is blank, and your body is splayed out, and I can use it however I want, that is very good. I like the times that we’ve done anything involving hypnotic drug play stuff – so like, a couple of times, I’ve tied a food item of yours, or water or something, to some kind of post-hypnotic response, like having your water turn you on more the more of it you drink, because it’s been drugged. That’s very good. I like the few times that we’ve played with amnesia a lot. It’s not overtly sexy to have somebody forget something, but there’s a lot of sexy things you can do with it, like making somebody forget that they’re naked, or forget that they’re wearing clothes, or make somebody forget their name, or your name, and then tease them about that in a D/s way… Arousal triggers are incredibly useful; that’s probably the most common thing we do, is having some word or phrase or set of numbers turn you on more and more, and then less. Like, occasionally I’ve used a 1-to-10 scale to turn you on, and then I’ve teased you by turning it down when you really wanted to be turned on more. It’s frustrating and useful. One of the things that we also do a lot, because we’re long-distance, is what is often called I guess like a guided-meditation style of trance, or a guided-roleplay style of trance, where you’re in trance and, because you’re in trance, your brain interprets words in a different way and can create sensations from that, so you can do sensation play where, because we’re far apart, I can tell you that I’m touching parts of you, or that you’re feeling certain touches on your body that you’re not physically feeling, but you can feel them in a more real way than normally if we were just having phone sex. So I like that a lot.

KS: Yup. Hypnosis is very good for long-distance. It’s a handy kink to have.

SS: Yeah. What are some ones I didn’t mention that you’ve really enjoyed?

KS: Bondage.

SS: Oh, yeah. Fuck yes.

KS: Yeah. It took me a really long time to realize that I have a bondage kink, because it just seemed so basic and obvious, and also I was often pairing it with other things that I also enjoyed, so I didn’t know where the arousal was coming from, but it’s become increasingly clear that I’m turned on by even just the sensation of being restrained, even if nothing else is happening. So it’s been fun to play with that. It makes me feel really submissive, which is nice.

SS: Hypnotic bondage is sort of like, telling somebody in trance that parts of their body are immobile, or feel like they’re tied down or restrained, and a brain that’s in trance is usually very cooperative with that. So if you tell somebody in trance that their arms are tied down and they can’t move them, and you ask them to try, it’s very likely that they won’t be able to move those limbs.

KS: Yeah. I also really like fractionation, which is not really a sexy suggestion, like what we’re talking about, but being pulled in and out of trance really fast makes me feel like you’re literally fucking my brain.

SS: Yup.

KS: It’s really disorienting, in much the same way that getting slapped across the face can be, which is nice, ‘cause I really like being in subspace, and you really like when I’m in subspace.

SS: Yeah. The sounds you make when I fractionate you are as good as the sounds you make when I fuck you.

KS: [giggling] It’s always the same sounds, too.

SS: Mmhmm!

KS: I can’t even change them. We’ve also occasionally enjoyed mixing hypnosis with roleplay – like, hysteria stuff and other types of roleplay.

SS: Yeah, there are certain roleplay scenarios where it’s even more exciting if the person roleplaying the dominant or toppy role also knows how to hypnotize you. So like, a school bully that pushes you into a closet, that also can hypnotize you to give him your homework, or a doctor that is trying to get you to come because it’s part of your treatment plan, but also can hypnotize you to make you feel a little more comfortable spreading your legs. You know?

KS: [giggling subbily] Yeah. I know.

SS: Aww.

KS: We also, in the past few months, have been playing with doing hypno stuff in public – which is really interesting, because I think there are very few kinks that you could do in public and be reasonably confident that no one’s gonna know what you’re doing, and you’re not gonna rope anyone into it without their consent. ‘Cause it can really just look like two people having a conversation, or one person taking a nap in the other person’s lap. It looks very innocuous. And I know you really enjoy doing that. What do you like about those public scenes?

SS: Yeah. I don’t really think I have an exhibitionism kink at all. I just like the totality of the control of that. I like that I can be out with you and I can use your trigger, or I can induce you quietly by looking at you or touching your shoulder or your hair, and make you fall asleep on me. Once, we played with hypnosis in addition to a remote-controlled vibe in your cunt, and that’s just a very discreet, very hot fucking thing, to be able to whisper in someone’s ear about how they’re feeling like you’re fucking them, and also have something on their clit. I mean, I don’t know. If people don’t get why that’s hot, I don’t know, I don’t get it.

KS: [laughing] Yeah, that’s fun. We should do that more.

SS: Yeah.

KS: It’s getting cold now, though. We’re gonna have to go to, like, a mall or something.

SS: Okay.

Check back on Friday for the last instalment of this interview, in which we’ll be talking about combining hypnosis with other kinks, how to ensure ongoing consent in a hypno scene, hypno aftercare, resources we recommend, how to cultivate a hypnotic voice, and the role intoxication plays in our hypno play!