spanking

9 Impeccable Indie Impact Implements

Kate Sloan

As you may have noticed, I love impact toys. I especially love weird impact toys: implements that would make good conversation starters at kink events, and that widen the eyes of tops and bottoms alike. Indie toymakers are often the best companies to look at when you want something unusual. I am lucky enough to own several impact implements from indie artisans; here are some reviews of them…

My leather paddle by Oddo Leather is bright pink and adorable. It’s made from latigo leather and contains two metal rods which give it its structural stability. It’s got that signature delicious leather smell, and comes in a variety of colors.

As a top: The leather handle is grippy enough that it stays securely in my hand even if I get sweaty. There’s a little suede strap I use to hang the paddle for storage but that isn’t long enough for me to stick my wrist through; I’d like to replace it with a longer one so I can have a little more assurance that I won’t accidentally throw the paddle while using it. The edges of the handle are a little rough and sometimes dig into my hand if I’m holding the toy tightly, which I generally am. I like the satisfyingly loud noise this paddle makes when it hits skin. Some particularly hard hits cause the internal metal rods to bend a bit, but it’s easy to bend the paddle back into its original shape.

As a bottom: As you might expect from a leather paddle, this one is pretty stingy. If a blow lands not-exactly-flat against my skin, it can feel thuddier, but not by much. On me, this paddle doesn’t bruise, it just reddens the area. It also doesn’t get above a 5 or 6 on the pain scale, even when a lot of power is put into the hits – so while it might be a good choice for an impact beginner, or for someone who eroticizes the sound of impact moreso than the pain, for me it just leaves me wanting more.

My acrylic layered paddle by Funkit Toys was custom-made to my specifications; a lot of stuff by Funkit is highly customizable like this. I asked for it to be made in blue and green, and for it to have five layers of acrylic; you can order anywhere from two to six layers in your paddle, and the more you get, the thuddier it’ll be. This paddle is also the most affordable option in this post, with its price ranging from $10 (two layers) to $22 (six layers).

As a top: I love how smooth, heavy, and well-constructed this paddle feels in my hand. The top of the handle, where it meets the blade, is made to resemble the analogous part on a chef’s knife, because Funkit Toys’ lead fucksmith Kenton is also a chef – so my index finger fits comfortably in that spot when I hold the paddle, though the way I spank, I usually like a little more momentum and hold the toy further down its handle to allow for that. The paddle’s impact surfaces are glossy, while its edges are matte, making the handle sufficiently grippy without sacrificing the beauty of that shiny finish. I would like this one a bit more if it was shorter and wider, because that’s my preferred shape to hit people with, but as is, it’s still wonderful.

As a bottom: This paddle is so mean! When it lands flat against the skin, it’s got a sharp stingy bite with a little thud to back it up – but when it lands a little off-kilter, or when I’m purposely hit with the side of it, it feels much thuddier, like getting thunked with a big heavy metal pipe. This toy can get up very high on the pain scale, in both stinginess and thuddiness. Depending on how it’s wielded, it can leave broad bruises or more focused stripes. Thuddier hits (especially those from the rounded edge of the paddle) get so deep that they might still ache days later.

My rainbow paddle by Funkit Toys is made of wood and gets its vivid, distinctive colors from spraypaint (with a clear coat on top). Kenton makes wooden paddles in several different shapes and sizes; this one is 16 inches long, and wider than the acrylic paddle but still fairly narrow for a paddle.

As a top: This paddle is made of very light wood, so in use it barely feels like I’m hefting anything at all. However, sometimes this makes it hard for me to gauge exactly how hard I’m hitting. The handle is entirely straight and a bit slippery; I wish it had a wrist strap for added stability. The wood makes a really satisfying smacking noise when it hits.

As a bottom: I get a surface-level sting from this paddle that falls more on the “bad type of pain” side of the spectrum for me, which would make it ideal for a true punishment spanking but also means it’s never gonna be a favorite of mine. I do sort of like it as a warm-up, used fairly lightly, because the broad stingy swats get my skin all tingly and sensitive and ready for more hits – but it gets up into high pain levels really easily and I can’t take much of it after that. It reddens my skin but I have yet to obtain any lasting marks from it, partly because it hurts so much that I always stop before I get to that point.

The Billiard Banger by KinkMachineWorks is such an inventive piece of kink wizardry. It’s a literal billiard ball at the end of a metal and hard plastic rod. Mine is a black 8-ball, which I chose for its #WitchyFemme vibes, but you can get a wide variety of different colors and numbers.

As a top: I love the heaviness of this toy – it’s not so heavy as to be hard to wield, but just heavy enough to feel substantial, well-made, and powerful. My arm does get a little tired if I’m swingin’ away for a good while, though. I thought the smooth metal handle on mine would be difficult to grip (KMW also sells a ribbed-handle version, if that’s a concern of yours too), but it’s got enough grippiness to it that this usually isn’t an issue. Depending on what kind of effect I want to achieve, I can bounce the ball against skin for a series of quick hits, or follow through with my swing for big, strong, thuddy hits.

As a bottom: Getting beat with a billiard ball is a thuddy and penetrating sensation, like getting punched by a tiny fist. On me, it rarely creates bruises, but it leaves sore spots under the skin that I can still feel days later. Having the same spot get hit over and over again is always a super-painful thing for me, but particularly so with this toy; the thuddiness stacks up and creates an almost bone-deep ache that I mostly really like. The toy’s handle and the billiard ball itself both have a naturally cold temperature, so rolling those parts of the toy along my skin between hits can be a soothing and surprising sensation.

The 1″-thick rubber paddle from KinkMachineWorks is a thing to behold: thick, heavy, and intimidating. It reliably gets an “Oh, wow” or a “Yikes!” whenever I show it to a fellow kinkster.

As a top: Most of this paddle’s weight is concentrated in the business end rather than the handle, so it can sometimes feel a little weighty and difficult to aim effectively. The flex of the rubber gives it a nice bounce, so while it’s heavy, my arm doesn’t get especially tired from wielding it. Its heaviness also means you don’t have to put much effort into your swing to get a big, strong hit out of it; however, this also means you have to check in with your spankee more to make sure you’re not overdoing it. The rubber causes my hands to smell like a truckstop after I’m done using this paddle, which I don’t really mind, but I’d prefer if it didn’t.

As a bottom: Wow, ouch, this one hurts a whole goddamn lot. Hits from this paddle’s flat impact surfaces feel thuddy with a topcoat of stinginess, whereas hits from the sides or end of the paddle feel thuddy like a punch. I imagine that this toy could leave some pretty gnarly bruises, but I’ve never been hit with it hard enough to find out, because it gets so painful so easily that I always back off before the point of bruising.

My Lexan paddle from KinkMachineWorks is one of my all-time favorite impact implements. Lexan – also known as polycarbonate – is a type of plastic that’s very hard and durable, making it ideal for paddlin’ with.

As a top: This paddle strikes a good balance between being heavy enough to feel impactful but light enough to be comfortable to wield at all times. I love the shape and size of it: it gives me a lot of surface area with which to smack broad swathes of my bottom’s skin, but can also be aimed effectively and precisely when need be. And dammit, you can’t beat the view of a butt being slightly squished beneath this see-through paddle.

As a bottom: The reason I love this paddle so much is that it – for me – strikes the ideal balance between thuddy and stingy. The stinginess makes it painful enough to send me into subspace relatively quickly, but it’s not all sting, so I don’t get burned out on it too fast. Its thuddiness also enables it to bruise me easily and beautifully. I think if I could only keep one impact toy from my entire collection, this is the one I would choose.

My torquemada from Creative Kink is made of beautiful pink-glazed wood. A “torquemada,” so far as I can tell, is a wood paddle that’s inlaid with metal studs. Woof.

As a top: This paddle is very big: it’s as long as my entire arm from shoulder to wrist, and almost twice as wide as my forearm. While this makes it look extra-menacing, it’s not my favorite to wield; it feels a little clunky and hard to manoeuvre effectively (though that might be less true for a bigger/stronger person than I). In addition to the flat side, the studded side, and the thuddy rounded edges, I can also hit someone (lightly) with that pointy tip at the top; it’s not as sharp as it looks, and it’s sort of like whacking someone with a dull pickaxe. This is a highly versatile toy!

As a bottom: The flat, non-studded side of this paddle feels as stingy as wooden paddles usually do (i.e. very), though its heaviness gives it a little bit of thud that balances it out nicely. It reddens my skin real quick and hurts a whole helluva lot. The studded side is even worse: the studs are rounded, rather than sharp, so they’re probably not gonna break skin or anything, but they do add some extra oomph to the hits, making this one of the most painful products in this post. I also like that the studs feel cold while the rest of the paddle remains room-temperature; it’s a little extra sensory weirdness that adds to the overall effect, and could be an especially fun tease if I was, say, blindfolded and tied up.

I requested the Lexan cane from Creative Kink because I already owned the aforementioned Lexan paddle and knew I liked this material for impact play. It’s so swishy and cute and reminds me of a wand Ollivander would pick out for the kinkiest wizard.

As a top: The handle of this cane is made of a grippy black foam; this toy was clearly designed by actual kinksters who understand the problems faced by impact tops! The Lexan is firm enough to allow for a stern caning, but also has juuust enough flex that I can pull it back with one hand and let it spring forward onto whoever I’m spanking, in an intense but precisely aimable motion. The significant length of this cane gives me the freedom to slice it down on both of my spankee’s buttcheeks, or only one at a time, whichever I want.

As a bottom: To my surprise, I find this cane never hurts thaaat badly, no matter how hard I’m getting hit by it. It’s more thuddy than stingy, but never gets beyond a 5-out-of-10 thud for me. It leaves pleasing red stripes on my skin, and occasional mildly raised welts, but isn’t mean enough to create bruises. While this description might make it sound lacklustre, I actually love getting beat by this cane; the pain is enough to send me into subspace after a little while, without being so bad as to distress me.

The aluminum cane by Creative Kink is a formidable thing; when Suz first felt mine, her eyes went wide and she said, “Oh, this one would be mean!” She is right. It is.

As a top: The weight of this cane makes it feel a little top-heavy in use sometimes, so I can’t always aim as precisely as I would like to. I also wish it made a bit more noise; it’s almost silent as skin absorbs its impact. It has the same grippy foam handle as the aforementioned Lexan cane, so it stays put in my hand when I hold it. I feel a little apprehensive wielding this toy, because it’s so heavy and hard that I feel like I could accidentally injure a partner pretty easily; I’d need to be very careful and focused to feel comfortable using it on someone. But damn, it makes me feel powerful.

As a bottom: Canes are traditionally stingy but this is perhaps the thuddiest one that has ever existed. If I couldn’t see what I was getting hit with, I’d have no way of knowing it was a cane and not a thick metal pipe. I love that it’s naturally cold; that adds some sensory excitement to the thuddiness and can be soothing in between hits. As with many heavy thuddy implements, this one bruises quite effectively, and the bruises are gorgeous stripes. Swoon.

What are your favorite impact toys from independent toymakers? Got any Etsy treasure-troves or local artisans to enthuse about?

Kiss and Make Up: High School, BJs, and the Disappearing Act

Kate Sloan

Kiss and Make Up is my new series wherein I review makeup according to how it held up in a sexual scenario. I hope you dig it!

making kissy faces with my friend Cadence in 2010I sprung for Duwop’s Lip Venom in the winter of 2010, when I had a new boy to kiss and it seemed desperately important that my lips look good. I’d wear the cinnamon-y gloss layered over MAC Russian Red (as pictured) or just on its own, and it would do its signature magic of irritating my lips into a plumper appearance. I loved it: the sharp spicy taste of it, the telltale tingle, and most of all, those plush pillowy lips it gave me. What an amazing invention.

My boyfriend, however, was less enthused. “What is on your lips?” he whined one day, mid-makeouts. The Lip Venom, he said, was stinging his lips. I apologized and wiped it off, as if this pretty pink gloss was the only obstacle between us and high-quality kisses. Truth be told, he was a distressingly bad kisser (by my tastes, anyway), and I wished he could’ve upped his game as easily and quickly as I upped mine by taking off that painful gloss.

I wore NARS Schiap lipstick the last day of Playground Conference in 2015. It paired well with my blue dress, pink handbag, and pigtails. In fact, my outfit was apparently so good that when I walked into a panel session late, I immediately got a text from my dom fuckbuddy, sitting across the room: “Oh god, you’re wearing thigh-high socks and a short skirt. I’m going to be thinking about eating you out all day.” This is a very good text to get at 11 in the morning.

NARS semi-matte lipsticks smell like clean laundry (so sayeth Sofie, who is correct). They go on satiny-smooth, and usually look good for several hours, even if you’re quaffing coffee like I was that day at Playground. However, put to the makeout test, they cannot hold their own. I discovered this when, later that day, I gave a hotel-room blowjob which morphed into an impromptu threesome – by the end of which, there was absolutely no lipstick left on my face. I smoothed on some peppermint lip balm to soothe the irritation I’d accrued from kissing a scruffy boy all afternoon, and that helped.

In my post-sex debrief with Bex over mac and cheese that night, we talked about how kissing someone who’s wearing lipstick is a lot like going down on someone who’s on their period. It’s messy, and maybe embarrassing, and I can completely understand why you wouldn’t want to do it. But I’ll like you so much better if you do.

me in pigtails and Pink Pong lipstickI fell in love with Bourjois liquid lipstick in Pink Pong at a drugstore and bought it on the spot. It was everything I most want in a lipstick: an eye-gougingly bright cool-toned pink, an opaque formula, a pleasant scent (pink grapefruit?), even a punny shade name.

Unlike many liquid lipsticks, Pink Pong felt comfortable once dry, and didn’t render my lips dry or cracked, even after many hours of wear. However, that dry texture is what allows truly long-haul lipsticks to stay put (and why Make Up For Ever Aqua Rouge comes with a clear gloss you’re supposed to wear on top of it). My new Bourjois treasure passed neither the makeout test nor the blowjob test.

That was the month when I was seeing both a boyfriend and a beloved fuckbuddy, alternating between them like my life was a buffet of good dicks (which, let’s be real, it often is). I wore Pink Pong to boyfriend’s house one afternoon and blew him while he sat on his couch like a king, arms spread wide, head dropping back in quiet pleasure. When we were done, I ducked into the bathroom and saw that there was no lipstick left on my mouth. None whatsoever. There sure was a lot on my hands, though. (Uhh, my BJs are pretty handsy.)

Later that week, I wore Pink Pong to my fuckpal’s place and we made out like teenagers in his cheap, squeaky bed. When he served us a post-canoodlin’ snack of spicy salmon sushi and Magnum ice cream bars (quelle gentleman!), he wiped his mouth on a napkin and the white scrap came away pink. “Aww, Kate, look, your lipstick’s all over my mouth,” he said, with an affection I had never known any boy to feel about my lipstick before. It made me want to kiss him a whole bunch more.

me in Maybelline Rich Ruby lipstickIn the late summer I briefly had a “spanking buddy.” It was a sweet deal. I’d go over to his place, we’d talk about the Adventure Zone and MBMBaM and other fine McElroy products, we’d vape some weed, and then he would spank me. The spankings were excellent: rhythmic, firm, and merciless. He always left both my sets of cheeks blushing.

One such night, I showed up with a full face of makeup, and by the time we said goodnight, there was none left at all. My lipstick of choice for the evening was Maybelline’s Rich Ruby, a creamy, matte, cool-toned red that normally holds up pretty well through food and drink. But it did not hold up through a spanking. Granted, when I get spanked, I typically bury my face in pillows/blankets/couch cushions, and sometimes I cry, and that combination of friction and fluid is not kind to makeup.

“How’s my lipstick looking?” I asked my spanking buddy when I raised my head off his bed, post-beating. He peered at me curiously and said, at last, “It’s not bad… it’s just… not there.” Indeed, it was not. My lipstick was gone.

After I left his place and went home, I got a text from him. “I found your lipstick,” he said. “It’s all over my blanket.” I laughed and apologized, and we said goodnight.

When my FWB came over to our sunny Airbnb in July to shoot BJ porn, I was nervous to the point of pacing and raving. “Hey, shh, it’s gonna be okay,” he told me. “You’re gonna be great.”

He had brought some underwear options, and asked for my help deciding which ones to wear – possibly as a tactic to distract me from my own jangling nerves. We eventually settled on some turquoisey boxer-briefs. “They’re moisture-wicking,” he commented, for no apparent reason, because he is a weirdo.

Just before filming was to begin, I knelt in front of him, my face all done up. On my lips was a combo of ColourPop’s lip pencil in Heart On and Bite’s fruity lipgloss in Bellini. I wasn’t at all confident it would stay on my face, but then, smeary lipstick is a selling point of BJ porn for some people. “I’m gonna kiss your dick through your underwear a bit before I start,” I jabbered nervously at my FWB. “Sorry in advance if I get lipstick all over these beautiful boxer-briefs.”

“It’s okay, they’re moisture-wicking,” he replied, and so there is a moment in the final porn scene where I giggle like a dork, and that is what I am giggling at.

By the time we finished, my face featured almost no lipstick but a euphoric, nervous-no-more kind of smile.

Pain, Punishment, & Pretty Girls at The Ritual Chamber

Kate Sloan

My inbox is a perpetual blur of unappealing offers, but there are some propositions you just don’t ignore. Like, for example: “Would you like to come try out our funky upscale queer-positive dungeon?”

It was an email from the Headmistress of The Ritual Chamber, and I practically started salivating as I read it. Yes, of course I wanted to play around in the dungeon. The only question was: with whom?

See, I’m between partners at the moment, and you can’t exactly jump on Tinder and ask a random fuckboy, “Wanna come beat me up in a dungeon?” Well, some people probably could, but I can’t. The very idea makes me hideously nervous. Plus I wouldn’t trust a Tinder bro to know my ass from my elbow if I put a flogger in his hand, know what I’m sayin’?

But then, of course, a perfect solution floated into view: my friend Suz volunteered to be my play partner for the day. I asked our friend Taylor J. Mace to come photograph the proceedings. And just like that, we became a trio on a mission: to trek to the dungeon, bruise Suz’s ass, and get some beautiful photos in the process.

The Ritual Chamber is a gorgeous space that you can rent for you and a partner (or up to 3 partners, if you please!). It’s set up to make a broad range of fantasies come true: there’s a medical clinic room, an elegant Victorian boudoir, an ageplay room for littles and caregivers, and a traditional dungeon space. But what interested me most, when I perused The Ritual Chamber’s website, was its “school detention room.”

I have a thing about teacher/student flirtation. It’s haunted my sex-brain since the days when I was a literal student, sitting at my hard, uncomfortable desk and staring dreamily at whatever babely instructor I currently had a crush on. Of course, I wouldn’t have wanted them to respond in kind, because that’d be gross IRL, but in fantasy, it was thrilling.

So when Suz asked me what she should wear to the dungeon, I told her to “dress like a subby good girl for me.” And when we arrived at the space, the detention room was our first stop.

I had brought some impact implements of my own to use, but ended up not needing them; the dungeon is extremely well-stocked with equipment. I bent Suz over this authentically vintage-looking schoolhouse desk and selected a paddle from the collection arranged in the corner. There were several frat-style paddles like this one, as well as a few wooden rulers for that legitimate mean-teacher aesthetic.

It was fun to make Suz write lines about what she’d done wrong, and then punish her accordingly. But I must admit I got a little distracted when I realized that those lockers behind us are actual, functional lockers. Oh, the school-bully roleplay possibilities!

(By the way, if you’re wondering, my dress is by Vesper and my flower hairclip is from H&M years ago. I don’t often dress in this “businesslady femme” style, but it seemed appropriate for the domme role I was playing!)

From there, we moved on to the ageplay room, which reeeeally appealed to my inner little girl. The toys and stuffed animals everywhere would be so great for comfort during and after scenes, and the impact toys laid out on the bed were perfect for punishment in an ageplay dynamic. One of them was painted to look like a lollipop. Aaaamazing.

I continued Suz’s spanking on the adorable little pink bed in this room, alternating between a wooden hairbrush and a paddle carved in the shape of a bear. Conveniently, there was even a pink footstool for her to rest her knees on. The creators of this space have truly thought of everything!

This room is super authentic-looking, not really a sexy, tarted-up version of a child’s room but more like an actual child’s room. I felt that way about the medical clinic room, too; every detail, from the scratchy paper on the exam table to the dingy fluorescent lighting, felt pitch-perfect. Those details are crucial when you’re trying to fulfill a fantasy – you don’t want to be taken out of the moment by a pervasive sense of artifice. So I really applaud the decorator(s) of The Ritual Chamber for taking so much care in the creation of this space – it looks fantastic, and every single room made me feel dirty in the best way.

The boudoir room is stunning. It reminds me of rich people’s parlours I’ve seen in films set in the Victorian era, like Hysteria. (Which, by the way, if you – like me – have a lot of sexual feelings about Victorian doctors and hysteria, the medical clinic room would be a perfect space in which to enact that fantasy…)

There’s an actual goddamn spanking bench in the boudoir, so obviously I had Suz “assume the position” on it and made her stare at her own face in the conveniently-placed mirror while I hit her with a crop.

As you can see, there was a lot of giggling. I am not exactly a serious domme.

Our last stop was the dungeon proper – a dimly-lit room in the middle of the space, where the walls are lined with floggers, whips, paddles, restraints, and pretty much everything you’d ever need for a kink scene. Even Taylor, a seasoned kinkster, found something in the collection he’d never seen before: a pair of gloves where each finger has flogger-esque falls attached to it, so you can hit someone by swinging your open paw like some kind of werewolf.

We cuffed Suz to the Saint Andrew’s cross in this room and then proceeded to beat her up in several different evil ways. Taylor hit her chest with the aforementioned flogger gloves, I flogged and whipped her with other implements from around the room, and then I scratched “BAD GIRL” onto her pale chest with some metal talons Taylor had brought along. Hey, when you’ve got a cute sub consensually chained to a cross, you make good use of that opportunity!

While this beating was going on, I noticed that the space felt blissfully private and safe. I couldn’t hear any noise from neighbouring houses or apartments, so I could rest assured they couldn’t hear us either. We could be as loud as we wanted or needed to be, and all our cavorting was safely contained in this tidy, well-appointed little dungeon. (And yeah, we got pretty loud at times.)

Our time at The Ritual Chamber was certainly an eye-opening experience! In the past, I’ve occasionally gotten into situations where I needed a private spot to have sex but there wasn’t one immediately available to me. We could’ve dropped by our local sex club in those situations, or tried to rent a hotel room or a last-minute Airbnb, but none of those are entirely ideal: the club might be crowded, an Airbnb might leak sound to its landlord, and a hotel room won’t come equipped with kink implements galore!

If you are in need of a sex-positive, queer-positive, kink-positive space to bring a scene to life, I can’t recommend The Ritual Chamber highly enough. It has just about everything you’ll need, all carefully arranged in a clean, comfortable, private space. It’s the perfect spot for a kinky getaway into your darkest fantasies!

 

Thank you so much to The Ritual Chamber for sponsoring this post, to Taylor for taking all the photos, and to Suz for being such a good girl for me!

Monthly Faves: We-Vibes and Teams of Tops

Kate Sloan

So hey, I’ll get to the sex stuff in a minute, but what’s really exciting me today is my new website design!! It was done by Jessica Mullen and Kelly Cree, some smart and savvy babes I’ve known online for years. They totally understand my brand and my vision, and I feel like my site is so much more aligned with what I want it to look and feel like now! Hope you dig it. (Make sure to click around a bit; there are four different headers that randomize, and they’re all gorgeous.) Now, here are the sexxxy thingz I liked best in February…

Sex toys

• GOD I LOVE THE WE-VIBE NOVA. Bex gifted me one over a year ago, and I’m pretty sure I tried it once before retiring it to the depths of a drawer somewhere. But this month I kept noticing the Nova at the sex shop where I work, and explaining it to curious customers, and a coworker told me Erika Moen had reviewed it well, so I decided to give it another shot. And damn, it is good. My review will be up soonish!

• Speaking of We-Vibe… I’m also loving the Touch lately. (They sent me the Dreamy Desire Collection to review, and the main appeal it held for me was that it contains a limited-edition dark blue Touch.) It hasn’t unseated their Tango as my favorite rechargeable clit vibe, because the Tango’s hard plastic conducts vibration just a leeeeetle better than the Touch’s squishy silicone, but it’s definitely a new “starting lineup” toy for me.

• Shall I give We-Vibe the hat trick and rhapsodize three of their toys in this post?! Yep, looks like it… A We-Vibe rep came to my work to teach us about their toys, and several of us got gifts. Mine was a We-Vibe Sync, the much-anticipated latest version of their flagship couples’ vibe. It’s very fucking excellent. The motor is strong and rumbly, the adjustability rules, and using the We-Connect app to give myself hands-free orgasms using my PHONE makes me feel like a badass sex-spy. My heart’s all aflutter for the Sync!

Fantasy fodder

• When crushing on fellow sex toy nerds, sometimes I fantasize about bringing them to my room, showing them my sex toy collection, and telling them to choose a few toys to use on me. It’s interesting (and hot) to imagine which toys each person would choose, and why – and then what they’d do with them. (Some of my fave toys for partners to fuck me with, FYI: the Double Trouble, Eleven, and S-Curve!)

• At a party this month, I got spanked by three different people, working in tandem like a relay team. It was hot and cute and I proceeded to ponder it for weeks afterward, sometimes substituting different people into the fantasy and seeing what that felt like. One person pulling my hair and scratching my thighs, one person checking in with me occasionally and bringing me icewater, one smacking my ass, and the three of them periodically rotating roles… Unf.

Sexcetera

• This month I had sex at a sex club for the first time (not counting that time I did so for a porn shoot, because that’s quite different!). It was pretty fun, although I don’t know if my anxiety would ever let me relax enough in that kind of situation to actually have an orgasm.

• Some of my work elsewhere this month: I wrote about sexist tropes in pop music for Teen Vogue (!!) and warming up for big penetration for Ignite. On our podcast, Bex and I talked about humor, attraction, romance, and sex toy retail.

• February orgasm stats: I only had 21 orgasms this month, versus 30 in January. My mental health sort of dipped a bit in the middle of the month, which usually results in fewer orgasms for me, plus I worked longer hours over Valentine’s week and didn’t have a lot of spare energy for jerkin’ it. While I did have some partnered sex this month, all the orgasms I had were solo. (Womp womp.)

Femme stuff

• This is boring, maybe, but winter sure makes me appreciate excellent lip balms more than I usually do! My current faves are the Nivea Lip Butters; I have them in a few flavors and they’re delightfully moisturizing.

• I finally did it: I bought a pair of heart-eyes emoji earrings. Mine are from FandomVerse Shoppe and I love ’em.

• Fellow retail workers and other folks who have to stay on their feet for long hours on the regs: I would love to hear your recommendations for cute shoes/boots that will support my feets properly! Currently I’m rocking my ol’ faithful Frye harness boots as per usual, but I’m thinking about maybe getting some Danskos or something. What say you?

Little things

Big tough cis dudes who make good use of their privilege and ability to intimidate other men into better behavior. A work-date with Taylor and Andrew over coffee and pizza. My favorite dancey jams of the month: Do You Love Someone, Talk Too Much, and Mother to a Brother. Coworker crushes. Steak and martinis with my mom. Customers who find my jokes amusing. Bursting into tears unexpectedly at a beautiful story someone told at Body Pride (that link goes to naked pictures, FYI!). Kink-flirting. Fancy cocktails with Anais. The sheer euphoria of palpable attraction. My new “I Heart Blowjobs” embroidery from Crass Stitches. Pre-drinking/femme time with Rosaline. Making out in a heated swimming pool under the stars. Myq Kaplan’s life-ruiningly funny comedy album No Kidding. The folks at Sili Saddle hand-delivering one in my favorite colors to my doorstep. People for whom punning is flirting. A photoshoot with Taylor and Suz at the Ritual Chamber (photos and story coming soon to a blog near you!). Having lots of cool new sex books to read (most notably: Closer by Sarah Barmak and Becoming Cliterate by Laurie Mintz). The zen calm of sweeping and mopping a floor. The Adventure Zone, fucking always (the cliffhanger ending of the latest episode killed me!). Punning and giggling with Brent over Facebook Phone at 2AM after a long, difficult day. Cleaning and reorganizing my entire sex toy collection, as a sex spell of sorts.

5 Bruises I Loved and Lost

Kate Sloan

Heads up, babes: this post deals with bruising and other visible signs of (consensual) injury, as well as self-harm. If that’s tough subject matter for you, please feel free to skip this post!

 

“I’ve never spanked anyone before,” Dane mentions offhandedly as we’re hanging out before our porn shoot.

“Oh,” I say, and my stomach drops. “Um, that’s fine, it’s not too hard to learn. I trust you.” I take my Tantus Pelt paddle out of my bag and show her how it works: the momentum, the swing, the snap. It’s been a few weeks since a partner’s used this mean little thing on me and I’m excited to bend over for my hot new friend in front of a rolling video camera.

What I don’t say, and later wish I had: Start slow, and work your way up. Warm up the area with gentle smacks til it’s red and glowing, before you progress to harder wallops. Spread out the impacts, instead of focusing on one spot. Rhythm and consistency are good, but give me time to breathe. I think these things but don’t communicate them. I said I trust her, and I do.

The scene goes better than I ever hoped or expected, given how nervous I was when we began. She teases and spanks and fucks me over a wooden coffee table in the airy afternoon light. But that paddle. Oh, that paddle.

There is a point, somewhere during most spankings, when I cross the threshold between safe, tolerable pain and pain so intense it scares me a little. This threshold is the reason I can’t spank myself effectively: I’ll never leap across that line myself. I need someone to push me.

Dane is bossy and authoritative and mean, and gets me crying within minutes. The silicone paddle rains down relentlessly on my reddening ass. And then she picks a spot on my right cheek and just wails on it. One hit after another, til the pain is a white-hot emergency alert in my brain. I think, I can’t take much more of this. Then I think, No, really, this has to stop. And then a deeper, stronger voice in my head says: No. You can take it. You can take just a little more.

I do. And eventually it ends. I’m left with the best bruise I’ve ever had, a crimson emblem of what I faithfully endured. A blotchy splotch that proudly announces what a very, very good girl I am.

Dane cuddles me on the couch. Caitlin brings me a cupcake. I’m grinning, glowing, good.

Depression comes in waves, arcing over the shoreline of my mind so ominously that I usually see it coming from yards away. I can arrange my schedule so the worst of it will hit when I’m alone, sobbing in bed, shoulders shaking, self-worth crumbling in polite privacy. I mask these desperate spells from my friends whenever I can. But sometimes I can’t.

One night in July, I’m at a party with Bex, Georgia, and a few other friends. But it’s the saddest party I’ve ever been to – even sadder than the surprisingly jovial secular shiva we held when my grandmother died – because I can’t stop crying.

Depression tells you lots of lies, the most pervasive one being that you are unendingly sad, have always been, and will always be. It tells you the tears you cry are justified, because everything is terrible and life is pain. It tells you the glimmers of happiness you once knew have been extinguished and were illusory anyway. It wrings the light from your spirit. It takes everything from you, most crucially, your hope.

So as I cry in front of my friends and they attempt to comfort me, none of it really works. “We love you,” they say, and my depression-brain says, Yeah, but the people you WISH loved you still don’t love you. “You’re a good person,” they say, and depression whispers, Bullshit, you’re garbage, they’re just humoring you. “You’ll feel better in the morning,” they predict, and depression insists, You will never feel good again.

What I need, when I’m like this, is to cry very hard for a while and then to be jolted out of my sad, salty rut. I need a distraction, a shake-up, a gear-change. So when Georgia says, “Do you want me to hit you?” some part of me perks up because I know that has worked in the past and it might work again.

I bend over the end of the sofa like a good girl, and Georgia – armed with my KinkMachineWorks Lexan paddle – begins to knock the sadness out of me via my ass.

When I’m sad and I don’t want to be sad anymore, sometimes I think of the saddest thoughts I can possibly imagine, in an effort to push the sadness through my veins faster so I’ll be rid of it sooner. If I’m crying over a boy, for example, I might force myself to think, “He doesn’t love me, he’ll never love me, he doesn’t want me the way I want him and he never will, I’m not good enough for him, I’ll be alone forever, and it’s only going to get worse from here.” Crying harder speeds up the process so I can get on with my life sooner – and spanking can serve a similar function for me. The pain gives me a tangible reason to cry, so I cry harder, feel my feelings deeper, and move through them quicker.

“I love you, babe,” Bex says to me while Georgia spanks me. “You’re being such a good girl,” Georgia says between hits. One friend holds my hand; another strokes my hair. I keep my face planted in the sofa’s upholstery and I cry and cry and cry.

And when it’s all done, I feel a bit better. And I have some epic bruises to remind me that I helped myself by letting my friends help me.

One night by myself in my room, depression sneaks up on me. I didn’t see you come in, I tell it, and it hisses back, That’s because you’re a stupid, silly girl who doesn’t know anything. I can’t argue with that.

Sometimes my depression comes alongside a restlessness: I know I need to do something to alleviate the uncomfortable feelings in my body and brain, but it’s not immediately clear what. When I’m coping well, I get out my journal, cry in a hot bath, go see a friend, or curl up with snacks and an episode of Sherlock. When I’m coping less well, I think about hurting myself.

The jury is out – by which I mean, my therapist is unsure – whether my self-spanking counts as self-harm. I don’t really do it to punish myself, to feel more alive, or to enact suicidal ideations, all common reasons people self-harm. I think I do it because it distracts me from the “bad” thoughts and feelings in my head, and because I know spanking has historically alleviated my mental health symptoms. It’s a last-ditch effort to snap myself back to stability.

On this particular night, crying numbly in my desk chair, I just start smacking my thigh with the back of my hand because it feels like the right thing to do. I do it so hard, and for so long, that I worry I might break my hand. I switch hands, and do it some more. I keep going until I’m sufficiently bruised, and the dark whispers in my head have calmed.

The bruise I’m left with is a chaotic mass of speckles, and I instantly hate it. It’s ugly, but I know I wouldn’t think that if a partner had given it to me. Each time I catch sight of it, I’m reminded of how I failed myself, how I let myself down by coping poorly with the feelings that rain down on me. I try to forgive myself, but in the meantime, I wear boxers around the house instead of my usual bikini briefs, so I never have to see the evidence of what depression wrought on my body.

When I was younger, I thought I’d hate one-night stands because sex felt too intimate to share with a near-stranger. As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned so much: sex doesn’t have to be intimate, and there are other valid reasons to hate one-night stands (which I kinda do). But it turns out that for me, kink feels too intimate to share with a near-stranger. It feels like an infringement, a mild violation, an incongruent aberration.

One cold night in December, I go out for drinks with a passably smart-‘n’-sweet Tinder boy. Our hours-long conversation brings out the details of my life that usually emerge on dates like these: I’m a sex writer, I review sex toys, I write about my kinks, and those kinks include spanking.

When I invite him over to my place after drinks, he makes a logical leap that any reasonable person could make: I like spanking, therefore, I want him to spank me. During our lukewarm hookup, he lands a few hard smacks on my ass, and I make noises of delight – because, physically, this feels like something I’ve enjoyed before. Emotionally, less so. He is nobody to me. I don’t care if he wants to punish me, or thinks I’ve been bad, or wants to make me feel good, or wants to give me what I want. I give zero shits what he thinks of me, and therefore, with him, kink feels irrelevant.

In the morning, we chat a bit via text, and he asks, “Is your butt even in the least bit sore?” It’s a vanilla-dude question, designed to determine whether his untrained hand even made a dent in my seasoned-kinkster ass. I look in the mirror and there is, faintly, the outline of a handprint. Red finger shapes against my creamy white skin. I text him a picture, though I doubt he even cares.

The bruise is mild, and only lasts a few days. So I spend those days thinking about how gross it feels to be bruised by someone I barely know. One-night stands are okay if I can hop in the shower afterward and wash away their sweat, their spit, their cum. But a bruise stays, and remains both mine and theirs until it fades. I love bruises when they make me feel “owned” by someone I want to own me – but a random-ass stranger from Tinder does not own me and should not bruise me. I glower furiously at the handprint for days, wishing it had come from someone else’s hand.

My fave fuckbuddy is extremely vanilla, but he’s also what Dan Savage calls “GGG“: good, giving, and game. He doesn’t “get” the whole spanking thing, but he’ll still do it if I ask – often quite enthusiastically – and I love that about him.

One night in a New York hotel room, we can’t figure out how to open the bottles of apple-ginger cider we brought with us – and we’re high, which makes this quandary even harder. “Let’s go to the front desk and ask if they have a bottle opener,” I suggest, reasonably, to which my FWB replies: “Okay, but you have to do the talking, because I am way too high to talk to a stranger right now.”

We make a giggly pilgrimage to the front desk; the attendant there doesn’t have a bottle opener either. So it’s back to the drawing board (after a meandering journey through the hotel lobby, mezzanine, and basement, laughing maniacally like the stoned delinquents we are). Once we find our hotel room again, we scour it for any and all objects that might function as a bottle opener: a pair of tweezers, the edge of a countertop, a thick bedsheet crumpled in a palm.

Eventually, grasping at straws, my gentleman-friend opens the wardrobe in the corner and pops out the silver metal bar holding up the clothes-hangers. “Oh no, you broke it!” I chirp, my high-brain momentarily unable to process that he did this on purpose. He grins at me in that roguish way he has, and jokes, “Those were load-bearing hangers.” I collapse into ganja giggles on the bed.

The metal bar works. He’s able to push the gaping end of it against the ridged edge of a bottlecap until the cap pops clean off. He hands me the bottle and gets to work on opening one for himself. I sit cheerfully, sipping my cider, one leg dangling off the bed and one draped over his thigh. We clink our drinks together and sip in the comfortable silence of two people who like each other – two people who just simply, uncomplicatedly, happily like each other.

And then I pick up the hanger bar and start whacking myself on the thigh with it, because of course I do.

He laughs darkly in his throat, because he knows me and he knows what’s coming. “Oh, you kinksters and your pervertables,” he says out loud, or maybe just in my memory because that’s the sentiment I sensed from him in my periphery. I take another swig of my cider and put the silver bar in his hand. “You should hit me with this,” I say.

He does. The cool metal lands stripes of pain along my thigh, still hitched over his. His thwacks are more earnest than I’ve ever felt from him; I think he’s finally figured out that when I ask to be hit, I want to be hit. Stoned, tipsy, gettin’ beat, and sitting beside one of my favorite people, I can’t recall many moments as purely, perfectly happy as this one, right here.

a thigh bruise“I want you to give me a bruise,” I tell him, but he’s vanilla and probably needs a little more instruction, so I continue. “Pick a spot. Hit that one spot again and again, starting soft and building up til you’re wailing on it.” I wrap both my arms around the one of his that’s not holding our impromptu impact implement, and press my face into his shoulder. “I might scream, but it’s okay.”

He does exactly what I’ve asked him to do, just like he always does; it’s one of the reasons he’s my favorite FWB I’ve ever had. As the bar slices through the air and onto my thigh again and again, my man-friend mutters in my ear about the way jazz drummers hold their drumsticks. He’s playing me like an instrument. His tone of voice reminds me of a doctor who tells you a cheerful story about elephants or fairies to distract you while he sets your broken bone. I don’t want to be distracted from the pain being rhythmically administered to me, but I like the sound of his voice, the closeness of it, how completely and totally safe I feel with this man who is hurting me at my request.

“There you go,” he says, and stops. “Look at that. Wow!”

I glance down at my thigh and see a thin streak of red, set in beautiful relief against the paleness of my skin. I’ve never seen my thigh look so gorgeous. In the days that follow, I keep hitching up my skirt to take a look, running my hand along the slightly raised mark, pressing the painful spot through my leggings on the subway to remind me that it’s there.

It makes me feel owned, and small, and safe, and happy. It fades, and I want it back. I want it to last forever, like a tattoo. But the nature of bruises is that they don’t last. Like the tumbling petals of a dying flower, they are perfect in their life and in their death. I am always sad to say goodbye to a bruise, and always happy to have had it at all.