Monthly Faves: Gush, Good Guys, & Gold Glitter

April was a bit of a tumultuous month – I got my PayPal account shut down for being a sex writer and had to reshuffle a bunch of career stuff as a result – but I think I managed to salvage it, for the most part! Here’s some of the sexy/sensual/smart stuff I liked this month…

Sex toys

Rock Candy sent me an 8-inch blue dildo that is just a glorious hunk o’ silicone. I requested it for pegging purposes, because my Ambit is feeling a little too small these days, but the Rock Candy Suga Daddy (what a name) is probably too big for my partner to take unless we’re in the mood for a lot of warm-up. I really like it for vaginal use, though! It’s girthy but not ridiculously so, long enough to hit my A-spot, and partway between realistic and whimsical. Perf.

• I snapped up a glittery gold April Fool’s Day version of Funkit Toys’ NoFrillDo X, fully expecting to enjoy it more for its aesthetic charms than its tactile ones, but actually, it’s delightful on both axes! The silicone is firm, the length is sufficient for A-spotting, and the ripply ridges are lovely. Yay!

• Another dildo? Yep! Still enamored with the VixSkin Bandit. The dimensions are perfect for me, and my partner likes that he can easily change the angle of penetration by varying how he holds the toy.

Fantasy fodder

• My Sir and I watched GUSH, a film by my pal Kate Sinclaire, together over the phone this month. It depicts a cis man squirting – not ejaculating in the usual sense, but something more akin to vaginal ejaculation, only from a penis – and it’s amazing. It made me think a lot about how gender is a construct and you can play with androgynous energy in all sorts of fun ways during sex.

• I got an email from male companion Madison James about a hypno audio track he made (his voice is very good, wow), and it got me thinking about wanting to do a roleplay with my Sir where he plays a sex worker and I’m the client. Sex as a service has been a big fantasy of mine for many years so this makes sense. Maybe one day we’ll pick a swanky hotel bar and do the thing.

• This month I fucked my lovely FWB for the first time in a while and I found myself thinking a lot afterward about how good he smells… and also how hard he works to make me feel good… I’ve only had two sexual partners over the past 14 months and that feels jarring to me, as a former major slut, but they’re both so excellent that who even cares?

Sexcetera

• I’m pleased to announce that my new newsletter, Sub Missives, is live! It’s a place for writing that’s more vulnerable and personal than I would typically get into here. The first edition, about phone sex and mental health, is free, but subsequent editions (including one about service submission and an upcoming one about polyamory and introversion) can be accessed by paying $5/month or $50/year. I hope you’ll sign up if you want more of my words!

• Sextistics: this month I had phone sex 21 times and in-person sex 17 times, totalling 38 sessions in all, making this my most sexually active month of the year so far.

Femme stuff

• I got my first Brazilian wax this month. I grew out my pubes for about three and a half weeks beforehand, which is the longest I’ve ever gone without shaving them, and then a nice lady ripped them out of me. It was painful, but not as bad as I thought it was gonna be, and I loved the results. Still debating whether needing to grow out the hair in between waxes is worth it to me for the thrillingly bare outcome (and high price tag).

• My velvet obsession continues: I bought a pale pink velvet slip from H&M and fell in love with its ethereal vibes. I wore it to my birthday drinks get-together with a grey cardigan, a blue sparkly heart necklace, black boots, and a smoky eye.

• My boy Paul at Avalon Hair Design darkened up my hair again and made me feel like a queen, as always. Thanks, Paul!

Media

• I read Laurie Essig’s book Love, Inc. after acquiring it through the magical media portal that is NetGalley, and it kind of blew my mind. Essig argues in it that the ideology of romance is distracting us and giving us false optimism at a time in human history when we really need to focus on bigger, more pressing issues (like that whole climate change thing, not to mention fascism and late-stage capitalism). While this book didn’t quite convince me to give up my idealistic romanticism, it did remind me to look at romantic myths critically and to pay more attention to the world outside my window instead of getting caught up in insular relationships.

• If you’re interested in the restaurant/bar business, you’ve gotta watch episode 2 of 7 Days Out on Netflix! It’s a short documentary about Eleven Madison Park, a fancy-as-fuck restaurant in New York. This piece of cinematic mastery is a devastatingly well-edited and often hilarious story of hard work, setbacks, passion, and obsession. Would recommend!

• My brother’s band Goodbye Honolulu has a new single out called U Got It and it’s a bop!

Little things

Exciting career developments. The great turquoise wall in my neighborhood that makes for the best selfies. Getting my friend high for his first time ever. Big diner breakfasts while I work. Our new relationship check-in questions, which Matt came up with after doing a bunch of research on relationship health (what a nerd). Surprisingly okay margaritas at cheap bars. Making plans to move in with a friend! Massively culling my wardrobe to prepare for the move. Having a decent pain tolerance. Satisfyingly organized suitcases. Being interviewed by smart folks. The new Pride Converse line. Dramatic readings of Passover poems. Hanging out with my brilliant cousin and his wife and son. Espresso at Café Olimpico. Dining in the dark at O’Noir. Montreal bagels. Riding a giant Ferris wheel with a bunch of iOS nerds. Discussing sex robots and Japanese dating culture at a fancy banquet. “I’m not a trusting man…” Oysters and champagne. Morning sex.

Review: VixSkin Bandit + Fleshlight Go Torque Ice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Cocks & Cocktails: Drink Pairings For Sex Toys

One of my Sir’s many talents is having a cocktail recommendation on tap for any occasion. He always orders my drinks when we go out together, and it gives me a feeling much like when he chooses exactly the right sex toy for what I’m craving on any given day: like he knows me and my needs better than I know myself. *swoon*

Recently, we were brainstorming some collaborations we could do together, and it occurred to me that we could write about cocktail pairings for sex toys. He brightened at the suggestion, and I could practically hear his mind whirring. Here are the pairings we came up with!


The We-Vibe Tango is a rumbly little bullet vibrator, perfectly sized and shaped for targeted clitoral stimulation. It comes in fun, sassy shades of pink and blue.

Sir recommends pairing the Tango with a Blackberry Rumble. (A rumble is a bramble made with rum instead of gin. It’s a pun, get it?!) “It’s a crushed-ice drink, which is rumbly, in a way, because you’ve gotta kinda bang it around,” he told me. “It’s very sweet and it ends up being pink, like the Tango. It’s also served with a short, thin straw reminiscent of the Tango’s shape. Crush that into your clit!” Except maybe don’t really. It sounds pointy. The Tango would probably feel better.


The Magic Wand Rechargeable is my favorite wand vibrator. It’s a lot of people’s favorite, actually! It’s a big, bulky behemoth with four reliable settings and a workhorse of a battery. It’s been a nightstand staple of mine for years!

“Because the Magic Wand is kind of the O.G., I would have to pair it with the Old Fashioned,” Sir said. The jumbo-sized ice cube usually found in an Old Fashioned resembles the big, unwieldy head of the Magic Wand – but they’ve got some similarities philosophically, too. “They’ve both inspired a lot of things and they’re still as good today as they were when they were first invented,” Sir explained. “There is no need to change them; they are immutable truths of the universe.”


The Hot Octopuss Pulse II is a vaguely tube-shaped vibrator meant to stimulate the penis with deep, rumbly oscillations. It has a simple, no-nonsense aesthetic, and is known for helping penis-owners experience a new and different type of orgasm.

“Like the Pulse, the Tuxedo No. 2 cocktail is a twist on a classic,” Sir explained. “In the same way that the Pulse throws you for a loop a little bit with its shape and its deep vibrations, the Tuxedo throws you for a loop too: you think you’re drinking a martini, but then it hits you with the Maraschino and the absinthe and hey, it’s not a martini!” The Pulse is also black and wraps around your dick… a little like a tuxedo. You know, a tuxedo for your dick.


The VixSkin Outlaw is a big, meaty, realistic dildo made of dual-density silicone. If you want girth, length, and realism, it’s hard (pun intended) to go past VixSkin.

Sir recommends pairing the Outlaw with the Zombie cocktail. “Served in a pretty large glass and difficult to make, it’s an intimidating drink – so much so that when it was originally served, its inventor wrote ‘maximum 2 per customer’ next to the Zombie on the menu,” he told me. “It’s like a big realistic dildo in that way. You’re not gonna take the Outlaw every time, probably. It’s more of a special-occasion dick.” He noted that the Zombie was supposedly originally invented to help a hungover customer get through a business meeting, which it definitely would not do, but the Outlaw could probably get you through a breakup. “Plus the ‘Outlaw Zombie’ just sounds cool. Like a zombie breaking the law.”


The Njoy Pure Wand is a C-shaped piece of stainless steel with a differently-sized round bulb on each end. It’s perfect for putting firm, unrelenting pressure on your G-spot or prostate. It is cold, intense, and formidable.

Sir says you should pair the Pure Wand with a daiquiri – fresh or frozen, though it’ll evoke chilly steel more vividly if it’s frozen. “The daiquiri’s my favorite simple, bold drink. It’s bright, sparkling, classic, intense, and timeless, like the Pure Wand,” he told me. “Plus, in the same way that the Pure Wand has one end that’s bigger and one that’s smaller, you can do a daiquiri with white rum if you want it less intense, or with dark rum if you want it funkier and more interesting. You get two different sensations out of that, and you can start with one and move to the other, just like with the Pure Wand.”

What cocktail would you pair with your favorite sex toy?

 

Thanks to my Sir for his excellent contributions, and thanks also to Friction for sponsoring this post! They’re one of the companies helping me get to this year’s Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit, and I’m very grateful. Check out their selection of body-safe, high-quality sex toys!

5 Dildos I Couldn’t Live Without

As a sex toy reviewer, you often get asked what your favorite toy is, and it’s a bit like being asked, as a fashion fan, what your favorite piece of clothing is: you can’t really give a clear answer because it depends on so many factors. The context, the occasion, the time, the place you’re at mentally or emotionally. You might love your shearling boots in winter and your red floral sundress in summer. It’s the same with sex toys.

That said, there are five dildos that I tend to come back to, time and time again. Five dildos to rule them all, you might say. Here they are. Be warned: once you get your hands on one of them, you might become so addicted that you can’t put it down…

1. Vixen Creations VixSkin Mustang (review)

The Mustang is my first choice when I’m craving something realistic. It’s touchably soft and squishy, just like a flesh-and-blood cock. The texture and shape lend themselves well to fantasizing about good ol’-fashioned PIV sex.

The head and coronal ridge stroke along my G-spot in a way that’s pleasurable without being uncomfortable, like some more intense G-spot toys are. The Mustang is also long enough to hit my A-spot with ease. Overall: an excellent dildo that makes me all starry-eyed and happy-twatted.

2. Vixen Creations Leo (review)

Another Vixen dildo? Yes, they really are that good.

Leo is similar in size and shape to the Mustang, but its thickness is more consistent throughout, and it’s made of a firmer silicone, so it feels meatier. I tend to reach for it when I want a slightly more thorough rogering than I’d get from the Mustang.

It also has some scratchy texture just below its head, which doesn’t sound like it’d feel good but it does. Nothing else I own feels like that, so when I want a little roughness, I gotta have Leo.

3. Ophoria Beyond #3

This dildo has been discontinued and the sex toy blogosphere will never truly get over it, I think. I still get emails semi-regularly from people asking if I’d be willing to part with my Beyond 3 in exchange for money or other sex toys, and I always say no. That should tell you how valuable this toy is to me.

There are other deeply-curved, hyper-effective G-spot toys out there, like the Pure Wand and the Comet Wand, but the Beyond 3 is the one I like best. Its head is round and bulbous, its curve and angle are ideal, and its looped handle is ergonomic and comfortable. It’s the best tool for inducing knee-weakening, mind-bending G-spot sensations. Other toys can come close but, for me, they can’t match the Beyond 3’s perfection.

4. Tantus Acute (review)

I don’t know about you, but for me, vaginal penetration can sometimes be a bit of a chore. It’s worth the prep work, of course, but to do it, I have to spend time lubing up a toy and gently warming myself up with fingers or a smaller dildo, or penetration can be uncomfortable. For those times when I just can’t be bothered putting in the effort, the Acute is there.

It’s small, so it’s not always 100% satisfying, but the size-to-stimulation ratio is pretty impressive. That little curve goes straight for my G-spot and is surprisingly satisfying. This dildo will remain a bedside staple for me because it’s so, so good and so, so easy.

5. Tantus Tsunami (review)

I have a hard time even forming sentences to describe how good this dildo feels.

Ridges. Curve. G-spot. A-spot. Thrust. Smooth. Bumpy. PINK. VERY PINK.

See? Just trust me, even in my incoherence: it’s good.

What are your must-have penetrative toys?

Review: Vixen Creations Leo

Happy Halloween, nerds!!!

The Vixen Creations Leo is undeniably one of my favorite dildos ever – and not just because mine happens to be a limited-edition “Batcock.” No, this would be a marvelous dildo even if it wasn’t bright orange and emblazoned with spooky flying bats. (Although, come on, that is pretty cool.)

Leo is the perfect size for my vag. It’s 1 ½" wide at the bulge of the head and a teensy bit narrower through the shaft, and it’s 7" long. Stunning. Stellar. Fabulous. Flawless.

Its head is only slightly defined, but there is a wrinkly faux-foreskin where the head meets the shaft that is really the crowning glory of Leo. When I describe the texture, it might not sound great – it’s slightly scratchy, a little bit rough – but it is harmless and actually weirdly pleasurable. You need lube, of course, but Leo’s foreskin produces a texture-fuelled feeling unlike any other dildo I own, and that’s pretty nifty.

Vixen’s regular silicone may not be quite as terrific as their well-loved VixSkin material, but it’s pretty damn good as far as silicone formulations go. It’s the perfect meeting point between squishy and firm. (I’m using the word “perfect” a lot in this review, have you noticed? Damn…)

I like to use Leo as a warm-up dildo when I’m planning on transitioning to something huge – but it’s obviously excellent in its own right. When I have my monthly craving for realistic dildos, Leo is always included in that desire, because its shape and size are just simply the epitome of an ideal cock.

Fun facts about Leo:

1. If you’ve ever seen a porn scene starring Roger Wood, you’ve probably seen the Leo. He’s used it in every scene I’ve seen him in, and it seems to perform astonishingly well in a strap-on.

2. It shares a name with Harry Connick Jr.’s character on Will & Grace, so if you’ve ever had a crush on that dude, you can go to town with fantasies while using this toy. (Do you like my extremely dated TV reference? I spend too much time watching old DVD box sets, evidently.)

3. MINE HAS BATS ON IT. BATS! But also, you can get it in purple or black these days, and Vixen’s silicone has a kind of sparkly/twinkly quality to it, so those colors are gorgeous, not boring. Pinky-swear.

In conclusion: buy a Leo. It will make your orifice(s) happy.

This review wasn’t sponsored by anyone, I just thought you should have something nice and spooky to read on Halloween. Kisses!