quizzical pussy

Countless times I’ve heard and read about how a woman is inescapably and biologically submissive: the penetrated, the supine, the taken. The image of being overcome and driven into is the source of apocryphal radical feminist notions that all penetration is at best a violent act, at worst automatic rape.

But to me, having something plunge inside an orifice that’s all-too-happy to accommodate it doesn’t feel all that passive. Nor does gripping that something in the crush of my mighty orgasm. Of course I’ve felt myself in the submissive position in sex before– in ways both lovely and horrible, but being penetrated wasn’t the factor that made it so.

One of the most alarming and saddening articles I’ve ever read on the subject of sex was Virginia Vitzthum’s 1999 Strap-on Epiphany. In it, Virginia recounts her experience of pegging (before it was called that) her boyfriend, Adam.

The article starts innocently enough. Sure, it flirts with the idea that a woman allowing someone to enter her body is empowering in its vulnerability or something, but it really doesn’t disturb me until she actually starts fucking Adam. Once she penetrates him, shit gets weird. (I refuse to resist pointing out that the link to the second page of this article says “Defiling Adam”. This is indicative of exactly the attitude you’re about to see.) Observe:

As “my” huge appendage disappeared inside him, his eyes showed shame, trust, fear and a sort of helpless adoration. In a way I’d never understood those words before, he was mine. The knowledge I could really hurt this person by being less than careful made me feel responsible, protective. The vulnerability appalled me at the same time; it was vaguely disgusting that he would let someone do this to him. Mixed in with the disgust was possessiveness. The thought of anyone else penetrating him seemed revolting. These observations clicked into place in quick succession; I felt like a projector being loaded with slides of maleness, of male seeing.

…I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. With his legs spread, Adam was agreeable, inviting, ashamed, taken.

When I first read this I was shaken. I’d never used a strap-on, and I wasn’t a man, so I felt completely unequipped to answer the question of IS THIS TRUE? Does penetrating someone really give you contempt for them? Is the act of being penetrated disgusting and weak somehow? This Virginia bitch had really upset me by suggesting that the sexual interactions I was having may be entirely different (in troubling, corrupt ways) to the people I was sharing them with.

I asked a few male friends, my boyfriend at the time. Some said, “Yeah, that sounds about right,” and some said “She’s overthinking it.”

In truth, I think that some people might equate penetrating with power, but it’s not an inevitable conclusion. Virginia’s views here weren’t objective, and they tell us more about her than they necessarily do about “men”. They tell us nothing about the native symbolism of a sex act.

Are you submissive to the food you eat? Is a canteen at the mercy of the water inside it? Eclipsing, holding, consuming, overlapping, absorbing aren’t words of weakness to me. We choose to think of the partner who welcomes the other into his/her body in such passive terms, but that’s choice, that’s perspective. It’s not innate to the nature of sex; it’s a commentary on our social paradigm.

I’ve had moments when I had a cock inside me and I was conquering, silent, responsible, the taker. Well, not silent, but close enough. And I refuse to be surrendering, tractable, helpless, and (wtf?) ashamed just because it feels good to fill my holes anymore than I would presume to project those words onto a guy I was pegging. It’s fucking piffle, is what it is.

…So 1999, anything else you want to tell me about sex? I’m all ears.

(image source)

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I, skeptic, have what can only be described as a “lucky shirt”.

One night I walked into my favorite karaoke dive wearing this shirt and two guys immediately approached me and sat down at my table. Every time one got up to put in a song or take a piss the other would jump in and try to make increasingly awkward conversation. Later they retired to a corner and seemed to be discussing something with drunken intensity. “They’re fighting over which one gets to ask you out,” my friend Miriam, who is wise in the ways of men, whispered.

In the midst of all this, a guy leaned his chair back and asked me if I was single, which I was at the time. “My friend is in love with you,” he informed me, pointing to an entirely other (intimidatingly good-looking) guy besides the first two, and asked if I could introduce myself because his friend was shy. (Which, if you read my blog, you know I’m too chickenshit to ever do.) Then, as I was leaving the bar for the night, still another guy asked for my number.

This sort of thing never happens to me. I was completely nonplussed. This was almost two years ago, and I still wonder if the bar had coordinated a “Let’s Fuck With Quizzical Pussy!” night.

About a year later, I was on a road trip. I met up with a bunch of friends in a little college town across the state, and we decided to go to the local gay bar (like you do). It was Drag Queen Bingo night, which is another way of saying the place was packed. I happened to be wearing the shirt. A cute lesbian couple sat alone at a table with an empty chair, and I asked to join them. We talked a little, marked some bingo squares, they asked if they could buy me a drink, and I told them thanks, but I don’t really drink. They bought all my friends a few rounds instead, still seeming genuinely distraught that they couldn’t get me anything.

After bingo, we all danced for a while, and at least three people came up and told me I was cool for absolutely no reason. This particular college town is either some sort of uncanny hellpit of friendliness, or all this had something to do with the shirt. Yes, those are the only two options.

Okay, so those are just two examples, but it truly seems like when I wear the shirt I have more social success than usual. People find me just a little hotter, more approachable, intriguing, something. Maybe. I don’t really know.

But here’s the thing you have to realize about this shirt: it is completely and utterly unsexy. It offers no cleavage, hugs no curves, and accentuates no waist. In fact, it’s a little boy’s polo, size large, bought at an unfashionable big box store. It has horizontal stripes (which I can say about roughly half my shirts, because I like them). Actually I have this striped boy’s polo shirt in several colors, but the blue-on-blue version is the only one that has ever given the faintest hint of being special. The green/green, the yellow/gray, the white/blue: they hold no mystery.

Last Friday, I saw an actual little boy wearing the same shirt, same version, and I wonder if it renders him magically chaseable to all those little playground vixens.

Now, I know it’s not truly a lucky shirt. It’s likely all down to coincidence or the Dumbo’s feather effect or some such phenomenon. It’s silly to think otherwise. But still, it has gradually become the shirt I tend wear when I’m planning a day that might well turn nerve-wracking or awkward. Some superstitious, primitive part of me believes it might give me an edge.

So, although it’s not one of the sexier pieces in my wardrobe, it’s what I put on when I was dressing to go to my first foursome last week.

(image source)

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Anonymous confessions GO!

I just started sleeping with a boy who is submissive. I’m submissive too, and awhile ago it would have really bummed me out that he wouldn’t be interested in dominating me and I wouldn’t have been able to dominate him. But now I’m in a triadic relationship with two dominants, I get all the domination I need. And apparently this combination is really good for me, because it’s like I’ve discovered a hidden wellspring of my own dominance and last night, I dominated someone properly (as opposed to awkwardly) for the first time in my life. Certainly not as skillfully as someone with experience, but definitely with passion and commitment. And I loved it!

My first boyfriend and I started dating when we were 14, and we dated until we were 21 when we finally broke up. His parents never gave him the sex talk and he had no idea about girls’ bodies, he learned it all from me. Somewhere along the line, he got the idea that girls hardly ever poop, and when they do they are very tiny little “rabbit turds”. I thought this was hilarious, so for the six years we were dating (we never lived together) I kind of encouraged this belief. We broke up, and he ended up in another relationship. They went on vacation together, and a few days into the vacation I got a text message from him (after months of no contact) that just said “YOU LIED ABOUT THE POOP!” I feel kind of bad for this poor girl who had to deal with a 22 year old who didn’t know girls pooped, but on the other hand I still laugh my ass off thinking about it.

I’m seriously glad that I wasn’t drinking anything when this confession first came in, because I would need a new keyboard from the eruption of spit/laughter combo.

Had my first threesome tonight. I double teamed one of my old friends with benefits with her new husband. Not too sure how I feel about it. It was fun, and all about trying new things, but I’m not sure if I want it to be a more than a one time thing. I’m all for trying new things, and I did without crossing any of my lines but there is some stuff I’m not particularly interested in doing again. It’s not a matter of disgust or anything, more of a blah, boring, does nothing for me kind of thing. Anyway, I think a good time was had by all but if it happens again I’ll have to explain that there are some things that really don’t do it for me, that I’m just not interested in.

I recently got out of an abusive relationship with a girl. Now, I’m on a new relationship with a new girlfriend and we love each other dearly. However, I get the feeling lesbian sex makes her feel guilty or something. she isn’t too comfortable with her own sexuality and she’s pretty insecure about herself. We rarely ever have sex because of that. Though I hate to admit it, I now often find myself fantasizing with the kind of violent sex my ex and I used to have in which she would humiliate me and completely dominate me. I’m furious at myself for this.

I hate it when people talk about sex. Not out of a sense of modesty, but because my friends keep turning out to be kinky or bisexual or poly, just like I am. I want to be the most decadent person in the room.

Do you have secrets? Sure you do. Send them in– anonymously!– here.

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I’ve never dated, fucked, or even made out with a guy who admitted to naming his penis. I’m one click short of naive enough to believe that this proves beyond a doubt that I’ve never been with a guy who had a name for his penis, but if you were the sort of person to name your genitals do you really think you’d be the sort of person to hide that fact?

While I like to name things as much as the next sexual deviant, naming my genitals would feel too much like dissociating myself from them, and that’s the last thing I want to do a) because that’s where I have a great deal of my fun and I have no wish to start living vicariously through my own body parts, and b) because if they got to have opinions they’d probably be very disappointed in me just now because I haven’t been keeping up on my caretaking duties (read: masturbating) lately.

I have jokingly given my tits names before, patently unsexy names that I throw out at really inconvenient times.

INT. SOME RANDOM COUCH – NIGHT

Groping is happening. Groping moves in a booberly direction.

Quizzical Pussy (indicating left breast): Ooooh, see that’s Statler.

Confused Dude: Huh?

Quizzical Pussy: The other one’s Waldorf. Now back to the balcony, kiddo! The old boys aren’t quite done with you!

Confused Dude: You sicken me.

Quizzical Pussy: Ah ah ah I lahve eet!

…This sort of thing is really great fun until I run out of people willing to fuck me. That’s when the laughter stops.

(image source)

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Recently one of my Facebook friends posted the following status update: “Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.” It’s another quote in a long line of hackneyed “folksy wisdom” gems he’s read or heard somewhere, and just had to share. But even as folksy wisdom goes, this advice is really atrocious.

I can think of countless reasons to smile: a friend’s face, the sun on your skin, the elation of running and jumping and climbing trees, remembering that puppies exist, or getting a new sex toy in the mail, just to name a few. But just to get a reaction from people, to seem more intriguing? Booooooooooring. I can get behind smiling out of friendliness, or to put people at ease, but this stupid cliche goes a step too far. It’s “I want people to think of me in a certain way, so I’ll disingenuously alter my behavior.”

This, gentle reader, is why we can’t have nice things.

Cilfton Overmangle texted me out of the blue recently to ask if three days was still the customary amount of time to wait to call a girl after getting her number (I don’t know why I’m the person he asks, but whatever. I’m here to help, I guess…) I wasn’t trying to be glib in the least when I responded that he should simply call her when it was convenient for him to talk and he would care to have a conversation with her. Has anyone not heard of the “three day” rule? And doesn’t it seem contrived and a touch desperate-not-to-seem-desperate when you can tell someone has purposely waited exactly three days to call? I’m not the mayor of dating or anything, but even my commitment-phobic ass couldn’t muster up a speck of contempt for someone calling me on days one, two, or four, especially if a decent conversation arose from it.

It strikes me that conventional wisdom encourages us too much to fake things, to play games with each other for social rewards. The fact that there’s a “rule” of how many days to wait before calling an individual with a pulse and a mother and unique thoughts and experiences betrays such cynacism. And you know if Quizzical Pussy is calling you on your cynicism you’ve gone too far.

That’s my major issue with Pick Up Artistry: it couldn’t be less like art. Art is human, individualistic, all about sharing a unique and fallible perspective. It’s against homogeneous rules; it runs counter to a jaded, cookie-cutter approach to people and the world. Hell, even if an artist is expressing a misanthropic point of view, the act of creation itself is the opposite of cynical.

In fact, the “art” referred to in PUA is more just at odds with being “artless”, in the sense that has positive connotations of sincerity and being unaffected.

Instead of embracing the natural, PUAs (and girls that follow The Rules or whatever the kids are calling it these days, or other con artists) devote themselves to running through life like it’s a role-playing game. And the person you’re trying to date isn’t even the princess you need to save or a member of your party. Your “target” is just another monster to vanquish on your way to your goal. So if you don’t get results with one chick, you just need to beef up your stats, or else you threw the dice wrong and luck just wasn’t on your side. Either way, you’ll encounter lots of HB9s on this level, so you’re cool… you’ll get the next one. How is it a good idea to treat a potential partner like a non-player character? Like ultimately, they don’t matter.

There has to be a better way to deal with rejection than dehumanizing people. Can’t a person not want to fuck you, yet remain fully human? Can’t social interactions be more about discovery and less about achievements? Can’t you just relax and see where and with whom you fit naturally, without trying to force perceptions and opinions you can’t control? Can’t you just smile because you feel like it, call when you want to, and acknowledge that if you’re playing a game, we’re all in it together and probably actually all on the same team?

(image source)


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The old adage that there’s no such thing as a bad blowjob is a little ridiculous. For one, it reinforces the man-as-sexual-supplicant myth, which really needs to end. Additionally, though, I don’t think it’s based in truth. I think that bad blowjobs can and do happen, and they may be happening to someone you know. Chilling, right?

Leo Tolstoy wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s not actually true of families or of sucking cock. But there are many ways to give a bad blowjob, and each bad blowjob is probably uniquely bad in its own special way. However, if you follow the bulleted rules below, you will most likely succeed in giving one miserable excuse for a blowjob. And, because I’m a philanthropist, I’ll also have a short italic section in which I talk about ways to avoid or address each rule because I honestly don’t wish bad oral sex on anyone. I wish zero oral sex on some really nasty people, but never bad oral sex!

I don’t know how realistic this is, but when someone is giving me oral sex I don’t want it to feel like a favor. I certainly don’t expect servicing me to be the sexual highlight of anyone’s year, but an “Aren’t I incredible? I’m suffering through this for you!” attitude gets an automatic “You shouldn’t have. No, really, you shouldn’t have.” response from me. I can have fun without oral sex, but a martyr in my bed really spoils the mood for me.

But I’ve been fortunate enough to have some really amazing tongues give me mad orgasms with enthusiasm and what passed for joy. And generally these people don’t even have to ask me if they’re incredible because I make that damn clear. So goes the blowjob. While just showing up and putting a dick in your mouth is cool, I guess, it doesn’t necessarily cut it.

Thus, the first and most important rule of a bad blowjob is…

• Be lukewarm and begrudging about it. He’s lucky you’re exposing yourself to this indignity in the first place; make sure he remembers that every fucking nanosecond of this ordeal.

If you find that you aren’t enjoying giving blowjobs, or that your partner isn’t enjoying giving them to you, you might have to get really unorthodox and actually have a frank conversation about sex. Maybe the giver has had a bad experience in the past, maybe there are some hygiene problems, maybe something the receiver is doing or saying is turning the giver off (I have no idea why, but if you call a blowjob a “beej” it automatically halves my motivation to give you one, which is admittedly rather finicky of me, but also fact). Maybe you need to employ the old 69 trick of training each other to associate giving oral sex with getting orgasms. There are many ways to address this problem.

I’ve heard it suggested that the absence of deepthroating ability and refusal to swallow are features of blowjob malfunction. I actually think that these “faults” are greatly exaggerated. Most guys like the idea of bottoming out on a willing throat, but very few will actually complain if you can’t do it. It actually seems like deepthroating is considered more of an advanced oral technique rather than a basic requirement.

I’m going on record right now saying that I don’t understand spitting in the “spit or swallow” dichotomy. If your goal is to not taste semen, spitting actually maximizes its contact with your tongue as opposed to having it spill down your throat. Is there another reason someone might want to spit? Vegetarianism? But why should spitting make a blowjob bad? It’s technically over by then anyway. Also, some guys actually prefer to come on your face,  tits, or various other body parts. Last time I checked that’s not swallowing.

Contrary to these old tropes, the two complaints I’ve come across most often as to technique are more about the fundamentals than the frills, and inspired rules two and three of giving a bad blowjob:

• Avoid falling into any discernible rhythm.

• Make sure to stick with the exact same technique, style, and tempo for the duration of your cock-sucking adventure.

It may seem like these two are at odds with each other, but they’re really not. It’s important to establish a rhythm and not flop about aimlessly, but it’s vital to not get so focused on keeping a rhythm that it gets boring. Do different things: tongue the head, suck the shaft, vary your pressure and depth. Have you ever been fucked by someone who was inept and dull in bed? Chances are he or she was following one or more of these two rules, because they don’t just apply to blowjobs.

I’ve heard conflicting things about what specific techniques guys like and dislike (e.g. suction, head vs. shaft focus, interaction with balls, use of hand/s) and guess why? Because these things are personal preferences, and there’s no magic formula for the perfect blowjob. That brings us to our fourth and final rule.

• You’re an infallible sex deity. You know what men like. Pick a generic blowjob to give to every guy and stick to your guns. If he hints, suggests, or flat-out tells you that he likes a certain kind of stimulus, ignore him. You’ve got this.

Sometimes when people get overconfident in their status as superlovahs they forget that there’s no such thing as “what men like” or “what women like”. There may be some statistical trends, sure, but assuming that your partner complies with what you consider the norm marks the death of sexual discovery. No, this rule won’t always guarantee that you’ll fail at sucking every cock, but it will ensure that if you continue sucking different cocks, eventually you will fail a lot. That penis is attached to a person. Pay attention to the feedback that person gives you, ask questions. If you’re honestly not interested in personalizing this experience for your partner, then congratulations! You’ve actually just managed to make someone else’s blowjob all about you!

In closing, now I want a blowjob. A good one.

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I’m not sure if you’re into the whole Easter thing. I consider it an annoying, primarily religious, holiday, particularly since I’m not a big candy eater these days. My one fond Easter association is this book, which I guess is a feminist parable according to all the Amazon reviews. I never thought about that before. It was just one of my favorites as a kid.

Anyway, have a bunny with a bullet through his head:

P.S. It’s a cock ring!

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of male sex toys. I think they’re every bit as good an idea as their female counterparts, and those are canon in Quizzical Pussyland. I even want a Fleshlight of my own so I can fuck it with my Feeldoe. Is that meta or what?

I say I specifically want a Fleshlight because I’m a little wary of some of the other toys out there. Like with any partner, I have some standards for my sex toys. I’m not saying that my masturbation aids have to be charming, witty, and have pretty eyes. I’m saying that they need to not creep me right the fuck out.

Fleshlights are cute, with a range of neat little orifices and inner textures (lotus, twista, ultra tight, vortex…), many of which seem appealing. The coin-slot “stealth” orifice is the closest these things come to being creepy (I can’t help but think it’d be like fucking a Barbie piggy bank, if there were such a thing), unless you find the hilarious “Succu Dry” vampire-toothed mouth off-putting.

Another  masturbator that seems pretty cool is the Tenga Flip, which looks like a hyperbaric chamber for your cock, or possibly something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It might seem a little sexless and sterile for some people, but since I have a well-known robot fetish I’d have no trouble putting my equipment in this docking station. Hopefully the tech wouldn’t revolt and the ending wouldn’t be totally inscrutable.

There are other sleeves and masturbators that seem pretty great. But there are many, many toys for guys out there that seem like catastrophically bad ideas. They’re designed oddly, marketed awkwardly, rendered patently unattractive, or just seem weird somehow. I realize that a vulva or a mouth is more aesthetically complex than, say, a penis, and that might account for some of the problems I’ve seen. But let’s face it, it doesn’t explain away all of them. Let’s examine some of these issues a little more closely:

Terrible Marketing Copy

The Super Head Honcho Masturbator has the following quote in its description: “It’s as good as a blow-job. Women will be dancing in the streets.” You know what guys like to think about while they’re masturbating? How much chicks hate giving them blowjobs! If my boyfriend had one of these and we were about to have sex, I’d definitely just hand him his Super Head Honcho Masturbator and a bottle of lube and tell him, “Enjoy your foreplay! Let me know when you want to fuck. I’ll be on the couch playing Pokemon.”

…Except how I like putting cocks in my mouth and the Head Honcho doesn’t have anything to do with that. That quote is just reinforcing the “Hey, consumer, you can’t get a woman to blow you, so you’d better buy this!” stereotype that I already mentioned I hate. This also seems like a rather dim marketing strategy.

Hilarious Details

Some guys are turned on by a full bush. I’ve had zero real guys complain that I shave mine, but I had a phone sex client who would always treat me to a diatribe about how I was hurting my “poor little peach” and crippling my sexiness whenever I forgot his preference and told him my character was smooth. So there’s a market for pubic hair.

The Full Bush Vibrating Cyberskin Pussy isn’t just a clever name: it was clearly meant to cater to the bush-loving demographic. But I can’t help but think that something went wrong in the execution. Something about it seems a little… off. I don’t think that pubic hair grows the way they think it grows. I vote we rename this “The Swedish Cleft”.

…which brings us to…

Dealbreakingly Embarrassing Name

The design could be absolute genius, the orgasmic promise superb. Still, I just don’t see myself buying a Flip A Sister Over or an ATM (not referring to banking) masturbator. Where I come from we try to keep our masturbation devices classy, thank you very much.

Resembles Something Deeply Troubling

I may never learn why anyone would choose to give the Kinky Virgin Masturbator a scalloped detail around its gaping suggestion of a vulva, but I hope they realize that it gives the toy an eerie vagina dentata/hookworm flavor to it.

However, I don’t have time to worry about The Kinky Virgin. I’m too busy praying to Paul Verhoeven Almighty that the My Cocoa Stroker isn’t hiding under my bed. I can confidently state that this is NOT what pussies are supposed to look like. Why why why would anyone put a body part inside something that looks like the brain bug from Starship Troopers? I loathe the people who brought this abomination into the world and I hate everything they stand for.

WHAT?

The reviews for the UR3 Pocket Ass are really good, and maybe I’m missing something, but does the disembodied finger tugging open its “life-sized” anus add something positive to this toy, or is it just really, really funny?

Real Dolls are arguably kind of creepy, but their anime-inspired Boy Toy line is far creepier. “Hey, Dawg. I heard you like the uncanny valley, so I put your sex doll in the uncanny valley so you can be unsettled while you fuck fake women.”

And don’t even get me started on ROXXXY. Robots are keen, but I’m with Holly on this particular one. I wouldn’t touch this “companion” with a ten-foot arc welder.

In closing, dear god what IS this thing?

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I dated Edwin Pomble for several years, but I never understood his odd prejudices. One in particular that galled me, upsets me to think about even now, was his awful double standard about toys.

Excepting necessary concessions to propriety, if I’m acquainted with (nevermind boning) someone for any length of time, I’ll probably start talking sex toys eventually. People like to talk about their hobbies. I talk about the ones I love, the ones I lust after, the hilarious ones, and the ones I want invented yesterday. And I’m never shy about the fact that if I were a dude I would gleefully and unashamedly use masturbation aids, because I think they’re a lovely idea for all sexes, genders, races, and creeds. Edwin was tolerant of this only to a point.

“It’s fine for girls to use vibrators or whatever, but it just seems weird for guys to use anything… it’s so pathetic,” he insisted one day.
“Why is using a Fleshlight or something any different from me using my jackrabbit to get off? They’re both just simulated versions of genitals.” I pounced. I don’t like this weird idea that a guy fucking plastic is any different from a girl fucking plastic. It grates against my sense of fair play.
“Well…” Edwin was a slow talker. With a hint of conflict my conversational rhythm lapses into a staccato gallop, so this harmless idiosyncrasy always piqued me. “…it’s just not the same…” Another pause.
“Why not?”
“It just… isn’t. It’s sad when a guy does it. It’s like he can’t get a girlfriend so he has to use a pretend vagina.”
“That’s ridiculous. Why should you or anyone else care what someone does all alone and in private? If it feels better than your hand it’s a great idea: simple as that. And maybe it feels twenty times better. Have you tried it?” I challenged, setting myself up for a very easy “don’t knock it ’til” rejoinder.
“Well… my ex once…bought me… something.” Huh. Really? Now this was getting interesting.
“Cool! What was it?” I leaned into the question.
“It was like, a masturbation… thing. A sleeve or something.”
“And did you try it?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t like it?”
“It felt really good, but…then I felt bad about it. So I threw it away.”

He threw it away! He fucking threw away a perfectly good sex toy. That’s sad! In my world, it’s practically a capital offense. A lovely sex toy whose only purpose in life is to help you get off, that exists only to enhance your pleasure, deserves better than that.

It bothers me no end that most people seem to think that when a girl uses a sex toy she’s adventurous, empowered, and sexually aware, but when a guy uses a sex toy it’s depressing unless he has a female chaperone, and even then the toy must mostly be for her benefit. Even those who get behind the idea of a man using dildos and buttplugs on himself often still revolt against the idea of him using a male masturbator. In short:

Toy penetrates flesh = HAWT
Flesh penetrates toy = UR A LOSER LOL

…Why? I honestly don’t get it. I can’t even argue against this prejudice in any systematic way because I have no idea where it’s coming from. If anyone out there can give me a logical reason people arrive at this conclusion I’ll give you a jelly bean.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some horrifying male toys out there, which is exactly what Part 2 of Quizzical Pussy’s “The wank that dare not speak its name” series will be about. But really, anyone who doesn’t (and no one should) have a problem with my dildo collection needs to stop worrying about guys using sleeves or other sex toys. It doesn’t mean we’re beneath all standards for human contact; it just means that we’re occasionally eschewing our hands for a fancier option.

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I was up way too late, but the Sci Fi convention I was attending had negotiated extended pool hours with the hotel. I couldn’t resist the temptation. I had to check out the hot tub.

I like cons. They’re silly and exuberant and many of my nerdy friends are there. But there are also all these… other people around. Some of them are the “friends you haven’t met” kind of strangers, indubitably, but there are also the “that guy that talks like a robot just farted on me in the elevator” kind. So conventions are admittedly a mixed bag.

Another thing about geeks: they’re often (not all of them, mind, but probably more than average) starved for attention, kinky, and accepting of the social quirks of others. I love this about them, but it puts a little extra pressure on me to be tolerant of quirks I don’t enjoy.

Take, for instance, bad breath. I have nothing against you if you have bad breath. I think you’re, like, fearfully and wonderfully made and stuff, and I’m sure your gorgon breath has nothing to do with dental hygiene and everything to do with a medical condition you can’t control. I’m not saying it’s your fault or that it reflects on you as a person (although I am totally judging you) but I’m still going to want a significant space between your face and mine. I would like you to stay outside the breath bubble, had I my druthers.

…And that’s just one example. But it often comes back to the personal space thing.

But I was talking about general acceptance before I was talking about my raging olfactory hatemongering. Acceptance is good. It’s freeing. Watching some of these people, it’s like a metric ton of societal pressures have been lifted off their shoulders for one weekend and they tool around frenetically, being who they wish they could be every day, in a gentler world.

This is all just a very round about way to say that as I entered the pool enclosure, 90% of the people there were stark naked.

Fandom is populated with some legitimately hot people and a host of other people that aren’t… I mean, that are more… well, people I’m sure are beautiful on the inside. I’m speaking for me here, since everyone finds different things attractive, but I’m going out on a limb and saying that there were three naked people tops at that highly attended pool party who would be considered above-average looks-wise.

Yeah, it’s shitty that my brain made evaluations about which naked people were pretty and which weren’t. They were just hanging out (ha) and not necessarily asking to be stared at and graded by shallow sex bloggers. But guess what? I’m human and I’m anonymously honest on the internet, and my brain probably didn’t do anything yours wouldn’t have. So there.

I wasn’t actually there to gawk at naked or to be naked. I was there to relax a bit in the hot tub before bed. If I flirted with some hot people (naked or clothed) so be it! But personally I’m a little naked shy, so I stripped down to my bra and knickers and grinned at my own cleverness having selected dark colored undies that day.

The sunken hot tub was crowded, but I found some space next to my (betrunked, if you’re curious) friend Crispin Hijanx. We chilled out and maxed, relaxing all cool, trying not to stare directly at anyone’s fun bits. It was all of two minutes before a naked (not ugly, if you’re curious) guy I’d never seen before came up and started small-talking me. I made some fairly bland, exhausted answers, failing in my attempts to not watch a curvy girl with an awesome ass ascend the hot tub stairs and dive into the nearby pool. When she was safely submerged, I turned back to my nameless naked companion.

“So,” he said, now that he had my attention, “you’re not going topless?”

I looked down at my bra “No. No, I guess I’m not.” Actually none of the women there were topless. They were naked or suited. But I guess Nameless Naked Dude thought boobs would be a good start.

“Why not?” Hmmmm. I’d never had a stranger ask me why I wasn’t showing him my tits before. His tone creeped me out: like he wasn’t mad, just disappointed. Like I was cheating him out of something. I suddenly felt oddly exposed. With all the flesh in that room he was feeling petulant that my breasts (probably the smallest pair in the room, even) were going to remain a mystery.

The cute thing about carefree light-hearted nudity is that no one makes that a big deal of it and no one solicits it. Everyone’s enjoying it, sure. That’s natural. But I don’t think that a hot tub needs an Ambassador of Naked. I didn’t have to flash Crispin the “save me” eyes or anything, but the whole exchange did convince me that the best way to get me to keep clothes on is to creepily request that I remove them. Maybe that was Nameless Naked Dude’s cunning plan all along: to keep me covered and hasten my departure. If so, his naked fu is very good.

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