quizzical pussy

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?

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.

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.

Or: Let’s all have a chuckle at my needlessly intricate self-loathing!

When I first started masturbating with mens rea and intent to get off (rather than my earlier preteen system, which was basically “Wow, neat! This feels cool! I wonder if other people know about this!”) I ran into a slight problem when it came to fantasizing.

I hadn’t discovered the wonders of visual aids yet, so all I really had was my libido and my imagination. I would lie alone in bed in the silent, friendly dark, thinking about sex. I only had a rough idea of what sex was at this point, but I could feel the vague promise of it purring down between my legs. I wanted to pretend it was more than that, though. I wanted to think about what it would be like to share that lust and that dark with someone: another body, a counterpoint breath weaving through mine. But there was this difficulty, you see.

I couldn’t figure out an honest way to fantasize about sex. I could not realistically conceive of anyone actually wanting to have sex with me. No one had ever told me that boys only wanted one thing from me, but if they had I wouldn’t have believed it for a second. I was shy, undesired, awkward, unattractive, uninteresting: being invisible was the best I could hope for. Being admired was something that only happened to other girls. How was I going to pretend I had a willing partner? My suspension of disbelief just wasn’t that good. I’d start composing a story in my head about some attractive guy from school touching me and my brain would jump in, “Wait wait wait. Are you delusional? Every girl he goes out with is stylish and thin and decidedly unhideous. This fantasy is ridiculous!” And pop! I’d lose the budding narrative. I was usually too disgusted with myself to try again.

I wouldn’t even let myself imagine an anonymous guy. “Nope. Not buying it. No one would ever want to touch your boobies.” I had to admit I had a point.

But horniness really is the slutty cougar mom of invention. It wasn’t long before I came up with an ingenious way for “fantasy me” to get sex without overburdening my skepticism and turning all my masturbation sessions into self-harangues about how ugly and worthless I was. I didn’t imagine myself thinner, prettier, or with better social skills. I did way better…I turned to Sci Fi.

I’d pretend myself into a dystopian society where as some strange ritual, everyone in my high school had to have sex with one of our schoolmates as determined by blind lottery. It was kind of like a Battle Royale key party. Each girl went into a cramped little chamber that was furnished with a bed, and there we waited for our surprise sex partner to enter. No one knew what or whom they were getting into until the door opened. Of course, my guy always turned out, through the magical luck of daydreams, to be whichever one I fancied especially at the moment.

Once my crush opened the door and realized it was me his face would fall (my hypercritical brain demanded this). Mortified, I’d immediately apologize for not being someone attractive, but he’d reassure me that it was really okay; he knew it wasn’t my fault, and besides, he’d always thought I was kind of funny. Oh good. Funny. And that’s when the fun could start. Then and only then would my brain allow me to fantasize about having sex. It was like the cheat code for my self-loathing.

I was so sure that no one would ever voluntarily fuck me, which is weird because I later found out that several of the guys I locked in that fictional sex pod with me would’ve had all sorts of sex with me in real life if I’d given the least encouragement. I’m so glad I eventually stopped being a teenager.

I’m no one’s sterotypist laureate or anything, but it seems to me conventional wisdom holds that men and women fap very differently. Some sources actually contend that women can’t fap at all, and that they only “schlick”, but that’s misogyny for you. Schlick isn’t even a word, and it sounds off-putting.

So let’s just all agree that girls can fap. And do. Some more frequently and enthusiastically than others. And perhaps it really is true that men and women tend to gratify themselves differently. Maybe men and women are from different planets, and those planets have very different masturbation rituals. Like…

“How men masturbate”

Let’s look at a fap in the life of your average bloke. He’s going to want a healthy clutch of porn, his hand, and ideally a bottle of lotion. A quick click animates the pretty naked things on the screen and his dick snaps to attention. He’ll graze on different porn scenes, flitting over whatever catches his eye and discarding it when it loses his interest, moving on to the next stimulus, and then the next. Alternately, if he’s in the shower or another place where porn isn’t readily available, he’ll use his imagination and fantasize about fucking his friends’ girlfriends or his wife’s sister or his squash partner. He focuses on the most sensitive spots on his cock with a fast and heavy, practiced touch. His orgasm is quick and workmanlike. He’s done this thousands of times and faps with efficiency, for results.

“How women masturbate”

Women don’t masturbate so much as make love to themselves. Women don’t like regular porn. They like “erotica”. There are special porn companies that make smut with story lines and character development and poignant portrayals of intimacy, but everyone knows that most women prefer their erotica in text, be it slash featuring anime characters or bodice-ripping plucked from the grocery store.

When a woman decides to masturbate, it is an event. She pours herself a glass of wine, lights some scented candles, and luxuriates in a bubble bath or lays back in bed with a favorite toy. And there she escapes into an erotic fantasy, becomes other people, slips into breathless moments and exotic roles. Her hands wander all over her body, teasing her neck, thigh, nipple– like a lover might, tracing circles that spiral ever closer to her sacred center. Finally, when she’s ready and she’s at an especially hot paragraph, she stimulates her clitoris or impales herself tenderly with a dildo. It’s spiritual, vital, powerful. It’s part of the process of falling desperately in love with herself. Hell, she might even have an orgasm!

…Yep. That’s definitely how men and women masturbate, respectively. But I’m such a special snowflake that none of it applies to me.

How I masturbate:

I’m actually much closer to the male stereotype when it comes to fapping, but I suspect that many women are. I can’t relate to its female analog. It seems too damn elaborate, like a lie that tries to cripple your skepticism with irrelevant details. I may need to put in a lot of work to seduce someone else, but myself? If I can’t be my own sure thing, we have a problem.

I think lots of women actually do like porn, and not just “girl porn”. Plenty of us like the really hot, exploitative kind. When I’m in the mood for video, I’ll watch mainstream, gay, or lesbian porn: hot people fuckin’, preferably saying derogatory things here and there.

But usually, I don’t just masturbate like a guy; I masturbate like a fourteen-year-old boy. I browse through pictures of hot naked chicks, my vibrator poised on my clit (or I’m actually jacking off, but we’ll cover that another time), eager eyes darting to the next picture, and the next, and the next. I’m not thinking about aught but the scandalous things I want to do to these women: there’s no grand backstory, no character development, just me-on-them action. In my mind’s eye.

Sometimes I do this for literally hours. Because although I normally pride myself on my will of adamantium, once I start getting off it is really, really tough for me to make myself get back on.

It’s a relief to be able to admit this aberrant behavior now. I spent a long time lying to boyfriends and telling them I thought of nothing, absolutely nothing, or just them when I fapped. We’re all mature enough here to realize that our partners are lying through their teeth if they tell us that, right?

Of course, sometimes I will think about fucking guys, usually things I did with partners in the past, things I wish I’d done with them, or things I intend to do with them.

…Or I fantasize about fucking my friends’ girlfriends. Just kidding. Kinda.

One thing that may be more stereotypically feminine about my system is that I actually do prefer “tasteful(ish) nudes” when it comes to pics. I don’t really need the spread-eagle pussy shot; in fact, occasionally it just looks tacky to me and I move on to something with a little more mystery: a wall to scale, a thicket to penetrate.

Sure, I’ll fap to hot text sometimes: a well-crafted erotic story or a field report from a fellow blogger. Not often, but it certainly happens. I’ll also masturbate casually while watching TV or reading a completely neutral book: it’s like fidgeting, but much better. I honestly do masturbate too much, the more I think about it. But really, every single other guy from my planet seems to have the exact same problem, right?

I’m massively creeped out by the purity movement and abstinence culture. You know how religious parents and teenagers– mostly daughters–buy into virginity in a big way with purity pledges, purity balls, purity rings, and… I dunno, probably chastity belts? That’s creepy.

I’m not even going to get into how I hate the fact that we’re teaching young women that their worth depends on their ability to withhold sex and/or to provide an unsullied sexual vessel to some schmuck in the future. I’m not even going to mention that. Well, barely.

What specifically makes my flesh crawl is the concept that somehow fathers are supposed to be the custodians of their daughters’ virginity. The implication that a man can more or less own his child’s sexuality at all is unspeakably corrupt, and giving her a little extra attention in the form of jewelry and dressed-up dancing doesn’t sanitize the concept or make it any easier to swallow. It’s still creepy as hell.

Take a look at this sample purity pledge, culled from the Hollywood Purity Ball’s website:

I (Name) pledge my purity to my father, my future/husband and my Creator. I recognize that virginity is my most precious gift to offer to my future husband. I will not engage in sexual activity of any kind before marriage but will keep my thought and my body pure as a very special present for the one I marry.

…Okay, I’m not trying to be a dick here, but what business is it of this girl’s father, future/husband, or Creator to care so damn much about stifling her emerging sexuality? These three guys are heroically falling all over themselves to bellyflop on some catastrophic grenade, but it’s actually just this poor girl. Now that she needs a training bra she might want to think about sex at some point and do other things associated with puberty. The pin has been pulled! Horrors! “Save yourself, Creator! Future/husband and I have got this. You have other virgins to make.”

And as “precious gifts” go, I think that if I were a guy I’d value other things in my future wife above her absolute lack of experience. Some examples that spring to mind:

1. An awesome sense of humor that still manages to pretend I’m funny from time to time
2. Compassion
3. Wit
4. A terrific ass (I’m an ass guy)
5. A sense of adventure in and out of the bedroom
6. Unfuckingbelievable blowjob skills
7. Independence, self-agency, and the ability to make up her own mind instead of just listening to her daddy all the fucking time
8. A good DVD collection
9. A ravenous intellect
10. A ravenous sex drive

If you don’t know what you’re doing or what you like, you should date and have some fun figuring it out. Being clueless isn’t your cue to go get married. Maybe it’s okay to give some virginity to your husband as a very special present, but for heaven’s sake, it shouldn’t be yours!

When I started second grade one of our first assignments was to draw pictures of our families. I drew my parents and sisters and hamsters and even my goldfish, but I forgot to draw my brother. Maybe I “forgot” to draw him. I don’t think it was intentional, but he’d been born a year and a half before, usurping my title of “baby”, so it’s possible that I just tacitly edited him out of my picture because I secretly hated him, not even admitting it to myself. In fact, that’s probably exactly what happened.

My parents encountered my artwork at Parents Night, and my dad wrote me a little note that said “Please remember that we love your brother and do consider him part of the family, even if he isn’t as important as the hamsters.”

Whoopsies.

Likewise, I feel like kind of a jerk not having written yet about my most trusty and loyal implement of orgasm. He is the unsung hero of my toybox, and even though he isn’t quite as important as the hamsters (I just made it too weird, didn’t I?) I still adore him and owe him about five billion orgasms that I know I can never repay.

Rabbit-style, or dual action, vibrators are a cliché for a reason. They’re really, really good at doing a really, really good thing: namely, providing clitoral stimulation and penetration at the same time without any outside assistance. They’re an amazing way to masturbate if you go in for that kind of thing.

The Impulse Jack Rabbit is the only one of its caste that I’ve tried, but I think it’s more or less representative of the genre. You’ve got a dildo with an intriguing bulb of rotating beads mid-shaft. The dildo itself also rotates independently of that. And of course there’s the adorable little animal-encased bullet vibrator that stimulates your clitoris delicately (but not weakly) with its ears. Similar vibrators have hummingbirds, elephants, butterflies, dolphins, or more abstract clit buddies, but the idea remains the same as the standard rabbit. The rabbit works well because the flickering ears are almost like two tiny and talented tongues. Rabbits are also cute, and fuck a lot.

The design is meant to be ultimately non-threatening. Although the slightly more badass Impulse Jack is all chrome and red where its cousins are often pink, white, or lavender, it’s still decidedly cute. It mimics the shape of a cock while doggedly resembling one as little as possible. The dildo even has a little smiley face where the frenulum would be. See? Not a scary penis. A happy penis! The animals evoke a simpler time when we all just humped stuffed animals, I guess? I’m not really sure, but this is an approachable sex toy.

But it’s also, as I said, awesome. The first time I fucked myself with it I knew my world would never be quite the same. There was so much going on! In my pussy! Things were happening texturally, vibrationally, rotationally… it was marvelous. The variations were unreal: 6 rotation speeds, 7 vibration routines utilizing three different ear-flickering speeds, the carousel rows of beads whirling inside the spinning phallus. Bliss. We fucked and fucked and fucked like, well… you know. Bunnies. And then, just like that, the honeymoon was over.

One of the very early problems that emerged was the fact that this thing burned through batteries. The clit vibration and shaft rotation functions are controlled by different buttons, and the latter was a huge drain. Like, a four AAs in ten minutes kind of drain. I understood. Relationships are give-and-take, after all. But then, after a couple months, the rotation gave up the ghost completely: there was no more shaft movement whatsoever. It was a sad, sad day. Apparently this is a common issue with this and other rabbit-style vibes of similar design. The same thing has happened to several other chicks I know, some of them not even as insatiable as I.

That said, my jack rabbit is still my go-to toy. I use it so often I should probably be embarrassed. And the orgasms are still amazing. I’m actually not big on insertion masturbation, although I absolutely love penetration as an institution. Clit play is just easier. I tend to start masturbating before I’m turned on, just because it sounds like a good idea (dopamine? Don’t mind if I do!). Can I be bothered with lubing up? Nope. Do I necessarily want to do lots of cleanup afterward? Nope. Generally, day-to-day, I just go for the clit. And for what I like, I’ve never found any clit stimulation that compares to that little bullet in its rabbit-shaped sleeve attached to its smiling, now-inanimate dildo (which still feels good, obviously, but no longer life-changing). I actually tried buying a stand-alone toy that’s just a bullet in a sleeve, but the ears weren’t quite right: too skinny and floppy and insubstantial. Impulse Jack Rabbit, it’s still you.

My jack rabbit is getting older and even feebler. His vibration is less trustworthy as time goes on, and battery efficiency– even without the energy-draining spinner–  is laughable (probably a combination of sex toy entropy and the fact that rechargeable batteries are an imperfect system that may always work best in theory). I know it’s only a matter of time before even his trusty rabbit ears fall silent. I think I’ll end up getting the rechargeable version to replace him, and then his shaft rotation will die, and I will still love him long and well and often anyway. That’s just the circle of life.

I may never come out to my parents as bisexual.

I haven’t identified as bisexual for very long. I didn’t actually have sex with a girl until last year, and although I quietly wanted to–was terrified to–for years before that, I never did, and wasn’t comfortable calling myself bi until I had actually interfaced with a pussy that wasn’t my own. I figured that was what the term “bi-curious” was for. Also, for me, if there was such a term as “bi-terrified”, that would’ve also applied. I was fairly certain that I would never actually be able to get together the courage to eat a girl out. It seemed so daunting and advanced and, although this is counter-intuitive…alien.

Of course, that was roughly the feeling I had about sucking cock before I tried it. In fact, to my teenage mind putting a penis in my mouth seemed like a disgusting, degrading endeavor. When rumors went around my high school about any girl “needing a pair of kneepads” as we put it, I always thought, “Poor thing! Why on Earth did she do that?” Remember, blooms just don’t happen much later than mine did. Obviously, once there was finally a cock rearing in front of me all hard and enticing, it finally clicked and I swallowed it with alacrity and without a speck of doubt. Similarly, when I finally had a pussy waiting under me, pretty and beckoning, I was suddenly way less scared and way more bisexual than I had ever given myself credit for. I only ached to make her feel something amazing. I only felt humbled, elated by the way she bucked and moaned as I tried to be less inept, to faster figure out her spots and secrets.

After that experience, I started to shyly define myself as bi. I sort of looked around the couple times I said it out loud to make sure it was okay, to see if anyone objected or called shenanigans on me. No one batted an eyelash (I don’t think anyone I told was all that surprised), and I didn’t get struck by lightning either.

I’ve never had a relationship with a woman. I’ve had weird pseudo-relationships, definitely. My best friend in high school had a meltdown when she learned I was thinking of going to Homecoming with a guy; my other best friend and I used to share chewing gum the fun way. The girl who became my Sophomore year roommate in college decided to become my friend when she watched me during a courtyard session of our Freshman Comp class, my hair backlit by the afternoon sun, and determined that she thought I was pretty. We read books about sex to each other late into the night, gave casual caresses that crackled with sexual tension, and our fights were practically lovers’ quarrels. I spent a lot of time during my late teens/early twenties thinking I could well be a lesbian (I did have a boyfriend, but I wasn’t physically attracted to him so much as in some kind of occult thrall, and I knew it). I was always sure I could date a chick; that was never the question.

Now that I’m no longer afraid to fuck a chick, there is no question. I could easily have a relationship with a woman. But I’m attracted to guys too, and so I have the bisexual privilege of never having to deal with being in a same-sex relationship if I don’t choose to. This makes it really easy for me to just not mention that I lust for, desire, could love women. It makes it easy to have a boyfriend and play with girls once in a while and never have to ask people to confront any facet of my sexuality that might be uncomfortable. And for my parents, my liking women would be a problem. Probably THE irrevocable problem. Maybe even worse than getting… gasp!… an abortion.

My friend Eloise Chestlegrinn didn’t come out to her family when she identified as bi, but as she became more and more sure that she preferred innies to outies it grew into a big issue. She started feeling that not claiming her sexuality was like lying to her very close (and very religious) family. What had been an acceptable deception as a bisexual woman was suddenly intolerable as a lesbian. And that makes sense: once you eschew men you can’t “pass” anymore. The option of camouflaging as straight has disappeared, and you’re no longer hiding what may be one aspect of yourself; you’re now hiding your entire romantic life. The fact that she fell in love with an amazing woman only adds to her yearning to be out. She wants to say “This is who I am and this is who I love!” fearlessly from the rooftops. Of course, she also feels like she’s going to need to add “…and please don’t hate me.” because her parents are probably going to shit bricks and then tell her she’s going to hell.

And that’s more or less what my parents would also do. They would be very, very sad and talk a lot about “urges” and “choices” and “lifestyle”. My mother would cry that she won’t be seeing me in heaven. It would honestly suck, and I don’t want to do it. I never want to deal with the mess it would make. And in a way, they’d be right about one thing: it is a choice in my case. I don’t have to fuck girls; I want to fuck girls. I really want to fuck girls, and it bothers me that anyone is pathetic enough to have a negative reaction to that choice, but I went through over two and a half decades not fucking them, and I can obviously choose not to. I just find that choice insipid and limiting, because my attraction to women is not a choice. And if I ever really fall for one, I may very well want to holler something from the rooftops about it and not get lectured about Leviticus 18:22.

Same-sex attraction isn’t a choice. Behavior is a choice. My father has worked with churches his entire adult life (does it surprise anyone that I’m a preacher’s kid?), and has counseled many well-meaning people who were terrified of hell on how to modify their behavior and “resist homosexual urges” by becoming half-hearted heterosexual spouses. You know how that turns out? Fucking badly! When I say behavior is a choice, I’m talking about Eloise’s parents, and potentially, someday, mine. We can’t change the fact that we want to touch boobies and lick clits and make pussies quiver and their owners writhe. And we shouldn’t be the ones to adjust. It’s a lot easier to choose to react to the news that your child’s gay or bisexual with understanding and love than it is for that child to eternally resist her truth. Our parents could modify their judgmental behavior and choose to embrace the parts in the Bible (if Bible-thump they must) that deal with not condemning others, loving everyone, and leaving the tough questions about who and who is not damned for all eternity to the great big Dom in the sky rather than focusing on the couple places that say “OMG fags are evil!” right next to where it says that eating shrimp is an abomination. How about THAT lifestyle choice?

I already tweeted about this, but I couldn’t leave it alone. When I was a kid I used to chew on the inside of my cheek when I got anxious or bored. The skin would start to get ragged and then it would be even harder not to gnaw on, and it became this vicious cycle of livid pink injury. That’s pretty much exactly how I feel about My New Pink Button. And by that I mean it seems a product of anxiety and boredom, it appears completely pointless, and I just can’t leave it alone even though (or maybe because) I already touched it.

My New Pink Button™ is labia dye. Did you ever think you’d see labia dye? Because honestly, I didn’t. Sometimes, it seems, a woman’s labia change color over the course of her life. According to the product’s website, “Yes, it’s perfectly normal and there are many factors that can contribute to this. Ethnicity is a big factor, also age, hormone change, surgeries, childbirth, sickness, health, diet, and medications can all contribute to a change from “Pink” to “Brown” in a woman’s genital area.”

…So, what you’re saying is that it’s perfectly healthy and normal for women of different ethnicities, ages, and states of health and reproduction to have different colored vulvas? And there’s nothing wrong with it that at all…

…that a little cosmetic dye won’t fix?? Awesome!

I’ve never really thought about pussy colors before. I have noticed different pussy colors, but I haven’t really thought of them as having any sort of a hierarchy. I mean, if you want to dye your labia, have at it! The more things you can dye, the more fun and interesting life is. What bothers me here is that while My New Pink Button™ offers four different colors for your labia-dying needs, all four of them are pink. Does that seem right to you?

The four different shades range from a light baby pink (called Marilyn) to a rosy burgundy pink (called Audry). The other two, Bettie and Ginger, are also– you guessed it– pink! If I’m going to dye my vulva, I want more options. I want a crayola box full of labia possibilities. I want an alien pussy, is what I’m trying to say. That’s what I will pay you $30 for: an alien pussy or nothing. Got that? Also, I slightly resent that this product is suggesting that my labia are supposed to be a certain color. Why is pinker better? This is probably the one thing to hate about my body that hasn’t yet occurred to me, and My New Pink Button™ is trying to fuck that up! This is just like the discussion I had with several male friends last summer where I learned that all of them consider large clitorises (did you know “clitorides” is the other plural form of clitoris, by the way?) amazingly attractive, and I suddenly realized– without ever considering it before– that my tiny clitoris is inadequate. And now maybe my labia aren’t “Bettie” enough? Are you just fucking kidding me?

Yes, I’ve gotten out the hand mirror before. Which of us has not? But never specifically to scope out color. So I immediately brandished my trusty mirror and went to studying my naughty bits:

• I’m not familiar with the etiquette involved, so I’m not sure if it’s obnoxious to say that I think my labia minora are kind of cute. They’re not exactly symmetrical, but they fold together like two little petals of a delicate budding flower. I literally just looked at them and said “awwww” out loud. (I suspect my attraction to them has a lot to do with the fact that they’re mine and we’ve had countless orgasms together, which is very bonding.)
• My clitoris is really, terribly small. :(
• Looking at my pussy makes me horny. Is that normal? Oh well. Don’t care. (brb. fapping.)
• Oh right. Color. I guess my labia are pink. I’d say they’re just about EE9572 in hex; fairly close (though not quite so ZOMG pink!) to the My New Pink Button™’s “Ginger” shade. But my skin is so candescently pale that it doesn’t really “do” brownish.
• Are my labia pink enough? Sure. They’re labia, not my sixth birthday party.
• Would I be dismayed if they suddenly became less pink? Maybe even (doom!) browner? I’m trying to imagine this bothering me. I really am. Look, I have trouble walking most days. Kittens are born without homes. Somewhere, someone is mistaking “its” with “it’s”. I have a minuscule clitoris. Please understand, I have enough problems. I really just can’t care about the color of my labia right now.

But some women apparently care, which is why this product exists and has five whole testimonials! And if this makes them feel better about their bodies or lives in any way, that’s awesome and I’m excited for them. However, if “labia must be pink!” is the new “labia must be small, smooth, and even!” I’m about to get grumpy. Although, come to think of it, I much prefer silly pink dye to drastic elective surgery. But can’t it just be time yet to decide that pussies are sexy just the way they are, and natural variety is part of what makes them so? No? It can’t? Didn’t fucking think so.

I didn’t know what it was called when it first made me come
The nomenclature’s trivia, it always knocks me dumb
Unless “Oh god oh god oh god”‘s superior to mum
If my G-spot is a fantasy, Oh god! Let me succumb

Dear Gräfenberg, you clever chap
Your spot at least, I mean
It’s helped me fuck and helped me fap
Almighty, though unseen
I swear I’ve never doubted you
It seems so simple, tried and true
And I thought everybody knew
But then, things got obscene
The meanest edict to debut
Since herpes and the clap

Some scientists in Britain gave a survey, not exam
These scientists in Britain say the g-spot is a sham
It’s marketing, they argue, it’s a sexy little scam
So stop pretending there’s a magic pearl inside your clam

Perhaps not standard issue like a coccyx or a wrist
But take away my G-spot and you’ll find me fucking pissed
Though time and time again it’s been neglected, scorned, or missed,
My orgasms don’t lie and they confirm mine does exist

Hey Gräfenberg, can you believe?
They think it’s in my brain
They think I’m terribly naive
My dildos curve in vain
But why does it feel so sublime
Consistently and every time
A climax on a ruddy dime
Not fictive or arcane
How could that lofty two-inch climb
Into my cunt deceive?

Just because you have no G-spot, you can’t wrestle mine away
And if you prefer the clitoris, I promise, that’s okay
But recall they came for G-spots on that dark and distant day
When experts say that prostate stimulation makes men gay