The Blowfish Blog

Blowfish Makes O: The Oprah Magazine!

Thank you to Cindy Chupack, who said amazingly nice and wonderful things about us in the October 2007 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine (no, really!). We couldn’t have said it better ourselves:

Blowfish.com turns out be as user-friendly as amazon.com. In addition to extensive privacy policies, it features enthusiastic, well-written reviews and a whole section of couples videos.

Of course, our loyal customers knew all that, but it’s cool to see it in a national magazine.

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OTAKU MAnKO: The First Kiss

I vividly remember my first kiss. I was in the clutches of a vastly more experienced girl my age, quite willingly I should add. It had been made pretty clear for at least a few days that we were going to “make out” the next time she got me alone. I was so nervous I was shaking.

When she kissed me, it wasn’t at all what I expected. I remember thinking “whoa, that’s her tongue,” which I expected in the abstract — but in real life it felt all wet, weird, and wriggly. Her mouth tasted ever so slightly sour, not like the oft-described “salty” kisses I’d read about.

To use a popular BDSM term, it kinda squicked me, as surely as if my partner had stuck a bunch of needles through her body and suspended herself by fleshhooks right there in her bedroom (which certainly would have been a novel first date, and far from unlikely for me in the years since then).

I’ve had lots of “first kisses” with new partners since that initial wrigglefest, but that’s the one I remember, perhaps because it was my only first kiss divorced from concrete expectation.

Not long after that, she and I were sharing kisses that didn’t squick me, not by a longshot; hours would pass with us making out and never once would I think “dude, it’s wriggly.” My brain adjusted to the sensations of the face-suck and I learned, as the scientists would say, to exchange evolutionary information and allow kissing to assist me in mate selection.

No, I’m not making these phrases up; first kisses are the subject of a recent study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology (PDF warning — there’s a concise summary at New Scientist). College students at the State University of New York in Albany completed one of three questionnaires to provide researchers with “a descriptive account of kissing behavior.”

From the study abstract:

Results showed that females place more importance on kissing as a mate assessment device and as a means of initiating, maintaining and monitoring the current status of their relationship with a long-term partner. In contrast, males place less importance on kissing, especially with short-term partners, and appear to use kissing to increase the likelihood of having sex.

As a sexual skeptic, I am automatically suspicious of studies about sex that promulgate behavioral hypotheses scientific “proof” for the stereotypical behavior of men and women. I’m even more skeptical of — hell, outright disgusted with — sexual studies of college students, for two reasons: first, the behavior of college students is overridingly gender-coded, and second, that such studies restrict our information to people who can afford college. Additionally, narrative questionnaires like this presuppose that people process sexual information verbally, which, as one of the most sexually verbal people I’ve ever met, I just don’t think is always true.

Last, but far from least, I don’t hold it against the authors that same-sex behavior wasn’t assessed in this study — but mightn’t they have mentioned it? I can’t think about kissing and men-vs-women without recalling the infamous “No Kissing” rule in some gay leather porn of the ’70s. If sex is all about evolutionary psychology and physiology — and I’m willing to entertain that it may be, even for queers — isn’t same-sex partnering some of the most interesting information about mating behavior?

Whatever the study’s shortcomings, it is a briskly erotic read for hardcore science geeks — it reads kinda like a tongue-in-cheek translation of Japanese tentacle porn. It’s packed with howlers like “One speculative possibility is that men may unwittingly use kissing to introduce substances such as hormones or proteins into women’s mouths” and “It is also possible that males may perceive a greater wetness or salivary exchange during kiissing as an index of the female’s sexual arousal/receptivity.”

There’s nothing better than a good study to get me all hopped up to exchange proteins with someone: I love it when scientists talk dirty.

Evolutionary Psychology: http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP05612631.pdf (PDF warning)

New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12583

Thomas Roche is the managing editor of Eros Zine, teaches at San Francisco Sex Information, and also blogs on sex, drugs and cryptozoology at thomasroche.com.

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Couple’s Couch: Spit or Swallow?

I recently headed out to see Pixar’s newest animated release Ratatouille, starring an adorable mouse with a sensitive palate who dreams of becoming a chef in Paris. (The film is great by the way, if you haven’t seen it, get your butts out of your desk chairs and get to it.) The flocks of queens sitting behind me in the theater ran continuous commentary throughout the cartoon, which might have been annoying if it weren’t so hilarious. But when the restaurant critic states under no uncertain terms, “I don’t like food, I love it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow,” all it took was one, “Amen, sista!” from the daddy in the back and the house came apart at the seams. Those San Francisco gays sure have dirty minds.

The incident led me to muse about blowjob etiquette, something most of the Ms. Manners books I’ve read over the years have strangely omitted. Does kneeling down to take it in the mouth sign us up for unspoken commitments of which we may be unaware? And when is it polite to swallow, to spit, to gargle, or to refuse?

Take swallowing for instance. I’ve been told that having one’s semen swallowed at the end of a blowjob is like having your cake and orgasming, too. Given the results from my informal blowjob census, most folks aren’t regular swallowers, even when they strongly prefer their partners to swallow when their own dingies are being sucked.

As someone who has always swallowed for the simplicity and ease of post-oral clean up, I never gave any thought to taking spitting. Why bother? It’s so easy to gulp and make it all go away. Not to mention that spitting would require having something to spit into (or onto). I suppose I could spit it back onto his trembling cock like a good little slut, but well, my sex life doesn’t always call for role-playing. And while I am down for letting a man come on my body/face/tits/ etc, the second they reach for a dirty sock to mop me off, the game is over. What I can not, do not, understand is the phenomenon of holding spunk in the mouth while fumbling through a dark room on the way to the bathroom to then spit it back out. I mean, really?

It isn’t that I don’t like semen. I really do. Having never owned my own cock, the cumshot remains a mysterious, powerful thing. It gives orgasm tangibility, some concrete evidence of desire. The male ejaculation is proof of a sensation so intense the body resorts to producing projectile substances. Semen amazes me; I just down want it congealing on my tongue.

Recognizing that being female with a female partner gives me very little creditability on that subject, I decided to seek some counsel from a pro cocksucker before offering any advice to the masses. I tracked down J after a stint of random hookups in various public restrooms, just returning from the clinic for his quarterly annual check-up. Turns out that the sore throat that he’s been battling is not Strep Throat, nor is it excess strain from singing at full volume along with Britany’s newest single. Turns out that J has oral chlamydia and it is affecting his mouth and throat.

Oral chlamydia? What the heck is that? I know all about genital chlamydia, but nothing about the oral variety. I caught up with an adolescent sexual health educator at a free Haight/Ashbury clinic for more information. She reported, “Many STIs can infect different parts of the body, depending on the place of contact. The mouth, throat, anus, genitals . . . they are all up for grabs.”

Bummer.

I was also informed of a memory rhyme for safer blowjob practice that is used frequently when advising new clients. It goes, “Spit or swallow, but don’t let it wallow.”

Who writes these things? Wallow?! I want to see the brochure that gets handed out to high school sophomores emblazoned with this doctrine.

The point of the rhyme, I am told, is to jog the old memory in a moment of unbridled passion and remind the blowjob giver to get the semen out of their mouth, stat. Turns out that “letting it wallow” is a Medium Risk behavior. The longer potentially STI infected semen stays in the mouth, the higher the potential risk of transferring oral gonorrhea, oral chlamydia, and, in some more extreme cases, HIV, to the receiver’s mouth, especially if you brush your teeth before you give head. Woah. To think, all this time I’ve been swallowing I’ve technically been practicing safer sex. Pat me on the back!

Take home message(s):

1. Oral sex is fun, entertaining, and a low-carb activity.
2. Don’t brush or floss before hooking up. Chew gum instead. And carry extra for your date.
3. No wallowing. It is bad for your health. Just swallow it already, or spit if you must. Aim for the cock—maybe he’ll like it.

— Rebekah Skoor, MA

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Give me a Cone, a Cone of my own…

Dear Blowfish,

Hey! What happened to the Cone?

It’s back! We had trouble getting the Cone from the manufacturer in the United Kingdom, but we’re pleased that it has returned to Blowfish Land.

Happy playing!

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Nea

What if you’re more of a clitoral-stimulation gal than a G-spot stimulation gal? Never fear, elegantly beautiful vibrating action for the clit is available from the same company that makes the Gigi with their tiny little vibe, the Nea. Shaped like a darling little bean (well, for a bean, it’s kinda big, but it’s small for a vibe), the Nea’s shiny hard plastic shell is femmed up by a trailing floral motif. At only about 3″ long and 1-7/16″ at the widest point, it fits neatly into the hand (palm or fingertips), and the slightly pointed nose is absolutely perfect for nestling right up against the clitoris. The gentle curve of the toy makes it snuggle up to whatever external bits you might enjoy vibrating, though, be they male, female or other. After a 2-hour charge, the manufacturer claims that this will run for 7 hours straight, or will hold a “stand-by” charge for up to 90 days (I was impatient and couldn’t wait that long to try it, however). Between the prettiness of the vibe itself and the elegant gift-box it comes in, this makes a truly luxurious gift for that special gal (or flower-loving man) in your life.

• Nea

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Gigi Rechargeable Silicone Vibrator

Oh, Gigi (Rechargeable Silicone Vibrator), what a wonderfully talented vibrator you are! Your silicone business end is shaped into such a cunning little wedge shape, just perfect for nestling right into the curve of the G-spot. You aren’t too wide (only an inch and a half across at most) nor do you overshoot by being too long (only three and a half inches — just perfect!), which makes you accessible even as a warm up. But what I love most about you, my darling Gigi, is your moods (or, ok, “modes”). Before you, I was a steady vibration kind of gal, and, while I like you in that mood, you’ve opened my eyes to the lure of the pulsation. Your little throbbing pulses feel almost like a nice steady rogering, and I love how I can choose whether to have you pulse nice and slow or fast and hard. After only 2 hours spent charging you last and last and last. And, with your deep rose color, satin carrying pouch and gift box, you’re the most elegant G-spot stimulation I’ve ever known. Don’t tell the other vibes, but you’re my new favorite.

• Gigi Rechargeable Silicone Vibrator

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Masterclass: Anal Sex

I know the reason other resource books on anal sex don’t include glossy pictures is probably because it’s expensive to print them, but wow, what a difference they make! Masterclass: Anal Sex is chock full of really lovely images of anal sex, and from full-color photographs to historical illustrations these are about as explicit as you could hope for. For the most part, they demonstrate the techniques or positions being described in the text, but despite their educational purpose, they’re also really, really, really useful for getting you turned on and rarin’ to go. Sure, there are more definitive books on anal sex out there, but the text of this one covers the basics clearly enough, and did we mention the pretty pretty pictures? A great choice for those who respond better to visual instruction but don’t want a DVD (or want their reference in a room other than the TV room), or for anyone wanting a reference book that’s also so hot it’s nearly wank material by itself. Recommended!

• Masterclass: Anal Sex

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Afrodite Superstar

Afrodite Superstar is a strange, witty, funny, and innovative film about gangsta rap culture, feminism, female empowerment, and self-acceptance. It also, almost incidentally, has a few sex scenes, but they aren’t the main thrust of the movie and, apart from the final scene, aren’t even all that integral to the plot. Feminist porn powerhouse Candida Royale is executive producer, and this is the first film from the “Femme Chocolat” imprint of her production company, devoted to making feminist porn featuring people of color. It’s a noble goal — there are way too many surgically-enhanced bottle blondes with scary fingernails in porn, and a little diversity is welcome — but I always worry when a movie comes pre-loaded with an Important Message and Agenda. Fortunately, the script is smart and funny, if sometimes a little heavy-handed — isn’t it enough for a character to quote Gloria Steinem and bell hooks, without the text of the quotes actually appearing on screen? Their hearts were in the right place, I guess, so never mind.

The plot concerns privileged “Black American Princess” Afrodite (played by the wonderful Simone Valentino) trying to make her way in the world without her rich father’s assistance. While helping her musically-talented friend Isis perform at a karaoke bar, Afrodite is discovered by hip-hop impresario CEO. (It occurs to me that most of the women in this film are named after Goddesses — Kali, Isis, Afrodite, Pandora — while most of the men are named after their jobs — CEO, Road Dawg, Criminal. Methinks there could be a film-studies thesis in that . . .) Afrodite agrees to let CEO make her into a superstar, which involves slutting up her wardrobe and having her lip-sync to Isis’s music, because Afrodite utterly lacks talent. Before long she’s completely immersed in the (gently satirized) gangsta culture of bitches and hos and violence, and it takes a series of misadventures and uncomfortable revelations to lead her back to herself. There’s even a sweet romance mixed in there. The fake music videos are a blast, and some of the jokes are hilarious, especially Afrodite’s fake thugette biography, which involves being born in prison and growing up in Compton. As for the actual sex scenes, well, there are some, and it’s always a pleasure to see Simone naked and frolicking, but sex isn’t the main point. Opportunities for sustained wanking are limited, but it would be a good choice for couples or people who don’t like more hardcore stuff. It’s a treat.

• Afrodite Superstar

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Cheating Housewives #4

I confess to being a bit mystified by the whole MILF thing. Not that I haven’t seen many beautiful women who happened to be mothers, but I don’t really get the fetishization of such women as a class. Is it the allure of experienced women? The temptation of forbidden fruit? Some weird incestuous impulse I’d really rather not consider too deeply? Savvy marketing on the part of porn stars who aren’t as young as they were when they got started in the business, and who got sick of being marginalized when they’re still plenty hot, thanks?

Whatever the reasons, I have a MILF video under consideration here today — Cheating Housewives #4. It is “100% MILF,” the box cover promises, but it’s clearly a lie, since the lovely Kylie Ireland doesn’t have any kids, and when I think of feminist porn legend Nina Hartley, I don’t think “Motherly.” But both Kylie and Nina are over age 35, so . . .. I’m even more bewildered by the whole MILF thing now. Apparently actual motherhood is not, in fact, strictly relevant. I should have realized I was being too literal. I guess “Mother I’d Like To Fuck” is just more acronym-friendly than “Woman Between the Ages of 35 and 50 I’d Like to Fuck.” Anyway. I’ll try to ignore the whole MILF thing and talk about the movie on its merits. And it has some merits! It’s a low-tech gonzo affair, a series of little vignettes with a common thread of infidelity. The first few scenes are fairly standard — there’s revenge-fucking, as when Nina Hartley invites two guys to fuck her in hopes that her cheating husband will walk in and get a taste of his own medicine, and there’s slumming, as when Kristal Summers picks up the dude who works at the quickie oil-change place and takes him to her suburban McMansion for an afternoon delight. But it gets weirder from there, when petite blonde Brittany Andrews puts on a strap-on and dishes out a punitive buttfucking to her husband because she found out he was cheating. (It’s a squirting strap-on dildo, which culminates in the rare spectacle of a woman giving a man a facial cumshot.) The best scene, though, has Kylie Ireland cheating on her husband, Mark Davis, who’s one of my favorite onscreen doms — I usually see him in bondage videos, or in the bondagey bits of more mainstream videos. Even though there’s not a whip or leash in sight, his toppy energy is in fine form as he catches his cheating wife and decides to show her lover how she really likes to be fucked.

So, to sum up: The MILF thing mystifies me, but this is good nasty hardcore porn with attractive women, who just happen to be over 35 (probably, I guess), and news flash, guys: most women hit their sexual peak in their 30s. Oh, wait. Maybe that’s the point of the whole MILF thing: to celebrate women hitting their sexual peak at a time when consumer commercial society arbitrarily deems them less sexy than their younger counterparts. (That would be pretty noble for porn, huh? Leave me my illusions.)

• Cheating Housewives #4

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Caught in the Net: A Bestiary

Fear not, this column isn’t about bestiality. (Well, I mean, not exactly.) In the middle ages, bestiaries were illustrated volumes of animals (and plants and occasionally rocks), often including implausible creatures like dragons, unicorns, and cockatrices (that is, a rooster with the tail of a lizard — not a creature that has three cocks, though that would certainly be worthy of a bestiary; even the noble wombat only has a two-headed penis). And even though we’ve subsequently discovered no factual basis for the existence of fire-breathing dinosaurs or horned horses, such fanciful creatures continue to possess a potent hold over the human imagination. And, like all things involving the human imagination, sex inevitably seeps in.

Symbolically speaking, unicorns are associated with purity and innocence (and often Christ), and the legend that only a virgin can touch a unicorn is well known. Horses, on the other hand, are potent symbols of sexuality, and since unicorns are most often depicted as horses with long rods on their heads . . . well, let’s just say some sexual implications are bound to pop up. Unicorn porn is alive and well in the virtual online world Second Life, you can acquire your very own incredibly adorable pet baby unicorn . . . but the only way to get it is to let an adult unicorn fuck you. That’s right — you bend over for the stallion, and once he’s had his way with you, you get a cute baby version of your sexual partner. You can also get reamed by a nightmare (a black horse), a stone demon, and a spider, and acquire other babies as a result. Isn’t the future a wonderful place?

Unicorns have their partisans, but few fantasy creatures have the ubiquitous power and influence of the dragon. Mighty, intelligent lizards, capable of breathing flame or spitting acid, wise, crafty, avaricious, long-lived . . . and some of them like to fuck cars. At least, if you look at the drawings in the directory linked above, that’s the impression you’ll get. The artwork is best described as “enthusiastically amateurish,” but is dragon/car slash really a subject that would benefit from the application of profound artistic talent? It’s such an odd little niche fetish that it’s tempting to say it must be a joke . . . but then I reflect on the fact that stranger things have been known to turn reasonable people on, and reserve judgment.

Tentacle porn could perhaps be lumped into this same taxonomy of sex-with-fantasy-creatures, though tentacled monsters owe more to the pulp horror of H.P. Lovecraft and his imitators than to older myths and legends. Still, it’s close enough to excuse a link to this wonderful Tentacle Hentai Birthday Cake. Now that’s art.

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OTAKU MAnKO: New England Journal Publishes “Comprehensive” Sex Survey of Older Americans

We’d like to welcome the latest column to the Blowfish Blog: Thomas Roche, sex author and editor, will be writing a weekly column on sex, science and technology, entitled OTAKU MAnKO (we’ll let him explain it later). Welcome, Thomas!

In last week’s New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago National Social Life, Health and Aging Project published the results of a study described as the first comprehensive national survey to chart sexual behavior among adults aged 57 to 85.

According to the University’s website, this survey overturns stereotypical notions about aging and sex (namely, that old people don’t like it). Edward Laumann, one of the report’s authors, told BBC News: “There are a lot of people who feel that age is very tightly correlated with sexual activity or interest . . . But it turns out that healthy people are sexually active if they have a partner, and that this is an important part of the quality of life.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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Couple’s Couch: Mint Jelly and Jumper Cables or: Debunking Fantasy Play

Isn’t it supposed to be that we meet, fall in love, choose sex-roles as either the top or the bottom, and run gleefully into the sunset and straight into the sack? That’s how my parents summed up the courting phase anyway, if in fewer, less explicit words. And if that is the case, then why do I hear from Y and Z that they negotiate their fantasy lives like they are making a grocery list, one man carefully laying out the toys he wants used on his ass while the other tries to pay attention and keep from squirming. It isn’t that these two aren’t desperately in love (they are), and it certainly isn’t that they don’t turn one another on (they do), it’s simply that they each want to have a kind of sex that the other finds, well, about as hot as scrubbing bathroom tile with a toothbrush, and not in that “good” kind of way.

What are we the needy, the fantasizing, the adventurous, the kinky to do when our fucking partners are only lukewarm about satisfying our well-wrought fantasies? Well, first I think we need to get the hell over it. You and your partner don’t have the same favorite vegetable side dish, prefer the same thickness of pillow, nor perform the same holiday traditions so why in the name of Timbuktu did you think you would want to be fucked the same way? Get over it. Now.

Second, we all need to just plain forget about our partner being able to guess what we want in bed as if they could sense it somehow with their fingertips or their advanced form of bedroom ESP. If I had a nickel for every blasted time I heard, “Well, I thought that they would figure it out eventually…nsbp;.…nsbp;.…nsbp;.”. Here’s a hint: they are never going to guess that you wanted jumper cables, mint jelly on your nipples, and three of their best friends to hold you down and lick you raw, so you are going to have to tell them.

Third, you may have to do more than tell them. If you are really serious about getting what you want, you’d better have already shopped for the mint jelly, text-messaged all of their friends, and taped a set of jumper cables to the bottom of the bed frame when you drop this twisted idea of yours onto their unsuspecting head.

And fourth, and most importantly, you have to ask. You have to ask and anticipate that you will be rejected. You have to be ready to wait awhile for the fantasy to occur, perhaps for months. You have to be ready to explain, negotiate, beg, and/or barter. You are asking for a slice of someone’s time, dedication, and most of all, you are asking for them to emotionally take-on fulfilling your personal fantasy.

They run many risks by accepting the tasks you ask of them. Should they accept your plea, they make themselves vulnerable to feeling or looking ridiculous, of interacting with you in ways that could feel yucky to them, of potentially hurting you, of not being turned on in the slightest or being far more turned on than they wanted, or, and scariest of all, of not doing it right. Oh yes, there is that. Not doing it well enough or looking convincing enough or failing to deliver the goods is enough to make the gamest of players quake in their boots.

So, a few suggestions?

Those on the getting end:

1. Be clear. If you say you want one friend but you were secretly hoping for three, do not be disappointed when only one shows up. That isn’t fair. Be a grownup and put your cards on the table. And while you are at it, let’s make your verbalized fantasies somewhat realistic. You know what I mean.
2. They might say no, so be prepared for disappointment. But, they might also say no to some part of it and yes to the rest. It is up to you to swallow your boner and agree to taking baby steps. Rome wasn’t built in a day and let’s face it, Rome is a little more realistic than some of the things you are asking for.
3. They are taking you on so be prepared to either treat them in kind with fulfilling a fantasy of theirs or be eager, and I do mean eage r, to say thank-you in some other way. I find waxing the car gets me a lot of mileage.
4. DO NOT expect them to be perfect. It is likely your lover is doing their damndest to be all they can be, so you best be on your knees thanking your lucky stars that you have someone who wants you enough to try.

To those on the giving end:

1. Say yes to as much of the fine print as you can. This does not mean you have to meet your lover’s every whim, but aim for at least the ballpark.
2. Stay true to yourself. It is fine (and great!) to leave your comfort zone, but if you leave it around the corner and down in the neighbor’s basement, you won’t have a good time and so neither will they.
3. I have some bad news. You aren’t going to do it exactly right. That said, move on and do your best. Oh, and don’t think about how much you are messing up the hip thrust while you are doing it. They will see that silly, vacant look of concentration on your face and the world you just created will come crashing down on your heads. Breathe, pretend you are in acting class or, better yet, that you are someone else entirely. Remember, you are a sex god(dess) and that their overactive imagination is filling in the rest of the details.
4. Enjoy yourself! This is supposed to be fun! After all, your partner could have picked just about anyone to enact this fantasy and they chose you. You must therefore be the goods, so stop worrying already.
5. Next time, it will beyour turn. Better put that thinking cap on and come up with something good…nsbp;.…nsbp;.…nsbp;.

Of course, any success stories (or utter disasters) should be told, in full, here. We delight in your attempts, no matter their outcome.

Happy playing and good luck!

— Rebekah Skoor, MA

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Pain, Connection, and Being Here Now

Why does pain feel good?

Why, for some people, under some conditions, do certain kinds of stimuli that my body would normally process as unpleasant get processed as pleasant instead? Not just pleasant, but hot and dirty and intensely desirable?

I’ve been a practicing masochist (and sadist) for so long that I sometimes forget what an odd thing this is. Pain is pretty much by definition the body saying No. Why is it that in certain conditions, with certain kinds of pain, my body says Yes instead?

Not just Yes, but More, Harder, Please Don’t Stop?

And I am talking about pain. Not “intense sensation.” Sometimes I’ll experience a mild spanking or a sweet flogging as more like a massage or something. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about P-A-I-N Pain, the kind of pain that my body is screaming No to at the exact moment it’s screaming Yes.

It’s a little odd. What is it about?

First, let me state for the record: I’m just talking about myself here. I’m not proposing a Unified Field Theory of Sexual Masochism. I’m trying to figure out what’s true for me, on the assumption that it might be true for some other people as well.

Okay. So what’s this about?

A lot of it is about context, of course: emotions, fantasies. If you have fantasies about power, subservience, force, what have you, pain can intensify the fantasy and make it more immediate, more believable. It’s the enforcer of the power, the reminder of who’s in charge.

But for me at least, the fantasy isn’t necessary. I can get off on a spanking in a completely egalitarian, “this is the two of us doing things together that we both get off on” context, with no power games even in my head. The context does need to be sexual – if someone hit me across the ass with a cane out of nowhere, I’d experience it as purely unpleasant badness, and I’d be pissed – but it doesn’t need to be about subservience or power or any of that. It can be about two (or more) equal people having sexy fun.

So there’s clearly a big component of this that is purely physical: a physiological crossing of the wires so deeply ingrained that I sometimes think it’s genetic.

Of course you’ve got your endorphins, the natural feel-good opiates produced by your brain when you’re in pain, etc. etc. But that doesn’t completely explain it, either. Endorphins are why a spanking or whipping will generally make me high and happy over the course of a scene. They don’t explain why the moment of pain itself — the instant the lash hits my skin — gets translated into ecstasy.

I think there’s something else going on as well, something that works both in my body and my heart.

It’s that pain gets through.

I can be a fairly distant person: frightened of strangers, lots of defenses and barriers, more comfortable alone than in a crowd, more comfortable expressing myself and connecting with people at a distance (hence the writing!), with a powerful need to withdraw into my head dozens of times a day. Intimacy and connection are hard for me, and during intense moments of intimacy I have a tendency to get distracted, space out, change the subject, crack a joke. Not that uncommon, I suppose.

And I’m also a person who has a hard time being here now. My inner chatterbox is always going a mile a minute, fretting over the past and making elaborate algorithms for the future (”if she says X, I’ll say Y; if B happens, I’ll do C”). Living in the moment, being completely present and conscious in the here and now: not my specialty. Again, probably not that unusual.

Even during sex. I love vanilla sex too, and once I get lost in the moment of my tongue on her clit or her fingers on mine, I can get well and truly lost. But it takes more concentration for me to get there, more conscious effort to stay in the moment and not space out or get distracted by some weird mental tangent.

Which brings me back to pain.

There is no distraction from the lash of a cane. There is no spacing out, no changing of the subject, no cracking of jokes. The pain brings me into the here and now more effectively and reliably than almost any other experience: more than music, more than exercise, more than art. (The only other thing that really compares is food – and it has to be astonishingly good food.)

And the pain reminds me that there’s another person out there. The moment that the lash lands on my skin is the moment that she’s touching me. And it’s a touch that gets all the way through. It’s a touch that cuts through my defenses and distractions and the ceaseless running commentary in my head, to land directly in my heart. It’s a touch that makes me know, just for a microsecond, that we are both here now, and that we’re here together.

Greta Christina, copyright © 2007. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.

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Pump It Up!

Dear Blowfish,

I’ve never seen you advertise the vacuum-pump suction devices used to create a male erection. Should I interpret this as an oversight, a mistake, lack of interest, or disapproval on your part? I’m wondering whether you’ve had experience with them. If so, do you have an opinion as to their effectiveness and safety? Any info?

For years we resisted penis pumps, but a few months ago we finally brought one on. We don’t support the packaging’s claims that it will make you permanently bigger, but it will help engorge your member with extra blood for a short period of time. And we’re pretty sure that it’s not meant to give you and erection so much as engorge one that you already have. You can read our full review on our website.

Happy playing!

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Rabbit Habit, Elastomer

The “rabbit” style vibrator is one of our most popular, thanks to a glowing (and we do mean glowing) recommendation by the women on Sex in the City a few years back. Suddenly, everyone and their mother wanted an in/out vibe of their very own, preferably with the “out” part shaped like an adorable little rabbit to tickle the clitoris. I’m happy to say that the Rabbit Habit has lived up to the mega-hype; there’s just something about a grinding, stirring shaft working its magic inside you while that little bunny goes to town on your clit that can drive many a woman to previously unheard-of heights of orgasmic bliss.

Well, this old (in sex-toy years, that is) favorite is now available in the hottest new sex-toy material, Elastomer. The Rabbit Habit, Elastomer is created from 100% phthalate-free, latex-free elastomer, so there’s almost no chemical odor and it’s overall just safer to use on your tender bits. This in/ out vibe also has a battery compartment at the bottom of the toy, which means no wires to get tangled up in while you’re thrashing about. The widest point is about 1-1/2″ (where the beads jumble about on the shaft) and it’s 4″ insertable. This is one bunny that knows how to show a lady a very, very, good time.

• Rabbit Habit, Elastomer

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The Essential Kama Sutra

The The Essential Kama Sutra is my new favorite version of this ancient text. Why? Well, in addition to the familiar Sir Richard Burton translation and smattering of Indian drawings of the positions, this book takes it two steps further by including photographs of a real-life couple, Sally and John, trying each position and commenting on what they thought of it. Not only does this make this a very hot book (these are not faked insertion shots, though they don’t go out of their way to make it overly explicit, either), but it makes it very approachable and fun to read. Sally and John clearly have a good sense of humor, healthy sex life and very decent flexibility (though I admit I found it reassuring when, for the picture of the Fixing of a Nail, it’s just a picture of Sally admitting that they tried, but she’s just not flexible enough to achieve the position; it’s one best left for the gymnasts and yogis). Between their feedback and the easy-to-keep-open size of the book (10″ x 7-1/2″), it’s easier than ever to try these ancient sexual positions at home! Recommended!

• The Essential Kama Sutra

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Stare: Photographs

Flipping through Stare: Photographs is like prowling through a very high-end, trendy nightclub in a major world city — without having to stress over the dress code yourself or whether the bouncer will let you in. These women are wearing everything from simple naughty school-girl outfits to out-and-out fetish gear, and from the way a few of them devour each other in front of photographer Derek Ridgers’ camera, it’s clear that I’ve been going to the wrong clubs. Beautiful, confident, saucy, naughty, defiant and flaunting it, these are not what you’d call the “girl next door”, but sometimes it’s nice to get out of the neighborhood. All black-and-white photography.

• Stare: Photographs

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Erection Services

So, Erection Services. (Heh. “Erection.” Heh.) Despite the impression created by a long opening credits sequence featuring the principal male performers standing around in front of wind machines with their shirts open, it’s not gay porn. It’s actually another good buff beefcake flick from InPulse, a company that specializes in making porn for the (straight) ladies. Headliner Julian is his usual hard-bodied, tattooed, big-dicked self, and the camera spends a lot of time lingering over his physique, and those of his co-stars. This time, in addition to seeing the sweat glisten on Julian’s muscular shoulders, we get to see him slathered in massage oil! Definitely a good idea.

The plot is thin, but silly enough to mention. Julian’s ex-girlfriend tells him that men don’t understand what women want, so to prove her wrong, he does what any reasonable person would do in such a situation: he gets a couple of his friends together, and they found a freelance gigolo start-up! That’s right. They become man-whores. (In the first scene they even have a hard time getting gigs — despite the fact that they own a Hummer limousine! — which is amusing.) In the course of plying his sweaty, sweaty trade, Julian discovers that, in fact, his old girlfriend was right — men don’t understand women! His insights, however, are not especially deep. It turns out women like it when you undress them slowly and treat them nice. And, um, that’s about all he manages to articulate. Still, we should judge him not by his words but by his deeds, and there’s a definite slant here toward the taste of women and away from the taste of the emotionally stunted misognynistic fourteen-year-olds that so much mainstream porn seems geared toward. For instance, there’s lots of cunnilingus, and some foot worship, and a guy using a vibrator and going down on a woman simultaneously. And only a couple of facial cumshots. And the anal sex (all that massage oil came in handy) is rather tender if — sadly — quite brief.

Also, while I don’t claim to be an expert on the fantasy lives of women, if stereotypes are to be believed, the sight of a buff half-naked guy admitting he was wrong must be some kind of turn-on! This would be a good choice for easing your porn-shy wife or girlfriend into the world of nasty videos, and if she gets all hotted up from watching Mr. Buff McBuffington and his oiled-up cock, fear not, for you’ll reap the rewards. Just remember to rub her feet first.

• Erection Services

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Cherry Bomb

I’m trying not to think too deeply about the plot of Cherry Bomb. I mean, basically, everybody who takes part in a sex scene? Ends up dead by the end of the film. Shoved down a flight of stairs, poisoned, stabbed with a barbecue implement, exploded in a car bomb, and shot in the head. Well, one person doesn’t die — our leading lady, Cherry. She’s a suspect in all the other murders, though, so it’s not like she’s untouched by the Reaper’s scythe, as it were. The film begins with Cherry — played by Monique Alexander — in a police interrogation room, being browbeaten by an improbably scantily-clad hot cop played by Alektra Blue. (And, yes, from moment one, there’s little doubt that the two of them will wind up getting naked and playing bad cop / bad prisoner on the conference table, but let’s not call it predictability — let’s call it building anticipation!) Cherry, a prostitute, is suspected of a series of murders — one of her clients, her pimp, her father, her best friend, another client and a couple of other hookers. Quite the body count! There are a number of, shall we say, crime-scene re-enactments, all involving fucking, as Cherry pleads her innocence and scoffs at Alektra’s silly circumstantial evidence. After all, she says — these people were her family, her lovers, her livelihood; why would she want to hurt them? Alektra believes her explanations, and they celebrate by fucking. Probably against police regulations, but, hey — love cannot be governed by your mortal laws. They even have a big dildo on hand to enhance their enjoyment, and its presence is actually explained: it’s a piece of evidence from one of the crime scenes! You have to appreciate that kind of attention to detail. Other things you have to appreciate: Lots of anal, sexy outfits including schoolgirl garb and slutty red dresses, and a long and messy three-way scene with Hillary Scott, Flower Tucci (justly famous for her squirting prowess), and lucky man Jay Huntington (well, lucky until he gets exploded by a car bomb, anyway). All three performers are wet, sticky, satisfied, and exhausted by the time they’re finished. That, my friends, is a sign of good porn. Was Cherry really innocent of those heinous crimes with which she was accused? All is revealed at film’s end, but I’ll let you watch and see for yourself.

• Cherry Bomb

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Steel Phalluses in Love Land

America has the occasional sex museum and a few high-profile celebrations of sexuality (Folsom Street Fair comes to mind), but as a nation we’re largely repressive amateurs when it comes to the public educational and celebratory aspects of sex. Hell, a lot of people don’t even recognize the symbolic significance of all those eggs and bunnies rolling and hopping around during our spring fertility festival — er, I mean, Easter.

But it’s impossible to miss the sexual gist of Kanamara Matsuri, a Shinto festival held in Kawasaki, Japan every April. The presence of an enormous steel phallus being paraded through the town by transvestites is the tip-off. This “Festival of the Steel Phallus” dates back to the Edo period — so we’re talking at least a couple of hundred years — when prostitutes would visit a local shrine and pray for protection from venereal disease. Now the festival is a fundraising hub for HIV research; the goddess would probably approve. There are penises carved out of radishes, see-saws shaped like penises, and other such delights. According to the Wikipedia article linked above, there’s a myth about a demon hiding inside a woman’s vagina and castrating two men on their wedding nights. The demon was finally driven out after a blacksmith fashioned a giant steel phallus to, ahem, break the demon’s teeth. Doesn’t sound much fun for anyone involved. (And one wonders about the second guy who got castrated . . . you might think he’d have given some credence to the rumors he surely heard about that girl . . .) For more details (and photos) about the festival, check out this entry from the Steve Goes Traveling blog, and this more newsy and informative article from Metropolis.

While we’re marveling at the sexual coolness of Asian countries, I’ll make brief mention of this neat photo story about an erotic garden in Korea. Love Land is a sculpture garden devoted to sex, and some of the sculptures are even interactive. Yeah, that’s right. Wikipedia has more details, and there’s also an official website, if you’re interested in checking the place out firsthand. There’s even a separate play area for the kids! There are also sex-related museums in Japan, and you can read about these Houses of Hidden Treasures at Juergen Specht, along with lots and lots of photos. There oughta be a Lonely Planet guide for this stuff.

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