What’s more intimate than sex? Well, depending on who you are and what feels intimate to you, maybe nothing. I don’t feel that way about it, though – at least not right now.

I’m thinking a lot lately about the role of sex in my life, as I toy with the idea that I might be more asexual than I’d previously realized. (More on that in the coming weeks, I would imagine, as I re-read my favorite asexuality resources and ponder my entire sexual history through this new lens. Sigh. Being a sex nerd is a tough gig, but somebody’s gotta do it!)

One thing I’ve realized is that I’ve often used sex as a way to try to feel closer to someone – but it doesn’t always have the intended effect, at least not for me. In fact, sometimes if I rush into sex with a new person, I start dissociating and internally panicking pretty much immediately, which is the opposite of intimacy: being trapped inside my own head, seemingly unable to communicate with the other person about how I feel and what I need. No wonder I walked away from so many sexual encounters in my twenties feeling like I’d widened the gulf between me and another human, rather than bridging that gap with touch and closeness and pleasure.

The ‘solution’ to this problem, to the extent that there is one, is threefold: I have to 1) be choosier and slower about starting new sexual entanglements (check!) and 2) work on my in-the-moment communication when I start to get anxious or feel triggered (difficult, but usually doable). The third thing, though, is not directly sex-related: I have to 3) identify what actually does make me feel closer to someone, and do more of those things, with people who have shown themselves to be trustworthy and kind. That seems to create a firmer foundation from which my attraction and desire can more safely develop (if they’re going to), like a seed safely situated in a well-tended little pot of soil.

People ask me all the time: “How have you managed to make a long-distance relationship work for over 7 years?!” (My wife and I just moved in together, finally – hence why I just moved to New York. Wish us mazel tov!)

There are a few points I always make when I answer this question – it helps to have compatible communication styles and to figure out the sex stuff ASAP, for example – but perhaps the most important one is that when my partner and I were long-distance, we spoke on the phone for hours, at least a few nights a week, every single week.

I really think those phone calls were the thing that made our LDR sustainable – because they felt like having actual conversations with my actual partner. Texting, by contrast, is usually asynchronous and sporadic, and it’s easy to lose the nuance of tone that way, especially when talking dirty and/or navigating conflict. Phone calls feel so much more connective. At this point I can’t imagine how I’d ever have a long-distance relationship again without regular, leisurely phone calls to keep us feeling close.

There is a middle ground, however, between texting and phone calls, and that’s voice notes: little audio clips you send back and forth. I used to wish there were more dating apps which offered this functionality, because I always found I could get a sense of someone much quicker if I heard their voice – not just its tone and timbre, but the way they speak, the words and phrases they use, the inflection and unique musicality of their speech. Still to this day, whether I know someone very well or not at all, I feel closer to them when I can hear their voice – sometimes in a really hot way. It’s common for me to exchange little voice memos with far-away people I’m flirting with; it concretizes our connection, making it feel bigger and more vivid, even if our entire relationship technically exists only within our phones.

Here’s some advice that I’ve found to be true across romantic, sexual, and creative realms: The more that you fail at something, the more you’ll learn about how to succeed at that thing instead – and the happier you’ll be, because you’ll learn that failure does not kill you.

This principle runs so counter to my nature that I’ve had to learn it over and over again, and even today as I’m writing this, I’m still not sure I 100% believe it (although, trust me, it is true). As a former “gifted & talented” kid, I often get frustrated with myself whenever I struggle with anything at all: cooking a new meal, trying a new art form, going to a new place. You’re supposed to be smart! says the critical voice in my head. You can’t embarrass yourself by being bad at things, especially where other people could see! I’ve given up on many endeavors simply because I wasn’t instantly good at them (ninth-grade ballet class comes to mind…) and I’m sure that in doing so, I’ve lost out on a lot of joy/fun/learning.

These days, I am trying to get more comfortable with failure. One of the best ways to do this is to take an improv class – and in fact, the first improv class I ever took, in the eleventh grade, was where I initially learned this lesson, because improv is the perfect training ground for tolerating failure. Sure, your first ~dozen terrible scenes will leave you ruminating shamefully on your mistakes for a while (if you’re anything like me, anyway), but once you’ve done enough of them, you see how ephemeral these scenes are. You also see that your classmates (probably) don’t judge you for fucking up, because they’ve had their own fuck-ups too, most of which you probably forgot about instantly, same way they probably forgot about yours. You see that each time you fail, you learn a bit more about what not to do (especially if you have a great teacher who reinforces these lessons in constructive ways), and so you get better and better over time.

I think the emotional side of “failure tolerance” is its most valuable aspect, though. The more times you’ve failed, the less afraid you become of failure, which allows you to take bigger risks, since you know even the worst-case scenario is endurable. I think getting good at improv is less about adding skills (though it’s that too) and more about subtracting fear and self-judgment, since good improv comes from a flow-state place of trusting your gut and following your momentary impulses – and in the same exact way, I think we get braver and better at life in general when we know that failure will not kill us, and will, in fact, only make us hotter. Uh, I mean, stronger.

I’ve been a writer for most of my life, and I’ve been a hopeless romantic for even longer. So, naturally, I am writing a romance novel. I’ve been drafting it on-and-off for about a year, and am about 50,000 words into my first draft.

There is plenty of writing available about the craft of romance novels: how to structure them, build romantic tension between characters, and so on. I have been devouring these texts as I slowly chip away at my draft – but I’ve also found myself craving information about the more psychological or emotional side of writing a romance novel. There’s a lot less of that type of writing, although it has been an experience unlike any other in my career – so I thought I’d tell you a bit about it today. I’m sure the experience will change a lot as time goes on (final edits might be more annoying than pie-in-the-sky drafting, for instance!) but here’s where I’m at right now…

1) I’m a total swoondog, bro.

I giggled maniacally when I encountered the word “swoondog” in Christopher Downing’s excellent book Fool Proof Romance. Chris doesn’t define it, but from context clues, I gathered it was meant as a romantic/crushy equivalent of being a “horndog” (something I also am, at times).

I think sex robots are cool, but I don’t think they’re hot.

Everyone is talking about A.I. these days. It feels like most of the pitches in my inbox are about new A.I.-based dating apps, sex toys, erotica websites, and on and on. Robots are flooding the zone!

Like many people, though, I have mixed feelings on A.I., particularly on its usefulness within the realms of sex and love. I have written a lot about sex robots over the years (most notably, this fancy column on the future of sexuality that I was commissioned to write for The Walrus) and have even sexted with an A.I., and while I think these robots are interesting toys and tools, I fundamentally don’t think they are hot…

…because I think, for me, the hottest thing about sex (and kissing, and flirting, etc.!) is wanting and being wanted, and a robot is inherently incapable of desire. It does not want me. It cannot want me. And so I cannot truly want it, either.

I’m writing a romance novel where the two leads are both sex nerds – that is to say, people who are passionately geeky and analytical about sexuality – and it’s making me more aware than ever: Sex nerds are my favorite kind of people. We are relentlessly curious, unabashedly dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, and (if I may say so) often quite hilarious and charming. And of course, it goes without saying that if you take us to bed, we will do our damnedest to make it good for you – and we will have done the required reading in advance!

I get along so well with fellow sex nerds, in fact, that I wish there were better ways for us to recognize each other ‘in the wild,’ aside from our subtle sex toy jewelry, enamel pins from sex conferences, etc.! As-is, I mostly meet them in environments specifically designed to attract them, like fisting workshops and vintage porn screenings… and when I do, I’m always glad to know so many weird sex facts I can bust out at a moment’s notice to impress my fellow dorks.

Sharing is caring, as the saying goes, so here are a few such facts that I’ll gift to you, so you can gift them to your future sex-nerd crushes like beautiful little vulva-shaped flowers…

The plural of clitoris is clitorides.

I got rejected this week. It sucks, but it happens. And fortunately(?), I’ve been on both sides of it enough times to have a toolkit for getting through it, which I’ll share with you here today. Feel free to send this along to someone who needs it!

A note on being the person who does the rejecting: That also fucking sucks! I hate it! Many of these tips can be adapted in some way to suit your needs if you’re struggling emotionally in the aftermath of rejecting someone, especially since I think similar feelings of shame can come up in both scenarios (although my shame, when doing the rejecting, is less “No one will ever love me again” and more “I am a heartless bitch who doesn’t deserve any of the love she receives,” but I digress).

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When you lose your way in life, it’s vital to have tools that can guide you back toward yourself and what truly matters to you, so you can get back on track.

Some people journal, some do psychedelics, some go on weeks-long silent meditation retreats. Some people hit the gym, sign up for skydiving, or book a trip someplace they can eat/pray/love. Some people read a lot of self-help books, or write one, or burn one ceremoniously in a bucket in the woods. Some people get a tattoo, a piercing, bangs, a Porsche. Some people seek counsel from their friends, their mom, their professor, or their god.

Me? I look to my crushes to see what’s next.

My journals are full of entries that pick through crushes like tea leaves, trying to puzzle out what they mean. My big attractions lead me to big questions, which lead to big thoughts about my life and my identity. A few recent examples of many:

It’s a tough time to have a job that requires you to be sexually aroused. (To be fair, it’s a tough time to have a lot of jobs, and mine ranks pretty low on the stress scale – but it’s the one I know and am qualified to write about!)

This week alone, I had three – count ‘em, three – dildo reviews on my docket. As you’ve probably heard, dildos are generally designed to penetrate an orifice… and inconveniently enough, my orifices were clenched so tight from life stress and doomscrolling that they could’ve squeezed a lump of coal into some kind of vagina diamond. (Hey, free drag name/burlesque name/band name if ya need one!)

Sure, I could review a sex toy from an unaroused state – but would you want to read a restaurant review written by someone who’d eaten a full meal before going into the joint they were meant to review? Probably not, because the reviewer wouldn’t be physically or mentally equipped at that time (in all likelihood) to give the restaurant a fair shake. Likewise, I need to be sufficiently aroused when I test sex toys; otherwise I just feel like my genitals are being poked and prodded, and that experience would make for a pretty boring and useless review.

So needless to say, my uncharacteristically low libido made it troublesome that I was contractually on the hook to fuck three dildos. As a result, my testing sessions this week were some of the most difficult I’ve ever had – which, let’s face it, it’s masturbating in my own comfy bed, so even at rock-bottom, it’s hardly a gruelling day at the office (or in the mines)! But nonetheless, it was a comedy of errors from start to finish. I’d start to get turned on from reading some hot erotica on my phone, and then suddenly get a stress-spiking notification that drained all my lust in an instant. So I’d put down my phone and switch to fantasizing about my crushes du jour, and I’d quickly get overcome by panicky doubt (“What if they don’t like me?! Or, perhaps even scarier, what if they DO like me?!?”) and have to do some deep breathing to calm down. I’d refocus on hot mental images to get back into the zone, only for my building’s fire alarm to go off (it was a false alarm, but the adrenaline it dumped into my bloodstream was entirely real). And so on and so forth, until eventually I had gathered enough testing notes to write a goddamn review.

When I go on a first, second, or third date with someone, it’s because something about them has intrigued me, so I’m interested in finding out more about them, and in discovering whether we might be compatible for a relationship, a situationship, a copulationship, or anything in between.

This is why it’s utterly bizarre to me that over the course of my adult life, I’ve been on several dates with several men (and yes, it was always and only men) who asked me literally zero questions the entire time.

You could call this behavior rude, you could call it self-absorbed, and in plenty of cases you would be right about that. But I also think there are some cases where the person isn’t trying to be an egomaniacal convo-killing dick, per se; they just don’t have the interpersonal skill or experience to know how to further a conversation. Or they get nervous and clam up in the moment, leaving their conversation partner to do all the heavy lifting (which, let’s face it, is not most people’s idea of a fun date; it’s certainly not mine, as a journalist who literally interviews people for work, and therefore would rather not do it off the clock too).

When someone asks me zero questions on a date, it doesn’t just frazzle my nervous system with the constant stress of having to run a whole conversation myself, and it doesn’t just make me assume my date finds me utterly boring and unappealing – it also makes it near-impossible for me to muster even a scrap of sexual attraction for them. How can I even contemplate relaxing into sexy pleasurable feelings with you, and trusting you with that vulnerability, if I don’t believe that you know me, like me, and want me – at least a little? And if you never ask me questions, I never feel known, I never feel liked, and I never feel wanted – so I never feel turned on, desirous, or even flirty, either. Why would I? To want sex with someone would require me to believe that sex with them could be good, and if someone’s shown no interest in my inner experience at all, I have no reason to think they’d care about my pleasure. That would require caring about what I think, and asking me questions… something you can prove your ability to do by simply doing it, starting long before any clothes come off. 🥵 

I used to think my nose and my forehead were the only things standing between me and true love. I know that sounds insane, but that’s really what I thought.

Like many of you reading this, I grew up in an era when female celebrities’ looks were picked apart in tabloids, when women’s magazines ran constant articles on how to “minimize” your body’s “problem areas,” and when TV makeover shows made it seem like a haircut and a flattering pair of jeans could fix your entire life. As an intrepid young romantic, I studied these texts like field guides, always seeking the secret knowledge that might transform me from a quivering, boy-repellent wallflower into a beautiful belle of the ball. I believed love mattered more than anything else (I still believe that), and I believed the only way to find or deserve love was to be pretty. (That one, I only sometimes still believe… and I’ve spent a lot of money on therapy to get to that point, thank you very much!)

One thing that strikes me now, looking back at all the media influences that tried to teach me how to be a Hot Girl, is how fake it all was. These types of articles frequently instructed readers to “be yourself!” while simultaneously offering scads of advice on doing just the opposite. Cut bangs to veil your big forehead, throw on a wrap dress to cinch your belly, slip into some control-top tights to mask your cellulite – hide more and more of yourself, basically, until you become an approximation of acceptable attractiveness – and then and only then, somebody might actually like you.

This struck me as unhinged and nonsensical at the time, and yet it was constantly presented as “just the way things were,” at least in the cis-het dating sphere (I thought I was straight back then). In addition to its misogynist attempts to curtail women’s personhood and spirit (not to mention finances), there’s something vaguely misandrist about this type of messaging, too – it seems to insist that all men/boys want the same things, and that they care about a woman’s looks to the exclusion of literally everything else, which simply isn’t true. Even the shallowest, shittiest fuckboys I’ve ever met must have some standards – they won’t date a woman who’s in a cult or an MLM, say – and yet dating advice aimed at women and girls in the oughts was so often just: Be blonde, thin, hairless, and agreeable, and you’re golden.

As I tossed my Magic Wand aside and struggled to catch my breath after a brain-shakingly intense orgasm, I reflected on the fantasy that had gotten me off – a virginal, inexperienced young man ejaculating in his pants from me merely kissing him – and I wondered: Am I part of the problem?

(Yes, that was a Carrie Bradshaw-ass way to open an essay. I doubt Carrie ever jerked off to the thought of a dude blowing his load in his boxer-briefs two minutes into a makeout, though, so we’ll diverge fairly drastically from here on out…)

Premature ejaculation – and dick sensitivity in general – has become a bigger and bigger part of my fantasy life over the past few years. It’s incredibly hot to me, the idea of someone being so excited, surprised, or overwhelmed by my touch (or even just my attention) that they can’t control their bodily responses. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with my own insecurities; what could be a better antidote to feeling undesirable than to have someone jizz in their jeans from just the sight of your sensuous bod? But there are other elements of the fantasy that turn me on too: the embarrassment that the premature ejaculator would feel; the shameful secrecy involved if he tried to conceal that he’d come, or (even worse) tried to push through and have sex with an already-spent dick; maybe even the extra-humiliating element of me talking shit about him in his ear, saying other men had satisfied me more because they could last longer. (This is false – partners who come quick have always excited me more, for reasons that should be self-evident at this point – but it’s still a hot thought!)

I can’t help but notice, though (oh god, there’s Carrie again), that this fantasy bears some resemblance to one that’s much more common and much more celebrated in our society: (some) men’s fantasies about “deflowering” a virginal young woman.

Recently I was in a silly mood while on some intoxicants, and I was pondering some of my favorite historical sex toys, as one does… when the phrase “The Cone is a koan” popped into my head, and I laughed so hard that I choked on my negroni.

Let me briefly define my terms…

The Cone is an infamous vibrator made by British brand Twisted Products circa ~2007. As its name suggests, it’s conical – like a traffic cone, except shorter and wider. You were supposed to sort of sit down on top of it. Theoretically it could feel good on the vaginal and/or anal opening, although I always thought it looked too pointy/pokey and wide to feel good, at least for me.

A question that shouldn’t be depressing, yet sometimes it is: “If you could say one thing to your younger self, what would it be?”

Maybe you’d tell them to spend more time with family, or to make more art. Maybe you’d throw them a financial lifeline (“Invest in some guy named Steve Jobs, trust me!”). Maybe you’d just remind them to floss their damn teeth.

But one common answer I’ve heard from people when discussing this question, especially from women, is some version of: “I wish I could tell her that even though she thinks she’s hideous, she’s actually beautiful.”

I’ve wished that too. My younger self was convinced she was unloveably ugly, and she acted accordingly: shy, skittish, and self-critical. And when I look back at her now, I sometimes wonder: If she had felt beautiful, and had acted like she felt beautiful, would people have seen more beauty in her? I think so.

There are soooo many myths about sex toys that I wish would just die, from the idea of them being "addictive," to the assumption that only awkward losers use them. (Both laughably false! I mean, hell, celebrities like Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera and Chappell Roan have been open about using sex toys... Do you really think they're awkward losers?! Not to mention, even us awkward losers deserve pleasure!)

Another such myth, which I loathe, is that you should only use sex toys if you "need" them. Most recently I saw this raised in a Reddit thread about men using sex toys, and whether it is (or should be) more stigmatized than women using them. A woman was uncomfortable with her husband's new vibrating stroker, and tried to rationalize her reaction by saying that men don't "need" toys as much as women do, because men are more easily sexually satisfied than women – and that, for this reason, men using sex toys is somehow "weirder" than women using them.

It's certainly true that cis men's sexuality is often assumed to be simpler and more straightforward than cis women's sexuality in our culture, but the science doesn't totally back up that assumption. As I learned from Dr. Laurie Mintz's great book Becoming Cliterate, studies show that most cis women tend to reach orgasm without much trouble, so long as they're getting adequate, sustained clitoral stimulation – the same way that most cis men need adequate, sustained penile stimulation to reach orgasm. The clit and dick are effectively the same body part, after all; they just developed differently in utero. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and all that!

As I told the woman on Reddit who felt threatened by her husband's stroker, there's a reason they're called sex toys – it's because they exist for the purpose of fun and pleasure. There are occasional deviations from this – for instance, some sadomasochistic toys are more painful than pleasurable (although their diehard users may tell you otherwise), and some medical aids like vaginal dilators and penis pumps get lumped into the sex toys category even though their usage may not always be 'fun,' per se. But broadly speaking, sex toys are meant to be enjoyable tools for exploration and experimentation, like paintbrushes or musical instruments. Seen through that lens, it's obvious that you don't have to "need" a sex toy to be allowed to use one.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. We’re seeing that all around us right now: protests spilling through streets, unionization efforts, grassroots healthcare initiatives. When times are especially bad, you have to do more things that are especially good in order to counteract that.

The same is true in our romantic and sexual lives, too. We must throw our cards on the table more brazenly and boldly than ever before – at least, if our goal is to continue to forge and deepen our connections to other human beings, at a time when human connection is more politically and personally important than ever.

But let me back up a sec, because this piece is actually about how I DMed a cute boy about a horror movie 5 months ago and now we talk every day.

I have spent a lot of these pandemic times daydreaming about intimacy but doing little to actually achieve it. (Maybe you can relate?) Outside of my safe and splendid relationship with my spouse, I’ve found it harder and harder to connect with people on a romantic or sexy level in recent years, for a tangled web of reasons, including COVID concerns, mental health struggles, and the lingering sting of past rejections. I’ve met a few cool people and been on a few nice dates, but mostly I’ve felt too tense and guarded to really let anybody in. My hopes for new romance receded into placid daydreams, which felt safer and more plausible than any real-life attempt to connect with someone new. Sad, but true!

I try not to be a polyamory evangelist, at least not anymore. At this point in human history, I figure anyone with an inkling of curiosity toward polyamory will have at least heard of it, so they can research it more deeply if they feel drawn to do so. You can’t “convince” someone to be poly just as you can’t “convince” someone to be gay, but you can model a healthy, happy life within this identity that might inspire others to seek the same if they desire it.

With that in mind, today I want to offer up some life lessons from the world of polyamory – not in the hopes of convincing you to “switch teams” if you’re currently monogs, but rather, with the intention of improving your relationship(s) regardless of how you prefer to structure ‘em. Here goes…

One person should not be your everything.

The farther away monogamy gets in my rearview mirror, the more clearly I can see that its philosophical foundations are absurd. It has never made sense for two people to have to fulfill all of each other’s needs. You know that old proverb about how it “takes a village” to raise a child? Well, children aren’t the only people who benefit from having wide-ranging social supports in their lives!

I’ve been trying to live in the moment more. It’s hard. But improv helps, and so does sex.

The other day in class, I was tasked with improvising a Hoedown about an aquarium. The first two lines formed in my head almost immediately once I heard the suggestion:

Why go on a date to a movie or a park,

When you could go someplace instead where you could see a shark?!

The other night, after my latest musical improv show, I was too exhausted to regale my spouse with the full details of my evening, although I wanted to. “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, if that’s okay,” I said over the phone, through a yawn.

She understood completely, but asked me: “Can you just tell me how it felt, then?”

I smiled, because her penchant for asking great questions is one of the many reasons I married her. “It felt great,” I said. “I felt in control the whole time. I didn’t feel nervous at all. It was the best.”

And really, that’s what she needed to know, anyway. The details are fun, but they’re not the point. The feeling is the point.

Are you in therapy right now, and do you take notes during sessions? I was just re-reading some of my old therapy notes the other day, and felt deeply grateful to my past self for writing down all these insights when they were fresh. I come back to them time and time again, and they often take on new meanings for me as my life changes and grows.

Recently I stumbled across notes from a session where my therapist posed one of those really juicy therapy questions, a question so good it unlocked something in my brain. They’d asked me: What would it take for you to believe that [false belief] isn’t true?

While this bears some similarity to activities I’d done before in cognitive-behavioral therapy workbooks, most of my CBT experiences have been about gathering and affirming evidence that already exists against my harmful belief (e.g. looking at old texts where my partner says “I love you” when I’m feeling unloveable). But my therapist was doing something a bit different in this case: they were asking me to identify what type of evidence would definitively disprove my belief, and then seek out or create that exact evidence. 

I immediately liked this idea, because it felt so much more empowering than what I’d done with CBT practitioners before. I didn’t have to wait around for evidence to present itself. I could go make my own.