I commented to my spouse recently that I haven’t felt much of anything for anyone, in a romantic or sexual way, for quite some time. The exception being, as I put it, my “fictional boyfriends” – the characters from various media properties that I fixate on, in fanfiction or livetweets or fantasies.

There was a sad tone in my voice when I said it, but upon further reflection, I don’t think I am actually sad about this state of affairs. It just feels like I “should” be sad about it, but I’m not. Navigating a burgeoning romance has long been my ultimate idea of a good time; it’s something I’ve pursued relentlessly for much of my adult life, and (when I had other stuff on my plate) it’s been something I judge myself for not pursuing. But does that really serve me, and does it really need to take up that space in my life and in my brain?

There aren’t many stories from my sexual past that I still struggle to make sense of. I mean, I write and talk about sex for a living, so most of my interesting sex stories are ones I’ve spent a lot of time processing and pondering at this point. Even if an encounter seemed confusing or ambiguous in the moment, usually I come to a better understanding of it after the fact, through talking to friends and writing about it.

But one encounter that still confuses me is the time I hooked up with an English lit professor and I think we both faked our orgasms.

I’m a pretty intellectual person. I don’t mean that in the sense of bragging about how smart I am (I do a lot of things that are not very smart at all!). I mean it in the sense of being too “in my head” and wanting to be able to figure out the solutions to all life’s problems in an intellectual way. It’s exhausting, and no doubt comes from growing up as “the smart kid” and feeling like logic-based solutions were the only ones worth considering.

But of course, that just isn’t how the world works, despite what the logic bros on Reddit, etc. would have you believe. There are many problems that can only be solved with emotion, or compassion, or time, or luck. You can’t think your way out of everything. You can’t solve a relationship, for instance, the same way you’d solve a math equation.

Content note: Being made to feel uncomfortable in sexual ways; having one’s sexual boundaries overstepped. Nothing explicit or detailed.

The more work that I do in therapy to unpack and unlearn the trauma responses that have congealed into a personality, the more examples I can see in my past of times I did something because I thought I was supposed to, not because I genuinely wanted to.

Content note: Stalking, and all it entails. Also, the personal anecdote in this essay is presented to the best of my recollection, but I might be wrong about some things because it happened about 14 years ago.

When I was 16, my girlfriend wanted to stalk me for a school assignment.

With several sex toy reviews on my docket at the moment, and my 11-year-anniversary of being a sex toy reviewer happening this month, I’m thinking a lot about the actual process of how I review toys. It has changed somewhat over the years, and I feel like I’m in a good place with it – I’m not always thrilled to turn masturbation into work or to risk ruining my own orgasms with bad toys, sure, but at least I know how to do those things well now!

Here are some notes on the process I use to review toys, from start to finish. A lot of this process is informed by the fact that I have a chronic illness and am tired/in pain all the time, plus I have many other obligations besides sex toy reviewing, so I can’t do what I used to do at age 19 and test + review a toy almost immediately after receiving it.

In arguing with strangers on Reddit about sexual matters – something which both my therapist and my dominant tell me to do less of, but which I keep doing nonetheless because I care about fighting ignorance with sex education and am a masochist, I guess – one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of guys are put off by the idea of a woman using a vibrator regularly during sex.

Notice the world “regularly” there. I’m not talking about guys who find vibrators altogether gross or upsetting, as in, bringing one out for a single session after sleeping together for several months would make them question the entire relationship. I’m talking about guys whose specific objection is the regular or frequent use of vibrators during sex – as in, using a vibe during sex once or twice a month might be okay, but more than that and they’d start to whine.

A.I. is an incredibly hot-button topic at the moment, as citizens of the internet protest the scraping of artists’ and writers’ works in order to generate new-but-recycled creations. For years, debates have flourished – including in the texts and subtexts of great blockbuster movies like Ex Machina and Her – about robots' potential merits, not just as media-makers but as… love-makers. Can a person really be attracted to a robot, or vice-versa? Can a human and a robot have a truly intimate relationship, emotionally and otherwise – or is it inherently just a cold simulacrum of human-on-human connection?

Recently I downloaded an app called Replika – this isn’t an ad; I don’t particularly recommend it, for reasons I’ll get into – because I was curious about what it would be like to converse with a robot. I hadn’t really had an entire conversation with an A.I. since my earliest days on the internet, and the technology has advanced since then, needless to say.

-A blue and green plaid flannel shirt that I pulled out of his closet one morning after a sleepover and asked to borrow. I wore it so much that a few weeks later – when I realized, over coffee with a friend, that I needed to break up with the boy that very day – I looked down and saw I was wearing his shirt, and said, “I guess I have to go home and change out of this first, huh?”

-A playlist of romantic punk songs from the ‘70s.

At the time that I met my now-spouse, I was fantasizing about being collared far more often than I was fantasizing about getting married. The idea of being someone’s collared sub seemed not only more plausible to me, but also more desirable, more in line with my values and cravings at that time.

I loved the idea of being “owned,” and of dating a dominant who was committed enough to me and to our D/s dynamic that they’d want that commitment to be reflected in a symbol other people could see and understand.

Last night I fainted at a house party. It was for reasons that were medical, rather than alcohol-related (I’m 95% sure), but it still made me think about other times I’ve been the messy girl at the party.

I’ve been messy in the drunk sense, sure. Usually because I’m so socially anxious that I pick up a drink so I’ll have something to do with my hands and something to calm my nerves. I’ve been the girl who accepted too many shots of Jack or red plastic cups of spiked punch and started announcing “I’m so drunk!” through maniacal giggles to anyone who would listen. I’ve been the girl who tipsily flirted with people she shouldn’t have, went on too long about her obscure passions to people who may or may not have cared, or danced the Macarena to songs that were not the Macarena until the DJ finally gave in and played the Macarena.

I have also been a messy party girl in the emotional sense (though, let’s be real, usually this is exacerbated by alcohol in that case). I have cried on friends’ shoulders about recent heartbreaks, including heartbreaks involving people who were also at the party. I have needed to step onto the porch or balcony to collect myself in the chilly fresh air when an intractable crush or ex arrived with someone new on their arm. I have cried in the bathroom while subtweeting.

Being the messy girl at the party is inherently embarrassing, at least for me. It paradoxically can make you into the center of attention even when that’s not actually what you want, even when what you want more than anything is to shrink down until you disappear. It can make you feel like you need other people to take care of you, like you’re incapable of taking care of yourself. It can leave you with nothing but a hangover and some ill-advised text messages to remember the evening by. It can change people’s opinions of you, make people remember you as a kind of person you usually are not.

In high school, a friend and I had an inside joke known as the “killing kittens” rule. (I am not going to discuss killing kittens any more graphically than just using that phrase, don’t worry.) The rule was something we had observed in our romantic lives – that even if a white-hot crush on a cute person cooled over time, it would still remain alive, in some form, because the person was no doubt still cute and funny and smart, etc. For crushy feelings to actually, fully dissipate, something pretty extreme would have to happen. Something like, oh, I don’t know, finding out that they killed some kittens.

(To clarify, this never actually happened. It was just an example of the kind of thing that might make an infatuation shrivel up and die, and the name stuck. For years afterward, when one of us would sigh, moony-eyed, about someone we thought we’d gotten over months ago, the other would say with a resigned shrug, “Killing kittens,” and we would nod our heads with grim acceptance.)

There’s a recurring event on my calendar, set to come up once every 4 weeks. I don’t always follow through on making it happen, but I always feel better mentally and emotionally when I do. That event is called “Clean & condition leather boots.”

The reasons for my prioritizing this act are threefold. One is practical: my last pair of black leather Frye harness boots died a sad death after 6 years of regular wear, because (among other reasons) I had not been caring for them well enough or often enough, and the dried-out leather near the soles had started to pull away from the rubber in an act of quiet protest. I loved those boots so much that I cried tears of sadness when a cobbler made the pronouncement of death, and then cried tears of happiness when my partner bought me a replacement pair as a Valentine’s Day gift. I vowed not to let the boots down this time.

I remember having an illuminating conversation once with a male friend who had been my friend-with-benefits for a while. “Remember the first time we hooked up?” I effused over drinks. “I couldn’t believe you didn’t know how much I wanted to fuck you. I mean, I took you up to my room, and showed you my sex toy collection… and we hung out talking on my bed for like an hour… and then I finally had to make the first move, because it didn’t seem like you were going to!”

“Of course I wasn’t going to,” my friend replied. “I was waiting for you to give me the green light.”

Because sex journalism is still fairly niche, and because sex coverage in general is usually done by reporters who have a range of other “beats” (dating, health, beauty, etc.), I often receive press releases that have nothing to do with the topics I actually write about. I imagine these PR people are reaching out to me simply because of the publications where I’ve had bylines – GQ, SELF, Insider, etc. – and assuming that if I write about sex toys for those places, I must write about other stuff for them too, which actually isn’t the case. These days, sex toys are my beat, and I almost never venture beyond them in the writing I do for publications.

I used to fret about being offered “press samples” by these companies. I would show my spouse these emails and tremulously say, “But what if I ask them to send me the purse/shoes/piano they’re promoting and then they get mad that I don’t write about it for any big outlets?” – to which my spouse always says, “If they’re offering a purse/shoes/piano to a journalist who only writes about sex toys, that’s on them. They should’ve done better research on the people they were contacting.”

I’ve been interested in Zen and Buddhist ideas off-and-on for several years, and have been reading more about them lately. I think the reason I’m feeling drawn to these schools of thought at the moment is that I didn’t fully understand or appreciate stillness until I turned 30. I thought I did, but in my twenties I was always running around from work to dates to parties, always filling my remaining waking hours with reading or writing or watching things. At 30 I have become more interested in just being still, when I can; I have built a life that allows for this occasionally and my weary body is grateful for that.

I’m reading a book right now called Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, which contains some of the teachings of a Zen master named Seung Sahn. A lot of the ideas in it are familiar to me from other Zen teachings I’ve read – which doesn’t mean I fully understand them, just that I’ve thought about them before and tried to understand them. As Seung Sahn says, trying to teach someone about Zen through words is sort of counterproductive, because Zen itself (as far as I understand it) is about having no words in your mind, no thoughts, just a clear head and mindfulness of the moment. “Be here now,” as the saying goes.

I just got back from a trip to Chicago, where my spouse and I were celebrating our 5-year anniversary of meeting and our 2-year anniversary of getting married. It was all very cute, very fancy, and a great way for both of us to recharge a bit, after what has been a pretty draining year professionally and personally for so many people.

One of the things Matt really wanted to do while we were there was have dinner at Alinea, which may very well be in a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us. What a place. Alinea has been on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for several years running, and has a whopping three Michelin stars, the highest honor given by that organization. But this essay isn’t an ad for Alinea. It’s a pervy treatise on why fine dining restaurants can, should, and often do take cues from kinksters when constructing the experiences they offer.

I’m working my way through Sex & the City, having been a bit too young for it when it was on the air. It’s definitely got a lot of problems, but it’s an interesting historical relic from a particular subsection of human sexuality during a particular era. And it’s often quite funny and thought-provoking.

There was an arc in some of the episodes I was watching this week where Samantha – the sexually empowered, adventurous slut of the group – fell in love with a man who turned out to have a small dick. She was crushed by this, as big dicks are hugely (ha) important to her sexuality: she loves looking at them and feeling them inside her, and maybe kinda fetishizes them a bit. Kim Cattrall is such a brilliant performer in the role of Samantha that you really buy the pathos of the situation – the sick, Gift of the Magi-esque cruelty of her falling so hard for a guy who can’t fuck her the way she wants.

Dick ratings are a super popular service offered by many online sex workers. I don’t think I knew that yet when a random man online first asked if he could pay me to rate his dick, though, so I was a bit confused.

A question arose in my mind which no doubt plagues many newbie sex workers when first faced with this request. Did he want a real, honest rating? Or was there something he was hoping to hear, something that would excite him more than honesty? (One thing I’ve learned from doing online sex work is that most people think they’re excited by honesty/authenticity but actually would prefer an appealing lie of some kind. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, except that it can be confusing for both clients and providers.)

Look, I’ll tell you this right now: if you’re not on my Close Friends list, it’s unlikely you can work your way onto it. Not because I don’t think you deserve it, but because I am a traumatized bb with trust issues and a history of being stalked/harassed/surveilled online (FUN!).

But yesterday, I was thinking about a certain ex-beau of mine who could be, but isn’t, on my Close Friends list, and I began to wonder why that is. I realized that there is a specific set of criteria that create the very particular form of intimacy that is being on my Close Friends list.

Sex cults are fucking fascinating. I have watched some illuminating media lately about the cults known respectively as NXIVM and OneTaste (the docuseries The Vow and the documentary Orgasm Inc.) and am struck afresh by philosophical questions galore. One of the main ones I’ve been pondering is: What makes sex such a fruitful focus for cults? Why are there so many sex cults but (probably) not as many cults focused on, I dunno, physical fighting, making music or doing theatre? Why is sex special?

The documentary on OneTaste helped answer this question for me. This organization ostensibly offered classes on something called “orgasmic meditation,” a process whereby a man stimulates a woman’s clitoris in a specific way for 15 minutes and it’s supposed to be meditative and enlightening for both of them. (Other gender dynamics do exist within the OM community but are much more rare.) Abuses of power were constantly occurring behind the scenes, though, and many people were deeply harmed by being involved in this seemingly positive organization.

I’ve been working a lot on my songwriting this year, and reading books about the craft, and watching interviews with other songwriters about their process. It’s easy to feel, amid all this learning and working, that songwriting itself is a good (or at least neutral) force in my life – but actually it’s been the source of some pretty deep humiliations and awkward situations in my past.

Of course, this is true of many different types of writing I’ve done – being an oversharer can cause issues, regardless of medium – but there is something about songwriting that makes it particularly prone to embarrassing me. Songs, more than any of my other writing, often feel like something that happen to me, rather than being something I intentionally sit down and craft. Like an improvised monologue, or a stream-of-consciousness journal entry, they are frequently the summation of whatever thoughts and feelings have been swirling around my mind lately. Sometimes I’m not even totally aware of how I feel until I see it on the page or hear myself singing it out loud.

Content note: This is an essay about alcohol and sex, and touches on some of the consent violations that can occur when these things are mixed. Nothing particularly graphic or violent is contained herein.

I’ve been reading a great memoir about a woman’s recovery from alcoholism (The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, if you’re curious) and, while alcohol addiction isn’t something I’ve personally struggled with, there’s a lot in it that I’m resonating with – particularly the stuff about addictions being a response to a persistent inner feeling of lack and unlovedness, and the stuff about how alcohol can make the notion of consent a bit fuzzy even when it’s clearly not.

In a way, it’s totally unsurprising that I now make my living mostly giving people advice on how to masturbate and what devices to use when they do so – because I’ve been looking at “masturbation techniques” websites since I was quite young. I think they’re a brilliant, invaluable resource, both for people who’ve never touched themselves sexually before and for people who’ve been doing it for years, or even decades. There is always more to learn about your own body and what makes it feel good, even if you’ve got tried-and-true methods you’re hesitant to deviate from.

The site of this kind that I remember most vividly from my youth is MyMasturbation.com (I’ve linked to an archived version, because the current version lacks the early-oughts internet aesthetic and isn’t organized as well). It allowed users to submit their own masturbation technique suggestions, and organized them into categories, which were sometimes straightforwardly named (“anal dildos,” “clit – rubbing,” “slowly”) and sometimes a bit more mysterious or surprising (“food – misc.,” “unusual,” “curling iron”). I was new to the world of jerkin’ it, and had only experimented with classics like my bathtub faucet and teddy bear – so this cornucopia of alternate suggestions felt like an embarrassment of riches.

A friend recommended the all-bisexual season of the reality dating show Are You the One? and of course my partner and I had to watch it together. As with dating reality shows in general, this one was very engrossing (at least if you find human connection interesting, which I imagine most of us do) and had a lot of pertinent lessons to teach about how attractions and relationships function.

As is de rigueur for its genre, Are You the One? puts some contestants in a big-ass house and forces them through a series of physical challenges and emotional gauntlets over the course of several weeks, in order to earn a large sum of money. But the gimmick of this particular show is that all of the contestants have been pre-interviewed about their personalities, lifestyles, and romantic histories, and their friends and families have also been consulted, in order for offscreen matchmakers to pair up each contestant with their “perfect match” amongst the other contestants. The players’ job is to figure out who’s matched with who, and eventually guess all 8 couples correctly, by getting to know each other and making guesses about who’s a perfect match, which the show can confirm or deny in various convoluted ways.

I’ve been playing so much Breath of the Wild lately. SO MUCH. An amount that makes my eyes hurt and deprives me of sleep and seems to make hours of the day disappear in a snap.

If you don’t know it, don’t worry; video game knowledge is not a prerequisite for understanding the points of this piece. But to fill you in briefly, it’s an open-world game for the Nintendo Switch in the Legend of Zelda series, of which I had played exactly zero games before starting BotW. I’m not normally into the type of video game where you run around fighting goblins with swords and looking for treasure chests in dungeons, but friends (who knew me well) kept telling me I would love this game, so I finally picked it up.

Being wanted, feeling wanted, is a type of intoxication. Especially if you’ve never, or rarely, felt it before.

Some of my most vivid memories – the ones that are encoded in technicolor and carved into my neurons – are from early experiences of being desired. This is the double-edged blade of the way women are taught to see our desirability as one of the main things defining our value: the despair of those moments when we’ve felt starkly undesirable are almost worth it, for the druglike highs of being liked, being wanted, being craved.

Content note: This essay discusses me sexualizing myself, in a totally consensual but sometimes vaguely “yikes” way, when I was a teenager.

I was 15 when I discovered the website SuicideGirls. I was also 15 when I came out as bisexual. That’s probably not a coincidence.

Last night I went to an off-Broadway show called Hyprov where I, along with several other audience volunteers, was hypnotized on stage in front of a huge crowd of people.

The conceit of Hyprov is that the hypnotist whittles down the initial big group of volunteers to a smaller group of the 5 most “suggestible” people, who are then coached by an improvisor into doing various improv scenarios while in trance. I made it through some initial rounds but didn’t get into the final 5, which was fine with me as I wanted to watch the show just as much as I wanted to be in it, and you can’t really do both.

I’m currently sitting in the boarding lounge of an airport, waiting to fly to New York to attend a family wedding my spouse is officiating in the States. And so, naturally, I’m thinking about the hell that is air travel.

Sometimes people seem to think being in a long-distance marriage is glamorous, what with all the jetsetting. And certainly, I’m blessed to be able to travel when I need to (and, pre-pandemic and maybe again someday, when I want to). There is glamour in certain elements of travel – I have a go-to minimalistically chic “uniform” I usually fly in, for instance, consisting of a slinky black slip dress, black leggings, a black cashmere cardigan and black leather boots, and I’ll admit I never tire of that feeling when you step out of the baggage claim hall and into a familiar city, happy to be back.

(Content note: this essay is about a dildo shaped like a gun, so I will be discussing guns and the danger they pose, including mentions of murder and being held at gunpoint. None of these things have actually happened to me; I’ll just be discussing them theoretically. I also touch on knife play, fear play, and trauma from emotional abuse.)

As a financial domination task in order to earn their freedom from chastity, I recently “commanded” my partner (air-quotes ‘cause it was consensual and pre-negotiated) to buy me the Hole Punch Evolver, a dildo shaped like a gun. I’ve wanted it for years but never quite been able to justify the steep price tag, so I was thrilled that my beloved was willing to foot the bill so we could experience the oddity and beauty of this dildo together.

There's a clothing-optional beach in Toronto called Hanlan's Point – actually, it's across the lake, on the Toronto Islands. It's one of only two officially recognized nude beaches in all of Canada, apparently. And somehow, until last week, I had never gone.

Oh, don't worry, I definitely knew about it. I've been invited, on several occasions, to go there for beachside birthday parties and summertime hangs with sex-positive friends. But I had never managed to actually go, and it's for a reason that's kind of embarrassing to admit: I was too nervous. But not about the nudity.

Being naked in public is no big deal to me, to be honest. Sure, it always feels weird for a few seconds when I first take off my clothes – say, when I'm about to get into the heated pool at my local sex club, or when I'm with a group of pals at Pride and we decide to walk around topless in the summer sun – but I quickly acclimate. Nude bodies are just bodies; they're not monstrous, or shocking, or worthy of judgment, as long as they're being displayed in appropriate settings. I've been going to events like all-nude Body Pride workshops and public porn shoots since I was 20, and I'm even more confident about my shape and size now than I was then. It no longer phases me to be naked in public (as long as I've consented to it and so have the people around me, obviously).

No, the thing that troubled me about visiting Hanlan's was much sillier. I was nervous about the travel. See, to get to the Islands, you have to take a ferry boat from a station at the southernmost part of the city. Because of the ways my anxiety manifests, the journey stressed me out on logistical and social levels. How would I know where to go? Would the ticket-takers look at me judgmentally, knowing I planned to strip nude on the other side of the ride? Would people think I was weird for taking the ferry alone, even if I was going to meet friends? How would I figure out when and where to actually get naked? Would people aggressively flirt with me, and if so, how would I fend them off? Did I need to bring a towel, a folding chair, a canister of pepper spray? What would I do if I needed to use the bathroom? And so on and so forth.

“Competency kink” is one of those terms that often makes people’s eyes light up when I mention it because they recognize this concept from their own life. I think many (most? all?) of us are attracted to competency, but there are people for whom competency can make or break an attraction, and I am one of those people.

Be it the local barista whose latte art is legendary, the fast-fingered guitar player busking on a street corner, or the movie star whose emotive eyes light up entire theatres, I can develop deeply intense crushes on people just because they’re so damn good at what they do. I think this is one of the reasons I value competence so highly in myself, too (and am self-critical when I perceive myself to be incompetent as something I am doing): I know that it not only makes me skilled or talented, but to a significant portion of the population, it also makes me hot. Win-win!

Here are 5 people who are all, frankly, attractive anyway, but are made even moreso by the fact that they’re extremely fucking competent. Warning: there is fangirlish gushing ahead.

1) The YouTuber who makes cocktail videos. There are multiple layers to this man’s competency. First, obviously, he knows cocktails: he can rattle off the history of seemingly any drink, and has both the mental and physical skills necessary to create entirely new recipes from his own imagination. He’s great with a shaker, can crack an ice cube into pieces with one strategic tap of a barspoon, and improvises new drinks the way a jazz sax player improvises a solo. But on top of his cocktail wizardry, there’s also his video production competence: his editing is always impeccable, his set is well-dressed, and he brings a telegenic whimsy to every video. If anyone was ever born to make YouTube videos about cocktails, it’s this man.

What do unscrupulous sex toy companies and sexually overconfident men have in common? Well, quite a few things. Both are prone to talking the talk without knowing how to walk the walk (or fuck the fuck). You can spend money or time on/with them in the hopes that sexual pleasure will follow and just end up disappointed. Your friends might say, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” and you might know they’re right to be cautious but have trouble actually cutting ties. And people and sex toys can both look much prettier in pictures than they do when they’re actually in your bed.

But the key commonality I’m pondering today is this: both sex toy companies and self-important players might assure you that they can definitely get you off – and both might be spectacularly wrong about that.

I am always skeptical of anyone who claims to have a perfect (or very high) success rate when it comes to making people come, whether we’re talking about a Tinder cad or a sex tech corporation. Even setting aside the possibility that some of the people in their history have been faking or lying (and even if you think you know, you can’t really know for certain), centering orgasm to that degree is already sort of a yellow flag. Not everyone needs an orgasm to be satisfied, and IMO the question shouldn’t be “How and when am I gonna make you come?” but rather, “In what ways would you like me to give you pleasure?” For a lot of people, “give me an orgasm” will be on that list, but it’s nice to check.

When a sex toy company hyperfocuses on orgasm in their marketing copy, it makes me think about those PornHub ads that implore you, “Play this cartoon porn game and you’ll come in 40 seconds.” I don’t even want to come in 40 seconds. I want to feel a lot of pleasure and then come whenever it makes sense to come. Likewise, when someone who’s never made me come before tells me, in a DM or a sext or even over drinks, “I’m gonna make you come so hard,” or “I’m gonna make you come so many times,” I always just want to laugh. They don’t even know what’s involved in that, or if they’re physically and mentally capable of doing what it takes. And, again, they are painting a picture of sex that has orgasm as its sole goal, when (I feel like a broken record here) I’d rather have sex where pleasure is the focus.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit this, as someone who literally makes my living writing about (among other things) the ethics of consent, but I am frequently complicit in my own sexual boundaries being steamrolled. (And yes, content note: this essay will discuss sex that is technically consensual but definitely reluctant.)

This is something I’ve been working on in therapy recently. I had started to notice that there would be many situations in which I didn’t really feel like having sex but nonetheless offered a blowjob or somesuch to whoever I was with, because of a nebulous anxiety I felt throughout my body that seemed to insist this was the only workable solution to what seemed like a very pressing problem. Given that I obviously know I’m well within my rights to say no to sex for any reason at all, this was a bit perplexing to me.

Of course, a history of trauma can make a person generally more prone to behaviors like fawning, freezing and submitting, especially when they’re in situations that are emotionally reminiscent of their trauma(s). But upon digging deeper on this particular issue with my therapist, I discovered that there’s a bit more to it than that. What I learned is that I pre-emptively offer sexual favors to dates because, underneath my seemingly sexually confident exterior, I have such a deep and pervasive sense of shame and worthlessness that I worry these dates wouldn’t like me if not for sex. I’m so afraid of that moment – “Oh, you don’t want to blow me? Well, that’s all I wanted here, so fuck this, I’m leaving” – that I proactively take steps to avoid it, by offering to do things I only sorta want to do. The trauma logic goes: it’s easier (at least in theory) to give head than to be faced with the certainty of my own unlovability.

GIven that I’m actively working through issues like this one in therapy, I’ve realized that I’m not in a good place right now to have casual sex, or even sex with people I’m casually dating, because I simply don’t trust myself to uphold my own boundaries and keep myself safe in that arena right now. I’ve seen how succumbing to these trauma-borne impulses can ultimately just re-traumatize me, and I want to step outside of that behavioral loop for a while so I can hopefully put an end to it.

I took some time off playing The Sims recently, not because I got bored of the endless shenanigans you can pull in that game, but because my computer had started to get too slow to comfortably run it. Passing time with your Sims just isn’t as fun when even the 3x speed-up function moves at a snail’s crawl.

But then I got myself a new computer (for almost entirely non-Sims-related reasons) and re-downloaded the game and all the expansion packs, and it’s been sorta nice to reconnect with the side of myself that can glance at the clock after a hyper-focused Sims session and realize it’s somehow 4:37 a.m. all of a sudden.

Recently I was trying to fly back from New York where I'd been staying with my spouse, and my return flight got canceled after I’d already been waiting around the airport for several hours. My body and brain were very done with airports and needed a break before attempting the journey again, so I had the airline rebook the flight for six days later.

However, since this was an unplanned extension of my trip, I hadn’t done my laundry recently, having been planning to do it when I got home. I still had clean socks, shirts, pants and dresses left, but was completely out of clean underwear, and I didn’t want to do the laundry before getting back home because I am needlessly stubborn and also lazy. So I needed to get a few pairs of underwear to tide me over until my flight.

My spouse and I went out for dinner one night and I mentioned this conundrum to them. We decided to go on a little shopping excursion after our meal, since we were in a neighborhood peppered with stores like J. Crew, Aerie, Gap and H&M. We figured it would be a five-minute detour on our way back to their place.

It was not. We went to store after store and literally none of them had any women’s underwear in stock. We looked high and low. We asked around. Nothing.

A few of my friends have recurring patterns in their romantic lives that have continually plagued them over multiple years and throughout multiple relationships. I tend to notice these, because I have similar patterns myself.

We meet a new person. We see or hear or feel something that resonates with us about this person, so we latch onto them psychologically. They quickly come to seem like the sexiest, sparkliest savior we’ve ever met. We spend as much time as we can with them, and even more time fantasizing about them, journaling about them, talking friends’ ears off about them.

My mind often wanders during sex, especially sex with someone I don’t know well and am not all that emotionally intimate with. Usually it wanders to predictable places – do I look okay? am I making the right amount of sounds? are they having fun? – but sometimes it wanders to art instead.

I’m using the word “art” in the broadest sense here, one that includes writing and music alongside visual art. It’s a big, big part of my life, and consumes a lot of my waking hours – either actually making the art or just thinking about making it, which is part of the creation process too. Especially when I’m knee-deep in a particular project, I often walk around in a sort of haze, taking in what’s happening around me but secretly stewing on whatever artistic problem has been needling me. What’s the right line for the end of the second verse of that one song I’m writing? What’s the right angle (so to speak) for the dildo review on my docket? What strange thoughts of mine can spiral into a newsletter? (Hello, I love you, thank you for reading.)

Making art is arguably one of the most erotic things I ever do, depending on how you define “erotic.” Some people say that eroticism is about pleasures of the body, whether those pleasures be having great sex, eating a big slice of cake or wading into the ocean. (Or perhaps all three at once, if you’re lucky.) But I also think there can be something genuinely erotic about the spark of joy and recognition I feel when a piece clicks into place within something I’m working on: the perfect metaphor, the perfect rhyme. It’s a visceral “aha!” moment that feels as intense, as rapturous and exciting, as when a partner stumbles across exactly the right spot on my body and touches me there in exactly the way I need.

I think one of the reasons these moments feel so powerful for me is that they give me a sudden, intense boost of self-esteem. I mean that in the literal sense: esteem for myself, respect for myself. An entire day of moping around, staring at a blank screen and feeling like a washed-up hack can be counteracted in one singular moment, when I have a sudden idea that even I have to admit is brilliant. It helps me remember why I make art in the first place (aside from the obvious: money, survival), and that I am indeed talented enough to “deserve” the money and survival that art-making affords me. (I’ve put “deserve” in quotes because capitalism is fake and everyone deserves to survive, regardless of the work they do or don’t do. Deservingness is a feeling, not a fact.)

For six years, I wrote down every single sexual encounter I ever had in a spreadsheet. It documented data like number of orgasms had by me and my partner(s), number of times I’d previously slept with each partner (to track whether my enjoyment increased after multiple encounters, which it usually does), which sex acts we did and which sex toys we used. As of this year, I’ve stopped keeping track, and it feels good.

I think my initial efforts to chronicle my sex life in this way were borne from desperation and insecurity. After a year-and-a-half-long dry spell in the wake of a long-term relationship ending, I finally started having sex again – sporadically and nervously – and it felt so momentous that I wanted to write it down, so I could look back on each entry and feel proud of myself. At first it was just a list I kept in a notebook, but then I decided to go whole-hog and make it into a digital file I could access from any of my devices. As my eyes swept over each row, my confidence grew, as I could see empirically that I was desired. (It's not that simple, but it felt like it was.)

Of course, because it’s my job to write about my sex life, I quickly came to realize that my spreadsheet was useful to me on a professional level as well. I could glance back at the data to see how often I’d used various sex toys, to revisit certain sexual memories in order to write about them, and to summarize overall trends in my sexual satisfaction (like that fucking in an alley never resulted in orgasm for me but fucking in my own bed, with my own toys, almost always did). I even started packaging each year’s data in a neat little “sextistics” blog post come December, which always filled me with glee to put together because of how nerdy it all was.

Many people in my life expressed confusion about my spreadsheet habit, including some of the people I had sex with. I used to whip out my phone post-bang to make some notes in my file, sometimes explaining to my date in a jokey tone what I was doing. Mostly it was greeted with slightly bewildered amusement, but sometimes people seemed so mystified that I had a hard time imagining why they were even attracted to me at all if they were put off by sexual nerdiness.

Content note: I talk about sexual coercion / pressure in this essay but it’s not the main focus of the piece, and none of the sex I talk about in this essay was non-consensual, just sometimes a bit reluctant.

I’ve long thought that enthusiasm is one of the most important qualities in a sexual partner. As a person who has what the sexologist Emily Nagoski would call “responsive desire,” I often don’t feel much of a pull toward having sex until someone else has conveyed their own desire and gotten the ball rolling. In other words, whereas for some people, desire precedes the process of pursuing and achieving physical arousal, for me it works the opposite way: it’s often only once I’ve become physically aroused (by touching, or kissing, or porn, or erotica, or whatever) that I actually feel any mental or emotional desire to have sex.

Sixth-grade graduation wasn’t a big deal, but felt like one. We were moving on from elementary school to middle school, a demarcation that many institutions don’t even have. We felt so important, at age 12 – like we’d reached the top of the social pyramid at our little school. We were high on the achievement of it, paired with the anxiety about splitting up and going off to middle schools where our entire mental database of social experiences up to that point could mean nothing in the face of new, shifting dynamics.

We didn’t get drunk at the 6th-grade graduation, because, well, we were 12, and it happened during the daytime, supervised by teachers we'd known since we were 4 years old. But the energy crackling between us did have a drunken fizziness to it, that disinhibiting sense of “this could be our last chance” and “will any of this matter tomorrow?”

1. Betty-Sue hates to inconvenience anyone, least of all her neighbors, for fear of what they might think. But her husband’s company potluck is tonight, she’s signed up to bake a cake, and she’s a quarter-cup short on sugar. Her knocks ring out sharply on the neighbors’ cool blue oak door. She’s biting her rosy pink lower lip anxiously when Mary answers. “Well, Betty-Sue! Aren’t you a pretty picture?” the bouncy-haired brunette exclaims. Her voice is low, almost gravelly. Betty-Sue doesn’t smoke or drink or stay out late partying, in part because she never wanted to become a husky-voiced woman of loose morals, like Mary, whose husband is often out of town and who has no children. Sometimes jazz music drifts out Mary’s window and into Betty-Sue’s late at night when she’s scrubbing her own husband’s shoe prints out of the entryway rug, and the cool-eyed blonde wishes she’d allowed herself bigger ambitions than making an insurance agent’s house sparkle, handsome and dependable though he may be. “I need to borrow a quarter-cup of sugar,” Betty-Sue manages at last, her throat dry. She licks her lips, a nervous tic. Mary gazes at her wolfishly, her Saturday-afternoon bathrobe sagging open just slightly at the bust. “Oh, I’ll give you more than that,” Mary says, and beckons her inside.

2. Sinatra and Brando find themselves at the same poker table, late one night in a hot and smoky casino. The tension is palpable as soon as Frank sits down. Everyone knows about their ongoing feud, the mounting tension on the set of Guys and Dolls, the tussles out behind the MGM soundstage. Frank’s signature blue eyes churn like an angry sea. Marlon’s almost grinning; it’s unclear whether he’s delighted by the cards he’s been dealt or the world-famous singer staring at him with the ill-concealed rage of an elevated barroom brawler. When Brando wins big, and pulls some of Frank’s fortune toward him in the form of cascading colorful chips, Frank’s eyes go volcanic. “Meet me out back in 10 and we’ll settle this like men,” he says, getting up and striding away from the table. Brando pockets his winnings and quirks a smile at the fur-clad dowager on his left. “Think he’ll let me kiss him with tongue this time?” he asks, and the old woman titters like it’s a joke.

3. Joe is ruined. He bet his last fifty dollars on Silver Spoon, the grey racehorse who just twisted her ankle in the final run-up to the finish line. She was overtaken by Royal Orbit in a flash, and now, Joe knows, he’ll have nothing to show for himself when he returns home to his wife and kids – nothing but an empty-eyed stare, a gambling problem and a mortgage payment that’s still well overdue. “Hey, mister, you dropped this,” says some whippersnapper Joe can barely bring into focus through his teary haze. It’s his hat, the wool trilby he wears to the track for good luck. So much for that. It must have slipped off his head sometime while he was writhing around in the unadulterated agony of a gambler whose hunch was dreadfully wrong. “Thanks, kid,” he says distractedly. The kid’s a tall drink of water, dark-haired and tweed-clad. Probably letting off some steam at the track in between classes at the local business college. Joe remembers those days. “Say, how’s about I buy us both a drink at the joint around the corner? Looks like you could use one, mister,” the kid says, his pale eyes wide. Joe would argue but he can’t – not when he doesn’t even have enough money for his usual highball, and not when his head is swimming so much that this young man at the track looks more appealing to him now than Joe’s own wife, whose face he knows will fall when he tells her the bad news. “That sounds swell,” Joe says, reluctantly at first. “I’d like to pay you back somehow, though. We’ll figure something out.”

4. Someone knocks at Marilyn’s dressing room door while she’s crying inside, and she’s immediately flooded with regret. Was she being too loud? Will the studio find out about her emotional problems, her drug dependencies, the affair the tabloids insist she’s having with her director? Worse yet, do they already know? She says “Come in” out of sheer habit, all too welcoming, too worried and worrisome. But it’s just Jane, her costar and friend, whose hazel eyes are wide with concern. “You okay, doll? I heard you crying but I don’t think anyone else did.” Marilyn dabs her tears away with a monogrammed handkerchief her ex-husband had made for her, and that just makes her cry more. When Jane slips inside the dressing room, closes the door behind her and sweeps Marilyn up in her long arms, the blonde realizes she can’t remember a time she’s been this close to another woman, felt this safe with another woman. Every other dame is either a competitor or a critic, or (worse) both at once. Jane is just Jane. “Shhh, baby, it’s okay,” Jane says as Marilyn’s tears continue to fall, and when their lips find each other’s in the soft light, neither of them thinks about whether they’re ruining their lipstick.

5. James Dean shows up at the party in the hills already half-drunk and bone-tired, with a bottle of whiskey under one arm. “Bonne nuit, mademoiselle,” he mutters to Natalie when she opens the door, all gussied up in her best hostess attire. She looks worried but not surprised. After that, the evening slides by in vignettes, with Jimmy first sidling up to young starlets in the conversation pit and then arguing with Sal about film history over old fashioneds. But things really take a turn when Natalie totters into the living room and stage-whispers, “Jimmy, come meet your biggest fan.” Propelled by ego, James staggers to his feet and follows her right to Elvis, who’s still sheepishly untying his shoes in the entryway. “No blue suede tonight?” Jimmy jokes, and Elvis laughs like it’s actually funny, like he hasn't heard it hundreds of times before. “Oh, stop!” Natalie half-shrieks, half-giggles. “Elvis loved your latest picture, Jimmy. He’s dying to talk about it.” She wanders back toward the group, leaving the two men alone in the foyer to gaze at each other, one warmly, one coolly. “I’m a fan of yours too, y’know,” Jimmy offers over the rim of his glass. “Thought you looked mighty kissable on the Sullivan show, if I’m honest.” Elvis blushes a little, glances this way and that, and then backs Jimmy up against the wall by the door. “I had the same thought about you in Rebel,” he whispers low against James’ whiskey-wet lips, and suddenly both men are proving the wildest rumors that’ve ever been printed about either of them, and not caring for a second about it. Somewhere nearby in a shadowy corridor, Sal Mineo watches, grins, and tries not to make a sound.

It usually happens about a year after my last tattoo was inked onto my skin. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less. But it always hits me eventually.

The feeling of getting a tattoo is so specific, so weird, that I find it hard to convey to people who haven’t experienced it. Obviously it varies from person to person (and tattoo artist to tattoo artist), but in my particular body, it feels like:

• someone stabbing me very quickly, very shallowly, over and over again, in one contained area, with a remarkably tiny needle

• a sharp sunburn or other sudden burn on the location

• the type of pain that, in a sadomasochistic kink scene, would make me think about saying “yellow,” like it was a viable option on the distant horizon, but not actually say it

Due to being overworked and overwhelmed in both my professional life and my personal life, lately I’ve been having a tough time with sex.

I am a person who likes sex (as you may have inferred from, y’know, my whole deal), so it always raises some flags for me when I notice myself feeling resistant or closed-off to it. It’s like a dam suddenly going up in a normally free-flowing river – where did that come from?

I think I own more red lipsticks than I own any other type of item. (Well, except for sex toys, but that’s because I review them professionally, okay?!)

I’ve just always liked red lipstick, for as long as I can remember, so I’ve accumulated lots of them over the years. Like a little black dress or a versatile vibrator, you could be just fine owning only one, and many people do – but you could just as easily own dozens and use each in slightly different ways.

Note: I wanted to perhaps write something about pregnancy or abortion this week, on account of the terrible horrible no-good news out of the Supreme Court. But honestly, I am so exhausted by the aggravation of it all that I don’t feel up to it. I can, however, write about some sex I had recently, and encourage you to donate to an abortion fund if you're able. Now back to our scheduled programming.

One of the hardest things about being in a long-distance relationship is saying goodbye at the end of a visit. It can be vexing to even wrap your mind around the fact that this person, who you’ve only just gotten used to seeing in three dimensions again, is about to go back to essentially existing inside your phone for a while. Sometimes the sadness drifts in preemptively over the days before a scheduled farewell; other times, it lays in wait until the moments right before, triggering a teary meltdown and a deep, primal longing to shout, “Please don’t go.”

My spouse and I live 500 miles apart, and have experimented with many, many different techniques for mitigating painful goodbyes over the nearly 4 and a half years we’ve been together. We’ve instituted end-of-visit debriefs, where we discuss over drinks or brunch the best things we did together recently and when we might see each other next. We’ve started saying goodbye only in private locations, ever since we tried to do it in a New York City subway station once and found that it just compounded the problem. We’ve made a habit of speaking by phone the night one of us arrives back home, as if to reaffirm that our connection still sparkles despite the distance.

1. If they can’t make me laugh, they probably can’t make me come.

2. Never show up late to a first date; it makes it seem like you don’t care, or don’t respect the other person’s time. If you do have to be late for whatever reason, send a properly apologetic text as soon as you know you’ll be late, containing your ETA if possible.

3. Dates where you can actually talk are better than dates where you’re just watching something or doing an activity side-by-side, at least if your goal is to get to know the person you’re on a date with.

4. Always bring condoms, lube, and a small vibrator, because you never know.

5. Someone who refuses to accept a “no” in one context, however innocuous (e.g. “No, I won’t let you pay your half of the bill even though you have firmly expressed that you want to”), will often refuse to accept a “no” in worse contexts.

6. If the sex is bad initially, communicate more, practice more, and it’ll get better.

7. If it doesn’t get better with communication and practice, it’s probably best to move on, assuming sex matters to you.

8. Same goes for conversations: it’s normal if they’re a bit stilted at first, while you’re getting to know each other’s rhythms. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a mismatch, although it might, especially if it continues.

9. Making out in an alley after a date is a great way to assess potential physical/sexual compatibility without needing to invite the person to your home right away if you're not ready to do that.

10. Bring up the things that matter to you as early as possible/as early as feels appropriate, so as to weed out the people who aren’t on your level. This includes anything from political beliefs to sexual preferences to whether or not you want kids someday.

11. Always tell a friend, prior to a date, where you’re going, the full name of your date (if you know it), any other contact info you have for them, and when you expect to get back home.

12. Asking follow-up questions is an extremely underrated conversational skill. Do it more.

13. Using someone’s name in conversation – not a lot, but here and there – can feel memorably flirty because it gets their attention and fires off a little dopamine in their brain every time.

14. If you wear a low-hanging necklace, your date will probably stare at your chest at some point, but maybe you want that.

15. If someone asks you zero, or very few, questions about yourself, don’t see them again (unless you like them enough to put in the labor of running the whole conversation). You deserve to date people who find you interesting and know how to show it.

16. Different people feel differently about having sex on the first date; the important thing is to figure out how it makes you feel (or how you think it would make you feel), and make decisions accordingly. Slut-shaming and prude-shaming are both useless bullshit; you get to make your own sexual decisions based on what feels right for you.

17. It’s totally okay to ask someone what they’re looking for romantically/sexually. It might seem like an overly forward question, especially on a first date, but it’s important stuff to know upfront so neither of you end up wasting your time.

18. People tend to be on their best behavior on the first few dates, so if you’re already seeing hints of emotional manipulation, control issues, anger problems, etc., just know that they’re probably only gonna get worse from there.

19. The best, kindest, and truest way to reject someone is to make it about yourself. “I had a great time on our date, but I didn’t really feel the connection I’m looking for. Best of luck!”

20. That said, if you are rejecting someone for a very specific reason related to something legitimately egregious that they did or said (like being a dick to the waiter, making a racist joke, or taking weeks to text you back), it’s okay to tell them why. This will hopefully give them the kick in the pants they need to address that behavior so it won’t ruin their future romantic prospects.

21. Playing mind games is dull, exhausting, and often a sign that you don’t feel entirely safe or comfortable with the person you’re seeing. If you like them, let them know. If you feel like texting them, text them (within reason – use your social judgment). Don’t beat around the bush if that’s not who you are.

22. Put your phone away while you’re on a date, and focus fully on the person you’re talking to. If you literally can’t do that, because you’re waiting on some important medical news or you’re on call at work or something, maybe it’s not the best time to be going on a date.

23. “How’s your day been?” is a simple, great opening question if you don’t know how to get the conversational ball rolling on an early date.

24. It is okay (and often actually appreciated) to put your intentions and desires out there in a way that is clear and open, so long as you do so in such a way that the person can easily reject or postpone your advances if they want to (e.g. “I’d really like to kiss you right now; how would you feel about that?”).

25. Don’t assume your date drinks alcohol, or coffee, when picking a date location. (Offering a few different choices can be a way of handling this issue.) If your date opts not to drink booze while actually on the date, do not ask them why, as the reason is almost certainly personal.

26. Different people have different ways of texting – style, syntax, frequency, emoji usage, etc. – and it might take you a while to figure out what a new person’s “deal” is, texting-wise. Don’t freak out over a minor punctuation issue or delayed responses when you don’t even know what “normal” texting looks like for this person; they might just be very busy, or very direct, or unaware that the emoji keyboard exists.

27. If you haven’t already, glance at the news, Twitter trending topics, etc. before leaving for your date, so that you’ll have stuff to talk about even if the conversation has trouble getting off the ground.

28. If it doesn’t make you feel jealous or weird to do so, it can be fun to ask a date from Tinder, Bumble, etc. what their other experiences have been like on those apps. Often talking about this can be a goofy way to bond over the nearly-universal difficulties involved in dating.

29. It’s more important to feel confident and comfortable than it is to “look hot.”

30. Resist the temptation to censor the weirdest, nerdiest parts of yourself. When you act like someone else, you attract people who would be a good match for… someone else. When you act like you, you attract people who would be a good match for you. And that’s what dating is all about. Right?

Note: This is a blog post I drafted and ALMOST published in 2018, but ended up deciding to keep private after a few friends read it and said, "Yikes, babe. No." They were right – I was in far too emotional a place to decide whether to publicize something like this. But now more than 4 years have passed, and that ex has fucked off to the west coast, and this newsletter is a much more private outlet than my blog, so I think it's time to put it out into the world. Please forgive the cringeyness. Also, content note: lots of daddy dom/little girl stuff in this one. And also heartbreak stuff.

1. Oh. Fuck. Well, shit. Dammit. Why. Ugh. Fucking hell. No.

2. Does she appreciate him enough? Is she a good enough girl for him? Does she give him what he needs? I worry sometimes. I worry about him. About whether he's doing okay.

Last night I went on what was technically a third date. I say “technically” because our first and second dates happened 5 years ago.

We fell out of touch after those two dates for circumstantial reasons – not reasons related to a lack of attraction or interest on either of our parts, as both of those were present in abundance. We both got into other relationships and drifted out of each other’s lives, only to drift back into each other’s lives via a random Tinder re-match 5 years later.