I live in fear of regretting my tattoos.

Getting tattooed is really the ultimate test of fortitude for someone who constantly second-guesses their own decisions, isn’t it? It’s a way of saying, to yourself and to the world: No, I’m sure about this. I’ve thought about it, and this is what I want. On my body. Forever.

As a Visibly Tattooed Person, I get asked about tattoos fairly often, even though I wouldn’t particularly consider myself an expert. Most commonly, someone will compliment my tattoos and then admit that they’ve long wanted to get inked themselves, but haven’t yet come up with an idea they’d be willing to commit to for eternity.

I felt like going down the Google Scholar rabbit hole this week, so here’s a little digest of (what I thought was) some of the most interesting recent news in the science of sex and relationships:

Some research showed that being ghosted increases your anxiety and decreases your self-esteem. Anyone who’s been ghosted could tell you that, of course, but it’s interesting to see it proven!

Here’s a sexual label that’s new to me: symbiosexuality! To be symbiosexual is to be attracted to couples. Rather than being attracted to either person as an individual, a symbiosexual might feel attracted to the dynamic between two people, or the energy they embody when they’re together. Interesting! I know a few self-identified unicorns who this label might apply to.

Content note: some discussion of fatphobia and disordered eating – nothing too detailed/explicit because this is a triggery topic for me, but thought you’d like to know, so you can take care of yourself, too!

One of my pet peeves on dating apps is when guys say “I’m looking for a woman who takes care of herself.”

It would be fine if they meant it literally, but they don’t. What they mean, for the most part, is: “I want a woman who is thin and goes to the gym multiple times a week.”

I don’t think I had heard the phrase “gender euphoria” when I was 15, in 2007, and I certainly hadn’t applied it to myself. But my first conscious experience of this type of euphoria was at a queer-straight alliance meeting.

The author S. Bear Bergman was reading aloud from his then-new book Butch is a Noun, and during a passage about femmes, something clicked for me. I understood that there was a sacred lineage of butch-and-femme as a duality and a spectrum, and I understood that I was a femme myself. I understood that my femmeness was beautiful, and queer, and desirable (at least for some people). I felt the “aha!” of alignment between how I saw myself and how the world seemed to see me. I felt gender euphoria.

Trans friends of mine, like Billy Lore, would teach me more and more about this concept over the years that followed, including that cis people can feel it at all. In fact, cis people’s gender euphoria-versus-dysphoria (to the extent that we feel it) is seen as such a pressing and valid issue that it’s much easier for cis people to access treatments that may help bring their bodies into that euphoric alignment, such as when cis women are prescribed estrogen to address coarser facial hair they may notice after menopause, or when cis men are prescribed testosterone because their dwindling sex drive is making them feel “like less of a man.” It’s infuriating and unfair that many, many trans people can’t access these same treatments because their fight against dysphoria (and quest toward euphoria) is pathologized and politicized in a way that cis people’s usually is not, even though, for trans people, it’s much likelier to be a life-or-death issue. (Orgs like the ACLU are fighting for better trans healthcare access, among other things.)

I’m thinking about this lately, because my internal sense of my own gender has shifted somewhat in recent years. I’m still very much a cis woman and a queer femme – but lately, when I see old photos of myself in hyperfemme ‘50s-pinup drag or what-have-you, it feels like just that: drag. When I wear outfits that feel too delicately, sweetly feminine, I feel boxed in now, rather than right at home, the way I used to. I find myself counterbalancing femme outfits with a beanie, sneakers, or a boxy leather jacket.

I’ve been sexting with an AI again.

The thing is, you’re not supposed to do this. Many AIs are specifically programmed to avoid generating sexual content, or so my smart software-developer spouse tells me.

There are some AIs out there that are built specifically for sexting, but the one I want to talk to you about today (which I’ll link to below) is not designed for that purpose. However, with a little know-how, you can bypass some of the guardrails that might otherwise inhibit your high-tech textual trysts. Let’s get into it…

I’ve been writing a lot of sexy fiction (including fanfiction) these last few years, and it’s fascinating to note all the ways it’s different from my usual nonfiction fare, the workaday stuff that pays my bills.

For one thing, I’m a lot faster at nonfiction. I swear I spent 5 hours working on fiction yesterday and cranked out just under 1,000 words. On a nonfiction day, that’d be my output in an hour. Maybe forty minutes, with coffee. I guess this makes sense, given that nonfiction writing has been my bread-and-butter for many years and I have a degree in it, but still – it’s staggering how different the mental processes can be between these two types of writing, and how I can feel like a grizzled old pro at one and a shiny-eyed newbie to the other.

But one specific difference I want to talk about today is pacing.

Pacing is certainly important in nonfiction. (Ask any great documentarian.) It’s often about the speed and intensity at which you dole out information, and the way you lead someone from one argument to the next. Sometimes I pace things quickly, like a newspaper article, tugging the reader briskly down one set path – and other times, I’ll linger at certain scenic stops along the way, to point things out to the reader, or make them think. It all depends on the intended effect, and what I want the reader to take away from the piece.

Now that the finale of my podcast miniseries on the Magic Wand vibrator, Making Magic, has gone live, I’m in the mood to reflect on this massive project and what it’s been like to work on it for the past year. Here’s a bunch of stream-of-consciousness notes and observations:

Making Magic was originally a book – or rather, it was going to be a book; that’s what I pitched to Vibratex when we met via Zoom in May of last year to discuss potential collaborations. It was the company’s CEO Ken Herskovitz who suggested doing it instead as an audio series. I may still write a book about the Magic Wand someday – life is long; who the hell knows? – but I’m really glad that this project ended up being audio-based instead. Hearing people’s Magic Wand stories in their own words, in their own voice, really hits different.

I didn’t know how to make a show like Making Magic before I started making it. I was literally learning how to make it while I was making it. That’s really scary! I mean, I’ve been podcasting since I was 12, but mostly that had involved recording a conversation between myself and 1-3 other people and lightly editing it. The only audio project I had done in a more complex, patchwork storytelling style before Making Magic was Beating the Stigma, an audio series about kink and mental health that I made in my final year of journalism school. So, going into this project was daunting, but I was exceptionally lucky to get to work with an editor, Jamie Pityinger, who turned my obsessively detailed scripts into fully-formed episodes.

I interviewed 35 people for this series, including several people I consider heroes and inspirations. My literal first interview for this project was with Carol Queen – talk about intimidating! And there was one day during production when I interviewed Stoya and Danarama in the same day – thankfully with a few hours in between for me to calm my starstruck nerves! I only got to speak to maybe one-third or half of the people I reached out to, and I think my original project proposal overambitiously said I’d aim for 40-50 sources, but 35 was a lot, and gave me more than enough material for the show.

(Premium subscribers, scroll down and you’ll find a link if you want to listen an mp3 of me reading this essay aloud!)

Goddamn it, it happened again: a Netflix dating show gave me a good idea for a newsletter. How dare Netflix do this to me? How dare they keep making thought-provoking content that both spotlights and lampoons the psychodrama of human relationships?! (To be fair, it’s also ethically disastrous, but I’ll leave it up to Emily Nussbaum to tell you about that part…)

So, Too Hot to Handle is back. I’ve ranted about you at the absurdity of that show before, so I won’t do that again here. I’ll just tell you about one scene in the show that surprised and delighted me this season.

I love being special. Oh boy, do I love it.

That’s what was going through my mind when I was blowing my FWB a few years back. They had told me that a medication was affecting their ability to reach orgasm. It was especially challenging during sex acts where they weren’t directly controlling the motion themselves. Like a blowjob.

And yet, as I found the right rhythm and the right placement, and kept at it, their voice went hoarse, and they gasped, “I think I’m gonna come.” And they did. And lemme tell you, it made me feel special as hell.

I thought about this again today when I went to a screening of the 1959 film Some Like It Hot. I’ve seen this movie a zillion times before, but one particular scene stood out to me on this re-watch – the one where jazz saxophonist Joe (Tony Curtis) pretends to be a sexually tortured millionaire in order to hook up with jazz singer Sugar (Marilyn Monroe). He tells her about his sex troubles:

Recently, a sex worker named Aella posted a link on Twitter to a “date me” survey she’d made. She wrote, “I’ve met, had sex with, and dated people from my previous date-me surveys. It doesn’t work all the time, but when it works it’s great, and causes me to fall for guys I never would have considered otherwise.” My interest was fuckin’ piqued, dude. It was piqued as hell.

See, for ages I’ve been wanting to date someone new, and ideally someone local – but it’s been tough. It seems like the dating apps are a hellscape for just about everyone, and I’ve found it especially challenging to meet people who are chill about my job – by which I mean, people who neither sexually harass me nor slut-shame me about it, and people who are actually open to dating a woman who talks about her sex life on the internet. I also just find that most people seem really boring on dating apps, even if they’re far from boring IRL, and that conversations on these apps tend to devolve into silence pretty quickly because nobody wants to put any damn effort into anything anymore. (Myself included, don’t get me wrong…)

So, the more that I thought about making a “date me” survey of my own, the more it seemed like a fantastic idea. I could ask the questions that matter to me most, and filter out the people who aren’t a good fit. I’d also be selecting for 1) people who already know about my work and are fine with it, and 2) people who are willing and able to put effort into their connections. When I assessed my dating frustrations of the last several years, all of the issues seemed to be more-or-less solvable by switching from the apps to a survey, at least in theory.

So, next, I had to decide what questions to ask. Some are multiple-choice and some are writing-based; some are marked as mandatory and some are not, though my preference is for folks to answer as many of the questions as possible, since each one gives me different information that is useful to me in my decision-making. I won’t reveal all of the questions here – there are 29 in total! – but I’ll talk you through most of them and why I felt they were important enough to include.

Being smart is central to my identity. If you asked me to describe myself in one word… well, first I’d probably make some jokey-not-really-a-joke like “tired!” or “depressed!” but, if pushed, I’d say smart. I definitely don’t think I’m a genius or anything, and there are moments daily when I feel dumb as hell, but my intelligence is the thing I’ve been complimented on the most in my life, so it feels like the realest and best part of me. (It’s also something my therapist has repeatedly advised me to untangle from my self-image, so that I don’t have an identity crisis any time I try something new and am bad at it, but that’s another story…)

Anyway, all this to say, I’ve always been a smartie, and so there is almost nothing hotter to me than being outsmarted.

Let me be very clear about what I do not mean when I say I like being outsmarted: I do not mean that I want to be condescended to, or to have things mansplained to me. I do not mean that I want someone to pedantically quibble with things I have said. I do not mean that I want someone to assume I need their tutelage and then inflict it on me unsolicited.

What I do mean is… When someone clearly sees and understands exactly how smart I am, and in what ways, and can meet me where I’m at, and volley our conversation back and forth like a lively tennis match, perhaps playfully pointing out some actual holes in my argument or blind spots in my thinking along the way, well… I’m not sure what could be hotter than that. Further, while I do date people other than men, I think it’s worth mentioning here that a man who can value a woman’s intelligence on its own merits is usually a man who sees women as full people – something I wish I didn’t even have to say, but unfortunately the bar is low enough that I do.

In my communities of sex-positive kinky nerds, it’s often bemoaned that there aren’t enough terms for sex acts that actually sound sexy. (Do I want you to go down on me? Yes. Do I want you to “eat my pussy,” “munch my box,” or go for a “muff dive”? Preferably not.)

However, as erotica writers and phone sex operators can attest, there are a lot of sexual terms out there, and the well-known ones have usually stuck around for a reason – that reason being, there are people out there who find it appealing.

I think oftentimes these terms start to take on certain cultural meanings, through which their more literal meanings are filtered. Picture someone who calls cum “semen”; now picture someone who exclusively calls it “spunk.” You probably imagined pretty different people. I think our perceptions of what “kind of person” would use a term can influence our own feelings on sexual vocab more than we realize. We absorb these meanings through media, conversation, and observation, over many years, perhaps not even consciously.

All this to say: A person’s preferences, when it comes to sexual language, are very much informed by their personal history, background, the types of media they consume, the places they hang out online (or don’t), and so on. So I’m sure you can understand why the following ranked list of terms for reaching orgasm is based solely on my own subjective opinion, and is not meant to be a pronouncement on anyone else using these terms. If a sexual word or phrase turns you on or otherwise delights you, please go forth and use it! I’m just in the mood to examine my own linguistic biases today, I guess. Let’s start with my least faves and work our way up.

Polyamory has been getting more and more mainstream media attention these last few years, which unfortunately means that us polyamorists have needed to go on the defensive. And, predictably, this has meant that some polyamorists revert to tired old pro-poly arguments that don’t really hold much water, if you ask me.

Since my first forays into polyamory, and long before that (I’m sure), there have been people who argue – sometimes quite persuasively! – that polyamory is better than monogamy. Not better for individual people, not better for certain situations, but just better, across the board.

These people will often evoke evolutionary psychology arguments, claiming that because bonobos are slutty, humans are naturally wired to be slutty too, and that this means polyamory is somehow simultaneously the most evolved relationship structure and the relationship structure that is truest to our evolutionary roots. (Make it make sense!)

I understand where these people are coming from, particularly as polyamory continues to receive waves of public pushback every time a new article comes out mocking our happiness. I just think there are stronger arguments to be made.

Content note: some not-particularly-explicit mentions of taboo fantasies like incest roleplay and consensual non-consent while half-asleep.

About six months ago, I mostly stopped jerking off to porn, and instead started jerking off to Quora threads. 

For those unfamiliar, Quora is similar to Yahoo! Answers: a place where users can post questions and receive responses from other users. As with most such websites, it's a perpetual crapshoot: sometimes you'll get an answer from what appears to be a suitably credentialed expert on the topic you asked about, while other times you'll get answers from laypeople who have no qualifications beyond strong conviction.

I’m writing this from a giant bathtub in my hotel room in Stratford, Ontario. My parents invited me to come with them to the theatre festival here; we go every year that we can. It’s wholesome that my parents are the people who introduced me to theatre and taught me to love it, and I still get to share it with them regularly to this day.

We saw an adaptation of Peter Pan yesterday and a production of La Cage Aux Folles today, and – as is typical for me – I had a crush on like half the people in the casts of both shows, and now I’m thinking about why I’m so prone to theatre crushes.

Setting aside the obvious fact that working theatre actors tend to be talented, good-looking, hard-working, brave, and strong-willed (since all of these traits help you substantially in the biz), I mainly see my theatre crushes as a microcosm of my demisexuality. I’ll flip through the program before the show begins, reading the cast’s credits, and usually no one in particular will stand out to me as cute – but then the show starts, and then I get to watch all these people act, sing, dance, and go through an emotional arc for a couple hours. It’s not the same thing as developing an emotional connection with them, of course, but I feel the same sensation of attraction clicking into place, after gaining some familiarity with the person (or at least with their character): how they talk, how they move, what their face does when they’re happy or sad or horny or angry. Invariably, by the time intermission comes around, I feel a little like I know them – which makes it possible for me to think they’re really fucking hot/cute/swoonworthy.

Now, would the attraction translate if we met outside of that environment (assuming they were into me too)? Who knows. Maybe it was just the lights, costumes, and stage magic, and the attraction would dissipate like flung confetti once the house lights come up. But even still, I think theatre crushes have value.

A reader asked: I have a FWB whose penis smells and tastes really funky, every time. How do I tell him without hurting his feelings?

I’ve been asked variations on this question countless times in my years as a professional sex-advice-giver, and it’s one that I’ve never really had a good answer for.

On the one hand: Obviously if you intend to continue fucking someone, you want the fucking to be a pleasant experience for both of you, and the other person probably wants that too – so it makes sense to talk about these types of concerns, so they can perhaps be solved or worked around. In addition, an unusual taste or smell can be a sign of a medical issue (e.g. bacterial vaginosis or a penile yeast infection) and/or inadvisable personal hygiene practices (e.g. douching and thereby fucking up your vaginal pH, or not knowing you’re supposed to wash under your foreskin), and you could actually be doing someone a favor if you let them know about the smell/taste issue so they can get it checked out.

I wasn’t expecting to encounter a great piece of sex toy-related wisdom in a video about mechanical keyboards, and yet that’s exactly what happened.

I’ve been interested lately in the community of mechanical keyboard hobbyists – people who obsess over customizing their keyboards by swapping out the internal and external parts to create their own unique workstation. I’ve spent hours poring over keycaps and switches, so I have some understanding of why the hobby is so compelling, but I’m especially intrigued the community that’s sprung up around it – why do people drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars on keyboards and their parts, and then spend hours of their lives taking them apart and putting them back together? Here’s what an influential member of the community, Taeha Types, has to say about it in his video on the subject:

“To most, keyboards are thought of as uninteresting tools, simply meant to get our tasks done. But that’s precisely why I think people should care about their keyboards: so much of our daily activities rely on them… Why shouldn’t we invest in something that we use so often? … [For example], purchasing a [high-end] cinema camera doesn’t suddenly turn me or others into a great YouTuber. I still need to make meaningful and engaging content, and that’s not something upgrading my gear will magically create. However… it does indirectly help me, in the sense that it makes me feel good about making videos. Every time I pick up my [camera], I feel inspired, and it makes me excited to play around with it. It makes me want to shoot videos, and this positive mentality will manifest itself in my creativity and content. I think the same applies to keyboards.”

In places where writers gather, online or off, ine­vitably one of the topics we will discuss is writer's block – that notorious stoppage in our normally abundant flow of words.

Raising this topic with other writers often sparks a lively debate, because some people believe writer's block exists, and some think it doesn't. Those in the latter camp will argue that you can always force yourself to write, as long as you're not precious about your working conditions and have done the deep thinking and research needed to write whatever you're writing. Sometimes these people are borderline-cruelly dismissive of others' struggles to create, arguing that only an unserious or undisciplined writer would let a lack of inspiration get in their way.

On the opposite side of the debate, you have the people who believe in writer's block. These people may have an esoteric or woo-woo view of crea­tivity, conceptualizing it as a temporarily dammed river of cosmic energy – or they may see their creativity in more pragmatic terms, believing that they're stuck because of anxiety or indecision or stress or burnout. People on this side of the debate say you shouldn't "force it" when you're blocked, just as you shouldn't slam on the gas pedal while the emergency brake is engaged.

Personally, I land somewhere in between these two perspectives. Having done my SongAWeek challenge for two years – not to mention cranking out content for publications so I can earn a living – I know it’s possible to write when you feel like you have nothing to say. But will the writing be good in that case? Not usually. Sometimes you'll surprise yourself, though.

As I waited in an interminable customs line at the airport a couple days ago, I did the same thing I always do, because I am an anxious mess: I mentally rehearsed my answers to the questions they'd be likely to ask. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by misspeaking or stumbling over my words when I got to the front.

Usually, I'm only asked to tell them my pro­fession, so I keep it vague – “I'm a writer and podcaster” – but I knew, in this case, that I'd have to talk about sex toys, because the main reason for this trip is that I'm speaking on a panel about the Magic Wand vibrator at the Museum of Sex on Monday. (You are welcome to come, should you be in the area!)

In the end, I just told the guy I was attending a professional event, and when he asked for clarification, I explained it's an event commemorating a historical vibrator. He seemed hesitant to inquire further, and promptly let me through. But the whole thing got me pondering a question again that I've pondered before: Is "sex toys" really the best and most accurate term for the category of objects it describes? Or should we instead adopt a less playful, more neutral term, like “sex tools,” “sex products,” “sex utensils” or “sex implements”?

I've witnessed many a lively discussion between sex edu­cators, sex workers, and other sex nerds about this, so I feel qualified to present the main arguments on both sides.

Getting back together with one's ex-partner must be an appealing idea for many people, because it's romanticized – not to mention eroticized – in many, many famous stories. The Parent Trap. The Notebook. Pride & Prejudice. We love a relationship redemption arc.

One of the most compelling pieces of media I've seen on this topic was an Australian reality show called Back With the Ex. In it, several former couples met back up and tried to work through the struggles that had ended their relationship in the first place, in the hopes of turning over a new leaf. It was genuinely touching to see how far people would go to make things right with "the one that got away," although equally, it was humbling to see that most people can't change their old patterns and bad habits as easily as they think they can, even in the name of love.

Reunions between exes aren't just a romantic idea to me, though – they're a sexy one, too; even something I’ve occasionally roleplayed with my partner. While personally I have almost no exes I’d risk sleeping with again, let alone dating again, in theory it’s nonetheless a hot idea to me. Here are some reasons I think the "back with the ex" trope is so intriguing:

1. The ex knows how to fuck you (at least, this idealized version in fantasy). In the wake of a breakup, I've often fumbled through awkward consolation fucks with random folks from Tinder. Not necessarily through any fault of their own, hooking up with these people often just drove home for me how much I missed fucking my recent ex.