Marketing Sex Toys: “You’re doing it right.” vs “WTF?”

I’ve been blessed enough to be a part of both the sexblogger and adult product industry communities, and have seen a large number of strange and wonderful things mailed to my house in that time – not the least of which is my much-loved Foot Vagina.  I will continue to mention the Sifeet Pussy Foot Vagina Masturbator in my blog as often as I can work it in, too. Why, you ask? Because the folks at pioneer products make excellent quality toys, and ship ridiculously quickly…I would have no qualms about steering a foot fetishy friend in their direction.

I’ve made the acquaintance, courtesy of twitter, of another fine company lately as well: Eros and Iris. Speaking as a woman with a fuckable disembodied foot on her desk, I thought I had seen everything.  I was pleasantly proven wrong, having taken a gander at the insanely gorgeous silicone victorian-inspired dildos offered at E&I. It doesn’t hurt that the folks at the helm are kind, attentive, and open to conversation either. I will roll out the marketing-pimpage red carpet for companies like these – small, hardworking, and with really amazing offerings.

Some companies, however, seem to suffer from biden-itis…that is, the inability to know when to stop talking when you’re only doing PR damage to yourself. If the internet had laws, a handful would read: Always assume snarkery from the writer penning the piece on their own blog, That any mention of your product is generally a good thing, and perhaps the most unmutable advice of all: Never ever rise to the bait of post commentors. Unless you have a major award in persuasive speech gathering dust on the mantle, chances are it won’t end well.  Just reading how it all unfolds makes me wince.

 

A vicious cycle..

I used to be like clockwork – every 26-28 days I would have mind-numbing cramps that would make me want to crawl under something and die. Motrin, copious naps, and heatpacks kept me semi-living for two days, during which I’d get a “free” day with no flow, then 3-4 more days, and tah dah – I was done for the month and the only blood I had left stayed in my veins, where it belonged.
It started getting screwy after a major accident last year, causing me to skip a good six months and leave me still not-quite-right in timing after that.  I came to realize that, despite the pain, it was something that reminded me of being a woman. I missed the ritual, which I had come to regard as something almost sacred – buy pads/tampons/heatpacks/motrin every month…this was my own little stash of things, just for me in the house I share with my hubby-to-be. I came to desolately wander down the “feminine products” aisle while my ‘friend’ had gone missing those long months, wishing it would return and remind me that I was fertile*.

During the hiatus, I came to notice two things clearly that had escaped my notice before:

1.) Women, just for being women with normal reproductive cycles, have to almost pay a tax for the privledge of pain and profuse bleeding every month. This really doesn’t seem fair at all, given as we’re the ones mucking about with the little ones on board when and if we do choose to procreate.  I had more money in my pockets those six months, the consequence of not having to buy 1 to 2 boxes of tampons, a bottle of menstrual-targeted pain killers, as well as thin stick-on heat packs and slender pads that allowed me to wander about without looking like I was smuggling badgers in my jeans or suffering from crotchal-area stigmata.

2.) The supermarket knows more about my cycle than I do. This creeps me out. I’d be strolling along, shopping for produce and canned goods, and at checkout these automated coupons would spit out for things like tampax and always brand pads…and nothing in my cart was remotely linked to either of them.

How do they know? Did they track my cycle back when I was “regular” before the crash? “Hey, she’s buying tampons on the 22nd again, must have her period.” What about the months where I bought my supplies from CVS or Walgreens? Did Shoprite notice I was buying chocolate and pickles in craving-induced shopping trips, thus reinforcing their timetable?

What I find even more disturbing than this is the fact the coupon machine has started supplying me with coupons for huggies and baby food when all I ever buy is normal 20-something dinner fare. This lends itself to the highly unsettling possibility that Shoprite realized I wasn’t getting my period for six months and thus must be pregnant. Can you imagine if they had this level of A.I. for coupon machines? I’m getting a little creeped out just thinking about it. 1984, courtesy of your friendly local supermarket.

*Don’t want kids? Awesome. I do. So kindly spare me the OMFGIdontwantkidsyoubabycrazypsycho bit. I support your decision, but this is a story about me. I’m not trying to undermine your choices at all.

 

The straight talk about non-Rx Sexual Pills and Herbal “Supplements”

When it comes to the NON prescription sexual enhancers (think things you buy at a gas station vs. a pharmacy) it kills me that I see so many pills being sold, over and over, with bright shiny packaging claiming the same thing. Better orgasms, stronger erections, bigger penises, etc etc. I get mad, mostly because I know how much money the damn things make as modern-day snake oil.

I write descriptions for these things, which entails typing out the ingredient list, and I can tell you the vast majority have the same “formula” with differing amounts of the various herbs and extracts for propriety’s sake. They throw together a collection of herbs that have sexy sounding names or have at some point been somehow associated with libido, when in truth some most of these are anecdotal at best and have no more scientific evidence supporting sexual enhancement then downing a handful of green M&Ms .

If they “work”, it’s by increasing blood flow throughout the entire body, which is why ‘energy drinks’ and these pills have similar side effects – nervousness, racing heartbeat, sweating, and feeling overheated. Not too sexy, if you ask me, and decidedly dangerous – one of the most popular seemed to work just fine…until the FDA dropped a nationwide recall on their asses for slipping real viagra in the formula to get repeat customers. Put it this way – if you had a headache, and someone offered to sell you a “headache capsule” (at a price per pill that blows aspirin waaaaay out of the water) filled with dried, ground up herbs you would not normally willingly seek out and ingest, would you enthusiastically nod and demand a glass of water to swig it down with? Yeah, didn’t think so.

Here’s the truth: No pill, prescription or not, pumps, gizmos, or methods will EVER permanently increase the size, length, or girth of the penis – it is what it is, and all purported success are only of temporarily increasing the quality of the erection, not the actual size.

If you have ED (erectile dysfunction), you should see a doctor and discuss legitimate solutions with a medical professional, not the carded back of mystery pills you found at a 7-11 or on a 3am infomercial. If you do not have ED, a cock ring does the same thing that these mystery pills do! The difference is that you only pay for it once, it only works in the area you’d like it to, and pills can’t strap a delightfully hot waterproof vibrator to your cock.

/publicserviceannouncement

 

A Sex Writing Quandary

You know how when you’re reading a sentence, say this one right here, and you see the word yawn, or a description of the word yawning? You’re probably trying to stifle a yawn right this second, aren’t you?

I’ve been detached for most of my flying feet-first leap into the industry a mere few years ago, and at work saw vibrators with all the excitement one might a shoe, or a window latch. They’re just…products to be worked on, to be measured and described. Checkmarks waiting to be checked off on a to do list to earn my keep. I get excited about neat colors, or abilities, or interesting things coming out on the market, but not really an “OMG I want to put that in my vagina” sort of feeling. I, to coin a phrase, geek out. Sex toys are my thing, and I like to know everything I can about products and the people who make them.

It’s only as I slowly (very slowly, thank you very much) creep up on my late 20s that I’ve begun to experience the perils of ovulation and what happens when it crash lands on my desk while I’m working. My ovaries have taken my concentration hostage at times, demanding an immediate baby or else.  All of a sudden these friendly dils and vibes that populate my desk like a fully populated risk board start to look a little more sinister and sexy. I try to explain to my ovaries that while these are fun, they won’t produce progeny, but the stubborn little bastards won’t listen and keep flicking hormones at the back of my head like so many chemical rubber bands.

It’s a little unnerving to find my mental paradigm (I’m also geeking out that I worked that into a sentence, btw) suddenly involuntarily shifted from “I wonder what this would feel like in a vagina?” to “I wonder what this would feel like in MY vagina?”. It isn’t to say I’m absconding with my products and having a roll in the hay during work hours, but on the other hand it would be a fantastic set up for a sick office romance joke.

Do they make sybian attachments for ergonomic desk chairs? If not, I’m gettin me a patent.

-TTC

 

The ToyChick Compendium: A List of Sex Toy Manufacturers

One of the things I noticed when I first got into the industry was that there were a lot of awesome companies that didn’t get the exposure they deserved. A company shouldn’t be punished for devoting more time to the product than the website, so I’d like to even the balance a bit. I’ve had the pleasure of working personally with some of the companies below, in one way or another.

If you’re a buyer, a writer, or even a blogger, you owe it to yourself to check out some of these places and see what they have to offer. If you’re looking for the “big guys”, I’ll mention them at the very end, but only for the sake of being thorough. They get more than enough exposure!

Guide: When “***” appears after a name, it means they only have a few products made out of that material, but that those are of enough quality to have the company make the list.

***If you are a retailer and end up using any of these manufacturers, I would GREATLY APPRECIATE if you mentioned that you found out about their company through my blog.***

Ceramic and Stone:

• Goldfrau – “Exclamation Point” shaped ceramic dils with gorgeous art-nouveau and solid color designs.
• JT’s Stockroom *** – A few noteworthy large black stone offerings.
• Lovemoiselle – Ceramic dils with simple, pretty floral patterns, as well as some with vibrating cores.
• Luxotiq – Semiprecious stone dildos, cockrings, and anal beads.

Glass:

• Don Wands – Inexpensive basic designs. (Caveat: Their pouches always smell like incense/head shop)
• Phallix – One of the higher priced companies, has all sorts of designs, including dichroic and 24k fumed.
• Pyrexions – USA made company with attractive hand-made designs.
• RubyGlass21 – USA made, very inexpensive, some 24k gold fumed designs, amazing customer support.
• Xhale Glass – Mid-price range, 24k gold designs, good customer support.

Leather

• Achella – Full range of USA handmade leather items – crops, canes, whips, floggers, etc.
• Aslan – Canadian company with fantastic harnesses. GLBT and Vegan-friendly offerings. Great customer service.
• Axovus – Raver light up/techno themed BDSM offerings that go from club to bedroom play with ease.
• JT’s Stockroom – The definitive source for all things kinky. In-house kinklab line is sleek and attractive.
• Leatherbeaten – Canadian company with great quality offerings, including a great belt-into-cuffs design.
• Oubliette Leathercraft – USA based ETSY store with pretty stamped and printed leather.
• Outlaw – Seattle based company, long considered a go-to for quality leather harnesses.
• Ruff Doggie Styles – NY based company, cute and playful designs for light and beginner bdsm-ers.
• Spartacus – USA company, nipple clamps out the wazoo, along with anything else you can imagine.

Metal:

• Big Teaze – Makers of, most famously, the “I rub my duckie”, their new daido metal line is well-liked.
• Elemental Pleasures – Made by two former aircraft-makers, titanium toys that come with cases.
• Gear Essentials – High quality stainless steel cock rings, packaged in nice tins. Various engraved patterns.
• Jimmyjane – Pioneers of the metal vibrator, their cigar-shaped $$$ flagship product has a replaceable motor.
• Luxotiq*** – Their wavy aluminum dildo and butt plug come in a pretty satin-lined box.
• Miko *** – Their teardrop-shaped pretty plugs feature a large sparkling faux gem in the base.
• Njoy – Synonomous with metal sex toys, often imitated but never duplicated. Must have for any store.
• Steel Vineyards – Famous for “G-Pops” – spheres of metal or semiprecious stone on long rods for insertion.
• Vergenza – Spun aluminum toys, made in the USA.

Positioning Toys

• Liberator
• Love Bumper

Sex Toy Storage

• BMS Enterprises***
• For Your Nymphomation
• Devine Toys
• Sugar Sak
• Toibocks

Silicone:

• Alien Dildos
• Bad Dragon
• Divine Interventions
• Downunder Toys
• D. Vice
• Eros and Isis
• Feelztoys
• Fun Factory
• Happy Valley
• Jollies
• Joya
• Lelo ***
• Nexus ***
• Private Island Toys
• Rocks Off
• Sh!
• Soju
• Sportsheets ***
• Square Peg Toys
• Tantus Inc
• Topco ***
• Vixen Creations
• We Vibe (Standard Innovation Corp) ***
• WhipspiderRubberworks

Vegan Friendly BDSM

• Fresh
• Wolf Princess Designs

Wood:

• Hardwood Dildos
• Jildo
• Nobessence

The Big Guys (Corporations that collectively make most of the mass-produced toys)

• California Exotics / Swedish Erotica
• Doc Johnson
• Lady Calston
• Nasstoys
• Pipedreams
• Topco

Condom Manufacturers

• Durex
• Four Seasons
• Lifestyles
• Trojan

Lubricants

• ID
• KY
• Maximus / Liquid Silk
• Swiss Navy
• System JO
• Wet

 

Dildos and Lattes – A smutwork survival guide for the uninitiated.

So, it’s been two years, give or take. Two years since I crash landed in the industry, broadly beaming like someone who’s fallen through the ground into a big ol’ pile of treasure. Every day I’m thankful to work around stuff that’s so fun and eminently interesting.

However, I’ve realized lately that working with this sort of thing – copy writing for sex toys and their smutty kin, to be exact – carries with it certain social restrictions that previously wouldn’t have occured to yours truly. Mind you, I catapulted straight from the mundane (vanilla? muggle?) world of temping at a supplemental insurance cube farm straight into figuring out a dizzying array of new ways to say “stick this in your vagina and buy lube while you’re at it”.

Here are some tips for surviving the jump from work to NSFW.

1.) A cover story for the “norms”.

Okay, this is one I sort of expected, going into it. Inevitably, there’s gonna be someone – relative, straight laced friend, your local preacher/rabbi/kid’s teacher – who isn’t going to instantly respond with “omigod SWEET” when you explain what exactly it is that pulls in the paychecks. My fiance’s grandmother, for example, fully believes I monitor USB ports for a living. My own grandmother is under the impression I sell women’s clothing for a living. Now, I DO look at the usb port when I plug in my mouse to start working (writing sex toy copy), and I DO sell women’s clothing (that would get one arrested under exposure laws almost immediately). It’s truth-by-omission, really. For those peers that are old enough to know that USB ports are fairly self-reliant, and whose wives (or selves) may be interested in women’s clothes, I throw out some technical jargon about SEO and web search spiders without being item-specific. If you have the misfortune of hanging out with devout christian techwriting couples, you have two options: feign contagious disease frequently to ward off social interaction, or get new friends. Seriously, how’d you even get into this line of work?

2.) The “Starbucks Office” model does NOT work as well for you.

The office as a concept is a pain in the ass…there are co-workers that piss you off, idiot bosses constantly interrupting your train of thought (or that game of flash tetris you found on a site the work filters neglected to block), not to mention getting up early and getting dressed in uncomfortable clothing.

However, this is a problem I’ve recently discovered. While working from home is awesome, you start to get a sallow complexion and eyes like Steve Busemi from the constant monitor-staring. Some human interaction is necessary to not go bonkers, and inviting strangers into your house, especially when working in this industry, is a recipe for either disaster or social awkwardness at the least. So, do like the other work-from-homers do, right? Have laptop, will travel?

You know how you go to Starbucks, and all you ever seem to see are disinterested people your age and up, partitioned off into groups and only aware of each other? Try opening a laptop and working on a description of a realistic vagina masturbator. Every priest, rabbi, teen mentor, and toddler in a five mile radius will suddenly get a demanding craving for an unpronouncable five dollar drink and will, for some reason, find it absolutely fascinating to sit/look/walk in your direction.

As soon as you get in, set yourself up in a corner near an outlet so you don’t have to move if you need to recharge. Face your screen towards the wall and into an unoccupied corner if possible, but be aware you’ll have to be alert enough to close your laptop or pull up a tab of lolcats if a kid starts waddling in your direction. If you’re going to be working at Starbucks in particular often, spring for a Starbucks Gold membership…it’s $25 a year, which sucks, but you’ll get 2 hours of free wifi every day. At $4 per 2 hour block, it will pay for itself if you’re going there several times a week. Buy the card in the store itself to save yourself the “customization fee” on the website. You also get 10% off your purchases, which adds up if you grab a java each time you settle in to work.

3.) Bringing work home can be problematic.

I’m without children (for the time being), so I don’t have to worry about curious little eyes seeking out the most inappropriate thing in any given room to shove into a recently-teething mouth. Hilarious as it may be, the therapy bills later on will not be, nor will the humorless call from child welfare services RE: your twitpic account.

Try to centralize any paperwork or adult paraphernalia that you have on your desk, and keep a towel or sheet handy on the back of your desk chair for quick coverups if the landlord or UPS shows up unexpectedly. And take batteries out of ANYthing, as murphy’s law dictates it must turn itself on when someone unpornish is in the house and the television is turned off.

4.) Have fun.

Celebrate the fact you work with a pretty awesome group of people, and that a lot of the industry (not all, mind you) isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. Make an effort to be social, make yourself a memorable “handle” (name), and join up on social sites like fetlife and find other adult industry folks on twitter.

Hope this helps, and feel free to write me if you have any questions or other survival tips.

-TTC

 

Interesting Articles About Sex

Courtesy of @TonyaCD on twitter, Syrian lingerie that blinks, sings, and flutters away on command: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7786564.stm?lolwut

 

Airport Security and AVN: What not to pack when travelling coast to coast.

When I did my updates, I’m ashamed to say I left out one of the more humorous parts of my epic journey from the east coast to vegas and back again. To lay a little groundwork down for this story, I usually pick up a healthy amount of swag (free shit) when I travel to porn cons, like so:

Omg stuff!

So, coming with a roller suitcase packed to the gills with zero room traveling TO Las Vegas was naturally not going to work with this gigantic horde of stuff heading back east. I bought a cheapo duffel bag and shoved my dirty laundry into it, checking it while I packed up my loot along with other essentials into my roller that traveled with me on the plane.

Now, I went out to Las Vegas to spread the word about the awesomeness of Vixen Creations dildos, and ended up with a pair of ginormous Outlaw dildos – one dark purple (and now infamous) and one flesh – coming back home with me, as they served well as display and had been chosen to decorate my desk back home. These were wrapped in CVS bags and carefully settled on top of the other stuff in my luggage. So this roller now contains approximately eight billion “herbal supplement” pill samples, a whole bunch of giant containers of lube that totally blew off the TSA quart-bag-3-oz rules, and all manners of vibrators.

So I’m a good little traveler, have my shoes off and in a bin, jewelery off, and pockets emptied before I get to the metal detector. I’m walking through no problem, waiting perched just after the x-ray tube of the security conveyor belt, waiting. And waiting.

I look up just in time to see the TSA gal’s eyes widen as she made furtive ‘come here’ gestures discreetly at her co-workers, jabbing a finger at the x-ray screen. She was, of course, seeing the two 11″+ dildos laying in my luggage that I’d forgotten all about. “I..uh…I just came from the..um..convention”, I offered lamely. “YEAH you did.” she replied.

Laughing, she calls this older woman, had to be at least 60, over for a bag check. Now, this sweet woman was from the deep south from the sound of it – with ‘darlin’ this and ’sweetie’ that, and THUNK goes my roller on the metal table. She proceeds to chat, undaunted, as first one Outlaw and then the other gets planted on the table with a mental cartoony sound effect in my head of “twaaaangggg-booooing”.

She proceeds to cheerfully inform Vera (from For Your Nymphomation) and I that she used to be a pro-domme, and how she could never talk about it here at work. And, more importantly, that it was my soy wax kama sutra massage candles that set off the xray…they thought they were face cream. Yeah…not my hundreds of pills, not my half-gallon of silicone lubricant…candles. I set off red flags because I apparently enjoy a little sensuality with my legal herbal hodgepodge roofies, milk jugs of lube, and gigantic dildos.

So, yeah. This is my life.

-TTC

 

Insanity, Debauchery, and Dildos – AVN 2009

While I spent most of the convention tucked in my booth, being a good little wage-earner, I did get to see some pretty fun stuff. Lots of people were debuting new things – of note:

*For Your Nymphomation’s ADORABLE freakin condom cases. The new designs went over really well, especially the now-infamous corset design Bling Squared. Due out in April!

*OhMiBod’s new Naughtibod – the former Naughtinano got a facelift!

*Njoy’s got a beautiful set of new stickers. I mean, really awesome stuff. (“I -plug icon- anal?” Hell YES!)

*Love Lava – You know those reusable handwarmers you boil to ‘reset’? Imagine that stuff inside a silicone skin, with a removable vibrator core…and you have…love lava! It’s tres awesome because you reset it as you’re boiling to sterilize and vice versa. Also, it isn’t a stupid silicone vibrator that wastes an awesome material by permanently attaching it to a non-removable vibrating component. We luv it CAUSE it can be boiled, industry. Take note.

Fun Factory booth at the 2009 AVN Show

Closeup of Fun Factory Sex Toys

Closeup of Fun Factory Cock Rings

Closeup of Fun Factory Bloom silicone sex toy

Closeup of Fun Factory Smartballs “Teneo Uno”

*Fun Factory has a couple of pretty exciting new toys, and naturally I absconded with a few to show off to my readers. FF was thoughtful enough to give me one of their new Smartballs Teneo to take home. They also have a duo available (hel-lo redesigned smartballs…by the by, these are actual silicone instead of the indeterminate “elastomed” material), a fun new penetration toy called the bloom, and they’re finally letting we Americans have a crack at the cock rings…apparently there was trouble before with sending them over here because the FDA says we have different cocks on this side of the pond. Whatever that means.

Also, a funny little vignette – while waiting in line for the cab, a religious kook across the bus lane had set up shop with a propaganda sign nailed to a 2×4 and held aloft by his buddy. This was not a problem, but the loud-ass megaphone he’d gotten his holy roller hands on was. His rambling oratory bounced around, teeth-grindingly annoying, the very large cement overhang and assailed the hundred-or-so sets of ears of the CES and AVN folks alike waiting for a cab. He was clearly just talking as loud as possible for as long as possible, bible-banger style, where words rhyme every few sentences but overall sound like total gibberish.

A mummer (yes, a mummer. Not sure why he was there.) set up shop against a piling and promptly started playing “when the saints go marching in” at full blast to drown the sucker out, pausing every few seconds to dramatically hold a hand to his ear and lean towards the source of our annoyance. The effect, and ensuing periodic silence, was the stuff comedy routines are made of.

When that didn’t stop him, a guy from the CES show went back inside and grabbed a megaphone and started yelling back at him, passing the megaphone down the cab line at one point so everyone could tell this guy exactly what they thought (hint: it wasn’t gratitude at being made to see the light). I added a gigantic purple Vixen Creations Outlaw dildo I had in my bag to the mix, and hilarity ensued in the form of a dildo unicorn explaining through a megaphone in a voice reminescent of Beavis and Butthead’s famous “cornholio”, that jesus loves porn, and god was getting us all laid tonight.

So, all in all, a pretty damn good show.

-TTC

 

Life Unladen – My Week of Walletdom

Like a lot of women, my purse has always been as much a part of my physical person as these glasses I’ve worn for twenty-odd years. Much like me, it morphed and changed, becoming skinnier or wider with my lifestyle, altering itself to carry baggage both physical and emotional. Short straps, buckles, zippers, snaps, velcro, magnets…each paraded through my daily experiences and added a comforting weight to my shoulder as I moved through life.

Becoming involved with the adult industry, and the cultures of transpeople and pomosexuals (however indirectly), opened my mind to the gender assignations of accouterments. It’s amazing how much x item is associated with y gender, and how few of us seem to stop to remark on it. I’ve recently acknowledged that I’ve waged a quiet battle with who I am versus who I “think” I should be pretty much my whole life. Here I sit, a reasonably educated independent woman, harboring a secret guilt for not having pretty writing in grade school with heart-dotted i’s. I feel like a traitor to my gender each time I peek in the secret pocket of soul that (I thought) should genetically covet Dooney and Burke bags and come up with nothing. Eyeliner is a strange and exotic thing, relegated to the brain folder that stores my knee-jerk reaction of jellyfish avoidance whilst swimming.

My purses, however, were one item that I always came packaged with, like a knockoff foreign barbie with second rate accessories. These fashion don’ts, if I got just the one I wanted, gave me the dashing appearance of a pack mule suddenly anthromorphized mid-journey. I carried everything in these shapeless sacks – sewing kits, first aid kits, a tea kit, a pitch pipe (because singing can break out anywhere when you’ve been a choir geek), hairbrushes, hair elastics, extra elastics in case someone needed one, advil, sparse makeup, pagan good luck charms, expired coupons, pocket change, a book, and sometimes even a foldable umbrella I’d forgotten to remove.  I wanted to be a boy scout, prepared for anything, ready to save the day when someone needed a bobby pin, band aid, or a note of middle C.

Sure, my shoulder ached constantly, you could hear me coming a mile away, and I frequently had “ohjesuschristwhere’dIputmypurse” patdown panics at least twice a day, but wasn’t it worth it? Right around Christmas last year, I finally decided that no, it wasn’t. I was out at the mall with my fiance, who effortlessly breezed from store to store (is ‘breezed’ too effeminate? Perhaps he actually maelstrom’d, when I stop to consider it), paying for his purchases by opening his slender wallet like an instruction manual for efficiency.  I struggled with my purse, blindly shoving aside the masses of items, fingers pricked at by a rogue safety pin, before I was able to pay for my own items. If my fiance had a few small items and needed to get something, and he never meant for me to BE a pack mule mind you, into my purse they went, no questions asked. It was something we both accepted and it’s been that way for years.

After a full day of shopping, my shoulder feeling like it was unsocketing from weight and pressure, I’d finally had damn well enough. The next day, with a sudden bout of powerful nervousness, I gingerly plucked my wallet from my ever-present saddlebag. The purse husk lay, deflated like a jilted lover, and I hurried out the door before the guilt set in. “What if someone needs a band-aid, you thoughtless jerk?” was the last thing I heard from it as I closed the door.

This week has had only one instance of something I might have been able to produce under normal, laden circumstances. The most surprising part of it all has been how much OTHER people think or believe I’m still toting around my baggage. Getting out of cabs, the drivers admonish me to take the purse I never brought. Friends ask where I left it as we depart restaurants. My puzzled fiance has no repository for his bigger-than-a-pocket items. My shoulder feels like it’s higher than it ought to be.

And sure, my wallet bulges out of my pocket a bit, but I’m thinking of even trimming THAT down, goddess preserve me. Life, if you’ve planned it right, should really dwindle down to a cell phone, a debit card, and a license in a perfect world. I’m getting there, slowly but surely.