The hilarious thing is that we’d been planning the engagement from back in May, and just hadn’t gotten around to the jewelry part. The baby kinda put things into overdrive, which, also hilariously, resulted in ToySir having to ask my father for my hand in marriage, request to take my family’s name, and explain to him that I was pregnant, all in about a half hour span in a taco bell.

I’m almost at 8 weeks now and feeling just fine, although my breasts hurt like hell – suddenly opening up a milk factory in a pair of F cups has some side effects, evidently. It’s for these developments that I’ve been off the radar, as we’ve opted to (because we’re insane) get married this November to legitimize the lil one before he or she gets here. Tons of planning out of the way already, tons more to do, and I’m damn near dizzy keeping it all in mind.

More updates on sexy stuff and the toychicklet later.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that soft, candlelit romance straight out of an illustrated Kama Sutra guide has its place in a relationship, but the day to day – at least for me – is far less silk-filtered. Erotic massage ranks pretty damn high only list of sexy things, second only to useful massage that makes other (less directly sexy) parts of me stop hurting. Crucial to this process is the massage medium; the oil, lotion, or other slick substance used to smooth out strokes and keep distracting friction to a minimum throughout the process.

I am very, very fussy about what goes on my skin, to the end that my body lotions have gained their coveted positions amongst my toiletries only through years of dedicated service. A lot of massage oils are exactly that – oil – that sits on the skin and makes you feel less like a pampered goddess and more like a braised cornish game hen* slated for the oven. In a similar vein, a lot of massage oil scents are geared towards women, slathering would-be massagees up in Eau de Fruit Loops or Essence of Department Store Cosmetics Counter, and where does that leave the menfolk and the lovers of non-traditional scents? Out in a nasally no man’s land, that’s where.

It’s rare I find something that I’m so fond of that it never leaves the bedside table, but Wet Inttimo has a well-earned place beside my glasses every night. I’m supremely lucky in that my awesome ToySir gives me a rubdown of some sorts at least once a day, and I’m willing to believe his fondness for the scent of the Tranquility oil has something to do with the sudden upswing in massagery lately. A toothpaste cap’s worth of the oil is all you really need for the whole back, and the small opening that’s thoughtfully placed at the bottle top under the cap keeps the flow entirely in the holder’s control. Even with our frequent use, one bottle lasted us a good four or five months, which means this product is more than worth it, to me.

The formula, which is about the same consistency of olive oil (but actually has a base of sweet almond oil) is scented, but not perfumed – I feel this is an important distinction to make because I go instantly to headache-ville the minute something heavily perfumed is put in my immediate area, let alone on my skin. Yes, you can smell the scents of each of the four varieties, but nothing knocks you off your feet or pulls your consciousness out of relaxation. The oil absorbs quickly and doesn’t make me feel “unwashed” as some others have; I usually like to rinse off after a long rubdown, but there have been times I haven’t and I’ve felt just fine.

If you’re looking for a reasonably priced, long-lasting, and high quality massage oil, pick up a bottle of Wet Inttimo. I’ve used it for several years and have only grown to enjoy it more and more each time I open my little bedside bottle. There are four scents to choose from: Tranquility (my fave) with ginger and bergamot, Romance with cedarwood and patchouli, Sensuality with ylang-ylang and tuberose, and Forbidden Fruit with wildberries. Each bottle is 4 oz and can be purchased for $10.95 here.

My twitter feed produces an endless supply of new online stores, products, and “stuff” from the adult industry – typically, I just add companies to the Massive Manufacturer List or use my findings for yet another installment of Weird Sex Toys of the Week. However, as I was perusing the single forthcoming product from my newest twitter follower, a staggeringly expensive $150 dark chocolate penis filled with your choice of fondants and shipped chilled, something rang out in my visual database of disembodied cocks.

I grant, it isn’t identical to the Doc Johnson Dil on the right, but hell of a similarity, isn’t it? If you live in the UK and have 89 pounds burning a hole in your wallet, head over to the awkwardly-named Unindecent.com to grab yourself a chilled, fondant-filled cock.

Yum.

Recently, two good friends of ours broke up after almost a yearlong romance. Dealing with the inevitable fallout of the split has consumed a lot of our time and energy as we make sure they’re alright. Naturally, when asked about our life en route to the planetarium with his folks, this bit of information came up. In a five minute soliloquy that I desperately wish I had recorded, the stepfather waxed poetic about what eventually became apparent as a call to have breakup sex with someone else to clear the proverbial cobwebs.

Being wholly uninitiated in the ways of lesbians, the call to action became increasingly hilarious, to the end of laughing hard enough to make me cough.

“Well, she should just go up to another girl, you know, but make sure she likes girls first, and go “Hey, do you want to go back to my place and do the vertical stuff rub?” And then, she should get one of them there double dong things, and they should do stuff with it, and bam. She’s not sad anymore because she found another lesbian.”

I don’t know what about the phrase “vertical stuff rub” that sends me into paroxysms of laughter, but I just picture two young women, traveling town holding hands and gently stroking lightposts, door frames, and car antennae in the stepdad’s world of narration. My guy and I have taken to stroking the side of the refrigerator and looking at each other with sultry eyes, whispering that we want to do the vertical stuff rub before utterly cracking up.

Feel free to add it to your lesbian lexicon, dear readers.

1.) The Gun Dildo from Creative Mouldings – for only $46.95 you can have this non-latex pleasure pistol in all the biological holsters you can round up.

2.) The “Little Death Ray” vibrator gun from Lady Clankington’s Cabinet of Carnal Curiosities. $99 gets you steampunk style and one beautiful ballistic bedroom toy.

3.) The Colt Power Stroker. For only $16.07 you too can own a grenade shaped masturbator with an ass in the bottom. So much manly-manness you might spontaneously grow body hair. Or more of it, depending.

4.) The Bomb Butt Plug by Oxballs. A veritable treasure trove of toys for the WSTOW doesn’t disappoint with this kinky kaboom of a silicone butt plug, available for $48.

5.) And if you want to salute your country with your moans of gun-toting ecstasy, look no further than a set of temporary lip tatts from Violent Lips, available as a set of 3 flag lip tattoos for $15.

BAD NEWS:

Shack of Scandals: An asshat blog scraper (a digital thief who copies someone’s original content and uses it illegally for “google notice”, usually laden with ad banners to boot) has been consistently and unrepentantly swiping stuff from a few sexblogger circuit buddies. Read all about AAG’s hilarious counterattack, Mina’s interaction and subsequent nonsensical reply from the owner, or follow those fighting the good fight over on twitter.

GOOD NEWS:

Crystal Causes: Crystal Delights Toys  has organized Crystal Causes, a thoroughly impressive charity event with $12,000 (omfg) in prizes up for grabs. Luxury sex toys galore will find themselves into the hands of a dozen lucky winners during the contest, which has recently been extended ’til August 31st and benefits a variety of sex positive organizations. Read all about it! Crystal Causes Charity Drive.

Papaya Toys: Papaya Toys is now selling to US retailers, including various Pleasure Chest locations and Dallas Novelty.

THINGS AND STUFF

Pretty stone Ben Wa balls!

While I strive to provide off-color humor and tongue-in-cheek commentary on this blog, I seldom wander over the proverbial edge. While I’m certainly not family-friendly by a longshot, I try and keep a modicum of classiness to this joint to ensure I don’t startle off skittish readers. There comes a time in every sex toy blogger’s life, though, that something so jaw-droppingly out of the ordinary skates across the radar that I’m compelled to mindlessly share it with you. *

It’s a shit dildo. There is no other way to say it. No, those of you in the back still clinging with panic to the notion that maybe I meant a poorly-constructed sex toy. I mean an ACTUAL shit dildo.

I won’t post the picture for those with sensitive stomachs, but you can view this…erm…very special toy here. Shit Dildo Link (Holy FUCK this is soooo NSFW)

…at…least…it’s…….silicone?

*kinda like that video tape in The Ring.

Through the bumps, bruises, and heart-wrenching splits that ensued the next decade or so, I began to get an inkling that maybe my approach needed a little work. I was coming off as a bitch to people that genuinely interested me, people who didn’t stick around long enough for me to explain my unorthodox methods. Instead, I put out a long explanation of me as a person, but I kept a healthy handful of absolutely-nots. My ex came into my life through one of these explanations on yahoo personals, and though neither of us was really emotionally or mentally ready for a major relationship, it happened anyway. Seven years later, I found myself sitting on a bunch of boxes in a new city, new state, and new home where I knew absolutely no one. I decided to throw caution to the wind and bust up all but one of my absolutely-nots – drugs were always the one hurdle I could never clear.

I ended up having a handful of pleasant make-out sessions in the cab of a truck, a man who had a young son – it was the very first time I’d kissed someone with a child. I took up with not one Navy guy, but two, as well as a Navy woman,  entering into a threesome for the third time in my life and becoming involved with military members for the very first time. After two days of many-hours long skype conversations with a handsome gent stationed fully across the country, he offered to fly me out to him only a week later and I accepted. I warmed his bed, did his laundry, and flew home after three days of the most crazy lengths I’d ever gone to for a first date.

There was one, however, that stole my heart so completely that my former absolutely-nots vanished off the radar altogether. Here he was, four years older, divorced, a smoker, unemployed, and a handful of other bothersome things that, on paper, would have scared me away from the man that is the greatest love I’ve ever known. I discovered him, and his body, like a house of hidden passages and made a commitment to tread slowly and keep an open mind. Here, this tiny circle on his lower lip where a piercing once threaded through – later, in more intimate moments, I’d find its twin elsewhere. Astride him and sated, we’d talk softly and my surprised fingertips would discover the wound in his chest where the improbable bullet had made its passage. I’d listen as his marriage, and subsequent divorce, were infinitely more complex than any knee-jerk scenario I could have imagined in my shallow checklists. The fingers that laced so sweetly with mine – these had saved dozens of lives while ending a single one, in one sad but necessary order in international waters. I’d trace tattoos with my nails as we lay half-asleep, and hear the stories of each that were as embedded as ink. This house, this soul’s home, is my partner now, and I still breathlessly explore each new room as it is revealed in my explorations.

It’s a pity that I spent so long building up walls that I forgot to add windows. Older, wiser, and calmer, I know that I still have more to learn than I can possibly fathom, but I am eternally grateful that love was the first place I truly learned that whatever will be, will be.

We met in Starbucks, and I of course had diligently googled her beforehand, and had also diligently confused her with a similarly-named porn actress and buddy of my hometown’s hero Kevin Smith. The conversation got off to an awkward footing as it became increasingly clear I was lauding the achievements of her pseudonym doppelganger, and not her own. Corrections were made, chai was consumed, and I found myself with a job. From the beginning, my duties and pay were incredibly vague. I may or may not eBay her shoes. I may or may not pick up her dry cleaning. I may or may not write things for her site.

There was a photographer that lived a half mile from my apartment at the time, her photographer, who ran a number of porn sites that he shot photos for, including a Jersey-themed one. The guy was nice enough, but sent up in me that skittering feeling that made me want to edge away from him when my pseudo-employer left to use the bathroom. I stepped down the hall to bring her the requested shirt (a scant piece of fabric with a few armholes for good measure) and was confronted with a fully nude woman I’d met only yesterday, nonchalantly applying makeup in the bathroom mirror. No prude I, the shirt was handed over with only a few blinks of surprise.

The next hour was spent watching her writhe around on his ridiculously red couch, pulling at various bits of her clothing like it was full of bees, making moues at the camera. It was later that I would have to put pen to paper to tell the world in her voice how she just couldn’t seem to keep her clothes on or her hands off of herself. Naturally, I took it for the fantasy it was intended to be, but as I wrote, I couldn’t help but think I was cashing in some of my women’s lib points to get a paycheck.

Other shoots that day included (hilariously) the three of us piling into her BMW, parked in the lot outside the apartments. I was assigned the dubious task of holding a flip camcorder through the sunroof so that site members could, in time, watch my employer strip down, inexplicably in the backseat of her own car. Spanish families walked by and raised eyebrows at the apparent clown car of paparazzi that had exploded mere steps from their front doors. Other escapades included a shoot in a semi-abandoned airplane assembly yard, with a crew of mechanics watching appreciatively as she tottered around in stripper heels and the faintest notion of a skirt. Later, in a state park*, we were chased down by rangers who had caught her on camera, prancing around naked in stilettos along a hiking trail with a pervy photographer and my nondescript jeans-and-t-shirt self in tow. There are few things more chastising than slinking out of a state park with a pair of fuck-me heels in hand that don’t even belong to you.

The woman was younger than I was, and, though undeniably pretty, looked ten years older than she was. She ran her life, and her sexuality, like a business – right down to perfecting her image and body through implants and liposuction, the latter of which I was informed of when I complimented her on what I thought was a rigorous gym schedule. A few years before she hired me for those scarce few months, she had gone on a reality dating show in a bid to get her name out in the world, keeping a partner back home all during filming. She won, turned down the “prize”, and came home to build her image and make an empire of sorts. I wrote her bio, amazed at the amount of times she’d been in fairly high-profile nude mags, despite her lack of a sex tape or any sex depictions on her paid-membership website.

She took me to Lane Bryant, dressing me up like a personal “curvy” barbie doll in clothes she felt I should wear, but privately I thought looked atrocious. She was the boss though, and wanted me to have a certain image, so I kept my head down and nodded while I slipped on yet another nautical-themed jean jacket. When the working relationship tapered off shortly after, I ended up returning the clothes and getting things that were a better fit for my wardrobe. I was the broad-shouldered semi-butchy purse puppy to her sparkly stripper self for a few weeks, and it was an interesting employment experiment. I made the most out of picking up her be-fringed thongs from the tailor, driving her to the airport for Spring Break party hosting in tropical destinations, and getting to watch her lounge across her dining room table and laundry machines for photo shoots, as if her own sexuality just reared up and possessed her meek cheerleader-outfitted form in the middle of housekeeping.

The time I spent with her taught me that I wasn’t willing to pay the prices needed to be that sort of sexy, and despite her occasional unthinking comment about my weight, made me more comfortable with my own body. I’ll never be a model, but damn do I respect the ones that are.

Here’s to you, K. Thanks for the fun times.

* Earlier, I’d watched a girl dildo-fuck herself in the ass atop one of the park’s tables in videos on the photographer’s other website. There was a family of four cheerfully eating sandwiches off the same table when we were there.

My one foray into femininity came one stubborn 4th grade summer when I refused to wear anything but sundresses, but it was most assuredly a phase. I watched my mom apply her makeup out of kits large enough to dwarf the aforementioned SUVs, and splash on jean nate. I liked the idea of it all, but putting any makeup on made me rub and brush my face until it came off in my palms. It literally felt like a physical weight on my face until I managed to get it off.  I actually suspect my longtime struggle with trichotillomania began when I’d pull out my eyelashes the few times I tried to wear mascara.

In high school, I wore button up shirts and tweed jackets, slacks and ties, entire thrift store outfits that did little to hide my chest, which was even massive back then. I loved my body, but I felt awkward in it, like a sweater that was too tight in the elbows.  I eventually settled into a very comfortable routine of jeans and t-shirts, which became my uniform to this day. Jeans feel good, won’t hold me up if I have to run from ninjas, and have pockets for storing things. That’s essentially my checklist for what good clothing should be – comfy, ninja-repellent, and imbued with some sort of storage.

Today, I got a box in the mail from a makeup store. I had ordered this box with things I thought I should have, including some sort of cheek tint glow, eyeshadow, and creams that would penetrate my face (har!) and give my cell walls SPF’d shiatsu massage.  I spread the contents of the box out on the bed and eyed the jeweltoned tubes and boxes with a healthy dose of skepticism. I tried some sort of mineral makeup and saw no difference. I smeared charcoal-hued shadow across my eyelid in an attempt to re-create sultry and looked more like a prizefighter after a losing bout. I smooshed hot-pink tint with provocative names into the apples of my cheeks and looked like a doll brought to life – not Barbie, mind, but her cousin Bambi from the dollar store that the rest of the Mattel family didn’t like to talk about at family functions. I was not good at this.

I sighed, smudged things around with my fingertips, and tromped into the other room to get an opinion from ToySir. I presented myself with a flourish and waited patiently while he complimented me on “new shirt”, which I’d been wearing all day. He didn’t notice the makeup, and even when I pointed it out, and his pleased reaction to me being nearby didn’t change at all. I snagged my new facial cleansers and went into the bathroom to wash off what already felt like ten pounds of makeup, even though it was barely any.

I’m happy with myself, my partner is head over heels for me even with bedhead and dragon breath, and I’m old enough now that I really don’t give a shit about being seen as unfashionable or less than feminine. Still, though, I feel like there’s some secret world in makeup that’s been kept from me. I want to understand the secret joys of $32 lipstick and perfume that costs more than three days’ pay, but I struggle to understand. Shoes elude me, to the end of owning only three pairs. I’ve been carrying the same khaki-colored purse for a year now. I revel in my wide-hipped fertile beauty, but I feel decidedly more Athena than Aphrodite these days and I wish I could find a happy medium.

Maybe I’ll give the shadow another try, after all.