Recent Ramblings

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This one’s for me. I think.

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Content Note:  Broad and ranty discussions of eating disorders, body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, death, abuse, and mental illness.   

The following post is likely going to be extremely triggering.  I left out a lot of perseverating details in how my disorder manifests, ways that are particularly personal in method and thought.  I still included the specific process of how this post came to be on this very night, so please take care of yourself should you continue to read.  I say take care of yourself when this subject is about my own self-care hypocrisy, so I can only hope I don’t create unbearable pain if you read on. 

It’s National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  I don’t think I was ever really aware this week existed, or maybe I was and deliberately stuffed it away like I do with everything eating disorder related.  I’m dreading writing this.  I’ve been thinking about this week for months now, seeing how it lines up with my Clinical Assessment and Diagnosis module for Eating and Eliminating Disorders which just happens to coincide with this week as well as every other fucked up triggering thing related to food and body image, all perfectly enmeshed with Mercury in Retrograde which, yes, I believe in fully.  I’m not editing this.  I’ll probably reread it once, post it, and try to forget it exists.  I’ll promote it once on Twitter and regret it instantly (I already regret it).   

My tits hurt.  They’re swollen from my weight gain, they hang heavy on my bloated body and I’m nowhere near my period.  I have nothing to blame it on hormonally and I’ve been off Testosterone for months.  I’m sucking the sugar from my teeth still left over from the half of a Kings Cake I polished off before my shower, making sure to rub extra lotion on my belly and breasts to reduce potential stretch marks from these last few pounds.  What the fuck am I doing writing this?  I’ve been dreading writing this more than I’ve ever dreaded writing anything in my life.  More than hundred-page curriculums, more than painful revisitations of abuse and trauma, more than writing about dead best friends or relationship nightmares still alive and unwell.  This is the last skeleton in my closet, and it hangs there because I simply don’t know how it will fall apart once it hits the sunlight.  I don’t understand my eating disorder.  Okay, fuck it, moving on, digging in.  

I put on makeup before writing this post, like I always do when I am about to do something tear-jerky and the risk of ruining my mascara or eyeliner is supposed to protect me from falling apart into water.  But I’m going to cry.  I’m inevitably, and possibly at this very moment, going to cry.  I can spend hours in therapy pouring my brain out, content that might make another person cry but just comes into analysis and feeling without a saline breakdown.  I don’t talk about my eating disorder often.  To anyone.  My loved ones, my therapist, anyone.  Or maybe I do and I just don’t remember because my trauma brain is really good at erasing things.  Maybe I stuff those away, too.  But I’d like to think I’m a pretty open and vulnerable person, and this, this I just cannot touch.   

I don’t want to touch it.  It is ugly and uncomfortable and triggering as fuck for me and so many people around me.  It is poison and I don’t know what to fucking do with it.  My new therapist says this is what we are going to unpack from now on.  And every time we talk about it, a new closet opens, more bones exposed, a reality that this skeleton belongs not to one body but many, many ugly morphs of dysmorphia from which I don’t understand their birth or origins, creatures I cannot name.  When I talk about my ED to my therapist, even for just a moment, I am reduced to tears, completely out of control. 

I need you to understand I have an eating disorder, but mostly, I myself need to hold a better understanding of this eating disorder.  My heart and all its SVT quirks is palpitating right now, appropriately so.  I am horrified.  “This eating disorder.”  “MY eating disorder…”  all thoughts I had when anticipating this post…would it be a history when I have no linear conception of how and why this has manifested throughout the entirety of my life?  Do I get generational and write about friends and family for their own past contributions and how I see it cycling through their own lives to this day?  How I know we all suffer and how lonely it must be?  Do I get cultural and talk about what a fucked up world we live in, where even someone like me who claims to be a sex-positive person can feel so much hatred toward my physicality?  How my idea of “body positivity” applies to every other human I see but myself?  How it relates to gender feelings, how I’ve always felt ugly, how my sexuality has been a crutch, a shield, a transaction, a mirror to understand myself in reflection of how others see me, want me, use me?  How once I start to pick apart the bones, I have no idea which ones will crumble to dust and disappear or which ones will stab me and splinter, how this weight piles onto my chest to the point where I’ve forgotten to breathe?  

I have an eating disorder.  I am deeply ashamed of it.  I am ashamed of how hard I try not to have one, how I know I’ll live with this for the rest of my life just as I have lived with it thus far.  When can it transform?  When will it mutate?  When do I get the chance to shift this from a burden to another disability, something that can define me but in enlightening ways?  My therapist wants to focus on this from now on.  I feel terrible for him.  I feel terrible for everyone and anyone who reads this.  I told two other people in my life that I was considering writing this post.  Coming out, so to speak, after years of feeling unworthy of the diagnosis and simultaneously drowning in it.  These people have seen me in it.  They’ve seen the suffering and they’ve suffered with me.   

I’m sick.  I’m addicted.  I have an eating disorder, and I’m hoping by typing it over and over, by naming it, by putting it naked and exposed to the universe and saying “something’s gotta give” that I can’t hide it anymore.  That no matter how much I exercise or eat “clean” or cook fresh meals, I will always see these as punishments, remedies to “fix” how I look.  Food is decadence, it is decay, it is hedonistic and lush and sexualized and immoral in all these contradictory ways that make zero sense to me, even theoretically.  My body is not my own and never was.  I don’t know if it ever will be, even when I try to reclaim it through a vector of sublimated sexual autonomy.  If one day, I’ll be able to massage lotion onto my belly and actually feel my hands touch my skin.   

Mike peeks his head into the living room as I write this.  He knew I was going to try, but he didn’t know when.  I’ve got the lo-fi beats on the TV and a cat curled up next to me; I’m pantsless and in tears.  He doesn’t ask if I AM okay.  He knows I’m not okay.  He knows what I’m doing, he doesn’t need to ask.  He just simply says “I love you.”  I love you, too.  I love all of you and any of you that trudge through this mess in whatever way you do, I admire you for existing even if I don’t know you.  This shit is fucking hard.  I have an eating disorder.  It still doesn’t feel real.  Maybe this will help and maybe it won’t.  But the work has to be done; life is too fucking short to pretend a huge chunk of it doesn’t exist.  So here it is.  Guts and all.   

unedited bc fuck it

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Ah yes, that time of the year, when scorpio season ends and mercury gets the fuck out of regrtrograde, thinkfeeldoers moult from their inertia into a confettied celebration of DO THE THING DO ALL THE THINGS because the energy is explosive and contagious and I found myself rehearsing the intro to this blog post on the toilet the same way I rehearse how I’m going to begin a session with my therapist on the car ride there like “Yes! This sounds so good, let’s not forget it!” and I recite it over and over in my head until it’s reduced to phrases that make absolutely no sense but sounded poetic in my head.  And then I plop it all somewhere or forget it with regretful intentional amnesia because would it have been authentic anyway?  And I can’t shake Cameron’s most recent Sex Ed in Color podcast about how not being ready is a shitty, lazy, excuse and part of me immediately kneejerked into an anxiety maelstrom about ablism and feeling shamed, part of me was like, is this an unapologetic call to action to get out of my funk?  and what the hell is the funk anyway?  I’ve been writing papers nonstop HOORAY finals and midterms, working my ass off at HiTOPS and doing Masakhane stuff, spending the lull hours at PROUD researching articles about pleasure based LGBTQ inclusive sex ed policy, and experimenting with a batch of new toys I want to review but also don’t know where to begin.  From bullets to buttplugs, a thrusting toy I hated but Mike graciously rehomed into his collection, an oak paddle that basically embodies my entire identity, a g-spot toy in transgender colors that actually feels good on my post-testosterone nethers…I don’t know.  There’s just so much.  I’ve neglected blogging, even within my identity, still habitually comparing myself to the dedicated action of fellow bloggers and grappling with the idea that I am not defined by what I create, and how capitalist white supremacy makes me feel obligated to curate content towards demand and appeal when really I just want to write.  if it makes sense, wahtever, if there’s spelling errors, whatever.  it’s a glorified livejournal with dildos and politics, which I think, if lj still existed, would have been what mine looked like anyway.  what an evolution that would have been, from taking quizzes about WHICH L WORD CHARACTER ARE YOU to talking about the empowerment of identifying with toys.  I have an entry I want to write about with regards to punk and ska, how adolescence in the late 90’s/early 2000’s taught me so much about finding community, actively putting your heart on your sleeve, using your body to exist weirdly in weird spaces, doing it yourself but knowing when, wehre, and how to ask for support.  how a break from the pit sitting on dirty stairs and sharing a bottle of water with a total stranger could look like self-care.  how screaming lyrics with a middle finger in the air in a sea of middle fingers, shouting about fuck the man, fuck authority, don’t judge us, don’t give up could look like activism.  how finding bands on mp3.com but understanding the importance of buying the whole cd and hanging around merch booths could look like supporting local creators.  how teaching someone that getting a leg up to crowdsurf to the front was an easy way to get out of the pit if they started feeling exhausted was a skillshare, and that tapping the people around you with the universal “up” gesture as they lowered their two hands for your foot could look like consent communication.  how a circle pit of skanking kids organically choreographed so nobody accidentally swung into each other could look like a ritual dance.  how pissing in the boys bathroom without a second glance could look like gender euphoria.  it all makes so much sense now.  I know my sexuality was always fucking weird, gender too.  I knew I was just weird in general.  but I wonder how much of me identified as punk before identifying as queer.  or maybe, as language evolved, I was always those things and will always be.  how there was so much power in this little jersey scene, and when I wear my battle vest, I am making a call for recognition but also alliance and reflection.  I rarely tell people how I chose my affirming name back in 2008.  there was a band in the scene, one I actually helped book at my local church, called avery.  there were a few bands back in the local scene with girls, but avery stood out so much to me.  I felt right at home with my brothers, but avery extended a new possiblity I had never considered outside of the riot grrl scene and a few female-fronted punk bands from the west coast.  avery showed me what local diy looked lke from a girl’s perspective, and even though I never really identified, something inside of me resonated so strongly with the confidence to represent themselves, to own their shit and have fun on the ride.  I reached out to nina saporta recently from avery after binging many, MANY episodes of mike doyle’s this was the scene podcast where steve from lwl was talking about his stint in avery and how he ended up naming his little girl after the band.  it looked like this: 

Subject: in a nostalgia hole, thanking you for it. 

Message: So I don’t know how I hadn’t discovered This Was the Scene, but I’ve been binging episodes and just hit the one with Steve from LWL. He starts off talking about your band, his stint, how he named his daughter after it. My legal birth name is Amanda. I helped the boys from Something 2 Say/The Consequence organize that show with the Bank Robbers and Socratic at my old church in Roseland, Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. Also volunteered at EPOCH at the Madison YMCA when one of my co-volunteer babes first introduced me to your sound. 
 
Growing up a little punk in the early 00’s scene, being perceived as a girl, queer girl, whatever, in a mess of dudes, it was so empowering to discover yr band. I saw you at Bloomfield Ave Cafe, a few other places… When I transitioned and came out as genderqueer in 2007, I chose Avery as my new name. Folx asked me why, and I always included you guys in the rationale. I’m just grateful, so fucking grateful to have had such a supportive environment as a teenager…I don’t think I would have ever held my identity so close if not for the NJ scene. Thank you for being a part of what makes me me. 

And the response… 

Re: Form Submission – Nina Saporta website contact form – in a nostalgia hole, thanking you for it. 

Wow, this message really stopped me in my tracks. I’m so grateful that you took the time to share this incredible experience with me.  The thought that we could have empowered you in any way is so moving.  Janet and I had been going to shows for a while (ALL DUDE BANDS) and it didn’t even occur to us that we could have our own band until we saw a band called Pillow at the Summit Christ Church, who had a frontwoman. It blew our minds. We had to see it happen before we could have even imagined that we could do it. To hear that we then were able to empower someone else in that sort of way is pretty amazing. And I’m going to guess that you have empowered someone else along your journey as well.  

I really get your appreciation of our scene- it was so utterly transformative to have a purpose and space outside of school to come into our own. I’m so happy to hear that you felt supported during that time, and hopefully as you transitioned. I love that you chose Avery as your name!!! If we play another reunion show (we did 2 this summer!) please come!! I’d love to give you a shirt and some stickers with your name on it, and get to give you a hug.  

Again, thank you so much for articulating and sharing all of this with me. We often tend to keep these experiences to ourselves, and miss out on the chance to connect in these really deep, meaningful ways. I appreciate your vulnerability and am so happy to know you!  

Have a wonderful day AVERY!!  
 

Love, 

Nina 

It just sealed it for me, sent it straight home into the feel center of my heart.  The ethics of the punk scene in NJ were always so damn accessible.  You could walk up to any band, any person at a show and just get into these amazing conversations about literally fucking anything.  It didn’t have to be music, or punk, it could be about wombats, or cutty sark, or what fucking ever and it was still valid and usable.  it taught us as kids the merit of interaction, of taking that risk of saying hi, grabbing a free sticker, offering a handshake or a “great set dude” and the reward of feeling seen, appreciated.  it was all reciprocal, full of fucking gratitude and passion, and it’s something that imprints on us forever.  it’s a payphone-using, wayne firehouse loitering, having 5 extra bucks for disco fries at peterpank diner after the show once youve found your missing shoe, stub-collecting tribe of fucking weirdos and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

Well shit.  I guess I just wrote the blog post anwyay.  unedited.  spelling mistakes and all.  because fuck it.  thanks cameron.  needed that fire under my ass.  <3 

Review of Mantric’s Rechargeable Rabbit

review, sex toys, trans*

I feel like a fucking movie montage on repeat. Get up, shower, chug a cup of coffee while putting on my face, throw on some khakis, go to work, go to class, somewhere along the route house a sandwich in my car, come home, shower (maybe), get in bed. Literally rinse and repeat. Interchange work with internships, pop those internships into a Saturday slot, throw some Masakhane board meetings in on Sundays and BOOM, I had two actual days off during the entire month of September. 12 hours, 5 days a week, occasional weekends. I. Am. A. Zombie. Appropriate for spoopy month, eh? But for whatever reason, I’ve been making really meaningful connections with folx from my past, past jobs, past degrees, past conferences, past lovers. The connections I’m making at school are few so far, but one in particular has zapped my heartbrain in the most delicious ways and I feel like we’re going to do something magical together. I’ve been volunteering for Ducky’s Sex Ed Skill Share series, which again reinforces the importance of extending, but not overextending our resources just enough to pool them into a mess of passion for like-minded work. So that’s the update, in a really, really small nutshell. Maybe like, half a pistachio.

Mantric in the sun on a map of Aruba
Heh. “Arikok.”

I wanted to write a review of a toy I’ve had since spring, but hesitated because it is so physically alike two toys I’ve already reviewed, the Jopen Vanity Vr6 which USED to be my all-time favorite before testosterone made my front hole accommodate different shapes, and the We-Vibe Nova, which is still tolerable for insertion but the slippery-wiggly external part feels like it’s in a constant arm-wrestling battle with my clit whenever I’m sufficiently lubed up and hard. Dual points haven’t really been my go-to lately, but for some reason, maybe the slight difference in a less bulbous g-spot angle or a fraction of space between the shaft and the arm? I don’t know… it just works. Pre-T the Mantric was sort of an “eh” version of what I already liked, though it certainly had a few unique perks. Post-T I’m all for it.

Mantric Rabbit standing up

For starters, it stands on its own. Literally. Propped upright, it rests like the L’Amorouse Prism V, except even more stable. The base flares out with a little lip to balance it nicely, which makes it a great addition if I’m going on a rotational session with different toys and I want to revisit the Mantric without gooping my nightstand or picking up cat fuzz. The lip of the base also helps my grip, which makes the handle easier for thrusting. The single button is featured on the lip, but it is inset just enough that I have not once accidentally pressed it during use. The button cycles through different vibrations after its initial pale blue standby mode. It changes in strength as the colors switch through the clicks, then eventually goes into different vibrational rhythms. I know I’m not alone when I say that vibrational modes can be excessive, complicated, and especially frustrating when the only way to get back to a desired mode is by clicking the button and cycling through again. Something about the Mantric, though, maybe because there’s only like, four different modes and they’re all wildly different, makes me not mind them so much. The vibration patterns also seem to make more sense than you’re average “cha-cha slide” or zapping so quickly you feel like you’re being tased through the crotch. The yellow, for example, features a vibration for internal stimulation that almost feels like the toy is is being thrusted into me while the arm stays on a constant buzz. I’m for it.

A pretty hilarious mashup of Mantric’s vibration modes.

So I’m a sucker for the colors. The Mantric is a pretty bland purple, almost “winey,” but it has this dual panel at the base that looks really fancy even when it’s not on. It’s a clear bubble that reminds me of the bottom of Nike Air soles, and the colors transition smoothly into one another so it doesn’t blink brightly or obnoxiously in the dark. It’s definitely a bonus feature and probably shouldn’t be the main reason I love the toy so much, but to be honest, it kind of is. It gives a new sensory tangibility for transition, and being a visually-oriented person, there’s no guessing which mode I’m on because the color is right fucking there. It also helps me associate via memory which mode I like best which takes out additional guesswork.

The Mantric has strength, it has a reasonable amount of options, it has physical balance, it has manual usability, and it is colorful as fuck. Overall, not bad, not bad at all.

Review of Uberrime’s Night King

review, sex toys, trans*

I typically put off writing blog posts for the usual five reasons:

1.) Life is immensely busy

2.) My mental health is not great

3.) My physical health is not great

4.) I haven’t had a chance to test a product

5.) I have nothing to say about the product

I haven’t gotten around to reviewing Uberrime’s Night King, but none of those reasons really factor in. I mean yeah, I’ve been busy as hell and not in the best headspace lately, but I’ve been itching to write this review for months now. As in, my mom was giving me GoT 101 back in May to explain the name of this toy. I brought it with me to Aruba for a photoshoot in June. It’s been my absolute go-to for penetration these days. In my mind, I’ve reviewed it over and over. It’s time to get the brain-thoughts into a post.

The Night King checks off all my marks and then some. It’s beautiful, featuring Marco’s signature marbling and flowery-spun colors at the base. Like Ice and Fire, the rich sparkled blues transition perfectly into reds, oranges, and a creamy yellow that drips over the top in an unapologetically suggestive way. It looks like a sunset, a beachy cocktail, a wand of superpowers, each color ribboning with complexity the closer you look at each detail. It’s visually the most striking toy in my collection, the contrast of cools and warms making it grab the eye. I keep moving it from shelf to shelf each time I use it to see how it looks in different angles, different light, among different toys. Every aspect of this toy is breathtakingly gorgeous. And yeah, sometimes it’s not about how a toy looks as long as it feels good, but the aesthetic is truly part of what made me fall in love with the Night King. And I fell hard.

Look at lil pre-T me with no jawline awwww…

Like I’ve said in previous posts, being on testosterone for 5 months has changed my junk. I have bottom growth, which was pretty inevitable, but I also am having increasing difficulty penetrating with harder toys. G-spot toys with bulbous heads are becoming too pinchy. Toys with firm texture are becoming intolerably uncomfortable even with generous helpings of lube. When I saw the length and girth of the Night King at first I thought it would be damn near impossible to use it. And like many of my other favorite toys, it proved me wrong in the best possible way.

Propped Night King
Balancing this thing on a fifth floor balcony railing was precarious at best.

The Night King is textured as fuck. It’s ridged in seemingly random arrays entirely down the shaft, a slight tilt at the head with a bit of a rim, just enough to nuzzle my G-spot on entry and exit. Which for me, is half the fun of insertive toys anyway, that moment where something first slides in and my body re-remembers the sensation of being filled. But the Night King doesn’t stop there. Each inch that goes deeper inside of me brings a new ridge with a new angle and a new stimulation I can never fully prepare for. Like, fuck, you know a toy is good when you get horny just writing about it.

Night King Base

It feels like fucking, like straight up fucking. The squish of it makes the texture absolutely delicious, and the length of it makes use so much easier. I don’t have to cramp up my hand or hold it at awkward angles; I can get as carried away as I want when going at it hard. And the length, which is great for grip, is also incredible for deep penetration. Whenever I use the Night King I end up taking it as deep as it can possibly go, having convulsive orgasms as I hit my A-spot and push up against my cervix. That dull ache of being completely filled, my kegels squeezing the toy while it’s inside me, feeling the ripples move themselves against my swelling insides, the lush silicone warming up orgasm after intoxicating orgasm, ughhhhh. This toy is SO good and I wish I were home right now to use it.

See THAT’s why I haven’t gotten around to writing about the Night King. I can’t stop using it. I can’t stop finding new things I love about it each time. I typically masturbate with something vibratey on my clit combined with a dildo. I use the Night King without a vibrator these days which is definitely a first. I’ve never just used a dildo and nothing else. It’s not quite enough to make me orgasm on its own, but it brings me so close I don’t even care. Well shit, I have the hugest boner right now. I finally own a sex toy that I’m not just obsessed with, but actually attracted to. Like if I could have a relationship with a toy, any toy in my collection, the Night King would be bae. It is seriously the best dicking I’ve ever gotten and I can’t stop using it. I have not one negative or critical thing to say. I’m infatuated with this dil and cannot thank Marco enough for its creation.

Night King Chess

If you like girthier, longer, squishier, more textured toys with heft yet ease of use, do your body a favor and grab a Night King. If you’re not sure but you have any ounce of curiosity, do your body a favor and grab a Night King. If you just want to swing around a floppy dildo for fun but also secretly want to test it out once or twice, do your body a favor and grab a Night King. Just grab a Night King… not mine of course, otherwise I’d stab you with Valryian steel and shatter you to pieces.

Thoughts on the ConCane(TM)

geekery, introduction, reflection, sex toys, sexuality, storytelling, trans*

So this testosterone thing is real.  4 months in and the changes are weird.  I can’t think of a better word.  Sometimes they’re subtle like a high note I can no longer hit in the shower, sometimes they’re more obvious like body acne, and sometimes they’re downright triggering.  Everything that is happening was expected at some point.  I knew my smell would change, I knew my downstairs would change, I knew I’d have different emotions and that I’d gain weight.  What I didn’t expect was the rate of these changes.  Nothing could have prepared me for the feelings I feel, the way I relate to my sexuality, how I carry my body now.  Testosterone is just fucking weird.  I used to hate pressure wave toys, now I love them.  I used to love hard glass and silicone, now I can’t really tolerate rough penetration.  I expected to be a horny teenager wanting to hump everything that moves, but now it’s a yearning for touch, comfort, and warmth. I definitely masturbate a LOT more frequently, typically 2-3 times a day.  My redistribution of muscle mass is taking its toll on my lower back and WHERE the HELL did the carb cravings come from?   

Testosterone has flattened my affect.  I still can’t cry.  My ups and downs are more frequent, but less drastic.  So much of my desire to write comes from manic episodes, moments of brilliance and inspiration I now fear I’ve lost.  I’ve felt the urge to blog almost every day and yet I can’t craft something coherent.  I never used to care about that; I’d just pound it out, edit it for grammar, and hit “Publish” with the intention of raw and unfiltered content.  I see all these awesome things bloggers are doing.  Going to conferences, hosting workshops, publishing amazing books, reviewing new and innovative products.   It’s beautiful and makes me proud to be a part of this community but I’m also teetering into a hole of doubt.  One of my fellow board members at Masakhane imparted a wonderful Theodore Roosevelt quote during our last picnic together: Comparison is the thief of joy.  I think about how I navigate this world and how comparison can be intoxicating and extremely damaging to my sense of well-being.  I’ve always had a certain respect for competition, my Aries tendencies reveling in the energy competition can create.  To extricate comparison from competition is so deeply rooted in my own neurodivergences and traumas, I’m not even sure where to begin.  I also see this narrative amplified through the macrocosms of corporations, particularly those who claim to advocate for gender and sexual minorities.  Authentic collaboration is entangled in capitalism, and that’s a reality I am sinking into more and more with age. 

https://twitter.com/ThePalimpsex/status/1132281350436921344

So clearly, my brain/body connection has been very, VERY fucky lately.  I’ve seen a quote circulate Instagram lately from Jamie J. Leclair about how “Intellectualizing your trauma is not the same as working through or processing it.”  For me, it rings true.  Intellectualizing is my defense mechanism.  And so here we are, wading through it again.  I need to be more vulnerable.  I need to fuck up.  Cameron Glover said in a Disability After Dark podcast with Andrew Gurza that sometimes it’s more about getting the content out there.  For me, I think I need to stop thinking in binaries.  It’s not the opposite of intellectualizing that will light a fire under my ass, it’s just thinking creatively.  I put together my ConCane last week.  It’s something Cameron and I came up with at the NSEC conference where I used a cane to help with my sciatic flares.  I found a hollow acrylic cane with a clear Lucite handle on Etsy.  For the NSEC conference I filled it with the sheds from my recently deceased snake, Princess Buttercup.  I kept every one of her sheds preserved in Ziploc bags throughout her life, knowing I’d create something beautiful out of them one day.  Buttercup passed away in March in the peak of her pubertal years.  She was only 5 and became eggbound due to her spinal lesions.  She was so severely kinked and arthritic that passing eggs was too painful for her.  We tried warm baths, anti–inflammatory injections, massage, but nothing worked.  Her death shook me in ways I hadn’t connected during the stress of the moment.   Here is this creature, my kin, suffering with similar disabilities and chronic pain, destroyed by her capacity to reproduce.  I’m still getting my fucking period on testosterone.  It is wreaking havoc on my back.  Hot baths, epidural injections, uterine massage…I miss you Buttercup. 

I had written a lengthy post about the ConCane last Friday during a 9 hour workshift where I was the only one in office.  I thought I had saved the post via Dropbox but it turns out I had only saved about half of it.  It’s not the first time I’ve lost a post and surely isn’t the last, but it broke me and I’ve spent the last week grieving, emotionally drained.  There was so much more I had written.  There was an outpour of gratitude to the companies, artists, and retailers in the field that donated minis/teenies for my cane.  There was a synthesis of how this cane has come to represent my identity in the nebulous frameworks of mind, body, and soul.  I am a collector.  I collect stones, toys, figurines, books, ticket stubs, patches, all from different moments in my life that help me remember who I am and why I’m here.  Layered on to WHAT I collect is HOW I collect these treasured identity-markers: a rotating wooden zodiac altar for my stones, a lit cabinet for my toys, a DIY converted DVD case for my figurines, my father’s bookcase from his years at Princeton for my books, a triple goddess triptych made out of my tickets (after taking this picture of them I am now realizing I hung the waxing and waning backwards yikes), my “battle vest” for my patches and buttons…the methods are performative as vehicles of self-expression, decades of evolution with threads of consistency validating my embodied existence.  As someone who frequently dissociates, these are quite often literal touchstones to keep me grounded.  It resonates through my cane, a device used to brace my existence on all planes, a rod to channel my understandings of sexuality and disability, a display for the symbols of support within my community, a means of saying “thank you” every time I take a step.   

I am rewriting the remains of this blog post on another Friday 9 hour workshift, one where I was supposed to be at the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference.  I’ll be there tomorrow, but I’m experiencing a dose of FOMO for missing the first two days, though I’m doing my bit here.  I’m fielding phone calls, some from patients who are at the conference this very moment. I’m organizing care for my community in the ways I can.  I’m adapting to a limitation, where being “stuck at work” during a major event related to my identity is still an opportunity to subvert, reach out, and process.  I am so excited to see familiar faces tomorrow, to connect with new communities, to learn new perspectives, and best of all, to show off my new ConCane(TM).   

Want to see how I did it?  I livestreamed the process on Instagram.  Saved it to Youtube.  Added CC’s.  Enjoy!

Special thanks to:

Funkit
Uberrime
Lust Arts
Pleasure Forge
Phoenix Flame Forge
Strange Bedfellas
Monster Maxim
Hole Punch
SarahJGoodnight

So I’m Engaged?

reflection, relationships, sexuality, storytelling, trans*

Well shit. It’s been some time, all. Life has taken some strange, albeit lovely courses lately. I ran a poll on Twitter last month asking what I should write about on vacation in Aruba. The results were mainly split between a review of Uberrime’s Night King and my ConCane, both are still works in progress. The ConCane is going to channel a pretty in-depth discussion of disability, community, interpersonal support, and reconstructing physicality. It’s going to be a great post, but it’s not time yet. The Night King is a beacon of positivity and everything about it sparks joy, but I want to wait until I can do it justice with a gushing (ayyyy, puns) review.

Right now I’m riding a plane back from Aruba to Newark Liberty. Everything seems connected these days with a very present recognition. Driving past the Newark Marriott and being flooded with memories of Masakhane’s workshop at NSEC, rereading old posts about Pride, registering for my MSW courses at Rutgers, wearing my staff shirt from PROUD while walking with Mike on the beach… I could never have expected the levels of synthesis in so many aspects of my life.

Avery Mike Engaygement
Still rocking that rainbow bracelet from Newark Pride last year.

Perhaps it’s just that time of year when everything comes up rainbows, maybe it’s just a matter of moving, starting my new job, preparing my internship for HiTops, whatever. The world of queers was always a paradoxically woven one for me. Queer academics even more tightly woven. Queer academic activists working their asses off, even more recursive. It’s a matter of time and space, I guess. I’m almost 15 years in the field, still ambiverting my ways through various professions in hopes they might one day inform one another with crystal clear dimension, rerouting through past professional encounters and networking those beyond the exchange of a business card or LinkedIn.

I’m actually manifesting kinetic plans that build into each other instead of reducing their complex application to one single mission. I shouldn’t be surprised by the success. I shouldn’t be humble. I should be celebrating. The shifts in my life have been pretty drastic, and yet I still find myself marveling each day at new, subtle changes. I’ve been on testosterone for over a month, intramuscular injections each week that sometimes leave me limping in pain, bloodwork bruising my arms, my voice gradually dropping, a sudden inability to cry. Words come so much harder, my mania has subdued into a different species, something foggy and nonconforming to my baseline analysis or comprehension.

I stutter a lot now. I stumble over myself in person and online, and writing this post has been pretty daunting, if not for all my life changes than the reduced lexicon which once trademarked my writing for its verbosity and derailing. I worry a lot about this now that I am going back to school for my final Master’s degree. My thoughts, conceptions, and ontologies are my most confident parts, an intellectualized defense from years of being bullied at a very young age.

I got a lot of backlash from my classmates for taking on this project. That smile has fear behind it.

I did not understand how to hide my queerness in elementary school and programs like “Talented and Gifted” as well as switching to a private school, though pretentious and extremely fucked up in rhetoric and social strata, were the few institutions protecting me against almost daily physical and verbal harassment from my peers. Anyone who says children are incapable of truly harming one another is completely unaware of how harmful that very declaration can be.

It took me a long time to honor my queerness and simultaneously took me the same amount of time to learn how to code switch into straight culture. I spent my vacation week with an engagement ring around my finger, silver oak leaves entwined with a sparkly green gem. For me, queerness is a lot like this gem. I want it to shine and I want it to be seen, but I don’t want it to make sense to everyone. I don’t want it to be read as feminine, but with everything society attaches to what it’s supposed to look like, I’m left wondering how to reclaim its meaning.

engaygement ring
People see me and Mike and some may think “straight couple.” They may see us and think cis, abled, monogamous, whatever. It’s not us. It’s not me and it’s not him. I hashtagged our engagement photo on my Instagram, saying #enGAYged, then wondered if that would lead to a critique of our queerness. I want to not give a fuck. I want to cherish this moment, to hold his hand in public and not fear the misinterpretation of heteroperformativity, but the reality of my life is that this misinterpretation IS privilege in and of itself. It does not carry the same risks of being read as queer, the inherent harm and discrimination against “visibly” LGBTQ folx.

View this post on Instagram

Ready to hit the town.

A post shared by Avery (@thepalimpsex) on

But what constitutes the parameters for”visibility?” Who gets left out from that definition? I once said to be “anti-man” requires more unpacking at what signifies “man.” Do I deserve to get pissed at people misgendering me; do I deserve that discomfort or centering myself in that discourse? Am I reproducing inequalities and privilege by even writing about this?

I started this post on the plane ride home from Aruba. Mike accidentally spilled water on my laptop, so I saved the document and shut it down immediately. I wonder sometimes about fate, luck, higher beings, universes, whatever, because I really needed time to process and reflect. Three days have gone by, reconnecting with my neighbors, coworkers, gaming buddies, folx who want to see “the ring” after they saw my announcements on social media. And I find myself hesitant to show them. As though me, of all people, is not supposed to have a sparkly gem added to my already compulsory heteronormative token of perceived matrimony.

Congratulations dessert
I mean, we’re going to milk free desserts as long as we can.

I want to say fuck the norms, I want to say I can have any damn gem on any damn ring of any damn finger and it means fuckall with regards to my sexuality and gender identity. I feel this need to tell people “no this doesn’t make me straight, or cis, or monogamous, or institutionally religious”…but that need just reinforces the duality of “normal” versus “subversive.” OMG like “nonconformity is just another conformity,” paging adolescent punky Avery covered in rainbows writing Anarchy symbols all over their locker… It feels like a projection, like I’m protesting too much. I aim not to justify my engagement when I know what feels right, but I also feel exhausted at the identity shifts that happen when I’ve become “permanently paired.” At least “fee-ahn-say” is pronounced the same no matter the gendered spelling.

I knew at a young age I never wanted kids but I never had many thoughts on marriage. I think everything’s still the same…my cat is my baby and a marriage is just an excuse to throw an awesome party celebrating a love that queered futurity. I see queer folx all the time in relationships with cis dudes and I don’t identify with these specific dynamics, but I also respect them so much. I’ve lived the “not trans enough” and “not queer enough” narratives to understand that my relationships are just another color to the spectrum, not necessarily a compounding layer of invisibility. I hope it stays complicated. I’m not sure I’d have it any other way.

Avery’s Top 40 Worst Sex Toys from a 2007 CalExotics Catalog

geekery, music, reflection, review, sex toys, storytelling

So with all the awesome blessings in my life right now, I’ve been busy packing up 6 years worth of belongings before my upcoming move to Somerville next Tuesday. I forgot I had a bunch of shit from my childhood in boxes up in the attic. One of these boxes had a whole batch of photo albums from disposable cameras during my teen years. I flipped through the albums, cringing, NOT at the photos themselves but the way I had captioned them. Things like “WUTZ ↑,” “Biffles 4ever!,” “Leonardo DiCaprio, eat ur heart out,” “We ArE sO kEwL!” You get the idea. I now realize this is psychologically genetic. My dad has kept photo albums since my childhood and captioned each picture with equally generationally corny subtitles. Even when he digitized these photos to an external hard drive, he kept all the awful captions in the fucking FILE NAMES.

I also found another relic in these boxes, a 2007 California Exotics catalogue, complete with vinyl-clad models in ridiculous positions on every other page. We stocked so much of this junk at Essex Adult Emporium, I could virtually smell the phthalates when flipping through the pages. I was blown away by how many shitty names, claims, materials, and packaging were in this magazine. I distinctly recall encouraging my manager to switch our inventory to better manufacturers, but I also remember there being at lease SOME toys from CalExotics that weren’t completely horrible. I mean, yeah, the hard plastic vibrators are still an okay start, bullets work too, but I’ll be damned if I could find a single silicone toy in this entire 300 page catalogue. Plenty of toys SAID they were silicone, but as most of us know, that’s a whole other thing.

So without further ado, I will begin a series of horribly captioned pictures for my “Top 40 Worst Toys” from the 2007 California Exotics magazine. I’ll describe the captions and use alt text with a bit of color commentary in between. I’ll also try to rank them from bad to worst but some of them are so off the map I don’t even know where they fit.

40

40 Shane's World Girl's Night Out swirly dual point vibrator with vibrating elephant

Starting out at number 40 is the Shane’s World Girl’s Night out. This dual-stim vibrator features an “EZ load battery case” and is made with “high grade, hygienically superior silicone,” two things I immediately think of when it comes to going on the town with my “girlfriends.” The toy is clearly not silicone and I guess having a jelly elephant twiddling your clit is the ultimate bonding experience during femme hijinks?

39

39 Remote Control Silicone Arouser not actual silicone meant to be inserted and worn internally with straps

39 is the Remote Control Silicone Arouser. Totally not silicone, totally thrown together with flimsy bra straps, complete with a protruding nubbin which I can only assume is supposed to vibrate internally while the rest vibrates externally. Full disclosure here, since I had a 50% off discount while working at the sex shop, I actually bought one of these as my first “couples toy.” Nothing about it fit any part of my body and I lost the remote after the first failed use. Garbage. Trash. Next.

38

38 Scintillating Sunflower strappy "hands-free" jelly vibrator shaped like a pink flower

38 is another one of those “hands free” strappy jelly vibrators, except this time it comes with a wired controller so I’m not really sure how this would pan out in one of those scenarios where you are trying to have a stealthy orgasm in public. I can just imagine the neon pink controller looking somewhat suspicious as the matching pink wire runs down your pants. What really got me laughing was the name, “Scintillating Sunflower (TM).” Note the trademark. I can only assume it’s because whoever named it thought “scintillating” was a fancy word and the alliteration was poetic genius.

37

37 Silicone Ultra Wireless Exciter with Sleeve clearly not silicone sleeved mini vibrator

Back in fake “silicone” land is the Silicone Ultra Wireless Exciter with Sleeve at 37. Normally when I think wireless I think there’s a remote option to control it. It’s just a mini bullet vibe. A mini bullet vibe with a control for “vibration, pulsation, and escalation” (These modes sure escalated quickly!). Again, the “hygienically superior” pitch becomes more and more common as these toys continue to profess their silicone composition. Over it.

36

36 35 Silicone Ultra Flashing Crystal Bunny supposedly silicone dual point vibrator plus grape scented jelly double dildo

In similar veins, 36 and 35 are featured on the same page. 36 is again, the fake Silicone ULTRA Flashing Crystal Bunny, y’know, in case you get lost in the woods or need to defend yourself against a bear. We sold this in the store and it smelled like absolute death. The texture was rough and bumpy, a perfect recipe for irritation.

35

35 also smelled horrible despite its description as a grape-scented Veined Double Dong. There are only a few fruity-scented items in the catalogue, but many of the worst smelling phthalate-ridden toys interestingly have a “Pleasantly Scented” stamp on them. My main issue aside from grape stench, is the description that it has an “AC/DC head.” I’ve never understood the AC/DC thing when describing sex toys. I’ve heard it referred to in voltage, I know it’s a band and also a pretty shitty way to describe bisexual people. But as far as double-ended dildos go, just…why?

34

34 33 Grape Vagina Strawberry Ass two strokers, one purple, one pink, grape and strawberry scented, vibrating

34 continues the aroma trend with the purple Grape Vagina and the pink Strawberry Ass. Smell aside, the descriptions are what kill me. The grape “vagina” (not “vulva,” mind you, which seems to be a reoccurring theme in the catalogue) is described as “Freshly scented,” while the Strawberry Ass is described as an “anus with noduled sleeve and succulent aroma.”

33

32 Cherry Scented Vibro-Dong vibrating jelly red dildo with a cherry aroma

33 culminates our scent series with the Cherry Scented Vibro-Dong, most often recognized for Epiphora’s hilarious April Fool’s joke a few years back. We also sold this at the store and not only is it fucking HUGE, but it was always covered with an oily sheen of chemical leakage. Delicious.

32

31 Love Vibes Double Lover supposed jelly dual stimulator covered in hearts but external heart nub contains no vibrator

Red wasn’t a very common color in CalExotics toys circa early 00’s, so most red toys were either fire-themed, berry-themed, or love themed. And what says love like number 32’s Love Vibes Double Lover, a supposed dual-stimulator covered in a swirl of hearts for texture. I say “supposed dual-stim” because the external part has absolutely no vibrating mechanism inside of it. It’s just this strange heart-shaped appendage barely attached to the rest of the vibe. AND the heart has hearts on it! That’s some meta lovin’ right there.

31

30 Bendi Clitifier dual point jelly stimulator with beads and assorted vibrating animals

In the theme of bad concepts for dual-stimulators is the Bendi Clitifier at number 31. Yes, “Bendi Clitifier.” I’m pretty sure neither of those are actual words. I understand “Bendi” means “bendy,” since the external attachment has an accordion-like stem to position the bullet. Now someone, please tell me what the hell is a “Clitifier?” I feel like that would be an awesome wrestling name or something in the campy horror-porn genre.

30

29 Pink Jelly Ele with Turbo Pearls dual point vibrator loaded with plastic pearls, pink jelly, and an elephant vibrator

Sometimes it’s a combination of the toy design and the name that makes my nethers twinge. 30’s Pink Jelly Ele with Turbo Pearls embodies that reaction. The shaft of this thing is entirely made up of “gyrating” plastic pearl beads with a vibrating elephant on the end. I can only assume the pearls jam up easily, as most of the shitty pearl rabbits we used to sell always broke even if just one or two pearls stopped working. I am, however, a huge fan of the description at the top of the box, “The Mystical Elephant.” It’s as though there were two sides in the naming process, one trying to make it cute as a “Jelly Ele,” the other trying to give it a supernatural spin. Either way, as my annoying handwritten caption states, I am completely mystified.

29

28 Jesse's Climactic Climaxer Jelly "Vaginal" arouser clearly meant to be used externally

Now at 29, we’re back to the alliteration game. California Exotics went all out on naming this toy. It doesn’t rhyme, it flat out uses the SAME WORD TWICE. Kind of. The Climactic Climaxer is described as an “ultra-powerful vaginal arouser with 3 seductive pistolettes and a luscious, soft mouth that forms a gentle yet secure suction cup over your vagina or nipples.” I just had to type out that whole description, it was too good. Though I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to suction “over” a vagina? I’ve had a menstrual cup crookedly suck against my vaginal wall but again, not really any vagina sucking happening.

28

27 Reverberating Jelly Beads purple jelly graduated vibrating anal beads

I think you get where I’m going by this point. 28’s Reverberating Jelly Beads are mostly on the list because of the word “reverberating.” I’m pretty sure someone just went to Thesaurus.com and typed in words like “vibrating,” “arousing,” “sexy,” and picked out any synonym they hadn’t used yet. “Reverberating” hasn’t been a go-to descriptor for anal beads as far as I’ve seen in the toy industry, but points for creativity.

27

26 Head Coach Pump Jelly sleeved penis pump

There are pages upon pages of penis pumps with their own personalities. There were fireman-themed pumps, military-themed pumps, matador-themed pumps, but the one that really intrigued me was the Head Coach Pump at number 27. Complete with a picture on the box of a shirtless (what I assume to be) football player, the Head Coach Pump emphasizes the sports theme by claiming the product is “ERECTION TRAINING!” (Caps on the packaging).

26

23 Shane's World Orgasm Balls kegel balls with cloth string shaped like 8 balls, basketballs, footballs, and soccer balls

Building off the sports theme is 26’s Shane’s World Orgasm Balls, kegel balls connected by string in various sports- themed shapes. Are you a renowned pool shark? A huge March Madness fan? Attending the next Super Bowl? In love with David Beckham? You’re set. Unless you really like badminton, then you’re just shit out of luck.

25

25 The Facilitator latex vibrating strap on with flimsy straps

Back during my years attending Widener’s Human Sexuality program, one of the most common phrases uttered by my classmates would be “Well, as an educator, I think…” Often our classes would be shared with therapy-track students and the phrase broadened to “As a facilitator, I think…” Number 25’s latex “dong” is aptly named The Facilitator. This giant chunk of bulky latex comes with a corded remote vibrator which will inevitably break after a few uses and is held up entirely by what looks to be a thin, adjustable bra strap. Funny names aside, this toy looks structurally impractical in every way.

24

24 Gold Balls in Presentation Box mystery metal kegel balls in a red box

24’s toy doesn’t have cords, strings, or any name in particular. It is simply titled Gold Balls in Presentation Box, like it’s a fucking Monet painting. If there are any artists reading this, I implore you to name your next piece “Gold Balls in Presentation Box.” Except trademark it since CalExotics didn’t. I know I don’t need to say these balls are probably made of crappy mystery metal, but I’m saying it anyway.

23

22 Colt Power Balls with Metal Chain anal beads with flimsy metal keyring attached

23 introduces a whole page of Colt Products, typically designed for “The Gay Male (TM)” demographic. You can tell it’s for particularly EXTREME gay men because there’s a metal chain and a key ring at the base of every toy. And for some reason the Colt Rammer with Metal Chain includes spikes on what might be described as testicles? I don’t know. I can’t imagine that chain being a very powerful retrieval cord, but at least it’s not string.

22

21 Silicone Ultra Probes clearly not silicone anal probe with no flared base

At least Colt uses retrieval cords, because 22’s Silicone Ultra Probes (almost accidentally typed “Problems,” but that would have been just as accurate) has nothing at all. No string, no loop, no cord, no flare. Just pointy, “hygienically superior silicone” with a rough, bumpy texture that is bound to destroy your intestines the moment your lubey fingers lose their grip. I’m baffled at how many anal products California Exotics sell with no method of retrieval or security whatsoever.

21

20 Waterproof Anal Probe plastic vibrating anal toy with no flared base

Number 21’s Waterproof Anal Probe is at least hard plastic, but again, where is the fucking flare? There are NO excuses on this one because the prescribed usage is literally in the name “Anal Probe.” It is definitely going to probe. It is definitely going to go where no other butt toy has gone before. My insides hurt thinking about how it would feel to have a hard plastic probe working its way through my guts while left on vibrate. If this grosses you out, it well should. Not trying to yuck yums, but getting a toy lodged further and further up your intestines is pretty dangerous and a very expensive trip to the ER.

20

19 Alexa's Crystal Wand jelly clear anal wand with no flared base

20. We’re almost there. Alexa’s Crystal Wand is not made of crystal. Its “stimulation beads” are well embedded in the toy for decoration, not sensation. There’s no flare. Moving on.

19

18 Hearts of Love jelly clear butt plug shaped with graduated hearts

I keep thinking about the uselessness of the heart nubbin on 32’s Love Vibes Double Lover. I appreciate that 19’s Hearts of Love butt plug puts some function into the heart shapes. It’s really just the name I can’t get past. Like, “Happy Anniversary, honey! I got you a smelly jelly graduated butt plug with a ‘superior suction base!’” I’m pretty sure we stocked this at the store and it was so unpopular we took it off the shelves.

18 and 17

17 Waterproof Bunny Treat Carrot Shaped Vibrator16 Vibra Dolce Corn Cob Vibrator

So anyone who’s read my blog knows I appreciate silly toys, so long as they’re actually body safe. Funkit’s Pumpkin Almond and Gespensts Farmer’s Delight mingle humor with functionality, and that’s really how it should be. 18 and 17 miss the mark by miles. 18’s Waterproof Bunny Treat is quoted as “Just like the real thing!” Except I don’t want the real thing. A hard, pointy carrot has zero appeal for any hole but my mouth. 17’s Vibra Dolce has me confused by the name. If they have to call the carrot a “Bunny Treat” couldn’t they call the corn a “Squirrel Treat” or something? Where the heck does the name “Vibra Dolce” come from?

16

15 Dr. Z Loving Vibrations purple jelly vibrator shaped like a penis covered in nodules

Similar in texture is the bizarre number 16. Kind of a corn cob with the leafy base and the texture except not, because it’s pale purple and has a dick tip. What confuses me even more than the corn/glans combination is the name: Dr. Z’s Loving Vibrations. This is apparently a whole line by Dr. Z, also known as Victoria Zdrok, a sex therapist, playmate, and clinical psychologist. I’m wondering if she actually signed off on this toy and if so, WHY?

15

14 Dr. Joel Kaplan Prostate Probe anal beads that look sharply spiked on each bead

Another Doctor with their name attached to a CalExotics toy line is Dr. Joel Kaplan. I find the promotional methods interesting in comparison, Zdrok is dressed in a revealing nurse’s outfit and Kaplan is in a suit and tie. What’s more interesting is that I can’t actually find anything certifying Kaplan as a doctor except for a case filed by the FDA in 2001 telling him that his products are ineffective if not outright harmful. Makes sense when you look at number 15, the Dr. Joel Kaplan Prostate Probe. There are spikes on every ball of these anal beads. I don’t care if it’s the softest jelly in the world, that shit can’t feel good.

14

13 Man Shark Enhancer Ring Clear jelly cock ring with dozens of jelly teeth

Another toy that looks far too spiky to be pleasurable is 14’s Man Shark Enhancer Ring. Even if these shark teeth did feel good, the “silicone soft ticklers” are clearly jelly and the whole thing looks like a bacterial gunk trap. All I can think of when seeing this is the “Suck my diiiiiick! I’m a shaaaark!” meme, hence the googly eyes I drew on the page.

13

12 Futurotic Clitoral Stimulator with Floral Prongs Corded bullet with futurotic sleeve that looks like a facehugger from Alien

As many folx already know, jelly and other shitty toy materials are often labeled with ridiculous names, like Sil-a-Gel or Cyberskin. Enter number 13’s Futurotic(R) Clitoral Stimulator with Floral Prongs. FLORAL PRONGS. This thing looks like a combination of an anemone and a face-hugger but pink. I could see it possibly feeling good if the material were better quality. Then again, the sleeve is removable so you could potentially use it once and just keep the bullet, but nah, pass.

12

11 Stroker Bud masturbation sleeves internally colored to look like flowers

The Floral Prongs look as much like a flower as the Stroker Bud does. This jelly masturbation sleeve is clear, but dyed on the inside to look like a tulip. The green part seems ridged and I’m willing to bet that after one use the dye rubs off all over whatever you’re fucking it with. There are a lot of fantasy sleeves out there made with far better materials that won’t fall apart after one use. The Stroker Bud lands at number 12 mostly because it makes me want to see some dude in an Easter bunny costume fuck it while lying in a spring meadow.

11

10 Senso Pocket Penis masturbation sleeve shaped like a penis

Or, if sticking your dick in a flower stroker isn’t your thing, you could always stick your dick in number 11’s Senso Pocket Penis. So, there’s no measurements in the description, meaning this stroker could very well be used for all sizes and types of dicks, kind of like how the Buck-Off operates. The dickception part is what gives me the giggles. Dicks in dicks. And if the person using it is a jerk named Richard, it could be dick Dick’s dick in a dick.

10

9 Linn Thomas Talking Love Doll with pre-recorded sex talk

Then again, you could always stick your dick in Linn Thomas’s Talking Love Doll (number 10…we’re almost there!) It includes pre-recorded “sex talk” which has me wondering if there’s a way to hack the recording box to make the doll sing Pavarotti or yodel. This brings back childhood memories of my Teddy Ruxpin, which was cute until my sister hit me with it and the speaker inside is hard as a rock. I also just noticed that the description has “jointed arms” and “orbital sockets” in bold font as some sort of selling point. I don’t like to shame fuck dolls, but this is just some sloppy next level disaster shit.

9

8 Vibra Phone Vibrating Flip Phone

A toy I WISH had a talking feature would sensibly be the Vibra Phone at number 9. The toy clearly dates the catalogue as it is a flip phone with an antenna, not even that cool RAZR I had freshman year of college. I’m not entirely sure which part of the phone vibrates, and its “Secret Agent” description has me thinking it had some real Talkboy potential. Okay, now I’M dating myself.

8

7 Funky Jelly Vibe in tye-dye colors

Continuing with the retro theme is the Funky Jelly Vibe at number 8. Coming in either pink and purple tye-dye or Nickelodeon-style orange and green, this vibrator could have had some real potential if the materials were better. This toy is unintentionally honest in its title, since Funky Jelly is likely to be the first thing you smell when opening the package.

7

6 Waterproof Mood-Light Jelly Penis Vibrator with a color-changing light at the tip

Right now this is easily the longest and most extensive blog post of my adult life. I’m feeling exhausted and cranky. If only I had the Waterproof Mood-Light vibrator (number 7) to tell me my true emotions. It seems like only the head of the vibe changes colors and I doubt it’s actually thermal reactive which gets me thinking, is it possible to manufacture body-safe glass “mood” dildos? Because the 90’s kid in me would totally buy that.

6

6 Pussy Whip Flavored Cream Cherry Rum, Cinnamon Schnapps, Blackberry Brandy

My final throwback item from this catalogue that really makes me scratch my head is number 6’s Pussy Whip Flavored Body Topping. It’s obviously non-dairy and I really, REALLY don’t want to know what the ingredients are. I am cracking up at the flavors, though! First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Cherry Rum. I’ve seen Cinnamon Schnapps and I used to nip my mom’s Blackberry Brandy when I was a teenager, but what the ever-living fuck is “Cherry Rum?” And WHY did they choose these flavors? Like, what would that demographic even be?

5

5 Body Teasers Vibrator with Hair Bristles on the other end

If you wanted to get creative, you could always apply your gross Pussy Whip with a vibrator that doubles as a basting brush! Number 5’s Body Teaser combines a hard plastic G-spot vibrator with what CalExotics calls “soft teasers,” aka polyester bristles with what I assume are for tickling purposes. Or a really ineffective toothbrush. Either way, it’s a bacterial breeding ground and one of the weirdest multipurpose “add-ons” I’ve ever seen on a sex toy.

4

4 Universal Adult Toy Lubricant Silicone on Silicone

Number 4 gives me flashbacks from my awful experience with MEO. Ruining one of my favorite toys with what MEO called a water-based lube (it was actually silicone) always makes me wary of any lube that is dubbed “Universal.” Like, nothing is universal, especially when it comes to sexuality. So when I saw this Universal Adult Toy Lubricant was “safe for all toys and materials” AND “silicone based” I wish I could say I was surprised at the error. I wish I could say this was the first time a company has been dishonest or uninformed about their lube ingredients. Number 4 is just frustrating on so many levels.

3

3 Gerbil Flex Stimulator

I think South Park is problematic for a lot of reasons and I grew up in a time where Snopes didn’t exist to debunk myths. There used to be unconfirmed rumors about Richard Gere putting a gerbil in his ass with a toilet paper roll, something so outrageous that people didn’t care about the validity but enjoyed the absurdity of it all. I once included this toy in a college sociology paper based on the folklore of “gerbilling.” That was in 2005. That’s how long this toy has been in existence. I can’t tell if there’s actually a market for it or if California Exotics is just too stubborn to discontinue it. The Gerbil Flex Stimulator is a bronze color with a little rodent face at the tip of the bullet. I feel like no further explanation is required for why it landed at number 3.

2

2 Butt Candy Prickly Butt Plugs

Butt Candy. Number 2. Appropriate, considering these plugs are essentially designed to scrape the shit right out of your colon. Even if these were silicone, there is NO WAY they could ever be “Hygienically Superior” based on texture alone. Yikes.

1

1 Dick and Balls Latex Penis Mask

You made it! Number 1! Number 1 is so bad that you probably looked at the picture before reading the description. It is ALL HORRIFYING. The Dick & Balls Latex Penis Mask contributes the inspiring quote “Sometimes, you just gotta be!” Remember listen as your mask unfolds, challenge what the dickhead holds, try and scare your roommates in your own sweet time. Some may have more sense than you, others never want this view, my oh my…

Hey, hey, hey.

Review of Uberrime’s Jellyfish 2.0

geekery, review, science!, sex toys

Get ready to be jelly…

My Glasswear Studios Jellyfish plugs.
My glass jellyfish plugs.

Insert all jelly puns here.  Actually, don’t. Because the only jelly I want inserted from now on is the Uberrime Jellyfish 2.0 dildo.  No K-Y, no Smucker’s (though chutneys are always welcome), and DEFINITELY no PVC mystery materials. Judging by the amount of double-entendres and jelly references I’ve been making since the arrival of this dildo, the Jellyfish 2.0 really shines as a conversation piece.  The shimmer, the glitter, the glow-in-the-dark dribble, the texture, the squish, the size…it’s fucking gorgeous in multisensory aesthetic. And this jellyfish isn’t even that jell-y! It’s actually quite firm. I guess you could say the concept of this dildo has really gelled with my philosophies on the beauty of form meeting function.  Okay, okay, time to reel it in.

Stardew Valley Jellyfish joy.

I’ve had an evolving relationship with tactilely complex insertables through the years.  As bodies change, so do minds, preferences, desires, and reactions. Nothing in my blog explains this better than the “three bears” metaphor with my ocean collection (one too soft, one too hard, the Jellyfish 2.0 ALMOST just right).  In addition to my Tails and Portholes Leviathan and my Simply Elegant glass dildo, Uberrime completes this trifecta of nautical novelties, stepping my fantasy collection up a notch with its (literally stunning) design and thoughtful approach.  I missed the boat when I failed to get my tentacles on the Tails and Portholes Jellyfish and the Whipspider Jellyfish before both companies closed, so I was super excited when She-Vibe shipped me this treasure.

Uberrime Jellyfish 2.0 blue purple light and thick vapor

Uberrime’s reboot packs a punch, one I’ve read about in review after review about the Jellyfish 2.0.  So many beloved bloggers have been reviewing this particular dildo, generating a fascinating scuttlebutt for note comparisons.  The marvelous thing about sex toy blogging is that there isn’t necessarily a scarcity versus abundance economy for content. Obscure toy reviews are super intriguing niche-reads; likewise, it’s also valuable to review toys which still exist on the market.  When companies like Uberrime get the exposure they deserve, it provides unique opportunities as readers and reviewers to take advantage of new products and dispense as much information as possible. Since bodies and sensations are different among and between bloggers, it has been a true pleasure to read different interpretations of the Jellyfish 2.0 experience.  

Uberrime Jellyfish 2.0

In a playful attempt at scientific “methodology,” I made sure to test the Jellyfish 2.0 several times before reading anyone else’s reviews.  And so far the data lines up. I’ve read the word “pop” in at least four reviews now, and I’m going to go ahead and echo that observation. Unlike the floppy tip of the Leviathan head which made it difficult to guide inside of me, the Jellyfish 2.0 has quite a firm head in mild contrast to its shaft shore.  This made insertion much easier at point of contact, but the moment its head gets completely inside me there is a tangible “pop.” It’s like the firmness of the coronal ridge drops off into the Marianas Trench of medium-shore squiggles and ribbons. The head locks against my G-Spot until I make a considerable effort with lube to push onward.  

Uberrime Jellyfish 2.0 with 16.9 oz water bottle for scale
Glittery purple water bottle for scale.

My biggest surprise with the Jellyfish 2.0 was not my fondness for the shaft.  I knew I’d enjoy the ripples the way I enjoyed the suckers of the Leviathan. I love hard silicone dildos when they’re smooth, but I prefer bumpy silicone at a medium shore.  What surprised me was the unexpected discovery of my A-Spot. I’ve been able to feel my A-Spot externally by pressing above my pubic bone, a technique I learned from Girly Juice’s external G-Spot heart tattoo.  When I mutually masturbate next to my partner, he can often help me orgasm just by adding external pressure to my A-Spot while I use my toys. I had never felt it internally with any previous toys until the Jellyfish 2.0 and when I say I was shocked, I mean my whole body twitched and froze like someone put a Petrificus Totalus curse on me.  Apparently I said “What the fuck?!” with a tone of disbelief, fascination, and amusement, but I was so in my body at that point I had no idea what else was going on around me.

gif of rotated Uberrime Jellyfish 2.0 in all angles and glowing in the dark
And because Adam worked so hard to make this GIF.

The Jellyfish 2.0, with its protruding head and lube-hungry ridges, will not be a dildo I use with vim and vigor.  I appreciate how the tentacles extend and flatten towards the base, creating little risen and indented surfaces for my thumbs to pinch.  I think that, given this dildo’s propensity to anchor inside of me, a wider, thicker, and firmer base akin to NYTC’s Shilo might give it better grip for thrusting.  The base is just wide enough to fit through a metal O-Ring on my harness, but with enough tugging, the squishy flare gives way and the entire thing pops out. It’s a moot point dramatization since nobody is likely going to be yanking my dick like they’re starting a motorboat.  Overall I think the Jellyfish 2.0 is probably more of an edging dildo than an orgasm dildo as it feels nice with slight movements, but anything too rigorous gets a bit uncomfortable as I get more aroused. It has certainly sparked my curiosity with regards to Uberrime’s ever-expanding line and I am very interested to try more of their products!

Sexual Health Versus Sexual Wellness…

Uncategorized

September 16, 2010.  My first known and diagnosed STI.  I’m rereading an old Livejournal entry about it. Yeah, somehow I still have a Livejournal, but it gives me a really good window into college-era Avery thinking.  Some parts are validating, like how my queer and genderfucky identities have evolved, the best friends I have had and sustained since childhood, the LJ communities I was a big part of, the slow progressions of my ongoing body modification.  Some parts are really tough to read, losing my best friend to suicide, the documentation of my PTSD from Patrick, failed attempts at polyamory, putting pets to sleep, disordered eating rants… It reminds me that yes, I’m constantly battling with the fear of being a horrible, unlovable person, but I’ve come a LONG, long way over the last ten years.

The entry about my genital wart is pure, unbridled hypocrisy.  I was already teaching sex education with Masakhane for 3 years by this point, emphasizing the importance of destigmatizing STI’s, reimagining the mythos of terms like “normal” and “healthy” with regards to the body and sexuality, and yet here I was, flipping my shit outside the Montclair Planned Parenthood for a fucking wart.

I was desperate to blame someone other than myself, as if this had been a consequence, a curse, a shameful punishment.  I stopped counting the number of my sexual partners by my senior year of high school. To this day, I know it’s probably somewhere in the hundreds and it’s pointless to think about since the very definition of “sex” is so fluid anyway.  If “virginity” is a bullshit means of normalizing cishetero-penetrative sex, a notion I defied so well as a queer nonbinary teenager, then why was I still drinking the “slut-shame punch?” Why was I so embarrassed to talk about it? Why was I treating my genital wart as though it was a measure of my humanity, existence, morality, whatever?

What became such a source for my own ignorance eventually turned into a badge of pride, an opportunity for discussion, a flicker of personal and political education, but it didn’t happen overnight.  Bit by bit, talking about HPV with partners, with family, with friends, with learners, classmates, anyone I could…I learned what I still now consider to be a world’s-ahead wealth of information regarding HPV.

I had been vaccinated with Gardasil at 18, but by then I had so many sexual partners it was pretty fucking pointless, even if it did offer protection against cancer-causing strains.  I was a warty kid my whole life: plantar warts on my heels, knuckle warts, and even to this day, I still get a wart on my elbow every now and then. They come and go like a cold except they don’t hurt or cause discomfort, and yet I still grew up learning that they needed to be removed, cut out, burned off of me.  They were considered ugly, undesirable flaws and I can’t even begin to tell you how many dermatology appointments I went to as a kid.

I grew up having HPV and never understanding it, so I can’t say I’m really surprised that I asked for my genital wart to be burned off with trichloroacetic acid.  There I was, spread apart at the gyno, holding a cotton ball to my taint to prevent acid dripping to my asshole while the gyno applied it to the tiny wart near my fourchette.  Logically, I feel like one of us should have realized that a cotton ball will just absorb and suck the acid down further, not block it. I felt nothing on the wart, but the chemical burn to my perineum and sphincter was so brutal I couldn’t walk for a week.  I had to tilt forward when urinating to avoid the sting of piss trailing over the wound. It was after this experience I decided I’d never have another wart removed from my body unless it caused me pain or discomfort.

My regular STI testing is still a really shitty process where I end up providing education to my gynecologists rather than getting adequate, competent care.  Yes I have a vulva. No it doesn’t make me female. Yes I want the full panel including bloodwork for Herpes and HIV. No, I haven’t had sex with more than one partner since the last test, but I still want the works.  Yes I understand barriers are important, but YOU need to understand they aren’t a fucking guarantee. Yes I brought my own lube for the exam because your shit is loaded with glycerin and other crap that shouldn’t be in my body.  No, I don’t enjoy getting needles in my arms just because I’m covered in tattoos.

These shouldn’t be things I need to teach medical professionals about, but here we are.  I shouldn’t have had to educate my cohorts in a SEX EDUCATION program that HPV doesn’t always have to be “sexually” transmitted to be transmitted.  That strep throat could be a fucking STI just as much as chlamydia. The dialogue needs to change. It starts with us. Me, you, the people reading this blog, the people doing the work.

I don’t even know if I have HPV right now.  And honestly, I don’t fucking care. Okay, you have oral herpes but no current outbreak?  I’ll still totally make out with you, I don’t give a fuck, we’re all probably going to get it at some point or another.  I’d be glad enough if someone chose to disclose their status so I can get and give informed consent. STI’s aren’t the end of the world and the negativity surrounding them needs to change.

Get tested like you get your teeth cleaned.  It’s maintenance. It’s not preventing the “baddies,” it’s getting to know your body better.  Let’s make these discussions more intellectually, emotionally, physically, and financially accessible, let’s make this entire process more accessible.  Shit, you can do it online now with companies like STDCheck.com (yes, they asked me to write a semi-sponsored post, but I really should have written about this a long time ago anyway).  Transparently speaking, STDCheck actually offered me a full free 10-test panel and a $200 donation to the organization of my choice. Fuck yeah being compensated for speaking about an important issue on my terms.  For a company to even reach out, encouraging me to write freely about my thoughts on sexual health, that’s a pretty sweet deal. So yeah. STI’s aren’t all sunshine and rainbows, but they’re not worth the “doom and gloom” slant either.  I’m grateful to have this perspective and I sincerely hope more people can approach sexually transmitted infections with more sex-positive attitudes in the future.