Or: why G-spot stimulation is not the pinnacle of pleasure. Hi, my name’s Epiphora, and I almost always need clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm. I thought this was common knowledge, clueless as that may sound. I mean, I write about my genitals on the internet every day of my life — obviously people must know this about me? But something happened the other day that made me realize that may not be true. That perhaps I haven’t been explicit enough about the types of stimulation I like and how, logistically, that plays out in my sex toy testing. Recently, I struck up a friendship with a new sex blogger. She messaged me one day seeking advice. “I think I’m . . . read more

Cupcake butt plug and Shilo. The cliché is true — it feels like just yesterday and like forever ago. This week marks 10 years since I first published a review of a sex toy on the internet. It was fall 2007, my junior year of college. That summer, I’d moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment. I was 20 years old, almost 21. If you’d asked me what my career was going to be, I would’ve hesitated and posited, “…writer? I hope?” A cautious optimism underneath which lied a practical fear. A fear that I could never make a living with writing, that I’d end up in an office job, probably, and that the only skill I’d spent my . . . read more

The simplehuman Sensor Pump squirting lube onto the njoy Pure Wand. Many a time, I stared at it longingly in the aisles of Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Among the as-seen-on-TV contraptions and glistening stainless steel bathroom accessories it beckoned, goading me to use it for nefarious purposes. I’d never spend $40 on an automatic soap dispenser, but in my household, the simplehuman Sensor Pump has a much more life-sustaining function: dispensing lube. Bzzzt. That’s the sound it makes. An adorable mechanical blip, and my god — it’s a glorious thing. The first time I used it, I couldn’t stop myself. Lube was flowing like water, like wine. It was one-handed. It was instantaneous. My left hand was still firmly grasping . . . read more

The Lovehoney Flash (left) is a buzzy vibrator. The Doxy Don (right) is rumbly. Perusing the sex toy exhibitor booths at AVN, turning on and off strange vibrators from no-name companies, one word kept flittering into my mind: buzzy. Ugh, too buzzy. What a shame. The design is cool, but it’s so fucking buzzy. Nope. I even met an avid reader of my blog who works for an up-and-coming sex toy manufacturer. Their flagship vibrator intrigued me with its peculiar manta ray flaps and vibrant shade of turquoise silicone. But I turned it on and could not hide my disgust. “It needs a better motor,” I sighed. “Oh, I know,” she said. “I knew you’d hate it.” A sex toy could do literally everything else right — ergonomic shape, body-safe . . . read more

So I was interviewed for a piece about female ejaculation/squirting for Fusion recently. The article finally went live, and lo and behold, I’m not mentioned at all because some new bullshit study came out that had to trump everything. Also, they needed to make room for all those animated GIFs. I’m no scientist and I’m not in the business of picking apart studies, but I will say that its findings contradict several other studies which have previously shown that ejaculate contains zero or low levels of urea and creatinine. Its findings also go against several thousand million vagina-owners, including myself, who have reported that the stuff they ejaculate does not look, smell, or taste like pee. Also, WHO FUCKING CARES what the chemical make-up of the ejaculate . . . read more

Aerie greets me at the airport with a bouquet of hand-drawn sex toys. Eleven toys, all of them my favorites, with green pipe cleaner stems. On the romance scale, this may surpass the CD that my boyfriend made for one of our anniversaries which included a Tegan & Sara cover and 5 minutes of our cat purring into a microphone. – – – Aerie lives in a swanky condo on the third level. It has sparkling wooden floors, kitchen appliances that beep at you if you don’t do their bidding, and best of all, air conditioning. We make delicious coffee in the morning with a hand grinder and a french press. Their bed is swathed in comfy grey sheets and pillows. I feel like I’m in a . . . read more

[But what about the Mona Wave, you ask? It’s a half-assed imposter.] I don’t know if you’ve heard: I love my LELO Mona 2. So much that I yell things like “THE MONA IS WHAT GOD WANTS TO BE WHEN HE GROWS UP” when I’m drunk. So much that I have nightmares about LELO changing it. So much that I rush to comfort it when it falls off my nightstand. “Obsessed” may be a word that describes how I feel about that vibrator. The Mona is the only sex toy I take on trips. I force shops to add it to their inventory. I subtly push people toward it in my job on the floor of a sex toy boutique (my current record is within 20 . . . read more

In this episode of True Life: I’m a Sex Toy Reviewer, I am in disbelief as I unbox this sex machine, because I still don’t believe that someone would send this to me, ever, let alone for free… But there it is. A Sybian. In all its hulking glory. Safe and sound, with the grotesque attachments neatly folded into a ziploc. It’s smaller than I imagined, but still quite a beast. It’s heavy, it’s loud, and the puny “handles” on the sides are laughable. I don’t know where I’m going to store it, and my boyfriend will never forgive me for acquiring yet another huge sex accessory. Too bad. If someone offers you a Sybian, you say yes. This is law. You . . . read more

A few weeks ago, I dusted the literal dust off a 2″-thick hunk of stainless steel, put on some porn, held a vibe to my clit, and easily slipped the big end of the 2.75-pound dildo into my vagina. Every so often, I check to make sure this is true. I am always slightly surprised when it is, but there’s no denying it anymore. My vagina is a black hole. A cave. A vagina of doom. This is quite normal for me now. But it certainly didn’t begin that way. In fact, it began exactly the opposite… with my vagina, as I described it, “as tight as a Chinese finger trap.” I used to laugh — especially when I first got . . . read more