Once upon a time, sex toys were either pink, purple, or a hideous shade of beige I’ve heard described as “silly putty,” “bandaid,” or “uncooked hot dog.” It was an era of churning out questionable designs in stinky toxic materials, characterized by companies’ hyper fixation on catering to the only target market they could imagine: straight, white, young, non-disabled cis women. (And a stereotypical understanding of them, at that.) But now, decades later, any sex toy manufacturer who’s been paying attention has realized that’s a really narrow view of sex toy users. More social-justice-minded companies now market their toys based on what the products do rather than prescribing who they’re for, and the color palette has expanded considerably. So while the industry . . . 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

I’ve had to come out to my parents more than once. When I was 14, I wrote them a letter confessing that I was in love with my female best friend. Almost exactly 5 years ago, I revealed that I was a sex blogger. Then, a little while later, I told them I was non-monogamous and introduced them to my girlfriend, Aerie. (My other partner is my boyfriend of 12 years.) While some parents might begrudgingly acknowledge these identities, my parents go beyond that. My mom, in particular, is remarkable. She doesn’t realize how radical it is for her to embrace who I am with not just acceptance, but active encouragement and genuine love. She’s a very “live and let live” . . . read more

[This post contains mentions of James Deen. I no longer support him or his work.] February 11, 2015 META JACK-OFF JOURNAL. After spending all day finishing Jack-off Journal #18, I gave it to Aerie to read in the other room and thrust myself into my office for two quick orgasms with the Hitachi, which I desperately needed after a day of nonchalantly skipping through porn files and editing screenshots. February 28, 2015 Please, god, let this be the last time my vagina experiences the Afterglow and its laser light “technology.” Let this rabbit-infested masturbation nightmare end. Determined to definitively disprove the veracity of the “PulseWave O” program (an 8-minute “journey designed to enhance arousal and help you achieve better and more frequent orgasms”), I endured it . . . read more

Courtney Trouble’s Seven Minutes in Heaven is a queer reality porn series. I am enamored with the first Seven Minutes in Heaven, and I thought Seven Minutes in Heaven 2 was pretty good as well. Seven Minutes in Heaven 3, however, feels like a step backward in ways that are difficult to articulate. The thing is, I don’t connect with many of the performers. The exceptions are the adorable and endearing Cyd Loverboy (duh, he’s amazing) and Drew Deveaux. I like Red Jackhammer, too, but Red doesn’t really do anything exciting in this installment. The rest just don’t strike me as people I want to watch fucking. Let’s leave it at that. ((I’m also entirely turned off by the porn . . . read more

So Billy Castro, hottie extraordinaire of Bordello and Speakeasy, now has his own film. It’s called Billy Castro Does the Mission, for obvious reasons. In it, he wanders around the Mission having sex with any woman he can get his hands on. Four, in all. After a jack-off session on a weightlifting bench, Billy wanders out onto the street, where he finds Dylan Ryan stealing his bike. Obvious answer to this? Follow her and have frantic, slightly angry sex with her in a hot tub. I don’t care if this makes sense — it’s awesome. Billy’s attitude — something along the lines of “you stole my bike; I will cut you. Wait, you are incredibly hot… I will cut you . . . read more

It’s the last day of Courtney Trouble week! Yesterday: Roulette Berlin. Today: Bordello. Courtney Trouble and I didn’t mean to have a drunken online chat; it just happened. I’d been meaning to email her my traditional interview questions and receive tidy paragraphs in response, but fuck that — this was a lot more fun. And informative. You can read part one here, part two here, and part three here. In this part, Courtney and I discuss Bordello, working with Eon McKai, and movie-like pornos. Courtney: i have to tell you… it doesn’t do me any good financially to say this because i get paid a flat amount each movie i make, but bordello… is the beginning. Courtney: it’s really different . . . read more

It’s the last day of Courtney Trouble week! Yesterday: Roulette Berlin. This shall excite you: Bordello is basically Clue porn. There is a murder, a selection of murder weapons, and a dramatic reveal at the end. It’s only 58 minutes long, but its composition and scope make it feel much more epic than any other Courtney Trouble film of the past. And everything — from the costumes to the set to the lighting — is done with a more exacting eye than ever before. Bordello is hot as hell, really and truly, but it’s also deliciously subversive: its performers play with the theme of sexualized violence, using that violence and its objects (a gun, a knife) to embody queer experience. . . . read more

It’s day seven of Courtney Trouble week! Yesterday: Seven Minutes in Heaven 2. Tomorrow: Bordello and a chat with Courtney Trouble, pt. 4. Roulette Berlin follows in the footsteps of Roulette Dirty South and the original Roulette; it is a film composed of vignettes, meant to celebrate the diversity of queer sexuality. But it differs from its predecessors, too — it is more expertly made. The music in Roulette Berlin generally stays out of the way — and when it doesn’t, it usually fits the action. There is also some beautiful lighting to be seen, although a few scenes are still not up to my lighting par. The scenes in Roulette Berlin are solid, and I dare say, the most . . . read more