The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex (57 page)

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Vinyl, hard plastic, and latex:
Less porous than rubber, so condoms aren’t essential. Wash with mild soap and water, rinse well, and air dry. Oils will ruin the surface of latex toys.

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Rubber (including jelly rubber):
These porous toys are hard to clean, so we recommend using condoms. Wash with mild soap and water, rinse well, and air dry. Oils will ruin the surface of jelly rubber toys.

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Cyberskin:
Made of a mystery blend of thermal plastic and rubber, cyberskin is highly porous and soils easily—condoms are the single best way to keep it clean. Wash with mild soap and water, rinse well, and pat dry with a clean cloth. You can help prolong your toy’s life span by dusting it with cornstarch before storing it away (don’t use talcum powder, which some studies have linked to cervical cancer). Oils, silicone-based lubricants, and direct contact with other rubber toys have all been known to melt the surface of cyberskin toys.

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Silicone:
Completely nonporous and easy to clean. You can sterilize silicone by boiling it for up to three minutes; popping it in the top rack of your dishwasher; or simply washing with mild soap and water, rinsing well, and air drying. Silicone-based lubricants may ruin the surface of a silicone toy—stick to water-based lubes.

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Acrylic:
Completely nonporous and easy to clean. Wash with mild soap and water, rinse well, and dry with a clean cloth.

The first time you and a partner play with dildos together, take turns manipulating the dildo by hand and show each other what angles, strokes, and speeds feel good. If you’re penetrating your partner with a dildo, be especially attentive to his or her body language as well as any expressions of discomfort. When you have a finger, fist, or penis inside somebody, the direct skin contact makes it easy to follow the shape of the vagina or anus and to respond immediately to any resistance or tension. You can’t expect the same immediacy when wielding a dildo, and you need to pay close attention to your partner’s reactions. With time and practice, the dildo may come to feel like an extension of your own body.

I love using dildos on a female partner by hand, not a strap-on, to really adjust to her pleasure.

I’ve used dildos with male and female partners, because they enjoy them, but it’s sometimes awkward (handling, that is) because dildos aren’t as “natural” as fingers.

If you crave a no-hands experience, dildos may seem kind of frustrating. They’re certainly not going to move unless you take them firmly in hand, and if you let go of them they’re apt to shoot right out of your vagina when your PC muscle contracts. But if you’re willing to experiment, you should be able to come up with some options for hands-free fun. For instance, try slipping your dildo into a harness and strapping the harness around the seat of a chair or a pillow so that the dildo is ready for you to mount. Of course, some great ideas are simply ahead of their time:

I’ve always wished there was a sex toy built like a Thigh-Master (the exercise device that looks like a butterfly, which you put between your thighs and squeeze) with an angled arm that was attached to a dildo and went inside when you squeezed your legs together. Hee-hee, a thigh workout and an orgasm! Score!

Teaming Up Dildos and Vibrators

If you like the way a vibrator feels, and you like the way a dildo feels, you’ve probably already figured out that playing with both at once is an extremely pleasant experience. We mentioned some of the ways you can combine vibrators and dildos in our Vibrators chapter, but we’ll review them briefly here.

Many battery vibrators are phallic in shape, reflecting their designers’ blissful disregard for the fundamentals of both anatomy and sexual response. The clitoris, the vaginal opening, and the anal opening contain nerve endings that can respond to vibration. The rectum and the inner two-thirds of the vagina contain fewer nerve endings, which tend to be more responsive to pressure than to vibration. Therefore, if you insert a battery vibrator that has vibration concentrated in the head, you’re not really going to feel the vibrations where they’re likely to do you the most good. We suspect that many women who say they’ve been disappointed by vibrators have tried shoving phallic battery vibrators in and out of their vaginas, to little effect.

Really, the best way to enjoy penetration and vibration is to use two toys at once. Yes, specialized technology provides the best results every time. Select a dildo whose size and shape appeal to you, and hold your vibrator against the base of the dildo—the vibrations will ripple throughout your entire genital area. Many coil-operated vibrators are packaged with a funnel-shaped attachment that, when placed against the round base of a dildo, creates a suction transforming the dildo into a powerfully vibrating toy. Battery vibrators can also be pleasantly combined with dildos: Some folks tuck a vibrating egg against the clitoris while playing with a dildo, and some attach a vibrating cock ring right onto the dildo.

My favorite method of masturbating is using a lubed-up dildo that one hand is pushing in and out, while the other hand is either rubbing my clitoris or using a vibrator on my clitoris. If using a vibrator, I’ll also hold the vibrator against the dildo and up against my anus. Yeow!

I particularly enjoy double penetration. My favorite is to lie absolutely still, with a dildo and anal plug inserted, and a vibrator on my clit. All my attention is focused on the sensations from the vibe, and the orgasms start strong and just keep building.

Soft rubber dildos tend to absorb vibration, but silicone is a divinely effective transmitter of vibration. Certain silicone dildos are especially designed to be teamed up with vibrators—their hollowed-out shafts accommodate vibrating bullets.

You may be thinking, “It all sounds so complicated!” The truth is, it’s actually far easier to enact sex toy combinations than it is to describe them. The great thing about sex toys is not only the sensations they provide, but also the sense of unlimited possibilities they inspire. We’ve learned a lot over the years from our creative customers, some of whom have graduated from buying sex toys to designing and manufacturing them for others. All it takes is a sense of humor and a spirit of adventure to whip up some unique sex toy recipes of your own.

Double Dildos

These consist of a shaft anywhere from twelve to eighteen inches in length with a “head” at each end. In theory, you mount one end of the dildo (either vaginally or anally), your partner mounts the other end, and you both ride the same dildo like a seesaw to mutual orgasm. The reality of a double dildo experience does not always live up to the ideal. As always, if you expect the dildo to take on a life of its own, you’ll be disappointed. One or the other of you will need to hold the middle of the double dildo and get a push-me/ pull-you motion going.

While the vast majority of double dildos are one size throughout, which can be problematic for couples with different size preferences, a few styles have different diameters at each end. Vixen Creations’ Nexus is a silicone double dildo with separately molded ends; it’s also the only double currently available that fits easily into a harness. And Good Vibrations sells the brilliantly simple “Coupler,” a neoprene pad perforated with three holes—you can slip any two dildos with bases through the holes and fasten them together.

Although they have an undeniable fantasy value, you may find double dildos just aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Double dildos haven’t worked as well as I’ve always hoped. They’re fun sometimes, but generally take too much effort and coordination for me to be able to really let go. This has been true for me with both men and women.

Unless you and your partner are roughly the same body size, it may be hard to coordinate riding the same toy. By far the most reliable position is one in which both of you lie on your sides facing opposite directions with your legs scissored together. If you’re trying to use a double dildo for anal-anal insertion or vaginalanal insertion, you may need to crouch doggie-style facing away from each other. People are frequently disappointed that a toy that promises simultaneity and intimacy actually puts them at arm’s length from a partner.

Sharing a double dildo

Double dongs are disappointing. Can’t get one to work right—always flops out or pulls you too far from your partner.

If you’d like to experiment with double dildos, your best bet would be to keep your expectations low and to approach the experience as a novel type of acrobatic foreplay. If you’re disappointed with the results of your experimentation, you can always keep that double dildo around as an extra-long single dildo. If you’re thrilled with the results, more power to you!

Dildo Harnesses

Harnesses are made to fit around your hips and hold a dildo in place against your pubic bone, enabling you to penetrate your partner while your hands roam free. At Good Vibrations we sell dildo and harness combos to couples of all sexual orientations and field plenty of requests from folks who are looking for X-rated videos featuring dildo and harness scenes. If our customer base is at all representative, dildos are being routinely strapped on all across this great land of ours. Women are wearing them with women; women are wearing them with men; men are wearing them with women; and men are wearing them with men.

Strapping on a dildo is the ultimate genderbender. A woman who pops on a phallus can expect to feel everything from ridiculous to sublimely powerful. After all, when a woman looks down and sees the archetypal symbol of male privilege bobbing between her thighs, the experience can subvert all preconceptions of who she is and what her role is during sex.

The first time I strapped on, my partner was way more experienced than me, so that was a bit intimidating. I asked her which of her plethora of dildos she wanted me to use, and she picked this large, bright turquoise one with lots of bumps and ripples. I remember strapping on and standing there, buck naked with this large turquoise thing dangling between my legs, and I felt absolutely ridiculous. I think I laughed for about five minutes straight. But the sex was fabulous, and I’ve never looked back!

Similarly, a man who straps on a dildo is accepting the radical idea that his penis isn’t necessarily center stage in every sexual scene, while a man who is anally penetrated by a dildo-wearing partner must embrace his own receptive, submissive side. Dildo-wearing presupposes a willingness to explore a range of emotions, fantasies, and roles.

My male lover enjoys getting fucked by me wearing a harness and dildo. As a woman, this experience has been extremely empowering for me. It changes the way you view sex—suddenly the “shoe is on the other foot,” so to speak.

While strap-ons are most commonly associated with lesbian sex, probably half of all harness sales are to heterosexual couples who plan to explore male anal penetration. Since its release,
Bend Over Boyfriend
—an educational porn video loaded with hot scenes of “the gals givin’ it to the guys”—has been a runaway bestseller with Good Vibrations’ customers.

Single-strap harness

Heterosexual and gay men also strap on dildos—to penetrate their partners if they can’t sustain an erection, to enjoy a method of penetration that is completely risk free, to penetrate their partners while having their penises stroked, or to double-penetrate a female partner both vaginally and anally. What people of all sexualities enjoy about dildo harnesses is the variety, adventure, and drama they add to a sexual encounter.

Most of all, I love to fuck my partner with a strap-on. I love to make him suck my realistic cock and then slowly and lovingly fuck him and talk dirty to him till he screams with pleasure and comes explosively.