The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex (60 page)

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Safety:
Your anal toy should have a flared base. Make sure that the surface of your toy is completely smooth and nonabrasive, and be prepared to file down plastic seams on some new toys before you play with them.

Buying an Anal Toy

Take the time to identify your personal preferences before you go out and buy an anal toy. Do you like the sensation of having a finger or two inserted in your anus? Then you might want to purchase a plug. Do you like moving a finger in and out of your rectum, or do you prefer holding it still? If you enjoy movement, you might want to buy anal beads, a slim rippled plug, or a dildo. If you prefer no movement, you might be happiest with a diamond-shaped plug.

As with buying a dildo, the most important aspect of selecting an anal toy is deciding what size to get. Plugs range in diameter from pinky-slim to fist-wide, so you won’t lack for options. Do your homework, and base your selection on fact rather than fantasy. We still have fond memories of the two female flight attendants who spent their time in front of the anal toy shelf boasting to each other, “My boyfriend’s so macho, he only wants the biggest one!” Those of us who are less macho probably have more in common with the survey respondent who wrote:

I bought a two-inch butt plug vibrator and savored the idea of using it only to find that it was too big!! And the vibration of the tiny bit that went in was so titillating.

Playing with Anal Toys

When inserting any plug, angle it up toward the front of your body. You’ll find it helpful to twist the plug slightly to get the widest part through your anal opening. When removing any plug, slowly jiggle it out of your rectum—a gentle twisting motion is also helpful here to ease the body of the plug past your sphincter.

You may enjoy wearing butt plugs during masturbation, oral sex, or vaginal penetration. The pressure and sense of fullness that plugs provide can be highly pleasurable, particularly in combination with other types of stimulation.

Sometimes while masturbating I use a small plug for prostate stimulation.

My wife enjoys inserting a plug while we are proceeding toward orgasm.

Anal intercourse with dildo harness

Some people like to wear butt plugs under their clothing throughout the day. Anyone who’s ever worked in a sex shop has encountered customers who immediately take their new purchase off to the bathroom to pop it in place. Keep this possibility in mind next time an intimidating highway patrolman pulls you over—perhaps he’s sitting on something that throbs even harder than his motorcycle.

Why would someone want to wear a plug out and about? For the thrill of a sexual secret, as an act of obedience to a dominant partner, or in order to relax the sphincter muscles in preparation for anal intercourse.

I enjoy inserting dildos into my boyfriend’s anus. I also insert butt plugs to relax him in preparation for a dildo.

If you do want to wear a butt plug inside yourself, during either masturbation or partner sex, you can use a cuff fastened around the center strap of a dildo harness. Or, you could take a more prosaic, low-tech approach:

I like wearing my leather cock ring wrapped around the base of my cock and balls, with my butt plug adhesive-taped in my bottom. I wear them while shopping, doing errands, and housework.

Customers buying a dildo harness for anal intercourse frequently make the mistake of selecting a diamond-shaped plug to go with their harness. Why is this a mistake? Well, standard butt plugs are designed to be left in place, not thrust into and out of your anus. You’d find it pretty uncomfortable to have the widest part of a plug yanked through your anal opening with each stroke of your partner’s hips.

Instead, select a dildo, rather than a plug, that seems the right diameter to the receptive partner. Use as your gauge the number of fingers the receiver can comfortably accommodate. You’ll probably find it helpful to select a dildo that curves up from the base, rather than one that is set perpendicular to the base, as this will align more naturally with the curve of the rectum. And remember that a dildo worn in a harness should be a little longer than a dildo used by hand, so that it will never slip entirely out of your partner’s body. Extra length also comes in handy when negotiating any body size discrepancies.

If you have half as much fun playing with anal toys as we’ve had selling them, you’re destined for a good time. It’s a pleasure to challenge our society’s irrational anal taboo, to spread the word that anal play is safe and stimulating, and to celebrate the sheer entertainment value of the subject matter. As more and more people around the country are discovering, anal toys are sex accessories that can be both fun and funny:

Once when we were staying in a hotel room, we left an anal plug in the sheets and went to breakfast. To our surprise, when we came back, the room had been made up. The plug had been washed and placed on the pillow surrounded by chocolate mints. My wife was embarrassed beyond words and I’m still laughing.

PROFILES
in
PLEASURE:

Tristan Taormino

“I feel so strongly
that there should be
a bottle of lube on
every bedside table
in America—I’m
trying to achieve
that. I cannot tell
you how much I
proselytize about
lube.”

W
riter, editor, performer, and entrepreneur—Tristan Taormino epitomizes a new generation of sex educators. Barely into her thirties, she is America’s most visible, enthusiastic, and persuasive advocate for the simple pleasures of anal sex.

Tristan began her writing career as publisher of her own pansexual erotic ’zine,
Pucker Up
, moving on to edit the nineties incarnation of the classic lesbian magazine
On Our Backs
. This led to a gig editing lesbian erotica anthologies for Cleis Press, and ultimately to her reign over an anal sex empire: When the folks at Cleis called and asked if she’d be willing to write a book on anal sex for women, Tristan didn’t hesitate. As she explains, “I was beginning to really love anal sex, to have a lot of anal sex, maybe what I perceived as more than the average amount—whatever that is. And I thought, I
cannot
be the only one. Well, why isn’t anyone talking about it?”

Tristan’s resulting book,
The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women,
has inspired an adult video series and, needless to say, butt plug endorsements (she designed Vixen Creations’ Tristan plug). When asked what her favorite sex toy is, however, she gives an answer that resonates with sex educators everywhere: “I feel so strongly that there should be a bottle of lube on every bedside table in America—I’m trying to achieve that. I cannot tell you how much I proselytize about lube.”

Tristan writes extensively about sexuality in venues ranging from the
Village Voice
to
Taboo
magazine and also leads workshops around the country—having honed her speaking style as a saleswoman at New York’s Toys in Babeland. Sincerely dedicated to improving sexual literacy, she visits college campuses, lecturing to the young men and women whose experiences of abstinence-only high school sex ed have left them in dire need of some straight talk about anatomy and sexual response.

These lectures have inspired Tristan’s number-one wish for America’s sexual evolution: “We need to change the way we educate teenagers, because all this adult sex education wouldn’t be necessary if teens got accurate information.” She’s an articulate advocate of honest communication about sex and the value of “sex with the lights on”—the signature message she preaches nationwide being “You are the key to your own pleasure.”

When asked about her own role models, Tristan credits Joani Blank for paving the way to making careers such as hers possible: “She was ahead of her time. Stores like Good Vibrations are radical places that actually change people’s lives.” She also admires Betty Dodson’s “Let’s get in there and look at everything with the lights on approach,” and points out that “When I give sex workshops, they are consciousness-raising groups repackaged in a new form for a new historical moment. The idea that we can teach ourselves and each other about our bodies, that we don’t need to crack open a textbook or look to the medical establishment, that we have the knowledge and can spread it around ourselves—that’s one legacy of the women’s movement that is intrinsic to how I teach people about sex.”

Visit Tristan Taormino online at
www.puckerup.com
.

CHAPTER 14

Fantasies

I like to fantasize when I’m walking around, in public places preferably. That way I can use my mind and imagination to get myself so worked up that I almost come without touching myself. And when I finally get myself alone, it’s guaranteed phenomenal masturbation.

You’ve no doubt heard that the brain is our largest sex organ, but it may never have occurred to you that it’s also an incredibly versatile sex toy. Without the brain responding to stimuli and sending messages to the rest of the body, we’d have about as much sexual feeling as pieces of furniture. But it’s the brain’s capacity to house a vast reservoir of erotic imagery—known as fantasies—that makes it a powerful sex toy, since fantasies can be endlessly tapped for sexual pleasure.

Sexual fantasies, simply put, are mental pictures that trigger arousal. Their content, importance, and purpose vary greatly from person to person. Some folks summon them when they want to be sexual, others find they have little control over how and when their fantasies emerge, while still others don’t fantasize at all.

Fantasizing, like masturbating, is an act of self-love as well as an assertion of sexual confidence and independence. You are responsible for turning yourself on; you don’t have to wait for someone else to do it.

A fantasy can be anything from flashing on an act or an image…

Making love on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean under the hot sun with a breeze blowing.

…to a well-scripted sexual encounter:

I am a (very naughty) queen in the 1600s or so. I’m sitting on my throne wearing one of those old-fashioned multilayer slips. It’s a huge throne and I have one leg up on the arm of the throne and my slip pulled up while I play with my clit. My court looks on entranced. I’m so turned on that my juices are forming a large puddle on my leather throne. My juices are even dripping off the throne onto the floor. My guards bring in a prisoner from the dungeon who has been screaming at them that he is dying of thirst. They bring the prisoner to me for punishment. When the prisoner (who is very sexy) sees my juices running off the chair, he breaks free from the guards and runs up to me. He drops to his knees and buries his face in my cunt and begins lapping up my juices straight out of me. I’m moaning and screaming while he licks my clit. He laps at me like a cat drinking from a big bowl of milk. He just keeps licking at me like this over and over till I cum. (My lover and I acted out this fantasy. After I’d cum, my lover climbed up to me and said, “Thank you for letting me drink you.” Wow. I don’t think anyone’s ever said something that has made me feel as sexy and desirable as that statement. Grrr!!)

Or fantasies can take a much less literal form:

I don’t have sexual fantasies as others do. I don’t have situational fantasies, or made-up people in them. I mainly focus on sensations: I try to re-create the feeling of someone’s hand on my skin, lips against my breast—not “imagery,” just sensation.

Whether it’s explicit or vague, short or long, kinky or common, if it gets you hot, it’s a fantasy. As a way to illustrate the variety of fantasies, in terms of both content and the way they are expressed, we have transcribed some of our survey respondents’ fantasies in this section. Perhaps you will discover new fantasies of your own as a result!

Popular Themes

Despite the fact that no two people’s fantasy lives are the same, some popular themes emerge.

Sex with Someone Other Than Your Partner

A favorite fantasy is of being forced to have sex with someone that is not my husband for the purpose of giving this man a child. He is blond and very good looking. I am told to fondle my breasts in a manner consistent to expressing breast milk while he is having sex with me.