A Box Of Delights #2

A Box Of Delights #2

This is the second half - here's the first.
(I thought I still had a copy of the published piece which gave details of all the toys in the box, but it seems to have vanished, so the following is just what I can remember...)

The top treat in this box of assorted self-pleasuring gadgetry was, of course, the Eroscillator. I remember it had four different, interchangeable 'heads' and I gave each one a go. Two felt a bit weird, one was OK and one was wonderful.
If I was going to make an actual chart of favourites, number two would have been the Tongue. It was a fairly horrific-looking item, to tell the truth: as you might have expected, it was supposed to resemble a tongue. But it was  about twice the size of a human tongue, made of lurid pink rubbery stuff, complete with veins, and had a hard white plastic base where the batteries went. It was nowhere near as pretty as this modern equivalent, but when I didn't look at it too closely, the effects were fairly spectacular. Prior to that weekend, I had been mostly used to the bog-standard rigid plastic tubes, which did the job well enough. This thing, being wide, flat and soft, felt quite different.
I think there may have been one of the egg-shaped vibes included, as well: I had a fondness for this type of toy as the first vibrator I ever bought was an Angel's Egg model (again, like this but uglier and more functional).
Otherwise, there were half a dozen or so vibrating things in slightly varied shapes, sizes and colours. I got a little bored, after a while, and resorted to testing them on my elbow or the tip of my nose, having remembered this suggestion from some or other article on how to choose your first vibrator.
And there was one which was supposed to be inserted and then... inflated, by means of an attached squeezy pump. I left that one till the end, as I was thoroughly wary of it: my imagination went off into unappealing visions of odd medical procedures, and random memories of the risk of air embolisms. I did my duty and had a go with it eventually, but found it uncomfortable and not particularly thrilling.
Feedback from readers on any particular article was... intermittent, to say the least, but we published my test session, and the suppliers of all the toys appreciated the credit we gave them. I think the 'Ooh, let's play with a load of sex toys' type of feature remained a once-a-year-or-so staple of the mag afterwards, but it wasn't an experience I repeated.

A Box Of Delights

A Box Of Delights #1

Nowadays, of course, you can barely move for sex toy reviews. I wouldn't even dare to try and count the number of blogs and sites run by people happy to spend vast amounts of time trying out new dildos, vibrators, lubes, buttplugs and nipple clamps.
Things were a bit different back at the end of the 90s. For one thing, what you could get by way of sex toys was still relatively limited. Rabbit vibes might or might not have been in existence by then, but they weren't all that widely known if there were such things. As I recall, the UK was just starting to get the kind of toys that came in different colours and different materials and could almost pass for modern art, though the US was some way ahead in that department.
I was editing the single women's title the company now published, and mentioned to the editor-in-chief that I was thinking of doing a sex-toy-review article: he agreed it was a good idea because the mag hadn't done one of those for a few years. My motivations were less than pure - I had been reading elsewhere about the launch of the Eroscillator, backed by then-famous sex therapist Dr Ruth, and I wanted one of those, but wasn't willing to pay the £70 or so they cost (for context, you could pick up a basic Non-Doctor for about three quid). The mail-order sex toy company we were accustomed to dealing with had an advert for this exciting new gadget running in our other titles, so I got the relevant info from the ad department, and picked up the phone.
Yes, they would send me a mixed box of stuff to play with, yes, all right, they would include an Eroscillator and no, they didn't want the toys back once I'd had a play with them...
I can't remember how many days it took for my surprise package to show up, but I do recall trotting out of the office with it tucked under my arm, announcing to all and sundry that I was Not To Be Disturbed that weekend...

A Kink Wedding

A Kink Wedding

(Because sometimes stuff going on in the wider world helps me decide what story to tell next...)

I'm not sure quite when my interest in weddings began - I have never married and, certainly, once I grew out of monogamy, never wanted to. But I'd probably talked about it in the office once or twice, because whenever we got a query in from a reader about a weird wedding, it got punted in my direction.

This time, it was a letter from Scotland: a dominant woman was marrying her sub, and wanted to know how much kink they could get away with during the wedding ceremony. I had previously answered a few similar letters, and was aware that the answer is: it depends on the specific registrar you'll be using as some are more open-minded than others. My standard advice also included the fact that people can, if they wish, do the legal bit in the morning and then have the ceremony of their choice elsewhere at a later date. (This is entirely true, still - if you want to exchange your personally-tailored vows in the nude/up a tree/while being suspended from hooks, that's up to you.)

In this case, there were a couple of extra points in the letter which interested me a little more. I had some Scottish mates at the time, who ran a fetish club, and the domme mentioned she was a regular there. I suggested she ask the club promoters if she and her sub could hold their special ceremony in the club. (I am not sure how much of a 'thing' collaring ceremonies were in the UK at this point - 1997, very early days in terms of kinky internet use - I wasn't aware of them and neither she, her sub, the promoters nor I ever used the term.)

She also mentioned that the two of them had met via a personal ad in the magazine, which made G, L and I all go 'Aww' - and so I added a PS asking if they wanted their wedding written up by us.
Unsurprisingly, I got a reply to the effect that they would love to have me attend, so I booked myself a train, having dug through the archives, located the advert one of them had placed three years previously and popped a photocopy of it into a nice frame by way of a wedding gift.

The couple were legally married in the morning, at the town hall, in latex and corsetry. Some clever individual (can't remember if it was me or not) had come up with the perfect descriptor - a 'Rocky Horror Style' wedding, which meant that the registrar, staff and even the chap from the local paper all treated it as slightly saucy fun rather than 'Eeek, perverts, arrest them!'

The 'real' wedding was scheduled for that night, at the club, which was opening an hour or so earlier for the bride, groom and invited guests. Those of us who had been there from the start spent a pleasant, sociable afternoon chilling out at the not-quite-weds' flat, and as time went by, I noticed that there was a small potential problem. The friend who had been going to conduct the ceremony for them was clearly quite unwell, and was slumped on the sofa going greener and greener.

No one could ever accuse me of being backward in coming forward: I drew the couple aside and said, look, he's clearly not too well, would you like me to be understudy? Given that, sort of, I represent the mag you met through, which kind of adds a little 'official status' - and I'm good at standing up and talking...

This was accepted all round as a Great Idea: the order of service was handed over to me for a quick read-through, and the poor queasy non-celebrant was able to go home to bed.

It was a lovely ceremony. The line I will always remember is 'You may now recieve your choice of ring,' as they had decided that the wedding would be commemorated/sealed by a Prince Albert piercing for the sub, and had a body piercer standing beside me, ready for action. As someone who does not love needles at all, I found that a lot more challenging than speaking in public (and stared very hard at my script until it was all done.) I also remember a performance artist who used fire poi giving the couple what she called a fire blessing with her flaming whatnots.

I don't think whatever happens at Windsor tomorrow will be half as cool as that was, somehow.

Wicked Wednesday: Continued Caning

Continued Caning

Well, technically it was a party rather than a club, but still...
I was still relatively new to kink, but had reached a point where I relished my status as a rare creature - a single, dominant female who wasn't charging for her services. The party host had invited me to be in charge of the maids for the night, which was fun. I think there were about three or four of them, altogether: at least one was the type of maid who genuinely wants to be 'good' and whose thrill comes from providing service. At least one of the others was an absolute brat, though.
At some point, towards the end of the night, she cheeked me once too often, and I decided it was time to give her the good hiding she deserved. I took her into the back room, made her bend over the bed and raise her skirt and petticoat.
I probably started with a few hand spanks, though I seem to recall she'd had her arse warmed up by others. And then I moved on to the cane.
I have never been the world's greatest exponent when it comes to caning, but I wasn't a total novice. I could place my strokes pretty much where I wanted them to land, and when it was a matter of disciplinary roleplay rather than something with a likelihood of more erotic involvement, I liked to get whoever was on the receiving end to count the strokes and thank me after every one.
She counted three strokes, but when I laid on the fourth, there was no response.
'I didn't hear anything, girl.'
'I didn't feel anything, madam.'
You cheeky...
I laid on a much harder stroke, and got the required count and thanks.
And then it happened again.
And again.
I think it took about twenty strokes to get an official count of Six of the Best, and I observed that she didn't seem particularly chastened, so she could take six more, for insolence.
And another six after that.
And then six more.
I don't know how long it took, but I continued caning her until we both hit some kind of Zen state. The world had narrowed to nothing but her arse, the cane and the repeated movements of my arm.
Looking back, I wouldn't call it sexual - there was no frisson between me and the maid, none at all. It was, however, intense, and spacey, and quite unlike anything I'd previously done.
Something jolted me out of my near-trance, in the end, and I thought: Oh shit! What have I done to her?
I dropped the cane and told her to stand up. She gave me a little half-bob of a curtsey. She didn't seem particularly traumatised, or in any particular pain.
'Well, girl, have you learned your lesson?'
'I suppose so, Madam.'  Our eyes met, for a second. Hers still held a spark of mischief.
'Run along, then, and don't let me have to punish you again.'

The next day, I could barely lift my arm to brush my hair.

Fetishwear 1 - Scarlet and Turquoise, Red and Blue

Fetishwear 1 - Scarlet and Turquoise, Red and Blue

Fetish club dress codes were a bit of a challenge right from the start, to be honest. Once I started going to a few more clubs, I got a slightly better idea of what I could get away with - I was generally short of money, and preferred to spend what spare cash I had on booze and books anyway (nothing has changed there). Also, I have a lifelong aversion to looking Just Like Everyone Else, wherever I might be. But I was generally on the lookout for stuff that would a) look OK on me b) get past the doorperson whose job it was to enforce the dresscode and b) not cost too much.
My home patch for most of the 90s was Deptford, which had a magnificent street market. Between the fruit and veg, meat and fish, and five-lighters-for-a-pound/wonky kitchenwear/no-brand binbag stalls there were always clothes for sale. Every now and again, there was something really worth having.
I think I bought the dresses some time in 1995. I have a picture in my mind of the circular rail by the side of the stall, full of these little dresses, all One Size Fits All. I think they had them in turquoise, scarlet and black. Ooh, I thought. Those look rather nice.
They were made of something stretchy, but not completely clingy; sleeveless, with a low round neck, coming down to about mid-thigh. They were about £5 each, so I decided I would have one scarlet one and one turquoise. The fabric had a slight shimmer to it; not metallic or glittery, just a little bit shiny.
I don't know how many Sue Grafton fans might be reading this, but her series heroine, Kinsey Milhone, often talks about her 'all-purpose black dress'. Those two little dresses were my all-purpose, go-to, fetish club outfits for the best part of two decades. They were 'naughty' enough to get me past all but the strictest door policies. They could be rolled up into a tiny bundle and literally stuffed in a pocket if I was going clubbing straight after work or another vanilla engagement. They are probably the only dresses I have ever owned that looked good whether I was having a chubby stage or a less chubby stage. They are still in the back of a drawer, because I really can't bear to part with them, even though they are finally wearing into holes.
The other best-loved find (and envy of many) would have been what I called the tractor boots. The soles of them were thick rubber, like tractor tires. They had a low, square heel and a rounded toe - rather similar in shape to DMs and, like 20-hole DMs, they laced up to the knee, but the boots themselves were thick rubber, not leather.
I found the boot stall one idle Saturday afternoon and wandered over for a look. The boots came in just the one style, but four colours: red, royal blue, black and a rather unlovely shade of brown, but they looked wonderful and they looked comfortable. I was inclined towards higher heels at the time, but getting a bit tired of the pain they inflicted. (To paraphrase Mr Eldritch, pain is for other people.)
'Help you, miss?' The stallholder was stacking up more boxes of boots.
'Have you got a size 8?'
'Loads, what colour do you want?'
'How much are they?' There was no price in site.
'Three quid a pair.'
Yes, all right, that does suggest dubious provenance, doesn't it? But I bought a red pair, and a blue pair, and often wished I'd bought a black pair as well. In fact, if I had bought a dozen pairs, I could probably have sold them all to various friends.
I don't think I have ever loved boots quite as much as I loved those two pairs, either. They were so unbelievably comfortable, yet so loaded with kinky visual cues. Also, having bought both red and blue ones, I could wear one of each if I wanted to be a smartarse.

What's the Weather Like?

What's the Weather Like?

Apparently the text sex, or sexting, industry is still going, despite all the hookup apps and free porn. One of these days I might see if I can have another go at it.
It was a job I took on in early 2002, right at the beginning of the industry, and I think the company I worked for were one of the first to make it a Thing. It was very different to the way it appears to work now. We had an office, in south London, and the 'texts' we sent were done on some modified version of (I think) Messenger. Because the service functioned 24/7, the office had to be staffed 24/7, so I had to build a team of staff who could work however-many six hour shifts a week. As the, er, #bossbabe, it usually fell to me to cover when someone was ill, or hungover, or had some other personal emergency, which sometimes meant working an 18-hour shift, having a 6-hour break and then going back in because something else had gone wrong.
In case you're completely unfamiliar with the concept, commercial sexting invites, by adverts in porn mags, people (mainly men) to text and 'flirt' with others. Except that the 'others', in the companies I have worked for, consist of paid staff pretending to be anything up to 150 fake people...
Yeah, the ethics were a little troubling, even at the beginning, but after a month or so, I was so bombed from the lack of sleep that I pretty much stopped caring. I like to think I had a bit of an aptitude for the work, though. Parts of it appealed to my fiction-writing side, for one thing. I often had to 'build personas' when the company had a new ad out, which meant listing a fictitious Hot Babe's hair colour, eye colour, age, tit size, and inventing stuff like what day job she had, where she lived, her favourite music or hobbies... and I had to keep this stuff interesting, plausible, and not so esoteric that my co-workers would struggle to sustain an ongoing conversation with a customer.
The co-workers, being a bit of a mixture of flakes, chancers, hard workers and howling wackjobs, often needed a certain amount of spoon-feeding when it came to keeping stories consistent and not doing something that left the next op with an incomprehensible mess and a cross punter ranting that he was being lied to. Even the weather mattered. If it was sunny in south London but pissing down in Perthshire, and you were roleplaying Margaret from 'the Scottish Highlands' you had to make sure you didn't get caught out.
I have to say that the second time I took on a sexting job, around 2010, this stuff was a lot easier to stay on top of: not only could you check the weather online wherever you were supposed to be, but the supervisors had even provided a list of websites where you could look up 'local' pubs and restaurants...

Not Getting Lucky

Not Getting Lucky

Yeah, sometimes there will be posts on here that are more about present-day stuff than what happened decades ago, though the past informs the present and all that...

You won't have missed the news that some men feel their human rights are being outraged because no one wants to fuck them - and some of them are so outraged that they feel hatred and violence is completely justified. Despite the fact that the reason no one wants to fuck them is that they are bursting with entitlement, hatred and violence. Someone else came up with the perfect term to describe such men: unfuckable hate nerds. They are, basically, horrible, and they need to learn how to improve.

Everyone knows that it isn't nice to go without sex or be without a partner when you would like to have a relationship, or a kinky session, or even just the delicious giggly thrill that comes from having someone you find appealing do something that at least implies they rather like you, too. But sometimes you just don't 'get lucky.'

In all the years of club reviewing, I almost always went along to that night's club by myself. (There were suggestions, from time to time, that I take a photographer along, which I always refused to do; there were a few occasions when I either went with someone I was seeing or agreed to meet a squeeze-of-the-time at the venue.) If I was doing a club in London, there was a fair chance I would run into a few pals or acquaintances (or people I actually couldn't fucking stand, but that's a topic for other posts), but if it was one of my mystery tours outside the M25 I probably wouldn't know anyone at all. And sometimes a person who was both appealing and available would appear, and fun would ensue, and sometimes I'd just spend the night either wandering round and round the venue or making increasingly strained conversation with the promoter and the bar staff. No guarantees. Not ever.

Additional complications, mostly in London clubs, would happen if there was someone I really rather liked, who liked me well enough to talk to but was not interested in doing any kink or sex with me, and this would get extra-complicated if that someone was someone I saw repeatedly.

Unless you have been very lucky (if that's quite the right word) in that the first person you ever took a fancy to at the school disco was equally smitten with you and the two of you have spent the rest of your lives in blissful monogamy, you're likely to have experienced the misery and thwarted resentment of wanting someone who doesn't want you, or at least doesn't want you in the way you want them to. And this is a wretched state to be in. But, here's the thing, you get over it. If you're remotely worthwhile, you get over it without doing anything obnoxious to anyone else.

My usual method was getting pissed and blubbering in the toilets, sometimes followed by the writing of epically awful poetry when I get home. (No. I will not be sharing any of that on this blog. Don't panic.) Or the final option of the narked fiction writer - putting a version of that person into a story and either Mary-Sue-ing some sex with them, or letting their avatar get eaten by hamsters.