Photo courtesy of A Couple of Wankers
Welcome to e[lust] - The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at e[lust]. Want to be included in e[lust] #37? Start with the newly updated rules, come back June 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
~ Top 3 ~
The Cheshire Cat – Alice felt whiskers tickle her skin and was wracked with sobs of fear. “Oh, little girl, don’t cry. You can stand much more than you think you can.”
Vaginal Overexposure? – I see a lot of vaginas. A lot. One of my favorite things to tell Vincent and his friends is, “I see more vagina that you ever will!”
Marionette – “I’m writing out a fantasy of mine, but I’m not sure what to do with some of it. I’m hoping you can help me figure it out.” “Yes Ma’am.”
~ Featured Post (Picked by Lilly) ~
Journeys – These insecurities are at the root of my fears. I don’t know how to combat them, how to turn those tapes off in my head.
~ e[lust] Editress ~
I’ve found a new secret to my G-spot – This g-spot thing might be hard to find since it can’t be mapped, but believe me it is real and with time, exploration, a good clitoral orgasm and a willing set of fingers and/or dildos you CAN find it.
Kink & Fetish
A Pixie Calls Me Daddy
Afterwards, kissing
Another Try at Topping
Bent Over and Exposed
Female Orgasm: Where Do You Get Off?
Hurts
Letting the Sadist Out to Play
more con-slut…
pain & sadism: how they intertwine
Tied Up and Tossed in a Corner
Waiting My Turn
Warm Up
Sex News, Interviews, Politics & Humor
Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships
Buying a Toy: What You Need to Know
Bring on the wanks
I want your sex
My Mother, The Whore
Poly Fallacies #4
Q&A # 3: Childhood BDSM Fantasies
Sticks and Stones…
Small World of Swinging
The Gauge
Us Lately
White and Nerdy
Erotic Writing
Around and ’round
Down
Golden girl
Hard Love
Hot sunny sex on a rainy day
It Ain’t Sex
I Want to be Watched
I made him watch me masturbate
Jealous
Lazy Day
Lost in Submission
Making out
On Display
Pussy Doctor
Perfect Cover
Pussy Eating- The Fun Way
Rack and Ruin part II
Shower Scene
The Third Date
Tickle Monster
Waiting for It
Watching Skylarks
Today marks 18 months of blogging since my first post on June 1st, 2010. This is also my 300th post!
When I first agreed to blog my sex life, I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into, I just did it, without thinking about how it would impact my life. It took me a while to find my voice. I still like to experiment with different formats and approaches. While sex has always been a big part of my life, it’s been interesting to frame my life in terms of sex. It’s made me broaden my definition of sex.
I find I’m sometimes tempted to do something sexually just because it would make a good blog post, but that doesn’t make a huge difference because I’m also just adventurous. Many times my sex dates include testing out products for review. My partners know that anything is fair game for the blog. But my life is by no means all sex. I am the mother of 5 children, and you wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) how many posts I write with Blues Clues or Barney in the background.
It’s been a great trip – and I plan to keep going! I want to share with you some of my favorite experiences so far…
I am most proud of my gender series. I learned so much interviewing Colleen, David, Jim, Kyle, and Aleksa. I’m still learning about gender all of the time, especially my own. I wrote about my experience packing a cock in My Inner Boy. I’ve worked harder on this series than anything else I’ve done for the blog and it’s been totally worth it in terms of what I got out of it – especially the friends I made.
Making erotic videos is something that I’d like to get better at. (I have plans!) Of the ones we’ve already made, a few stand out for me. The Rainy Afternoon video is precious to me because of the energy between Harold and me. We had a lot of technical difficulties, so the result is very “art house,” but I was pleased with it; a genuine connection is harder to capture than anything. I also have to mention the More Love video that we made for all the poly people on Valentine’s Day (and for a fan who wanted to see some plushy sex). Harold and I should both be embarrassed by our acting, but it was sooooo fun to make. I like being so totally silly. I was disappointed that it didn’t provoke more of a reaction.
We got a huge reaction over our Figging Lab Experiment and the Figging Lab Results. Our labs are written rather tongue-in-check, but people took them pretty seriously. I am disappointed that I made up such a beautiful data sheet, but that no one to date has returned a completed experiment to me. That’s too bad! Another post discusses the mathematics of Viagra. Did you know that Viagra leads to math?
Some of my posts have been deeply emotional and reveal much of my inner workings. You can see my journey over time working through sex abuse issues and wanting to be topped in The Opposite of Love, Sex in the Shadow, Okay on the Outside, Walking through the Darkness, Fear and Arousal, Magic Words, and Deep Dark Fantasies.
My trip to Hawaii was big for me. I got to spend time with my girlfriend, Erika, and I met a bunch of really fabulous people. All of the foliage in Hawaii looks erotic.
Another pivotal moment for me was the first close up picture of my cunt I’d ever seen. I wrote about it in Ready for my Close Up, talking about all of my conflicting feelings.
It’s interesting to read Is Thin the Only Sexy? written almost a year ago. I talk about my body image after seeing nude pictures of myself and realizing that I was fat. I decided that fat is still sexy. It totally is. But I also realize that I’ve lost 35 pounds since then. I feel much more comfortable in my body now, but I still look at pictures of myself and feel unhappy.
Some of my favorite posts have to do with being part of a family. My children drew pictures for Secret Life of a Mommy. In Love Song for my Metamour I got to express all of the wonderful things I feel about sharing my life with Melanie. A Poly Jolly Christmas talks about how blessed I feel to have my large poly family together over the holidays.
Finally, I do a lot of reviews, but a few things have really changed my life. One of them is the book, I’ll Show You Mine, which features gorgeous photographs of vulvas. Another is Buck Angel’s Sexing the Transman, a documentary/porn flick that taught me a ton about transmen. Also, working with the photographer, David Steinberg, over two photo sessions was deeply moving.
Photo by David Steinberg, 2011
As you can see, blogging has had a huge impact on my life. These posts represent my highs and lows, ins and outs of the last 18 months. I want to thank all of our readers for your thoughtful comments and constant support. Your participation means so much to me!
This is my 250th post. That seems like a big deal. Those 250 posts were written over the past 14 months, documenting pretty much the whole of my sexual experience and thoughts. Writing for the blog has become a part of my life, just a part of what I do. It is a record of my life as a sex maven, but it’s also about me, stripped naked and talking about something real.
It seems to work. Our site is not huge, but it’s been building steadily from the beginning. We’ve had visitors from 123 countries around the world. We get between 150 and 350 visitors per day and between 500 and 1000 page-views per day. Our most popular posts of all time have been our Figging Experiment posts, which have been viewed a collective 18,000 times. We started letting women tell their stories about their sexuality. I’ve written 15 review posts, spanning a variety of objects and experiences. We’ve made 7 explicit videos. We did a week-long special on gender. We’ve been featured on various websites and gotten good reviews. We’ve made friends with fabulous people.
I really appreciate all of the support we’ve gotten as we grow. It’s the community and the culture of WholeSexLife that are really important to me and to our overall vision. We are still working on creating the sex positive social networking, erotic marketplace, and education site we designed 18 months ago. The going is slow and our lives are busy. Keeping this blog keeps me going. I’m having a blast. All of the people who open up their lives to me keep me going. Thank you!
I’m just going to keep blogging and keep expanding. There’s so much more to do and I’m having so much fun. If you’d like to help out and get involved, I’m looking to open up WholeSexLife forums and I could use some moderators. (Do you want to get used?) I’d also love to get more female-identified people sharing their stories in the Sirens section. I want to hear about what is real for you. If there are other ways you’d like to be involved, let me know. Email me at evoe@wholesexlife.com.
I’m so grateful to you all!
Sometimes I lose sight of my vision. This week things have come together in such a way that I am reminded of why I do this work. Of my reasoning behind WholeSexLife as it will be when we launch the actual site. I want to eradicate sex abuse.
There’s a lot of fear around abuse. It’s occurred to me recently that real safety comes in knowing yourself and being very open about who you are. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive. When I’m scared I want to pull everything in close, but I know that self confidence is a huge deterrent to abuse. I don’t look like an easy mark. I won’t put up with any crap that isn’t good for me and I will actively seek out healthy relationships. When I am open about my sexuality I am establishing clear boundaries about what is acceptable to me. It lets others know that I don’t have any handles around stuff I haven’t worked through yet – no shame to be used against me.
I want our website to be a place where people can learn about themselves and explore their sexuality. It’s important that everyone feels safe. I want to make sure that we create a community and an environment where abusive or predatory behavior is not accepted in any way. In turn, I believe that WholeSexLife will reduce the number of abusers out there. I think that many abusers become so because they are repressed and don’t have an outlet to learn about themselves.
I think it’s time for everyone to feel good about themselves as a sexual being and feel free to express that in positive ways. It’s also time for us as a society to demand safety, to demand an end to sex abuse, to demand culture that supports healthy sexuality. Let it start right here.
Do I have your attention now? Good, because I feel like such a hypocrite. I’m always telling other people to explore their sexuality and pay attention to what feels right for them. I’m always complaining about how the porn that’s out there right now doesn’t do anything for me. You know why? Because I’ve been looking in the wrong places. You know what really, really, really turns me on? Yep, hot gay male porn.
This afternoon Joel sent me one of those e-cards as a sort of, have a happy day, pick-me-up things. It’s totally sweet. Only this card has a warning, “by clicking on the link below, you’ll be taken to our gay adult oriented website, overflowing with naked skin, ripped muscle, and hot young college guys!” Wow. And I follow the link, but it doesn’t work. So I just go to the Corbin Fisher website.
I can’t even describe how I started feeling looking at those clean-cut, smooth bodied, well muscled young men touching each other intimately. It’s like it got harder to breathe. I felt excited and a little scared, like riding a ferris wheel, kind of a tingly thrill that travels from my chest to the bottoms of my feet, but mostly stays in my cunt. My mouth got wetter and my tongue kept traveling from the roof of my mouth to my lips. I really wanted to taste those boys.
I got completely sucked in. I read the story outlines for the porn movies. I read about the company. I read model bios and started feeling like maybe I kind of knew them. I wanted to know a whole lot more. I downloaded wall paper and cleaned up my desktop icons so I could see all of the naked boys. They’re so sweet and sexy. I don’t even want to have sex with them. I want to watch them have sex with each other. Maybe tell them what to do. OMG, I am so in lust.
I keep telling myself that it’s business. It’s research. It’s important for me to be aware of what’s out there. I’m curious about how they make their movies. I appreciate how well done their website is. I’m sure there is a ton of stuff for me to learn. So why am I drooling on my keyboard?
I feel so ridiculous. I’m like a 12 year old girl with a Tiger Beat magazine, fantasizing about the current heartthrobs. Excited over a few muscles? It just isn’t me. Except… in retrospect, I should have seen this coming. I’ve made Joel and Harold sit through countless bad art flicks just because there’s gay male sex. In fact, right now Netflix is sending me La ley del Deseo, featuring a young Antonio Banderas in an explicit gay sex scene. I’ve written erotica with gay male sex. It’s always gotten me hot. I’ve just never thought to check out the porn.
I’ve just gotten off the phone with Harold, where I begged him to buy me internet porn. I can get a 5-day trial subscription to both of their websites for $35. Ouch! But I want to watch these boys fuck each other so bad, my nipples are hard. It’s pretty embarrassing. He reminded me of the research we’ve both seen that saws that women and men both respond physically to explicit materials at about the same time. Women just don’t expect it.
Well, I’d better go. I think my work load for the next 5 days just got heavier.
Wait… what was Joel doing on that site?
Sunday, 9:37 am – I woke up in a panic. While I seem to have worked through a most of my feelings of shame and guilt around sex, I am evidently racked with a plethora of yucky feelings about relaxing and having fun. I’m anxious about what’s going on at home, disappointed that we didn’t get to do more here, guilty about spending so much money and wasting so much time and leaving our children, embarrassed because I don’t feel like I belong here in this fancy hotel, ashamed that I can’t just enjoy myself for a few days and be fully present with my sweetheart. It’s kind of a mess. I have gotten a lot of work for WholeSexLife done here. Yes, it’s a good opportunity to do some of those things, but I can see that I’m also trying to compensate for everything I feel bad about.
Sunday, 10:32 am – We’re eating breakfast in our room. I had wanted to go to Powell’s this morning but I slept too late. Rather than add to my stress, we decided to order room service again and slowly pack up our stuff. I really could get used to someone bringing me breakfast in bed every morning. Or at least coffee. Food is helping me to feel better. I didn’t even think I was hungry! I also made out with Joel. Kissing soothes me. It’s both physically grounding and spiritually uplifting. I feel more connected to our purpose here.
Sunday, 12:26 pm – I’m on the train for Seattle. I think that I have managed to relax some while I’ve been here because I can feel myself starting to pick up tension again as I think of the stuff I’ll need to do when I get home. (Hey! We just passed the Willbridge Lubricant Plant. Cool.) I’m also reflecting on the things we did over the weekend – little snippets of things: Joel snoring on the train… seeing at least 3 or 4 different protests around the Pearl District… learning how extremely ticklish Joel is… holding hands at dinner… bantering while we walk around town and smelling pot on the air… Joel with tzatziki on his cheek… leaning out of our 9th floor window while mostly naked… watching a street musician drum on 5 gallon buckets… snuggling up in bed. Sometimes it’s not the big events that matter. 
Sometimes it’s the moments in between that make all the difference. Yes, I’ve been struggly this weekend, but I still needed this. I’ve needed the time for Joel and I to just be people together.
Sunday, 2:27 pm – We’ve just had some emergency application of the train brake system or something. They aren’t sure what caused it and systems check out, so we’re going to proceed. It makes me think of how I deal with sex. From time to time the emergency brake system gets activated for some reason I can’t figure out and I need to pause in my sexual activities. If I can ascertain the cause of the problem, I can work toward fixing it. If things seem to be okay, sex can resume.
Sunday, 3:10 pm – I’m trying to work on the train, but I keep getting distracted. I’m writing a review of some nipple clamps for tomorrow’s post, but I start thinking about how I wish I had a girlfriend to try them on. A girl without pierced nipples. Big, pink nipples. I could tie her up with my black bondage rope and put the clips on her nipples. I have it all with me. It could happen right here on the train. There, that girl is cute. I bet her nipples are perfect. She’d look good tied to her seat, with all of the people watching in lust and envy. I have my vibrator too. I could plug it in under the seat and hold it to her clit while she comes and come, struggling helplessly. Damn, I need a girlfriend.
Sunday, 4:09 pm – We are minutes away from the King Street Station in Seattle. I can feel my adventure drawing to a close. I’m already moving on to normal things. We’ll stop by Costco on the way home for groceries, go home and snoodle the children, make some dinner, and if I’m lucky (and not too exhausted) I’ll make love with my husband in the coziness of our very own bed. Vacations are nice, but so is coming home!
What happens when you figure out that a particular sexual practice really turns you on, but your long-time partner isn’t interested? Or worse, what if it isn’t something you can even talk to your partner about? Where do you go from there?
Well, you can try to explain your interest to your partner and hope that they won’t reject you or feel hurt or threatened by your evolving sexuality. You can end the relationship, give up everything you’ve worked for, and hope for an eventual good outcome. You can preserve your “normal” life, denying that aspect of your sexuality, trying to keep your desires from surfacing. Or you can explore on your own, without your partner’s knowledge, creating a world of secrecy and shame.
Sadly, I think many, many people find themselves facing these kinds of life choices. I spoke with a lovely man yesterday who, after years of marriage, has realized that he would like to explore cock and ball torture (CBT). He feels that he could not talk to his wife about it at this point. He wants information and a chance to gain some experience, hoping to slowly introduce her to the concept after he’s more comfortable himself.
I ache with the need to help him. I know what it is to yearn for something more in my sex life. I lived through a marriage desperately holding back a sea of unfulfilled desires, telling myself every day that sexual satisfaction wasn’t necessary to my happiness. I tried explaining what I wanted. I tried asking for exactly what I thought I would enjoy. I suffered through things I didn’t want. I offered to take classes together. In the end, not just because of the sexual issues, I left him. I needed to be a whole person and I couldn’t do that and stay in the marriage.
So I have some idea of what this man is going through. And while I really want to help, and I thought he was attractive, my own code of ethics keep me from engaging in CBT with a man whose partner doesn’t know. The situation sucks. I did my best to offer some options – good CBT porn, things to try on his own, information about the CSPC here in Seattle, suggestions about talking to his wife, and contact information for a few good pro-dommes. I hope he finds his way to happiness, whatever that is.
This is the work that I really want to be doing and what I think WholeSexLife is about at it’s heart – helping people to find a safe way to come into the fullness of their sexuality, preferably while keeping their relationships intact. I used to want to be a sex therapist or a sex worker who helped couples through problems of a sexual nature, especially around the time they had children and everything in their relationship changed. I’ve always been drawn to healing and helping people. Sex is so important to me (and everyone!) that we need to stop hiding and start dealing with sexuality with knowledge, honesty, and compassion.
Yes, I get a little bit ranty. It matters so much. I’m doing what I can to help people, but it doesn’t feel like enough fast enough. It doesn’t help the man I had coffee with yesterday. I just feel helpless.
One of the things that I’m thinking a lot about right now is pornography and how it affects people’s lives. What makes something pornographic? What is sex addiction and what does porn have to do with it? What kind of sexually explicit materials do women want? As a person whose job it is to create a social networking site for women to explore their sexuality, these are things I want to know. So I was very interested when I saw this survey in my email box this morning:
Are You a Woman Who Views, Reads, or Listens to Pornography, Erotica, Romance Novels, and/or any other Sexually Explicit Materials?
If so, please share your experiences! Complete a Short Survey (30 min or less) and Contribute to a Scholarly Understanding of Women’s Experiences with Sexually Explicit Materials. My name is Kari Hempel and I am a female psychology graduate student who is doing my dissertation research on women’s experiences with sexually explicit materials. For too long women’s real experiences with these materials have been ignored. My goal is not to judge anyone’s experiences, but to accumulate surveys from as many women as possible around the country about their positive, negative, and/or mixed experiences with sexually explicit materials, and to present the differences and commonalities in a scholarly, respectful fashion. Your Participation is Completely Confidential. Any identifying information that is asked for in the completion of this study will be kept completely confidential and will be destroyed once the study is complete.
You Qualify for Participation If:
- You are a woman (at least 18 years old)
- You currently view, read, or listen to any written, audio, visual, or audio-visual material that is sexually explicit (including but not limited to films, magazines, novels, and audio-recordings)
- You currently live in the United States
To Participate Go To:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/womens_experiences
If you have any questions or concerns, please call or email me. I am happy to address them!
Kari Hempel, MA
503-208-4083
karihempel@yahoo.com
If you meet the qualifications, please take the survey. I went through it myself and I found it to be well thought out and inclusive. For example, transgender was always a gender option. There are some questions about your spiritual path and how influential that path is in your life. I think that’s entirely valid because sex and spirituality are so closely tied together for most people. Sometimes sex and spirituality are opposed, sometimes not.
The only place in the survey where I felt some bias showed was the series of questions that asked if you have ever been involved in making some kind of sexually explicit materials and then ask how being involved in “the industry” (my quotes) affected personal use of sexually explicit materials. Anyone with a cell phone and access to the internet can distribute sexually explicit materials. Not everyone is out to make money. There are plenty of websites where people can share their own explicit photos, videos, and stories just for fun.
I am happy to see someone researching women’s sexuality around pornography. There’s so little research out there about this kind of stuff. It’s difficult to know how women really feel. Even the word pornography is loaded with negative connotations. Women are suppose to hate porn, right? But why? Because it degrades us? Because we feel less attractive when we see porn stars doing their thing? Because it takes our men away from us? Are they wasting their precious orgasms beating off to porn?
Well, I’m offended because a lot of the pornography that is readily available on the internet is really bad. It bears only a vague resemblance to real sex. So maybe that’s the real reason women don’t like porn – sex is sacred and treating it cheaply is sacrilege. Luckily, there’s a solution to this problem. Let’s make some fabulously sexy explicit materials!
Here are some pictures of me in my new office…
Enjoy!
I set out just to write an honest blog about my sex life. I think I do pretty well at that, but I’m starting to notice that keeping a blog affects my sex life, in both positive and negative ways. How do I keep my sex pure, honest and meaningful without letting the reporting color the event? How did sex get so complicated?
For one thing, the equipment has gotten out of hand. It used to be that all you needed was some naked horny people! Now I’ve outgrown my tool box of sex toys, and I have a shoulder bag in addition to the tool box. And there’s the bag with all of my camera gear. And my purse. And another bag with things that we might need, generally consumables. When Harold and I went away for the weekend we had our suitcases and the trampling table too! I need a better system – different containers for different types of toys or my own studio or something.
Then there’s always my partners’ trepidation – are you going to be blogging about this? Although I usually let them read my posts before they go live, it must be a bit unnerving. To be fair, they’re often giving me suggestions about good blog topics. They’ve been fabulously supportive, but it must be difficult knowing that any private moment is potentially blog fodder. If I had more time I might try to use some of these men who are coming out of the woodwork, asking to be used. It sounds like a lot of work.
Wanting photos for each post has also become somewhat restrictive. It’s hard to take photos of an experience without changing the experience. I find myself stopping in the middle of 
something really hot to take a photo and hoping that it doesn’t ruin the moment. Worse are the times when I rule out sex altogether because the light is bad. And I suddenly act different when a camera is pointed at me. I may feel totally sexy, but the instant the camera is pointed at me, I’m thinking about how overweight I am. Which, incidentally, does not make for very good photos.
There’s also the phenomenon of trying some sex act just so I can blog about it but I don’t really see a problem with that. That’s just hot and sexy. It’s like playing Truth-or-Dare or using a purity test as a checklist.
I’m doing my best to keep it real. A sense of humor helps a lot. So does keeping my boundaries and only doing what feels right. I cherish my relationships and value the love we have. Ultimately, it’s the love that’s important. I can always fake the photos.
