I first started reading sex blogs right around this time last year. The first blogs I’d found weren’t that interesting, and I was thinking about sticking with the political bogs I’d been reading for several years, when I stumbled across a link to the first annual Best of Blogs awards. That first list of nominations in the sex blog category was like finding a fresh produce stand after living on fast food on a cross-country trip! I’ve been having a blast ever since.

So BoB is back again this year and I’d like to encourage you to take a look. If there are any good blogs you think should be there that aren’t, please add their name and URL in the Best of Sex Blogs category. Just click here and put your nomination in a comment.

I’m flattered as can be that someone nominated me (thanks, DarkNeuro!) and many of my favorite bloggers have already been nominated. Figleaf says check it out.

Evidently someone grabbed the domain “Bloggasm” so Sam’s renamed it “Sugasm.” Still a cool idea and a slightly better name.

The best of the blogs by the bloggers who blog them (this week starting with the letter E.)

• Emerging on the other side… (emergingontheotherside.blogspot.com)
• Fuckin’ the old ball and chain (whatsyourpleasure.blogspot.com)
• Kitkast Outtakes #1.1 (mskitka.com)
• Mister Mistress (mimredbeard.com)
• Penis Questions Answered (damnjezebel.com)
• Pretending to be Mrs. Claus (whatsexmaycome.blogspot.com)
• Quick and Dirty (talkingdirty.blogspot.com)
• Something new to do on rainy days (realadultsex.com)
• StoryTime: blue oriental flowers (secretbrain.blogspot.com)
• Suffering (nyc-urban-gypsy.blogspot.com)
• Tête-à-Tête (theholidaylife.blogspot.com)
• Touching (alwasysarousedgirl.blogspot.com)
• The First Time I Never Remember (insatiablemrw.blogspot.com)
• Transvestite nativity scandal in Rome (sexblo.gs)
• A (reluctant) spanking (lumpesse.com)
• Bloggasm is Dead. Long Live the Sugasm! (sugarbank.com)
• Business and Pleasure in the Pleasure Biz (tirepaddle.com)
• Competitive Nature (anyonesgirl.blogspot.com)
• Cornered (deltavegas.blogspot.com)
• Dumping a Client (radicalvixen.com)

[Updated with a late addition by special request from SugarBank. —fl]

One of the reasons I like blogging is it helps me unlearn things I incorrectly believe are true and to reinforce things I can’t quite get over thinking aren’t true that really are. Here’s one trivial example of the latter: I already knew better than to drill relentlessly around your clitoris but Steff of The Cunting Linguist really brought it home for me in part two of her Man’s Guide to Cunnilingus.

I don’t know if there’s an area on the man’s body that reacts with the same intensity as a woman’s clit. If there was, it’d probably be the frenulum, that sensitive bit just under the nib of the cock’s tip, which has always been a favourite plaything of mine during fellatio.

But for us girls, the clit is your ticket to orgasmic fame. So don’t even fucking think of starting things there. The clit’s where you go when you want to take her higher, push her to the edge of it all. It’s not an appetizer. It’s not the starter.

The quote is from Part Two but you might also want to read parts One and Three as well.

The clincher came either from Steff or maybe from Shay of The S-Spot when one of them (I can’t find a link) said that past a certain point of arousal pretty much everything between her hips and her knees becomes one big erogenous zone.

I knew it all along but those couple of posts chased away my last remaining doubts.

An example of the first problem — unlearning things I only thought were true — comes from a nifty comment from Gigi in my post about discovering lubricants. Gigi said:

Lubes are my favorite masturbatory “toy” even raking above my beloved irabbit! I use lube as directed but let me tell you a little rubbed on other parts of the body say the nipples or the waist or belly…WOW slipery, slidey cool then warm! Good messy fun. I’m sure that using lube in this way is also great with a partner though I’m only guessing at this.

Gigi, as most of you know or should know, is the author of Mamalicious and Garden of Earthly Gi-lights. —fl]

Which cracked a giant hole in my “learned it so long ago it must be true” understanding that girls don’t like to get messy during sex.

Ok, ok! Before you break a rib laughing at me or anything… I wasn’t being completely stupid. Instead I think I conflated the old complaint about being the ones to sleep on the wet spot and another complaint about the common porn/strip-club trope of oil or mud wrestling. Plus the whole “sugar and spice and everything nice” nursery rhyme.

If I wasn’t being completely stupid I was still being stupid, though. It’s not as though I hadn’t had all kinds of counterevidence, not least of which would be how much fun various partners over the years have loved it when I’ve licked them silly from head to toe but particularly from collarbone to navel, knees to thighs, heels to toes, and pretty much everywhere else. That being just one example. Ok, ok, already, another example would be just about everything one person can do with another with a bar of soap in a tub or shower.

The point is that, for whatever reason, Gigi managed to get something new through my thick skull and I wanted to say thanks for teaching me something I should have known wasn’t true.

I’m seriously gonna have to reconsider this lube idea, by the way. All the partners I’ve ever had who used lube at all typically used just a little dab to sort of prime their wells. Now I’m starting to appreciate why they sell the stuff in pump bottles and I’m going “hmmm….” I’m dying to try more.

Lots more.

Thanks again for helping with my continuing education.

Ok, so after posting the last HNT photo I went to Obasso’s site only to find he’d suggested we post our best HNT photo of the year. I’m not sure this was the greatest photo I’ve ever taken but it seemed to be the most popular.

[From my “HNT Editorial: Flamers, trolls, and alienation” post on Dec. 8th.]

Nothing profound to say this week, really, other than happy HNT and happy new year.

[I began this post back in September and held off because I’d written three or more things based on posts by Lynn Gazis-Sax. Her writing always makes me think. I’ve recently been reading Easton & Liszt’s The Ethical Slut. It too is making me think. It’s a very good book in terms of understanding one’s romantic and sexual relationships with others whether or not one is monogamous. I’ll probably have more to say about the book but I think I’ll clear the decks a bit by finally posting this one. —fl]

Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones has thrown me for another loop, this time with her meditations on casual sex.

As I see it, there are at least four categories of reasons not to have casual sex, and much confusion follows when people confound one set of reasons with another (either by emphasizing a different set of reasons from the ones that are chiefly guiding them, or by making a wrong guess about what reasons are guiding others). Either the definition of “casualâ€? or the definition of “sexâ€? may vary, depending on what set of reasons you are using.

First, there’s the matter of what kind of sex you subjectively actually want to have. Sex, after all, is a form of communication. It’s other things besides, and some of them can be grander. But at the very least, sex with another person is a form of communication, not just a function of physical release (for that you could just check out some of flea’s products). And, if you don’t happen to like the communication that’s going on, you probably don’t like the sex. So, in this case, a distaste for “casual sexâ€? means a distaste for sex that leaves you feeling used, unappreciated, unlistened to, or whatever. Or for a relationship which is unpleasant to be in because the other person doesn’t seem to be taking you seriously as more than an object for his or her release. Casual sex, in this case, is sex you just plain don’t want. And the definition of “casualâ€? may vary depending on just what it is that you do want.
It’s worth reading the rest of Lynn’s post here. Leave her a comment if you find it interesting.

The idea that sex is a form of communication is both a) novel (at least to me) and b) exactly correct, no matter what other grand, mundane, or transgressive things it might be.

It also (as many of Lynn’s posts do) throws me into a bit of inner turmoil. Decades ago, when I was a young, homeless musical minstrel and wandering wastrel I took immense pleasure in hanging out on park benches on the Boston common just talking to total strangers — many of them elderly, some as young and aimless as I, others in the prime of their productive years as parents, politicians, clerks, or entrepreneurs — and those conversations changed both my life and, I’m pretty confident, changed the lives of some of the people I conversed with.

Initially I didn’t seek out those conversations, which often took place when I would take breaks from busking with my decrepit found-in-a-dumpster guitar and my meager found-in-a-Mel-Bay-book musical skills. But as time went on, and the advancing winter made my fingers too stiff to play, I found myself returning to the Commons for that, well, casual comm-union with strangers in the public square. (While I did develop some friendships there I rarely saw, or had a chance to speak with, the same people twice)

So how does this relate to casual sex? As I mentioned a while ago there are at least a hundred relative strangers I’ve met in the blogosphere I’d love to have casual social intercourse with. And were I single, knowing what I know of them and they of me, I’d be equally delighted to also have casual sexual intercourse with many of them (well, certainly with any single individual among them.) Note the “also” in that last sentence, it’s important — as Lynn says, if all one wanted was physical release one could simply masturbate.

If I ever make it to Lynn’s part of the country I’d love to meet her in person for casual conversation (though not for sex, given her well-articulated preferences, not to mention our monogamous relationships.) I would certainly enjoy that kind of face-to-face contact with someone I admire and enjoy sharing comments with. But where does that desire, for that kind of communication — a gratuitous and mutually gratifying (I would hope) meeting to discuss theology and it’s role in modern relationship formation, for instance — fit into a model that includes the communication model of casual sex? Or, put more concretely, how would that compare, for instance, to two other individuals who, with very similar motivation, chose to meet instead to talk and have sex without intending to form a longer lasting proximal relationship?

I’m the first to admit I have always had a more slippery boundary between intellectual, emotional, and physical relationships, and that I have chosen to be monogamous out of respect for my partner and for social convention more than any personal conviction, but the idea of sex as communication resonates with me and my intuition says putting the boundary between physical and non-physical communication not only be arbitrary but misplaced.

This is another one of those libertine prude / prudish libertine dichotomies for me. The idea of non-communicative/obligatory sex that’s never-the-less permissible because you’re married seems as grim to me as the idea of communicative/personal/optional/casual sex outside of marriage seems benign. (This is not to say that’s my experience with married sex, by the way! I don’t think I’m disclosing too much about our relationship when I say my partner and I have communicative, personal, optional sex.)

[p.s. While we’re on the topic of communication, check out Steff’s Case for More Communications. I really appreciated her post as well. —fl]

I’ve often groused about the distinct imbalance between sex toys for women vs. toys for men. You guys get Pocket Rockets, Rock Chicks, Rabbits with 31 settings, and tempered glass confections that would make Dale Chiluli green with envy. We get penis pumps, Auto Suck, and inflatable sheep.

Usually after I pee I lose my morning erection. I’ve got a bit of a cold so I stayed in bed after everyone went down for breakfast and the darned thing came back. The funny thing about morning erections is they don’t really signify horniness, but since I was just lying there anyway I started exploring it, probing around the base to see what happens after it disappears under the skin of my pubis, pushing it around to see what tendons attach where, flexing my PC muscles when I put it under tension, and just generally appreciating it not as a sex organ or masturbation locus but just for itself.

Don’t get me wrong, all that touching felt very nice. Since I was feeling experimental, not really fantasizing about anyone or anything, just playing around, I decided to experiment a little. Usually when I masturbate I just… well… masturbate. This time, though, I reached into the bedside table and experimented with the way different lubricants felt.

One thing that was nice right away was the cool feeling of the first gel I tried. I know it sounds dumb but the chill felt really refreshing on my skin and it was fun feeling it warm in the space between my cock and my hands. I swirled and stroked myself, again not trying to get off but just mapping the sensations to see where things feel best, until the lube had gone… where ever lube goes when it dries out or rubs in or whatever. I grabbed a different type (we had some unused samples) and I really noticed a difference in the texture and, thus, the sensation.

That was pretty cool! Now I want to run out and buy another whole sample pack and see what kind of difference each makes. I know a lot of women use lubricants with their toys and even more rely on their own juices, but I’ve never heard anyone mention lube as a stimulant in and of itself. But until you correct me I’m going to say I might have found something to compensate for my vibrator envy. There may not be many (any?) effective vibrators for men but last time I checked there were shelves and shelves of lubricants — specific ones in sex shops, general lotions, creams, and gels in grocery stores. I think I’m going to check a few of them out.

Ok, maybe more than a few. :-)

Ok, so if Santa is a right jolly old elf and not a member of my species then…

... if I’d agreed to have sex with Mrs. Claus would it have been guilty of adultery or of bestiality?

Why oh why did we let the kids sleep in so late this morning? So they could go to bed late tonight, wild with excitement and new ideas for welcoming Santa. Cookies. Milk. Carrots for reindeer. Candles. Excuses, really, but sweet and utterly well-intentioned.

Meanwhile I’ve got the traditional big dad-must-assemble where Tab A in Slot B has no innuendo-iotic signifier other than “where are the dang pliers?”

—-

I used to think that Christmas was for gifts, for when this promise or that was made, a Nicean hijacking of pagan Saturnalia, an orgy of commercial excess, a stressful pretend-to-be-merry occasion, a reason for too-long car trips in too-crowded cars, a time to be lonely when alone and away from home for the first time, an excuse for sanctimonious and pseudo-sanctified savages to yap and yawp about the everlasting lives promised for those who toed their particular line.

Then I read a stunning essay by Hannah Arendt — once Heidegger’s student and lover, once a concentration camp escapee, a philosopher, a Hellephile, a life-long athiest — who spoke of this guy from Nazereth who introduced the idea of forgiveness into political, legal, and philosophical discourse. Arendt, who forgave her former teacher and lover for becoming a Nazi, pointed out several problems with forgiveness but said all in all it was a pretty good idea. Whatever else he may or may not have done, whatever he was or wasn’t, whatever else he may mean, in retrospect that was a pretty big deal.

I believe pretty strongly in tolerance. In a world full of imperfect understanding I think it’s pretty hard to have tolerance without forgiveness. It makes all the difference in this world, whatever else it may mean in the next. So happy birthday, big guy. Thanks for the good idea.

For that reason if no other I’d like to wish each of you a particularly merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heart.

Not a creature was stirring, well, one tiny mouse was just starting to stir…