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Trying Universal Lube for the first time was a terrifying experience. I wasn’t worried about what it might do to my body. I basically trusted that VibeReview would never send me anything dangerous and that it would be a passable lube. But I was scared to death about what it might do to my silicone toys.

Traditional wisdom dictates that you do not use silicone lubes with silicone sex toys. The fact that they are made of similar materials triggers a reaction and can allow the lube to break down the materials in your precious silicone toys. So, even though silicone lubes can be awesome and a lot of people prefer them, most of us keep water-based lubes around for sex toy use.

But, Universal Lube is different. The name really says it all. It is a silicone lube that is designed to be safe with sex toys. I was a bit scared the first time I squirted it onto one of my favorite silicone dongs but I am happy to report that the toy came out unscathed.

Now that we’ve established that it didn’t fuck up my toys, how does it work as a lube? Pretty well, I think. It is thicker than most silicone lubes I’ve tried so that means that it stays in place. In general, this class of lube is more slippery than slick so you feel the lubrication in a more pure sense instead of just wetness. Depending on the situation, I love this because it preserves a lot more of the friction of sex while maintaining a safe and comfortable level of movement and lubrication.

I was also really please that the bottle is a generous size, inviting me to slather on as much as I felt like while I was playing. Many silicone lubes are incredibly pricey so this seemed like a great value.

If you like the feel of silicone lubes but get nervous about using them because they negate the use of your favorite toys, then Universal Lube is a must to try. You’ll find that it may become one of your go-to lubes because it will keep your options open in terms of toy choices and can be easily layered with water-based lubes to create new sensations.

There is a certain pervert around here that is obsessed with over the knee socks. Last night at the store, I saw a precious pink and purple pair that I thought would go great with Mary Janes. So I got them. Cute, huh? You can even see cat paws at the top of the photo as my black cat sauntered past while I took the picture.

This is a pretty demure photo for me, perhaps you’re wondering why? Well I sent my racy photos from this week to the Boobiethon. Go check it out and donate to this very worthy cause.

This is part of my ongoing series of interviews with men on masculinity. I am sorry for the long hiatus in posting these. The travel I have been doing has gotten in the way a bit.

This interview is actually with a kinky, female, top who has been one of the most steadfast commenter on this series. Trinity (who has a brilliant blog) discusses how her BDSM role relates to her perceptions of masculinity and her own performance of it.

When was the first time you remember being aware of masculinity? How old were you? What was the cultural climate or influence?

Aware it existed? I don’t know, other than just a vague sense that men were threatening coupled with a vague sense that I wanted to do the things that our society said was sexually reserved for them. Feeling like I was an alien for being female and wanting those things. Wondering, years later, when I found a trans man’s website about sex, describing some of the things he did and wanted to do and how he did them, if that was me. Feeling like I’d finally found descriptions of sex and sexuality that fit.

I was more aware of femininity and how it didn’t fit, and how everyone either tried to convince me to fit it or called me “he.” I was very unhappy with either of those options. (I don’t so much feel uncomfortable with being read as male nowadays. I kind of like it. I wonder about transition, but I’m not sure I’d feel any more comfortable on the other end of the gender continuum than I do on this one.)

As far as really thinking about the word, not until a Women’s Studies class in college. The point was the social stereotypes of masculinity and femininity and how stifling they are, but I felt weird and attacked even though I understood. I felt like I was being described as this enemy to women, when as far as I could tell I was one. I didn’t like the word — as it was presented it described some pretty icky people, it seemed — but I liked what it was supposed to represent, and came to see myself as on the masculine side of androgynous.

Which I still do, and that’s part of why I wrestle with whether or not I qualify as “butch.” (That I’m queer but not a dyke — I tend to date men — is the other.) I dress in a way I’d call butch when I’m wearing clothes I feel good in, I fuck in a masculine way, I go by Sir in the leather community and wonder where the matron is when someone says Ma’am… but I wonder how much of that is sexual persona and how much is my essence. They’re definitely intertwined, but there’s a lot of kink in it all. Which sometimes makes me fear I’m trampling on the toes of people who have it harder, since they’re not “just” folks with a fetish.

Do you think of yourself as masculine? Why or why not?

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the term. I use it because I still feel I’m a little too androgynous to be “butch,” but I’m not sure if I’m too androgynous to quite qualify as “masculine” either. “Masculine female” is the closest bad approximation when I’m trying to say that look, my sense of my gender and body and role and what I want from those things is not like what I see most women wanting.

How does your masculinity relate to your sexuality (be it your orientation, preferences, or expressions)?

I’m a stone (most of the time) top. I’d much rather penetrate than be penetrated, and while I don’t think that’s necessarily masculine (femmes with sparkly strap-ons under their skirts are yay, and no less feminine), for me it fits with my gender and my sense of myself in a way that I do think of as masculine.

While it may not be popular in Feministlund to say this, and I definitely don’t think it’s true of everyone, I actually do suspect that I was born this way. I knew from a very, very young age that what people told me females were designed to do sexually was wrong for me, and what people told me males were designed to do sexually was right for me. It caused me great distress as a young child, as I knew nothing about strap-ons or whatever else. I thought I was crazy, and tried desperately to try to make myself feel that bottoming sexually seemed natural and right. I was angry at my body for not being equipped to have sex right, though I didn’t think of myself as a boy.

Though I’ve also seen some references to studies that suggested that girls who had disabilities grew up to behave in ways considered more masculine as a way of coping with being impaired or sick. So who knows.

At any rate I think this is a part of who I am and not something that should be laid at the feet of society.

We have been home from Dark Odyssey Summer Camp for two weeks now and I haven’t said much about it. I’ve been processing my thoughts but I have a list of posts that I want to write about the experience. A lot happened there. I met Wendy, a longtime blog friend that is even more awesome when you get to see her in person. I got to spend time with my dear, sweet Viviane who is one of the most comforting and lovely people I’ve met in a long time. I also got to meet many new friends and take classes and workshops with remarkable presenters and educators.

Despite the plethora of experiences that I *did* have, I am going to start with one that I didn’t. A gangbang.

It was Sunday afternoon, laying around in the pool, that I got the idea that I wanted to have a gangbang. Just by merit of timing, the idea was already ill-fated but Jay tried to organize it for me. Needless to say, most people had pretty full dance cards and getting that many cocks to convene in one place at camp was, well, not going to happen.

But, in the spirit of better luck next time, let me tell you a bit about what I have in mind.

I want to be violated by multiple people in a way that is really quite beyond my control. I first got a taste for this during our playful threesomes with Ian. He and Jay often pin me down and tickle me and molest me. It is fun and sexy and I struggle, giggle, and moan. But what if I screamed and cried and begged them to stop? It could go either way. The reality is that I have two tall, strong men pinning me down and doing what they want to me.

I got to thinking that I really love this, the feel of my muscles straining against their power. Knowing that I can’t get away, can’t stop it from occurring. The ability to let go because there is nowhere else to go. Sure, I’m a rope slut and I like bondage of all sorts but actually being restrained by another person, unable to fight them off, is a totally different thing.

Suddenly the attention is divided. I can’t just think about the hand mauling my pussy or the teeth biting my nipples but instead have to focus on the fingers wrapped around my arm, squeezing tight enough to bruise. Or perhaps the knees pressed against my thigh, forcing my legs apart so that my unwilling wetness is revealed. And they can’t just focus on what they are doing to me, their animalism has to come out and it becomes just as much about the struggle as the sex.

The idea of multiple people making this happen for me, taking turns pinning me down and keeping my subdued while their companions touch me in every way they can imagine is an overwhelming urge. They can be faceless and nameless. I could be blindfolded or not. The details, the humans involved don’t matter. I am interested in arms and hands, mouths and cocks just as they should not be interested in me in this moment, just my sex, just what my warm and wet holes can offer them.

Fantasies like this are scary to some people. The lack of consent is alarming. There are feminists that would have some choice (or perhaps condescending) words for me. But it is mine and I own it. And I look forward, perhaps too eagerly, to the day that I can make it a reality.

When I first heard about the Fukuoku vibrating glove I instantly knew it was a really good idea. I enjoy massage and I enjoy vibrations. There is no reason that these things shouldn’t go together. Packaging it all in the form of a glove was just too ingenious to pass up.

The glove is not meant to fit snugly as it is one size fits all but it does come in left or right-handed varieties. I chose right-handed since it would be useful to everyone in our household that way.

The way this toy works is that the tips of each finger have an individual, small vibrator in them. So, across the entire hand a lot of vibration is possible. It feels fabulous when run over almost any body part. You can give an aggressive massage while wearing the glove and really dig your fingertips in transmitting the vibrations into the muscles. You can also very much enhance an erotic massage and the glove works great for sensation play of all types.

Of course you can also rub your hand all over your pussy and have a superb level of control and precision with each individual vibrator. I enjoyed being able to have an ergonomic position and also being able to vary my touch from incredibly light to  firm, grinding movements.

My only real complaint about this glove is the inevitable reality that your fingertips start to get over-vibrated rather quickly while wearing it. I found that when I pressed down hard they started to go numb and when I was using a light touch against my body, my fingertips felt tickled. Still, slightly funny finger sensations are a small price to pay to be able to provide this sort of pleasure to yourself or a partner.

This weekend Jay and I travelled to the Fetish Fair Flea Market in Charlotte to present a class on Kinky Phone Sex for Couples. We had a great time and met some great friends that we had previously only known online. Catalina and Marky were kind enough to open their home to us and we spent Friday night with them. I wish I could say that we had some hot sex to tell you about (I mean, I *really* wish) but we were all beat and after eating pizza and talking about blogs and sex and random kinky stuff we all got to bed pretty early.

However, Catalina and Marky are amazingly cool people and both brilliantly fun, smart, and sexy. Know how sometimes when you are meeting someone for the first time it can be weird and you get uncomfortable because they aren’t exactly what you expect them to be? Well, this was *not* one of those situations.

On Saturday they both attended my class along with a small group and I got to have a great conversation/workshop with some lovely people about how to improve communication in their relationships and share fantasies with phone sex. After my class, it was time to go shopping since that was what the Fetish Fair was about.

Jay and I saw tons of cool stuff from some great vendors but we were most swayed by the amazing assortment of canes from The Kink Shop. We picked out three pretty thick ones and I can’t wait to try them out.

Our friends Liz and Alex had come to see us at the Fetish Fair and after we got our canes, Liz ran up to me in a gorgeous under the bust corset. She hadn’t been wearing it when I saw her just a few minutes before and I quickly complimented her on it. So, just for kicks, she said she would show me the vendor she had got it from.

Bear in mind that I had absolutely no intention of buying a corset. They are certainly gorgeous but it seemed like a lot of money to spend on a single item of clothing. However, the owner of Passional was really lovely and sweet and cinched me into a few just to try them out. This brings me to my tutorial on how to get your boyfriend to buy you a corset. Just follow this simple procedure:

Step One: Try on corset and let boyfriend see.

Congratulations! You have just successfully gotten your boyfriend to buy you a corset. I wish I was kidding but Jay’s hand was on his wallet before I even made it to the mirror. Sure, it was a lot of money to spend but he rationalized that it was a gift for both of us. So, how does it look?  How about you tell me.

More pictures are right on Flickr.

Some situations beg for subtlety. Vibrations on my clitoris tend to be one of them.

I had heard amazing things about Lelo products and knew was expecting big things from this toy. The Nea has amazing packaging that had be instantly intrigued.  It came in a vivid purple outer box and a black display box that is perfect for leaving on the nightstand for storing the toy.

Taking the small vibrator out of the box I was surprised by its small size and how lightweight it was. The Nea has a gorgeous smooth finish that rests in my hand beautifully. It is clearly intended as a sensual experience; this is a toy that begs to be caressed as much as it deserves to caress you.

But while design can create a lovely mood and instill a feeling of luxury, what really matters is how well it works, right? Well, it felt great.

People that are fans of deep and very intense vibrations may be disappointed by the Nea but if you like light teasing, you are in for a treat. The Nea has several different speeds and 5 programs for vibration patterns. The vary from quick bursts of buzzing to a wave pattern that brings the intensity up and down. I enjoyed the wave for teasing myself and getting going and the fastest set of bursts to take me over the edge.

Beyond the different vibration settings, there are several other things that set this toy aside as outstanding. First of all, it is made of safe materials that can be properly cleaned, this is an important thing to think about in any sex toy. Second it is rechargeable and has a long battery life. I wish my cell phone could perform this well for so long on such a short charge. If the Nea had a GPS it would be officially sexier than my iPhone. Finally, the construction is very unique and well-thought out. The vibrations seem to be focused into the tip so holding it doesn’t make my hand numb and the shape is very pleasant to hold onto.

The Nea has become my go-to toy for clitoral stimulation. When I’m deciding what to toss in the toy bag for a play party or weekend away, it always comes along. It is lovely, discreet, and produces really unique sensations.

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants. Want in Sugasm #149? Submit a link to your best post of the week by emailing me directly at radicalvixenatgmaildotcom Participants, repost the link list within a week and you’re all set.

This Week’s Picks

People I could hang out with

“But it wasn’t just a story, it was a damn sexy story.”

Red, Hot Ass

“I grunted, but held still.”

Smart Girls Make Better Lovers

“Chicks with brains can make you scream.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself

Sugar Bank

Editor’s Choice

Sex Blogging and Writing for the Drawer

More Sugasm

Join the Sugasm

See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.