I doubt there can be anyone on earth who hasn’t had a filthy thought whilst out shopping and strolling through the vegetable aisles – just take a look at that zucchini (or courgette, if you’re in the UK), or that cucumber there! Carrots, perhaps? The supermarket can be a wealth of opportunities for play, especially if you happen to have found yourself on holiday with a willing partner but forgot to pack the toys!

Great vegetable to play with include: Carrots, parsnips, zucchini, cucumbers, even small squash are all great for insertion – but why stop at insertion? There is plenty more entertainment right here in your fruit and vegetable aisle! I’m reliably informed that sprigs of rosemary make excellent mini-floggers, a fuzzy kiwi fruit, or a bumpy lychee makes for interesting sensation-play, and how about using a bunch of celery as a paddle (my housemates have tested this one, apparently it works just great!)? Use your imagination, and let us know if you come up with any really interesting ideas! How about blindfolding your partner and playing a game of ‘guess the vegetable’?

On a serious note though, not every fruit or vegetable is suitable for insertion. A few guidelines are useful to think about when selecting a potential natural dildo:

1. Check that your chosen item has no sharp bits. Accidental scarring from a jagged edge is NOT sexy.

2. Choose an item with a nice firm texture, one you could squeeze quite firmly with your hand without crushing it. Suddenly finding you have half a squashy vegetable or fruit stuck inside you that you have to retrieve is also not sexy at all! Bananas, however tempting they might look, are really not good as sex toys for both of these reasons – with the skin on they have some surprisingly jagged edges, and with the skin off tend to become a squashy mess rather quickly, not to mention that the fruit sugars encourage the growth of yeast infections. Fine on the outside, but not for internal use!

Before use, make sure any natural dildo you’ve chosen to use has been washed thoroughly – you may want to use a condom over it to be certain – and it’s probably best to regard them as single use, especially if you share a fridge with anyone you’re not playing with! On the other hand, a gentleman I know is rather partial to a salad for lunch, made with the toys of the night before. Apparently it makes the meal that touch more piquant.

A couple more don’ts – again, it may be tempting, but using a piece of fruit as a gag (or anything that doesn’t allow ventilation through or around it, in fact) is not a good idea. We’ve seen far too many news reports of deaths after such activities to ignore the hazards there! Also make sure anything that’s going into an anus has a wider end that doesn’t go all of the way in. Going to the emergency room for carrot removal procedures is inconvenient to say the least!

Lastly, a fun addition: if you’re feeling a bit sadistic, try keeping your vegetables in the refrigerator for a while before use – chilly!

This is the first of three articles on food play, and just to be contrary, we’re going to start with the last part of the traditional meal first. Why? Because making your partner into dessert is the simplest and most sensual way to play with food.

What isn’t sexy about dessert? Made famous by films like Nine and a Half Weeks, food play can be a fabulous turn-on in many, many ways. What could be more delectable on a summers day than sharing a plate of strawberries and cream with a lover… where one or both of you act as the plate!

Imagine laying out in the sunshine on a picnic blanket (somewhere private, of course), as your playmate nibbles fruit delicately off your skin, no doubt taking time to lick and nibble the tasty flesh underneath. Perhaps you could add a glass of champagne, trickled down a collar bone or over a hip, it’s great fun to lick off, and pleasantly tingly. There are a few other tricks to play with a glass of sparkling wine, too, but I’ll leave them for another day.

Not a fan of strawberries or cream? There are endless alternatives. Jelly, ice-cream or sorbet, fruity yogurts perhaps, anything spreadable is great fun to play with. Sticky substances, like chocolate syrup, jam or honey are particularly fun to drizzle over erogenous zones – they take extra time to lick off! Of course, there are savoury options too. Taramosalata is fun, as is sushi (watch where you put the wasabi, though!). You could have a full on food fight if you’re somewhere cleaning isn’t a problem, and enjoy getting messy – enjoy taking time out from being dignified and grown-up, it’s great fun!

More about sexy ways to use food next week. In the meantime, lunch is on me!

This can be as simple or as elaborate as you want it to be. Choose something that reminds you of your favorite sexual activity or some particularly special time you had with your partner, and carry it discreetly with you throughout the day. It might be a sex toy of some sort, or a blindfold (I’m quite fond of blindfolds, as regular readers will know), or if your tastes are a bit more kinky it might even be a length of rope or a pair of handcuffs.

Slipping some tangible reminder of fun times ahead into your pocket or purse when you’re on the way out the door to work can help keep you excited all day long. It’s fun and exciting to slip your hand in your pocket and think about what might be waiting for you when you get home, or open your purse and get a little reminder of the fun you had last night.

If you want to ramp it up a notch, you can even choose a more…direct reminder. Wear an insertable vibrating egg or a set of Ben-Wa balls throughout your day, or perhaps keep a piece of locking jewelry around your wrist as a token of some more spicy adventures awaiting you.

One of the things I’ve done is to combine this with some of the other tips I’ve talked about here. For example, if you’re planning a sexy getaway at a hotel for the evening, carry something with you all day long that you plan to use. One great way to get into the mood might be to bring a blindfold to work with yu in the morning, for instance. After work, slip away to the hotel room, put it on, and be waiting to greet your partner already blindfolded and ready to go.

Or, excuse yourself on your lunch break, take a quick snap of whatever you’ve carried with you on your camera phone, and text it to your partner to let him or her know what you’ve been thinking about all day.

By the end of the day, these constant, subtle little reminders should have you in quite a sexy mood, ready to jump on your partner as soon as you get the chance!

When folks first start exploring things like paddling and spanking and other kinky stuff in bed, there are two things that they often end up buying very early on: cheap fuzzy handcuffs and/or a fur-lined paddle.

That was the way it was with me, way back when I started down the road to interesting and unusual sex. These things are staples in the “kink” section of almost any sex toy store.

The furry handcuffs usually fall by the wayside pretty quickly. Most of them are poorly made, a lot of them are uncomfortable or don’t work right, some of them are downright dangerous, and at the end of the day both leather cuffs and good old fashioned rope are a whole lot safer and a whole lot more comfortable.

The furry paddle usually ends up being put away in the toybox and neglected after a while, too. I know a lot of folks who have one, and most of them never use it.

I bought my furry paddle many years ago, then more or less forgot about it. I dug it back out of the recesses of my toybox a couple of weeks ago, and discovered a whole new liking for it. Even though some hard-core kinksters sneer at the lowly fuzzy paddle, it’s actually remarkably versatile and quite a lot of fun.

The secret, as with most sex toys, is in the person who uses it, not in the toy itself. With a little imagination, this thing can make your partner sing! Well, figuratively, anyway.

The basic premise is pretty simple: smack someone’s ass with the furry side and they barely feel it, smack with the other side and it produces a mild to moderate sting. Easy, right? Ah, but think of the soaring cathedrals of sensation that you can build from such simple bricks!

For starters, combine this with a blindfold, which I still say is one of the most fun basic toys you can have. When your partner can’t see what you’re doing, mixing the furry side with the leather side gets a lot more interesting. With just a little practice, you can get pretty skilled at flipping the paddle over in your hands while you’re using it, so your partner will never quite know what to expect. A steady rhythm, but with random furry side/hard side smacks, is a lot of fun. “Whuf whuf smack whuf smack smack whuf”…you get the idea.

It takes a second for skin sensation to register, which makes this game especially delightful. You can hear the smack before you feel it, so it makes an interesting little split-second of uncertainty–”Is that going to sting, or not?” And by the time it registers, the next smack is already on the way…

And you don’t have to use it only on your partner’s behind. Paddles can be quite interesting on breasts, the back of the calves, even on the feet.

Another thing that’s quite a lot of fun is to gently stroke and caress your partner with the furry side, then randomly and without warning smack with the leather side, then flip it over smoothly and go back to the stroking and caressing. If you do it quickly enough, your partner will barely even have time to be aware of the smack before you’re gently caressing again.

For anyone who’s even a little bit curious about spanking or paddling, the furry paddle is a safe, soft introduction to the joys of paddling. But even for people who are a bit more experienced, a furry paddle is still a great sensation toy.

You can find them pretty cheaply at almost any sex toy store. You can also find a premium high-end version here, or an inexpensive version here. I think they deserve a place in (almost) any toy box.

One thing that can sometimes happen in a long-term relationship is that things in the bedroom can get stuck in a rut. Occasionally, it’s nice to shake things out of that rut, to keep the sex fun and fresh and interesting.

It’s easy to say “Well, you keep things fun by trying new stuff,” but making a list of new stuff to try can sometimes be challenging. Sometimes, the best solution is just to step away from the rut without any clear idea of where you might be going, just to see what happens.

Most of us have things we really like doing in bed–one or two standbys that we find ourselves doing all the time, or perhaps things that we know we’re really good at. And so it’s tempting to go with what we know works and what we feel comfortable doing.

So try this. For some period of time–perhaps the next time you have sex, perhaps a few days, whatever–don’t do the things that you find easiest to do. Talk to your partner: “You know that thing I do that you really like, that we do all the time? Let’s try NOT to do that. And that thing you do that you know really works for me, let’s not do that either. Instead, let’s experiment, as though we were just having sex for the first time and didn’t know what worked for us, and see what we find!”

It might seem a little weird to tell someone NOT to do whatever it is that they’re best at doing, but every now and then it’s a good way to mix up the routine and explore new territory. In fact, who knows? You might find some new thing that works even better for you!

That’s a very tricky question.

The short answer is you have four options: talk to him to find out why he’s not interested and see if there is some way you can rebuild your relationship with him to give you the things you need; end the relationship; talk to him about your needs and explore the possibility of finding a way for you to meet your needs somewhere else or with someone else, in a way that he is on-board with and is compassionate and respectful of him; or cheat.

Of these four options, I definitely don’t recommend cheating. There are a lot of problems with cheating, some of them practical, some of them ethical, and some of them philosophical. On a practical matter, it’s overwhelmingly likely that sooner or later, he will find out. On an ethical level, betraying the trust of a person that you love and have committed to isn’t cool, even if the relationship doesn’t meet your needs. It’s also an attempt to take the easy way out, to seek having your needs met elsewhere without actually having to take responsibility for the consequences in your existing relationship. On a philosophical level, everything that you hide from your partner corrodes and destroys intimacy.

So, first, I would recommend sitting down with him and having a real, serious conversation about the things that you need and the way he feels about that. Don’t just take “I dunno” or “I don’t want to” as being the end of the conversation. Ask detailed and specific questions; for example, if you say “I would like to explore ___” and he says “I don’t want to,” find out why. Does the idea intimidate him? Does it simply not appeal to him, and if that’s the case, what DOES appeal to him? What does he like about sex? Does he find the idea threatening? Does he have moral or religious objections to it? (Many people may feel that dominating a woman is wrong because it reinforces the historical, patriarchal ideas that are harmful to women; in BDSM, though, a role that is freely chosen is very different from a role that is imposed on women by choice. Accepting the idea that women should be free to choose their own role means accepting that some women do in fact want to choose a submissive role.)

Keep the conversation going. Look for things that HE might like. Ask him about his fantasies. Find out if there are things that he might like to try himself, and look for common ground. If he is resistant to the idea of trying anything new, find out why. Is it about a belief that there is a certain way that relationships are “supposed” to be? Is it about feeling uncomfortable with the unknown? Something else?

And don’t necessarily expect that a single conversation will answer everything. Sometimes, people take time to warm up to new ideas. Even folks who seem absolutely dead-set against something will occasionally change their minds, if you present it as something you’d really like and that can enrich your life with that person.

If that doesn’t seem to get you anywhere, try exploring some other options. Ask him if it would be okay if you try to learn about these things or meet these needs somewhere else, such as with a BDSM munch group.

This is another conversation that he might find threatening; it’s important to emphasize that you’re not looking to replace him, but rather to meet a need that he seems unwilling to meet. I personally find it helpful to keep in mind that it is perfectly reasonable of you to ask that your needs be met, and that it is not necessarily reasonable for someone to tell you “I refuse to allow you to have oyur needs met from anyone but me, and I refuse to meet your needs.”

If none of that succeeds, then I think it’s time to consider whether or not this relationship gives you the things that it takes for you to be happy. It may be that each of you might be happier with a different partner.

Good luck!

We all know about stripping games like strip poker, of course. Or, at least, most of us do. There are a zillion variants; some versions of strip poker don’t involve betting but require the player with the worst hand to remove an item of clothing after each round, while others are more conventional betting games but the stakes you play for are your opponent’s clothes rather than money. There’s a version here that’s pretty easy even for people who aren’t poker players to follow.

Some variants of strip games also have rules that say a person who’s completely naked and who must lose clothing instead performs some act for the benefit of the other players, though other varieties say that a player who’s naked is simply out of the game, or a player who’s naked doesn’t suffer any consequences for a losing hand.

The neat thing, though, is that any game, with a bit of cleverness, can be turned into a strip game.

And not just card games. Hell, you can turn a pile of forks and a banana hook into a strip game, if you like…I’ll get to that in a minute.

The first part of turning any game into a strip game is to define what an article of clothing is. Some folks like to leave that up to each player, though I think that can unfairly slant the game–if you get one person who says that only wearable items like shorts or socks count and another person who counts each individual earring as a separate item of clothing, things can end up unbalanced. Especially for the player who has no earrings sitting next to the player who’s got fifteen piercings in each ear.

The rules that my friends and I have standardized on are: Jewelry and items such as watches don’t count. Paired items count as one article of clothing–both shoes together are a single item, both socks together are a single item, and so on. We also play that if you’re wearing a shirt and a sweater, they both together count as a single item–no multiple layers of clothing allowed.

But then, we’re pretty hardcore about getting naked during a strip game, so take that for what it’s worth.

So to show the kind of versatility you can get with strip games, I’ll describe three games I’ve played: two commercial games (Are You a Werewolf? and Apples to Apples) and a game invented by a friend (Forks).

Are You a Werewolf? is a party game based on an older game called Mafia. It can be played with a special deck of cards that you can buy online, or with a normal deck of cards. The full rules of the game are available here, but basically it’s a game of social manipulation in which two players are randomly assigned the role of “werewolf,” one player is randomly assigned the role “seer,” and everyone else is assigned the role “villager.” Another player is the moderator, who doesn’t actually participate except to tell the players what happens each round. The players do not know who is assigned to what role.

Each round, the players all close their eyes and make noise. The werewolves silently open their eyes and then silently choose another player to devour in the night. Then they close their eyes and the seer opens his eyes. The seer silently chooses a player, and the moderator silently tells the seer if the chosen player is a villager or werewolf. Then the entire group opens their eyes.

The moderator tells the players which one of them was devoured by the werewolves. That player is then out of the game. The players then vote on who to lynch for the crime; their goal is to lynch the werewolves, of course, but they don’t know who the werewolves are! Simple majority vote carries the day, and players can use deceit and trickery to try to influence the lynching away from themselves onto others. The seer can try to manipulate the voting, but since the seer is a prime target of the werewolves, she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself.

When a player is chosen to be lynched, that player is out of the game and that player’s role is revealed. Then a new round begins. The game continues in rounds until either both werewolves are lynched or until the werewolves eat the village.

The strip variant of Are You a Werewolf? is pretty straightforward. After each game, if the werewolves won, all the villagers lose an item of clothing. If the villagers won, all the werewolves lose an item of clothing. The fun part comes in when people begin negotiating about who to lynch based not on who they think the werewolves might be, but on who they think they might like to see get naked…

Apples to Apples is a word-association game in which each round, one player acts as a judge and plays a card that has some adjective printed on it. The other players, who hold cards containing nouns printed on them, play one of their noun cards they think is most related to the adjective card. The player who is the judge for that round chooses which card she thinks most suits the adjective. That person gets a point, and the play continues with a new judge.

We’ve gone through several strip variants of Apples to Apples, most of which end up with everyone getting naked pretty quick. In the variant we finally came up with, each round the judge chooses the noun card that LEAST matches the adjective, and the player who played that card loses an item of clothing.

Since a person is guaranteed to lose clothing every round, and since a round takes less than a minute to play, someone usually ends up naked very quickly in the game. For that reason, we adopted a rule that says that if the player who is to lose clothing is already naked, then he chooses another player at his whim to lose an article of clothing instead. Like I said, we’re pretty hardcore about our strip games…

Recently, at a fetish convention, I was introduced to a fun and quirky little reverse-Jenga style game called Forks, played with a metal skewer, a banana hook, and a pile of 60 or 70 forks.

The first step is to bend the metal skewer so that it has a loop in one end. The skewer gets hung on the banana hook like so:

The forks are distributed so that each player has the same number of forks in front of her.

The players take turns on each round. On each turn, the players insert one fork onto the skewer or hook, or onto forks that are already there. Forks may not be stacked and they must not touch the ground.

If a player knocks forks off the stack, or causes forks to touch the ground, then as long as 5 or fewer forks have fallen the player must place them back in the collection of forks. If more than 5 forks end up falling off or touching the ground on one turn, the player adds all those forks to his pile of forks.

The goal is to run out of forks. If more than one player runs out of forks in one round, then the players who still have forks left are out of the game. Their forks are distributed among the remaining players and play continues.

There are a couple of ways to make this a stripping game. In the fast version, any player who knocks forks off the pile immediately loses an item of clothing. In the slow version, the losers of each game lose an item of clothing.

Me being who I am, I like the fast version better.

Anyway, after a long weekend spent going to sex workshops on subjects like bondage and kink, and time spent with friends I don’t get to see nearly often enough, I’m back home and getting settled in to normal life again.

This week’s tip isn’t a how-to, but rather is a catalog of some silly sex myths I’ve heard. Some of these myths are surprisingly common, and can really mess with our ability to have fun, satisfying sex.

So, without further ado, here we go!

#1. You can’t get pregnant if you don’t have an orgasm.

It would be easy to write an entire article on “You can’t get pregnant if…” myths. There’s “You can’t get pregnant if you’re on your period,” or “you can’t get pregnant if you have sex standing up,” or “you can’t get pregnant if you’re in a hot tub,” or “you can’t get pregnant if he pulls out,” or… It’s really beyond the scope of this article to talk about all the ways you can get pregnant, but it’s worth mentioning that these are all myths. Yes, you CAN get pregnant these ways. Even if you have sex standing up in a hot tub during the full moon after eating a clove of garlic on the first day after Lent and he pulls out before you come.

#2. If you have “too much” sex, whatever that means, or if you use sex toys that are “too big,” your vagina will become loose.

#3. Anal sex makes your anus loose. People who have anal sex too much end up in diapers.

The human body is not made of Silly Putty. It doesn’t stretch out and then not return to its original shape.

The vagina and anus are lined with muscle. Muscle, unlike Silly Putty, becomes firmer and more elastic, not looser, when it is worked. This myth is as silly as believing that your mouth will stretch out and become looser if you eat too many Big Macs!

It’s repeated often by folks who one would really expect to know better, like “Doctor” Drew (I put the “doctor” in quotes because his medical degree is in a field totally unrelated to human sexuality; expecting him to be a sex expert because he is a doctor of internal medicine is a bit like expecting someone to be able to work on jet airplanes because he knows how to change the battery in your car).

#4. Oral sex can get you pregnant.

With all the myths about things that can’t get you pregnant, occasionally we have to throw in a myth about something that can get you pregnant just for good measure.

Some folks actually believe that swallowing semen can lead to pregnancy. Granted, these folks probably don’t know a whole lot about human anatomy (here’s a hint: babies don’t actually grow in your stomach), but there it is.

#5. When you are in a relationship for a long time, of course the sex will decline and become less exciting.

This can happen, no doubt about it. But it isn’t inevitable.

People who have been partnered for a long time don’t have sex less often because that’s what long-term relationships do; people who have been partnered for a long time have sex less often because they choose to allow their sex lives to taper off.

The best way I have ever discovered to have a healthy, dynamic, exciting sex life is simply to choose to do so. Try new things; there’s never any possibility of running out of new stuff to do. Talk about your sexual fantasies; it’s a great way to discover new territory to explore. And above all, don’t be afraid! If you are with someone who you really love and who really loves you, then it should be possible for you to talk about anything, even sexual ideas that might seem strange or uncomfortable at first.

#6. Men have a stronger sex drive than women.

If I could choose one common sex myth to disappear tomorrow, this one would be it. This myth, and all its corollaries (men always want sex, men are always ready for sex, men are always the pursuers of sex, men are not capable of having a female friend they don’t want to fuck) does more to distort sexual relationships than any other single myth I can think of.

Because of this myth, women who have high sex drives and men who have low sex drives often feel like there is something wrong with them. Women who expect men to have the stronger sex drive may be uncomfortable or afraid when it comes to initiating sex.

The reality, as near as I can tell, is that both men and women want sex, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the specific person, and that no one sex wants sex more often than the other. I’ve known many women with very high libidos, who are happiest having sex three or more times a day, and many men who are more or less indifferent to sex and are perfectly happy having it once a month.

Making assumptions about a person’s sex drive just because that person is a man or a woman is foolish.

#7. Women don’t like porn; porn is for men.

#9. Men are more “visual” than women.

Porn is another one of those things that an entire essay could be written about. These aren’t all the myths floating around about porn, though some of them (like “porn causes rape”) are so politically and socially charged that debunking them would take a book.

These three myths are all interrelated, and are also related to the “men want sex more than women” myth. The fact is, both men and women are aroused by depictions of other people having sex. Porn producers know this; there are porn production companies owned and run by women. Women and men both find porn entertaining and stimulating, though they are often socialized around porn differently; women seem more likely to purchase written porn (and yes, bodice-ripper novels count), men seem more likely to purchase porn flicks.

But does that mean men are more “visual” than women? No; more likely, it just means that we consider it more socially acceptable for men to buy porn DVDs than for women to do so. And, interestingly, many of the people I know personally who have large libraries of porn movies are women!

Porn is something that people can enjoy even in a relationship; it actually has no bearing on whether or not a person is satisfied in relationship. Indeed, sex is one of those things where the more you have it, the more you want it, at least for many people. And porn can be enjoyed by couples as well as alone.

#10. Masturbating causes blindness. (Hard to believe anyone still believes this one.)

#12. If you have a sex partner, you shouldn’t need or want to masturbate.

Masturbation is more openly acknowledged now than it has been in the past, but it’s still surrounded with walls of guilt and shame…and yes, myths.

The notion that masturbation causes blindness (or infertility or emotional problems or whatever other Very Bad Thing you might imagine) is still hanging on in some parts of American society even though there isn’t a shred of evidence to support it.

Masturbation won’t make you blind, or cause any other health ills–at least not unless you’re doing it with a belt sander or something. Nor will it “train” your body to respond only to masturbation.

There is a tiny kernel of truth hidden in the idea of “training” your body, in the sense that orgasm is often a partly learned response; it isn’t always obvious what sort of stimulation will work to get you off. When you masturbate, you can learn exactly what works for you, whereas a partner you’re having sex with doesn’t necessarily know what to do.

But believing that masturbation will ruin you for intercourse is a bit like believing that practicing the piano means you can never become skilled at flute. You can learn how to get yourself off and also learn what works for you when you’re with a partner; the one does not preclude the other.

And masturbation isn’t the same as partnered sex; having a happy, fulfilling sex life doesn’t mean that the desire for solo pleasure suddenly vanishes! In fact, I find that I masturbate more often, not less often, when I have a regular sex partner.

#13. If my partner is attracted to someone else, that must mean my partner doesn’t really love me. If I am attracted to other people, that must mean I don’t really love my partner.

Disney moves really try to convince us that this is true; when our prince or princess arrives, the toggle switch inside our brains gets switched off and forever afterward nobody else even exists for us.

For a very small number of people, that might be true. But the reality for most people is that we do still notice, and find ourselves attracted to, other people no matter who we are with or how deeply we are in love.

And that’s all perfectly OK. It is what we do, not who we find attractive, that matters.

#14. Eating oysers (or horny goat weed, or ground-up tiger penis, or ginger, or cherries, or Spanish fly, or whatever) causes increased sexual arousal.

Sorry, ain’t true. All of these things–horny goat weed, Spanish fly, tiger penis (yes, seriously, tiger penis!), and so on–work no better than a placebo.

Well, at least not at making people horny. They work very well indeed at transferring money from the wallets of desperate people into the wallets of hucksters and con men. But as far as making you horny, a sugar pill works just as well.

Sexual arousal is so subjective that it’s highly susceptible to belief and hope. If we think something will make us horny, often we will convince ourselves that it’s true. The only substance ever shown in double-blind studies to work as an aphrodisiac for real, though, is a drug called “Bremelanotide,” or PT-141. It was discovered accidentally by a company called Palatin Technologies, but was never introduced to the market; the FDA shut down third-stage clinical studies on the fear that the drug might cause high blood pressure.

#15. A person who is into kinky sex probably was abused as a child.

#17. A person who tries out or enjoys kinky sex will be “ruined” for normal sex and won’t enjoy simple intercourse without kink any more.

BDSM and kink are surrounded by a sea of myth all their own. The most common one I’ve seen is that anyone who likes kinky sex has some kind of past childhood issue at work, which I think probably comes from the fact that a lot of folks think that kinky sex can look superficially like abuse. It seems reasonable to believe that things that look similar to each other must be related, which is why we assume that people who enjoy eating Sno-Cones probably grew up in places with lots of snow…oh, wait.

Anyway, it’s been my observation that there is no more likelihood of past childhood abuse among people who like kink than among people in general; in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the incidence of abuse among people who like kink is, if anything, lower.

The second two myths speak, it seems, to a fear of not being “normal.” It is common, when we fear something, to make ourselves believe that the folks who do that thing are Bad And Wrong. It’s even easier if we don’t understand the appeal of the thing in question; to someone who doesn’t like to be spanked and who can’t fathom why someone else might enjoy it, it can be seductively easy to say “It must be because that person is addicted to sex” or “It must be because that person has been damaged by abuse.”

The notion that kink “ruins” someone for “normal” sex, for whatever value of “normal” sex, is also a myth. I used to live with a woman who was one of the most amazing cooks I’ve ever known; when she made lasagna, for instance, it was a three-day affair, with fresh noodles made from scratch and a special blend of cheese.s The lasagna was heavenly; we’d have friends stopping forever by whenever they’d heard a rumor that she might be cooking.

Yet that doesn’t mean that I am forever ruined for tuna melts! I still love ‘em just as much as I always have.

Exploring kink doesn’t mean you’ll never want good old-fashioned missionary sex again; it simply means you now have a wider variety of taste sensations, that’s all.

#18. If you need to use a vibrator to have an orgasm, there’s something wrong with you.

#19. If your partner doesn’t have an orgasm during intercourse, that means you are doing something wrong.

Different people respond to different things. That’s all part of the normal, natural variability of the human species. If vibration gets you off, use a vibrator! And rejoice that you know hat works for you!

Unfortunately, we live in a society that teaches us that orgasm is what happens when you do things “correctly”–if you rub the right bit the right number of times in the right way, the belief goes, then orgasm is what happens. This ignores the reality: most of what happens during orgasm, for most of us, has more to do with what goes on between the ears than what goes on between the legs.

And that’s perfectly OK. Sex is all about the journey, not the destination. If it’s fun and you’re both having a good time, you’re doing it right. Hell, there are times when I’ll deliberately not have an orgasm, just because I’m enjoying what’s going on so much.

#20. If a man likes receiving anal sex, that means he is gay (or has “gay tendencies,” whatever those are).

There is nothing “gay” about anal sex, any more than there is anything gay about oral sex, kissing, or manual sex. Look at it this way: Lots of women like being fingered. Does that mean that if a lesbian woman enjoys being fingered by her lover, she’s secretly straight, or has “straight tendencies”?

Men have prostates. It feels good to stimulate the prostate. That’s all there is to it.

The fact is, nothing that a man and a woman do together is gay, by definition. Sexual orientation is entirely separate from sexual activity.

FIRST, THE TECHNICAL STUFF

Of course, the first thing you’ll need is a Webcam. Most modern laptops come equipped with Webcams from the get-go; desktops often do not. You can find cheap USB cameras for as little as $30 in computer stores, with the more popular models typically weighing in at around $100 or so. Most also have built-in microphones as well.

Almost any USB Webcam will work fine. Higher-end Webcams offer better low-light sensitivity, noise-canceling microphones, autofocus lenses, and the like, though you don’t actually need any of these features to have good cam sex. What you will want is a good frame rate (look for 30 frames per second) and a camera that says it’s USB 2.0 (older USB 1 cameras typically offer highly compressed, pixelated images and poor motion).

SECOND, THE SOFTWARE AND IM SERVICE

Once you have a Webcam, you need software. There are several options available for Webcam chatting, with different Internet requirements and different levels of difficulty in setting up. I’ve found the most popular free Webcam chat services that work with both Macs and PCs, in order of ease of setup, to be Yahoo IM, Skype, and AOL IM.

Yahoo IM doesn’t require any setup at all. If you have a Yahoo IM chat ID, you’re set. It works over slow Internet connections and there’s no configuration.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the image you see is tiny, jerky, and poor quality.

Skype requires you to download the Skype program onto your computer. If you choose to use it only for Internet chat sessions and don’t need it to work like a telephone, it’s free. It’s also relatively easy to set up and it doesn’t require much configuration, and it gives you nice full-screen video.

When it works, anyway. I’ve had problems where some Webcams, including the built-in Mac Webcam, tend to go black after exactly two minutes of use. This is apparently a known and documented bug in some versions of the Skype software. It’s also really annoying.

AOL IM allows lovely full-motion, full-screen, high-quality video, and it works with the iChat software built into the Mac. Windows users need to download the free AIM client software.

The disadvantage is that if you have a home router, it can require some tinkering with your router’s settings to make video work.

THIRD, THE LOCATION

Assuming you’ve got the technical end licked and you and your partner can video chat to your heart’s content, the next big thing is location, location, location. Well, location and also lighting, but mostly location.

Lighting and location are linked, of course. You want to choose a comfortable place free of distracting clutter and with good, even lighting. Avoid light behind you; that tends to turn you into a silhouette. Lighting that’s at face level is more flattering than lighting directly above your head. Many Webcams don’t have good low-light performance, so if there’s not enough light the image will look grainy and fuzzy.

A lot of folks like to set up on a bed, which can be a little tricky if you’re using a laptop with a built-in Webcam. small table or desk at the foot of the bed can make for a good place to set your camera or computer. I personally find that it’s easier to sit than lie down, but whatever you want to try is fine. Remember that the image recorded by your Webcam might be fairly small, so closer to the camera is better.

GETTING IT ON

Cam sex is a bit like cyber sex, a bit like sharing the secret room, a bit like negotiating sex, and a bit like having in-person sex. A lot of the same little wobbles and fears that apply to letting someone watch you masturbate or to having cybersex apply; “What if I don’t know what to do?” “What if I can’t think of anything that’s exciting?” “What if I feel awkward letting someone watch me?”

It’s helpful to remember that it’s about sharing intimacy with your partner, not winning an Academy Award. Theatrics aren’t what makes cam sex good; good cam sex is about good interaction. It’s OK to feel nervous if you’ve never done it before, and it’s OK to say “Wow, I’ve never done this before, so I’m feeling a little nervous!”.

And you don’t need to jump straight into taking your clothes off. Sometimes, a bit of tease goes a long way. If you want to start slow, start slow!

SCENARIOS

If you don’t have any specific ideas about what to do, a few scenarios might help you to get going.

Show Me What You Want
One fun, easy way to get started is to talk to your partner about how you like to be touched. Describe where you like to feel hands on your body, and how hard, and then demonstrate by moving your own hands over yourself. Again, you ned not necessarily dive straight into getting naked–there’s a lot of foreplay that can happen with your clothes on!

As with cybersex, the key to cam sex is to keep it authentic. Talk about how you feel. Show your partner how your body is responding. Talk about how you would like your partner to touch you. Describe what you would like your partner to do, and how it would make you feel.

Keep it interactive, too. Ask your partner how he or she feels, and what he or she might like to do. Have your partner show you the ways he or she would like to be touched.

Playing Director
Another fun Webcam scenario is to tell your partner what to do, or have your partner tell you what to do. There is something that’s really, really exciting, I think, about describing what I would like to watch my partner do to herself, and then seeing her do it. And, on the flip side, when a partner describes to me what she would like to see me do, it can really help me to learn what turns her on!

The fun in this isn’t just in taking control (though that is a lot of fun, no doubt about it); it’s also in using it to explore how you and your partner react. Pay close attention, if you’re telling your partner what to do, to your partner’s reactions. You can tease your partner by drawing out the experience; tell your partner to get really close to the edge of orgasm and then stop, for example, to bring out a heightened sense of arousal and to tease him or her. You can do this for an extended time, having your partner tease himself or herself multiple times, then switch roles and have your partner tell you what to do to tease yourself.

By watching your partner’s responses closely as you instruct him or her, you can sometimes learn quite a bit about the way your partner likes to be touched. I’ve even found a few things that some of my partners didn’t know, by telling them to touch themselves in ways that they normally don’t do; when we pleasure ourselves, it can be easy to get into a rut, because we know what works most efficiently. Touching ourselves in different ways can sometimes be a neat avenue to learning new things about our bodies.

Question and Answer
One fun game I played with an online lover a long time ago involved asking each other questions about ourselves, to see how well we knew each other. We took turns asking questions like “What is my favorite color?” and “What kinds of movies do I like?” If one of us got the answer right, we would get a reward by watching the other of us do something sexy; a wrong answer would mean some kind of penalty, such as “Nope! Now you have to put a clothespin on your nipple” or “Nope! Now you have to pinch yourself.” It was a fun, sexy way to explore how well we each knew each other.

Roleplay
Some folks like to introduce an element of role-playing into their Webcam sex, by dressing up in costumes (cheerleader and Catholic schoolgirl are popular choices) and acting out a fantasy scenario. Just about any role-play scenario can be adapted to cam sex; again, the key to making it fun is to be authentic about your responses and talk about how it makes you feel, even if the scenario itself is fiction.

Sharing Fantasies
It can be a lot of fun to use Webcam sex to talk about fantasies that you normally don’t feel comfortable sharing with your partner. For some people, chat or Webcam can offer enough space that it’s more comfortable to talk about things that are hard to talk about in person.

Run your hands over your body. Describe to your partner what you’re fantasizing about and how the fantasy turns you on. Use the Webcam to show your partner how turned on you are, as you talk about your fantasy. Invite your partner into the fantasy by describing how you would like him or her to participate.

Remember that fantasies aren’t necessarily about things that we would really like to do in real life, and that offering your partner a safe space to talk about fantasies with you is an important part of sharing and intimacy. We all carry around fantasies that other people would find surprising or even shocking; creating a safe space to describe them, without judgment or negative reaction, builds trust and intimacy, and can be surprisingly sexy.