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Sharing Fantasies

Well, I’m back among the living; I’ve had a nasty cold for the last week that kept me from updating on the regular schedule yesterday. To make up for it, here’s an extra-hot sex tip!

One of the best ways that you can spice up your sex life is to share your sexual fantasies with your lover. There are a lot of ways you can do that, but one of my favorites brings an extra added element of spice into the bedroom.

Write down one of your favorite sexual fantasies. Describe the fantasy, and how it makes you feel. Then, when you’re ready to share, make yourself comfortable in bed while your lover sits behind you.

Have your partner run his hands all over your body while you read the fantasy out loud. Take your time, and be descriptive! Let your partner’s touch get you worked up while you read.

If you don’t have a favorite fantasy that you want to share this way, find a story that really gets your motor revving. It can be anything–a story from a “letters” style magazine, or something you find on an online Web site like Literotica or the Alt Sex Stories Text Repository, or other people’s fantasies from a site like Whispers.

While you read, let the feel of your partner’s hands traveling over your body get you all revved up. You can start undressed, and feel hands on your bare skin while you share your fantasy, or let your partner undress you bit by bit while you read–whatever sounds sexier to you.

By the time you’re finished, you should both be in a deliciously erotic state, ready to follow through with some sexy fun!

Letting The Genie Out of the Bottle

Fables and fairy tales are filled with examples of the genie who comes out of a bottle to grant someone three wishes, and often the genie in these stories has a very particular habit of creative interpretation of those wishes to trap the luckless and unwary.

In many stories involving genies and wishes, a hapless protagonist doesn’t word his wishes quite correctly, and leaves the genie with room to turn the wish around in all sorts of unintended ways.

I recently invented a sex game that works in much the same way, and it’s a lot of fun to play. One person is the genie, and other other person makes the wishes–tells the genie what to do. But the twist is that genie rules apply; the person giving the instructions must take care to communicate his or her desires precisely, or else the genie is free to interpret them!

Not only is this a fun game to play, it really helps with communication as well. “Take off my clothes” might seem like a simple request, but if the person who asks for it doesn’t specify how to take them off, and the genie has a pair of scissors handy, well…

And “I want you inside of me” might seem like a straightforward request, until the genie sticks his finger in your ear. (Hey, that counts, right?)

This game is great if you’re usually shy or nervous about asking for exactly what you want, and it brings a bit of humor and fun into the bedroom while you’re at it. Give it a try!

How to Screw Up your Sex Life

There are plenty of guides online about how to have a safe, healthy, happy, fulfilling sexual relationship. This is not one of those guides. Instead, this post is about ways you can screw up your sexual relationship–the little tricks and techniques that are sure to doom even the most healthy of relationships and send any hope of happiness spiraling into the ground. It’s easier than you think, and with the application of these few simple techniques, you can ruin your relationship and make yourself and your partner miserable in no time! Ready? Then on we go!

Don’t ask for what you want.
We all have things we like to do or things we’d like to try. There’s a simple way to explore these things: just tell your partner you’re interested in trying them. After all, you can’t expect to get what you want if you never ask for what you want!

One great way to make yourself frustrated and angry, and make your partner confused and upset, is to want something but not ask for it, and expect your partner to read your mind. For extra bonus points, you can beat around the bush and drop hints about it but never come right out and ask for it; and to make things even more painful, you can become angry at your partner for not giving it to you, or expect that if your partner really loved you, “of course” he or she should just know that you want it. This one tip can do wonders for taking a positive, healthy relationship and reducing it to a resentful mass of frustration in no time!

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How to Choose a Sex Toy: Materials

The world of sex toy design is exploding, with all sorts of interesting materials being used in all sorts of cool ways.

This means there are all kinds of fun, cool sex toys available, but it also means that you have a lot of choices to make. Today I’m going to talk about some of the materials you’ll most commonly find dildos and other sex toys made out of.

Some of the coolest materials being used to make sex toys today are metal, glass, stone, and wood. These make very hard insertable sex toys that are also quite smooth, and the result can feel amazing.

Stainless steel is a popular material for sex toys. It’s silky smooth and warms quickly to body temperature. In practice, it feels quite unlike anything else; once warmed, it’s like a sense of pressure that I’ve heard compared to warm liquid. The Njoy Pleasure Wand is one of my all-time favorite toys. Aluminum, which warms even more quickly than steel, is now being used to craft fun, gorgeous sex toys.

Stone is heavy and holds temperature well. The heaviness of it is a feeling that many people very much enjoy.

Glass is probably one of the best materials for dildos. Every woman I’ve talked to who has tried a glass dildo says it’s her favorite toy. Glass can be shaped into all sorts of textures, and glass sex toys often feature knobs, ripples, or ridges for more stimulation. It’s stunningly beautiful as well, as this example shows, and can be surprisingly affordable.

Wood sex toys have a deep, warm glow that’s pleasing to the eye and a smooth finish that’s pleasing to the senses. Wood toys are generally sealed with a hypo-allergenic finish to render them smooth and impervious to moisture. While they tend to be pricey, some of them are also absolutely gorgeous works of art.

All these materials are compatible with any kind of lubricant, and are easily cleaned and sterilized; while they tend to be pricey, they are investments in pleasure that can last a lifetime.

Silicone is becoming extremely popular for sex toys. While silicone can be pricey, it is a safe, long-lasting, non-porous material that’s flexible an smooth. Silicone dildos and anal toys are easily cleaned (you can even wash them in the dishwasher!).

Silicone is an especially popular choice for dildos that are used with strap-on harnesses.

The one drawback of silicone is that it can not be used with silicone-based lubes; the lubes will damage the toy. They are compatible with other lubes, however.

Vinyl is a fairly new material for making dildos and sex toys. Like silicone, it is long-lasting. It tends to be softer than silicone, for people who like a little extra “give” in their sex toys.

It has an advantage over silicone in that it can be used with any kind of lube, including silicone-based lube. It’s usually about as expensive as silicone toys, but is a bit harder to clean; consider using vinyl toys with a condom for ease of cleaning.

Rubber dildos are available in a huge assortment of shapes, sizes, and colors. These are very inexpensive toys, great for people on a budget. Jelly rubber material is porous and it’s very difficult to clean thoroughly, though, so I recommend using a condom with any rubber toys to make cleanup easier.

There has in the past been some concern over the presence of phthalates in jelly rubber sex toys. Phthalates are ingredients which make rubber softer, and some people have claimed that they are capable of irritating the skin or causing allergic reactions in people who are sensitive to them. For that reason, most sex toy manufacturers have stopped putting phthalates in their rubber sex toys.

The problem this creates is that without these ingredients to keep the rubber soft, it can sometimes tend to become brittle and crumble over time. Rubber sex toys are very inexpensive, but may not last longer than a year or so. Still, considering how little they cost, this might not be a problem for most people.

Hotel Room Sex

Hotel rooms are a fantastic way to add a dash of fun and excitement to your sex life. You can withdraw from the world for a time and spend all of your energy and attention on exploring your partner…with the added bonus that someone else makes the bed in the morning.

Something I’m particularly fond of in hotel rooms is using door mounted cuffs for a little light bondage. Under-bed restraint systems work well too if this is your cup of tea.

One thing I did a while back with one of my sweeties is we checked in to the hotel, then went out sex-toy shopping for things we could bring back to the hotel with us. That was a lot of fun. :)

If you like role-playing, hotels are a great place to spice it up that offer a change of scenery. Set up some kind of scenario beforehand–boss/secretary, informant/spy, professor/student, escort/client…whatever you like! The hotel gives you a great opportunity to really get into your roles; you can arrange a secret meeting in the lobby, have dinner in the hotel restaurant, then go back to your room…you get the picture.

One of my favorite activities is drawing or painting on my lover, or having her draw or paint on me. Magic markers, body paints, and finger paints all work well for this…and in a hotel, you don’t need to be quite so concerned about washing the sheets after you’re done!

Bring a digital camera! Hotel rooms definitely make for good places to do a photo shoot. They can be as simple as lounging around on the bed half-dressed or sitting at the desk with your computer topless to as explicit as you like.

Another nice thing about hotel-room sex is that it doesn’t have to be rushed. You’ve got a perfect opportunity to escape from all your normal, everyday responsibilities, and you can spend as much time exploring your partner as you want to. If you like slow, long, sensual sex, you can experiment with some of the ideas in Tantric sex; find a comfortable position, move very slowly, concentrate on each other, thrust just enough to keep you both aroused, and see how long you can prolong your sex.

A hotel room is a great place to relax and have fun with a sex game.

Going with the relaxation theme, bring some massage oil and spend some time exchanging erotic massages.

If your hotel room is on an upper floor, having sex in front of the window is a fun way to feel like you’re exploring your exhibitionist side without actually risking public sex. You can stand in front of the window scantily clad in a bathrobe or your favorite lingerie with all the lights out, while your partner comes up behind you and runs a hand over your body… Being in front of the window makes you feel like you’re on display, but with the lights out at night it’s unlikely that anyone can actually see in.

When you have room service available (and someone else has to wash the sheets), the opportunities for food and sex abound. You can do something as simple as using ice from the ice machine to caress and stroke your partner’s skin, to ordering all kinds of desserts and having fun feeding each other, eating them off each other’s bodies, or both! This can even become a game of its own; you and your partner can take turns putting strawberries or chocolate syrup on your body to show the other person where you most like to be kissed and licked, and then your partner can follow the path you’ve created.

The two things I suggest you don’t do during hotel sex are:

- Don’t bring the outside world with you. Turn off your cell phones, leave any other stress behind.

- Don’t be inconsiderate of other people. Loud, obnoxious, noisy sex sounds like fun, but in many hotels the walls are paper-thin. Speaking as someone who has had to travel on business, there is very little in the world that is more unpleasant than getting into town late on very little sleep and ending up in the room next to a couple who’s screaming at the top of their lungs until 4 AM.

“Help! My girlfriend doesn’t want to be touched after sex!”

Whenever we have sex, my girlfriend doesn’t want me to touch her for a little while afterward, and pushes me away. She says she feels too sensitive. What’s wrong?

Seems like an ordinary part of normal human variation to me.

Immediately after orgasm, a very large cascade of chemical changes takes place in the brain. These changes are the result of a brain hormone called “prolactin,” which is produced in large amounts just after orgasm and has an effect on mood, desire, and behavior. (I’ve actually talked about this in a post on my online blog here.)

Different people react differently to these chemical changes, and different people produce different amounts of prolactin and other hormones after orgasm.

Prolactin inhibits a different brain chemical called “dopamine.” Dopamine is a hormone that affects mood; the drug ecstasy, which makes people feel more cuddly, works by increasing dopamine in the brain. It makes sense that something which opposes dopamine, like prolactin, would make a person feel less cuddly.

Orgasm also produces other brain chemicals, like vasopressin. Vasopressin makes people feel more cuddly. These changes offset the inhibition of dopamine after orgasm, so most people do still want to cuddle after sex. But again, like with anything else, this varies from person to person.

If your girlfriend happens to be a person who naturally produces lots of prolactin (which decreases cuddliness) and not very much vasopressin (which increases cuddliness) after orgasm, then it makes sense that she would not want to be touched after she gets off.

Meeting people for threesomes

I am a bicurious woman. I have never had sex with another woman but I would like to try. My boyfriend thinks this is a neat idea and we are thinking about finding a bisexual woman for a threesome. So far, we have not had any luck. We have made rules that we are comfortable with, but where do we find someone to join us?

Well, first, what sort of rules have you laid down? Couples looking for a bisexual woman for a threesome are very, very common (at last count, there were about 237,129,522,873 of them), and bisexual women who are willing to have a threesome with a man and his bicurious partner can be very choosy indeed, so the kind of rules the couple lays down often determines whether or not anyone will have sex with them. Rules that make the bisexual third woman feel expendable or objectified are likely to lead to her saying “no”.

In fact, I’ve even written a tongue-in-cheek flowchart for couples consisting of a man and a bisexual woman looking for another bisexual woman to have sex with.

If you want to do this, there are three factors that will determine your success: What kind of rules you lay down, how you approach people, and where you approach people.

Rules: It is very easy to think about rules when it’s just you and your boyfriend and there’s no other person in the room, but what can happen if you are not careful is that you invent rules that serve you and serve your boyfriend but do not serve, or even think about, the third person. This can make you, without realizing it and without meaning to, create rules that treat the third person like a fuck toy instead of a human being.

Think about things from her perspective. Do your rules consider her needs? Do your rules treat her with respect and compassion? What is the purpose of the rules you and your boyfriend invent, and do they serve that purpose? How much say does she get? What if she has different ideas? What do you expect to have happen? Do your rules respect your boundaries but not hers? (For example, one common rule that some couples have is “she has to fuck both of us so that we don’t feel jealous.” If she is attracted to one of you but not the other, that’s likely to trample all over her boundaries; essentially that sort of rule is a way to say “our boundaries are important but hers are not–we can pass rules that don’t consider hers.”)

How you look: When you are searching for something specific, like a bisexual woman to have sex with, it can be easy, if you’re not careful, to get in the mindset where you subconsciously size up everyone you meet. “How about her?” “How about her, would I like to have sex with her?” “How about her–I wonder if she’s bisexual. Would she be a good person to have sex with?” This can cause you to unconsciously act like you’re in a meat market, checking out everyone like a side of beef, and that will often put people off. It can also make you look desperate, which will put people off as well.

I have found a better approach is just to go about your business, having fun and meeting people without scoping them all out as sex partners, but making yourself available if someone comes along. That way, you don’t look desperate and you don’t give off a “meat market” vibe. Be open about your interests, but do it without making people feel like you’re propositioning them for sex.

Where you look: It should be obvious, but the local Baptist church picnic probably isn’t the best place to find partners for a threesome. Neither is your company Christmas party.

It becomes much easier to meet people who are open to alternative types of sexual relationships if you expand your circle of friends to include people who are open to alternative types of sexual relationships. Most towns and cities have a BDSM community of some sort or another; a lot of them also have a poly community. Googling for poly or BDSM organizations in your town can often turn up mailing lists or social get-togethers (BDSM folks often meet at “munches,” which are social, low-pressure gatherings at places like restaurants. They are not sex parties; they’re just social.)

Once you’ve met a couple of people who are into alternative sexualities, you will tend to meet more. That makes finding what you’re looking for a whole lot easier. Some of my best, closest long-term friends–people I’ve known for decades–I’ve met at these sorts of gatherings. You won’t be expected to go to wild kinky sex orgies or anything like that; it’s simply a way of meeting folks who are open to what you’re looking for, that’s all.

Good luck!

“Been involved for a while and our sex life is going downhill. Help!”

so, i’m 24, female, and I’ve been with my boyfriend for a little more than 18 months. The relationship is awesome and we love each other so much. Bu these days i’ve been desiring sex less and less. What do I do?

Yep, that sounds about right.

When you first start dating someone, you tend to get that giddy, OMG OMG feeling just being around them, and you just can’t wait to climb into their pants. This is the result of simple biological processes in your brain. The start of a new relationship releases two hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, which are responsible for that “OMG this is so wonderful!” feeling.

As the relationship matures, these chemicals are no longer produced in the brain. For most people, they start going away after about 24-30 months or so, but 18 months is not unheard of. When that happens, you no longer have the same kind of sexual desire any more, you don’t get the butterflies in your tummy any more, that sort of thing. A lot of folks wrongly think this means they are not in love any more, because they confuse the giddy feelings caused by those brain hormones with love; that’s where this common “I love you but I’m not in love with you” nonsense comes from.

There’s actually something you can do about that. You can keep the sex fun, fresh, and exciting, and keep those “I can’t wait to rip your clothes off of you” feelings going for decades. It’s not hard to do; just try new things.

Everyone has some kind of sexual fantasy they’ve never explored. Well, explore it! Switch things up in the bedroom! Talk about new things. Do new things. Exploring new sexual territory will keep those feelings alive.

Tip for being great in bed?

Question: I’m new at sex. I just lost my virginity, and I wonder if there’s any tricks I can use to blow my boyfriend’s mind. He had another girlfriend who was more experienced than me.

Yep! There sure are. In fact, there’s one simple trick that will make you absolutely phenomenal in bed:

Talk openly to your partner about sex with no fear or shame.

It really is that simple. The thing that experienced people know that inexperienced people don’t know is that every single person in the world is different, and that the way to blow your partner’s mind in bed is to talk to him.

A lot of folks, especially folks new to sex, end up having a very mechanical idea about sex–if you move your hips in just the right way at just the right speed for just the right number of times, then you’re good in bed, so learning to be good in bed means learning all the “right” ways to move.

It doesn’t actually work that way. The thing about sex is that even with six and a half billion people on the planet, no two people like exactly the same things. So the secret to being an amazing lover is in easy, seamless communication–the sort of natural, easy way of talking to your lover that lets you learn what really gets his motor running.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal. You don’t need to sit down and have A Conversation. Easy, natural, constant communication all throughout sex is what makes it effortless. “Do you like that?” “How does that feel?” That sort of thing. And in fact, a great way to start the ball rolling is to talk openly about what you like and what you fantasize about; talking about sexual fantasies is a fun, exciting way to learn your partner’s sexual turnons.

On the flip side of the same coin, a good way to be BAD in bed is to be closed, shy, or reluctant to talk about sex; to be closed to the idea of trying new things; to act shocked, laugh, or ridicule your partner if he suggests something new; or to worry about seeming “weird” in your sexual tastes.

So you want to try new things in bed, but you’re worried it’ll be awkward.

There’s a simple way to deal with that, and it all comes down to one thing: Understand that it’s OK to feel awkward.

I am a veteran, seasoned pervert, and so are most of my friends and partners. I have explored all kinds of kinky, wild sex that a lot of folks only read about in magazines. You want to know a secret?

Everybody feels awkward the first time they try new things. Nobody is born already knowing how to be wild and kinky in bed. The difference between a veteran, seasoned pervert with a wild and kinky sex life and folks without kinky sex lives is just this: Veteran, seasoned perverts know that there will be times when they feel awkward, and it’s all perfectly OK.

The things that probably run through your head when you think about being dominant and wild are probably, if you’re like everyone else:

- What if I do something wrong?

- What if my partner doesn’t like what I’m doing?

- What if I run out of ideas?

- What if I get to a point where it isn’t working for me and the things I’m doing don’t turn me on?

- What if my partner rejects me?

These are all the things that everyone feels when they first start getting down with the kink. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal.

What if you do something wrong? Hey, it’s not the end of the world. Laugh it off and keep going. It won’t kill you, I promise. You’ll probably make mistakes; I do, everyone does. So what?

What if your partner doesn’t like what you’re doing? Then he just says so, that’s all. It doesn’t need to be a big deal. It doesn’t need to be The End Of The World. A little tiny bit of simple communication fixes that right up. Say you go to blindfold him, and he says “I don’t like blindfolds.” Well, then, take the blindfold off and keep on going. No sweat, no fuss, no problem. When you explore new things, you will encounter stuff that your partner doesn’t like. As long as he says so, hey, it’s no big deal.

What if you run out of ideas? Sex is always fun even when you’re doing stuff you already know. If you run out of ideas, then do something you already know how to do. (Oral sex and intercourse are always fun no matter what else is going on!) Or, ask your partner. In truth, though, once you start getting in the groove, you will probably find that ideas start flowing easily…it’s just a question of getting past that first “ZOMG what if I get stuck?” fear.

What if you get to a point where it isn’t working for you and the things you’re doing don’t turn you on? No biggie; do something else! No fuss, no catastrophe, just do something else.

What if your partner rejects you? I’d say about 99% of people’s sexual fears are all wrapped up in that right there. People are often scared to talk about the things they like in sex because “what if my partner thinks I’m a freak?” People are often scared to try new things because “What if it’s too weird?” Those are all fear of rejection. But you love your partner, right? Your partner loves you, right? Your relationship is not just based on sex, right?

So why worry that if you do not meet 100% of your partner’s sexual expectations 100% of the time, then it will be the end of the world? Your partner wouldn’t reject you if you cooked dinner and burned the lasagna, right? Your partner wouldn’t reject you if you went to pick him up from the airport and you were 10 minutes late, right? So why worry that your partner will reject you if your sexual life isn’t perfectly the way he wants it to be? After all, you’re involved, too, and you have a right to explore the things you want to explore just like he does!