Adriana, Author at of Sex and Love

Bettie Page Picture Perfect Spanking Paddle

February 4th, 2014

Bettie Page Picture Perfect Spanking Paddle
$59.99 from Lovehoney

This review has been too long in the making and this item has definitely been too long in the drawer since I received it. I cannot wait until I have an awesome opportunity to use this paddle for a play session.

This is one of those items that I showed to everyone as soon as I received it, and we all felt the same way: it’s an awesome impact instrument.

Now, I generally don’t go for items that are branded or designed like this. Sex toys and accessories with celebrities and porn stars on them tend to be kinda cheesy and frequently cheaply made in my opinion. This paddle is not.

The entire thing comes in a sleek, long box that has a paperboard cover. Once you slip this off, the top of the box pulls off to reveal the paddle. If you flip over the to of the box, you’ll see black and white photos of Bettie Page printed inside it.

The paddle has a similar photo of the model printed on the wide end. It fades to black on the handle, which is blank save for a signature. I am not sure if this is Bettie’s actually signature, but the overall look is sleek and sophisticated.

Bettie Page Keychain

While the paddle is held into place with elastic straps, there are two other items in the box. These are a keychain and a collector’s card. I’ve already added the keychain to my keys. The decorative part is round and depicts another monochromatic picture of Bettie. It uses a lobster claw hook, which I like. The card will remain in my box, which I will also use to store the paddle. I am not usually the type of person who keeps boxes — I hate Lelo boxes at this point — but I will make an exception because the design here was done so well.

The decorative side of the paddle is a textured faux leather while the “usable” side is a quilted sort of faux leather. This gives the paddle a sort of plush feel when you’re just touching it. It’s also nice to look at.

During use, the neck has give but isn’t floppy, and this paddle comes with a wrist strap that makes it easy to use. I’ve personally found that the paddle can be used for a light swat or with more force for a sting that will make your skin glow rosy red – if you want it to. This sort of versatility means the paddle will likely work for a variety of users. Even if you’re getting it for novelty’s sake, you’ll find it is good for use.

The material can be cleaned with a damp cloth, but don’t consider it sterilizable.

If my experience with the Bettie Page Picture Perfect Spanking Paddle is any indication, then LoveHoney has done a good job with this line, and I’d be happy to recommend any of the items in it to BDSM and sex toy lovers.

11 Comments

Categories: BDSM

LoveLife Cuddle

January 26th, 2014

Lovelife Cuddle
$68 from PinkCherry

I’ve read a lot of pretty positive reviews for the items in this line. Indeed, OhMiBod’s official move from musically-enhanced sex toys to plain Jain toys seems to have been pretty successful. There’s less novelty here and more solid function. I give this a thumbs up.

Also, I kinda like the shape of the Cuddle. There’s just the faintest hint of a ridge on the head to provide G-spot stimulation more so than any other toy in this line. This includes the Dream. A more noticeable angle of the shaft also makes finding your G-spot easier. The ridge is made of plush silicone. In fact, the silicone over the shaft is quite plush. It’s softer than any Lelo vibe, for example. You can get pressure you need but it’s not going to make your pubic bone feel like it’s stabbing you from the inside out. Yay for that.

The shaft offers about 4,5 inches to insert with another two inches for grasping. The size of the Cuddle is good all around. However, you might opt for something thicker if you’re a size queen as this one tops out with a 1.25-inch diameter.

But here’s something I don’t like: the name. The cuddle? I want someone to name their toy “Motherfucking vibrator.” Let’s just be out with this cutesy BS, okay? It reminds me of that book about anal where the author was afraid to say anus.

There’s just so much packaging!

I really want to add another positive here, but let’s go on a tangent, instead. This Cuddle comes with all sorts of packaging. There’s this outter sleeve with a cutout heart and you see this cute pattern through it. When you remove the sleeve, there box has a top and bottom that you must separate. Not rocket science, but a lot of packaging. Once you do this, the Cuddle sits on a tray specially made for its. It’s nice packaging, okay. I like pink! I love pink and white! I just wish it weren’t wasted on packaging, which I am ultimately going to throw away. Had I not tried over 9000 Lelo toys, I would be more impressed.

So, Cuddle comes with its own little sleeping bag. I think I’ll call storage pouches this all the time. Mucho good-o. I’d much rather store toys in pouches. In fact, I kind of have to after rearranging my nightstand. I broke up one drawer of toys I really like in two: dildos and vibes. But I digress.

This vibrator has a little heart-shaped control pad surrounded by an LED. The heart shape works well for the three buttons. Plus, minus and tilde (~). I do not get to use that word frequently enough. I like standard three-button controls, but this isn’t it. To turn the toy on or off, you have to hold the ~ for several seconds. I don’t understand why companies don’t understand that we need to be able to turn off toys instantly. This isn’t negotiable, people!

The + and – obviously allow you to change the strength of the vibrations. To be honest, this might be the place where the Cuddle best excels. Even on the lowest setting, the steady vibrations are strong and pretty rumbly. The tilde also switches between settings. Aside from steady vibes, you get:

Pulsation
Fast pulsation
Escalation/pulsation combo
Slow then fast pulsation
Fast then slow pulsation
Fast pulsation, escalation, pulsation again

The strength of the motor makes the pulsation much more interesting than weaker vibes, and I actually rather like the last setting even if it’s difficult to describe. This is pretty high praise coming from someone who doesn’t use those extra settings at all.

The strength does make this toy a little louder than I’d like, however. It’s certainly louder than any of my Lelo rechargeables. I have yet to drain the battery, but it’s running now on full force so we’ll see if it dies before I finish this review (I got 1+ hours before I shut it off cause it was bugging me, too. There was no decrease in power at all). In case you were wondering, my cat does not like this.

The LED serves as a charging indicator, blinking as Cuddle charges. The port is proprietary and surrounding by a soft silicone that’s intended to help waterproof, so you have to wiggle the charger into place. I dislike that this only comes with a USB cable and no outlet adapter. I have some, but I don’t have any place to permanently plug cables to let things charge. According to the manual, it can take 2.5 hours to fully charge, and you’ll get about 2 hours of use.

However, for a USB-powered vibe, Cuddle is one of the more powerful I’ve tried. If this were my first G-spot or USB vibe, I’d probably love it. However, I’m eager to recommend it as a rechargeable G-spot vibe that’s affordable. Pinkcherry has it for just $68 right now. If you wait for one of the store’s awesome sales, it’ll be even more affordable. This makes Lovelife a brand that many first-timers might try, and I can’t argue with that.

11 Comments

Categories: Reviews, Vibrators

A battle of will.

January 21st, 2014

I am not sure if I can put into words how much I want to climb atop you, to guide you into myself. Maybe I’ll wet my lips and gasp at the first sensations as our bodies meet, your cock so perfectly filling me, your presence completing the parts of me I didn’t even know were missing.

And I’ll stay there in that moment, not moving, barely breathing. I’ll slide my hands down your chest, rest them on your stomach and arch backwards. The sound of my silhouette will be my moans breaking the silence as the moment meets every item on my mental checklist.

Perfection.

The time for silence will pass. So will the time for stillness, as my hands bring yours to explore my body, every curve, every fold, every muscle. There won’t be any need to guess. Your fingers will travel from my mouth down the length of my body, finally delving between my lips like electricity on my clit.

We’ll move slowly together, my hips against yours and my mouth against your own. You’ll taste me on your tongue as it intertwines with mine. When we finally break, you’ll chase my lips, begging from more.

But the sudden crack of my palm against your cheek will let you know that you can’t have it.

The time for leisure will pass.

I will fuck you until we both cum, and neither of us will have words, anymore.

Comment

Categories: Stories, The Bartender

Laws of Attraction

January 18th, 2014

Maybe it’s weird, but I am just not that attracted to people as an adult. I remember being a teenager. I had a different crush every week, it seemed. In middle school, I liked so many people. I don’t even think I could name them. I often thought people were attractive even if I didn’t like their personality. It’s just how it went.

In high school, I suppose that slowed down but only because I was talking to more people online. I noticed attractive people less in person as I focused on the personalities I got to know through chat, IM, email and phone calls.

Even as I watch movies or porn, all of which are full of people that are generally considered to be universally attractive, I find myself looking for people who are attractive to me.. and not finding them. I can even hop on to live sex cams sites like LiveX.com and shrug, unimpressed at what others would find as beautiful cam models. I can literally look at all the porn on Tumblr — and there is a plethora of it — and nitpick every single photo that I come across. I have to remind myself not to do this. It’s just plain rude. (On the other hand, clean your damned room before you take those selfies).

This makes online dating a bit hard. I can scan through dozens of photos and be relatively unimpressed with any of them. When you consider the general lack of effort that most people put into their profiles, you understand how this is frustrating for me. I guess I look at one of two things: do their profiles make me smile or do their photos make me drool? Typically, neither proves true.

This leaves me feeling a little shallow. In fact, my friends haven’t been slow at all to call me such. Do I just have ridiculously high standards when it comes to people? to bodies? to makeup? to presentation? If this is the case, how can I possibly expect to find someone when I wouldn’t meet my own standards?

I guess I am not sure what I am looking for. I’ll know it when I see it, right? It’s not so much something that’s only in the visual. It’s a big picture thing. It’s in the ambiance and the facial expression. And as I’ve found out, I can be wildly attracted to someone who doesn’t display most of the physical traits that I find attractive, and it can take me years to discover this.

Sleepiness and a fever have made this post ramble more than I intended. I shall end here and perhaps return at a later date with more clarity.

3 Comments

Categories: Dating, Everything Else

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

January 10th, 2014

I guess I’m at the point in my life where people feel like it’s fine to point out that I’m single. In fact, my best friend’s mother in law recently asked me if I was dating anyone. I didn’t go into the details about the bartender. That’s rather confusing on its own. I just told her I wasn’t seeing anyone.

She went on in a judgmental way about how I had very little time left. It just rubbed me the wrong way. When people say things like that, it seems like there are all these assumptions:

That I’m straight
That I want kids
That I want kids naturally
That I want to get married again
That I even want another relationship

All of these assumptions rub me the wrong way but it’s the idea that I haven’t thought about dating that bugs me. I’ve been on dates. I signed up with OkCupid and Plenty of Fish. I’ve thought about clubs and considered dating friends. I’ve tried looking at everyone I met as a potential love interest.

I just don’t see going on miserable dates as a fun pastime. I am not desperate enough to settle like so many people. Sure, I’d like to have more sex, but I only want that to be good sex, amazing sex. This, I will not get after some random first date. Of this I am sure.

So I’d rather be happy and alone even if I’m not living by someone else’s timeline. In fact, I’d rather be happy and alone than miserable because I’m not meeting some timeline of my own. I don’t like arbitrary goals. It’s why I have no new year’s resolutions.

And if you’re not going to take the time to get to know me, then you certainly don’t deserve any explanation or have the right to make demands of what I do with my own time, with my personal life.

I suppose it does no good to be angry with people whose worldview is so narrow that they need to box me in, too.

6 Comments

Categories: Dating

2013 in Review

January 5th, 2014

This might be the third year in a row that I’ve posted a best of list. I figured I wouldn’t just do the wonderful toys but provide you with some of the strange and disappointing, too. I’ll have to fudge the lines of “this year” a bit. I must have written last year’s a little early because there were two reviews in December 2012 that didn’t make it on the list. I waited until January for this post because I really wanted to get one last review in, so let’s start there.

D.1 stone dildo

I liked the design but expected the Ceramix Pleasure Pottery Dildo No. 4 to be a gimmick with its hollow inside for warm. But warming this dildo up far surpassed my expectations. It’s one of the few dildos that I’ve ever used twice, and I think that says a lot.

I’ve been pimping out the Jimmyjane Form 6 G3 all this year even though it was one of those reviews from late last year. The latest version if powerful, versatile and feels luxurious. It’s the first Jimmyjane vibe that I actually like. Maybe it won’t be the last. My review was on the EF, though, so I’ll probably get around to writing something up on OSAL for you to read.

The Delight by Fun Factory was actually my second. I swapped for one of the originals — the ones that came with a charging case — but never got around to using it. When I moved last year, I misplaced the cable. I wound up trying out the Delight for shape to see if I liked it, and I did like it so much that I purchased the new Click n Charge style. Not only do I love the magenta and black, but it fits my anatomy extremely well.

The Decor Stashe Pillow in Velvish Aubergine won’t get me off but it will hide everything that does and in style.

After using the D.1 stone dildo, I have to say that this blows every metal dildo I’ve ever used out of the water. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to use it and see myself using it frequently in the future.

Another new type of toy was the Stronic Eins Pulsator, which has made its way around many of these lists. It feels good. I just need to wash off all that lint, charge it and use it again (and again and again). This was also my first video review, you guys!

Finally, I cannot tell you how much I love my SHE AfterShave Oil. I could show you the nearly-empty bottle, though. I definitely need to purchase another one.

So, there’s the good.

How about the weird? Strange? Disappointing? Ridiculous?

Cat toy or vibrator?

The Sonic Revel Body. Cool tech, totally not going to get me off. And those attachments? WTF!
This costume from ILoveSexy just didn’t cut it. I mean, I kinda hate the cut.
The Revive Energy isn’t terrible but they needed to test the storage pouch, first. Now, mine looks like a sick leopard.
Ovo looked like a promising brand, but the kegel balls fucking hurt. The t1 didn’t hurt. It just sucked.
I got 2 Gigi 2s. I am giving both away. Meh.
I’m not sure that this UFO vibrator works for me.. or anyone.
The U Touch Down and U Touch Up just need.. to be better.
These “keyless cuffs” are so not practical.
This vibrator looks like a cat toy. Pretty sure the cat toy would get me off better.
Bummer..

Why the fuck are companies still making these pieces of shit?
I’d rather fuck the actual Flash, and he’s my least favorite of the Justice League.
But, hey, at least it’s better than vibrating vaginal balls.
Minna Ola is the most overrated, over-hyped, overpriced piece of junk I’ve used.. until the Revel Sonic.
Remember when that glass dildo broke before I even had a chance to use it?