I say it every time I do a gift guide: it’s so important to be scrupulous if you intend to offer sex toys as presents because they are, in so many cases, non-refundable. If you have even the teeniest sneaking suspicion that your well-intentioned choice may inspire a teary, week-long emotional processing festival, then for chrissake, get your special friend a naughty gift certificate. Besides the wasted expense, nobody needs to spend an already stressful time of year sleeping against someone’s fuming backside. If you intend to forge ahead with an actual present, here are some of my suggestions.
Rechargeable vibrators are wonderful things. Lelo (www.lelo.com), from Sweden, makes a couple of beauties — most especially, in my opinion, the Iris: five programs, two engines, many hours of fun once it’s charged and a smooth, feminine design. Just about everyone’s trying to get away from the seamier visuals when promoting toys nowadays and Lelo has succeeded brilliantly — honestly, is it an offering to your goddess altar or a vibrator? If you’ve been dying to buy your mom a sex toy because you suspect that she has lacked the kind of pleasure that has become a birthright for our generation, but you want to get her something persuasively classy, this would be a good choice.
Lord knows I’ve been trying for weeks to get them inside me, but mostly what I do with my Cowboy Line from Tantus (www.tantusinc.com) is gaze at these colossal dildos and dream of the gifted lover who can fit something so substantial up their ass. Do you have a partner with a roller rink for a rectum? Or maybe someone who’d like to be fisted either vaginally or anally but your arthritis or perhaps another mobility issue prevents you? This is the line for you and them: medical-grade silicone, heavy, durable and, need I say it again, astonishingly large.
As always, Vixen (www.vixencreations.com) remains a perennial favourite of mine, especially their VixSkin line. Goddamn, they make a nice fake penis — chewing gum soft on the outside, firm on the inside. It’s almost depressingly hard to tell the difference between VixSkin and the real thing. If they ever succeed in creating one with a foreskin, I may just give up on biological men altogether.
Despite the new lifespan policy and whatever all that ends up meaning, I would still recommend getting your favourite menstruating lady a DivaCup. I mean, basically what you’re doing is letting the babe know she doesn’t have to buy another tampon or pad for the next several years of her life. How’s that for caring? It also means you don’t have to make that trip to the pharmacy for her, so it’s something for both of you, really.
I raved about them here last week but I still can’t get enough. Vergenza (www.inspired
byvergenza.com) is officially my favourite new sex-toy line. Again, if art deco is your passion, dare to take it one step further into the boudoir with these stunning, early-20th-century industry-inspired designs.
The We Vibe, the toy that got the biggest buzz this year, was a disappointment for me. I wore it, as suggested, during penetrative sex, and just felt the whole time like I had a urinary tract infection coming on. Painful, annoying… any better up my ass? Nope. This is not to say that other people haven’t been enjoying it. Have a look at this YouTube video, where Shannon from Babeland demonstrates the many other uses, including as a vibrating cock ring and frenulum massager (and, yes, that is a cock from the VixSkin line she is demonstrating on). Regardless, I feel like this is a gift that the female wearer needs to see in person with an advanced understanding of her own anatomy.
Have you been curious about The Cone (www.conezone.info) ever since you read that Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton was spotted buying one? I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who likes a more focused clitoral vibration, but if you’re sharing your bed with a pillow/stuffed-animal humper, The Cone is their Carlsberg years. It’s also nice to plunk your anus down on while you have another vibrator on your clitoris and it’s definitely good for helping relax the anal area in preparation for more invasive items.
All of the above toys can certainly be used by boys, but if you’re looking for a tab-in-slot type deal, The Fleshlight (www.fleshlight.com), as always, works like a charm.
I frankly didn’t see any porn this year that blew me away but Tristan Taormino’s Chemistry series stands out in the heterosexual genre for its relatively diverse casts and the occasional genuine chemistry. Chemistry 4 (“the Orgy Edition”) was released this year and I just wish Tristan would come home to the east coast before she’s kidnapped by some Bay Area crystal sex cult, because there is one bizarre scene where a couple that teaches Tantra (Taaaahhhntra) comes in to teach the porn stars how to really make love. The overall tone of the film does nothing to merit this instructive attempt at profundity and, as such, the exercise comes across as
condescending and critical of porngraphic sexual expression in a really inappropriate setting.
Worse, the dude instructor had a combytail. (I can’t come up with a better word for a comb-over combined with a ponytail. Can you?) He and his ladylove seem like super-nice people but they make one of the porn stars cry with their bliss and then the chemistry kind of fizzles.
If I were to recommend one adult film this year it would be a re-release: Long Jeanne Silver, available for rental at Queen Video and for order over the internet if you can get it into the country. The star of this 1977 film is a stunning amputee who fucks both men and women with her distinctly penis-shaped stump. It is wonderfully, beautifully perverted in the way only porn films from this era were.
Skim was my favourite graphic novel of the year, penned by local writer Mariko Tamaki and illustrated by her cousin Jillian. Another delightful contribution comes from Toronto’s own Maurice Vellekoop. Our city is just brimming with internationally acclaimed artists, folks, and if that doesn’t give you a boner, then the sassy hunks in Vellekoop’s book Pin-Ups sure will.