What do you think about when you’re having an orgasm?

Nothing. 

Maybe you’re thinking, but I know I’m not thinking. My mind is clear. My mouth goes on autopilot, the sounds coming out of it may occasionally be words but they have no intellectual thought behind them. The “oh god”s and “fuck”s are almost a mantra. I am a blank puddle of nerve endings, completely open to sensation. I have no control over my rapidly contracting lower abdomen or my flailing limbs. My back arches, dragging my shoulders over the now damp sheets, pushing my hips down into the mattress. Warm inner forearm skin pressing into my hip bone and leg hair gently crunching against the back of my thigh. 

What’s going on here is pure haptic sensation. Touch. 

Touch is a basic human need. My go-to example for this is the post-Ceasecu situation in Romania’s orphanages. We need physical contact with each other. We need to touch and to be touched. Both sexual and non-sexual snuggles produce Oxytocin, which scientists say appears to stimulate bonding and might do things like help our bodies heal faster. I’m not a scientist, but I know anecdotally that skin-on-skin contact relaxes people. A good hug really does help. Laying around with each other like a pile of kittens is so delightful that Jess and I’s couch for years was an almost non-stop cuddle-puddle of whatever friends happened to be over at the time. 

Yes, I am going directly from a paragraph that starts with abused orphans into a paragraph about sex.

The process of peeling my clothing off with another consenting adult and finding the most enjoyable ways to fit our naked bodies together is something I think of as my inalienable right as a person. It might be one of the main points of being human and alive. When I share my body with someone, I’m sharing more than the purely physical. When everyone involved allows themselves to be truly open, we all come away with more of something (amazing and indefinable) than we started with. Putting someone’s appendage into one of your orifices and opening yourself in a personal and emotional way are two different things. When they happen simultaneously, that is where sex becomes so wonderful that poets start to make sense and you lose the ability to pronounce ‘fine motor skills’ much less make use of them.

What do you think about when you’re having an orgasm? 

I’m too busy feeling.

…alternately, just bang ‘em until their vulva needs to be iced.

it amazes me how much i’m able to love someone simply because they accept that i want to be alone to work.
that, in the true ironic twists and turns of love, is the ultimate turn-on for me. 
the ultimate turn-off? clinginess. neediness. damnation.

-Amanda Palmer on her blog.

A long long time ago, way before I started taking my clothes off on the internet, I had this boyfriend who was pretty filthy. By pretty filthy, I mean he liked a healthy dose of kink in his sex. At some point he introduced me to the concept of tease and denial (which I’ve also seen referred to as edging). Tease and denial is still one of my favorite games. 

It’s a fun way to play with control. Sometimes I find it entertaining to watch/make someone squirm. My sexual partners have generally seemed to enjoy watching me squirm, being responsible for and in control of it. My favorite part is the element of surprise. Like most sexually active people I know, I can feel when I’m about to have an orgasm, and usually having an orgasm comes right after feeling like I’m about to have one. Still immensely fun, but predictable. However, when someone slightly evil is in charge you never quite know what is going to happen. They could dole them out slowly, bringing you right back to the edge after every one and keeping you wriggling around in their lap with their dick buried in your asscrack. They could keep you on the brink for eight minutes (which feels like *forever* in the moment) and then make you come so many times you loose count. Also, they could theoretically wander away and not get you off at all. It would be really mean, but the possibility makes every single orgasm a pleasant surprise.

More widely applicable is the the core idea that when I want something and can’t have it right then, I want it more. Which brings me to Amanda Palmer’s quote.

I can’t miss someone unless they let me miss them. There’s this behavioral science thing tied in with lab rat studies (aren’t all behavioral science things tied into studies of rats somehow?) that says that any reward becomes mundane when it is constant. If people won money every time they pulled the arm of a slot machine, they probably wouldn’t develop addictions to gambling. If you eat a gallon of ice cream every day for the entire summer, ice cream isn’t super delicious again until October. Yes, I am speaking from experience on that one. If your live-in girlfriend makes you coffee every morning, it becomes habitual and you stop appreciating it. If you metaphorically crawl so far up a partner’s butt that they never get any distance from you, they can’t miss you… and getting things you’ve had the chance to want is so very delightful.

We’re in the car. I’m tired of wearing clothing, I feel constricted. I pop the clasp on the back of my bra open and remove it. You encourage me to take my panties off as well if it’ll make me feel better. You’re filthy. So incredibly filthy in the best ways imaginable. My pussy contracts involuntarily and starts to get wet. I slide the matching net briefs down my legs and put them in my purse.

When we get to the parking garage I keep my knees together as I get out of the passenger side door. We walk back to my building and as we’re headed up the stairs you put your hand up my skirt and run a finger down the length of my lips. I know you can feel how much I want you. You slowly enter me with that finger. I can feel the calluses, the muscle. Who the fuck has muscular fingers? You do. I love your hands.

“Let’s go, cutie.”

I’m pretty sure you’re walking me up the stairs by my vulva. You’re in control. You have the control because I’ve given it to you and we both seem to enjoy this arrangement very much.

I take my skirt off and sit on the bed. You spread my legs, kiss the inside of one thigh and breathe on my pussy. I shiver. You do it a couple of times, alternating this with blowing a cooler, more focused puff over my clitoris or towards my asshole. You can be such a tease. It’s hot and cold and I might melt and then you touch me with your tongue. Yes, touch. Not lick. I know you’ll get to that eventually but you keep your tongue virtually immobile on my clit until I really may not be able to stand it any more. The first lick is slow and almost torturous. Can torturous be used in this context? You’re so delicate with your tongue. Precise. So very purposeful. You eat pussy like a chick. Like you know where we’re headed but you’re going to take your time getting there because you know this part is enjoyable too. Yes, torturous can absolutely be used in this context. I need to come. It’s maddening. I’m trying to push a little harder against your mouth when suddenly you grab my clitoris firmly with your lips or teeth or something and start doing something that feels like you’re suction cupped to it. You drag the orgasm out of me. You take it because you know you can. I can’t control myself any longer. My legs come up and wrap around your neck, my hand on the back of your head. I’m humping your face, probably cutting off the supply of blood through your jugular with my thighs. It’s like dying. My brain shuts off. All I feel is tactile pleasure. I may explode, I do explode, and then I’m sliding down, away from your mouth. The half grown out facial hair feels nice. My vaginal secretions are dripping off of your chin. I hope you can understand now why I enjoy it so much when you come on my face, in my mouth.

“I wish I could fuck you and do this at the same time.”

You’re filthy. You’re amazing.

——-

I am coming down from a series of orgasms which culminated in one so intense that it re-set my vagina. My only option is to lay there under you and glow for a few seconds before my body can even consider building towards another one. You’re thrusting into me with a steady rhythm. I feel sated and relaxed. I just want to push back with my hips and give you some dedicated you time. I want to make you come. I want to pay attention to every detail.

I can feel you get slightly harder. This always surprises me. Your cock fits me so nicely that when it swells up that little extra bit I can feel it push against the inner circumference of my vagina and it drives me crazy. Every time, I can’t believe you could feel any better than you did a few seconds earlier, but you do.

You’re going to come. You say you want to come inside me. You say this because you know it turns me on, and I think because it turns you on, too. Sometimes you try to fake me out, you say you’re going to and mimic an orgasm inside me and the thought of it is so hot but I know you’re far too respectful and responsible to do that unless I asked you to.

Unless I asked you to.

It’s a terrible idea, but…

“Do it. I want to feel you come inside me.”

I grab you by your butt cheeks and pull you in. Your pubic bone brushes against my clitoris, it feels nice but every single nerve in my vaginal canal is so awake and so tuned in to what’s about to happen that it barely registers. I feel you fall into me hips first. Your cock twitches, expands, a burst of hot, tingling fluid fills me up. I feel it splash off of my cervix and this moment is so beautiful I want to hang suspended in it forever. One more spurt of liquid and I’m full. You gently lay your upper body down on me. I run the pads of my fingers gently over the warm skin of your sculpted back and shoulders. You make a slight backwards movement with your pelvis as though you might pull out. I think you don’t want to squish me.

“No, please, stay.”

This feels so good I want to draw it out as long as possible.

A trickle of your semen dribbles out of me and over my asshole. I can feel you still engorged, pressing against the front wall which so loves to be pressed up against. I am so turned on that I am teetering on the cusp of another orgasm, but to do so would stop the feeling I have right now and I don’t want it to end. It’s delicious, being right on the edge and holding back like that.

“You just came inside me.”

“I did. It felt so right in the moment.”

It did feel so right. So very right. I could fall asleep like this, you on top of and inside me, your face nuzzled next to mine, your big hands holding me so gently by the waist. You start to go limp and I treasure every centimeter of internal caress as your dick slides out. This is something so much more than lust.

My left ovary was in pain.

If you’re just tuning in and haven’t browsed the archives, you should know that I really love my lady-parts. I listen to them, I take care of them, I try to give them everything they could possibly want or need. “Take care of your vagina and it will take care of you” is an oft repeated phrase of mine. 

(Although it does inaccurately use the word vagina in place of “vagina/vulva/womb conglomeration” which gives me a mental image of Shonen manga robots when they connect together to make a MEGA ROBOT. I suppose “female uro-genital system” or “female reproductive system” are accurate but they sound so clinical. I’m just going to keep calling it my lady parts or vagina and prepare myself for the onslaught of “Improper terminology!!” that sometimes follows a post. ::ducks under a pile of lacy undergarments:: )

Back to my ovary. There was a lot of pain in the area of my left ovary. It sucked. It felt like being stabbed, although I’ve never been stabbed so I can’t say for sure. The pain started during vigorous sex. Since the vigorous sex was with my boyfriend I felt it was ok to ask him to come to the gynecologist with me. If by ask you mean tearfully repeat “aaaEEEEEEwhimperwhimperOUCH” in a squeaky voice a few times until the meaning can be deciphered. I think he would have offered to come if I hadn’t asked. That kind of behavior usually inspires blow jobs later, just saying…

My hard drive had just crashed as well. I keep meticulous notes on what my vagina is exposed to, when it bleeds, anything strange that happens, when all of these things start and end, when my frequent STD tests were taken, but I’d been keeping all of these notes in my iCal, which had disappeared with the rest of the contents of my hard drive.

I was filling out paperwork in the gynecologist’s office. I couldn’t remember when my last period started because I always write it down and then forget it. I was headed into the bathroom to wipe with a sterile wipe and then pee in a cup. I started to panic because the doctor needs data in order to diagnose and my lack of computer back-up meant I couldn’t give her much data. Actually, I’d been panicking for a day or so because my vagina was in intense horrible stabby pain and I was starting to feel like shooting myself in the face would really be a more tolerable option than what I was feeling, but the lack of data added a bit more panic and put me into near-hyperventilation mode.

“I can’t remember when my last period was, she’s going to need to know this, oh man.”

“The 29th”

“You’re good….”

“I checked your twitter.”

Matt is calm. This is a good quality, a nice balance to my generally frenetic way of interacting with the world. I started to feel like I might make it through the appointment without curling up in a ball and having a spectacularly melodramatic meltdown. 

The doctor, a statuesque woman with a German accent in knee-high stiletto boots did some poking and prodding, threw out a few possibilities:

“It could be a Hernia…”

“OH GOD I’ll never be able to do a sit-up again.”

“Or an Ovarian Cyst…”

“Gah! They’re going to have to operate and take some giant thing out of my abdomen and cut it open to check for cancer!”

“Or PID…”

“But I get tested for Chlamydia all the time. Literally, all the time. Sometimes I just go get a test for peace of mind when I haven’t even been potentially exposed to something.”

“Well, we’re going to start you on antibiotics just in case and then send you for a sonogram and a this and a that and maybe this other thing.”

“Eeeeugh, antibiotics. Ok.”

Later, the sonogram technician told me she could see fluid and what very much looked like the remains of a cyst. I tweeted about it. It turns out that quite a few women who I am friends with, or who follow me on twitter have had this kind of awful experience.

I want to know why I didn’t know about this possibility. I want to know why we can all list the vague symptoms of a heart attack or choking or the flu and know what to do in those situations but we aren’t as well educated on some of the things that can go awry with our reproductive organs. I want to know why giving women this kind of knowledge before they’re in huge amounts of pain isn’t a priority. Obviously the answer is to discuss it. 

Suggestions/comments/graphic personal anecdotes?

-Stoya

Thank you very much, Laura.

It’s always nice to hear positive feedback from people who’ve enjoyed my pornographic work.

I do hope you continue to laugh at porn though, if for a different reason. Sometimes I laugh when I’m making porn. I laugh when I’m having sex at home, too. I really believe sex should be fun, and it’s all pretty silly when you stop and think about it.

(or: Stoya vs. Lady Porn Day Part 2: The Twat Talk Just Keeps On Comin’)

“Stoya’s experience is that the porn industry cares about what her body – including her vagina – looks like because of production value. That I understand: if the vagina was the bedroom of a house, each wall should be painted, the floor should be finished, the glass installed in the windows and a door frame put in place. Each vagina – and cock, and anus, and mouth – should look finished and clean.
However, mainstream porn – and the cosmetic industry, and mainstream media – has gone further than that. They’ve homogenized vaginas into a single “preferred” look that screams pre-pubescence: tight, light-colored and completely hairless labia, with a bare pubic mound (okay, sometimes there’s a liiiiittle tuft) and a bleached anus. Not only must the bedroom be “finished and clean,” but every window should be square, every door made from the same wood, every wall painted beige.”

-Reply by Jennifer Nicole via the Demoiselles

Uh… hey ladies… I kind of really hate to break this to you… but I work in mainstream porn. Digital Playground, the company that I’ve been with for the entirety of my hardcore career, they’re about as mainstream as you can get.

They’re everywhere. I can’t walk down the street in a major metropolitan area without seeing my face (or butt cheeks) in the window of an adult store. That Pirates movie was cut into a softcore flick and Blockbuster carries it. When Vivid still had a booth at the Adult Entertainment Expo, Digital Playground’s was sandwiched between them and Hustler.

Google ‘em real quick. Digital Playground is the company that launched Jesse Jane and Tera Patrick. That very same mainstream porn company sends someone running outside with an umbrella if they see me wander into the harsh LA sunlight on set. They don’t want me beige. DP’s main director, Robby D., is the one that got me to grow my pubic hair out in the first place.

Aside from my desire to defend the company that I’ve directly worked for and can speak from personal experience on, there really is plenty of pubic hair in porn, a variety of labia sizes/shapes, and a reasonable amount of different vulva colorings. I’m starting to wonder how you arrived at the opinion that this pre-pubescent pudenda look is so prolific in the adult industry.

Oh, and thanks for posting that sweet photo of my sweet outfit from AVN this year, but I only made the skirt. The top is a vintage Vivienne Westwood ebay find. I should really re-check that post and see if my wording is misleading or unclear.

I am a porn star.

I am a lady that makes porn.

I hear a lot from women about how they are uncomfortable with their vaginas. They wonder if it looks right, smells right, is the right color, shape, size, proportionate, if their labia stick out too much (or even not enough).

I hear that they appreciate my comfort with my own protruding labia and take it as validation that they don’t need a hairless “coin slot” vulva where everything is all tucked in in order to be attractive.

It’s nice to hear that ladies like my body and like that I run around with no clothing on sometimes, but seriously, you need to understand something.

Dudes do not give a fuck.

I’m focusing on female/male sexual interaction here because men that only have sex with men have reasons for not wanting to touch your pretty lap flower that have nothing to do with its scent or aesthetic value, and I really hope that women who have sex with women are already openly down with the fact that pussies come in a wide and beautiful array of looks, feels and smells.

But seriously, dudes that are into chicks don’t give a fuck.

Porn dudes don’t give a fuck.

Dudes that I have sexual things to do with in my off time do not give a fuck.

I don’t give a fuck either. Personally, if I am touching the vagina of someone I find attractive, I am much more focused on joy that I am touching it and figuring out what the best way to make it orgasm is.

I’m pretty sure I missed #ladypornday on rabbitwrite.com. That’s fine because the only days for me that aren’t lady-porn-days are usually rhinestone-something-within-an-inch-of-its-life-and-practice-removing-it-gracefully days or lay-around-with-little-clothing-on-and-discuss-sex days, which are really only semantically different. I think anything that encourages more of an open discussion and dialogue about sexuality is wonderful. I did, however, feel the need to respond to something written by The Demoiselles for #ladyporn day. In the piece, the writer says

“Because looks are everything when someone’s about to give you an orgasm.
…well, okay, maybe in porn they are.”

and I just can’t let that go without replying to it. On the porn sets that I have been on, the director, production company, camera guy, etc. care what the vaginas look like. They care for the same reason that a contractor might leave a light switch plate off in his own home but really ought to make sure every detail of a home they are building for someone else is perfect. We are producing a product and every detail should have the highest production value possible.

But the male talent? They don’t care. They get paid to have fun with the most meticulously groomed ladies available to the adult industry, and (in my experience) even if you’re having sex with them off set just for fun they don’t give a flying rats ass what kind of half grown out razorburned disaster area you’ve got going on in your crotch as long as it doesn’t look diseased and you’ve taken a shower recently. Even then, the shower might be negotiable.

Men outside of the porn industry that I’ve had sex with don’t care. There was one who couldn’t stand to look at the bloody mess that period sex created because he associated all that blood with somehow hurting me, but if a towel was down and the lights were off, it didn’t matter at all. Men in my personal life don’t expect me to be perfectly groomed, over glossed and decked out in fake eyelashes, nor do they expect the C cup breasts that I appear to have on my box covers.

Please… get to know your vagina. Find out what it looks like in various states of arousal. Find out what it smells like over the course of your monthly cycle. Get in there with a mirror and a speculum and really get to know it. Whatever it does is right for it, and the only time you should be concerned is when your Gynecologist is or if it’s doing something out of character. Don’t let a sexual partner tell you something that’s normal for your body is gross or wrong. If they do, don’t let them back until they’re ready to deal with the reality of sex.

But seriously. Dudes… they aren’t really known for noticing details. They usually don’t give a fuck.

After a lengthy adventure wandering the prophylactic section of various drug stores in a couple of different counties and failing to locate a ”female” or “internal” condom things were looking bleak for my great (if by ‘great’ you mean ‘miniscule’ and ‘not particularly scientific’) alternative safe sex experiment.

This was especially tragic because somewhere in the comments on my article for popporn.com asking for feedback from consumers on condom use in porn… or maybe on twitter… I had promised to explore female condoms and report back.

Until…. Babeland. Originally known as Toys in Babeland and one of the pioneers of female friendly sex shops. In the time before Hustler had stores in most major cities and large amounts of online retailers started peddling every naughty good one could dream up, there were two women who saw a void in the smut market and moved to fill it. They’ve grown over the years into a comfortable high gloss destination for sexual education material and props of all sorts. If there were a place on the East Coast that would have a female condom in stock, it would be Babeland. Quite auspiciously, there was a Babeland mere blocks from the street corner I happened to be standing on at the time and it was open at 9pm (on a Monday no less.)

I dragged my penis having partner in crime with me to the Babeland store. We had a fantastically awkward moment when he saw Digital Playground’s line of Pirates/Pirates 2 themed sex toys and loudly pointed out the one with my face on the packaging in the store. The female condom was acquired (success! jubliation!) and brought back to the penis having person’s apartment. Much levity was had about the experiment which was about to commence. Laughter and sex go quite well together.

It’s a really good thing that laughter and sex go well together.

The thing about these female condoms is that they’re kind of baggy. And the ring at the top which is supposed to keep it in the vagina isn’t very stable. And they’re sort of sticky. All of this adds up to the condom kind of sticking to the penis in question instead of sticking inside my vagina, which kind of felt like I was being banged by a stiff ziplock bag. Eeek.

Also…

Dear Female Condom Company: can we talk about the lube you guys use? I doubt it’s Vaseline since petroleum jelly and condoms not mixing well has been drilled into my head since puberty, but it really looks and feels like a more gelatinous version of Vaseline. Stickier, less slidey. Kind of goopy. It’s like something out of the special effects kit for low budget Sci-Fi movies and the complete polar opposite of cute.

On your website you mention individual counseling and personal fittings [http://www.ripnroll.com/femalecondoms.htm FAQ item #1]. I think an in depth session with one of your representatives may be in order, especially if this representative happens to have a pencil skirt, white button down shirt, and glasses. Busty is optional. Hair preferably done up in a bun.

-Stoya

It’s always a good idea to try and stay on the right side of the law, but I don’t know anything about Ireland’s legal stance on such issues. I will stop nanny-ing now :)