Let me tell you about my employment history.

Actually, to do that, I have to tell you about my education history. When I was growing up, education was Very Important. Getting As (not A minuses, for which I was always jokingly-but-not-really chastised by my father) was Very Important. Going to college and keeping a high GPA was Very Important.

Things that were not Very Important? Part-time jobs, because they might impact my schoolwork. Internships, because they might impact my schoolwork.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

Continue reading “Overeducated and underqualified, or getting into sex work” →

If you’re kinky, chances are you know a lot of other kinky people too, be they partners or friends or just acquaintances. And around this time of year, gift-giving is as much in the air as the cold. These people in your life are important to you, and you want to show them so.

For partners, you might have a good idea already of what they want or what they’d appreciate, but what about the people you don’t know quite so intimately?

I was pondering this myself and came up with a few kink-specific gift ideas to share. This list isn’t exhaustive by any means, but it’s a good place to start—and maybe it’ll get your own ideas flowing!

Ready? Let’s get a little kinky.

Continue reading “Gift ideas for the kinksters in your life” →

Technically this blog existed long before I started publishing under Rose P. Lethe, although its name was different. In my midtwenties I had aspirations of someday reviewing sex toys for a living.

I tried it, for a few months. My then-Wordpress was called Run on Batteries, which I took from one of Kaylee’s lines in Serenity. 

It didn’t work out, obviously.

Continue reading “Run on batteries, or the history and future of this blog” →

I spent about an hour this afternoon cutting open and deseeding a pomegranate. It took this long mostly because I don’t know any better, but also because I had to pause to take pictures for my new blog header.

Because of the mess they make, I don’t eat them often, but at the same time I love them. Aesthetically, they’re my favorite fruit.

Continue reading “Fruit of the dead” →

(tw: cutting, self-harm, blood)

I’ve eroticized blood since I was a kid. Age thirteen or fourteen at the latest, maybe younger.

Continue reading “Humble beginnings of blood kink” →

Depression–mental illness in general, really–is a lot like a ghost. There are periods of calmness and quiet, nights where you think Ah, good, it’s gone or I must’ve been making it up.

Then there are nights where it rattles its chains and bangs its fists against the walls and paces back and forth, back and forth, in the darkness where you can hear and feel its presence but never see its face.

Continue reading “Written from the halls of chain rattling and wall banging” →

I’m on a horror kick after seeing It yesterday. I didn’t find it particularly scary–although in its defense I am hard to scare these days, since 20ish years of consuming horror media has desensitized me to a lot of scary stuff.

But I did like it, for the most part, and there was enough of a taste of true scare to it that now I’m craving more.

Continue reading “You want (it) to float, don’t you?” →

I’ve decided that orgasms are impossible describe. I mean, really describe, without resorting to metaphor. To fully capture in words not just the physical aspects like muscle contractions, but how fucking good it feels to just close your eyes and come.

Continue reading “The inexpressible (period) orgasm” →

The thing that I’ve found about social anxiety is that it always comes back. Like dust. You can clean and sweep, but over time new dust will always settle on your once-clean coffee table or the nooks and crannies on your bookshelves. It’s the natural order of things.

I’ve done traditional talk therapy, art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy. Six therapists in three different states, plus an assortment of medications. It’s done a lot of good. I can function more or less as a “normal” person now.

Continue reading “Musings on social anxiety” →

After I wrote my last blog post—the one where I called myself the Horace Slughorn of sex toys—I was hit by a wonderful kernel of an idea. It was influenced, no doubt, by the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, by the fact that my partner’s and my wedding rings are Hogwarts House–themed (mine Slytherin, hers Ravenclaw), and by the fact that my love for those books is so strong it’s permanently inked on my skin in two places.

I wondered: If the characters of Harry Potter were sex toys, what would they be?

Of course I had to answer that question, using some of the toys from my collection.

Continue reading “Harry Potter characters as…sex toys?” →