Strap-ons: Tricks and Techniques

This is my kind of strap-on!

 Strap-ons:  Tricks and Technique

I keep forgetting this is supposed to be a sex advice column, and while I have a lot of fun talking politics, feminist issues, and more vanilla relationship advice, I can’t ignore that the blog is called “Erotic Answers.” My guide to buying strap-ons was one of the most popular blog posts I’ve ever done and so I thought I’d do a follow up post explaining what you should do with one of these things once you’ve found it, or, if you’ve already figured out a few tricks you like, some new things to try. After all, what’s the point of going strapped if you don’t really know how to use it?

I’m also fond of reminding everyone that my qualifications for being a sexpert and relationship advice columnist is actually the fact that I’m a romance/erotica author who has successfully maintained a healthy relationship for many years. I’m not a doctor of the MD, Ph. D, or even DDS variety (can you imagine a dentist’s sex advice column? “Butt Floss More!”), although I do have my degree now, which I didn’t have when I started this shin dig. Of course, it has nothing to do with mental health or medicine:  English with a writing emphasis and minors in political science and women’s studies, which isn’t super important since I don’t need a degree in English to be a writer—I mean, Vonnegut’s degree was in chemistry and Hemmingway didn’t even go to college, so if the boys can do it, why can’t I? Anyway, where was I going with this…oh, right, I’m an author and not a counselor so I’ll be using my fiction to illustrate the points about strap-ons. Technique and accuracy are both important to me, so trust me when I say I have tried every strap-on scene in my works (in one way or the other if you catch my meaning) and I know they’re all not only possible but potentially fun!

Disclaimer: I’m not going over the lesbian purist issues with strap-ons in this post. I covered that in the first one. My stance continues to be:  strap-ons aren’t cocks and don’t make someone less of a lesbian simply for wearing or being fucked by one.

“Lucy’s concerns about much of anything completely melted away when Sasha aggressively bent her over the end of the pool table, holding her chest flat against the green felt with her pencil skirt bunched around her waist and panties around her ankles. Sasha’s favored strap-on, which fit beautifully over her slender hips in the tight jeans, had a little arched knob at the top, designed to tickle Lucy’s clit if they were facing each other, but in the bent over, from behind position, actually vibrated and knocked at her backdoor with every powerful thrust her vampire girl made into her. Lucy screamed in delight as Sasha ravaged her, each scream brought either a tug on the back of her ponytail or a sharp swat on her increasingly red behind. It felt like a proper send-off for the pool table nobody had ever used.

Lucy climaxed again for what she thought might have been the fifth time. An aggressive sweat rose on her skin, adding an additional sting to the harshly spanked red of her behind, and she felt her legs weaken to the point of giving out. Sasha, intuiting that Lucy wouldn’t hold herself up much longer, grasped Lucy’s legs, swept them off the floor into her hands and moved her into a modified wheel-barrow position that Lucy knew would leave rug burns from the pool table felt across her forearms, but couldn’t imagine a reason why she would care.”

This excerpt is from “The Last Best Tip” and illustrates several really important points about going strapped while standing.

Clothes can not only look good with your "accessory" but also help hold it in place!

First and foremost, you’ll notice Sasha is wearing her strap-on over her jeans. This is actually kind of a neat trick considering denim holds straps better than bare skin and provides padding to prevent chaffing in the wearer during, vigorous thrusting. If you haven’t tried your strap-on with clothes, you might give this a try, especially if you’re having trouble keeping it in place comfortably.

Secondly, you’ll notice this particular strap-on has a clitstimulator—it’s like the rabbit part on rabbit dildos, but fits a strap-on harness. These are spendy and difficult to use, and, as you see in the scene, point at other things if you switch positions. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. I’m personally a fan of light playing in that area, and it’s an avenue of pleasure a lot of people don’t give full credit to. Obviously good hygiene and diligent toy washing becomes even more important if you’re going back there and never never never never go from back door to front door—you’re likely to get a really bad infection that way. Still, the little vibrating rabbits meant for clits can feel nice if you switch to from behind positions and of course there are strap-ons that have special attachments specifically for simultaneous anal play.

Thirdly, there’s the modified wheel-barrow position. This requires an appropriately heighted sturdy surface and an athletic partner capable of holding up your legs. Turns out, a pool table does work for my girlfriend and she is strong enough to…you get the picture. Anyway, focus on the right height, sturdy enough to hold more than half your weight, and a girlfriend who is physically capable for this one.

Technically, this has stuff for the wearer and would probably stay in place, but...

The next piece comes from Demons of Paradise:  “…she next found herself lying flat on her back, panting and moaning, with Vendela straddling her, riding almost in slow motion, the front of her kimono falling open on occasion to show her perfect white breasts, which might have been carved of marble for the smooth sheen they boasted. When Brooke reached up to touch them as Vendela rode smoothly up and down on her strap-on, she found the breasts ice-cold, but absolutely perfect in every other way.”

There are theories out there about breasts being grown to promote face to face coupling, and even though that’s evolutionary preposterous, it’s kind of believable considering how awesome breasts are. Regardless, face to face really is the best for a lot of things. Specifically, in this case, if you have a strap-on with interior items for clit stimulationon the wearer, and believe me they are worth a try. On top, or cowgirl, position can really be good for both partners with the right toy making it a one star on difficulty and five star on pleasure. The trick is to find the right position and place for both people to get something out of it, but not necessarily at the same time, although at the same time is amazing. Did you know vaginas are angled differently depending on the individual women? Strange to think of, but it’s true. A position that works for one woman on top won’t work for all women on top because we all have different angles inside, so focus on finding which one works best for you. And, if you’re the cowgirl in this position (and you definitely should at least try it once) don’t be afraid of getting grindy—that’s what will help your partner have fun if you have one of those special strap-ons with clit stimulation on the inside.

Obviously this is varsity level strapping

 “Even as Fiona was getting used to the sensation of wearing such a thing, something she’d never done before, Veronica was busy mentally checking off things on her list. She pushed Fiona against the pillar, fell to her knees, and began giving the most lurid blow job Fiona could have imagined, taking the enormous, red phallus in her mouth with inexperienced verve. The strap along the back, just above Fiona’s ass, scraped and rubbed against the wall with every plunge and sloppy sucking motion Veronica made. There was little in the way of physical sensation to the blow job for Fiona, but the visual, auditory, and energy components shifted her thinking from survival to sexual ends. When Veronica had satisfied her curiosity, she’d climbed Fiona’s body, her lips made rosy from the work, an ineffable smile on her face, having checked off something she’d never done and didn’t want to die without knowing. “Some of the girls talk about how great that is,” she’d said. “I had to know.”
            “Oh,” Fiona had replied breathlessly.”

This excerpt comes from The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head in which Fiona and Veronica are sure they’re about to die, and start doing some naughty things so they at least don’t die wondering. And, this probably sounds strange to the uninitiated, right? Two women, one toy, nobody getting anything physical out of the act of a blow job, so what’s the point? Sure, there aren’t pleasure nerve endings in the strap-on or the mouth really, and even if you have one of the aforementioned strap-ons with the internal clit stimulation, this isn’t really the best way to make use of it to be honest, so why would you try this?

I’m a firm believer that the largest erogenous zone on a woman is the mind. Sure, sure, the clit is a wonder with twice as many nerve endings as the penis, and don't get me wrong, that should be taken care of too, but mental stimulation makes all the other erogenous zones run when it comes to women, and that is what the point of this is. It can be sexy to watch as the receiver and naughty to try as the giver. There are the functional benefits of spit being a good lubricant as well, and unlike straight girls, you can quit whenever you want since there isn’t a possibility of completion (for reals, I get all I need to from this on either end within 30 seconds so don’t feel like this needs to be a big part of anything). Try it for fun, not because it’s a technically sound way to stimulate anyone, but because it might hit a mental note with one or both of you, and as I’ve already pointed out, this won’t hurt your lesbian credibility because strap-ons aren’t cocks.

See how feminine these things really are?

 The last example comes from Lesbians in Space:  Astral Liaisons in which Captain Val and her girlfriends (yep, plural) are in a position called exponential decline by the mathematically inclined one:  “The angle Jesse took with the toy, timed to perfection on every thrust, pressed down against the soft little bundle of nerves inside Val with expert precision. The pleasant sensation of being filled quickly built to something else. The swell of desire building inside Val grew exponentially with every subsequent thrust across her g-spot until a rolling wave of gratification washed through her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. She barely recognized her own muffled groan of pleasure with her mouth still firmly suctioned to Jane’s clit.”

Judging from some of my stories, the assumption out there is that I probably have lots and lots of group sex, but the truth is, I’ve never had so much as a single threesome. You know that triple kiss thing mentioned in Fabled Fang Girls? Yep, never done that either. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a good fantasy or fun fodder for reading material. And if you are one of those people having lots and lots of group sex, that’s cool too.

The information to take away from this scene, which is basically just modified doggy-style with a little oral sex added to the other side, is the g-spot stimulation. Not everyone has a highly sensitive g-spot or can climax from g-spot stimulation alone, which is fine, but it’s pretty darn hard to stimulate the big G without help from a toy, and strap-ons with the right positioning can do a fine job of it. This is going to require communication to get right though. Being on the receiving end of this, you have to let your partner know when she’s found the right spot since, as I pointed out before, we’re all angled a little differently. This doesn’t have to necessarily be an, “Oh, right there!” declaration, although it certainly can be. If you want to work out nonverbal cues like the ladies in the scene did, that’s fine and will help your partner learn to read your sexual arousal far more quickly than trial and error will. This isn’t really an effective position for clit stimulation for the person going strapped, even with the specialized kind. But that can be a good thing too since the person wearing can focus entirely on finding the right angle, which I’m guessing is something straight girls don’t get as much of. So if you’re the one going strapped, focus on finding the exact right way to do this by taking cues for when you’ve hit the right angle to find the g-spot.

Those aren’t the only instances of strap-on use in my fiction, but I thought those were the most useful teaching examples. Hopefully you’ll have a few new tricks to try with your strap-on, or good motivation to go out and buy one if you haven’t already. I’m encouraging my readers to post in the comments how these things worked for them, or if you want to post your own techniques and tricks as well, feel free to do that!

How Soon is Too Soon?

Another quick retread of an article from the dating website I work for addressing the complex lesbian issue of U-Hauling! Original post here on 8-17-2011

From a really charming greeting card company with LGBT options

A recent letter I answered on the Q and A section of my web column addressed in very limited detail how soon is too soon to move in together. This actually matched up with a conversation I had with a friend recently about her and her girlfriend’s desire to start having babies. Something she said kind of stuck out to me: they’d been together for six years and it was about time they started having kids. Wait, what? Six years is the alarm clock for children? Do we start sperm donor shopping at about five years and six months? What happens if a couple makes it to seven years without procreating? Are one or both ladies labeled an old maid? It all seemed a little arbitrary to me.

In the aforementioned letter, the submitter said she’d moved in with her girlfriend because it was more convenient to see each other that way. I may have been a little outraged in my response, but I think my outrage was warranted. Of all the reasons to move in together, I think convenience is even sillier than your relationship meeting some arbitrary time stamp set up by the particular Sapphistocracy in your area (I made that word up—please use it until it catches on). I’ve started to wonder how many of these relationship norms and benchmarks my own relationship violates. We’ve been together going on three years, have been living together for about two of those, and we’re light-years from even deciding which one of us would get pregnant, let alone looking for genetically favorable strong swimmers from a willing donor. This all begs the question: how soon is too soon?

There is of course the silly joke about U-Hauling (there’s even a word for it) where any relationship that doesn’t result in moving in together within the first few dates is viewed as a failure. Let’s move past that though and take a realistic look at some real reasons for and against moving in and how soon is really too soon.

First and foremost, let me reiterate the advice given in the Q and A section a few weeks ago for those of you who may have missed it. Moving in for convenience, to save on gas or commute time, for the insurance benefits, a shared wardrobe that doubles your options (I am so freaking jealous of you ladies with girlfriends the same size as you who get to do this), or any other reason that really boils down to ‘it makes things easier’ is all a bad idea. We have enough trouble with bed death and girlfriends becoming roommates without actually using reasons tailored to having a roommate thrown in the mix. You move in with your girlfriend when you want to move your relationship to the next level and you’re both ready for the lifestyle change. You do not move in together to save on rent and split the cost of milk.

 

Addressing the concept of time stamps is a little more difficult, because these are the demands brought on by peer pressure, both external and internal. You look around at your circle of friends and you see Katie and her new girlfriend Beth are moving in together and they’ve only been together six months, but you and your girlfriend have been together for eight months and you’re not sure you’re ready yet, but they’re both going on and on and on about how great it is, so you…? Let’s just stop right there, and let’s not even touch how much pressure you’d feel if you and your girlfriend had been together for a year or more and still hadn’t moved in together. Seeing the pace others are running around us can encourage us to try to run at a pace we’re not built for, not ready for, and will exhaust us long before it does them; I don’t actually run, but my girlfriend does and she said this metaphor works. The point being, your relationship is different than your friends’ relationships, but, more than that (and this is where most people get tripped up) your relationship with your current girlfriend is different than any other relationship you’ve likely had. You can’t move in with Sara at six months just because you moved in with Jennifer at five…remember how that turned out? (I totally hope I freaked someone out by using the name of their current and ex-girlfriends in that hypothetical example. If I did, send me an email telling me to get out of your head).

“How soon is too soon?” is a question only you and your current girlfriend can answer. It can’t be based off the people around you or their opinions on how long is long enough. Lesbians are entirely too reliant on the advice of their friends when it comes to making life choices and that advice usually comes from a place just as confused and lost as the one you’re currently in. If someone is saying X number of months or years is the right time to do something in a relationship, take a step back and realize your relationship isn’t on a timeline. To use a sports analogy, since I’m dating a stem and I’m a total daddy’s girl I know all of these cool parallels between dating and sports: your relationship is like softball or baseball—there’s no time limit on things, just benchmarks to be met; your relationship is not like a soccer match where the time can run out on something and there’s very little scoring going on (hopefully that’s true on the second part).

Move in together when you’re ready to take that next step. Understand that your relationship is unique even within all the relationships you’ve already had. And never move in for simple convenience. Together we can make that U-Haul joke go away by making good relationship choices and increasing our chances for longer-lasting unions.

Fabled Fang Girls

She's only evil on the outside...and probably on the inside too.

I coined a phrase for my most recent collection of short stories. I had to. There just wasn't a word befitting the rabid (bloodthirsty even?) female fans of vampires in existence right now. So I made one up. Fang-girl! It's a play on words for "fanboy" which is a description of an obsessive male fan of nerd culture. With all the "Team Edward" nonsense around Twilight, I felt we needed a similar name to reflect our fanaticism. I can just hear my readers now, "But Cassandra, you're a lesbian goddess who has repeatedly pointed out that Robert Pattinson looks like he probably smells really bad" and you're right, I am a lesbian goddess who has said that on many occasions, but just because I'm not into Stephanie Meyer's version of a "vampire" doesn't mean I'm not into vampires. The vampires I'm into don't walk around in the daytime seducing boring high school girls (or play baseball in thunderstorms like doofuses) and they all have breasts--the last part is probably the most important bit.

See what I mean about the breasts part being important?

So in celebration of my newest collection released under the Sapphic Pixie Tales label, I'm going to give you a sneak peak at one of the stories along with the usual rundown from the book jacket. Enjoy!

Fang Girl - noun – a female fan of vampire media who might be a little obsessive in her fandom.

[Derived from modern slang fanboy but always in reference to females. First used by Cassandra Duffy in Fabled Fang Girls]

Cassandra Duffy, an emerging voice in lesbian literature, releases her third short story collection, Fabled Fang Girls in a transparent attempt to satisfy the vampire addiction of her readership. Eight short stories of vampire lust and love revisit characters from Demons of Paradise and introduce new stories of lesbian sex and relationships.

“The Princess of Castle Eclipse” – a beautiful fairytale of doomed love in the tragic tradition of European fables.

“The Witch of Vigil’s Grove” and “Return to Vigil’s Grove” – two pieces of an upcoming novel that offer a chilling introduction to the town of Vigil’s Rest where a vampire haunts the forest, luring young girls to their doom with promises of forbidden love.

“The Last Best Tip” – the critically acclaimed novella finds a new home in this collection. Grifts, swingers, a sassy but irresponsible vampire and her underachieving girlfriend occupy a clever urban fantasy landscape where even eternal children of the night have money problems.

“From Nightshift to Swing Shift” – Vendela and Brooke are back! The vampire fashionista and her Australian girlfriend have hit a lull in their peculiar relationship and turn to a beautiful Persian executive to inject some much-need passion back into the couple’s sex life to keep out the Alaskan cold.

“Lovely Predators” – a brief look at the upcoming Noire style mystery novel of the same name that follows a talented Los Angeles homicide detective as she investigates a series of grisly murders that keep leading her back to the doorstep of her new girlfriend who is keeping a dark secret.

“Undead Housewives of the Other Orange County” – a farcical take on the Real Housewives television shows that interjects vampires and humanity to create a humorous story about what might really take place between bored housewives.

“Chains of Command” – a mixture of Duffy’s remarkable science fiction, paranormal romance, and hardcore erotica. Chains follows a vampire captain of a cutting-edge space warship who must break the will of her new executive officer during a long, deep space raid, but quickly finds the tables turned on her by the fiery and reckless, Commander Crash Langford.

Cassandra Duffy floods this collection with vampires, sex, horror, romance, action, and humor in ways that truly display the depth and range of her remarkable talent. Sapphic Pixie Tales is proud to offer this outstanding collection of vampire fiction from the 21-year-old lesbian author.

 

What surprised Brooke most about her relationship with Vendela wasn’t the length of it as she had a pretty high threshold for relationship bullshit; she was most astonished by how much she actually cared for Vendela. Her former boss and live-in girlfriend of more than a year was obtuse beyond reason and completely inept at expressing even simple things in a clear way, which pretty much precluded her feelings ever being communicated. The amount of guesswork required of Brooke to simply have a concept of the status of their relationship was profound. Still, for reasons she couldn’t articulate or fathom, she adored the peculiar little vampire fashion designer.

“Brooke,” Vendela said, snapping Brooke out of her dazed state. “Do you see anything that might fit Denise for the…what is she going to?”

“Possibly,” Brooke said, answering the first question first, “and she’s going to the Daytime Emmys.”

Brooke had lost all interest in fashion design after their second trip to Barrow Alaska. It wasn’t the mind-bending sex on the colossal bearskin rug that prevented her from wishing to one day be competition for her girlfriend, it was the fact that at her very best, which Vendela managed to draw from her, she was still miles behind what the petite vampire designer could manage with ease. So she shifted from design to fashion stylist; actresses, models, and singers flocked to her clientele, rightly assuming she would have exclusive access to Vendela’s fashion lines.

“Babe,” Vendela said, “you know how I feel about…television award shows.”

The short, clipped, peculiar way of pronouncing things was something that had once irritated Brooke to no end. Once Vendela started calling her ‘babe’, Brooke found she rather liked the way Vendela spoke.

“I know,” Brooke said. “I normally wouldn’t even ask, but I feel so bad for her. She’s on something like her third divorce.” Brooke selected a possible gown, holding it up to herself out of habit. The slinky, off-white cocktail wasn’t dressy enough for even a Daytime Emmy award show and was probably two sizes too small for Brooke’s personal use. “I swear my ass has doubled in size over the past few months,” she grumbled. Her statement, while an exaggeration at double, wasn’t entirely untrue. She’d lost a lot of her surfer physique by spending too much time working and too little time wave riding.

“I think your ass looks…like an apple,” Vendela said, crossing the cavernous clothing vault in a flash to stand behind Brooke. Her hand caressed down the small of Brooke’s back, onto the curvaceous ass in question, and gave it a playful squeeze.

The vampire trick of moving faster than the human eye could follow used to give Brooke the willies. After a year of Vendela doing that exact thing to her, she wondered if she would ever be able to date a human who couldn’t instantly cross a room to give her a compliment and grope combination.

Brooke replaced the dress on the rack and sighed. She was supposed to be shopping for Denise, but the more she looked at the beautiful clothes in Vendela’s line, the more she wished she could shop for herself or dress up the designer. Her overly elfin girlfriend adored the chunky jewelry, oversized sunglasses, and baggy clothes that made her appear even tinier, while Brooke loved seeing her in more fitted, daring attire. Their little tête-à-têtes usually ended up with Vendela wearing whatever she wanted and somehow Brooke ended up in the tight clothes.

“Award season is coming up,” Brooke said. “Care to be seen on the red carpet with me wearing something like this.” Brooke searched the immediate area as quickly as possible, finally deciding on a taupe straight cut gown that could easily be taken in to find Vendela’s lithe frame.

Vendela smirked, knowing the game well, and came back with a black, bow bodice pencil dress. “And you can wear this…or nothing…babe.”

Brooke stared down an entirely unreadable Vendela. She wasn’t smiling, wasn’t frowning, wasn’t breathing, wasn’t doing anything really aside from holding out the black dress that Brooke knew would flaunt every flaw in the figure she wasn’t particularly happy with anymore. The more she stared at Vendela, the more the latent vampiric power of mind control pushed a fine mist over her mind. She knew Vendela wasn’t doing it on purpose—it was just something that happened when she really wanted something. It had actually been what originally brought Brooke to Barrow, what made her pack her strap-on, and what started their whole tryst. Vendela hadn’t consciously exerted her mental control on Brooke those first few months. In fact, as she would explain later, she thought she was the seduced until Brooke had told her about the mental haze surrounding the majority of their feverish lovemaking. If Vendela’s mind was pushing out to cloud Brooke’s thinking, seeing her in that pencil dress was something the little fashionista desperately wanted, but wasn’t socially equipped enough to ask for.

“Deal,” Brooke said, much to Vendela’s surprise. Brooke took the dress from her to give it a closer look. “It’ll have to be let out quite a bit though.”

“No, it won’t…babe,” Vendela said. “It’ll be major, I promise. Trust me, I am an excellent judge of…your figure. I think you might have been Kim Novak in a former life.”

“Kim Novak is still alive,” Brooke said.

“Really? That’s…ba-na-nas.”

“Vendela?” Justin called from the doorway. “There’s a problem with the fit models not quite fitting.”

Vendela rolled her eyes and handed the dress to Brooke. Justin, the assistant that replaced Brooke, was a masterful organizer, a driven personality, an A-list gay in the fashion world, and a stunningly beautiful vampire. Brooke liked everything about him except his personality. There wouldn’t be any chance he would steal Vendela, but he also kept her running at a driven pace leaving little personal time.

Vendela vacated the room to check why what she was calling a size six didn’t fit an industry standard size six model. Justin, perfectly frocked in a vested pinstripe suit, made his way to Brooke to inspect the dress she was holding.

“60’s retro is in ever since all those TV shows decided we should glorify the days of segregation, lung cancer, and alcoholism,” Justin said. “The only positive side is the fashion.” He took the dress from Brooke and gently held it up to her with a far more objective eye than Vendela. “You’ll need to have the top padded. Or you could just get a boob job like everyone else in LA.”

“I’ll consider all the options,” Brooke said. The thing she disliked about Justin was how much of what he said turned out to be double-speak. The comment about a boob job could have been idle conversation, or it could have been something Vendela had said to him and he’d strategically decided to let it slip. Brooke could never tell.

“If you did, you might reignite the old sex life.” Justin hung up the dress. His comments weren’t usually that blunt, and it took Brooke aback a little to hear such candor from the fabulously catty vampire assistant.

“What do you even know?”

“I know she’s not having sex,” Justin said, “and now I know you aren’t either.”

It was true. Combined, their hectic work schedules left little time for intimacy and the time they did spend together had felt a little flat over the past few months. As much as Brooke hated to admit it, she probably needed Justin’s help.

“What do you know about fixing it?” Brooke asked.

“Besides the boob job?” Justin made a dramatic show of looking up while he thought. “You could always swing.”

For some reason Brooke’s mind immediately jumped to a swing-set and only then transitioned to imagining one of those hanging-from-the-ceiling sex swings. Clearly reading her thoughts, Justin intervened before her flawed train of though could evolve further along an incorrect line.

“No, silly, not literally,” Justin said. “I meant going out to another partner and then coming home to be reclaimed by her. You clearly need more sex than she does and it’s a fairly common vampire practice to send our little playthings out to other vampires so we might recapture them. Call it a latent hunter instinct.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Brooke said. Even still, the notion had set a fire in her that she was a little ashamed of, a little intrigued by, yet completely unwilling to verbally admit to.

“Is it?” Justin said, raising a perfectly manscaped eyebrow.

She knew he could read her mind. He knew that she knew that he could read her mind. The fact that they both pretended this wasn’t the case was out of simple human politeness, which made the socially acceptable white lie seem so hollow.

“Would Vendela even be interested in something like that?” Brooke asked.

“Maybe you missed the execu-bitch vice president of operations she hired,” Justin said. “I think she’s been planning it for months but hasn’t worked up the nerve to mention it to you.”

Brooke had indeed noticed the gorgeous Persian vampire Vendela had hired. Shabnam was elegant, officious, and a little like Vendela in that she was difficult to read. Brooke also wondered if she wasn’t a slightly more stereotypical vampire considering she dressed only in black and wore her eyeliner on the heavy side. Still, she was attractive, and some of her comments directed at Brooke could have been mistaken for flirting when fitted to the bizarre Vendela standards. Brooke began to wonder if peculiar, petite, and vampiric was becoming her type.

“How do I go about setting something like this up?” Brooke said.

“Tell Vendela,” Justin said. “She’ll fill you in on the rest.”

...and that's all you get. Of course, if you've read Demons of Paradise, you'll recognize Brooke and Vendela, but you'll have to buy Fang Girls to find out what happens next!

Pet Problems

Get ready for cute pictures of women and cats.

 Hi, Cassandra,

I enjoyed reading your post on Internet Etiquette. Lots of good advice. I wonder if you could comment on a problem I've experienced over many years of trying to find Ms. Right. I happen to have asthma, which means I can't spend a lot of time around pets. I'm good for about an hour and then have to leave. It seems like just about all lesbians have pets, often cats, which I love but are particularly bad for my asthma. This makes it particularly hard to meet anyone. I've tried dating women who have pets, but it forces the other woman to always come to my place. We can never be in her home for more than a few minutes. It really creates a problem, plus I would feel guilty asking someone to give up a pet that they love. Do you have any suggestions on how to get around this problem? I state clearly in my lesbian personals profile that I have asthma and can't be around pets, but I get very few contacts and the ones I do get are either living in another state or have several pets. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Amorous Asthmatic

Most of the time I can fix or drastically improve a situation for a letter writer when they ask for advice with some easily followed advice, but this one really had me scratching my head. Yep, us gay girls love our pets. Maybe it’s the feminine urge to nurture and when you have two women in a relationship you end up with twice the pets to divvy up when the relationship ends so we all have two cats and two dogs collected from three ex-girlfriends. Or maybe it’s a surrogate child thing because most of us didn’t get knocked up in high school. I don’t know. But you’re right; most of us do have at least one cat or one dog.

Sadly, this is not going to be an easy fix. My first piece of advice is medical, for which I am grossly unqualified, so verify everything I say on this part with a real medical professional as I am just a romance author and that comes with very little medical training. According to WebMD, asthma attacks caused by pets are usually an allergic reaction. So, I think you need a patchwork test to see exactly what you’re allergic to because cats might only be part of a larger problem that could include dust and other environmental stuff aggravating your asthma. Patchwork tests are where they draw a grid somewhere on your body (when I had mine it was on my back) and then they jab you with a little poker thing and dowse the wound with allergens to see what your body freaks out about. Once you know what all you’re allergic to, adding a daily antihistamine to your asthma medications might really help.

This looks more painful than it really is.

There’s also the possibility of getting your body accustomed to a particular cat owned by a particular girlfriend, which involves slow acclimation. People can train their body to get used to a particular cat over time. Don’t just dive in and go right to her place. Have her bring a cat item to you, spend some time with it, and slowly work your way up to spending time around her cat. Increased exposure over time might desensitize your body to the specific animal even if you remain asthmatic around cats in general.

Cute girls and cute cats just go together.

There are also hypoallergenic breeds of cats out there that don’t seem to cause as much respiratory problems as other cats. There’s a list here that’ll help you figure out what breeds might be less problematic for you. I know it’s a strange concept to try to narrow your dating pool based on what breed of cat a woman owns, but it might be a helpful new parameter to work in there.

If none of this works, and it might not since as I previously stated I’m not a doctor although I kick ass at Operation, you may need to expand your search area. This is something I always encourage within the gay and lesbian community. As lesbians, we are a tiny tiny tiny fraction of society—3% according to a 2006 census (gay men are 7% according to the same census, which is where the whole 10% of the population figure you hear people throwing around comes from—I personally think both of those numbers are probably low and will go up as more and more people feel comfortable with coming out to census takers). The point is, your odds of finding an available, attractive, non-pet owning lesbian within driving distance of your house are pretty remote. I always make the joke that so many lesbian relationship aren’t about Miss Right they’re about Miss Close Enough in the area, and you can participate in that if you want, but with your asthma, that might not be the best way to go. I have a friend who has found a lovely relationship with a woman in Boston even though she’s in Los Angeles. They Skype, Facebook, talk endlessly on the phone and visit each other once a month with plans for the Boston girl to relocate to Los Angeles eventually (probably for the weather). The internet has made this possible in ways it never was before. So, yeah, you mentioned there are girls that seemed interesting in other states; maybe it’s time to give them a shot.

This could make for some amazing van art.

Moving for the right girl isn’t exactly a strange new concept. For fuck’s sake, I moved from California to Florida to stay with my girlfriend when she relocated for grad school. If you find the right woman, geography shouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle. Even if you didn’t have the pet/asthma problem, I would still encourage you to expand your search radius. 3% of the population—we don’t have the same dating pool as straight girls. Odds are, Miss Right doesn’t live near you.

There are probably other options like air purifiers and such, but I’ve heard those aren’t tremendously effective when it comes to cat dander. Judging from the two cats my girlfriend and I own, you’d probably have to have an air filter the size of a refrigerator to clean the air of their fuzz in just one room. I swear I vacuum twice a week just to keep our carpets the right color. So don’t listen to the people who claim it’s just a matter of cleaning up better after the cats during the times they’re shedding. Two facts:  cats are always shedding and you can’t clean microscopic things with any sort of efficacy unless you live in the CDC or a computer chip manufacturing factory.

It's probably homier than it looks.

This isn’t going to be an easy solve. Try the medical stuff to see if antihistamines might help, aim for girls with those hypoallergenic breeds of cats and dogs, and try to acclimate slowly to let your body get used to the particular animal of the girl you’re after. If all of that fails to yield a relationship, consider expanding your search to the entire country with the understanding that we’re too small of a population to date locally very effectively.

Fitness Goddess

Jackie Warner and my girlfriend share similar dimensions.

If you’ve been paying attention to my Twitter feed and Facebook statuses, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been trying to go to the gym more, and have been whining about it pretty constantly. I’ve learned a little something about relationships in the process and want to share it with my lovely readers.

My girlfriend is fond of saying, “you’re skinny, not healthy” which is probably the most accurate assessment of what’s going on with me. Having a Buddhist’s mind for only eating out of necessity and petite Asian genes galore, I have always been skinny. But Nikki is right. Just because I look like I’m healthy doesn’t mean I actually am. I have my weekly trip to Wendy’s. Up until a few months ago I was smoking 3-4 cigarettes a day, which I know isn’t a massively unhealthy amount, but I can’t imagine smoking any amount is a good thing. All of this probably wouldn’t have even been noticeable if I wasn’t dating a fitness goddess. When you’re living with someone who runs 5 miles a day and lives at the gym, you tend to start wondering why she’s never out of breath and a couple flights of stairs kicks your ass.

Another source of epiphany on my lack of fitness is football. I’m in week three now of a coed-flag football league and I’m doing just terrible. It’s a no contact league and somehow I’m always sore after the games (mostly from falling down a lot). This is probably where my Asian genes work against me. Ever hear of an Asian football player? Me neither.

I share similar dimensions with Mulan...or maybe the dragon.

I’ll admit my privilege in this though. I don’t have to work at all to look like I do. I sleep 10 hours a day. I play a lot of video games. My quads (learned what they were called from Nikki, it's the top of your legs) are used almost entirely to support my laptop for writing. I subsist on a diet of Wendy’s, ramen, and breakfast cereal because I don’t really know how to cook. Yet, even with all that, I’ve hovered around 100 lbs since 8^th grade (don’t worry, I’m short enough for that to be well within normal - BMI 20.5). If you think that all sounds fantastic, let me ask you this:  could you put a baseball uniform on and easily infiltrate a Little League team? If your answer was anything along the lines of, “Of course not, I have boobs and hips” you’ve got me beat, because I’m positive I could pull of an Amanda Bynes type switcheroo for the LittleLeague World Series except I’m hopelessly unathletic. The point being, I’m not trying to build the body I have into the body I want. All the exercise I’m doing is only going to change the composition of the same shape I’ve always had; I’m literally exercising to lose my nerd’s lack of stamina. This is probably a strange concept for a lot of women, exercising for functionality rather than appearance, which is kind of a shame, isn’t it? More on that later.

So now I’m trying to go to the gym, which is kind of not what you think. We have a tiny fitness center in our apartment complex that nobody really uses, except for me now apparently. My girlfriend uses the massive athletic complex gym at UCF for real athletes and, while she’s offered to come with me to the free fitness center in our complex, I always tell her I’d rather she didn’t. It’s impossible to go to the gym the 1 hour a day I can tolerate (I get so freaking bored), when the person who is supposed to be your gym buddy could stay there for three hours quite happily. More than that, I’m fairly certain I use most exercise machines wrong the first time, realize there’s no way I’m supposed to bonk my head that many times, and then have to look at the vague silhouette diagrams on the sides to see what I should have been doing. I definitely still have this "please oh please oh please don’t embarrass yourself in front of Nikki" thing that has persisted since I met her. Despite the fact that she could probably really help me in this, being the multi-sport athlete and personal trainer she is, I still really want her to think I’m cool even though I’m really obviously not. This is when I realized my fitness idol and hero was actually my girlfriend. She exercises to be a better athlete and ends up with the amazing body she has because it is functional for what she does. When I realized I was doing very badly in my own sport, I figured out fitness wasn’t something that functioned only for looks, which I already have and exercise wouldn’t change, but should help me do the things I want to do physically. Ladies, look at your own fitness routine and ask yourself, is it helping you do what you want to do? Does it make you more functional or are you doing it in hopes of changing your appearance?

Oh! Yep, I was on it backward.

So the question becomes, how does a couch potato date a fitness goddess? Actually, strike that, I don’t like couch potato. Revised:  how does a bedroom bunny date a fitness goddess? All my exercise usually comes in the bedroom, so this is far more accurate anyway. To this point, she has tried to help me be a better person and I’ve convinced her an occasional trip to In-n-Out won’t kill her girl abs. This is one of those surprisingly complex relationship questions most people probably don’t even consider. A differential in fitness and health goals can really strain a relationship. I mean, she is up at 6 AM every day for jogging, and I’m rolling into bed most nights around 2 AM not to be awoken until noon, which means there are whole chunks of the day where one of us is awake while the other is asleep. My sister says this is completely normal, especially since she’s had her son, but I have the lesbian urge to merge here. I’d pretty much wrap myself around Nikki 24/7 if I could figure out how to manage that without it being socially awkward. I think the answer is incremental change and unconditional acceptance of benign traits. Let me explain that since it sounds all jargony.

In any long term relationship, you’re going to find there are things that don’t match up that can be changed and things that don’t match up that don’t matter. The skill set to develop here is to figure out the difference. When you’re with someone special, you’re going to have this urge to want to be a better person for them, and they’ll have this whole other set of interests and ideas than you, which can end up enriching you as a person if you’re open to trying. You’re not changing to suit them, you’re trying what they like and seeing if it might also be something you like but have never considered. Positive changes in your life can come from other people’s desires for your best interests. Take the smoking thing, if Nikki hadn’t pressured me, I’d probably still be doing it—incremental change. There are other traits though that are basic to happiness and aren’t really harming the other person, but just might not be what the other person would like for themselves. My sleeping in doesn’t hurt anyone. I’m a freelance writer. I can have the sleep schedule I want so long as I’m productive with my waking hours. It doesn’t really hurt me for Nikki to get up at 6 AM since I’m a dead to the world type sleeper, and it doesn’t really hurt her for me to wake up at 11:30 or noon. So we just accept those idiosyncrasies as part of the lovely tapestry that is the other person even though it doesn’t match our own personal preferences. If it doesn’t hurt you or make you unhappy, let it go.

I don’t expect the complaining about going to the gym will leave my Twitter feed anytime soon even as I’m getting into better shape, but hopefully I’ll stop falling down so much during games.

Another Cop-Out Post

I'm not going to make a habit of this...probably. It's just, two good friends from the twitterverse have two new postings of me on their websites at the exact same time, and I feel like I can use this opportunity to shirk my duties as a blogger (didn't think I was going to be that honest, didja?). Seriously though, people. Do want countless new and interesting blog posts or do you want more books, because I can probably do both, but that'll really kill the time I spend playing Xbox and tormenting my cats with a laser pointer. Do you have any idea how not tan I've become since moving to Florida and quitting promo work? I used to be able to stand outside for days on end, in heels, without getting sunburned or sore feet, and now I can't even remember the last time I wore shoes that weren't flip flops. Where was I going with all this...? Oh, right, trying to justify flaking on my blogging duties...again.

So the thing about that is, I did an interview with Amelia for her website Trashy Treasures and I thought it went really well. Amelia James is also an author in her own right in addition to being a delightfully naughty kindred spirit, so you should pop over to the sections on her website where her books are and check those out as well. Her interview with me about "The Gunfighter and The Gear-Head" can be found here:  http://trashystreasures.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/author-interview-cassandra-duffy/

If that was all I had for you this week, I'd say you would be justified in calling me completely lazy. As it stands, I have more, so you should probably downgrade that to mostly lazy. Another lovely kindred spirit of naughtiness and authoring, Blue Sleighty, launched her website My Secret Obsessions for books, and a bunch of my titles found their way onto the list along with a bunch of other really great stuff. It's nice to find myself in some seriously impressive company. Again, aside from just checking out my stuff, which you should, you should also peek at Blue's writing since we are such similar sapphic critters. She's a follower of this blog, so it should be a matter of a couple clicks to finding your way to her blog, and she's far more dedicated to posting than I am. Take a look at her beautifully compiled list here:  http://www.mysecretobsession.com/My%20Secret%20Obsession%20-%20eBooks.htm

Last time I did this shirking thing, I posted a bunch of tumblr-esque photos of boobs I liked, and someone pointed out that I really like boobs. This is true. I do. But it was more a matter of just trying to give something back to my readers since I wasn't going to be giving a real blog post. Seriously though, the vaguely lesbian side storyline, Amber Heard, and boobs were about the only things that kept me watching the Playboy Club for the three episodes I made it through before it got canceled, but I'll skip the gratuitous posting of great boob pictures here since I don't want to seem single-minded.

Instead, I'm posting pictures of female abs, since I like those too...seriously, next week, I'll do a real post. Enjoy the interview, the website, and the abs!

I also really like these kinds of shorts. They're super comfy.

Gwen Stefani has really nice abs, and she's an OC girl too!

Jilian Michaels has really nice abs, and she likes girls, which is always a good combo.

I had this exact Gabby Reece poster on my wall growing up. Took my parents forever to figure out I didn't remotely care about beach volleyball.

And this is what I wished I looked like, but never actually will.

Did everyone notice one of the breasts pictures from last time got yanked by blogger? I wonder if they'll find any of these offensive too. "That is entirely too much navel!"

Modular Dating

So I have some relationship advice columns that ran on my more normalized job for a dating website that I thought I'd repost here from time to time if I thought they were particularly helpful and/or popular since the advice might be good for people in relationships too and a buying a subscription to a dating website just to read my column might seem strange to your partner.

I'm sure my advice works for men, but I doubt many read my blog.

 Modular Dating

Dinner and a movie is a tried and true dating trope because it actually plays on a concept that I’ve been apparently practicing for years (and I just now labeled it, which goes to show how procrastinatory I can be about labels). Modular dating is the simple concept of having individual, wholly functional units of entertainment strung together to allow for continuation or discontinuation of a date with the least amount of fuss or awkwardness. If this all sounds highly technical, don’t worry, I’m a relationship expert, I spent a lot of time in my lab mixing chemicals in a lab coat to make sure it all works before I brought this to you.

We’ve all been a situation where a date was going so well that we wanted it to continue, but, at the end of the listed things set out at the start of the date, we kind of ran out of ideas and the date ended early and awkwardly because we just didn’t have anything else on the schedule, and you’re usually having a hard time thinking straight around the people on those kinds of dates, so thinking of something new wasn’t going to happen. Or, and this is probably more common, you were on an obscenely bad date and you just wanted out, but you’d listed X, Y, and Z as the things you were going to do at the outset of the date, and you both end up trudging through all those activities, even though neither of you want to, simply because that was the schedule and nobody wants to be rude. There’s a fix:  modular dating.

Regardless of who is planning the date, and as lesbians we have a lot more leeway with this than straight girls who are still at least somewhat required to defer to the guy as not to threaten his masculinity (ugh), both people can have a secret treasure trove of fun activities that can easily be transitioned to if a date is going well. If you’re the primary planner of the date, I would recommend at least four, with the last few getting increasingly close to your home if things end up going very well with the final stop being your bed/hot tub/front porch. The key is to only let her know about the first two or three ideas at the outset. This way, if the date is going badly, you can bail after the proscribed schedule without hurting anyone’s feelings. If things are going well and you suddenly pull out these great ideas of further fun activities, she’ll think you’re a bundle of impetuousness and fun when in fact it was all careful planning.

Confused yet?

 Let’s look at an example of what I mean…

Angela and Lisa are on their third date, but haven’t had sex yet. The first few dates went well, and they’re getting increasingly close. Angela plans a date that involves an early dinner at a sushi place (good for conversation) and then mini-golf since Lisa was on her college golf team (fun physical activity with lots of opportunity for contact). Now, if these two activities go well, and Angela has ever reason to believe they will, she planned two secret activities to follow if Lisa is interested in continuing the date. The third one is checking out Angela’s favorite independent bookstore, which has a coffee bar and a fantastic poetry section, as a quiet, intimate activity and is a scant few miles from Angela’s apartment. After the bookstore, depending on how things have gone, there are three options:  continue to the fourth activity, end the date, or head back to Angela’s place. Let’s say it went well enough to not end the date yet, but not well enough to start comparing appendectomy scars just yet. At that point, Angela could suggest the fourth activity, which is getting gelato at a stand she knows about and then walking by the waterfront to watch the sunset (obviously the most romantic of the plans should go last). At the outset of the date, Lisa didn’t necessarily have to know there was a third or fourth plan involved. If she had other plans for that night, they could have skipped the bookstore and walk without anyone feeling like they were canceling. But, because they were having such a great time and as a Romance writer I like writing about happy couples falling in love and having lots of sex, we’ll pretend like they needed the third and fourth activity to deepen their connection, which ultimately put the conclusion of the date at Angela’s apartment.

This is obviously the fifth step if everything goes well!

The key to planning good modular dates is thoughtfulness. The activities should be varied, tailored to the specific lady you’re dating, and require very little in the way of commuting since nothing kills the mood like a two hour car ride to an amusement park that turns out to be completelynot worth it. In the example above, Angela tailored the date to Lisa’s interests (golf), showed off aspects of herself (the bookstore), had a wide variety of activities (sitting/eating/talking, walking, reading, competition, and romance) so the date wasn’t just one note, and each element was not predicated on the one before it, making them all easily removable. This last part is important for if you’ve misread something. Let’s say mini-golf was a hit, and Angela had every reason to think it would be, but Lisa expressed absolutely no interest in the bookstore, then it would be a simple matter of moving on to the waterfront walk and gelato rather than simply ending the date for want of something to do. And this is one of the really nice features of planning modular dating—flexibility.

See how important flexibility is in all forms?

Now, you might be thinking, “Cassandra, you’re so scientifically gifted and have such nice teeth, but what if I’m not that good at thinking of activities?” Firstly, thank you, I can’t possibly be complimented enough on my teeth, and secondly, make good use of the internet. A simple Google search of “stuff to do in…” and then insert your location will bring up page after page of things people have tried and will usually include a corresponding Yelp rating (a review site where independent users can describe their experiences) to let you know if it’s worth the time. The internet is a powerful tool and will not only tell you what there is to do, but will also tell you how fun it is and will draw you a map to get you from one part of the date to the next without so much as a hiccup. There is far more going on around you than you probably realize. The added benefit to doing this is that there’s more going on than she’s probably aware of either so you’ll end up looking hooked up and on scene when you take her somewhere she’s never heard of and you both have a great time.

Modular dating can help lengthen out the good dates, cut short the bad ones, and will never leave you wondering what to do next. Be considerate, be creative, and be internet savvy in your planning.