Can a leopard change her spots?

Well, now that my outbreak has cleared up, Holden and I have had a chance to try out some of the goodies we ordered from Condomania.com

First of all, let me remind you that I have very limited experience with condoms and stuff, so some of what I’ve learned you may already know.

We tried the female condom the other day and it was, well, rough going. But it was the first time using one, so I’m going to give it another chance. First of all, insertion is NOT as easy as they make it look in the picture. They tell you to squeeze the inner ring so it becomes insertable like a tampon. What they don’t tell you is that with the lube that comes in the package and the extra lube you put on because you really like lube is going to make that little ring almost impossible to grip. You pinch it and think you’ve got it secure between your fingers and you slowly position your hand between your legs and POP it slips out of your grasp and is a ring again. So you go through the whole process again, gripping the ring, getting it between your legs, hoping against hope that the tube part hasn’t gotten twisted along the way because you can’t pay attention to that part while you’re concentrating on keeping the ring pinched. I wonder if somebody will come up with an applicator for this type of condom that holds the ring in a tube for insertion until you take the tube out and let the ring pop open once it’s up by the cervix. Speaking of that step, my fingers aren’t very long and they barely reach my cervix as it is. So sticking my fingers inside the condom to make sure the inner ring was positioned properly over the cervix was not very reassuring. All the handling I did with my fingers left more lube on my hands than on the condom, so when Holden put his penis in, it was slippery enough to be comfortable, but the condom stuck to his penis and started moving with him, rather than staying anchored inside me while he moved inside the condom. Also, I kept feeling like the outer ring was going to be pushed inside me as well, so I had to keep stopping him and touching the ring to make sure it was still in the right place. Perhaps more lube would have helped the sensation too because it really felt like having sex with a sandwich baggy. Cleanup and disposal were like any condom, easy enough and fairly mess-free. Though they tell you to twist the tube of the condom before pulling it out to trap the semen inside. Well, you can twist, but then as soon as you pull, the pulling motion untwists the condom, so it’s a little harder to keep it fully closed than they’d like you to believe. All this sounds a bit harsh, I know. I really think the female condom is a brilliant invention and long overdue. I’ll give it another try and let you know how round two goes.

A bit more fun was the strawberry scented condom, one of a variety pack we got free with our order. I took the opportunity to learn how to put a condom on. I’d seen it done, but never done it myself. Also, I’ve never given a blow job with a condom, so that was a new sensation for me. The loose rubber at the tip (the “reservoir” I guess it’s called) tickled the back of my throat when I went a little deeper, so that took some getting used to. Also, I kept getting the sensation that if I sucked too hard it’d pop off and get stuck in my throat, but I held on good and tight with my hand, so I quickly got over that. Normally when I give Holden blow jobs I do use my teeth (very carefully, not in an unpleasantly painful way) but I was unsure whether that would be wise with a condom. After a couple little tests of exposing my teeth to the rubber and feeling how my teeth were actually too dull to do any damage to the condom in the gentle way I was using them, I felt better (and so did Holden! *wink*) One really nice thing about using a condom for oral sex was that I didn’t have to pause to swallow when he orgasmed. I have no problem swallowing, but I do have to interrupt my rhythm to let my mouth and throat coordinate the swallow. Not really a big deal, but it was nice not to have to do that this time, and I think Holden would agree. When it came time to take the condom off, I was actually more nervous than I had been about putting it on. The idea of rubber pulling against the skin did not sound pleasant, so I asked for a little extra guidance and Holden showed me how to do it so it wasn’t painful.

Last night we tried the Elexa Natural Feel condom from Trojan. It is latex, but textured in such a way that it really does feel more natural. It also has practically no smell. This will probably be a new favorite of mine. Holden said it was good for him too.

We have yet to try the Trojan Supra polyurethane and the dental dams we got from Smittenkittenonline.com But I’ll be sure and report back when we do.

Happy safer sexing!

-Grace

My package from Condomania.com arrived today! YAAAAAAAY!!!

Here’s a picture, and… ummm….. bye! -Grace

Holden and I have been doing a lot of talking and reading about this whole herpes thing. We both realized how little we knew about herpes and about STD protection. See, when we first got together we used condoms a few times. But we decided that since we both had clean histories and I was on the pill we could stop using them. Holden had been tested for STDs after his last partner and I had only ever had sex with one other guy who had also been a virgin when we were together, so we calculated our risk as being very low with each other.

Even when we did use condoms though, I was relying entirely on Holden’s knowledge to make sure we were using them properly, and that wasn’t smart on my part. I realize now that it’s just as important for a woman to know how to properly put on and take off a condom. Even in the couple of times we did use condoms together, one slipped off unexpectedly.

So Holden and I have decided to take this opportunity to learn as much as we can about how to properly use condoms, dental dams, female condoms, and other safer sex techniques.

Right now, Holden doesn’t know whether he’s infected with herpes. Since we don’t know, we’re going to take precautions to make sure I don’t pass it along to him. From what we’ve learned from my doctor and from reading things online, there isn’t really a reliable way to test for herpes unless you’re actually having an outbreak. Since Holden hasn’t shown any signs of an outbreak, we’re going to wait a little bit to have him tested. Meanwhile, I’m looking at another 8 days of treatment with Valtrex, by which time my outbreak is supposed to be finished and Holden and I will have some serious catching up to do.

To that end, we went on a little shopping spree on a great website called Condomania.com. We ordered female condoms, male condoms, and flavored condoms. We’re going to order dental dams from another website, smittenkittenonline.com. They have more variety for dental dams.

And here is a little shameless plug for Condomania.com: Their website was fun, accessible, and super informative! They describe the fun qualities of each item in equal proportion to its protective uses, they compare one product to another, and the site is put together in a very friendly format for people new to safer sex. Smittenkittenonline.com is similar, though they have more of a focus on sex toys and games.

There is still a lot of frustration and pain and side effects from the Valtrex, but having something to look forward to when this outbreak is over makes the time go faster.

-Grace

Like I mentioned before, I was raised Catholic. To some extent that colored how my mother discussed (or rather, DIDN’T discuss) sex with me. To understand my sexual education, you must first understand a bit about my parents.

My parents were born in the 50s baby boom and grew up in the 60s. They grew up about a block away from each other their whole lives, went to the same Catholic parish, the same Catholic grade school and high school.

The way my mother tells the story, they never had pre-marital sex, which I don’t doubt. They also had a lot of friends who were into drugs and had a lot of promiscuous sex. But the way Mom tells it, she and Dad stayed out of it for the most part. A few of their friends went to Viet Nam. My dad was too young to go. He got his draft card, but by the time he’d graduated high school, the war was over and his number had never been called up. Nevertheless, the urgency to get married was strong, and a couple months after my mom graduated from high school, they had a beautiful hippy wedding with lots of hippy music and a hippy priest. They were set to be on the road to Catholic wedded bliss.

They waited six years to have their first child (me) and during that time they had a lot of marital problems. Apparently Mom was a little frigid, and Dad didn’t have the patience or understanding to help her overcome it. Instead he turned to porno mags. When she found his stash of them, she made him throw them out. She never got over that first feeling of betrayal, and as the two of them got older she regretted more and more having gotten married so young and with so little experience.

Mom’s parents never talked about sex. Sex was not considered sinful in their household, so long as it was between married couples. Mom herself was the oldest of nine kids, so obviously, Grandma and Grandpa shared a healthy sex life of their own. But when it came to actually talking about sex, it just wasn’t done, and so when the time came to talk to me about sex, the words just wouldn’t come, and so they didn’t come until I was sixteen years old.

That’s not to say I wasn’t learning about sex before then. I was sexually curious from a very young age. I learned how to masturbate before kindergarten and did it fairly frequently. My method of masturbation was perhaps a little unconventional. I would often read a book while sitting cross legged on the floor. I realized that it felt good when the binding of the book rubbed up against my crotch, so I started doing that on purpose. When my mom realized what I was doing, she sat me down on the couch and explained that “what you’re doing when you put a book down there has to do with sex. Daddy and I are concerned that you might hurt yourself, so you shouldn’t do that anymore.” I have to give her credit. She didn’t try to shame me out of masturbation. She didn’t tell me I was dirty. She took issue with how I was doing it, but considering her own upbringing, I have to say that was pretty enlightened of her. Anyway, I kept on masturbating, just in my room.

Mom dealt with her sexual frustration with Dad by reading romance novels. She didn’t hide them from view. She kept them in a reading rack in the bathroom among the Reader’s Digest and sections of the newspaper. She’d spend a long time in the bathroom, reading those books and probably masturbating. I didn’t know what those books were like, and until I was seven or eight I never bothered to open one and read it. I remember the first time I did, though. I had just gone to the bathroom myself and was still sitting on the toilet when, bored, I decided to pick one up and flip through it. I came to the juicy bits and started reading. I liked what I read, even though I was very puzzled by it. What did it mean when it said, “he entered her?” And then another puzzling thing: After I was done reading, I felt like I needed to wipe myself again, even though I already had. Must have started sweating, sitting on the toilet so long like that, I thought to myself as I wiped. After that I started sneaking Mom’s romance novels up to my room to study the juicy bits and try to figure them out.

We got health class in sixth grade, when they’d take the boys in one room and the girls in another room and explain puberty. We girls learned about menstruation and maxi pads and tampons. I still don’t know what the boys learned about.

In eighth grade, we finally got sex education in biology class. It was a short unit, two weeks long during which we spent about three or four days watching The Miracle of Life or whatever that standard, vague, video was about sex and childbirth. Even so, I entered high school having never seen a penis that wasn’t flaccid. All the pictures showed a flaccid penis. When we were finally showed a diagram of an erect penis in high school anatomy class, I still didn’t quite understand it.

When I was sixteen, my mom was driving me home from a piano lesson and after a long pause in our usual conversation, she said, “Grace, you know about intercourse, right?” Was this a trap? Was she trying to test me? I decided to be cagey. “Yes.” She swallowed hard. This was clearly very difficult for her. “And you know about condoms and birth control pills, right?” I had learned a little about these in sex education. “Yup.” “And you know that if you were ever thinking about having sex you could come talk to me, right?” Yeah, right. “Sure.” A very long pause. “You know, you can’t trust condoms,” she suddenly stated. “Really? Why?” “Because they don’t always work. They tear really easily and they can slip off. You just shouldn’t trust them. They don’t really protect you from much.” I wanted to ask how she knew that, but I thought better of it and just let her keep rambling. “And you know, if you ever did want to have sex, I’d want you to be on the pill.” I was impressed at her free-thinking here. Birth control in any form went against the Church, and here she was advocating breaking the rules to protect my best interest. Cool! “So, are you thinking about having sex?” Only every second of every day! But realistically speaking, considering the status of my social life, “No. Not yet.” “But you’d tell me if you were?” Not sure why I’d want to do that, but “Sure, I think so.” “Ok, good.” And we spent the rest of the car ride in complete silence.

It wasn’t until I was seventeen that I had my first boyfriend and we did little more than make out. I had my second boyfriend during the three months of the summer between high school graduation and going off to college. By this time I was about to turn eighteen and was thinking about having sex. When I stopped in at the hospital clinic to ask a nurse about birth control, they took down my name and address and sent a bill to my house. My mom saw a bill from the hospital with my name on it, freaked out, opened it, and freaked out again when it said, “Emergency room services.” She confronted me about it and I told her that I was there asking about birth control and she freaked out again. So much for that previous invitation to talk about getting the pill.

So I entered college with a bad self esteem problem, an acute lack of education about all things sexual, and a prescription from Planned Parenthood for Ortho Tri-Cyclen. I didn’t want to repeat my parents’ mistakes and I wasn’t sure how yet, but I was going to build my own sexual destiny.

-Grace