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Sexy gifts for your sweetie
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The next time you have a hankering for eating, say, beef stroganoff off that spot between your lover’s breasts, you’ll be happy you gave the gift of PVC bed sheets. You could even follow up with cherries jubilee — minus the flames — and still not damage your pricey Swedish foam mattress because the PVC sheets will stand up to pretty much anything you’d want to have on your skin. UK-based Between the Sheets charges $114.54 for a queen-sized fitted sheet.
Now imagine some point in the distant future ... Antiques Roadshow is taping its 10,000th episode in the local convention center. Your grandchildren have dragged in a strange-looking piece of furniture, a stool, sort of, an open square with four short legs, and a sling suspended underneath. “My grandmother had this stored in her attic, and we have no idea what it is,” they will say.
“Well,” the future appraiser will say, “what you’ve got there is a queening stool, used by people for centuries to provide, umm, lip service. It cost your grandparents about $400 in 2005, but at auction, I’d estimate it would sell for $10,000 because of the historical interest in how desperate people have always been to try just about any new way to get off.”
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Liberator The Liberator Wedge |
The Liberator Wedge, sold through Amazon.com (in “health and personal care,” ahem) for $65, is somewhat less esoteric.
It is just what it sounds like, a wedge of foam rubber covered with cloth. You could use pillows to achieve many of the effects, but the maker also sells enhancements like “The Ramp” ($130) that can create some interesting combinations.
Movies and books
All these toys are very modern and techno, I grant you, and I like gee-gaws as much as the next guy, but I wonder if your sex buddy might not enjoy something a tad more subtle, even cerebral.
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Image Entertainment "Ecstasy" by Hedy Lamarr |
If black and white just doesn’t do it for you, look up "Body Heat," "Jamon, Jamon," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," or "In the Realm of the Senses." Snuggle up on the couch, turn on the DVD player and see what happens.
Don’t forget books. There are some terrific examples of erotic photography out now. We vote for "Helmut Newton: Big Nudes," but you and your lover should shop around. Come to think of it, just shopping for them could be erotic.
Finally, may we suggest a gift of Victorian erotica? Buy three to make a collection. "The Pearl" (from an erotic magazine of the day, not to be confused with John Steinbeck or the poem of the middle ages), "The Romance of Lust, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure" and "The Altar of Venus" are all good choice and available from book-sellers everywhere, usually for under $10 in paperback. Not only are they fun to read, but they remind us that there really isn’t much new under the sun when it comes to sex.
Pour a couple glasses of wine and take ’em into the bathtub, maybe with that rubber duckie.
Brian Alexander is a California-based writer who covers sex, relationships and health. He is a contributing editor at Glamour and the author of "Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion" (Basic Books).
Sexploration appears every other Thursday.
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