Pulse Queen review: Yes, Your Rumbly Majesty!

It’s always an event when Hot Octopuss releases a new sex toy, and the Pulse Queen external vibrator is a winner! Rarely does a new sex toy charm me this thoroughly.

 

Why do I love the Pulse Queen?

First and foremost, I love it because it’s rumbly — deeply rumbly! — and it stays rumbly even on the highest of 9 speeds. It’s also super strong. I consider myself a power user, usually requiring the highest speed. But with the Pulse Queen, I don’t need to go past level 6 — it’s that powerful.

The experience is exquisite. The whole vulva reverberates with sensation, and I feel it deep in my body, not just surface level. The secret is the combination of rumble and oscillation, which is more intense than simple vibration. The technology is the same as the PulsePlate Technology™ in the Pulse penis toys which has delighted many a frenulum.

You can also enjoy seven patterns, some quite unusual. Sometimes I start with patterns for a tease, but when I’m ready to get serious about going to my happy place, steady pulsing gets me there. Your experience may vary, of course. Feel free to contribute your thoughts in the comments.

 

Ergonomic, oh yes

The Pulse Queen is also ergonomic for seniors in all the best ways:

  • Shaped for targeted clitoral stimulation and more. The “bulb” extends out for pinpointing, circling, or edging onto the clitoris; clamping between your thighs for all-over vulva stimulation; or pairing with a dildo for vaginal + clitoral delights. Explore, experiment!
  • Good for arthritic wrists. The handle is long, slim, and curved, making it easy to hold. Vibrations are only minimally transmitted though the handle.
  • Large, Raised Controls are easy to see (no need for glasses) or feel even with eyes closed.
  • Instruction booklet with large, clear diagrams illustrating everything you need to know — no words required.

Bonus points

  • Completely waterproof.
  • Made of body-safe silicone. Use with water-based lubricant only.
  • Black satin storage pouch.
  • Easy USB charging (see photo for insertion point for pin).

Not just for vulvas!

The Pulse Queen is marketed to vulva owners, but if you’re partnered with a penis owner, share the joy! As Shamus MacDuff discovered,

My partner told me of a new sex toy she wanted to try on herself. She said its name is Queen and it’s designed for vulvas so I assumed it would be for her pleasure alone. Was I ever wrong! After enjoying it on her own parts, she applied it to mine. First she ramped up the vibrations on my balls, then my shaft, and finally my frenulum. This produced pure ecstasy and a wonderful orgasm. The Queen works beautifully for penis owners too!

 

 

 

Purchase the Pulse Queen from Hot Octopuss — and take a look at their other fine products before you check out. Shamus MacDuff and I have  been reviewing their exceptional vibrators for penises and vulvas for years. Read our reviews (keep scrolling and click “older posts,” because there are many). They’re a terrific company, too, focused on sexual pleasure and health for all bodies.

 

 

Why don’t I review sex toys more often?

I’ve been reviewing sex toys from senior perspective for more than 14 years, and I admit I’ve become a little jaded. These days, I turn down more offers of review products than I accept. Even when I request one, a review isn’t guaranteed.  A new vibrator needs to offer an exceptional or novel experience, or I don’t want to spend your time and mine on a review. Know that if a product jumps all my hurdles and ends up with a rave review, my body, brain, and extensive experience have collaborated on that celebration!  Enjoy!

 

Come Together by Emily Nagoski

Emily Nagoski at Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections

by Emily Nagoski, PhD

Reviewed by Mac Marshall

 

What is the key to passionate sex over the long term? Frequency? Orgasms? Novelty? Monogamy? Being a “skilled” lover?

Wrong, says Emily Nagoski, PhD in her new book, Come Together: The Science (and Art) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections. Her goal is to give us the key to long-term satisfying sex. She writes,

Great sex in a long-term relationship is not about how much you desire sex or how often you have to do it. It’s not about what you do, in which position, with whom or where or in what clothes, even how many orgasms you have. It’s whether or not you like the sex you are having.

 

Pleasure Is the Measure” is a major theme of Come Together.  Pleasure is all about “how much you like the sex you’re having.” Most of the book teaches how to create access to pleasure with a long-term partner. Mutual admiration and trust are essential to this creative process.

Most of us seek both connection and pleasure in sexual relationships. But the excitement we feel when a relationship begins often fades as time goes by. Partners in committed relationships such as marriage frequently drift apart sexually. Typically, this is due to work pressures, the demands of family, and our physical changes as we age. Nagoski gives us helpful guidelines to revive and maintain connection and pleasure for the long haul.

Two chapters focus on what she calls “your emotional floorplan.” She bases this on the dual control model that she introduced in her best-known book, Come As You Are: turn-ons—the accelerator—and turn-offs—the brakes. The floorplan consists of seven emotional spaces that affect your sexuality: lust, care, play, rage, panic+grief, fear and seeking. She offers advice on how to navigate these emotional states as we construct a safe space with our partner for mutual sexual pleasure.

When people “come together” in partnerships Nagoski finds they seek:

  • connection,
  • shared pleasure,
  • being wanted by another,
  • freedom to feel full immersion in an erotic moment.

These are especially pertinent for relationships between seniors. Aging usually changes our needs for erotic connection. It is potentially empowering. For example, Nagoski observes:

[Aging provides] a context that encourages you to explore. Try new things. Shed all the preconceived ideas about how sex “should” work and experiment with all the ways it can and does work for you and your partners, in the bodies you have right now.

 

 Come Together centers on persons of any gender in long-term relationships. She shows us ways to create partnerships that sustain a strong sexual connection. The partnership characteristics she focuses on are:

  • they are friends
  • they prioritize sex
  • they pursue what’s genuinely true for them—what works in their unique relationship—rather than accepting other people’s opinions about how they’re supposed to do sex.

These characteristics flourish by avoiding “the desire imperative” and “the sex imperatives”:

  • “The desire imperative” is the notion that we should feel a “spark” of spontaneous craving for sexual intimacy when a relationship begins. And if we don’t continue to feel that sparky desire, we’ve failed. The desire imperative pooh-poohs planning or preparing for sex, and if we and our partner don’t just spontaneously want each other effortlessly, we must not want each other enough. Against this “mess of wrongheadedness,” Nagoski centers pleasure as the alternative measure of sexual well-being.
  • “The sex imperatives” that endanger lasting sexual connections are many, including these:
    • the coital imperative (penis-in-vagina sex)
    • the variety imperative (manual, oral, and anal play as well as PIV)
    • the performance imperative (enhancing your sexual skill set)
    • the monogamy imperative (you should only have one sexual relationship at a time)

Fixation on any or all of these can thwart success in building lasting sexual connections.

 

Change is an unavoidable given in life and relationships. Among the changes most of us encounter are illness, pain, and aging. Nagoski writes,

 The key to sustaining a strong sexual connection over the long term is to adapt—with confidence, joy, and calm, warm curiosity—to the changes brought by each season of our lives.

To join together in a successful sexually rewarding long-term partnership, Nagoski champions trust, admiration, confidence and joy. She gives these tips for achieving mutual lasting pleasure and connection:

  • Seek authenticity.
  • Plan for and embrace the changes that will always occur.
  • Find adaptations and adjustments that work for your unique situation.

Just as Nagoski’s Come as You Are is a ground-breaking book for women understanding their sexuality and achieving sexual pleasure, Come Together is the book you need to enrich the sexual joy in a long-term relationship. Read it — your sexual relationship will thank you!

 

 

Purchase Come Together at your local independent bookstore or order from Bookshop.org or Amazon.

 

 

Mac Marshall, PhD is a retired anthropology professor, researcher, and author who is delighted to explore sexuality studies at this time of his life.

 

 

Interview with Ann Anderson Evans, author of The Sweet Pain of Being Alive

photo Ann and Terry

cover Sweet Pain of Being Alive

 

I never worried that Terry would leave me. Having married in our sixties, we felt we’d captured an unexpected shower of fairy dust. For all our fourteen years together, we frequently joined hands for a warm, smiling moment. We were so lucky to have each other!

But one night, he did leave me. He placed a plastic bag over his head. The thin kind used to bag vegetables in the grocery store.

 

So begins The Sweet Pain of Being Alive: A Memoir of Love and Death by Ann Anderson Evans. Why did her husband Terry die?

“People are not always, maybe not ever, what they seem,” writes Evans. In The Sweet Pain of Being Alive, she unravels Terry’s pain and expands her own understanding of gender identity, shame, marriage, and the facades we build.

Evans was willing to share some thoughts with us here:

 

Q:  Ann, The Sweet Pain of Being Alive, deals with the death of someone you loved who had a secret. Why was it important for you to reveal what Terry had kept hidden?

photo Ann EvansI wanted to honor what Terry had gone through as it became clear, after his death, that he yearned to be a woman. “Imagine what it took just for him to get through every day,” one person told me.

The secrecy around his gender dysphoria contributed to his suicide, and I refuse to keep this toxic secret. I want to lend my voice in support of people, especially those of my generation, who feel they must hide who they are.

 

Q: What did you understand about Terry’s gender dysphoria while you lived together?

There were many signs, but I didn’t know what I was looking at. I was shocked when I found a box of women’s clothes under the bed, for example, but didn’t know what to make of it. He also didn’t have the kind of sexual drive men usually have. But he was so much more than sex for me that I was willing to adjust to that, without realizing it was a symptom of dysphoria.

 

Q: This was more than cross-dressing. You say he wanted to be a woman, yet he kept that secret, even from you. How far do you think he wanted to go?

Terry didn’t realize how much transition would entail. Just wearing women’s clothes is barely a beginning. He would have to learn how to dress, do his hair, walk, and laugh. Men pretty much walk where they please. Women don’t. He’d have to develop the protective sense that women have as they move through the world. This is difficult choreography. He knew he would likely lose a lot, possibly including a job he loved and even his marriage, Maybe he didn’t want to risk that.

 

Q: What do you understand now that you didn’t before?

Terry never sat me down and said, “Ann, either I die or you become a lesbian,” but if he had, I think I would have tried to adjust, though I’m not sexually attracted to women. His transition would have required me to make deep changes in myself that I had not agreed to. I don’t know how that would have played out. I had not calculated the demands of transition on the person’s partner.

All the transgender people I know have been uncomfortable in their body from childhood. It is a condition as old as humanity. The challenge is not for them to pretend they are as we want them to be, but it is for us to make space for them. The acceptance of gay marriage and other deep societal changes prove that this can be done.

In my experience, there is a refreshing insouciance to transgender women. They’ve been raised as boys, had their fights in the schoolyard, been in the competitive locker rooms, carried expectations of professional achievement. They have an often humorous sense of the arbitrariness of many of our cultural habits. If we started out with the attitude that “Every member of the tribe counts,” then transgender people would be free to create roles that we have never imagined.

 

Q: How are you now?

Suicide is very common, yet the shock of it doesn’t wear off easily. There is an element of betrayal—a loved one has abandoned you.

Every death is unique and revisits every grieving person differently and in its own time. Three and a half years after Terry’s death, I sometimes feel untethered, left behind. This may be true of people whose loss does not include suicide, but in my heart, it is connected.

Joan, as you write in your book, Sex After Grief, widows and widowers are vulnerable for quite a while after their loss. We can be struck out of the blue. My special kind of loneliness is reliving of a situation where I thought I knew where I was, but it was just an illusion.

I have learned that suicide has its own agenda, unrelated to the gender dysphoria, and I do not feel responsible for his death. I know that he never for one minute had occasion to doubt my love for him, and I never doubted his love for me. We both did our best, and I don’t say that lightly. We took the best care we could of each other every day.

 

Purchase The Sweet Pain of Being Alive: A Memoir of Love and Death from Bookshop.org or Amazon. Learn more about Ann Anderson Evans at https://annandersonevans.com/.

Suck or Rotate? Two Strokers, reviewed by Shamus MacDuff

Photo Suction Stroker and Rotating Stroker

 

Suction Stroker (bottom); Rotating Stroker (top)

 

Both the Suction Stroker and Rotating Stroker from The One are penis strokers designed to mimic various aspects of fellatio. The One calls them “The Male Rose,” referring to a popular vulva toy called The Rose. “The Male Rose” brings to mind Juliet’s famous Shakespearean line: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet.”

Our question is, do these strokers offer blow jobs as sweet as a partner’s mouth? Well, no, but they sure do suck and rotate!

 

 

The One Suction Stroker

For this penis owner, the Suction Stroker is the more successful of the two. Its sleeve for insertion has a small 3/4” opening, the size of a penny. Your penis must be erect and lubed to fit through the stretchable opening into the 4” deep chamber. Once you’re inside, three easily accessible buttons control five suction modes, ten vibration modes and the power level. Combine these to find many settings to your liking.

When operating, the toy clamps onto your member. You can even let it dangle hands-free while stroking your nipples or other erogenous zones. It not only sucks on your cock, but when hanging down, it also reverberates pleasantly against your balls.

Caveat: Once you’ve cleaned the Suction Stroker after use be sure to turn the motor on over the sink with the handle pointing down to eliminate any water that hasn’t already shaken out. Otherwise you’ll be sprayed by a tiny opening in the handle end when next you power up to play. The One should have mentioned this.

The Suction Stroker is 8” long and 3 1/2” wide, considerably larger and heavier (just under a pound!) than Body Kisses by Gender X. Even so, the large variety of pattern combinations is delightful, and for me, this “Male Rose” is a “keeper.”

 

The One Rotating Stroker

The Rotating Stroker requires hands-on at all times because it has a 2-1/2” wide mouth that doesn’t close around your penis. It has nine vibrating, rotating, thrusting patterns and a warming function. Frankly, these make me feel as if my member is a stick in a tug-of-war with my dog. Although personally I don’t find the wild thrashing actions sexy, you might like the sensations. A lubed and erect penis is required to successfully access the toy. The Rotating Stroker is 10” long, 2-1/2” wide, and 3-1/2” deep.

 

“Mouths” of Suction (L) and Rotating (R)

Both Strokers

These strokers are rather heavy and cumbersome compared to other penis toys I’ve reviewed. They are somewhat noisy, especially the Suction Stroker when it’s in full “enthusiastic mode.” Each toy comes with a USB magnetic charger, and they hold a charge for quite a while.

The “action ends” that envelop your penis are of silicone. Their chambers contain lots of soft silicone nubbles to surround your cock, which I enjoy. The handles that contain the motors are made of ABS plastic.

Neither stroker is waterproof. You’ll need to wash the silicone chambers of the strokers with warm water and gentle hand soap while being careful to keep water away from its handle.

 

Final Thoughts

I considered titling this review, “The Ray Gun and the Carp.” The Suction Stroker resembles the ray guns of science fiction fame. The opening of the Rotating Stroker looks like the mouth of a hungry carp. The “ray gun” definitely has the means to blow you away, and if you’re not careful the “carp” will swallow you in a thrash. I recommend the Suction Stroker with enthusiasm — the Rotating Stroker not so much.

 

Many thanks to Good Vibes for sending me the One’s Suction Stroker and Rotating Stroker in return for an honest review.

Good Vibes Logo

 

Shamus MacDuff, age 80, was oblivious to the delights of sex toys for penises until age 73. He’s been making up for lost time! Read his other posts at https://joanprice.com/tag/shamus-macduff.