I got a cock ring for my birthday a few years ago. I had never considered using a sex toy for my own benefit before. Sex toys are an implicit taboo for straight men. It's become generally accepted that women require vibrators and dildos for their own self-pleasure (how could a woman get off without a phallus?), but a man with a sex toy is a greasy kink monster.

One of the benefits of being in a relationship is that you are given leeway to experiment with new ways to arouse yourself and your partner. Sex toys lose their fetishistic edge and become more functional and exploratory. They aren't lurid artifacts but new intermediaries with which to break new ground. Being single is a different matter. How can you reasonably try and break new ground with someone when you're only vaguely acquainted with their body and person?

I used to tease a woman I was seeing that we could use a truck battery and alligator clips together. "It'll be out thing, just for me and you," I told her. "We're not using alligator clips," she would tell me with a deadpan glare.

I've never used an electrical current during sex, and my offer wasn't serious. But the irony wasn't meant to be totally dismissive either. I know what's felt good to me in the past, but I can't say what will elicit that reaction tomorrow. In the worst of times, we get so familiar with ourselves, and the bodies in bed with us, that we forget to move forward. We tell each other myths about "good" sex and "bad" sex, and then assemble a mountain of books, websites, seminars, and television shows that create a rubric for what that is.

Sex is both mundane and ecstatic. It is fundamentally unknowable. The more familiar it becomes the more it loses its defining quality. All of which is a lot to saddle a lover with, servicing the mundanity and ecstasy or our bodies. Can a person's imagination really be so expansive as to keep the act a continual discovery day after day or year after year?

I also own anal beads, though I have never used them with anyone else. I'm not sure I like using them on myself. I like the attempt, it's an experience I've never had before. I fumble and do things awkwardly; it's not the most intuitive of processes and is even less so without an extra set of hands. But it's an adventure, something I'm happy to have embarked on.

At what point does the introduction of sex accoutrements become acceptable with a new partner? Is there a dictum requiring polite society to avoid anal beads until the third date? Is the use of a cock ring a masochistic affront to a man's hetero-virility?

I bought a woman I had dated a vibrating dildo once. It sounds like an easy task, but I wandered around the back of the sex store for an hour debating different shapes, sizes, and functions. Would it have been rude to buy a big ten-inch dildo? Would it have been sad to present her with the narrow five inch instead? We weren't seeing each other anymore so I felt doubly at a loss. Whatever my choice, it would be up to her to make the best use of it. My seat on the exploratory committee had been abdicated.

I settled on something pink and soft, with a gentle motor and an approachable length. I played it safe, not wanting to push the line with something crass and vulgar. Later, she told me she had used it for a few months and thrown it away. I should have gotten her something that connected to a truck battery. Or better yet, we should have gone shopping together, before we stopped having sex.

Previous Posts:

Date Night: Kissing in the Rain

Sex Education Machine: Abstinence, or Waiting is Easier Because...

Sex Machine: The Funny Thing About Handjobs

Love Machine: The Three-Year Itch

Sex Machine: Show Me Your Penis

Date Machine: The Gun Show or Is That All You Got?

Love Machine: Morning Breath Kisses

 Date Machine: Making Your Online Dating Profile

Sex Machine: Sex with 19 Year-Olds

Love Machine: Making A Scene

Nerve Confessions: Oh Hai, You're Pregnant

Sex Machine: Don't Forget to Masturbate

Love Machine: My Mother

Love Machine: Thanks But I'll Pass, or Handling Rejection

Naked Machine: Buying New Underwear, or Sex in a Dressing Room

Date Machine: Look Ugly in a Photograph

Love Machine: On Your Own, or Moving On

Love Machine: Going to Bed Angry

Love Machine: The Hooker on the Corner