I really like sex.  (I suppose you already know that.)  And, I really like products that add to my (our) sexual pleasure.  One of our favorite toys is the “Love Swing“.   Basically the Love Swing is a shortened cot-like bed that can be suspended at any height, at any angle.  In other words, she is completely weightless, floating mid-air, while being comfortably supported.

You might wonder why I’d like my partner to be weightless?  Because with no weight there is practically no effort devoted to fighting gravity, no effort to hold ourselves in one position or another, all our effort can be focused on our pleasure.

In our favorite position Kat relaxes into the Love Swing and we adjust the height and angle.  I stand between her legs and with the tiniest movement of my hand, gently rock her yoni back and forth onto my lingam.  I feel wonderful sensations that keep me aroused, close to “the edge” but not climaxing.  Meanwhile, each movement draws my lingam back and forth on her “sacred spot“. With no gravity to worry about the pleasure just goes on and on.

No sore back,  no huffing and puffing, beautiful eye contact, lots of laughter.  Who could ask for more.  Give it a try - The Love Swing - and mention you heard about it from Chip and you’ll qualify for some special treatment.

Don’t know if you saw this, but Royal Phillips Electronics - makers of shavers, electric toothbrushes, TV sets and more - have introduced a line of what they call “Relationship Care” products, and what I call sex toys.  Selling in the big drug stores - Boots, Selfridges - as well as on Amazon/UK, Phillips has introduced a line of intimate massagers.

 

Apparently consumer research in the UK indicated that there’s a big market awaiting the company that treats sex as normal and natural as tooth care.  Hooray!

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin is 5 months pregnant.  Sixteen-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears (Brittany’s sister) got pregnant.  18-year old Oscar-nominated actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who starred in movies such as Star Wars Episode III and The Whale Rider, was only 16 when she gave birth to her daughter Felicity-Amore on April 25, 2007.

Here’s the good news, according to Advocates for Youth, since 1991, U.S. teenage pregnancy, abortion, and birth rates have declined steadily in every age and racial/ethnic group. Teenage birth rates declined in every state as well as in the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Research indicates that sexually active teens are becoming more effective users of contraception and that more teens are choosing to remain abstinent during early and middle adolescence. Nevertheless, the United States continues to have higher rates of teen pregnancy, birth, and abortion than other industrialized nations.  Most teenage mothers come from socially and/or economically disadvantaged backgrounds; adolescent motherhood often compounds this disadvantage.

Here’s the bad news, each year, approximately 750,000 to 850,000 teenage women in the United States experience pregnancy. Seventy-four to 95 percent of teen pregnancies are unintended.

What’s a parent to do?  Dr. Debra W. Haffner, former President of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), in an article titled: Facing Facts:  Sexual Health for American Adolescents has some great ideas. She suggests that parents of sexually healthy adolescents:

• Demonstrate value, respect, acceptance, and trust in their adolescent children.
• Model sexually healthy attitudes in their own relationships.
• Maintain a non-punitive stance toward sexuality.
• Are knowledge about sexuality.
• Discuss sexuality with their children.
• Provide information on sexuality to their children.
• Seek appropriate guidance and information as needed.
• Try to understand their son’s or daughter’s point of view.
• Help their daughter or son gain an understanding of their values.
• Set and maintain limits for dating and other activities outside of school.
• Stay actively involved in their son’s or daughter’s life.
• Ask questions about friends and romantic partners.
• Provide a supportive and safe environment for their children.
• Offer to assist adolescents in accessing health care services.

Hi, I’m back.  Sorry if you missed me.  I took a bit of a summer break.  Ahhhh!

I went back to Ashland, OR to see some more Shakespeare at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF).  My partner and I saw 5 plays in 5 days including an amazing production of Othello.  Othello is primarily about jealousy.  It is the story of an embittered military aide, Iago, who nurses a vengeful hate for his commander, Othello.  By clever innuendo and artful lying Iago convinces Othello that Othello’s beautiful new bride is having an affair with Othello’s second-in-command.

Sitting in the audience I felt an almost overwhelming impulse to shout at the actors, to tell Othello to stop listening to Iago.  The audience around me, so uncomfortable with the ruin that Iago is creating, started hissing and booing at him, like children at a Saturday matinee movie.  Being a tragedy, it does not end well.

At the end of the play Othello describes himself as “one that loved not wisely but too well.“  But I think he really means that he his jealousy made him stupid (not wisely).  That his failure to believe in love, his need to feel secure, his own doubt about his worthiness drove him to kill that which he most loved.

And that idea - that in the absence of our own sense of self-worth, in our fear that we really can’t control our beloved and therefore can’t rely on them, in our fear of being abandoned, we kill that which we love - is as real and compelling today as it was 400 years ago when Will Shakespeare first penned it.