Reviewer Greta Christina has worked in and around the sex industry for over a decade writing about it, editing books about it, and living it. She edited Paying For It, a collection of articles by all kinds of sex workers: dommes, escorts, peep show girls, T-girls. Her novella called Bending is out in Susie Bright's book Three Kinds of Asking For It (published by Simon & Schuster and can be found at amazon.com). In response to overwhelming member requests for reviews of sex toys, sexy films, and other sex whatnots, Ms. Christina brings her girl-about-sex wisdom twice monthly to ALT.com. You can check out Ms. Christina on her web site, gretachristina.com.
So I've been looking over my past reviews over the last couple of years, and it occurs to me that I almost never review gooey stuff. I've reviewed dirty movies, dirty books, dirty magazines, dirty comics, and of course sex toys by the score. But somehow I've neglected the all-important category of lubes and massage oils and other lovely goopy substances that you smear in or on each other when you're doing it.
I'm not sure why I've neglected them. My Lovely Testing Partner and I use this stuff all the time. I love giving her massages -- she's a babe, how could I not want to get my hands all over her body -- and a nice-feeling, nice-smelling massage oil that's not too perfume-y definitely adds to the atmosphere. And lube is such a natural part of our sex life that we just reach for it without even thinking about it. Maybe that's why I haven't been writing about this stuff -- lubes and massage oils are such a deeply ingrained part of our sex lives, it doesn't occur to me to even think about them anymore.
But there are so many lubes and erotic massage products on the market -- with more coming out all the time -- that it really doesn't make any sense to ignore them. So today I'm doing a round-up of three different gooey sex substances -- and I'll keep rounding up more over the next few months.
This batch is all available at Good Vibrations (two out of the three are brands specially packaged for GV) ‒ but while the Good Vibes seal of approval definitely increases the odds that we'll like a product, it doesn't give us an automatic guarantee. We still had to smear the stuff on our bodies ourselves.
GOOD VIBRATIONS MASSAGE BAR
This stuff kicks ass.I was somewhat skeptical when I first picked this up. It seemed kind of gimmicky, and kind of pointless. Why would I want to massage someone with a hard bar of something that looks like soap, when I can use a nice gooey massage oil?
But it kicks ass. Trust me on this. I may even like it better than our regular massage oils -- and our regular massage oils inspire a passionate devotion in me that I'm not convinced is entirely healthy.
What makes it so special?
It is SO much less messy than massage oils. That's the first what. The one thing I don't like about our lovely massage oils is that they're messy.
They get on the sheets, they get in your hair, the oil gets all over the bottles (we've actually had to throw away massage oil bottles because they'd gotten too sticky and gross to even pick up). And if you spill them, you're fucked, and not in a good way -- pretty much everything stops while you deal with the big puddle of oil in your bed.
With the Massage Bar, you get none of that. It's very self-contained, and very neat. Despite my original skepticism, it isn't hard like a bar of soap -- the texture is firm, but it softens up into a creamy, buttery texture when it's rubbed onto warm skin. But it is solid -- and that means a whole lot less mess.
And a lot less mess isn't just good because it's less messy. It's good because it makes the transition from massage-y foreplay into full-on sex a whole lot smoother. It's lovely to be able to give a massage and glide right into some serious fooling around, without having to deal with the drippy massage oil bottle and the oil getting all over everywhere. (Do be aware, though: Even though it's not an oil, the Massage Bar is still basically oil-based -- which means it'll still wreak havoc with latex. So if you're using latex condoms or gloves afterwards, or even latex sex toys, you'll still need to wash your hands first.)Neatness counts, of course -- but it doesn't count for everything. The neatness wouldn't matter if the bar wasn't good to massage with. But it's great to massage with. It slides over your skin with a smooth, creamy stroke, and it leaves your skin silky soft, wonderful to touch and caress.
And it's made of cocoa butter and peppermint, so it makes you smell like a fresh-baked brownie or an Andes mint. If you or your partner think chocolate is an aphrodisiac, you're going to love it.
Now, it does sink into your skin more quickly than regular massage oil, which means you have to re-apply it more often. But that's not actually a bad thing. We personally found it to be an actual plus, an important part of the whole "less messy" concept. When the Massage Bar melts into your skin, it's less like oil and more like creamy butter… and it really sinks into your skin, with very little residue. So when we were done with the massaging and ready to move onto more X-rated activities, we didn't feel all oily -- just soft and sexy.
I review a lot of sex products, and I like a fair number of them a fair amount. But because I get so many, most of them eventually get forgotten, and they often wind up in the milk crate I call the Island of Misfit Toys.
Not this one. This is one I'd actually buy again, with my own money. And for a sex product critic, that's saying a lot.
GOOD VIBRATIONS ALL-NATURAL MASSAGE LOTION
The Good Vibrations All-Natural Massage Lotion, on the other hand, was a bit of a disappointment. The blurb on the bottle says that it's "designed to stay on the surface of the skin for a long-lasting deep-tissue massage." That was the big selling point of this lotion over our regular oils and stuff: the idea that you wouldn't have to keep slathering it on.Well, yeah -- it stayed on the surface of the skin all right. It's just that that didn't turn out to be such a great thing. Regular massage oils and creams (the good kind, anyway) sink into your skin, making it all soft and silky. This massage lotion just sort of sat there on the surface of my Lovely Testing Partner's lovely skin -- and on my own lovely hands, for that matter -- getting sticky and tacky and a little bit gross.
So while it did stay on the surface of the skin longer than regular massage oil, it didn't do so in any useful way. I mean, I wasn't timing the massage with a stopwatch or anything… but it didn't seem like the lotion lasted longer than regular massage oil, or had to be re-applied less often. If it did, it wasn't noticeable. And the stickiness made the transition from Sexy Massage to Sex a lot more awkward -- basically everything had to stop while I got the gunk off my hands. Not a world-shaking crisis, but a bit annoying nonetheless. This one I'm going to pass on.
SENSUA ORGANICS LUBE
Now this stuff… this is interesting.It's not exciting or anything. But I actually like that in a lube. When it comes to lube, I don't want it to tingle or heat up or have an interesting flavor. I just want it to work. I want it to (a) be slippery, (b) stay slippery, (c) have a pleasant texture, and (d) have a non-existent odor and taste (or as close to non-existent as you can get).
And Sensua Organics does exactly that.
If you've ever used Probe… well, imagine Probe, but in a super-duper premium variety. Imagine Probe, but without the stringiness, and without the tendency to get sticky. That's what Sensua Organics is like. And it's pretty darned cool.
As it happens, my Lovely Testing Partner and I do like Probe. We like that it's relatively flavorless, and we like that its consistency is so much like actual pussy juice. But more importantly, it doesn't irritate my LTP's rather sensitive tissues ‒ an extremely crucial issue for us, as you might well guess. And until we tried the Sensua Organics, Probe was the ONLY lube we'd tried that she didn't find irritating. So the Sensua stuff was a real find for us. It has all the qualities we like about Probe -- and none of the qualities (like the stringiness and the stickiness) that annoy us.
I am a little irritated that it says "homeopathic" on the label -- partly because I think homeopathy is bullshit, and partly because even the bullshit term "homeopathic" means something rather specific and I'm quite sure it doesn't apply to this lube. But whatever. If I stopped using every oil and cream and goo that had unsubstantiated New Age claims about aromatherapy and cleansing energies and whatnot, I'd have a pretty empty bathroom cabinet… and a very empty bedside table. I live in Northern California. I can cope.And while I realize that the definition of "organic" is getting less and less meaningful, I will admit that the idea of an organic lube does have its appeal. Fuck your girlfriend and save the planet! I can get off on that.
So would we get this stuff again?
See, this is where being a reviewer -- and thus not having to pay for samples to try out -- puts me at a disadvantage. I liked Sensua Organics.
I liked it a fair amount. My partner liked it a fair amount. But the stuff is pretty damned pricey -- it costs $25.00 for a 4-ounce bottle, and that ain't cheap.
And because I got it for free, it's very hard for me to judge whether I think it's worth the extra money… or whether I'd just stick with Probe, which is almost as good at less than half the price.
I guess we'll find out when the bottle runs out.
You can visit Greta's blog: [extern url='http://gretachristina.typepad.com' target='_blank' text='gretachristina.typepad.com']
or visit her web site:[extern url='http://www.gretachristina.com' target='_blank' text='gretachristina.com']
