Black Holes and Revelations: Tenga Flip Hole review by Brazilian Maik

Brazilian Maik is one of my awesomest friends who also happens to own a penis. I mention this simply because he has the capability to test certain toys that aren't designed for my ladyparts. We have a tradition of buying each other weird sex toys as birthday presents. I got him the Tenga Flip Hole Black last year, and he was awesome enough to write this amazing review. And yes I titled this post after a Muse song, since I know you love to have theme music:



BRAZILIAN MAIK VS. THE TENGA FLIP HOLE BLACK!!!!

I must say, I have always had a bit of squeamishness about sex toys that are "for men", in the sense of some kind of textured sleeve that you are supposed to stick your dick into in, and then be left with the task of trying to wash out later. I think the discomfort comes from two distinct places, one is that, in contrast to vibrators, dildos, prostate massagers, butt plugs, Wartenberg wheels, etc., most people already have a perfectly effective built in method of applying rhythmic pressure to a penis: their hands. Thus, unless, the experience of whatever masturbatory sleeve is far superior to what can be accomplished with a hand (and let's be honest, unless you seriously lack creativity you can accomplish quite a lot), one has to ask: why are you bothering with the expense, the awkwardness and the clean-up required by such a device? I mean, it starts to smack of some weird fetishized interest specifically in nailing a tube filled with a polymer.

Which leads me to the second source of discomfort, that most masturbatory tube-like devices are stylized to look like some creepily disembodied orifice, an upsettingly featureless vulva, for example, or the genitals of one of those aliens from Avatar. So yes, I've always had this (probably irrational) worry that having such an item would brand me as someone who wanted a cartoonish replica of a piece of a woman's body to acheive something that could be accomplished more effectively without any appliances at all.

This is why I was excited to try the Tenga Flip Hole. It looks much more like something you would find in the engine room of a spaceship than any kind of simulated anatomy, and the complicated interior of silicone bumps, curtains and orbs seems like some kind of thrilling miniature golf course. But, y'know, for your dick.

Ground Control to Major Dong.

Retail price:$74.99

Specs:6 3/4" long, 6" insertable depth, 3" diameter, 1.5 pounds

Appearance:
The Tenga Flip Hole is a largish silicone sleeve that is encased in black plastic, and hinged in the middle. This nice hinged feature means that if you for some reason need to clean it out (suppose some reproductive cells accidentally ended up inside), you can easily open it up and wash it out with warm water. To use the Flip Hole, the idea is that you close the hinged sleeve and then lock it in place with a somewhat flimsy black plastic piece with grooves that slide over the middle of the toy (more on this later).

The interior is made of silicone from a very intricate mold. It's hard to do it justice in words, and it's clear that a lot of thought went into it. Some elements look like stylized versions of things you might find inside a flesh-and-blood vagina, like a textured region that's a bit like the anterior vaginal wall, and a bulbous orb at the end that feels a little bit like a cervix. But there are many features (like a series of zig-zag-y curtains) that don't really refer to anything anatomical and just reflect the creativity of the designers.

I would translate the Japanese stuff if I was less lazy.

Special Features:
The toy employs a simple but ingenious idea to make things interesting: there are three "buttons" on the outside of the case that you can apply pressure to. This has two effects, one is to put pressure directly on your penis, and the other is to create suction if you press on one of the buttons that's further into the toy than your dick currently is.

The Tenga Flip Hole comes with three samples of lube: "wild", "real" and "mild". Lube is really important with this toy, but to be honest I didn't like any of these very much. They began to get tacky pretty quickly once I was going at it.

Orgasmic Factor:
I am strongly divided here. First of all, the interior of the toy is really well-designed, and can generate a lot of really unusual sensations. Also, the ability to apply pressure and suction with the buttons on the outside can be extremely effective once you get the hang of it, especially if you press on the buttons rhythmically. It's certainly possibly to create very intense oral sex-like sensations this way. It feels really good, but it does require a lot of sustained stimulation to get off this way, so a lot of lube is a must. Really a thicker lube than the ones they include is required. I had a couple of experiences with this toy under inadequately lubed conditions and ended up with a bit of chafing.

My biggest complaint is the cheapness and finickiness of the plastic piece that holds the Flip Hole together in the closed position. Given the amount of thought and design that went into the rest of the toy, it's unfortunate that this is so difficult to line up correctly, especially if your hands are slippery. More than once, I had the experience of thinking the toy was really locked in the closed position, only to pop open when the thrusting got vigorous. Once, I managed to pinch my junk in the hinge after it popped open. Ow!

Overall Grade: 6/10
I'd give this a very high rating just based on the intensity of pleasurable sensations it can produce, but the unreliability of the locking mechanism, at least for the unit I had, made me want to stop using it. Even one minor genital injury is one too many! I think if they envisioned making this toy more like a "permanent" product rather than a disposable piece of plastic, it could be fantastic.

Big thanks to Brazilian Maik for the awesome review!

This post was sponsored by EdenFantasys (all opinions expressed are the author's), awesome retailer of vibrators, dildos, and other fine sex toys!

The Crystals and the Golden Age of Abuse Pop

1960s Girl Group music was basically dominated by songs about falling for emotionally unavailable, criminal, and possibly abusive men, and people dying.(I blame creepy Phil Spector's involvement, at least partially.) Which is of course, part of why I enjoy this music, even though it makes me feel creeped out sometimes.

After the whole OH HEY SO WHAT IF CHRIS BROWN ABUSES WOMEN, HE GETS A GRAMMY! kerfuffle, I couldn't help but this of this super fucking creepy song by The Crystals:



It's beautiful song with a horrible message:

"He hit me (da-da-da-ah) and it felt like a kiss (felt like a kiss)
He hit me (da-da-da-ah) and I knew he loved me
If he didn't care for me,
I could have never made him mad
But he hit me (da-da-da-ah) and I was glad"

Let's get one thing straight: abusers gonna abuse. This is not a sign of love. AAAAAHHHHH. Rihanna, please do not cover this song.

So I assumed this song was just a one-off a weird product of a gloriously misogynist era in history(there are a lot of songs about loving bad boys, but they're usually about misunderstood bad boys with hearts of gold who die), but apparently the Crystals ALSO recorded this lesser-known but equally charming song, entitled "PLEASE HURT ME." I do not think this is a song about consensual BD/SM:



She knows the guy is an asshole, but she flat-out encourages him to treat her like crap:

"If you gotta hurt somebody, please hurt me
& if you gotta break a heart, then please break mine
I won't cry if you deceive me
I'll take it with a smile
I know someday you will leave me
But at least I'll have you for a while
So darlin', if you gotta hurt somebody, please hurt me
& if I have to be a plaything, that's what I'll be
Please hurt me, oh please hurt me
Come on & please hurt me
Why don't you please hurt me"

Ok, so here's where things get weird. Both of these songs were co-written by Gerry Goffin and MUTHAFUCKING CAROLE KING. You know, the same Carole King that did a bunch of funky hippy folk jams like "I feel the earth move":



WTFFFFF

OK, apparently Little Eva (best known for "The Loco-Motion," also written by Goffin/King) recorded "Please Hurt Me" before the Crystals did. She apparently worked as a babysitter for Carole King before becoming a pop star, and both of these songs were based on Little Eva's abusive boyfriend, and LE's rationalizations about how HE HURTS ME BECAUSE HE LOVES ME.

Unsurprisingly, legendary abuser Phil Spector produced "He hit me," which is probably why this song is so chillingly beautiful but makes you want to scream "OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING WRONG MAKE IT STOP!!! AAAAHHHHH."

Yeah.

General Update

It's been about a week since I updated to sulk about my taxes, so I figured I should post fun stuff for a change.

PEEP MY NAILS. It's dark purple OPI Crackle over an Essie shade called "Play Date" which I find hilarious for reasons Essie probably did not intend. I think crackle is kind of tacky looking, but I also kind of like it. My friend Femmily met me to get our nails done together, and we split a bottle of Vinho Verde and I gave her some of the vodka red velvet cupcakes I baked for Stricknine's birthday, and it was just ridiculously fun. Wine, manicures, cupcakes and lady friends are some of my favorite things!

UPCOMING BLOG POSTS:

*I will be reviewing G-Side's "The ONE...COHESIVE" album soon because I just can't get enough of this Alabama cloud rap, and I'm totally behind on my hip hop coverage (which is like, what EVERYONE reads this blog for). I was forced to make a Y U NO meme based on their song Y U MAD because I'm a huge dork.

(This is the original song. I love the chillaxing piano intro).

*Brazilian Maik is going to review the Tenga Fliphole next week, unless he flakes, which I hope he won't. Getting people to write guests posts is work, y'all.

*I got my review copy of Tristan Taormino's "Expert Guide to Pegging" from Vivid (which came out on Valentine's Day) which I watched with Stricknine and her gay boy roommate while eating thai takeout and drinking Sangria and I can't wait to review it for y'all because it's AMAZING. (Time, as always, is the issue.)

In other awesome news, I will no longer be writing for Eden Cafe, but contributing content to SexIs magazine alongside luminaries like Nina Hartley and Midori! So woohoo! Also, here's my most recent article on XOJane if you missed it. It's about being my love for Capoeira, despite being SUPER BAD at it! Enjoy!

Middle class, going nowhere fast.

I love Kanye West, and I'm not going to bother justifying it right this moment, other than to say sometimes he just NAILS SHIT. The College Dropout has a couple tracks that capture the shittiness of working in America just too damn well. I posted "Spaceship" from the same album a while back (the song about working at the Gap), but the track above ("We Don't Care") is bittersweet and amazing...Told to make an inspirational song "for the kids" by Bernie Mac portraying a holier than thou Judge Mathis type, Kanye has a chorus of kids sweetly singing "drug dealing just to get by, stack your money until it gets sky high/you said we wouldn't make it past 25, jokes on you, we're still alive." The song is a searing fuck you to the American Dream, the bullshit "by the bootstraps" idea that if you just worked harder...you'd make it. The reality is the folks who work the hardest are usually the poorest.

So, here's my chorus of "We Don't Care":

The second verse is for my dogs working 9 to 5
That still hustle cause a nigga can't shine off $6.55
And everybody selling make-up, Jacobs
And bootleg tapes just to get they cake up
We put shit on layaway then come back
We claim other people kids on our income tax
We take that money cop work than push packs to get paid
And we don't care what people say

I don't talk much about my "day job" on here because that's my private life on a certain level. I compartmentalize it. But for the curious, I've had an underpaid professional job for three years now. And I'm always broke. So I take a million side hustles, paid writing work and other stuff that I'm not going to discuss here, so I can take some deductions and try to afford to pay my quarterly tax payments AND my student loan payments AND my credit card bills (because yes, even though I work full time in an office, I'm still taxed as if I'm self employed). I make enough to live alone, buy Trader Joes wine, and the occasional bubble bar from Lush. I'm "middle class." Sort of. I don't think I could, at the prime of my baby making years, afford to have a kid as a single mother without seeking government assistance that I probably make too much money to qualify for. I certainly can't afford a car, a wedding or property. Though god knows my taxes would probably be more manageable if I had a husband and kids and all those trappings of heteronormative acceptability.

I am single and "middle class." And it's a motherfucking scam. My life is ruled by debt. Fuck you Suze Orman, I don't have an IRA or savings and I don't know if and when I'll ever be able to plan for my future in this way. In some ways I had it easier when I was poor. I took this job after being poor for several years, which meant I could never get ahead because I had all this debt leftover from the poor years, plus massive tax payments on top of it. The freelancing checks get thrown at the quarterly tax payments, only now I owe more money for it.

Seriously, is it any wonder that people deal drugs, cheat on their taxes, and don't report their income from their server and sex work jobs? Playing by the rules is guaranteed poverty. It's not like the rich (with maybe the exception of Warren Buffet) get that way by being ethical.

I feel like the reward for barely scraping my way into the middle class is more poverty. This year I made five times what I made four years ago, before I took this job. But I got charged twelve times more in taxes. So wait, this is "moving up in the world?"

I am in the process of applying to grad school (so I can theoretically make more money in a different field), and found out that I am not eligible for federal student loan grants based on what I made in 2011. Even though at the end of the day, I really don't have much more financial resources at my disposal than I did when I was considered legitimately poor. Middle class just qualifies me for more debt, and the vicious cycle deepens. Treating me like I can afford annual tuition that's twice than I make in a year because I'm not living in abject poverty is bullshit. "Middle Class" is cleverly disguised poverty that winds up screwing you over worse if you were just regular poor, because at least then you could get government breaks on your taxes and would be eligible for certain types of assistance.

I know someone is going to get offended by this essay and accuse me of white privilege and blah blah and I want to say- I fucking know poverty sucks. My mom raised 2 kids as a single mom on $11k a year in a neighborhood where crack deals took place on our doorstep. And I realize that my whiteness undoubtably helped me claw my way to the lower rungs of the middle class in adulthood, but finally getting to middle class really hasn't GOTTEN ME ANYWHERE but in more debt.

I want to make it clear that I'm not a Libertarian, and don't have problems with paying taxes, it's more that I have problems with giving up a third of my income in a country that still throws tons of money at the military but doesn't have national health care. And I have a problem that there's really only two classes in this country- the ridiculously rich, and the poor, which realistically DOES include the so-called middle class.

I feel pretty #4: Hair Dilemmas

I have blogged about my hair before here and here. So this is nothing new, but it fits in with this current series.

I have kept my hair severely short for about the past year. I set the Wahl clippers to about 5/8th" and go to town. It's cheap and easy. But lately I've been thinking about growing out my hair again. Not to long, but to a longer short.

I've had longer short hair in the past, but I was generally paying my stylist a lot of money to maintain it:

Believe it or not, keeping short hair looking good is a lot of work, more work than long hair. And I don't have a huge budget for hair stuff. So I'm kind of just letting it grow right now, and eventually I'll get sick of it and shave it off, or break down and start getting haircuts again.

I'm also on the fence about bleaching vs. natural again. And about hairy pubes/pits vs. shaved. (I shaved them after growing them out for a while and it felt really weird but growing them back takes forever. And I always alienate the preferences of someone I'm dating either way.)

ANYWAY

Would you like to see my current hair inspirations?

1. Robyn
I like Robyn because she's weird looking, and has a very talented colorist.

Her hair is amazing. I've had similar hair in the past, though I suspect her hair is straighter and thicker than mine.

2. Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams looks SO AWESOME short and platinum.

3. Noomi Rapace
Another weird looking yet hot Swedish lady.Yeah, I get that her bitchen hair was probably only for the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Franchise, but god it's hot. It's hard to find decent pics of her hair online, but this is a good indication:

I am less into the weird minibangs/mullet thing they gave Rooney Mara for her take on Lisbeth:

It just looks high maintenance. And stupid.

So yeah, should I go for a longer style? Or embrace my habianism and stick with my butch ass hair au naturel?

I feel pretty #3: Glamour as coping mechanism

I am having one of those days when I am super irritable and seriously don't want anyone to come within a ten feet radius of me unless it's to give me a hug or a massage. No, it's not PMS, I don't get that anymore. Realistically it's being overextended with work, socializing, grad school apps, etc. I don't have the mental resources to write a deep essay about fat shaming or gender identity or "what counts as rape" or the politics of dealing with abuse in BD/SM scene right now, even though these are all things on my radar right now. I am weary, and I havent gone to the gym or had a home cooked meal or gotten enough sleep in a while, so instead, I am going to blog about the little things that keep me sort of sane-ish.


Nice lingerie. Lane Bryant's Valentines Day line has got some nice pieces, y'all. I am $200 poorer, but richer 5 bras and 12 new pairs of sexy panties.(There is nothing wrong with having 10 bras and 30+ pairs of underwear- you can do laundry less often and they last longer!) I wear sexy lingerie on a daily basis, I'm French like that. I'm wearing frilly purple mesh ones today:

Coconut oil. I've come to the conclusion that this is my 100% favorite way to moisturize. I am annoyed by the process of moisturizing my whole body, btws. It seems so fricken cumbersome to have to do my face, whole body and feet everyday, but it's worth it. Anyway, Coconut oil is cheap and makes your skin feel incredible, you can get it at Trader Joe's for like $6 now, and a bottle will last you awhile. Digging it out with a spoon is annoying, so I am thinking I want to develop a system where I liquify the jar (with heat) pour it into a rectangular pan, refrigerate and then cut it into single-portion pieces that can be used post-shower, or thrown into bath water. Better yet, I might use my silicone heart-shaped ice cube tray from IKEA. You can also mix it with sea salt for a body scrub. Also, it allegedly clears up keratosis pilaris (bumpy skin) according to my editor at XO Jane.

Yup, that's a fakegagement ring. 

Getting a manicure. My new favorite salon is BYOB, plays old Sex and the City episodes on a nonstop   loop, and is walkable from my office. My favorite nail tech is an awesome Ukrainian lady named Nellie who kindly painted my hands and toes and rich royal blue while I ate gold leaf adorned mini Valhrona cupcakes from More and drank Vinho Rose, which is my new favorite $5 wine from Trader Joes. Fancy nails make me happy all week. 

Getting my regular sex toy delivery from EdenFantasys. I got my friend Stricknine the Tentacle as a birthday present, and Pipedream's Icicles #18 for myself. I love the #17 so much that I bought it for two of my friends, and the #18 looks pretty fantastic, too! I know sex toys are not technically beauty products but they count as self-pampering as far as I'm concerned. 

The new Lush Gorilla Perfume exclusive line. I bought the $25 mini sampler at the shop, which features 8 of their new only-online fragrances. It's always a bit hit or miss with them, but I love about half of the new scents. BScent is probably my favorite so far, and it smells like grapefruit, rose and fennel, very fresh and natural. My other favorites include Dear John, which is supposedly coffee, pine and lime, but really smells a lot like Gammel Dansk or Underberg Bitters to me, which is less gross than it sounds. Cocktail is hard to describe- it's like, root beer, gin and tonic, and heady florals mixed up. I generally don't trust Lush's descriptions of their scents (seriously, they never make sense), but their assessment of Superworld Unknown is pretty accurate: "Scents of a carnival in a single perfume. Cotton candy, toffee apples and the seaside." I hate the smell of cotton candy and toffee apples, yet I love this perfume. It smells like teenage misadventure, and this Dead Can Dance song:

I've been keeping my little perfume samples in a box on my desk at work and I sniff them when I need a pick me up. They aren't super long lasting scentwise, but they certainly are a lot of fun.

In other beauty news, my friend DDD wrote a little tribute post about her erotic fixation with her electric toothbrush, so check that out too!

Tell me of your beauty pick me ups, lovers!