In part 1 of another 2-parter, we explore the wide whacky world of pervertibles!
What are pervertibles? They’re anything with an ordinary, innocuous purpose that can be pressed into service as sex toys. Wooden spoons? Great for paddling! Chip clips? They reseal plastic bags to keep your potato chips (crisps for you Brits) fresh, but also make excellent nipple clamps!
Humans are ingenious. Given enough time and creativity, there’s little that can’t be used as a sex toy.
Here’s the transcript:
Franklin: Welcome back to The Skeptical Pervert, where we take a rational, evidence-based look at sex! I’m your host, part-time mad scientist, and this show’s spontaneous-libido representative, Franklin!
Joreth: I’m your kinky, sopo, grey-ace, chicana, feminist Renaissance cat cohost, Joreth! My gender identity is “tomboy”, and my pronouns are she/her but you may refer to me as “your grace”.
Eunice: And I’m Eunice, your friendly neighborhood queer, kinky, solopoly, ace-spec, bi woman, bringing an East Asian British sense of decorum to this fabulously filthy podcast.
Franklin: In today’s episode, we’re putting the “pervert” in “the Skeptical Pervert.” Let’s talk about…pervertibles!
Eunice: So first off: what even is a pervertible? I think this might be a situation in which “you know it when you see it” is applicable, but that’s not very helpful.
Franklin: What even is anything? What even is life? What even is the world? If it’s true that all the mass-energy content of the universe plus gravitational potential energy plus dark energy adds up to zero, is the universe even?
Eunice: Eh, I reckon it’s more odd than even.
Franklin: Is zero even or odd?
Eunice: It’s either even, or not a number at all.
Joreth: That is an EXCELLENT question. At least, the original one was – what is a pervertible? As we started listing things, and I started looking around my place at things that could be perverted, and I was asked by a partner if I had a thing that we could use for a purpose that was not its intended purpose, I asked myself that very question. Like, is rope considered a “pervertible”, because it’s intended purpose is to restrain things, just not exclusively in a sexual context. And corsets – while not exclusively intended for sex or kinky play, thanks to changing fashions, they are pretty much used exclusively for sexy or kinky purposes now. So, where do we start? Maybe we should start by defining what we mean by “pervertibles” for this show?
Eunice: OK, so there’s a point in there about “it can’t be something that is already used exclusively for sexual or kink purposes”. I guess we start there? Given what we talked about in the past, that brings up an interesting connection to non-sexual kink (check out our Patreon for that behind the scenes discussion, assuming it’s up at the time of this episode going out—I have no idea when that’s going to be available, because time is an illusion etc etc)
Joreth: What even is time?
Eunice: A human conceptual trap designed by the capitalists to destroy my sanity. As are mornings, especially Monday mornings, before 10am at least.
Joreth: Mornings are definitely evil – a pox on capitalism for mornings! And, y’know, everything else.
Franklin: I was thinking about the original question this morning. Right now, I have two 3D printers hard at work making test mockups and molds for casting silicone alien xenomorph Borg Queen parasite sex toys for our upcoming Borg Queen xenomorph parasite gangbang, so am I using my 3D printers as pervertibles? On the one hand, they’re not designed to be used as part of sex, but on the other, they’re metatools–tools to make tools–which is exactly what I’m using them for. So is this a pervertible, or sex toy fabrication, or on the fuzzy edge between? And will the phrase “Borg Queen xenomorph parasite gangbang” ever stop being weird?
Eunice: I certainly hope not! The mental confusion and mild horror is part of the fun!
Joreth: So I guess we can start with “pervertibles is a spectrum”, where there are items that are absolutely definitely not intended for use for anything even remotely related to what it’s being used for in a sexual context, and things that are maybe not technically intended for this exact specific sexual or kinky purpose but … is it really not? And then everything in between.
Franklin: When you say the word “pervertible,” I think most folks imagine more “using a wooden spoon as a paddle” than “using a 3D printer to make a mold to cast a dildo shaped like the facehugger from the Alien movies,” so I suspect most of our examples will be more the former than the latter.
Eunice: See, that’s at least two steps away from the actual sex toy itself, though – you have the 3D printer, then you have the mold you pour the silicone into. Neither of those are sex toys, they’re tools you use to create sex toys, which it also has in common with practically every other sex toy in existence. Every sex toy manufacturer uses tools to create their products, and we don’t call their machinery pervertibles, do we?
Joreth: Right, so, at least for this episode, we might want to define “pervertibles” as on a spectrum, and items that are not intended for sexual or kinky play that are being used directly as part of sexual or kinky play. What about accessibility to the item? Back to the example of the wooden spoon, are we thinking household items not intended for sex but used for sex? Because with enough money, I could probably pervert just about anything the average person could think up, even if they were thinking up bizarre things to stump me.
Eunice: Hmmm, I don’t think the cost of the item should be part of the consideration – after all, the definition of ‘financially accessible to everyone’ is a really vague term, and also includes things that we might consider pervertibles.
Joreth: OK, maybe not cost, exactly, but … readily available? Something an average person could get, even if a specific person might not be able to? Or do we ignore that element?
Eunice: Who are we including in ‘average person’ here? So for example, as a Chinese person, I might well have items in my kitchen that the average mid-Western, white, older guy would definitely not consider a basic tool of cookery.
Joreth: Another good question. Maybe that person would not consider those tools “basic cooking tools”, but could any reasonably sized large town in America have a neighborhood that we might call “Chinatown” with a grocery store they could walk into and purchase it if they wanted to?
Eunice: Look, I’m just going to put it out there, ok? How the hell do you all survive without a wok? And a rice cooker?
Joreth: Don’t ask me, I have a wok! And I cook rice in a pot on the stove, but we have managed to pervert that so thoroughly that there are a thousand different styles of microwavable rice in every major grocery store, so … yeah, Americans love perverting things, for a wide definition of the word “perverting”!
Franklin: Like statistics, for example. And economics (ahem trickle-down ahem). Anyway, according to Google, the most common definition of “pervertible” seems to be something along the lines of “an object or device intended for a non-sexual function that people use for sex.”
Eunice: You know this totally reminds me of that scene from Sex and the City, with the massagers – Samantha is such #SexyLifeGoals and #NoRegrets in this, it’s fantastic.
[Sex and the City clip]
Joreth: I love that bit.
Franklin: I think the Google definition would seem to rule out tools used for making things for sex; for example, if I use a lathe to carve a wooden paddle, the paddle is a sex toy but the lathe is not, so I don’t think most folks would describe the lathe itself as a “pervertible” in that case. But who knows? I put up a poll on whether or not a 3D printer being used to make molds for silicone is a ‘pervertible,’ and right now the voting is super-close, one vote toward ‘no.’ So some people think it is, at least.
Eunice: On the other hand, I’m sure I could figure out a way to pervert a lathe…
Franklin: Yes. Yes, Eunice, you could.
Joreth: I think I lean toward ‘no’ as well – things not intended for sex stuff but used directly as a toy or accessory in sex or kink. When you think about it, basically anything ultimately used to make things for sex was not originally intended to make things for sex, but many of them, especially things like 3D printers, were used to make inaccessible things more accessible to bring them into the home. Take the first camcorder, for instance – we talked about this in our sex tech episode – VHS was used to take high end porn and make it more accessible to the average person, both making and viewing. And film cameras themselves were not originally intended to make porn yet one of the very first things we did with film was to film porn. Camcorders and film cameras are not considered “pervertibles” just because a person could use them and have used them to make sex stuff.
Eunice: Just because you might use a 3D printer to make a cooking utensil doesn’t mean you just cooked with a 3D printer. No matter how clickbaity you want to make it.
Joreth: So lathes, camcorders, exacto knives for trimming silicone, and 3D printers don’t count, to me, as “pervertibles” because they ARE being used exactly as intended, since their use as metatools does not include a definition for the purpose of the tools they create. And how many people really have metatools anyway, other than people who actually work in those industries or serious hobbyists? Compared to people who have wooden spoons in their kitchens or cylindrical vegetables in the fridge? Which brings us back to the question of accessibility.
Franklin: The three of us have some experience with pervertibles, so we thought we’d share some of our experiences with you all, since we’re nice like that.
Eunice: So we’re just not going to provide a definition, then?
Franklin: I’m thinking that we might close in on a reasonably robust definition of ‘pervertible’ as we talk about our experiences, which might help illuminate how we think about them. So who wants to go first? Favorite pervertible? Most unusual pervertible? Most elaborate pervertible?
Eunice: How about we just start off with things we’ve actually perverted?
Franklin: Let’s do it!
Joreth: So I went out to eat once some Asian fusion high end hipster restaurant. You know, the kind where you pay one flat price and then they set the menu for you. And at the end of it, they gave me this little gift box. And when I opened it up, it contained several pairs of chopsticks and a little wooden spoon. And so I opened it up. And the first thing I said was, “Aww! Baby’s first BDSM starter kit!”
Franklin: Chopsticks. Oh, man. Chopsticks. I will never eat with chopsticks again without remembering the party in King’s Lynn, where my partner Bunny used a nicely polished pair of stainless steel smooth chopsticks on me as her emergency sounds.
Joreth: Ouch. They seem kind of wide for sounds.
Franklin: Actually, surprisingly, they’re not. So I had this idea in my head that like sounding is really painful, and I think a lot of people do, which is why you get, you know, you talk about sounding and so many people, like, wince and grab their nethers. And actually, no, it’s. Not if you do. It correctly, it really isn’t. Not even with chopsticks.
Joreth: Huh!
Eunice: But of course, also chopsticks are, if, you know, used in collaboration with elastic bands, also very good for nipple clamps. Which I know for certain. Bunny has also done.
Franklin: Oh man, I was having a conversation years ago about the idea that just about anything can be used as a sex toy, and the guy—I don’t even remember who I was having a conversation with. It was somewhere online, but there was a guy who was like “ohh yeah, I Bet I can name something you can’t pervert.”
And I was like, “Give me your best shot, bro. Come at me.”
So he was like, “dental floss!” And the thing that was funny about that was not only can you pervert dental floss, but I had, like, just that week used dental floss as a pervertible. And it is awesome for doing nipple torture. You wrap a bunch of turns of it around a nipple, and then hang away from it and boom. There you are.
Joreth: Yeah, like that’s not even a hard one, dude, come on.
Franklin: Right?
Eunice: And you can also do a thing with that or with thread. Like just normal sewing thread.
Joreth: Yeah.
Eunice: Which you can use in place of, like, you know, restraints. Not as a “I’m actually going to hold you still using this,” but as a mental thing. You know, ”you’re not allowed to snap the thread.”
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Eunice: So you tie them up in a way where they have to actively maintain their own position using thread. And you say if you snap the thread, you’re gonna get punished.
Joreth: And there you have restraint play and predicament play in one.
Franklin: I did something like that a long time ago with these things that are, I think they’re called Snap and Pops. It’s a piece of string with a little cardboard tube in the middle of it and it’s filled with this same explosive that they put in whippersnappers where if you tug on the ends of the string, it explodes and makes a loud bang. And I had tied somebody up, but I left a couple of inches of slack in the rope, so that she could squirm a little bit. But then I tied those snap and pops tight between the tie down points and her cuffs. And I said, now, if you squirm, you’re going to yank on the string, and the snap and pop is going to go bang. And if you make the snap and pop go bang, there will be consequences.
Joreth: Yeah, with predicament play, you can pervert almost anything because if a thing happens, then there will be consequences.
Franklin: And of course, we all love consequences, don’t we?
Joreth: Some of us seem to!
Eunice: Yeah… I remember I had a I had these clothes pins which have a like a loop like it’s a metal hoop at the end of them, which I’m guessing they used to be attached to those, like, racks, like a circular rack. And then you clip whatever onto it, smaller items onto those. And I took them off of this rack that was broken, but now what I have is a clothes pin that I can use as a clamp that will also have a loop at the end that I can thread a thin rope through. And attach it to. So yeah, it’s it’s very handy and it’s also not so ferociously, like, tight that it will cause problems, but it’s tight enough to be noticeable.
Joreth: So that sounds like that could be used for nipple play and labia or scrotum clamps.
Eunice: Ohh, and other bits.
Franklin: I was at a mall years and years ago and there was a store that was selling polished aluminum clothespins. And so I bought a bunch of them and then I took them down to the Things Remembered that was in the same mall, which is an engraving shop that you just bring stuff to them and they’ll engrave stuff on them. And I had them engrave my girlfriend’s name on the clothes pins.
Joreth: Ohh! That sounds pretty!
Franklin: It was! They were actually quite. Lovely. They’re really beautiful. And they were…yeah. Yeah, they were fun.
Joreth: So binder clips also come with a built in loop on them in the same vein as clothes pins. You know, they’re the little black clippy things with the metal that folds one way to open and and folds another way when they’re closed. So binder clips. Chip clips, which are just basically a closed pin, but more expensive so that they can sell it to you for the purpose of just closing your bag of crisps or chips.
Franklin: Ohh, is that what those are called? I know what you mean. I didn’t know they were actually called chip clips.
Joreth: Chip clips!
Franklin: Hair clips that have all the teeth on them.
Joreth: You mean like this one?
Eunice: Yeah, the cool ones, yeah.
Joreth: Yeah, the claws.
Franklin: Yes, yes, the hairpin claws! Those are excellent, excellent sex toys.
Joreth: Yes, I am wearing one right now.
Franklin: I’m going to go there for a minute…
Eunice: Also, hair sticks! So I exclusively use metal hair sticks to put my hair up. I have tried wood, I have tried resin, I’ve tried plastics of other sorts. None of those work. I have snapped so many hair sticks. But what that means is that I can use my hair stick, which is just a long—
Joreth: Just a long metal rod.
Eunice: —rod of metal, a long rod, for a number of things! Because it is long and thin and probably slightly thinner than, say, a chopstick. It is also metal, so if you put it into the freezer…
Franklin: Ohh God Oh! Oh!
Eunice: Ohh I wish we recorded in video in that moment!
Franklin: Oh, man.
Joreth: Ooh, let’s see if I can do that! Those are also metal, so if you have a contact probe on your violet wand…
Franklin: Uggh! Now, now let’s, like, let’s…ngh. Yeah. Well, I have used a replica of a medieval battle axe with a violet wand.
Joreth: I have a picture of that!
Franklin: Yes! That was fun, because if you have the contact probe… So, I would go to play parties and I would use the contact probe and then I would hold the axe in my other hand and then touch somebody with the edge of it. And you get this pretty blue glow on the edge of the battle axe and all these sparks jumping from the blade to the person’s skin. Oh, it is so cool! And it makes a really scary sound, too.
Joreth: Yes, and I got a picture of it back with my ancient—what was it, like, a 240 by 340 pixel digital camera. And so I got a picture of the blade as it arced on the skin of the person you were playing with. It’s so awesome.
Franklin: Yeah. Oh yeah, that was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun.
Eunice: Just, blades in general, blades in general are so usable in so many ways. I remember one time where one of my partners dripped wax on me, and then used his very, very, very sharp kitchen knives. Like this is a set of kitchen knives that he had previously used to slice sashimi on another partner’s back. Without anything in between, used it to slice…and he had find enough control that he could slice that without cutting or anything. And he used it to shave the wax off of my back.
Joreth: Wow.
Franklin: Wait a minute. I think I was there for that. Wasn’t I there for that?
Eunice: Which one of the occasions?
Franklin: This is something really familiar. I remember him preparing sashimi on—
Eunice: Yes.
Franklin: On Bunny’s back and then..yeah. Yeah. I think I was there for that.
Eunice: Yeah.
Franklin: This is all ringing a bell now. That was hot, actually, that was. I’m not usually a voyeur, but watching that was fun.
Joreth: Yeah. So any of the metal utensils—knives, whether they’re sharp or dull, forks, butter knives by themselves—create really interesting sensations, especially on delicate parts. And then you can freeze them or warm them up for sensation play. Or you can use a contact probe with a violet wand and get electrical play in them.
Eunice: Actually you mentioned freezing and at one point I was playing with someone and I realised that I didn’t have any of my usual, like, knives, daggers, none of the sharp ones available to me at that point. And fortunately the person I was playing with was blindfolded. So I went and chucked a fork into the freezer.
Joreth: Ooh!
Eunice: And managed to build them up to thinking that this was a really sharp knife I was using on them. Because it’s frozen, it felt to them like it was a genuinely sharp implement.
Joreth: Yeah, once you start bringing in the psychology and you can twist up all of their sensation receptors, then you can make one thing feel like something completely different.
Franklin: Yeah, butter knives will feel like razors if you freeze them first. It’s really weird. I have no idea what’s actually going on there biologically with all your sensory apparatus, but that totally works. Yeah.
Eunice: And I have a letter opener. It’s beautiful. Like, it’s got a Marino Glass handle, and it’s just gorgeous. And I use that. It’s not going to cut anyone. But it feels really sharp and it has really, really good control, because as a letter opener, all the weight is on the back.
Joreth: Right.
Eunice: Very, very much designed to have all of your weight on the back in the palm. So great sense of control. And it feels a lot sharper than it actually is.
Joreth: And that’s helpful, when you can have something that feels more dangerous than it really is. And that’s one of the tricks with perverting things, because you can either use something that is…because it’s not intended for that purpose, it’s actually really safe, or you can use something because it’s not intended for that purpose, it’s actually really dangerous.
Franklin: Yeah, generally probably want to lean towards safe than dangerous. No chlorine trifluoride in the bedroom please.
Joreth: Right!
Eunice: Out of all of the people that might possibly have such substances in their bedroom…
Joreth: [Laughs]
Eunice: I was going to. Say I could only think of you as…no, no. No, I think actually knowing the people we know possibly there might be more than one person that could have accidentally just forgotten…I don’t know how you would, but forgotten this.
Franklin: Eunice, you and I have somebody in our shared social circle who would be more likely than me to have chlorine trifluoride just lying around.
Eunice: Actually, yeah, you’re right. Yeah, ignore what I said. Carry on, carry on.
Joreth: So, but speaking of, like, pervertible things that “not intended makes it more dangerous,” don’t insert things into the anal cavity without a flared base, please.
Eunice: Yes.
Franklin: Oh God, yes. You become a story in somebody’s comedy routine or some website somewhere about “oh, you’re not gonna believe what somebody came in the hospital today with up their butt.”
Eunice: The the whole, if anyone’s ever heard the Wet Ppots…
Joreth: Yes!
Eunice: Wet Spots have a song that they called PSA and it’s the first line of the chorus, I want to say, is “don’t stick a fish up your bum.” That feels like a story.
Franklin: Yeah, that, that definitely seems like it has the ring of “yeah, somebody did this and it ended badly.”
Eunice: More than somebody, I imagine. I bet there’s more than one person.
Joreth: In fact, I think we could probably play that first line for our listeners.
[Snip from The Wet Spots, “PSA”]
Franklin: But yes, nothing in your bum that doesn’t have a base on it. You can put things in other orifices without bases, if you’re careful.
Condoms are fun to fill with things and play with. You can make dildos out of ice, of course, by filling a condom with water and then putting in the freezer. It tends to get little lumpy and misshapen or flat if you do that. And of course, water expands when it freezes, so it will bulge. So what you actually do is you fill a condom with water and you tie it shut, and then you take cardboard tube, like a toilet paper tube, and you hang the cardboard vertically inside the tube and that will keep its shape.
Joreth: You hang the condom inside the tube.
Franklin: Yes. And if you boil the water first, you drive all the air out of it so that the water turns out clear when it freezes, instead of being all cloudy like most ice cubes are, and it looks really cool.
Joreth: Yeah. So you can do that with condoms, with water and make it cold. But you can also use condoms—non-lubricated condoms—to do that with heat as well. Remember, Franklin, when we tried this?
Franklin: Yes!
Joreth: I think this specific grain that we used was buckwheat, but you can use rice or barley or any number of grains and then you microwave it for a few seconds at a time until it’s as warm as you want it. And you fill the condom with it, and then…
Franklin: Important safety tip: a few seconds! They warm up really fast, so you don’t put it in there for a minute. You don’t put it in there for 10 seconds. Do it for two or three seconds at a time until it’s, you know, nice and warm.
Eunice: Just also a reminder, don’t try to use the grains afterwards! I know theoretically it has been inside a condom and therefore, but don’t. Just…just don’t.
Joreth: Probably best not to. But yeah, if anybody has ever had a microwavable heating massage thing that you can buy at any drugstore, I guess. It looks like a long sock and it’s filled with something bumpy. And if you don’t know what that bumpy stuff is, it’s a grain. It’s probably buckwheat is the most common. So that’s all we’re doing is we’re taking this thing that you buy from the store and you’re just making it yourself with condoms.
Franklin: And Speaking of foods, I have one word and I’m sure from the expressions on both of your faces, you know exactly where I’m going with this: tapioca. Oh my God. You can pervert tapioca and it is awful.
Eunice: I think this one is one in which you will probably have had more personal experience than any other person. In this way.
Franklin: Yes. You take the little tiny tapioca balls and you prepare them just so that they’re squishy, and then you mix them with Lube and they feel like alien eggs. And it is horrifying.
Eunice: I’m really gonna enjoy that Borg Queen xenomorph gangbang.
Joreth: Yeah, that’s gonna be fun. Ovipositors everywhere.
Franklin: Ovipositors everywhere.
Eunice: And there’s the slime and the ovipositors and the sticky lubey stuff in every orifice. You’re welcome.
Franklin: There’s an ovipositor for you! And an ovipositor for you! And everybody gets an ovipositor!
Eunice: Except Franklin, because Franklin will be the target of said ovipositors.
Franklin: Jesus, God, what have I gotten myself into?
Joreth: Now for the audience listening, if you are going to use food in any sort of insertable fashion, please wash very carefully afterward.
Eunice: Also, for anyone who is the owner of a, you know, vulva, please do not put sugary items up there.
Joreth: Yes.
Eunice: Yeast infections are not fun. Do not put tapioca up there either. Cause that also counts.
Joreth: Yeah.
Eunice: It is a starch. Do not put that up there. Anything sugary. Syrup, do not use syrup as Lube. Do not any of these things, trust me.
Joreth: Don’t use honey.
Eunice: Don’t use oil!
Franklin: Does tapioca have sugar in it? I have no idea what tapioca is.
Eunice: Tapioca is a form of starch, and starches are just sugars.
Joreth: Don’t use oil!
Eunice: Don’t use oil. Your vaginal areas can clean, but not oil. It is not designed for cleaning of oils, it will just get icky.
Joreth: Keep the food products mostly to the mouth and the anal region. Try to keep them away from vulvas and vaginas. There are a couple of exceptions, but mostly because these are not terribly messy or starchy items. Like, say, ginger root.
Eunice: Yeah.
Franklin: Ooh, ginger root is a fun one, yes. Take a nice fresh piece of ginger—it has to be fresh—and carve the skin off of it, and then carve it into a butt plug or a dildo, and then watch the fireworks!
Eunice: Oh, and don’t use lube, because lube could, like, seal it away from, you know, your mucous membranes.
Franklin: Yeah, well, it doesn’t work if you. Lube it up first.
Eunice: Yeah, don’t use lube for that. Actually, God just talking about food and insertable food reminds me of our episode that was talking about sex toys through history, and, like, the bread and stuff, right?
Joreth: The breadsticks!
Franklin: Oh, the bread, yeah! Special breadsticks that are used to bake dildos. That is such a bad idea on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to start.
Joreth: You know, while we’re on the subject of things not to put near a vagina, no starchy things, no sugary things, no yeasty things, no porous things in either. Like try to keep the porous stuff away. Again, certain exceptions apply, like ginger root, but if you intend to use it again…like, you know, the food stuff, you’re not gonna use again, but if it’s an item you’re perverting and you want to use it again, don’t use porous things because you can’t clean them very well.
Franklin: Or if you do, seal them first. Like, there’s a whole cottage industry in making wooden dildos.
Joreth: Yeah.
Franklin: Which is cool and all, but you do not want to use them, or at least you do not want to use them more than once, if they are not properly sealed. And apparently there’s a whole hobbyist scene about this, because of course there is.
Joreth: Right.
Eunice: What did they used to seal them?
Joreth: I assume a polyurethane.
Franklin: It’s been a long time—like, this has never been something that I was really into. But I remember stumbling across a forum for this on the web and I think they said that polyurethane and acrylic are both non porous and also body safe.
Joreth: Yeah, I assumed it was a polyurethane.
Eunice: Makes sense, because obviously, of course, internals, your vagina is a little bit acidic.
Joreth: Little bit.
Eunice: Just a tiny bit. So yeah, I just wanna make sure that it, you know, totally reminding me of that whole…was it Tumblr, I think?
Joreth: I think it was.
Eunice: Right? A Tumblr thread about, like, don’t fuck the rock.
Joreth: Don’t lick the—what was it? The—
Eunice: Malachite?
Joreth: Malachite stalactite! Yes!
Franklin: Malachite, yes.
Eunice: Do not insert the malachite.
Franklin: Oh, oh God. People actually try to make things out of malachite. Yikes.
Joreth: Yes. And we’ve said this before on another episode, too: No jade eggs. I don’t care what you…no. I care very much what Gwyneth Paltrow says. Whatever she says, do the opposite, which means no jade eggs.
Franklin: Yes! Do not put jade up your hoo ha, that is bad for you on multiple levels.
Eunice: And if you want that kind of sensation, steel eggs exist and are a lot easier to clean.
Joreth: Yes, much better.
Franklin: You know, actually, to be fair, I say that I was never actually into wood, but I have used a nightstick as an improvised dildo. That was a lot of fun. I had a partner tied down and happened to have a police night stick, and it was actually during a threesome, if I recall correctly. And my friend had a nightstick, and we had her tied down, and that was a lot of fun.
Eunice: I feel like that would be really great in combination with those, like, really bright desk lamps that you can use and create like a interrogation scene, right?
Joreth: Oh yeah, yeah! You’ve already got the nightstick.
Eunice: Yeah, just, like….
Franklin: Yep, Yep. I did an interrogation scene once, and one of the things about the an interrogation scene is that you want the person who’s the submissive partner in the interrogation scene to have some sort of information that you genuinely want to get but that you can verify afterward. And so what we did was we just used a deck of cards. She drew a card at random, she looked at it, she put it back on the top of the deck, and then my goal in the scene was to try to get that card out of her, and her goal was to make me believe that it was a different card. And it was something that was verifiable, so we could go back later and say OK, who won? And she actually won. She had me completely, utterly convinced it was a card other than what it was. It was…she did a really good job. Wow.
Joreth: Wow!
Eunice: Hmm. I mean, there’s also lots of ways you can use a deck of cards for these sorts of things, right? I recently saw a really interesting article from JAMA I think about using a deck of cards to randomize like the hierarchical status of people, when you’re in a scene, So the card you draw defines what level of status you are in comparison to each other. So, you know, someone who draws a two is going to be in a very different position related to someone who is a 10 versus someone who is an 8 or a jack, for example.
Joreth: Hmm. So yeah, you can gamify a lot of these things. You know, games of chance, consequences or responsibilities, or activities that need to be done depending on the luck of the draw dice.
Eunice: Dice!
Joreth: Dice.
Franklin: Dice. Dice. Oh my God.
Joreth: And we also turned Apples to Apples into a strip game.
Franklin: Yes, strip Apples to Apples is actually kind of fun. And I say this as a person who is not an exhibitionist.
Joreth: Yes, I don’t really like getting naked in front of groups of peoples, but strip Apples to Apples is one of the very few games I will actually play.
Franklin: Hmm. Dice man. I have permanently been…like, my psychology has permanently been altered so that metal 6 sided dice get me hot.
Eunice: You’re welcome!
Joreth: Yes, conditioning. That’s another thing, listeners, that if you use a particular thing often enough, you can condition someone.
Franklin: Yes, you can. Oh, that’s a nice, excited die you’ve got there. Oh, my God, I’m getting hot. Just thinking about it.
Joreth: So if you wanted to turn something into a scene or get somebody aroused and you get them conditioned with something first, then you don’t even have to do the thing. You can be out in public and they could see the item, you could show it to them, they could feel the item, or whatever. And instantly you’ve got arousal or terror, which is also arousal.
Eunice: I remember, Franklin, when we…I think we went around…I think it was Boston? And we went around all of these different, like, churches and things. And you rolled the dice at those churches. We had some really fun, filthy conversations in some of those churches.
Franklin: Oh, my God. Yes. Yeah. Standing in old North Church talking filth with you and sexting at the same time with somebody else was, uh…yeah, that was an interesting experience. And rolling dice there. I think I have photos of the dice, in fact. They’re filthy! They are filthy photos!
Joreth: Now, Speaking of conditioning, something that’s really easy to condition somebody with is bamboo fans. Like folding fans. You want to use something like bamboo or metal. You can do it with the plastic, but you have to do it lightly cause the plastic tends to break. But when the folding fan is closed it makes a really good impact weapon, so striking poking… So anybody who is into impact play, you can use it on them, but then the sound it makes when it opens, that’s a very distinctive sound. So if you associate that sound with the play that comes with it and you condition them to that sound, then from then on, all you have to do is open a folding fan and make that pop sound and you’ve got them in the right mindset for it.
Franklin: Mm-hmm. I could totally see where that would work. And it’s an unusual enough sound that you’re not going to hear it, you know, just randomly going around every day.
Joreth: Unless you’re a dancer.
Franklin: Oh, oh, oh, that’s bad. Oh my goodness. Oh, there’s a whole…wow. Ooh..
Eunice: Yes, I think Franklin has volunteered for another round of conditioning.
Joreth: Yeah, I think so.
Franklin: I don’t actually remember volunteering. I’m not sure that was what just happened there.
Eunice: That sounded like interest!
Joreth: That sounded and looked a whole lot like interest.
Franklin: Interest and volunteering are not necessarily the same.
Eunice: When it comes to you.
Joreth: You know, I have been identified in, like, I’ll go to a city I’ve never been in before and you know, I’ll go to live music events looking for other dancers. And people who have never met me because I’m not in that scene will come up to me and ask me to dance and they’ll tell me that they recognize me as a dancer because I have a folding fan in my back pocket. So if you condition someone to folding fans and you’re a dancer, you can condition them for things happening in public quite frequently.
Franklin: Oh my God.
Eunice: Yep, practically every dancer I know carries a folding fan. I carry a folding fan with me around everywhere.
Franklin: You two are terrible!
Eunice: Yeah. You’re welcome! So I have a folding fan in my bag. I also have a folding fan here that I leave just by the side of my desk the whole time. Because of course.
Franklin: Because of course, yes. Why would I expect anything else?
Joreth: Yep, and this fan that I’ve got, this is in my daily backpack, the one, like, I’m not intending to go anywhere in particular, it just has my general necessities. It also has this folding fan.
Franklin: Normal people carry around things like pens and pencils as general necessities.
Eunice: I mean, I carry those around as well.
Joreth: Speaking of pens and pencils, those can also be used.
Franklin: Well, Eunice has some very fancy pens that I used on her during the orgy…not in King’s Lynn. Where were we? Lincolnshire! Lincolnshire, when we started our first porn novel together.
Eunice: Yeah, fountain pens are lovely things. Fountain pens, those glass dip pens, anything that you can use to write on skin is going to be lovely because it feels a lot like the scratching sensation you get with some, you know, knives or daggers or whatever, but then you are also writing on the person’s skin.
Joreth: Which is a fetish in itself.
Franklin: I have always thought yes, I have always thought it would be really, really interesting to write in graphic detail on somebody’s body what you would like to do with them, or what you would like them to do with you, but using one of those pens that leaves invisible ink that only shows up under a black light. So, and then you could like, go out and go to dinner or something. And they’ve got all of this incredible filth written all over their body. But they don’t even know what you’ve written until the end of the evening when you get the black light out.
Eunice: So I actually had a thing at one point with one of my partners and his other partner where we would write things, notes to each other, on bits of skin that he couldn’t see. So like on the back of the neck just below the nape of the neck, and things like that where he couldn’t see it for himself. So we would leave notes for each other, and like, suggestions… That’s a lot of fun.
Franklin: That is hot. That is hot. Yes! Goodness.
Joreth: You could also write things with edible stuff, back to the food, so you could write notes on each other using, y’know, chocolate syrup, caramel, strawberry, butterscotch. I don’t know, what else comes in syrup? You can draw.
Franklin: And all kinds of loops and spirals and paths to follow with one’s tongue.
Eunice: And I think at one point Bunny drew like various things with, you know, the stuff that they used to write on cakes, the…
Franklin: Oh, the little icing pen things.
Eunice: Yeah, like that. You used to write on cakes and they they come in a tube and she did a a galleon on my thigh once, I remember that. But also if you’re of a certain disposition, you could probably water down wasabi a little bit, and use that.
Joreth: Yes you could.
Franklin: Ohh, that…mmm, I’m gonna have to say no to that one. Oh, my God, that sounds intense.
Joreth: You could finger paint with it. You could water it down a little bit and use a paint brush and and paint with it. It’s a pretty green color.
Eunice: Yeah! And, I mean, you can also use similar things that are hot like deep heat and stuff. At one point I had this very interesting scene with someone where, let’s just say he was at the point where he no longer wanted to orgasm. It was no longer fun for him. And I told him, one more. Like, he gets to rest after he does one more. And when he said I really can’t make it, I was like well, You have a choice. You can do it, or I can do it using deep heat as lube.
Franklin: Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, no.
Eunice: I did not mention I didn’t actually have any deep heat in, but he never realized, because he’s like “No, no, no, no, no, definitely not. I will definitely get in.” So yeah, he made it. He took a while. He made it.
Franklin: Oh God, that sounds awful.
Joreth: There are lots of products that can create a heating or a cooling sensation on the body. It’s not temperature heat, but it feels the same way. You know the body’s receptors respond that way.
So I just recently tried waxing for the first time. I got a Brazilian wax and one of the things you’re supposed to do is use an exfoliating soap or a scrub, a light one, to prevent ingrown hairs. For those who don’t know, an exfoliating scrub is a lotion or a cream that has little little tiny granules of something in it. So it’s a little bit abrasive. That way you kind of scrub off the very, very top layers of skin. And by layers, I mean like cell layers, not layers layers. So if you can scrub off some of the top layers of skin, particularly dead skin, then the hairs don’t grow under it, it’ll grow through it. So not knowing what to get and also being on a budget, I found a really inexpensive facial scrub that was meant for sensitive skin. So I was ”sensitive skin, it’ll probably be fine for the genital region, then.” What I didn’t notice was that this facial scrub for sensitive skin had a quote-unquote “cooling” effect on it. Refreshing cooling effect. So…
Franklin: Uh oh.
Joreth: I’ve got it all over me, and I’m scrubbing, and then I’m standing in the shower for a moment, soaping the rest of me up, and suddenly everything got very sensitive and cool and tingly. And that’s a sensation I was not expecting right now!
Eunice: Yeah, and I mean, you can do the same thing with, like, minty stuff in general.
Joreth: Toothpaste, tea tree oils, like all different kinds of things that have that sort of sensation with. And that’s how the urban legend came about for giving a blowjob while sucking on an Altoid.
Eunice: Huh. I have never tried that.
Joreth: I haven’t either, because it sounds like it would also be scrapey, but that’s why that urban legend started. I don’t know of anyone who has actually tried it, but that is the purpose of it. The Altoids are such strong mints that however it feels in your mouth is probably close to how it’s going to feel on the genital region when you give them oral sex.
Eunice: I also don’t like the taste, so I just, I don’t, I don’t like that stuff.
Joreth: I don’t either.
Franklin: I have never tried that and I’ve I have perverted an Altoids tin without using the Altoids in it. I don’t like Altoids, so not only did I not think to use them for oral, I just actually got the tin of Altoids and threw the Altoids away because I wanted the tin. Because it was…
Eunice: So what I’m hearing is that Altoids would be a good punishment tool.
Joreth: There you go!
Franklin: I am not hearing that at all. I am pretty sure that I actually didn’t say anything even remotely like that. We should put up a poll to see if our listeners heard that or not too, because I’m pretty sure that nobody except the two of you.
But I wanted the tin because I wanted to make a vibrator that would run and shut itself off and run and shut itself off for random periods of time at random intensities. You know, just at random intervals. And so I did it with a teensy, which is a an Arduino compatible very, very tiny circuit board. And the teensy microcontroller and the field effect transistor and the battery all fit perfectly inside of the Altoids tin. I was looking for a case for it and I happened to be at a store and like I was checking out and there’s the Altoids right there. And I’m like cool that case is exactly the right Size! And I got the Altoids and threw them away.
So, we got to this point in the recording and realized we are even bigger perverts than we thought, because we’ve barely made a dent in the list of pervertibles we brainstormed for this episode. So we made it two episodes, because of course we did, for double the perversion! Come back next time for even more perverted pervertables!
Eunice: And in some cases, some items we unperverted just because we happen to have more kinky items on hand than most people…
Franklin: Because who among us hasn’t used a sex toy for something prosaic?
Franklin: Thanks for joining us on this episode! Find us on the web at skepticalpervert dot com, or on Amazon or Libsyn or Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you go for your podcasting goodness. If you liked what you heard in this episode, why not spread the love? Do you have something you’d like to hear us to talk about? Email us at contact@skepticalpervert.com. The Skeptical Pervert is copyrighted by Joreth, Eunice, and Franklin. Editing is done by Joreth, and the website is maintained by Franklin.
Joreth: And remember… anything can be perverted if you’re creative … or sadistic enough
Eunice: Or are Franklin enough? Or maybe that should be “have access to a Franklin, and a bit too much free time, and are easily bored.”
Franklin: I’m sure I have no idea what you mean. On a technical note, if any listeners hear an irregular hum in the background of this episode, it’s the 3D printer hard at work on a mold for a silicone facehugger gag, which I bring up for no particular reason.
Joreth: Sure, Mr. Type 2 and Type 3 Fun, you have no idea what we mean.
Eunice: Do you even do type 1 fun anymore, Franklin?
Franklin: That’s a ridiculous thing to ask! Of course I do Type 1 fun! Just…not usually in my sex life.
Joreth: Hmmm… I think citation needed here.
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