As I’ve been getting older, sometimes my erection doesn’t last. Is there anything that I can do?

Erections—how easy it is to convince your penis to stand up and how reliably it stays hard—can all change with age. Often, those changes are totally normal. However, sometimes, they can be one of the first warning signs of health problems.

Erectile changes can be caused by diabetes, high blood pressure, and/or heart disease. These are health issues that benefit a lot from early treatment. If you have noticed a change in your erection patterns, checking in with your clinician should be your first step. Don’t have health insurance? Check out Chase Brexton or another Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). A quick google search should turn up several close to you. FQHCs offer health care on a sliding scale.

Once you’ve had your health checked out, it’s time to deal with the erection stuff.

The good news is there are a lot of options. The bad news is that no solution is perfect.

Penises are pretty amazing things. When you get turned on, all kinds of chemical stuff happens in your brain. A message gets sent down your spine and blood gets sent to your genitals. The blood fills up the the spongy tissue in the penis and creates an erection.

As we age, blood flow changes, and those changes can make it difficult to get or maintain an erection. In some cases, additional stimulation like vibrators (there’s even a vibrator called The Pulse that’s specifically designed for penises!) and taking your time can get you to an erection. Are there parts of your body that you like to have stimulated in addition to your penis? Nipples? Butt? Add it all in.

Sometimes people choose to use medications like Viagra or other “erection drugs.” These drugs all work the same way. There are vasodilators—which means that when someone is turned on, the medication helps open up the small blood vessels in your body sends more blood to the penis. Blood causes erections.

Lots of places sell supplements that they claim will do similar things. Those supplements are either useless or they are working on your blood flow. It’s a bad plan to take something that is affecting your blood flow without getting it from a clinician. Worst case scenario, it could interact with something else going on with your body or a medicine that you’re on and hurt you.

Want to use a medication, but don’t want to take a pill? There is emerging research that indicates that CBD oil (made from marijuana or hemp) may be of some use in supporting erections. If you have your medical marijuana card, it might be worth a try.

Below are sex toys that can also help you get and maintain erections—and you don’t have to go to the doctor.

Cock rings: To use a cock ring to help an erection, first, put it on when you aren’t hard. First, lube up, next, insert the balls, then insert the penis. The cock ring should rest back behind your balls and at the base of the penis. The ring will help your blood stay in the penis and help you to maintain an erection.

There are cock rings that have vibrators attached. The extra stimulation of a vibrator may provide the boost you need to help you keep that erection going. If you aren’t getting an erection at all, a cock ring isn’t the place to start. It’s also not a great idea to use a cock ring if you are taking any erection medications or cocaine. You shouldn’t wear a cock ring for hours at a time.

Pumps: A pump is a simple device that draws blood into the penis. There are number of different kinds of pumps that vary a lot in price from around $25 to over $300. Put a cock ring around the base of the pump. Once the pump has helped you get an erection, roll the ring off the pump and onto the base of the shaft of your penis. That ring will help you keep the blood in the penis and keep your erection.

Harnesses: Sometimes, an erection just isn’t going to happen, but you still want to penetrate your partner. That’s where a harness comes in. With a harness, you can attach a dildo to your body and penetrate your partner. Harnesses are pretty much magic. The Deuce harness by Spare Parts is specifically designed for folks with penises and scrotums. You get to pick what size dildo you and your partner want that day. You don’t have to worry about if you’re staying hard; you can just focus on giving your partner pleasure.

Some folks find that they really love using a harness. Not only does it take all of the pressure off worrying about your erection, but you get to experience what it’s like to be focused on your partner and not distracted by your own sensations. It can be a deeply sexy and hot experience!

Do you have a question about sex, relationships, or gender? Send us an email at sugartalk@sugartheshop.com.

Jacq Jones is a sex educator and the owner Sugar, a sex positive, education focused sex toy store in Baltimore and online at sugartheshop.com

The post Sugar Talk: Keeping it up—a guide to erectile change including cock rings, pumps, harnesses, more appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

Last week I learned that January is Cervical Health Awareness Month. I’m sure all y’all were already aware of this, but it was news to me. There’s a holiday, month, or awareness day for just about everything. Ice cream, pizza, steak, blow jobs (you’ve got to wait till March for that one), and now, cervixes.

The cervix is a pretty cool body part. It’s a little thing, about the size (and feel) of the end of your nose. It’s how the uterus opens into the vagina. It allows sperm to pass into the uterus, and it lets menstrual blood and babies come out. The cervix also protects the uterus by keeping it sanitary and blocking bacteria from entering. The cervix seems like a pretty simple body part, but folks have questions, and we’re here for those.

Why on earth am I supposed to get a Pap smear? How often do I need to get it?

Pap smears are pretty damn awesome. They may not be fun to get, but they’re one of the very few tests out there that can detect changes in cells BEFORE those changes turn into cancer. Your medical providers can then treat those cells and actually prevent cancer. Not detect cancer early, but actually prevent that shit.

Pap smears were invented by Dr. Georgios Papanikolaou in the 1940s and went into wide use in the 1950s. Before folks started getting Pap smears, cervical cancer was the leading cause of cancer death for women in the United States. After introduction of the Pap smear, cervical cancer rates declined by over 60 percent. That’s huge.

So yes. If you have a vagina, please get a Pap smear as frequently as your clinician thinks you should. If you are a trans or genderqueer person and dealing with your vagina doesn’t feel comfortable, there are medical providers who specialize in getting you through the exam (check out Chase Brexton). If you are a person of any gender who has a vagina and have fear or trauma associated with vaginal exams, there are medical providers who specialize in helping you get through the exam as well. Ask for a clinician who specializes in trauma informed care. A Pap smear can save your life.

I’ve been hearing about cervical orgasms. What are they? My one friend keeps talking about them like they’re the holy grail of orgasms.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: There is no holy grail of orgasm. Different people have different bodies, different relationships with their bodies, different histories and experiences, and different understandings of what sex and sexuality mean to them. Orgasms are, in general, good things. One kind of orgasm is not fundamentally better than another.

People who have experienced cervical orgasms describe them as deep in the body or whole body orgasms. These orgasms result from stimulation deep in the vagina, specifically from massage of the cervix or deep thrusting against the cervix. Some folks find that orgasms resulting from this kind of stimulation create a sense of spiritual well being or oneness.

So, what’s going on there? When it comes to science, the jury is still out. We know that the cervix has nerves, but there’s some dispute as to if it has the kind of nerves that are sensitive to touch (sensory nerves). One study, done by Komisaruk, Gerdes & Whipple, found that when pressure was applied to the cervix, study participants reported feeling the sensation. Some of the women described the sensation as pleasurable. In my work as a sex educator and formerly as an assistant in a clinic, I can promise that most folks with cervixes experience some sensation when their cervixes are touched.

We also know that the clitoris, which has a ton of nerves, is usually stimulated directly or indirectly when the vagina is penetrated. In fact, most orgasms that involve vaginal penetration are “blended orgasms”—meaning there’s a bunch of different nerves and neural pathways being stimulated at the same time. How that stimulation happens can result in different sensations.

In an utterly unscientific survey of folks I know, several people reported enjoying cervical massage, especially massaging around the cervix or using fingers to make a ring around the cervix. Other folks reported that they very much enjoy deep, hard thrusting on the cervix with a penis or dildo.

The best way to explore cervical or deeper body orgasms is to take your time and get really turned on. If you are someone who can have more than one orgasm in a session, do what you do to have an orgasm, then move on to cervical stimulation. Many people don’t like have their cervix touched when they aren’t turned on. However, the way we process sensation often changes with arousal. What doesn’t feel good when you’re not all revved up can feel awesome when you are. Lots of folks like to have their hair pulled when they’re having sex, but pulling their hair when they are walking down the street will get a very, very different reaction. Try massaging around the cervix and see how that feels. Then try putting pressure directly on the cervix and see how that feels. If the sensation feels odd, sit with that and see where it takes you. Keep breathing and relax into the new sensations. Breath is important to any sexual experience. It’s especially important when you are trying something new.

Enjoy yourself. If the sensation feels yucky, stop and do something else. No one likes everything. If you don’t like something, it just means that’s not the thing you should be doing right then. Keep playing and exploring. There’s a touch that will absolutely send you over the edge—let me know what you find.

Do you have a question about sex, relationships, or gender? Send us an email at sugartalk@sugartheshop.com! Jacq Jones is a sex educator and the owner Sugar, a sex positive, education-focused sex toy store in Baltimore and online at sugartheshop.com.

The post Sugar Talk: Cervix Talk appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

2017 has been a bit of shit show. I hesitate to say it’s extra shitty for sex education and sex. It’s been bad all around. It certainly hasn’t done sexuality any favors.

We have an administration in the White House that is attempting to steer our country back to abstinence-only education; nixed a proposed move to begin collecting information about lesbian, gay or bisexual people in the census; that is attempting to ban transgender people from serving in the military; that rolled back the birth control mandate (thereby allowing employers to refuse to cover birth control); that attempted to defund Planned Parenthood (the largest provider of reproductive health care in the United States); that is actively separating families through deportation; that has nominated countless folks to governmental positions who oppose LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and sexual freedom to various offices, including the judiciary.

The president of the United States has been accused of a number of acts of sexual impropriety ranging from harassment and inappropriate comments to groping and sexual assault by 22 women with incidents stretching over the past 40 years. The #metoo movement, started by Tarana Burke in 2006 and popularized by Alyssa Milano in response to the Harvey Weinstein revelations, has rippled across industries resulting in multiple powerful men losing their jobs and changing the national conversation. It’s great that we’re finally talking about sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. It’s also exhausting.

Plus: North Korea. White supremacists and neo-Nazis marching and worse, being normalized. An increase in violence against synagogues and mosques. Massive hurricanes. Mass shootings. Ongoing police shootings. Racism writ large. Of course, many of these aren’t new. Yet, this year the bandage got ripped off.

You know. You’re living through it.

It’s not fucking sexy. Not. At. All.

At Sugar, we’ve heard from customers that they’re too stressed out to have sex. That they’re angry. That they’re scared: How do we find our joy when shit gets scary, or simply gets even scarier than it was before?

When times are tough, does sex even matter?

It does. As sex educator and coach Amy Jo Goddard has said, “The more whole we are as sexual beings, the more fulfilled we are as human beings.” There certainly are times when it makes sense to put your sexuality on the back burner. But don’t leave it there. Our sexuality is part of our life force. It’s part of how we heal ourselves and those we love. It’s part of what gives us joy. It’s a spark that feeds us and gets us through the hard times. It helps us stand tall in the face of things we fear.

So we have to prioritize it. We have to step away from the outside world, where we are told that we aren’t worthy, that our bodies aren’t good enough, that being born with Black and Brown skin is less than, that we don’t deserve pleasure or that how we fuck is broken. We have to celebrate our bodies and our spirits exactly as they perfectly are. Scars, battle wounds, and all.

It is not only OK to take time to honor your sexuality, it is critical. It is oxygen.

Go and fuck, make love, masturbate, whatever that looks like for you, and embrace your joy.

You deserve it.

Do you have questions about sex, sexuality, relationships, or gender? Send them to sugartalk@sugartheshop.com. Jacq Jones is a sex educator and the owner of Sugar, an education-focused sex toy store in Baltimore and online at sugartheshop.com.

The post Sugar Talk: A shit show year for everything—including sex education appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

This week, let’s get right into some questions.

“My boyfriend wants to have anal sex. I’ve tried it with my past boyfriend and it really hurt. Is there a way to reduce the pain? I’d really like to give my boyfriend this experience.”

Anal sex should never, ever hurt. Pain is our body’s way of telling us that something isn’t right. It’s a warning system that prevents us from really hurting ourselves. So listen to your body and slow down. Getting to place where a body is ready to receive anal penetration can take time. To get ready for penetration, you need to relax. For penetration to be comfortable, those muscles need to relax. When the muscles in your anus are relaxed, penetration can be not just comfortable, but mind-glowingly delightful. Start out with analingus (rimming), massage with lube, or vibration around the outside of the anus. When you feel like you’re ready for a little penetration, tell your partner. Have your partner use a well lubricated finger or a small butt plug. The person receiving the penetration is the person in charge of how much, how fast, how deep. If something starts to hurt, slow down.

Don’t go into it thinking that you’re going to go from a little vibration outside the butt to full on anal intercourse in one session. This is something that may take days, weeks, or frankly never. Anal sex can be utterly fantastic. And no matter how educated and caring a partner is, some folks just don’t like it. That’s totally OK. You don’t have to like everything. One of the best things about giving or receiving anal sex is that it’s totally not gender dependent. Everyone has a butt. And anyone can celebrate their butt. In fact, the clitoris has more nerve endings than anywhere on the human body, followed by the anus, then the penis (new information is coming out that indicates it’s possible an uncircumcised penis may have almost as many nerve endings as the clitoris). So, if you have a penis, you should definitely experiment with exploring your butt. Enjoying anal sex is a process—it takes time. Be patient and enjoy the journey and if you’re looking for more info, check out these books: Tristan Taormino’s “Guide to Anal Sex for Women” (which has great advice for people of all genders) and Jack Morin’s “Anal Pleasure and Health.”

I’ve been hearing about PrEP. What the heck is that?

PrEP is AMAZING. It’s the first major breakthrough we’ve made in HIV prevention in decades. We’ve come a long way in our fight against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. With ongoing treatment, many people are able to live long, healthy lives with HIV. Currently there are around ONE million people living with HIV in the United States. Unfortunately, in the past several years, we have seen an increase in HIV infections, especially among men who have sex with men, and even more among African-American men who have sex with men. While folks who have ongoing treatment can live healthy lives, treatment involves a decent amount of medication and following up with doctors. In Maryland, we have good systems in place to support folks living with HIV and it’s rare for someone to not be able to afford or access treatment. Unfortunately, that’s not true for people in many other states.

Previously, we had four main ways of preventing HIV: abstinence, condoms, needle exchange programs, and testing and treatment. All of those methods require people to change their behavior. Sometimes, people don’t want to change their behavior. Sometimes, for a million different reasons, they just can’t use a condom every time they have sex. And that is putting them at higher risk for HIV.

There are many reasons that people aren’t able to use condoms when they have sex. They may be in a relationships where they can’t ask their partner to use a condom. They may be too high when they have sex to remember to use a condom. They may love going to condom-free sex parties. They may be a sex worker who gets paid more to have sex without a condom, and they need that money. They may be an HIV negative person in a monogamous relationship with an HIV positive person who hates feeling like there’s a barrier between them and their partner.

Until PrEP, there wasn’t a good way for folks in these situations to protect themselves. But now, there’s PrEP, a pill that someone who is HIV negative takes every day (kind of like the birth control pill). If it’s taken every day, the risk of infection drops to less than one percent. If someone misses some pills, the effectiveness drops, but it’s still more effective than nothing.

Not everyone should take PrEP—it’s for folks who are at higher risk for HIV. Like any medication, it has side effects, and if you’re not at higher risk for HIV, it’s probably not worth the trouble.You can even stop and start PrEP. Are you planning a vacation that’s going to be a fuck fest? Start PrEP six weeks before you go, take it consistently until after you’re home, and stop taking it until your next vacation. You can get PrEP by asking your doctor. Depending on your doctor, you may need to do a little bit of education. If you want to avoid that, try going to a local LGBTQ clinic like Chase Brexton. If you have insurance, PrEP should be covered. It’s definitely covered on Medicaid. For the right person, PrEP can be an amazing option.

Thanks for your questions! I can’t wait to hear what you’re thinking about next.

The post Sugar Talk: Anal sex advice and a PrEP explainer appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

It’s that time of the year. The holidays. Gift giving time. Are you thinking about getting someone a sexy gift? Not sure where to start? Sexy gifts include a number of different options. I think of them in three main types: sensual gifts, experience gifts, and sex toy gifts.

Sensual gifts

These gifts emphasize luxury, touch and, frequently, self care. Massage oil, bath oil, candles, feather ticklers, satin sheets—these things feel good because they are centered around intentional touch and stimulating skin. Our skin is the biggest organ on our body. It’s incredibly sensitive. Our skin is also a big part of how we interact with the world—shaking hands, rubbing shoulders on the bus, a scratchy scarf around our neck. But, much of the touch we encounter isn’t centered on pleasure. Creating space where our skin is only for pleasure can be dazzling. When purchasing sensual gifts, spend as much or as little as you want. You can even learn to make your own massage oil (check out Youtube for some tutorials).

Experience gifts

Experience gifts are sexy because they are centered around listening to your partner and providing them with an experience that is all about them — a gift that is all about their desires, their needs, and their dreams. Experience gifts, when done right, make a person feel seen, heard, and desired. What’s sexier than that?

When shopping for an experience gift, think about the things that mean the most to your partner. Is it spending a morning alone hiking? Or spending an evening with their friends? Maybe it’s getting to sleep an entire night through without being woken up by the kids. The experience doesn’t need to be something you do together. Creating time for your partner to be alone can be especially important in a long term relationship. Mystery is sexy. Creating a little space for that mystery to breathe can bring air and fire to your passion.

Experience gifts are often not directly related to sex. Frequently, they’re about what I call “the sex bank.” The sex bank is that part of your mind that decides if you’re interested in sex. You make deposits in your partner’s sex bank when you take out the trash, hand over the remote, or buy the Fire Hot Cheetos that you hate but your partner loves. You make withdrawals when you’re not nice, or you neglect your partner or things they care about. When you keep the sex bank full, your partner wants to have sex with you, desires having sex with you, and will turn off their phone, dim the lights, walk over legos to have sex with you.

Sex toy gifts

These gifts are tools. They are able to provide stimulation in a way that is either difficult or impossible to do with a body. A vibrator can stimulate nerve endings at an intensity that’s simply not possible from a tongue, finger, or penis. Dildos are made in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Want something small one minute, something bigger the next? Dildos can give you that. Wrist restraints help someone stay still while leaving a partner free to provide extra stimulation. Adding a sex toy opens up worlds of possibilities.

Which toy should you get? That’s all up to you and your partner. Are either of you open to trying something new? What kind of thing might they be interested in? Sex educators at a sex positive store, like Sugar, will be able to guide you to exactly what you need. And regardless of what genitals you all have, a good vibrator and a bottle of lube can go a long way to creating one hell of a good night.

Do you have a question about sex, relationships or gender? Send us an email at sugartalk@sugartheshop.com!

The post Sugar Talk: A guide to the holiday guide—buying sexy gifts appeared first on Baltimore Beat.

How do you define sex?

When is it OK to have sex? Who is OK to have sex with?

Are you having enough sex? Or what’s too much? Is there such a thing as too much or too little?

What makes something a fetish?

How do you ask for something new in the bedroom?

What’s a g-spot?

Is it weird if a straight guy wants anal penetration?

How do I talk to my kid about sex?

Why are so many people talking about “rape culture”? What does that even mean?

How do you know if you’ve had an orgasm? What does it mean if you’ve never had an orgasm?

Sex is delicious. And complicated. Frequently, accurate and useful information is hard to come by.

That’s why Sugar Talk is here.

In this column, we’ll cover sex, anatomy, sexuality, gender, relationships, sexual orientations, sex in popular culture, and most importantly, your questions.

My name is Jacq Jones; I’m a local sex educator and I own an education-focused sex toy store in Hampden called Sugar. I love talking about sex, I love helping people find their way to joy in their own sexuality and sexual expression, regardless of what that looks like. As long as it’s truly consensual, I am here to help you get the info you need to experience your desires.

I’ve been working in sex education and reproductive health care since 1994. I know a lot, but I don’t know everything. Sugar Talk will also feature medical professionals, sex workers, and other sex educators and professionals for answers and different perspectives. Often with sex, there’s more than one “right” answer. We’re going to work to cover a lot of bases. We’ll begin the column with a frequently asked question I encounter at the store from straight, cis women: “My boyfriend and I have been together for a few months. I go down on him, and I like doing it. But he never goes down on me. It doesn’t seem fair.”

You’re dealing with a super common issue. I’d start with telling him that you like receiving cunnilingus and ask him how he feels about it. It’s possible that he had a past partner who didn’t like it, or he’s been told that he’s “doing it wrong” so he’s avoiding it.

Conversations like these can feel a little intimidating. I promise that you’ll survive it. Start out by having the conversation someplace private, when you’re both sober, happy, and not about to have sex. Use the conversation sandwich. It’s a magic tool. Here’s how the sandwich works: First tell him how much you enjoy having sex with him, tell him about something that he does that feels really good to you, then tell him that receiving cunnilingus (pussy-licking) is something you’d love to receive from him and ask if that’s an option. Then listen.

If he’s willing to to try it, set up some time to play with cunnilingus. Set it up as separate from sex. View it as an experiment. Try different things. Laugh. Understand that licking someone’s genitals in the way that works for them can take practice and input from the person receiving the cunnilingus.

If he really just doesn’t like going down and isn’t willing to try it with you, you have some decisions to make. Is this a deal breaker for you? No one should do something they don’t like doing in the bedroom. Are there other parts of sex and your relationship that make up for not receiving that one thing? It can be OK to stay in a relationship that’s missing something. Relationship researchers John and Julie Gottman have found that every relationship has 10 problems. There is no such thing as a problem-free relationship. The key is to decide if the specific problems are deal breakers. It’s OK if this is a deal breaker. It’s OK if it’s not.

I will, however, make one exception to that rule. If he’s not going down because he thinks that pussies are dirty or gross, and he’s not willing to reconsider that concept (pro-tip—pussies are amazing, wonderful, magic creations that are absolutely not dirty or gross), that’s definitely not OK. As my friend and fellow sex educator Ducky Doolittle says, “Sometimes we’re fucking the wrong people.”

You deserve a partner who is deeply excited about your body and about having sex with you. This guy might be exactly that partner. If not, it might be time to move on. You deserve a partner who gives you the pleasure you desire. So, go get it—and let me know how it goes!

Do you have a question? Send me an email to spice@sugartheshop.com. And we’ll get to talking about sex.

The post Sugar Talk: Unreciprocated oral sex and the importance of the conversation sandwich appeared first on Baltimore Beat.