Halo the GxdBody and La Muxer Diosa in Crash Pad Series episode 305. All of the photographs in this NSFW Sunday are from the Crash Pad. The inclusion of a visual here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If you’re a photographer or model and think your work would be a good fit for NSFW Sunday, please email carolyn at autostraddle dot com.
Welcome to NSFW Sunday! Bottoms, tops, we all hate cops.
Struggling with guidelines around pandemic safer sex? The New York City Department of Health has released a set of recommendations that include gloryholes. Specifically, the guideline reads, “Be creative with sexual positions and physical barriers, like walls, that allow sexual contact while preventing close face to face contact.” As Gizmodo notes:
“Barriers, sure. Condoms and dams are barriers, for instance. There are also plenty of sexual configurations that don’t require facial proximity. Walls, however, seem like an oddly specific suggestion. Personally, I cannot think of any sex act that involves a load-bearing structure other than the use of a glory hole.”
(To anyone who thinks you have to have a penis to partake in a glory hole, I would say: you’re not being creative enough.)
Izel the Alpha and Puppy Chulo in Crash Pad Series episode 289
Self-pleasure is a radical act, writes Josie Pickens at Bitch:
“”My favorite benefit of masturbation is that it helps connect us to our pleasure,” says Howard, who has been teaching sex education and sexual health and helping women learn how to cum for more than 12 years. “When you know what feels good to you and communicate it to your partner, it makes you a better lover and makes the sex you have with others even more satisfying.” Self-pleasure is radical for women because, as Goody mentioned, it helps us understand how our own bodies work and what makes them feel their sexual best. The more we know about what brings our bodies pleasure, the more we’re able to center our pleasure when we share our bodies with others. It puts us in the driver’s seat. It teaches us that our pleasure deserves priority.”
Golden Curlz in Crash Pad Series episode 209
If your city is slowly coming out of lockdown, here are some steps you can take to protect your sexual health, including getting an STI test, getting a COVID-19 test, using protection and checking in with your mental health. Should you wear a mask during sex with anyone you don’t live with? Possibly. Meanwhile, England has effectively banned having sex with anyone you don’t live with via a new law that bans indoor “gatherings” of “two or more.”
In a sweet personal essay at Medium, Roxane Gay wrote about moving in with her fianceé Debbie Millman after being long-distance, all the things you notice when you’re spending so much time together in quarantine, and what happens as you create the portrait of a relationship together:
“In many ways, distance makes a relationship easy. When your time together is finite, you’re generally on your best behavior. Every night is date night — sexy restaurants, exciting theater, museums, fancy parties, hot dogs at three in the morning from Chelsea Papaya, our favorite lesbian bar and booze in plastic cups and grinding on a tiny dance floor surrounded by people 20 years our junior. You don’t really settle into any ruts because you’re always on the go, go, go. Before any cracks might start to show, you’re apart again and missing each other and hearts are growing fonder. You get quality time together and quality time alone, the best of both worlds. In the weeks before the pandemic, however, both Debbie and I shared that maybe, just maybe, we wanted to spend more time together than apart even if we didn’t know how to make that happen.
Now, we are together all day every day. We are together more than we ordinarily would be if we lived together. We have had more than enough time for cracks to show. We work in separate areas of the house but we’re always in each other’s orbit, always. We run errands together. We ride bikes around our neighborhood together. I knew my fiancée before we began isolating but still, with each passing day, I am getting to know so much more about her and, fortunately, I delight in each new thing I learn.”
Adina and Saffron in Crash Pad Series episode 303
Here are the people hooking up with strangers during the pandemic.
If you’re playing it safe and keeping your hookups virtual, here are a few Zoom alternatives that feature encryption rather than a snooping AI.
Queers have always been marrying, regardless of how legal it was.
Here’s what #vanlife couples can teach us about living together in a very small space for a very long time.
Monday is a great day to have sex.
Grindr has finally removed it’s problematic “ethnicity filter.”
Monday sex ! Starting my week off with a bang why didn’t I think of that ??