Want to read an interview with me?

The interview process

Want to see what I said last week? No? Well, if you change your mind, here it is. (And jeez, you could've at least pretended like you wanted to read it.) The interview was with Amanda Wayne of The Letter Works, an editing outfit that apparently doesn't mind a little cussing. (thx also to TLW's Catherine Foster, who you can hold responsible for this and probably doesn't care for this sentence structure.)

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In Bed with Jill Hamilton by Amanda Wayne

When I started researching Jill Hamilton for this interview, I ran into a rather unique problem. Every site I visited had her essays and tips. I kept getting sucked into them and forgetting that I was there to do actual work. I wasn’t there to learn about the weirdest sex inventions, seminars for vagina meditation, or octopus fetishes. I just wanted to find out about her degree from the University of Michigan and any random tidbits on her personal life that I could. I used every millennial surfing trick I possessed. I was all over social media, scouring website “about me” blurbs, and lurking on professional networking sites. I was this close to paying one of those stalker sites to get some good info on her. I knew super intimate details about her, but not the boring surface stuff that I knew about my neighbor's sister. Jill manages to make it feel perfectly ordinary to read about things I only talk about with my best friend after we split one of the really big bottles of cheap wine.  It turns out that reading all of Jill’s entire anthology of essays was all the research I needed on this enigmatic lady. Jill has written for major magazines such as Rolling Stone and Cosmo and Entertainment Weekly. Her blog, www.inbedwithmarriedwomen.com, is hilarious and full of useful information. She agreed to answer a few questions for me and it was every bit as entertaining as I had hoped.

You have built this persona as a sexpert, writing for Cosmo, Salon, Alternet, Jezebel and many others. How did you fall into this crazy line of work where you make money talking about sex? 
My first Cosmo story was about 10 Weirdest Sex Devices or something like that. One of the things was a 70s-era bra with built-in nipples. The joke was about would happen if your actual nipples decided to make an appearance.  That is, 2 nipples = sexy, yet 4 nipples = not so much.
It mutated into me doing a stint as a sexual guinea pig, testing out Ye Olde Cosmo Tips–Use a scrunchie during a BJ! Smear food all over yourselves!  I have literally taken money for having sex (with my husband, for a Cosmo story, but still.) Whorish? Best job ever? Answer unclear.

What was the first big break you got as a writer?
I found out (long story) that there was a concert at a local nudist park in Michigan featuring Foreigner, Eric Burdon and others of that ilk. I sent a query to the delightful Jancee Dunn at Rolling Stone and she sent me to cover it. In case you were wondering, no one in Foreigner got naked, but everyone around me–who were exactly the age and demographic you could expect of older, not especially-toned nudists in Michigan– were butt naked, but for, incongruously, shoes and socks.

At what point did you decide to just embrace the baser side of humanity and write about the kinds of things people read in an incognito window?
Short answer:  Why bother with anything else?
Longer answer: I was sitting at the friggin’ Chuck E. Cheese with my friend, and we were discussing our moribund sex lives. What were the other preschool mothers doing about this? Was that one lady who looked like a grandma still banging her grandpa-looking husband? Were people having affairs? Did people just let their sex lives die, chalking it up to “maturity” and focusing really really hard on something like scrap booking?
I decided to start a blog In Bed With Married Women to ask people just this. (I am alarmingly nosy.) The idea was going to be a sociology study, with women just telling their stories. Like Studs Terkel but with more nudity.  The thing was, stories about marital sex are about as interesting as actual marital sex.
About the same time I saw an ad for something called Anal Ring Toss and I kind of veered in a whole different direction. This is still the central tension in the blog today–between a serious look at sex and what the hell it even is vs. the immature joy of finding a Japanese sex spray that smells like “secretary.”

What advice do you have for moms trying to live both lives?
My kids are kind of like Stepford children and are bizarrely good and smart. Advice for others:  just do the parts you want. Like I don’t really fold clothes as much as bend them into smaller shapes.

Do you ever have trouble making those pieces work together? “Lift your left leg on to your partner’s right shoulder and- Hey! Don’t eat with scissors!”
I actually have said “Don’t eat with scissors.”  They were safety scissors, but still.  My kids are older now and they know way too much about what I do. I think it’s good though. Knowledge is power and all that. My sixteen-year-old, Maddie, is cheeky as hell and makes up fake positions that I should be sending to Cosmo.  I think the most recent one was the New Year’s themed “The Ball Drop” for the older gentleman.

What advice would you give to someone trying to get their first set of words in print? 
Write something. If you don’t, maybe you aren’t actually a writer. Maybe you’re a chef or something.

Do you ever get tired of writing about sex? 
Positions, yes. So yes. But sex, not yet.

Does anyone ever recognize you and ask for sex advice?
People ask me about sex toys. If you’re asking, I am currently going steady with an iRock by Doc Johnson.

You have a very intimate writing style. It is unapologetically frank and quite charismatic. Did this come naturally to you or did you develop it over time?
This sounds so ick and pretentious, but if you’re not talking about something real, what’s the point?

You seem to go to a lot of sex seminars and workshops, is it usually a sausage fest? Or are the sexes equally represented?
Both; people are generally earnest.  They want to be decent lovers, have good sex lives and are open to learning something new.

In the 60s, America had a sexual revolution and women came out of the kitchen burning bras and marching for rights. Women have started to march again. What do you think the future generations will have to say about what women accomplished now?
I think they will think it’s ridiculous that we were so backwards.

Do you think we have gone too far? America’s modern mother is a bread winner, bacon cooker, house maid, PTA president, soccer mom, 5k runner who also is forward thinking enough to want to be on top when the lights go down. Is this equality?
Equality is when we all can feel comfortable and able to be whoever we are. Men women, black, white, whatever.

If you could have a one minute Superbowl ad to impart your wisdom to the masses of men and women in America, what would you say?
Science is real, you fucking morons.  Hmmm, maybe should tone that down a little. (Nah!)

You interact with your readers a lot. Are you ever afraid an overzealous fan will use internet skills to find you and show up at your door? 
Eighty-five percent of my readers are exactly who I hoped–super smart, funny and curious. I adore them. The weirdest people were a group of couch Nazis on Twitter who got all roused/riled up by a piece on pegging I did. They were super furious, yet oddly obsessed. They were like “Are you a Jew? Cause you write like one.” I said “No, but thank you!” and they got even madder.

What’s next for Jill Hamilton? Your own sex toy line? Lingerie? A book? Directing female friendly adult films? Parenting books? Cooking show?
I’m eternally working on a book, though by “working” I mean thinking about it, then playing Words With Friends.

IKEA, Tentacles and Other Sexy Sexy Things

[Hey! Look what I found from back when the blog and the rest of us were shiny and new, unaware of what would befall us. Yes, my friends, welcome to 2010.]

After a few months of In Bed With Married Women, I thought I was getting somewhat savvy about what's going on out there in the world of sex. But as it turns out, clearly I have no fucking idea. None.

Like, just today, I learned that there is a whole genre of art, animation and storytelling focused on tentacle eroticism, which is the desire to enjoy sexual congress with particularly fetching members of the octopus or squid family. The fetish is traced from the early 19th century woodcut, The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (aka,"Honey, I had a really weird dream last night," shown above) by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, (a man who, as Nathan Reed put it in Cracked.com, "Liked him some tentacles.") The tentacle love was inadvertently furthered when Japanese censors banned depictions of penis penetration but weren't forward-thinking enough to ban depictions of tentacle penetrations as well. (I am pretty sure they assumed such a ban wouldn't be necessary. And, to be fair, if I had been sitting there in that censorship meeting, it's not like I would want to be the one to be bringing up the subject of tentacle/personal orifice contact.)

Hey Sailor, do you like IKEA?

As if that weren't enough--and I'm quite sure it is--there's this whole other thing I learned regarding IKEA and sex. And, no, I'm not referring to the almost sexual rush of finding stylish throw pillows at an Impossible Price but rather actual sex at IKEA. Apparently there's this whole sex thing going on at IKEA--meet-ups in the parking lot, stolen moments for bathroom hand jobs, furniture assembly/masturbation dates--or so it would seem according to Nerve.com's Best of Craigslist: IKEA Sex, a compilation of hook-up/sex ads that mention IKEA. One ad reads: "Going to IKEA? What you cock sucked?" Yes, "what you" cock sucked. I know this is illogical, but if I had a cock and indeed wanted it sucked at the IKEA, I would want a cock sucker with better grammar skills. I'm picky like that.

Writes another aspirer to IKEA sex:

I bought this IKEA table and I can't assemble it. Come over and put it together for me and I'll masturbate while you do it. With a dildo. And I will serve you unlimited iced tea. I'm 37 and not amazing looking but totally serviceable. 

I especially love the touch of the unlimited iced tea. I'm mean she/he has already offered to masturbate--with a dildo--but somehow feels the need to sweeten the deal. "Hmmm," she/he pondered while composing the ad on the floor, next to the mockingly still-unassembled IKEA table, "What does everyone love besides masturbation (with a dildo)? Iced tea! And not just one puny glass of iced tea--unlimited iced tea."

What especially wigged me out about this IKEA sex thing is that one of the IKEA sex ads is for a meet-up at the Costa Mesa IKEA, that is, my IKEA. Which means that I'm not just missing on this trend in a general sense, but in a very literal sense at my own damn neighborhood IKEA. While I'm in blissful ignorance eating attractively-priced gravalax in the Costa Mesa IKEA cafeteria, someone's probably a couple yards away in an ergonomically-designed bathroom stall smearing lingonberries all over a stranger. This is unsettling news, to say the least. But...I do love IKEA and I'm ashamed to admit that I'm not sure that decadent sex between poor grammarians going on all around me as I obliviously shop for housewares is enough to make me stop going there.

I will, however, draw the line at having sex with a tentacle. As mentioned above, I do have standards. Although if the tentacles offered furniture assembly, excellent grammar skills and unlimited iced tea...

Emma from Sweden Reports on Her Vibrator Because That's the Kind of Place This Is

Someone who is not Emma

If you must know, I was kinda pissed that Emma from Sweden didn't mention that she was from fucking Sweden when she entered to win something from that big-ass box I got from my beloved Erica Braverman at Doc Johnson.
 
Not only did I have to pay like $50 bucks to ship the damn thing to dear Emma at a time of personal poverty (aka always), but I had to deal with the super gross guy at the post office who always needs to drill down on what, exactly, I mean by “massager” on the customs form.

Anyway, now all is forgiven because Emma wrote back with a wholly unnecessary but delightful review of her iVibe Select iBend. She even sent pictures and is the cutest thing ever.

Here then, Emma from Sweden, who will remain only thus because, "I have children who I do not wish to shame."
 
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I won something! On the Internet! This in itself is miraculous, as I rarely comment on blogs and have never won anything before. And then it turned out (and turned on) to be a sensuous object of desire. It arrived in a package all the way from sunny California, USA to cold and dark Sweden, discreetly packaged and marked as "Massager" on the customs label, but I managed to hide it from my prying coworkers. In the evening, my Darling was out of town on work, so after I had sent my children to bed, I decided to go for it. Should I dress up for my new electronic lover, or put on sexy undies?

The box was sturdy and made to resemble the packaging of phones of the apple kind, and the pink matched my Colefax & Fowler wallpaper very nicely. Inside was a reliable-looking silicone dick with a super-smooth surface and pleasant size. It joined the other electronics on my vintage teak vanity, Kobo reading tablet (fantastic!) and Natural Cycles thermometer (the best thing that happened to my sex drive ever!). After half an hour of charging, which I spent knitting like the Little Old Lady that I am (44), I unplugged it and turned it on to the first stage. Mild, friendly buzz, and I tried the other six patterns on my thigh (foreplay?) before getting serious. The iBend can be bent in one direction, and then HOLD that position, which is brilliant. I bent it to an angle that allowed insertion and still provided enough buzz on my clitoris. The second setting made me come hard and sudden. Next time I will try the other rhythm patterns as well, and maybe let my lover decide for more surprises.

I can strongly recommend this dick to horny folks who like something well-made and versatile for their buzzy needs. My only complaint is that it is somewhat difficult to turn off, it requires pressing the on/off-button for 4 seconds, but as the iBend can run for over an hour on one charging, it is not necessary to save batteries. In the instruction leaflet it says to store the iBend away from other sex toys. The reason for this must be that the other toys will get really jealous when iBend gets all of your attention!

Nighty-night!

See? Cute as a damned button

xoxo

jill 

Thanks Emma and everyone who has sent mail that I not only haven't run yet but might not have even answered yet. I can be cruel that way.

What You Weirdos Bought on Amazon This Year

super sexy, but plz consult footnote

When I'm at the store, I'm a cart voyeur. I look at what other people bought and assess/judge them. Do the people with the healthy stuff look healthy? Do the folks with the cart of junk look weak and slovenly? My findings thus far: inconclusive.

And yes, I do the same voyerism/judgey thing to you. Those of you who kindly start your Amazon shopping through one of the links there in the right margin not only support the blog with a few pennies (literally) per purchase and indirectly support democracy not dying in darkness, but you also give me some truly stellar cart voyeurism.*

Every year I look over what you bought, looking to draw big connections like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind when the random letters rise from the newspaper and he sees the Secret Wisdom within.

But, as it is with my cart research, I find myself with more questions than answers. Like:

--Dog toy or sex toy?

--Were the oddly high number of people who bought Naughty With Santa: An Erotic Christmas Story wholly satisfied?  Like $2.99 satisfied?  Seems kinda pricey, though the first sentence alone is probably worth a good buck fifty:  "I really didn't mean to, but I fucked Santa."

--And to the person who bought the Cowardly Lion Badge of Courage. I have no question--just liked that you wanted it. I'm going to imagine that it totally worked.  

I did manage to learn some stuff about you. Here are 4 things that, like Oprah, I Know For Sure.

1. Someone bought a friggin' snow-making machine! And, apparently, you can buy peppermint scented snow juice to go in it! What a world, what a world! (If peppermint is too delightful for you, there's also charred corpse --wtf--or cannabis, aka the cock tease of snow juice scents.)

2. You like to stick all kinds of things in and around your body and the bodies of others, up to and including: 12 speed Ben Wa balls, thigh cuffs, deep throat numbing spray, tons of lube, prostate massagers, and something called Vibrating Penis Rings Fun Clit Dual Vibrating Cock Ring Stretchy Delay Penis Rings Sex Toys for Couple because it's just not a sketchy Amazon sex toy unless there are about 17 seemingly random words in the name, each making it a bit more confusing.

In that vein (huge and realistic, natch), even though I like money and am beyond grateful to you for taking the extra time to buy thru IBWMW, I feel obligated to tell you that jelly toys are are bad for your body. So person who bought XIKEZAN 8" Lifelike Huge Dildo Realistic Penis Sex Toys with Suction Cup Base & Balls 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed (Pink) et al, maybe time to find a new penis n' balls fuck toy.

3. Someone bought a Lock N Hold Rod Rack which, disappointingly, has something to do with fishing.

4.  Except for the person who bought what I would consider an excessive amount of chinos for the big and tall man, y'all like to dress sexy. I mean, damn, girl.

Covering her boobs because, modest

Coincidentally, I too am currently wearing the Eternatstic Women Mesh Cupless Babydoll Sleepwear Lingerie Set Thong (see above: Amazonese product name, word salad) and it's getting a bit hard to type while simultaneously cupping my boobs, so I will leave you for now.

Thank you for your purchases. I am grateful beyond measure. 

To a New Fucking Year, my friend. Huzzah!

xoxo
jill

*For those of you worried about privacy (hahahaha, privacy is not really a "thing" anymore), I can't actually see who bought what, just what was bought. That means I can't personally thank the person who bought the Vagisil Daily Intimate Powder, Odor Block, but I also don't know that it's YOU that requires ODOR BLOCK for your nether regions. (For the record, don't buy that shit--it's bad for your cooch! Maybe remove sugar from your diet and if things get really rough, try this.)

And in vaguely related news, this is my favorite joke that everyone else thinks is just meh:
Person 1:  Mmm, you smell delicious. What is it?
Person 2:  It's my tampon!  It's scented.

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Fund bloggery/outdated communication styles:

The Tipping Point

You know how you throw a buck or two to the coffee lady? If you're feeling flush, pretend I'm the coffee lady, but with delicious words for your soul, man.

(If you are rich and/or drunk when this finds you, consider becoming a monthly patron!)  

xo jill

How Wanking It Created the Universe and Other Theories on Masturbation

I am thinking of masturbation this morning. Not in the sense of putting it on today's "to do" list (although--what the hell--maybe I was, you don't need to know every damn thing), but in a more general, historic context way.

It was spurred by Kathleen telling me about a sexuality talk she gave some 'tween girls, based on the excellent book Changing Bodies, Changing Lives.

Armed with some notes and pads of paper for the girls to doodle on (secret real purpose: to give them a place to pretend to stare at if things got too embarrassing) brave Kathleen laid it all out for these girls--including the hows of orgasms, the phases of sexual response, and the role of masturbation in a healthy sex life. Kathleen even talked to them about sexual fantasies and told them different ways that girls might want to touch themselves. The eminently sensible idea being: people armed with knowledge are better able to make smart and responsible decisions about sex.

It was completely revolutionary to me. The one hour of sex education class I got in the 1970s contained quite a bit of information--an excessive amount, to my mind--about vas deferens, fallopian tubes and the like, but nothing in the way of practical information about sex. That is, the $%$# you actually wanted to know. I mean, my teacher described the doing of "IT" as "the sperm meeting the egg," as though a cotillion was somehow involved. There was no fucking way she was going to talk about the emotional and physical benefits of jerking off.

When I had my first self-given orgasm, I thought I had probably broken myself. I might have asked someone about it, but I was somehow aware that this was the sort of activity one didn't speak of. (Later I worried that I might have become pregnant after an interesting experiment with a pool water jet.* I was perhaps not the brightest of children.)

This kind of masturbation shame/ignorance is, fortunately, a fairly recent development. Throughout most of history, masturbation was considered natural, good, a sign of fertility and such. There are spurts of masturbation references throughout art, mythology and history. The ancient Greeks approved of stoking one's own fire, considering it a healthy outlet for both men and women. And in Egypt, the god Atum was thought to have brought forth the universe by ejaculating during what must have been a rather interesting session of beating off. ("Atum! You're still in the bathroom? What are you doing in there, young man?")

So accepted was the practice that nannies in 17th century Europe would masturbate young males who couldn't get to sleep(!) This is perhaps what people mean when they complain they can't get good help anymore. Dear Carmen, the lady who used to clean my house before I became poor, never once offered to give me a handjob, even after I pointedly mentioned I was having trouble sleeping.

How did we get from there to here? I mean, what sort of crazy-ass mind control propaganda could get people to turn against such a pleasurable activity? It was an influential pamphlet, of all things, circulated in 1700s America. It explained that semen held the Life Force and, as such, should not be squandered in the handkerchiefs of the day.

Soon, a variety of health and moral problems were added to plain ol' life force squandering. In "A Solemn Appeal," Sister Ellen G. White lists a host of old-timey ails caused by "the practice" including the dreaded "dropsy." The alarmed Sister warns, "The mind is often utterly ruined, and insanity supervenes." This perhaps explains why I have been known to stare blankly when someone asks me my cell phone number.

In Daniel Hack Turke's 1892 A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, he described a habitual masturbator thusly:

The face becomes pale and pasty, and the eye lusterless. The man loses all spontaneity and cheerfulness, all manliness and self-reliance. He cannot look you in the face because he is haunted by the consciousness of a dirty secret which he must always conceal and always dreads that you may discover. He shuns society, and has no intimate friends, does not dare to marry, and becomes a timid, hypersensitive, self-centered, hypochondriac.

Obviously such a fate was undesirable and young masturbators needed to be saved lest they, too, become pale and pasty in the face. According to Mary Roach in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, "Little hands were tied to headboards, and trousers fashioned without pockets. Hobbyhorses were taken away, and climbing ropes removed from school gymnasiums." And in 1914's Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship, scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell urges boys stricken with the forbidden urge to literally run away from temptation until presumably the boy would be so physically exhausted he would no longer have the energy to reach for his member.

This kind of hysteria fed on itself, and at a certain point, anti-masturbation advocates sound less concerned with the moral health of our youth and more like completely insane sadists. John Kellogg, the cereal guy, claimed that the "solitary vice" caused a host of health problems, up to and including death. "Such a victim literally dies by his own hands," Kellogg wrote, perhaps chuckling to himself over his wit. I knew Kellogg was wack--I mean, the dude invented a high-powered enema machine for personal use--but I didn't realize just how much of a nutter he was until I saw this in Wikipedia's History of Masturbation:

He recommended, to prevent children from this "solitary vice", bandaging or tying their hands, covering their genitals with patented cages, sewing the foreskin shut and electrical shock. He also recommended burning off the clitoris to prevent masturbation in girls.

Enterprising Americans wanted in on this action and dutifully invented all sorts of dreadful devices to stop people from ravishing themselves. (For lots of scary pictures, see also: Stephenson Billings' The Anti-Masturbation Movement's 14 Greatest Inventions on ChristWire.) There were penis fans to keep one's member from undue warmth, full body suits to prevent lustful wandering hands, and alarm systems designed to alert parents to their children's nocturnal erections (not quite sure what the parent is supposed to do once alerted). Penis cages and trusses locked the guilty organ up or tied it down to physically prevent erections. And when those didn't work, physical pain was employed. 

"The Timely Warning" (pictured at left) prevented "night emissions by arousing the wearer." "Arousing" is, at the very least, a curious choice of words. I guess it's an 1800s adman's best try at a positive spin on what would more accurately be described as: "being rudely awakened from your sweet dreams and pleasantly swelling erection by the sharp stab of a ring of metal teeth cutting into your wang."

The fetish gear-looking contraption shown at right is from US Patent 745,264, filed May 29, 1903, by one Albert V. Todd, for a device designed to prevent masturbation and nocturnal emissions. It features "a lockable belt with a tube for inserting the penis." If the errant penis were to rise while its pious owner was innocently sleeping, the device would employ spikes, an alarm bell, and an electric shock to get things back under control.

It's madness, obviously, but plenty of people are still afraid of masturbation (see also: The Dreaded "M" Word by former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, who was fired--I can still scarcely believe it!--for merely mentioning masturbation.) This article, for example, Freedom From Masturbation, offers guilty onanists a religious approach to stopping, including specific anti-monkey-spanking prayers to recite and the advice to "pray intermittently in tongues as the Lord leads you." (I would much less disturbed by walking in on some guy jacking off than some guy not jacking off while sporting a huge hard-on and speaking in tongues, but that's just me.)

The good news is that, in general, things seem to be finally turning around. Viva Changing Bodies, Changing Lives and people like brave Kathleen teaching girls how to wank it! As Dan Savage says in Savage U, "Girls should be encouraged to experiment, masturbate, learn how their bodies and orgasms work before moving on to partnered sex. Partnered sex would be less intimidating and disappointing out of the gate if more women arrived knowing how to get themselves off."

Go forth and create a universe.

xoxox
jill

*I'm pretty sure that this is how Aquaman was conceived.

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