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Hello Crush,
It’s February and as I had foreshadowed, we are getting hot and heavy for the whole month.
You’re sexy and you know it, CRUSH.
In This Letter.
+The PrimeCrush Toy Tester Project. The LELO Lipstick Vibrator.
+SIGHS & Moans. By Ralph Greco How To Stop Worrying About What Your Fantasies “Mean” and Start Loving Your Sexual Imagination.
+Three Best Jazz Albums for a Sexy Night In, from a Jazz Vocalist. By Lisa Ellex From a jazz vocalist who grew up with the sounds of live jazz wafting through her grandmother's Greenwich Village luncheonette.
+BITE. What to Cook When You Want to F*ck. Sometimes not much, as it turns out. Chef Ali Waks Adams brings us along on her night in.
+Songs That Make You Wanna F*ck. from Carla. I offer this song up as a counterpoint to Lucy’s song last week. Lucy, with all due respect, you’re obviously not out dating.
+dishing. Ryan Holiday’s This Is Why You Have to Care, and more.
+Our Song of the Week Tell me you got something to give
The PrimeCrush Toy Tester Project. By Dish Stanley
Here is the latest report in our PrimeCrush Toy Tester Project, in which actual PrimeCrush Readers agree to try out and review for the rest of us a range of sex products (toys, lubes, books, vibrators, you name it).
Would you recommend the LELO MIA Vibrator to other CRUSH Readers?
All of our toy testers for this vibrator were women, two of whom indicated that they used it for solo stimulation and two used it with her partner for foreplay. The LELO MIA is $109.
4 out of 4 toy testers said “Yes.”
Here are CRUSH Testers’ specific comments on the MIA Lipstick Vibrator:
I like that it is small enough to travel with, that it gives a very intense, directed vibe (vs all over, more widely disbursed vibrations). I like the color (purple). -Kay
I love the idea of a “lipstick vibrator,” are you kidding me? It’s very feminine, and the fact that it is small and discreet makes it even more so. For its size, though, its pulse is as powerful as it needs to be (there are multiple power settings and types of vibrations) and it has a nice weight and great feel. I prefer the soft rubber to other vibrators that are slick. -Jamie
This is a find! I think that LELO makes some of the most high quality sex toys out there, but I didn’t know about the lipstick. Small but with kick. This is fir pinpoint stimulation. The USB charger is much more convenient than having to match it with the right cord/outlet or battery. All around, it’s perfect. -Laura
This little lipstick “tube” is always in my cosmetic bag because it’s compact and convenient and has a built-in charger. I don’t want to have to remember to throw it into my luggage, etc., etc. -Dish
All four testers said:
- It feels very high quality.
- They loved the size.
- Great for travel.
- Great for a quickie.
- The USB charger is convenient.
In our last PrimeCrush Toy Tester Report, CRUSH Reader Susie shared her review of WIRED’s pick for the top vibrator. Scroll down for that.
SIGHS & Moans. By Ralph Greco
How To Stop Worrying About What Your Fantasies “Mean” and Start Loving Your Sexual Imagination.
A column on love, sex, and kink in relationships from the host of the podcast Licking Non-Vanilla, who has spent a lot of time contemplating all of it in his sixty years of being alive.
Even though lots of folks won’t admit to masturbating, we know a lot of people do. It’s healthy. It’s fun. It’s a great way to spend a few minutes not watching another round of Seinfeld reruns.
It’s the same with our sexual fantasies.
We are all pretty much having them, they’re healthy and a great distraction from real life. As we wrote about in The Crush Letter No 8 “The Power of the Erotic Imagination,” the renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel calls fantasies the “essence of creativity and vitality, and a necessity for feeling truly alive.”
At any rate, you won’t be able to stop your sexual fantasies from coming, so don’t even try. Nor should you. They are normal mind-movie candy all adults enjoy, to a greater or lesser extent, close or far away from one’s real life, sparking high to the front of one’s brain, or slowly idling on one’s kinky back burner, depending on a great many factors.
Continue reading here
Three Best Jazz Albums for a Sexy Night In, from a Jazz Vocalist. By Lisa Ellex
Writer and vocalist Lisa Ellex combed her collection for the top three best jazz albums for your sexy night in, whether you’re behind closed doors or going solo, here are her favorites.
Jazz was the first music I ever recall hearing. On any given day, Carmen McRae, Stan Getz, Sergio Mendez, or Antonio Carlos Jobim would be playing in our home, on my father’s car radio, or in my grandmother’s Greenwich Village luncheonette. My parents always began their Saturday date night at the famed Village Vanguard, and Sunday nights meant I would get to hear the music pouring from its doors on our walk home from dinner at my grandmother’s apartment.
It seemed that jazz was everywhere then, and even at my young age, I instinctively knew it was romantic and sexy, and I knew I would sing it one day. And much like the best sex, it’s always a thrill to be immersed in it, while experiencing the element of surprise, and the anticipation of what’s to come.
Getz/Gilberto (1964)
When Brazilian musician/composer Antonio Carlo Jobim brought his band of bossa to Carnegie Hall in 1962, he invited American tenor saxophonist Stan Getz to join the lineup. This single night of music set off the bossa nova craze in the United States that spread the world over. Getz and Jobim’s guitarist/singer, Joao Gilberto, went on to record the now classic Getz/Gilbert and forged this dreamy Brazilian sound that is the bossa we still can’t get enough of -- 57 years later!
The album offers the perfect balance of instrumental and vocal selections and features Gilberto’s wife, Astrud, better known as the “Girl From Ipanema.” Though I’ve heard it for decades, I never tire of Getz’s gorgeous, breathy solo on this cut.
Every offering on this record is a stand-out, but you’ll especially love the classic “Corcovado” (“Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars”) with vocals provided by Mr. and Mrs. Gilberto in both English and Portuguese. It just doesn’t get much sexier than bossa nova.
Watch: Astrud Gilberto perform “Corcovado” on YouTube
Continue reading here
BITE. What to Cook When You Want to F*ck.
This time around, Chef Ali designed an easy edible experience that seduces, before and after.
Seduction is my favorite part—it is all about possibilities. You are inviting someone in, showing them just a little of what you got goin’ on. Like a great dish, it starts with the barest whiff of attraction, sliding garlic cloves into warm oil. Soon there’s a legitimate aroma pulling you in, filling the room. Attraction is like that too, even the slightest possibility of sex makes the air a bit thicker, you feel yourself moving through it languidly, every movement means something.
As a chef, I am a professional seductress, I tease, I tantalize, I draw you in to my world. My food heightens your senses, you find out what this tastes like, what that feels like, what it smells like, you eagerly anticipate what’s next until that final climax and then—ahhhhhh!—we relax together with a few little nibbles, and bites left to linger over. We are temporarily sated, but still curious…what could be next.
Food is a fabulous vehicle for seduction. I fed a man his first fresh fig, teetering on over ripeness - almost sticky, I wrapped it in salty, meaty serrano ham, I fed it to him by hand. I brought one gentleman into my world by leaving tiny bits of food out for him to taste, offering things he’d never thought of eating—truffles, roasted oysters, mushrooms. Before meeting me he thought the five basic flavors were Ranch, Blue Cheese, Ketchup, BBQ and Cheez (they are, for the uninformed, Salty, Sour, Sweet, Bitter and Umami). I seduced my husband with a cheese plate. After a mouthful of aged cheddar crunchy with crystals and crisp russet apple drizzled with buckwheat honey, he was very interested in finding out what else I had to offer.
Continue reading here
Songs That Make You Wanna F*ck. A Compendium from the Readers of The Crush Letter.
An occasional pop-up where we share the songs that make the readers of The Crush Letter want to bang. Got one? Send it to me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com.
Man I Need by Olivia Dean
Submitted by CRUSH Reader Carla*
What about this song musically does it for you?
Such a catchy sound.
Why does this song do it for you?
I offer this song up as a counterpoint and “in conversation with” Lucy* (or should I say, “why don’t you call me Lucy”), who submitted Tig3r Lewis’s Mr. Right Now last week. Lucy*, I loved your fantasy of a night with tig3r, the irresponsible boy toy you wouldn’t want to bring home to your parents. Or have greeting you the next morning over coffee. But, with all due respect, I’m steadying that you’re not out actively dating? As someone who has been out in the oftentimes cruel, insensitive, noncommittal, irresponsible, detached dating world we currently swim in — this Olivia Dean song is what turns me on. Not in the sense that it is a sensual, erotically-charged song, but in the sense that right now any guy who says he is going to call and then actually calls at the time he says he will is a sexpot to me. A guy who picks out the restaurant, makes the reservation, gets dressed nicely, asks me questions about myself and actually listens is a sexpot.
Who/What are you thinking of when you listen to this song?
Sam (Tom Hanks) in Sleepless in Seattle - the widowed architect looking for stability for him and his son, rather than a thrill.
Thanks Lucy*!
dishing.
things that are getting me off these days.
The soft porn film that nobody saw coming? The Wuthering Heights adaptation by Emerald Fennell being released next week on February 13th. The trailer suggests that the film is a highly eroticized interpretation which, okay, I can accept because the novel is a moody, gothic story about obsessive love, so making the sex that was burning just-under-the-surface throughout the novel more explicit seems a fair take. But the trailer markets Wuthering Heights as “the greatest love story of all time.” WTF? It makes me wonder whether Fennell and I read the same book? It’s a toxic, intergenerational unfulfilled obsession, Fennell. It’s a great story. But a great love story, no.
Still, yes of course, I plan to see it stat.
If you are a fan of Arthur Brooks’s work on happiness, then this free substack post from The White Pages might be helpful: Seven reasons why hosting a silly little potluck … is essential to defeating fascism. Garrett Bucks wrote it in response to questions about how to support demonstrators in Minneapolis, but its helpfulness goes wider and deeper. That’s because Brooks argues that one of the reasons we are unhappy is because our dinosaur brains were not meant to process all the news we take in electronically. From an evolutionary perspective we were meant to monitor the lives and doings of a small circle of 25-30 people, a community small enough that we have an impact. Powerlessness makes us unhappy; forming communities gives us the building block to take back a sense of control.
Ryan Holiday’s This Is Why You Have to Care. He argues (convincingly, I believe) that caring about injustice and human rights violations is not optional, but a moral obligation.
18 romantic texts to keep the spark alive, from @theheartshift. Since it’s Frisky February …
I started listening to Cameron Crowe read his memoir The Uncool and it’s very far from uncool. If you loved Almost Famous or enjoy rock star gossip, I believe you’d agree.
An online mah jong game that I love. I’ve been using it 1-2x a week to pop into impromptu (or scheduled) live games with far-flung friends. You can see and hear them while you play, and it’s been such a fun way to ”be together.”
Song of the Week
Man I Need by Olivia Dean
Thanks for being here, CRUSHes.
XO,
Dish
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The Crush Letter
The Crush Letter is a weekly newsletter from Dish Stanley curating articles & intelligence on everything love & connection - friendship, romance, self-love, sex. If you’d like to take a look at some of our best stories go to Read Us. Want the Dish?
