Woodhull Dinner with Epiphora, Kate Sloan, Rae Chen, and Super Sleepy Enby

"I just had din­ner with Epiphora, Girly Juice, and The Notice last night!!!!" I texted a friend.

"WHAT THE FUCK," she respond­ed. "WAS EPIPHORA JUST AS ADORABLE IN PERSON?!"

"UH YES, she's so down-to-earth and endear­ing­ly dorky."

My past self would have react­ed the same way as my friend: "WHAT THE FUCK" to the thought of meet­ing them. Of even being in the same place as them, at Woodhull's Sexual Freedom Summit near Washington, D.C.

Assembling the sex bloggers

For flip's sake, Epiphora, Kate, and Rae togeth­er wield­ed a colos­sal 28 years of blog­ging and count­ing. That's longer than I've even been on this plan­et. Not any­more, lol.

But I ini­ti­at­ed din­ner plans because I was con­fi­dent of a few things:

1. Every last one of my idols is a human who has to eat.
2. Woodhull's offi­cial sched­ule had a built-in din­ner break.
3. They're also intro­verts with dorky quirks.
4. I'm on Epiphora's and Kate's blogrolls, so it's not like I'm a total stranger.

"Also, heads up, [my boyfriend and I] are gonna be dressed up because we decid­ed to be extra tonight," Kate mes­saged me.

I fol­lowed suit and put on a form-fitting bur­gundy dress with diag­o­nal pleats by Calvin Klein.

"You look so regal!" Rae told me. "Like you'd be del­i­cate­ly pet­ting a white cat in your lap."

About Rae Chen, Epiphora, and Kate Sloan

You know how drunk women in bar bath­rooms are fierce­ly cor­dial to each oth­er? That's the vibe I get from Rae, a fash­ion and beau­ty blog­ger. Even before the din­ner, Rae imme­di­ate­ly start­ed talk­ing to me upon meet­ing ("Yes, the one oth­er Asian here! Be my friend!") and had com­pli­ment­ed my outfit.

Piph was delight­ful­ly sex-geeky with her SheVibe T‑shirt and vul­va neck­lace. Her nails were mar­bled with blue and gold geode vul­vas. Despite the unde­ni­able flair through­out her ample blog, she was hard­ly intim­i­dat­ing or scary. Especially when she said, "aww" at the wal­rus on the restau­rant menu.

She's just as human as you and I. Epiphora comes com­plete with quirks like think­ing of a wit­ty joke for a post, only to real­ize that she had already writ­ten that joke before. And, rest assured: if you're a blog­ger who's felt Impostor Syndrome or cringed at your for­mer self, under­stand that she's been there too.

Girly Juice's blog brand is built on per­son­al sto­ries and relata­bil­i­ty. Kate is old­er than me by two years and has gone through sim­i­lar phas­es, like deal­ing with depres­sion and tak­ing a gap year from school. When read­ing her blog, it's easy to get the feel­ing that you know her. And not only that, but it's reas­sur­ing that I, too, will be okay two years from now.

Getting comfortable with the flagrant sex-positivity

None of this is to say I wasn't reserved at first. After all, I was still an intro­vert din­ing with four near-strangers and my then-boyfriend in a pub­lic place. I gave an under­stat­ed response when Super Sleepy, Kate's boyfriend, asked me what I thought of the single-density Vixen Randy.

"It's amaz­ing," I said. What I meant was, "It's so dizzy­ing­ly over­whelm­ing that I almost sound like I'm giv­ing birth when I use it. it's my toy of choice for forced orgasms."

The oth­ers? No fucks giv­en. All but hol­ler­ing about squirt­ing. But after years of writ­ing about sex, I sup­pose you inevitably get over the peo­ple glar­ing at you for talk­ing about it in public.

I learned a bit more about the oth­ers' pref­er­ences. Rae has nev­er liked any Tantus toy and finds the big end of the njoy Pure Wand painful; she strong­ly prefers dil­dos with squish. Kate agreed with me about the Hitachi Magic Wand Original not being the Greatest Thing Ever… but the rum­bli­er Magic Wand Rechargeable and Plus come clos­er to that goal than their predecessors.

And, shock­ing­ly, Piph's SenseVibe might be her new LELO Mona 2…?! Update: Epiphora and I both have a new Mona 2: the BMS Factory Pillow Talk Sassy and it's under $60.

At the time, I was the only femme at the table who nei­ther squirt­ed, nor kept a sex spread­sheet or jack-off jour­nal.

The (relatively) vanilla parts of our lives

They also asked me about my day job as an art mod­el, my then-boyfriend about being a food sci­en­tist, and what it's like dat­ing a sex blog­ger.

.@Squeaky_Springs: "I'm sure there are weird­er con­ven­tions than [Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit]. People go to cheese conventions"

My boyfriend, a food sci­en­tist: *feels attacked* …the thing I went to wasn't a con­ven­tion, but a com­pe­ti­tion where peo­ple eval­u­ate dairy"#SFS18

— Super Smash Cache (@supersmashcache) August 3, 2018

"Well, it's inter­est­ing being part of her blog," he replied, "But there wasn't a dis­tinct moment where I was shocked to find out [that she wrote about sex]."

"On our sec­ond date, I showed him Mary Roach's '10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm' TED talk, and he wasn't weird­ed out by it. So knew he'd be okay with my blog."

"You guys bond­ed over Mary Roach? Awww!" said Kate. "[Super Sleepy and I] are total jour­nal­ism geeks over her work."

"That's a real­ly good fil­ter," added Piph. Indeed, that TED talk gave me a safe-ish way to dis­cern whether a poten­tial date was sex-positive.

We talked about first dates. My then-boyfriend's and my first date, when he cut his fin­ger while cook­ing for me and said, "Just so you know, I'm prob­a­bly going to pass out with­in the next fif­teen min­utes [over the sight of blood]."  Super Sleepy and Kate's first date, when they rent­ed an office for an hour to make out (reser­va­tion title: "Important Meeting" with a brief­case emoji).

Okay, but tell us more about Super Sleepy!

Super Sleepy Dude indeed is hand­some with a fit­ting­ly firm hand­shake. But I don't agree with Kate about them look­ing like Cillian Murphy. They seem more dis­tinct­ly cute than Cillian. They look whole­some, even though I know they're any­thing but that.

I haven't writ­ten much about Super Sleepy, most­ly because I don't want to say too much and "out" him. UPDATE: Super Sleepy is out as non­bi­na­ry and no longer anony­mous. Their name is Matthew Bischoff.

It's not because I don't think they're inter­est­ing. They've been on Jeopardy and met famous Pomeranians! And their triv­ia knowl­edge is, of course, odd­ly and specif­i­cal­ly top-notch. When Piph and Rae expressed their dis­like of onions, I said, "Did you know that Romanians dip raw onion in salt and eat it straight?" Super Sleepy (and only Super Sleepy) said yes.

If you're grossed out by the idea of eat­ing raw onion straight, let me cleanse your palate with this fac­toid: they reg­u­lar­ly drink pineap­ple juice. Cue the "You're a lucky girl, Kate!" AND they nev­er ever for­get to give oral— super com­mit­ted to shrink­ing the orgasm gap.

The magic of the Sexual Freedom Summit

That's the one main thing we all have in com­mon: we're all about mak­ing the world a sex­i­er and more plea­sur­able place to be in. It was refresh­ing to chill with peo­ple who gave a fuck about sex­u­al free­dom. That goes for every­one in the blog­ger lounge and not just the four I wrote about here.