NSFW Lesbosexy Sunday Has Skin Hunger

Feature image of Cinnamon Maxxine and Golden Curlz in Crash Pad Series episode 206. 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!

Cinnamon Maxxine and Golden Curlz

Cinnamon Maxxine and Golden Curlz in Crash Pad Series episode 206

Skin hunger, or longing for physical touch and connection, is all the rage right now and can be hard to cope with at the best of times. Here’s how to deal with it:

“Life feels like it has slowed down for many of us. While we’re staying at home to stop the spread of COVID-19, many of us have also experienced job loss, or are working less and looking for ways to fill the time — this can be seen as an invitation to be in a relationship with yourself. How might you be able to satiate your need for touch right now? “You may have to be creative based on your physical ability, but ultimately the point is to spend some extra time in affectionate contact with your skin,” says Francis. Some types of solo intimacy could be giving yourself a hug, self-massage, cuddling your pets or a stuffed animal/soft pillow, taking a long bath or shower, swaddling yourself in a blanket, masturbating, playing with textures like feathers or silk or leather against your skin, and slathering yourself in lotion. Kahn affirms that solo touch and movement can provide benefits similar to interpersonal touch.”

Daisy Ducati and Ella Nova

Daisy Ducati and Ella Nova in Crash Pad Series episode 186

You can also use your own body to reduce stress, such as through practicing bodily awareness, breath work, self-massage, masturbation and more:

“Whether on yourself or through the therapeutic touch of another, massage reduces stress by increasing blood flow, thereby increasing mood-lifting hormones such as endorphins and oxytocin throughout the body. For those without much experience with self-massage, Rocco Foronda, a massage therapist at the Oakland-based queer-affirming massage studio Bayan Roots, recommends three basic massage techniques: squeezing, brushing, and tapotement, or tapping. Rocco advises going slowly, increasing pressure as needed, and always trying to direct one’s squeezes, brushes, or taps toward the heart. “We never want to do strokes away from the heart because that goes against the veins or the venous system. Stroking toward the heart helps increase circulation,” they explain. Using a lotion or massage oil can help further increase circulation, though it’s not necessary.”

Barbary Rose and Rion Rhodes

Barbary Rose and Rion Rhodes in Crash Pad Series episode 277

Lots of people are getting caught in affairs in lockdown.

Here are a few breakup stories from quarantine. Here are a few Tinder stories.

At Bust, Tequila Mockingbird discussed doing sex work under quarantine, including a little about how her studio is functioning and ways to support sex workers in addition to buying their porn.

Here are some classifications of “horny.”

How do you share your beauty routine with partners? (I recently converted mine to the magic of mud masks, but think I might have been able to do so sooner if I hadn’t made so many masc for mask jokes.)

Here’s what sex on MDMA feels like.

Curious about shibari after watching nightmare Too Hot to Handle? Check out Autostraddle’s shibari 101 series.

Do nothing.

Check out these sex books.

Do you need to talk to your partner about the future right now? It depends:

“Ask yourself: Is this the right time to have this conversation, or am I just bored? For a lot of us, life has become super monotonous, and the definitely-not-urgent thoughts we were having two months ago can easily ramp up when we have less to distract and entertain us. It’s all made worse by the fact that time is meaningless now; this crisis pretty much guarantees that a lot of relationship milestones are going to happen much earlier—or way later—than they normally would.”

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Ryan Yates

Ryan Yates was the NSFW Editor (2013–2018) and Literary Editor for Autostraddle.com, with bylines in Nylon, Refinery29, The Toast, Bitch, The Daily Beast, Jezebel, and elsewhere. They live in Los Angeles and also on twitter and instagram.

Ryan has written 1142 articles for us.

3 Comments

  1. that Do Nothing article is interesting! I’d never considered waking rest vs. deliberate rest, but it makes so much sense.. I loved this quote too:

    “[Rest has] never been something you do when you’ve finished everything else… If you want rest, you have to take it.”

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