Welcome back to A Slut’s Guide to Happiness, where your body is perfectly imperfect and it’s safe to be as sexual, kinky, queer or slutty as you want.

I’m wearing a hat today because it’s relevant to the ethos of this podcast in general, and the specific topic we’re discussing today. I also wore this recently, last week to an incredible group video call.

As you may know, I’m the CEO of a unique porn production company called Clif Media that’s rooted in community driven, community driven women and queer led porn. This week, 22 people, queer people from around the country got on a video call. Our leadership team of queer directors presented the scenes to help prepare the folks that were there for what to expect, how to take care of themselves and each other.

Those folks are going to be joining with a bunch of cis straight guys who are all together coming to an open-to-all shoot next Saturday. This is an amazing moment in our growth as a company, integrating social groups across identity.

I was talking with those folks and encouraging them to take up space to own your body, to own your story. I showed them this hat and I also want to share it with you. 

On the front of this baseball cap, it says “Bad hair day”, but you can think about that as anything – bad hair, bad life, feeling frumpy, unworthy, gross, unattractive. And in the case of this episode, even having an STI. 

But then you flip that hat around and on the back of the hat it says, “Don’t care”. And you know which way you can see my smile better, when I release those limiting beliefs and those stories about myself and I proudly live my life anyway. It is your smile, your confidence, your joy, your tenderness, your presence with people that people are going to connect with anyway.

So with the hat on backwards today, we’re going to talk about STIs, or sexually transmitted infection. Super sexy topic right? 

We’re not really going to talk about testing or how to identify STIs or get treatment, even though all of those are important topics for another day, and probably for an interview with a medical professional, which I am definitely not.

Instead, today we’re going to talk about 10 wicked hot ways to wait out an STI.

Imagine there’s some record scratch effect right there. That’s not how people normally talk about having an STI. Even the most sex-positive, slut-positive, loving medical professionals who find out that you have enough STI will typically say “Don’t have sex until this is cleared up”.

And the trouble is, they don’t get specific. Like, depending on the STI, they might say, don’t have sex in which you or your partner exchange fluids. 

But there’s often not a habit of communicating the nuance of sexuality in conversations with medial professionals.

I think it’s an awesome opportunity for us in the sex-positive community to fill that gap. 

Many folks who have spent their whole sexual lives in the straight world, may think of sex as dick in pussy, or  maybe dick in ass sometimes. The amazing thing about living in queer culture is that those aren’t foregone assumptions about sex. 

When I was 14, I came out as lesbian. It took a while, about eight years before I realized that I also wanted dick. Over those eight years, I had a lot of sex that had nothing to do with penetration. I actually didn’t even start using dildos until I was working in porn. Up until very, very recently, dildos have been purely performative. 

So for eight years, I had hot intense orgasms that had nothing to do with a dick or dildo in a pussy. 

One of my partners is bicurious or exploring. They said they’re not sure whether they’ve had gay sex because they’ve “only sucked dick”. To me, it’s really important from a queer perspective that oral sex is sex. If it’s not, I don’t know how my girlfriends and I were having such intense good orgasms. 

This is just an example of the approach to a broader understanding of sex. Of course, with many STIs, you can’t have oral sex either, but you can still have hot sexual connections. 

In the context of this broad interpretation of sexual connection, today I’m going to dive in deep to what it looks like when you have an STI, and how you can still maintain sexual connections with your partners, with your buddies, or your friends with benefits.

This is not a common approach, but I think it’s really important, including to undo the shame of STIs. It can be hard to tell someone you have an STI, which is wild. It’s not a big deal to tell someone you have a cold or bronchitis, but telling someone you have an STI can bring up lots of feelings. 

It gets wrapped up in sex- and slut-negative ideas, that a positive STI results is “dirty”, that the person did something to cause the STI exposure. Some people also feel afraid that their sex life is over, they need to cancel all their plans, or it will damage their relationships. 

But these narratives aren’t true. No matter what precautions you take, bodies get STIs just like bodies get any other infection, it’s part of being a sexually active human. 

Many STIs, like chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis, take a week or two to treat with antibiotics. Others, like HSV, require waiting out the first outbreak until the virus is in remission, which can take a week or two. Some people choose to take antivirals as a suppressant.

For some people, a couple of weeks of abstinence is not a big deal. As long as people around you are supportive and chill about you sharing your STI, the positive test result and cheating should be a breeze. 

If you’re a person with a high sex drive, multiple partners, or sexual plans, I’m here to talk about what no one is talking about. During that time of recovery, you’re not a sexual pariah, you still have fantastic options for engagement with mitigated risk. 

I recently found out that I had chlamydia. One of my partners got a positive test result, and within a few hours, we had partner packs on hand so that everyone in any chain of sexual activity got treatment. 

Planned Parenthood was great, offering partner packs as part of treatment. But their standard policy was up to 3-4 packs. I encouraged my partner to be honest, as I think is the best policy for interacting with health care. He explained to the doctors that the circle of people with exposure was closer to 12 or 16, because of the number of sexual partners that we had had. 

After explaining the situation and public health value of ensuring that everyone exposed receive treatment, we were able to distribute partner packs by the end of the day. 

Like most people who have a STI for the first time, my initial reaction was tears, frustration, and fear, not of the health consequences, but of the social consequences. I had to go back to someone with whom I’d had an awkward interpersonal closure and let them know about their exposure. 

It felt rough having to have that conversation, even though I know illness is not a personal failing. No matter how often you’re tested, no matter how many precautions you take, there are always risks associated with sex. But our culture has so much stigma attached to STIs, it’s an easy idea to internalize. 

Thereafter, a doctor told me about Doxy-Pep. They explained that current estimates consider it 70% preventive against syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. I have already been taking PrEP, prevention against HIV, and adding Doxy-Pep to my routine preventive care helped me to reduce the chances of STIs. I wish more doctors shared this kind of sex-positive preventive health information. 

But one thing I feel really grateful for about my positive diagnosis is the lesson that having an STI isn’t the end of the world, and it isn’t even the end or disruption of super hot sexual connections. 

During the two weeks that I went through antibiotic treatment, I had multiple one-on-one and threesomes with my partners. They were amazing, and my partners were fantastic at getting creative with me, having hot sex even while staying safe. I’m excited to share some of what we learned. 

Without further ado, I present ten wicked hot ways to wait out an STI. 

1. Impact and Power Play

I’m going to dive in deep first, then we’ll end with more vanilla and common sexual activities. 

The day after I found out I had an STI, I already had a kink threesome scheduled. This is the first time I was introducing these two of my partners to each other. We’d been sexting in a group chat all week about how they were both going to fuck me into oblivion. They were into the fantasy of DVP (double vaginal penetration), sliding their dicks against each other inside me, to fill up my cunt. Doubling up on my cunt was exciting but now clearly out of the picture. 

Regardless, the kink energy was still there. I still had a deep desire to play out the fantasy of being submissive to both of them at the same time and they were both still eager for that dynamic. 

We decided to explore the same power play dynamics, but without the originally imagined fluid exchange. We did impact play; they used their hands and toys to spank me. They twisted my nipples, left bite marks on my ass, spit on my face and tits. They wrote on my chest with degrading words, things they knew would turn me on. 

I came so hard from the experience of two people I deeply love and trust working together to dominate me. There’s so much deeper that we could have gone into this, too. We were just beginning to scratch the surface. 

A lot of pro-impact, as Hazel Havoc was talking about in Episode 2 “Light Me Up”, may go on for hours without any penetration or contact with the genitals at all. You can put someone in a deep kink subspace or top space without either participant engaging their genitals. It’s about a flow of sexual energy, a headspace that can be exchanged anywhere on the body. 

2. Penetration with Dildos, Fingers and Fists

During that threesome, my partners eventually broke out the bag of dildos. There is totally unnecessary stigma surrounding cis guys wearing strap-on dildos. I think some guys perceive it as suggesting that they are insufficient, that it implies their dick isn’t long enough or doesn’t get hard enough, and therefore a replacement is needed. 

Neither big nor hard dicks are necessary for hot sex, including when you have an STI. If you’re going to have sex, it makes sense to me that you explore all the possible creative ways to do it, so that you and your partners never get bored. 

My partners, in their beautiful, shameless way, put on those harnesses, strapped in the big cocks, dildo cocks that are bigger than any normal dick would be. I climbed on top of one of them and the other came behind me in my ass. And you better believe that double penetration was hot. I came squirting all over them. 

The partner on the bottom was covered in my squirt. And the partner that was in my ass was so turned on by this that he pulled out and in about 20 seconds of jerking off, he came all over my chest. Then my other partner was turned on, aroused by compersion and perhaps mild twinges of jealousy, and he came on my chest too. 

It ended up being an incredibly memorable connection, even though there was no genital-on-genital contact. It was still an intense experience together. They were fucking my pussy and ass with dildos. I also could have used a dildo to fuck their slutholes (pussies or asses, whatever body parts your partner has). 

3. Kink Gender Roleplays

One of my partners and I have lately begun experimenting with kink switching. I had previously been pretty sexually submissive, but I’ve been leaning into my dominant side. 

We’ve also been playing with some gender role play, which can go along with the kink switching or be entirely separate, because dominant and submissive roles can be any gender. In sexual gender play, sometimes I’m a good girl, sometimes I’m a good boy. Sometimes mommy, sometimes daddy. 

While I happily and confidently identify as a cis woman in the rest of my life, I love the freedom to be able to explore anything and everything during sex. Taking on any identity is a role play. 

Limitations on fluid exchange sex actually inspired more exploration of my dominant and daddy side. I did some impact play on my partner, made him say submissive things to me. Then I fucked his ass with my fingers and that strap-on dildo, making him call me daddy, and I came so hard. 

No one was touching me, there was no genital contact, but the arousal of hearing him call me daddy while fucking his ass, put me over the top. I felt like a guy, I got into the gender play, I felt like a guy with a dick cumming inside him. That was a new experience for me that I definitely plan to repeat in my post-STI life. 

4. Mutual Masturbation

In my normal life, I almost never masturbate next to my partners. It’s just not a thing I think to do, we go right into touching each other. But during this waiting period, we ended up doing a lot of masturbating next to each other, and it was surprisingly hot. 

We talked about our sexual imagination and fantasies, touching ourselves in a way that the other can see. It was hot as fuck to watch a person I’m so attracted to touch themselves because I liked having that secret window into their private relationship with their sexuality, their private personal space and mind. 

It felt emotionally intimate, even though we weren’t touching at all. We also did some masturbating with each other, a handjob on him and fingering on me while making out. He came on his hand and I cried the intense tears of sexual connection into his arms. Even though it wasn’t “sex” in the normative sense, it was an intense level of emotional connection and vulnerability, sharing our personal sexual fantasies. 

5. Teasing

I also used masturbation for a totally different purpose, for ruthless teasing. This can be done with masturbation, sexy dancing, and more. 

In this particular case, I stopped over at my partner’s place while he was getting ready for work. He was in the bedroom, just out of the shower, putting on his clothes. I stripped down in front of him, giving him intense teasing eye contact, sat him on the bench in his bedroom and gave him a lap dance. I was grinding my wet cunt on his leg and kissing his cheek. 

Then I laid down on the floor, legs spread, staring up at him, and fingered myself until I squirted all over myself and the floor. I was dirty talking to him in ways I knew would get him going because I know him so well. We was so turned on by this that his dick was rock hard, throbbing in his jeans as he walked out the door to work. 

Devilish, sure, but it means he was left horny and craving. And there’s something really hot about not being able to get what you want immediately. 

We’ve talked about that a little bit before on this podcast. Excessive closeness in a relationship, like when you’re living together and you see each other every day, see each other only doing the mundane things of life together, that can be suffocating for sexual tension in a long-term relationship. Having some sexual distance and longing between you and your partner fosters erotic energy. 

6. Long-Form Edging

Whereas teasing has a bratty tone, taunting your partner in kinky, playful desire, edging your partner can be more intimate and sensual. The erotic tension leaves both of you longing for each other. 

One of my partners is very into sensation play. Sometimes that’s primal and animalistic, like scratching and biting, and sometimes that’s gentle, like erotic touch cross all the different erogenous zones of the body. 

Although touch like this is usually foreplay during sex, it can also consume an hour or more of aching longing, exploration and desire. That sexual frustration is both painful and intensely connecting. 

Is it painful to wait? Sure. But building up the desire for each other is still a powerful form of hot connection. 

7. Sexy Date Night Out

Now we’re moving away from kink and into the romantic connections that are available to anyone, whether you identify as kinky or not. 

When you have an STI, a “sexy” date night might sound impossible. But there are lots of ways you and your partner can still experience sexual tension and connection on a date, even if you don’t end up in bed with each other at the end of the night. 

I have a lot of threesomes and partner meetups in my life these days. I’m a pretty big fan of poly and feel very lucky. But this suggestion could apply to any dating situation, with a long-term partner or a new cutie early in a dating adventure. (Bonus points: when you tell your new cutie about your STI, you get a fabulous litmus test for their comfort level with open sexuality.) 

Before I found out I had an STI, my partners and I had planned to go out for a quick drink then back to my partner’s place for a hot threesome. There was even some conversation about bisexual exploration which is a big turn on for me to watch. 

We decided to wait on that plan and instead of going back to his place right away, we did some bar hopping and ended up in a basement bar with live music. 

I took turns kissing my partners. We danced. We talked about and drooled over one of the really hot performers. And we all agreed that we definitely would have a foursome with her if she were into it, on a different, STI-free night. 

Then we found a corner of the bar to hang out where we could see the band but still have some intimate cuddle time. 

Hands slid sneakily up my dress a bit. Another pulled down my dress to briefly expose a nipple. Not enough for anyone to see, but just enough to be daring and sexy as fuck. 

8. Talking About Sex That Your Partners Are Having with Other People

For some people, this may sound like a terrible idea, a source of anger, jealousy or frustration, rather than connection. That might certainly be true for you. But if you have the desire to explore the feeling, having an STI can be the perfect impetus to try it. 

The erotic sensation of jealousy I’ll discuss more on this podcast in a couple of weeks, so we’ll just touch on it a bit here. If your partner wasn’t exposed to the STI or gets treated and tests negative before you do, you may not have the same period of abstention from fluid exchange. 

This means you get the pleasure of knowing that your partner is out there fucking other people while you are waiting. I realize “pleasure” may be an unconventional way to think about it. But how you experience an emotion can also be a choice. 

Let’s say you’re going on stage to do a performance. If you’re really nervous, you might feel butterflies, feel your body getting full of shaky energy. You could tell yourself that you’re nervous, or you could think about it as a lot of energy. 

Shaking, building up energy is your body’s way of preparing you to do a fucking great job. Excitement is a very similar sensation. You just change the narrative about that bodily experience. 

So you can do the same thing in conversations with your partners’ sex with other partners. The pit in your stomach could be jealousy or it could move through your body and turn into erotic energy. 

You could treat it as a little bit of emotional masochism, or you could approach it as compersion, happiness about your partner’s joy. I enjoy knowing that other people find my partner hot and a source of pleasure. 

I think in particular, when you’re in the intimate, safe space of being naked in bed, there are so many things that people can share with each other that they would not normally divulge. In that space, hearing them talk about their sexual experiences can be especially hot and can be an affirming connection back to them. You know that they trust you enough to share intimate details and they know that you’re happy for them and turned on by their adventures. 

9. Romantic Conversations

This approach is probably one of the most accessible to everyone, even if you’re in a vanilla, monogamous and long-term relationship. There is always opportunity in every relationship for more romantic conversations. 

I’ve experienced that sometimes, when I’m on an intentional date, sexual play and sex takes over. Sometimes, when sex is not available, relationship time becomes passive, like flipping on the TV to zone out. But even without sex, you and your date or partner can still create intentional time with each other, even doing nothing but talking.

Lying naked in bed next to each other, without intentions of having sex, can create an opportunity for intentional connection. 

During the two weeks waiting out an STI, I spent a lot more time than I normally would just cuddling, talking about our experiences, feelings, and life. 

Sexual connection is not just about bodies colliding. If it was, then casual sex would be just as, if not more, delightful than the mundane repetition of sex with a long-term partner. But there’s something more meaningful that elevates relationship sex. 

Emotional intimacy breeds sexual satisfaction. So those emotional or romantic conversations you’re having while you’re waiting on an STI make the post-STI sex even better. 

10. Discovering Trust in Your Partner

I think of dating, in some ways, as a long-form trust game, like when you fall back on someone to see if they will catch you. In every life circumstance, you don’t really know how they will respond or how deeply you can trust them until you experience it together. 

Telling someone you have an STI, in light of the unnecessary but omnipresent slut-shaming stigmas around it, can be vulnerable. Continuing to spend time together, including sexy time, even when you can’t have penetrative sex, can also be sexually and emotionally frustrating for both of you. Someone may be sex-positive and affirming in theory, but may still struggle when confront with reality. 

So when you discover that your partner or partners are actually kind, caring and easy, with no implication of slut-shaming, there’s beauty and intimacy in that. When you work together to find creative opportunities for connection, whatever that means for both of you, it can increase the sense of achievement through teamwork. It’s like falling backwards and discovering that they’ve got you, it’s safe to fall into their arms. 

So there you go, 10 hot ways to wait out an STI, including impact and power play, kink roleplays, dildo penetration, mutual masturbation, teasing, edging, adventures out in the world, compersion and romantic connection. You have a world of opportunity to continue exploring connections with your partner, fuck buddies or flirty friends, replacing shame with creativity and joy. 

And when you finally do get to experience fluid exchange with those people again, the release of all that built up sexual and emotional tension is incredible. 

This has been another edition of A Slut’s Guide to Happiness. I’m your host, Vanessa Cliff.

You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple and Spotify, as well as on cliffmediaproductions.com

If you’re over the age of 18, you can also check out our video content on our website, cliffmediaproductions.com. 

And most of all, I invite you to join us in the pleasure of being awkwardly human, naked, and without pretense.

Let’s get free.