Sex can be seen as a three-course meal consisting of foreplay, intercourse and cuddling. Playing with food in bed can open doors to new sensations and crazy maneuvers that might not even occur to run-of-the-mill missionary lovers, but on the flip side, it can also lead to a lot of awkwardness and maybe even a substantial amount of time spent cleaning gross stains out of bed sheets. The advantages of adventurousness and the perils of perfunctory sexual process are all too real. Such a tricky road demands a navigator, and I’ve set out to help anyone who’s ever looked at a can of whipped cream and imagined something beyond a popular sundae topping.
Remember to keep in mind that the point of food play in bed is to enhance the sexual experience by giving in to the two base, animalistic desires of hunger and reproduction. If bringing food into the bedroom doesn’t result in being more turned on, leave it out. There are times when raspberries might be a good idea, but doing weird stuff like throwing salsa on your lover’s back when doing it doggy style and eating chips off her is a bad idea.
Sometimes you hear people saying things in lusty-esque fashion like, “I want to cover your body in honey and lick it all off you.” This can lead to a dangerous area of calling an ambulance because someone is suffering from a diabetic coma, which is definitely not sexy. This rules out chocolate syrup, caramel and honey. Erring on the side of light and sweet is recommended. Fullness is satisfaction, and satisfaction should always be experienced at the end of the bed party lest you find yourself too sleepy or too sluggish mid-coitus to be sexy. If you cannot resist the temptation of turning a booty call into a Snickers bar, use the heavy syrups sparingly. Only apply enough liquid that can be sucked off completely. The sugars can make skin sticky and stale feeling. Whipped cream, the classic and standard, is great for this purpose. It’s light enough to not make a horrible mess and sweet enough to be enticing. The thick, foamy application can also leave more to the imagination, which is good because mystery and foreplay tend to go hand in hand.
A remark on pre-sex date protocol should be made. If there is indeed a dinner date leading up to an obvious encounter, make sure not to eat too much or not to eat anything extra salty or hearty. Being too full has the aforementioned drawbacks, and high-sodium foods can also lead to being tired or just having stomach turmoil, which is not conducive to passionate lovemaking. Having wine and avoiding too much onion or garlic are obvious features of a good pre-sex food warm up and will be noted no more extensively than this sentence. The meal itself should be intriguing and involve hands-on stimulation. Try feeding each other sushi (with low sodium soy sauce, for a number of reasons including the one above). Exotic foods that aren’t too adventurous work well, but despite popular belief, avoid oysters unless you both actually enjoy them genuinely. The aphrodisiac qualities of the shellfish are not well substantiated, with the myth stemming mainly from the fact that oysters taste like genitals. Gross.
Foreplay and food should mean a lot of teasing and oral. As far as teasing goes, one recipe that does the trick calls for ice and blindfolds. You could also use chocolate covered strawberries, and with the blindfold in play the whole thing relies heavily on trust to work in bed. Those who are squeamish about giving or even receiving might be a little more comfortable with some sweet thrown in the mix. Edible underwear is a novel intimate that can provide a sometimes (and unfortunately) much needed incentive for cunnilingus. They are usually made of a fruit rollup type gummy material, though there are pairs of edible underwear that resemble candy necklaces. I would recommend the fruit snack kind over the hard candy variety, though both are arguably for more novel purposes than genuinely sexy ones. How sexy (or rather, unsexy) is it to be crunching away at gross, off-brand condensed sugar while trying to get down to business? Edible undies should be licked and rubbed upon without discomfort, so if you’re going down this route make sure that its not only comfortable to wear, but yummy to eat as well.
Flavored lubricants can also provide a nice cushion for the orally squeamish, but be warned that the sugars composing the flavoring elements will dry the parts they are applied to and leave everyone in a rather sticky situation. Cautious application should be practiced. Don’t just smear lube all over your man’s penis and in no way should the verb “squirting” be exercised. Lube itself subscribes to the rule of less is more, and it should be delicately dripped on a vagina, or penis, or even dildo. Let me reiterate the lack of necessity in squirting lube. From the sexperts that I’ve talked to at Red Letter News, the adults-only shop on East Washington Ave, it seems the fruitier flavors are optimal relative to more gimmicky chocolate and stranger derivative flavors, though most of them recommend against the flavorings in lieu of stimulating warming and tingling varieties. All of that, however, is a different column.
There are plenty of options available to the adventurous out there, and the role of food play in bed has plenty of room for innovation. I didn’t mention anything along the lines of produce penetration, or stimulation through spicy foods. Organic orgasm-inducing objects abound in this world we live, but always remember that the main point of food in bed is to keep it sexy.
Alex Truong ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in economics.
