How rope play allowed me to release my shame about sex
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked up to the house in Agoura Hills, California, where I would be staying for the weekend. Well, I knew that I would be getting suspended with ropes, in a practice known as shibari or erotic rope bondage. I knew I’d be working through my shame around sex. But still, the weekend felt like uncharted territory, and I was the explorer discovering it.

When I found out Alexandra Roxo, transformational mentor and filmmaker, and Blue, a shibari teacher, performer, and founder of Vox Body Studio, were leading a retreat around shibari and sexual healing, I knew I had to be there. Not only had I been itching to try shibari and explore that kink, but, like almost every other person on the planet raised in a patriarchal society, I also …

The perfume sits rather un-subtly on my nightstand. In thick black capital letters, its label reads, “Sexual Healing.” Nearly everyone who sees the fragrance—friends, dates, even the ConEd employee dispatched to set up my internet—whips out their phone to take a photo of the cheeky sentiment.

True, I have no idea what the late Marvin Gaye smelled like in person, as I was born 11 years after his untimely death. However, I believe the scent manages to encapsulate the aura of one of the greatest, horniest songs in history—in only 50 milliliters.

If you ask Ali Kashani, founder and creator of Art Meets Art, the label that released this fragrance by Christophe Raynaud, Sexual Healing smells like “a gourmand and spicy honey accord that melts with tobacco absolute and vanilla.”

If you ask me, it smells like the idealized suburban basement where America’s youth collectively took their first cigarette puff. …