I still have a video from the first time I tried a Hitachi Magic Wand. It was back in my content creation days — a lifetime ago! — and my partner and I were in Las Vegas, NV for the yearly Adult Video Network (AVN) pornography convention.
Our friend Hunny Daniels had come to our hotel room to shoot trade content (a term used in the porn industry to mean content that two or more people shoot together and then each sell individually on their clip platforms) and we were trying to come up with ideas. Hunny casually mentioned they had a magic wand in their bag, and I said I had never used one. I remember Hunny looking at me in disbelief and saying, “Let’s give it a go on camera!”
At the time I didn’t even like regular vibrators. I had a hard time convincing my brain to register the sensation as pleasurable, or even sexual. I’m one for organic touch — fingers, tongues, cocks. I had stubbornly decided that hard plastic buzzing things should stay out of the bedroom.
Thinking back, it seems this preference was influenced, at least in part, by the fact that I was steadily partnered and rarely even thought to masturbate given that I consistently got the amount of sex I wanted. Folks certainly use toys in partnered sex as well, but it just really wasn’t a part of my repertoire. And for decades, when I did masturbate, I did it old school: no porn, no toys — just me, myself, and my fingers. I’m a slow adopter of technology!
I agreed to record my first experience with the wand with Hunny because I knew viewers get a kick out of “first-time” videos, but I had no idea how it would go. Hunny and I picked out the lingerie we would wear in the video while my partner set up the lighting. Once all of us were ready, my partner stood behind the camera as I lay on my back on the couch in the living area of our hotel suite, my legs parted while Hunny sat between them with a wand in her hand.
Before going further into this story I should say that when I created content, I did so with the same earnestness that I handled the rest of my career; I shot with people I had genuine connections with, having the kind of sex that I enjoyed having. Pornography was never my main source of income, so I had the privilege of being able to view it as an extension of my sexuality. Certainly, sex is different when the camera is rolling than when it’s off (somewhere I have a funny outtake of me looking up at my partner who was trying to get the exact right angle with an annoyed look on my face as I said, “You keep saying ‘One more time!’”), but I tried to, as closely as possible, approximate my “real” sex life. I wasn’t going to loudly fake my first Hitachi orgasm for the purpose of the clip.
Hunny put the wand on the lightest possible setting, and first, lightly brushed the head against the inside of my thighs while I got used to the sensation, then slowly moved it down until it rested against my vulva, then ran up to my clitoris. As I lay there, waiting to be aroused, I remember thinking, “Why does anyone like this?” The mechanical buzzing just wasn’t doing it for me. The only sensation that I enjoyed was the feel of their fingertips resting against the inside of my thighs.
Hunny talked me through the experience, checking in throughout, while I stubbornly said I wasn’t getting anything out of it. Then a funny thing happened: I came.
It happened almost in spite of me. There wasn’t the typical pleasure build-up that ended in orgasm. Instead, I was experiencing a feeling I couldn’t quite identify, and then my body started involuntarily contracting. I was almost mad. I said so, and Hunny responded by saying, “This is the most wholesome video I’ve ever shot.”
I decided that day that a wand was not for me. I may have come, but I didn’t like it, and if I couldn’t like it with someone as sweet as Hunny, there was no hope. I swore I would never use a wand again.
But you know what they say about famous last words. Guess what is in my bedside drawer these days?
Jessie Sage is a Pittsburgh-based sex worker, writer, and the host of the podcast When We’re Not Hustling: Sex Workers Talking About Everything But.
Find Jessie on her website or her socials at X: @sapiotextual, Bluesky: @sapiotextual.bsky.social, and Instagram: @curvaceous_sage.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2024.
