MTSR #5: Cleanliness is Next to Hawtliness

Once upon a very long time ago, I was asked a question about a “proper” way to clean toys. Yay for questions! While “my way” is by no means the only or best way to minimize the risks of accidentally giving your play partners 'extra bonuses' when you play, in my not-at-all humble opinion the best way involves either getting new toys for each person you play with, or having an autoclave in your kitchen. If you don't happen to be made of that much money, feel free to try my way, if you like. I won't even charge you a user's fee.

A brief little blurb about pathogens, since this is obviously what we're trying not to pass on (I suppose it's __possible__ that pregnancy can occur by sharing a flogger in some very intimate ways, but I'm going to let someone else talk about ways of preventing that, okay?) Most (not all! Hep C, for example, can live all safe and happy on surfaces for up to four frigging days!) but most pathogens do not survive for very long outside their host body _unless_, and pay close attention here because this is the point of this paragraph, they have some small part of that body to keep them all safe and cozy and warm. That small part is usually a bodily fluid like blood, or mucus, or semen, etc... Think of that fluid as acting like the little bag of aquarium water you bring a goldfish home in, except that it's a bag for chlamydia instead.

The goal when you're cleaning toys that might break skin or otherwise come into contact with broken skin or other high risk areas is actually two mini-goals: We want to remove and/or kill off all the pathogens that we can, and then we want to make the area as toxic and inhospitable for whatever sneaky little buggers we might have missed so that they too will die a horrible, horrible death.

Now, I'm a bit lazy, so if, say, I want to use an insertable on more than one person, I'll generally just wrap it up in a condom. Otherwise, my method for cleaning toys is as follows:

1. Wash it down with a foaming, mild antibacterial soap. I like Softsoap antibacterial. If there are nooks or crannies in it, consider using a fingernail brush to get into the hideyholes. Rinse or wipe down well.

2. Spray or wipe down with a 10% peroxide solution.

3. Let dry completely. Yes, Virginia, this is a separate step. Allowing the peroxide to evaporate is the way to make sure it's done it's job. If we remember our little terrifying lesson from the first paragraph, the longer the better here.  Like, as in, days longer.

4. Rinse well or wipe down with baby wipes to remove any residue that could irritate the skin. Please note that this is my step _#4_, baby wipes alone do not come anywhere near a safe enough cleaning method for toys that could potentially create fluid exchange.

Ta-da! That's it! I deliberately didn't say that this is a way to sterilize your toys. Nothing short of that kitchen autoclave I mentioned above really is. But I've done quite a bit of research, and this is the method that stuck with me as a good balance between being pretty dang effective and also fairly easy to do.

“But Mad!” you say, “Some of the toys that I want to clean are leather! Won't the peroxide dry out my leather and make it all yukky and cracky?”

Honestly, peroxide will dry out leather, and this will lead to it becoming damaged, but if I had a leather singletail that had drawn blood I'd still do all the steps listed above to it, *despite* it being made of leather. That being said, as soon as the peroxide evaporated, I'd be all over that whip to reverse the damage I might have done to it. For me, that would mean a nice lathering with saddle soap (the Dove bar of leather soaps) and a finish up with some leather conditioner. It's worth it to me to make sure I'm not adding any special treats to my partner's play experience.

If I may for a very quick moment before I leave you today return to my chlamydia-in-vaginal-fluid-as-goldfish-in-bag-of-aquarium-water analogy, goldfish may live for a while in there, but at least it's not as long as they would if you brought them home and put them in your nice, big aquarium with food and a filter and maybe a cute little pirate ship at the bottom. If you're on the fence, and wondering whether you need to go through my 4 steps of superhawt cleanliness, consider how long it's going to be before that toy is going to be used on someone else. If it never is, then leave that blood drop caked on there for all I care, use it as a badge of honour! If the answer's in two weeks, then maybe wiping it down carefully and hanging it out to dry is enough. If it's going to touch someone else later tonight, you bet your ass that you should do all 4 steps. And also know that even those may not be enough.   That is if, of course, if you want my learned advice. If not, then why are you reading this article anyway?

Yours in squeaky clean hawt kinkiness until next time,

Mad the Safety Ranger

MTSR #2: Mmmm,.. Fluids!

I love bodily fluids. Boy, howdy!

Sadomasochists playing so hard that their shirts are drenched completely in sweat make me get all tingly.

Hard, straining cocks dripping pre-come is an image of many of my fantasies.

A sexy woman who’s so horny that she soaks not only through her underwear but right through her jeans, who wouldn't love to see that?

A pair of leatherboys who delight each other on first meeting by noticing that one is flagging yellow right and the other left, and decide to take a quick detour into a bathroom stall for a nice little golden shower getting-to-know-you private event–yummy!

That cute androgynous bottom so lost in the moment that he is beyond noticing the drool and snot pooling around the huge ball gag clamped firmly in his teeth makes everyone want him (or possibly want to be him.)

A hawt drag princess with a needle corset pulled so tightly that the blood from the wounds starts to stain the pretty ribbon laced in between them–any one of these is pretty much guaranteed to give me a metaphorical hard-on.


Because I’m such a greedy fluids slut, many of the above delicious drippings are likely to show up in a scene in which I participate. And this means that I like to know exactly what risks I’m taking with any behaviours that involve said lovely fluids.

Let’s start with semen. You remember sex ed in school, right? Semen carries sperm, that can make babies. It can also carry little nasties that cause wonderful STIs like chlamydia, and AIDS, and hepatitis, and, and…

Well. D’uh. Fortunately, semen comes exclusively from the penis. And we all listened in sex ed (right?) so we know. We either keep little mister awesome in his rain jacket, or we choose to share his ..quirks…with all of his partners. We all know what constitutes high risk sex, low risk sex, risk free se…abstinence. We’ve heard it a million times before. For one-on-one vanilla sex at least. But them vanilla folks, they have no idea how marvellous the whole gamut of bodily fluids can be. Or how dangerous.

So, here are a few pointers for the rest of us, who like things a little more rocky road:

Let’s warm up with a nice, lovely, lower risk fluid, shall we? Urine: pee, piss golden showers, whatever you want to call it, it’s a huge turn-on to many, many people. Now, there’s this saying that’s going around. Oh, everyone knows you can share piss all you want, it’s sterile! This is a lovely example of everyone NOT knowing, but blindly repeating what they heard from someone else. Now, don’t get me wrong, if you are going to wrap your mouth around an unprotected cock and suck down either urine or semen, swallowing the pee is far safer.

The pH of urine is inhospitable to many microorganisms. One hugely positive note: there are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted through urine. (blood, semen, vaginal fluid, and breast milk being the virus’s carriers in the body) This does not mean that you should consider urine a stronger tasting version of Gatorade. Hepatitis B, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea can survive in small amounts in urine, as can the bacteria present in a urinary tract infection. Another thing to keep in mind, if you are the mind-expanding type: some drugs, particularly hallucinogens like peyote, can pass un-metabolized through the urine. So you might be getting an extra tasty surprise! Personally, I love piss play, and I think it’s a good, happy wholesome activity in which to participate. However, I like the idea of participating with a full knowledge of what I’m getting into. To quote the immortal G.I. Joe of my childhood: “Now you know. And knowing is half the battle!”

What about vaginal fluid? Apart from pregnancy, realize that it carries much the same risks as semen. It *can* carry viruses like Hep C, HIV, and other little nasties and especially if you have a cut in your mouth, it can pass those things on. Quick handy hint? If you don’t feel like taking those chances, a flavoured condom with the tip cut off and split up the side makes a tastier grapey (or chocolatey) alternative to saran wrap or a dental dam.

Okay, so. We’re warmed up now, right? Let’s move on to the heavy hitter: blood. As superhot as the vampy fantasy of digging your teeth into your lover’s neck until it oozes red, and licking off the drippage is, we all know that this is high-risk behaviour. Everyone knows what we are possibly taking into our body with that lovely coppery red. But what about situations when we might not know we’re trading that possibly deadliest of deadlies? Those sadomasochists among us like hurting each other. We beat and flog, and hit, and tie, and cut, and scratch, and bruise each other. And sometimes, just sometimes, we draw blood. Even worse- sometimes we don’t know we have.

There’s a convention followed by many with a taste for a bit of protocol that if you draw blood with a cane on someone, that the cane then belongs to them, and can be used on no one else. When we stop to think about it, we do care about sharing blood, and we don’t ever want to do it inadvertently. So my advice here is simple. Better to be safe than to be sorry. If you have an insertible that you’re using on more than one person, you put a condom on it, right? (and if you don’t –you should!) Well, if you have a toy that has a chance of drawing blood, whether or not you think you have, sterilize it as best you can between uses! Give it a good hard scrub, and then a once over with bleach or peroxide, and let it dry out for a few days between uses when feasible. And make sure that your needles go into a sharps container, not the trash can! (You can get these at any pharmacy that sells diabetes supplies, and they’ll even take it back to dispose of properly once it’s full – how’s that for service?).

This kinky stuff we do is risky, we know that, this is part of what makes it so damn sexy. But let’s be sure we know what those risks we’re taking are, so we can choose them with eyes wide open.

Mad the Safety Ranger Out.