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This week’s S L I C K is curated and edited by Carolyn Yates.

Content notes: tentacles, sex toys, friend sex

I’d never seen anything like the tentacle in the box Ari handed me: a blue and green shaft with purple and orange freckles, covered in knobby feelers, coiled up like a fern. The shaft was thick as my forearm and tapered into a pencil-thin point. The base ended in a three-pronged copper plug, where it could be plugged into my body. It was almost two feet long. I shut the box and handed it back to Ari.

“That one’s a bit much,” they said, placing the box next to them on the bed. “I grabbed it anyway, to give you a sense of the range.”

We were sitting on my bed, which doubled as my couch, and Ari had unpacked a duffel bag with a suite of cellophane-wrapped attachments. A camera on a tripod waited next to the bed.

I had met Ari last year in an insurance-company-mandated info session ahead of our respective surgeries. We were an unlikely pair: I was here because I had no choice, and getting a universal genital port installed was the only way I could still have genitals. Ari had bought their way into this room with a combination of hustling, bartending, truck driving, sex work, and probably some other things I didn’t want to know about. But when I left the hospital, it was Ari who called me every day and sent me care packages throughout chemo, regardless of whether they were visiting their grandma in Poughkeepsie or on a photo shoot in Hong Kong.

Ari was scandalized that the hospital had sent me home with something as pedestrian as a penis or a vagina. They had immediately vowed to scour the indie markets and DIY manufacturers to find me a set of the wildest, most colorful attachments I couldn’t imagine.

I picked up each of the attachments Ari had bought me and placed them on the bed in a neat row: the small phallus poking out of two vulva lips, the purple-red bulb that looked like a sea anemone, and the tentacle, which scared the hell out of me. Honestly, I left my attachments at home under the bed most of the time. It was just easier.

But here was Ari, laughing with me over a bag full of bright colors and different textures and unusual shapes. Just like them to stage an intervention with objects of pleasure.

I picked up the phallus. It at least looked like human genitals, not abstract art. Ari followed me down the hall to the bathroom, their boots clomping on the floor.

“I’ll just be a moment,” I said.

“Okay,” they said, leaning against the wall. They seemed concerned. They brushed a loc over their shoulder. “Let me know if you need help.”

In my bathroom, I shut the door and took off the pajama pants I’d been living in since the beginning of quarantine. I pulled the silicone cover off my port. Plugging these things into your nervous system was like giving yourself a shot or putting in a contact lens. How had the nurses done this? They had some trick I didn’t remember. Something about lining up the lower edge of the attachment with the bottom of the port before clicking it into place.

I tried doing that, but the prongs didn’t fit. I lined up the plug and tried to angle it inside. A sudden shock jolted me. I yelped and dropped the phallus, and it bounced off the tile floor.

“Are you okay?” Ari called.

“Ow! Fuck,” I said, rubbing my hand.

“I’m coming in.”

I would have balked at walking in on someone who was trying to put an attachment into a universal genital port, but Ari seemed used to it. They probably faced situations like this all the time at work. I felt clumsy. I picked up the attachment from the floor and began to rinse it off in the sink.

“Hey,” Ari said in a soft voice. They took my hands in theirs as we soaped it together, cleaning between all the little folds. “This is your time, okay?” they said tenderly. “You get to decide what you do and how fast you go.”

We patted the attachment dry. “May I?” They gestured to my port, and I nodded. Ari showed me how to line up the port, how to brace myself by holding the towel rack, how to click it in with one long steady exhale. I felt the cold and uncomfortable metallic tang of the plug going in, and then the sudden awareness of a new body part. Ari stretched the outer rim of skin over the rim of my port.

“That’s a great look on you,” they said. I turned to face both of us in the mirror. Ari’s arm around my narrow shoulders. My folds opening up to reveal my phallus.

I’m sure I blushed. With Ari’s attention on me, I felt good. The tip of the phallus even tingled. It felt like a fat thrust of pressure among silks. I liked how the shaft and head felt concentrated but the folds felt diffuse.

“That one really rocks with a stroker,” Aris said excitedly, leading me back to the living room.

Why didn’t I have a stroker? I had a basic twist-the-cap vibrator from forever ago that lived in a drawer. Why hadn’t I bought more sex toys, especially when Ari gleefully informed me that they’d found me an arsenal of attachments? Did I think it was more than I deserved?

I lay on the bed, and Ari took pictures. I ran the tip of my finger along the phallus until it stiffened in my hands and begged me to stroke it. I closed my eyes and engulfed it in my hand, rubbing it in tune with the click of Ari’s camera. Mmm.

“You look amazing,” they said, showing me the photo roll. Who was this person with the arched back, the eyes closing in pleasure, the I’m-going-to-melt smile?

I wanted to try something else. Ari showed me how to get the attachment out without an uncomfortable jolt, a skill they had discovered on their own through lots of practice. I reached over, fumbling with the other attachments on the bed. “Do you ever even wear this?” I asked Ari, holding up the blue-green tentacle.

Illustration by Laura Lee Benjamin.

“All the time,” they said. “I’m wearing one right now.”

I stared.

“It’s got a personality of its own,” they insisted, waving their hands. “I swear it knows what I want and who’s good for me before I do.”

I wasn’t ready to go there yet. I picked up the anemone. As soon as I plugged it in, its fronds began desperately searching and its bulb pulsing for something inside. I grabbed the vibrator from my drawer and touched the tip to one of the fronds. Ari sat on the bed next to me, camera at the ready.

I yelped as the anemone grasped the tip of the vibrator and pulled it in, inch by inch, all the way to the base. It was so strong! I gripped the comforter and screamed and thrashed as the anemone swallowed every inch of it. And above me, Ari’s smile. I swear I saw tears in their eyes. I turned off the vibrator and gently eased it out, then popped off the attachment.

“All right, I’m going to try this,” I giggled, reaching for the tentacle.

“I knew it,” they cackled, clapping their hands together. “You can’t stay away from it.”

I picked up the tentacle attachment and clicked it into place. For a moment, nothing happened, and I wondered if Ari had purchased a defective one. Then, the tip began to move, seeking out something to touch, and the entire shaft lit up with sensation. There was so much of it! I felt like I had an extra arm between my legs. Every time the suckers touched the comforter, little pinpricks of sensation licked up my spine.

“I know, right?” Ari said as I watched in amazement. “It’s like it wants to touch and taste every…” They started. Something was poking out from under the edge of their skirt, reaching toward mine. We laughed.

“Told you,” they said, propping themselves up on one elbow. “It’s got a mind of its own.”

The tips reached for each other. As they met, the sudden touch made my legs shake. I moaned as my tip coiled around Ari’s, touching and exploring. Ari rolled over and reached into the duffel bag on the floor, rummaging around in it. Our tips coiled around each other, like we were holding hands. “You’ve got to experience this,” they said, producing the biggest bottle of lube I’d ever seen.

Ari popped open the cap and filled their palm with lube. I wondered if they were enjoying this beyond the thrill of getting to show their repressed friend something cool. There’d been so much unspoken between us, especially those times I helped them through break-ups or non-starters with people who treated them wrong, who saw them as strong and unshakable and didn’t know that they were sensitive and needed a lot of time to recharge. I wanted Ari to touch me if they wanted that too.

They cupped their hand below our two tentacles and let them cover themselves in lube. I gasped and my back arched as mine slipped past theirs, a sudden ocean of sensation. We lay side by side on the bed, the tentacles slick and slipping past one another, pulling us closer together as they corkscrewed around each other. I moaned, arching my back and pushing into the touch. The tip of Ari’s nose brushed against mine. Ask, I thought. Ask them.

“Can I kiss you?” I asked.

“I thought you’d never ask,” they said, reaching for me.

Our mouths met and they kissed me gently, exploring, inviting me in. I kissed them back harder, running my hands over their smooth skin. Ari’s hands found my face, my shoulders, my chest, my belly. The parts of my body that had been locked up and closely guarded all opened to their touch. Our attachments coiled like ropes between us, tighter and tighter. All the things I wished I’d said to them during our late-night phone calls came out in the force of my attachment coiling around theirs, slipping against each other.

I grasped Ari around the waist, holding them close to me as our tentacles quivered together. The tips sought our nipples, our belly buttons, the soft spaces between our thighs. We caught our faces in each other’s hands and kissed and kissed.

Ari’s breath hitched and they grasped my thighs as we came together, our attachments spasming between us in big waves that made my legs shake and forced the breath out of me. We lay side by side, panting and gasping, as our attachments went slack and limp. The tips rested in a puddle of lube on the comforter, the ends twining their way into a heart. We both giggled.

“What else is in your bag of tricks?” I asked.

“No tricks. Just me,” they said, running their hand over my thigh.