Day ¹ Favorite Tollie Episode

→ 8.03 Toxic

I think I am EXTREMELY cliche here—like duh, what else was I gonna say, but I think the range that you get of Tess & Oliver in this episode is absolutely fantastic.  You see her stare up at him with absolute heroic worship when he holds out his hand to her in the flashback and you see in her eyes that she will follow him anywhere, and then later, you totally see all of her fury, but you still see that he’s the first one on the show who gets her to smile and who brings out the authentic vulnerability that she doesn’t exactly appreciate.

It threw me, I wasn’t expecting to like her character, I already didn’t like his character (sorry Oliver, lol) and she *got* me to like him because she makes him a hero.  And then you know, they’re just…hot.  That helps too.  If I have to say something shallow.  :)

via 30 Days of Tess & Oliver

The best thing I ever did was join Slumber Parties.
The second best thing I ever did was leave Pure Romance.

Before Slumber Parties, I didn’t have any place I felt I could have any pride in my sexuality. In a culture so hellbent on turning sex into a health risk, it’s nearly impossible to find a place where sex is passionate, fun, and romantic.

I was so surprised by how I was treated when Pure Romance took over. I had technical issues with Pure Romance’s website for almost four months and spent endless hours on the phone with corporate headquarters. The first thing one of their employees said to me was, “We’re going clean you guys right up.” I thought to myself, “You sure have an awful lot of butt plugs in your product line to make a statement like that.”

I’m still stunned by that statement. My jaw is still on the floor lol. I don’t mean to point fingers but a company who names a product “Come Clean” shouldn’t really be talking.

On top of that, the removal of the red and black, the censorship of the language and the products we could no longer demo, the new standardized, micromanaged format we were taught to manage our business in, it began to wipe away the sexual liberation that Slumber Parties had given me. I remember calling corporate to stress that this was my company, and I required a little more autonomy than they were providing. They told me, “It is your company, but you have to run it the way we tell you to.”


They objected to team meetings being hosted at a consultant’s house. They wanted us to rent out conference halls. I said, “So you don’t want us to host in-home party meetings….in someone’s home?” They objected to us having inventory shipped to our home address. They preferred we rent a P.O. Box at our local post office. They restricted the products that we could advertise on social media (i.e. the vibrators) and they insisted we use hashtags in our posts so we could be more easily “tracked by corporate”. In addition we were supposed to advise our clients on the kind of gynecological services they should receive — and this was during parties! I watched women walk out of parties in defiance when consultants would get to the gynecological portion of the demo. By this point, it was all too much.

I was in that same patriarchal setting I had been in before Slumber Parties.

It was time to leave.

I had my Pure Romance kit fully in tact and I drove to a fellow Slumber Sister’s house to exchange my PR products with some of her Slumber inventory. Through the discounts, I was able to acquire Slumber products that would’ve taken me months to years to gather as a consultant. I was SO happy. This consultant was one of the leading consultants in Virginia so she had EVERYTHING. I was in hog heaven, surrounded by all things Slumber Parties. And in a way, helping a SP sister unload some of her Slumber inventory and providing her PR products that would help her business was EXACTLY what I loved about being a part of Slumber Parties. We were there to help each other and magically, when one consultant helped another, it helped us all. Kim Henagan Brecheen Pitslata, you should be so PROUD of the business structure you created.

I was so enthusiastic about every Slumber product (lots of yayyys and oh my gods!) that the consultant said to me, “Your enthusiasm reminds me of why I do this for a living. I needed to remember that. Thank you.”

I drove home with a car full of Slumber products that provided me an inner joy that had not been there on my way down with a car full of Pure Romance products.

I felt a sense of liberation and slight rebellion as I drove past people who had no idea that I had a penis shaped yoga ball in my backseat. The playfulness was back. The fun and the freedom were a part of me again.

I rolled down the windows and turned the music up, exhaling with relief. I knew that I would never forget how I felt in that moment and I promised myself that someday, I would be in my car again with products as fun as these in the backseat, and I would be on my way to a party.