Dear Sasha: For Christmas, I bought my girlfriend the ben wa balls she asked for. They're smaller than I thought (half an inch in diameter) and I'm wondering how you remove them. Since they don't have any string or such, are they difficult to find and remove? Sadly, I passed up the duotone balls she also flagged because I thought they sounded gimmicky and, frankly, didn't look as nice. Now I suspect they may have been more effective. » Ballsy Santa

Dear Ballsy,
One of the many outstanding features of the vagina is that you can put unanchored objects in it and they don't go on week-long capers like things sometimes do in your colon. Although you may occasionally hear about women requiring a doctor to retrieve a wayward condom or tampon, this might be due to panic or forgetfulness.

The ben wa balls you purchased are intended for a few purposes: to strengthen the vaginal muscles and encourage and heighten orgasm. Whether they have any function at all in either department is debatable. The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex makes these comments: "Even if ben wa balls really were decent sex toys, they'd have a hard time living up to their hype. According to legend, the women of ancient Japan used to insert two hollow ivory balls filled with mercury into their vaginas, then sit back and enjoy the sensation as the balls rolled around inside them." As the book points out, this fable requires some imagination. Mercury is poisonous, and "the vagina is not a gaping cave that anything is likely to "roll around" in." From my own experience, their sensation and size is so nugatory that they can often be forgotten and by the time you feel one making its way down the pipe, it's already bouncing around in your underwear or careening down your pant leg.

Personal experiences with the duotone balls have proven only somewhat more fruitful in my household, with some external effort, ie. vibrators (good for solo masturbating as they do not fly out with contractions like dildos often do) leaping about etc.

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, my suggestion would be to purchase the Good Vibrations Guide to Sex, available at Venez Tels Quels (5427 St-Laurent) or online at www.goodvibes.com. Aside from having several comprehensive chapters on sex toys, interspersed with personal anecdotes, it asks obvious questions that we, as anxious and tender consumers, often don't.

Dear Sasha: It would seem that when I sleep with a full bladder, I sometimes find myself dreaming where I'm seeking out a bathroom to relieve myself. While I'm doing this, I am also pushing down on my clit with my hand, like I'm trying to hold it in. In this process, I find myself quickly approaching an orgasm. Just before I do, I release my hand and subsequently stop my approaching orgasm. I'll do this three or four times before I finally wake up. I'm wondering if this is all real, so to speak. I've informed my boyfriend of this and asked him if he's ever noticed me rubbing my clit while asleep and he hasn't. Also, if I were to allow myself to achieve orgasm while sleeping, do you think I'd pee the bed? Does this happen to many women? » Confused but Happy

Dear Confused,
As a childhood bed wetter, I can tell you that yes, you will likely wet your bed if you release during sleep, although I have had more recent full-bladder dreams where I go to the bathroom in dreamland but wak up in a dry bed. I am also someone who was nocturnally orgasmic prior to being so in waking life, and never wet the bed in the process.

There is absolutely no reason, as far as I'm concerned, why you shouldn't give it a try. There are many products designed to sop up bodily fluids, from incontinence pads to the Luv Linens (www.luvlinens.com) I was raving about not a month ago. Be a pioneer!

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