Big Bathrooms, Heavy Silverware, and Powerwashing: 11 Nonsexual Things That Turn Us On

Yeah, this is about showing skin, but it’s not sexual, and especially not on day four of not shaving your legs. It’s mathematical. You see, there are perfect ratios of sneaker height to sock height, and sock height to skin gap to wide-leg pant length. (See above.) I love my high-top white sneakers (props to Nothing New), and I like letting about an inch of a Dickies men’s gray mid-crew sock peak out the top of them. However, as a woman with long legs, my jeans are always dangerously close to presenting as capris (miss ’em). But I can’t wear super-long socks to close up the ankle skin gap—that’d look absurd. Nor do high-tops really come any higher. So I fiddle with pant styles or I show too much ankle skin. Life is hard! But when I hit that golden ratio, I’m freakin’ walking on sunshine and shit. That confidence feels great. It’s stylistic nirvana. —Sarah Rense

Videos of powerwashers in action are porn to me. Seeing a dirty sidewalk or siding on a house get pummeled into an instant facelift is both mesmerizing and titillating. Perhaps it’s because I spend too much time online and I would like to powerwash the inside of my brain so I can live what I presume is the lovely existence of people who don’t know all the ways the New York Times promotes anti-trans agendas, or what “GamerGate” is. Regardless, when I see one of these videos, the pleasure centers in my brain light up as I smile and let out a breath. —Susan Rinkunas

Some people like the bliss of a feather tickler running gently along their back. Others like the pain of painted talons digging into their skin. But I like the feeling of a fine tip pen gliding effortlessly along the dotted lines of my journals. In fact, I’m getting aroused just imagining crawling in bed to scribble words that won’t bleed through to the next page or smear as I go. Not only do I find pens—cold, lifeless objects though they are—to be inexplicably sexy, I find those who don’t experience titillation in the process of putting pen to paper to be totally unserious and sexless. Writing is a tactile activity: You are using a tool to leave behind a perfect trail of ink, without a trace of a mess. Can you think of any other activities where you manipulate a tool until it spills a little ink? Then add a fine tip, which allows you to maneuver and express yourself with finesse: something like a Pilot G-2 Gel Pen, a SAKURA Pigma Micron Fineliner Pen, or, if you’re the fussy type and have over $200 to spend, a Montblanc. Now that’s something worth working up a sweat over. —Emily Leibert

There is nothing in this life that inspires more joy and non-sexual horniness for me than being at the bookstore, at the cafe, at the combination bookstore and cafe. The sheer energy of being at a bookstore—especially an indie one filled with plants and maybe a cat or two—nourishes my soul; you are quite literally surrounded by stories and possibilities. I could spend all day at a bookstore, but that would require them to have food and beverages. And that’s where bookstore-cafes come in. They are simply a perfect invention, and I would turn down sexual encounters with 99% of prospective partners to spend an afternoon by myself in one of these bad boys instead. —Kylie Cheung

In my first media job, I was assigned to cover a women’s car rally from Paris to St. Tropez sponsored by Richard Mille—that is, the luxury watch brand. Of course, it was a lush trip consisting of stays at lush French resorts and attended by lush people…with the exception of me. One of the many perks was flying first-class from New York to Paris. I vividly remember feeling immediately embarrassed while boarding the flight. For starters, I was booked for the very first pod, meaning I’d have to look every single passenger in the eye as they moved toward their assigned seat in steerage. Secondly, I was woefully underdressed; I hadn’t gotten the memo from the woman seated next to me—clad in a tweed Chanel suit—that an overnight flight in first class required something a little more fabulous than an elastic waistband.

All that humiliation dissipated, however, when an attendant promptly delivered a glass of champagne. The service was impeccable—delightfully relentless, even. (For example: My glass was refilled twice before takeoff.) Any belief in egalitarianism left my body somewhere between the bread basket, lobster course, and bottomless bubbly. It didn’t matter that my film selections were She’s All That and Bridget Jones’ Diary, nor that at one point, I’d smudged a chocolate mousse stain on the complimentary blanket. I was covered in diamonds, baby!

Every time I fly, I revisit the memory and imagine what it might be like to be as wealthy as the Chanel suit lady. Perhaps one day, another assignment will provide such accommodations. Or, I’ll succumb to marrying an obscenely rich and objectively bad person to make a permanent home in the mile high club for fancy people (I imagine it has a bidet). Until then, I’ll just have the peanuts. —Audra Heinrichs

A month ago, my boyfriend and I went to the Four Horsemen, a Michelin-starred restaurant and wine bar in Brooklyn (owned by none other than LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy). We’d wanted to eat there for over a year and had both surprised the other by making reservations the same week, more than a month in advance. (Unfortunately, we could only afford it once.) The first dish that arrived was a delicious citrus-y scallop concoction, but what drove our conversation was not what we ate but what we ate it with: The silverware we picked up to scoop bites of shellfish had such a satisfying weight to it that we both repeatedly commented on how pleasant it felt. The handles weren’t hefty, they were merely exceptionally well-balanced. Horniness, as a concept, involves the heightening of senses, which is exactly what holding this silverware did to me. It made me more conscious of the act of bringing this expensive meal to my mouth; there would be no shoveling. This food was not fuel; it was meant to be sensually experienced, and this fork, this spoon, this knife were a part of that. —Nora Biette-Timmons

It’s a bit meta to write this for a Jezebel slideshow, but nothing is more orgasmic for me (the editor of this crazy website) than chopping a 1,200-word draft in half. I will cut out all of your irrelevant tangents. I will delete your overwrought lede entirely. I will take at least half of the adjectives and adverbs out of every one of your sentences and leave only the ones that matter. And then I will smoke a post-coital cigarette while gazing upon your much more readable 600-word story. —Laura E. Bassett

I absolutely love bookcases. I love to see what people have bought, how they’ve arranged—by color, by genre, ABC? I think books are the ultimate decor. For the past two years, I had the bookshelf of my dreams. It was wall to wall; it was to the ceiling. I used Ikea’s Billy bookcases with no hacks, just secured to the walls to display my important treasures—aka the hundreds of books I’ve spent my hard-earned American dollars on. At the end of last year we had to move. Ikea MDF-based furniture famously doesn’t travel well, so away my bookshelves went to their new homes via Facebook Marketplace. I have never been so sad to see furniture leave my possession. So now, settled in my new residence where wall-to-wall bookcases are not possible, I must simply settle for fawning over other incredible bookcase set ups. —Caitlin Cruz

OK listen, I wear a lot of lime green, so I don’t want to give the impression that I’m just walking around, permanently horned up by my neon green beanie. But the first glance of something lime green or bright green or neon green definitely makes me feel a tingle, if you will. It could be a bright green sign, a chair, a sweater, a glass, a car, a painted toenail, an especially neon pothos plant, a bunch of slime, a construction worker’s jacket, some shit on the sidewalk that I can’t even identify—if it’s lime, I get a little tickle in my brain.

People with synesthesia (like Lorde) can hear colors, and some people say they can taste shapes: Seeing my favorite color makes my vagina go, “I like that.” The brightness, the saturation, the way it kind of screams, “Hey! What are you doing?! Can I join? Let’s have fun!”—it makes me feel great. Kermit (who’s not quite bright enough for my taste) said it’s not easy being green…but he also sang that it’s “cool and friendlylike” and “big like an ocean” and “important like a mountain.” Basically, if green is the color of life, then lime/bright/neon green is the color of LIVING. And that’s hot. —Lauren Tousignant

I love a very spacious bathroom. It settles my racing mind and soothes my aching bones. When I can lay out and organize my products on a surface far away from the sink? When there’s natural light shining in from a proper window? If the bathroom has a full length mirror and a proper storage closet or large cabinet? I shudder at the ecstasy that brings me. Nothing cramps my vibe more than a literally cramped bathroom. —Kady Ruth Ashcraft

The year is 2023, meaning the contents and day-to-day demands of our lives long ago migrated from Filofaxes and diaries to Google Calendars and the Notes app. But for me, there remains something so divinely, borderline-sexually satisfying abou writing down and crossing out items from a to-do list in a physical planner. It just feels more productive!

If you spend more than five minutes on TikTok, you’re bound to encounter some video of an influencer “romanticizing” the most mundane, tiresome aspects of life, whether it’s taking a walk, cleaning their room, or treading water in a corporate job. The non-sexual horniness that writing in a physical planner arouses, for me, stems from that same well of desire—for nostalgia and romance, even if it’s just hand-writing a list of otherwise unsavory things in a beautiful notebook. —KC