The very worst places to hide your sex toys, with the Mash sex columnist

YOU get one, then an upgrade, then a quick-and-easy handbag-sized one for dates, and suddenly you’ve got a whole battalion of sex toys doing the grunt work for you. 

But where do you keep them that’s easy access for busy, horny days but won’t find them gently buzzing in the hands of a questing child? Anywhere but these places:

At pet height

Hide something from a toddler and they forget it exists, but pets have powerful noses and love your specific scent very, very much. So out of jumping height unless you want the dog wandering in, tail wagging, with a dildo in its jaws or the cat pouncing on your anal beads.

Too securely

Padlocked in a box and on top of the wardrobe, nobody’s stumbling across these. There, you say, with a glow of satisfaction that soon turns into the urge for a little strum. Now you’ve got to find the key and get the stepladder to free your vibrator, when you only have it to skip all the tedious foreplay.

With all your other sex toys

Hiding all the playthings, from the exotic to the never actually used, in one location lacks deniability. If your in-laws come across them in their multitudes, you’re fucked. They’ll never let you pass the gravy again. So conceal your precious toys in different easily-forgotten locations around the house, like the children do.

With other secret things

If there’s one thing kids are on top of, it’s where you keep the good stuff. From a stash of Percy Pigs to all their presents you’ve earmarked for regifting, they know where it is. Don’t, therefore, pop a butt plug in alongside them unless you want to find your daughter using it as a hair accessory.

In plain sight

You think you’re so damn clever, keeping your clitoral suction stimulator in the pot with your toothbrush, your prostate massager alongside your mini dumbbells, your Hitachi wand in the kitchen drawer with the electric whisk. All very well until your mother comes to stay and whips up a lemon meringue pie for pudding.

My six facial expressions, by Vin Diesel

FAST & Furious star Vin Diesel has more hit movies than he has facial expressions, but only if you count all the F&F films separately. Otherwise it’s fewer. 

He talks us through the half-dozen faces that have made him, incredibly, one of the highest grossing film stars working today:

Squinting confusion

So underrated. Whether you’re involved in a six-way standoff, have just discovered your dead lover is alive or simply don’t know what everyone’s talking about, geologically-dawning confusion adds so much. Hold your expression longer than anyone would imagine possible and they’ll do all the talking for you.

Intense concentration

Perfect for revving the engines at the start of a race or punching Jason Statham in a car park, this is also a face I get a lot of use from in real life. For example, calling the latest movie Fast X came out of a 35-hour concentration session. I’ve scheduled another to come up with the title for the next one. So far I’m on Fur11ous. 

Brooding

Whether I’m playing Dom Toretto driving a car or at rest, his face is alive with the grievances he’s suffered and the revenge he needs to take. Like a projection of a rock on a rock, I show that with a slight downturned lip and an unfocused eye. Not The Rock, by the way. Guy’s an asshole. He doesn’t know that because I never show it in my face.

Fury

It’s in the fucking title so I need it. For inspiration I remember everything I’ve lost: the XXX franchise, the Riddick franchise, the Bloodshot franchise, the Marvel movies because I agreed to be a one-line tree for a laugh. The Academy, who refuse to create new categories for Best Wheelspin or Longest Vehicular Jump, the bastards.

Completely blank

The protagonist of a movie – even someone as multi-faceted as Dom – represents the audience. They want to inhabit him. I allow them. I go blank, staring directly at a co-star’s pulsing forehead vein and letting all thought flow from me until there’s not a spark of animation there. I can remain like this for days. Keanu cracks after a mere six hours.

My O-face

I don’t get many sex scenes, because I’m too manly, so I’ve repurposed my orgasm face for any reaction shot where I’m expected to show joy, happiness, regret, love, or pleasure at the size of a barbecue. It’s the face I use when I say ‘Family’ while holding a beer at the end of a movie. And scene. Cinema doesn’t deserve me.