This morning, I rolled over in bed and pulled Liv into a big, spooning hug. With my erection pressed against her arse and my arm wrapped round her chest, it wasn’t long before she was squirming and wriggling back into me. Martha was fast asleep in her crib, so we had at least a few minutes to ourselves – we’ve learnt by now that even when she starts to stir in the mornings, it takes her a little while to wake up properly.
Liv reached round with her right hand to stroke my cock, still slightly sticky with lube and cum from sex a few hours earlier. I grabbed lube from the shelf above our bed and pumped a generous amount into her hand. With my face buried in her neck, she made a tight fist around the base of my cock and applied gentle pressure as I thrust into it.
You can probably guess the rest. Liv is great at jerking me off anyway, but there’s something just incredibly hot about fucking someone’s hand like that, especially when it’s properly slick with lube. She kept squeezing right through to the end, then laughed with delight as I jizzed all over her back and arse.
It was brilliant. The perfect start to a Sunday morning.
Why mention it now? Because for all its ergonomic design, high-quality material, vibrant appearance, and signature craftsmanship, the Godemiche OffBeat does not feel as good as a hand job like that.
BUT: to my surprise and delight, it gets pretty damn close…
I was actually somewhat reluctant to review the OffBeat, even though I love the good folks at Godemiche and will evangelise about their penetrative toys to whoever will listen. I didn’t doubt for a second that they’d apply the same care and creativity to a masturbation sleeve, but after reading a whole load of sex toy bloggers over the years – good and bad – I’ve come to one basic conclusion: in most cases, it’s pretty unfair to publish your verdict on a product if you’re really not into the type of toy you’re reviewing.
And reader, I’m really not into penis strokers. Or I wasn’t into them – until now.
That makes total sense when I think about it. If I had a vulva and all I’d ever used were cheap jelly dongs from my local smut shop, I probably wouldn’t be the world’s biggest dildo enthusiast. The strokers I’ve used in the past have offered a similarly underwhelming experience, mainly because I’ve never bothered to invest time or money in finding something decent. As a result, I’ve ended up with toys that have been either too flimsy and lightweight or too chunky; toys that have become unpleasantly sticky within 30 seconds of applying lube; and toys that are such a pain in the arse to clean that I’ve used them once and then chucked them into a drawer, never to be seen again.
The Godemiche OffBeat is none of those things. It is still ‘just’ a masturbation sleeve, but everything about the way it’s designed and manufactured gave me instant confidence that I wouldn’t be pissed off by the whole experience before it had even started.
Like all Godemiche toys, the OffBeat is made from 100% Platinum Silicone. It comes in two sizes – ‘Grande’ (£20) and ‘Venti’ (£25) – and a whopping colours (six standard, eight UV), which already gives it a point of difference over most penis strokers. I was sent two early prototypes for an initial assessment (more on those in a bit), followed by a striking, UV blue version of the Venti sleeve to review.
At 10cm (4”) long, the Venti feels like the perfect size for my cock – and more importantly, for my hand. The hole in which you insert your penis has a diameter of 3cm, which allows for a really tight grip, even as the silicone stretches around it. Inside the sleeve, rings of tiny raised nodules glide over your skin, providing texture to each stroke. That’s crucial: the all-important pressure still comes mainly from my hand as I squeeze it, but the ribbed interior elevates what would otherwise be a uniformly soft, squelchy wank into something more interesting.
For me, that’s pretty much the acid test. I know how to get myself off – I’ve been doing it for over 20 years – and I don’t feel doing it with my hand requires so much time or physical effort that I need a toy to help speed things along. For a masturbation sleeve to hold my attention – especially at £25 a pop – it has to offer a different kind of experience, rather than just a short-cut. There’s no point trying to make something that directly replicates a hand job – or indeed a blow job or a vaginal fuck – because it’s simply not possible. Far better to apply some decent design principles and focus entirely on making sure the person using your product has a bloody good time.
In that respect, the OffBeat is helped massively by what Godemiche describe as its ‘hourglass shape’. Between that and the quality of the silicone, I actually wanted to spend time with my fingers curled round it, which is more important than you’d think! Even when I’d been wanking for a while and the outside of the sleeve was covered in lube, it felt easy to maintain my grip – and consequently the pressure on my cock.
I will say that this was only true of the Venti model. Somewhat counterintuitively, the ‘Grande’ is half the length (tbh, neither name makes much sense – Venti means twenty in Italian, so feels like an odd choice for a 10cm toy that costs £25…), and in this case size definitely matters. The shorter model feels no less spectacular around my cock, but with a much smaller surface area I found it significantly harder to use for more than a couple of minutes. The effort required to stop it slipping from my fingers was that much greater, so my hand quickly began to ache – which obviously isn’t ideal when you’re trying to enjoy a lovely long wank.
However, I think that is about my only complaint. The OffBeat even scores top marks when it comes to clean-up and care. I was able to wash lube and jizz out of it with no difficulty whatsoever, and the fact it’s made from silicone means you can use soap and/or boiling water to give it a proper clean at any point. That’s a huge plus in my book, as is the fact that it doesn’t seem to pick up much dust or dirt between uses, even when it’s just chucked loose into our sex toy drawer.
In the end, the most important question is this: if there’s a penis in your life (whether it belongs to you or someone else), should you spend £20-25 ($26-33) on the Godemiche OffBeat? Somewhat paradoxically, my answer is a resounding “yes, but”. The OffBeat is unlikely to revolutionise your wanking habits; it won’t help give your partner the killer hand job they’ve always craved; and I wouldn’t bother with the Grande unless you’re happy to use it with a couple of fingers rather than your whole fist.
If you’re anything like me though, the OffBeat will offer something different and interesting enough to make the Venti model a worthwhile addition to your sex toy collection, at a price point that’s steep by penis stroker standards, but pretty reasonable in the broader context of ‘stuff designed to make your junk feel good.’ All of which gets a resounding thumbs-up from me.
The OffBeat UV was sent to me by Godemiche in exchange for an honest review.