Is Liquid Silk the best lube on the market, or does it just happen to be popular with guys I’ve fucked? This question has played on my mind for a long time. Far longer than is reasonable, to be honest. When I was single in my twenties, I rarely paid much attention to brands, I’d just use the lube provided by whoever wanted to fuck me up the arse. Eventually, though, I started to notice a pattern. If ‘every single guy I fucked using the same lube’ could constitute a pattern. Is block colour a pattern? Whatever. My ex used Liquid Silk, and I assumed he just really liked it, but after he and I parted ways I went on to fuck some more guys and… yeah… they all used Liquid Silk too! So obviously that’s what I bought, because although I pretend to be feminist deep down I’m obsessed with impressing men. The type of men I most wanted to lick all tended to use it, so I assumed Liquid Silk must be the best lube around. But is it actually? Or have I just jumped on a bandwagon beside other lazy, sexy, wank-loving Londoners? Let’s find out.
Is Liquid Silk really the best lube, or is it just popular?
I asked this question of one of my site sponsors – Whipple Tickle, who run an online shop that stocks TONNES of different types of lube – and they confirmed that Liquid Silk is one of their bestsellers, as well as one that has the most recommendations.
This bottle has Been Through Some Stuff
But there was one other lube that came close to Liquid Silk in terms of sales: Lubido. I asked if they’d be up for sending me some of that to try out, plus a couple of their other bestsellers, so I could have an excuse to wank my boyfriend off loads and loads test and assess the relative merits of each. Ideally while wearing a lab coat with nothing underneath.
Are you ready for my entirely scientific and not in any way horny write-ups of each different lube? Sweet. Strap in.
Lubido: £5.99 for 250 ml
Pump-action bottles FTW.
This is a water based lube, which is relevant if you’re going to be using it with silicone sex toys: you should always use water-based lube with silicone toys, fact-fans! Silicone lube can apparently degrade the toy, thus making it porous and less body safe. Silicone lube has other benefits though: if you’re shagging in the bath it doesn’t wash away as easily as water-based lube can. Other details of Lubido (and all other products mentioned) can be found on the Whipple Tickle website, I can’t be arsed repeating the basic info here – click through to the Lubido product page.
The first time I used this, it was quite easy to test it relatively ‘blind’ to start with, by which I mean without having to announce to my dude that I was trying something new, and therefore the following hand-job would come with post-nut homework. The bottle was on my bedside table, adjacent to the Liquid Silk, and because it’s the same shape I could reach aside and pump the lube out one-handed without breaking stride. Big bonus points to Lubido for this, as well as for the other practical consideration that it’d be remiss of me not to mention: it’s very cheap (£5.99 RRP versus £12.99 for the same amount of Liquid Silk).
Unfortunately, Lubido’s texture is so utterly different that I noticed as soon as I pumped a shot out of the bottle, and I think he knew the moment I pressed the tips of my sopping-wet fingers to the aching head of his dick. There’s something a little sticky about Lubido, I’m afraid. It doesn’t glide in quite the same way as the Liquid Silk that we’re used to. This might be a bonus if you like a bit more friction, but it did slightly throw me off my game. I am using lube mostly so I can toy with the head of his cock in whichever ways I want without ever causing so much tension that it pulls against the surface of his precious, delicate dick skin. I want lube slippery enough that when I make a fist and tug, the inside of my knuckles will ripple against the coronal ridge without ever catching. That’s the fun of a hand job. Well… with this guy, at any rate. A few previous guys haven’t cared much about lube, as long as I get the death-grip tight enough, they’re happy (for the approximately 3.5 seconds I can maintain that kind of intensity). A circumcised guy I dated for a while required a little more friction, and I can’t help but think that this lube might have suited him perfectly. I should drop him a line.
At this point in my life, though, with a man who loves it when I touch his dick gently, the purpose of lube is to drastically reduce friction. That way the sensations I’m delivering are all about pressure and speed, and I don’t have to worry about drag. But because Lubido is stickier than Liquid Silk, I found myself constantly worrying about drag and thus having to replenish it fairly frequently.
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t tell you not to buy a bottle: we both still had a lovely time. I always enjoy having the chance to go to town on him and he… well… he likes it when I touch his dick, obviously. But Lubido definitely won’t knock Liquid Silk off the top spot right now – when I nagged nudged my boyfriend to complete his post-nut homework, his take on Lubido was: “Too claggy.”
ONWARD.
Gun Oil: £43.99 (FORTY THREE POUNDS AND NINETY NINE PENCE) for 250 ml
Before I get into the detail of this product, a quick note for companies: lube is one of those things for which packaging is absolutely vital. I don’t think it’s an accident that Whipple Tickle’s two top-selling ones are both sold in a pump-action bottle. Personally, I think that for any lube packaging to pass quality control, any layperson with average dexterity should be able to dispense it with one hand, while blindfolded.
Why? OK. Let’s say I’m lying in bed with a man (Billie Joe Armstrong, for example, or Gerard Way, or Small Hands or my actual hot punk boyfriend) and we’re both naked and I’m playing with his cock. In this scenario, my lips and both my hands are usually busy. I want to be able to maintain as much of that me-to-hot-punk contact as is humanly possible while I reach to the bedside table and dish out a portion of lube. Obviously I can break the kiss, turn away, and use both hands if necessary. But I’d rather not have to.
So pump-action bottles are perfect.
Squeezy bottles? Fine, as long as they aren’t too big to hold in one hand.
Screw-top jars? Maaaaaybe – you’d have to make sure you prepped for sex by pre-opening the jar, but I do often prep for sex (by tying ropes to the bedposts, scattering dildos around or douching if we might be doing butt stuff) so it’s conceivable that I might unscrew a jar too.
Fundamentally though, I think everyone should be empowered (yes, I said ’empowered’) to grab a portion of lube without ever having to relinquish their passionate grip on Billie Joe Armstrong. So unless you’re a stone-cold genius like Epiphora, who made an automated lube dispenser by adapting hardware originally designed for soap, pump-action bottles are the best way to dispense it.
Click-top bottles such as the one in which Gun Oil is served, which require one hand to hold/pour/squeeze and another hand to catch? NOPE.
The bottle is too rigid and heavy to allow for one-handed squirting. I could technically bring it to his dick then squeeze the lube straight on, but I’m a sensitive and caring lover and I prefer to give the liquid a little warm up with my fingers first. Besides, I have a thing for that moment when my lubed-up fingers first touch the head of his cock. Usually he lets out one of those lovely little moan-sighs, so I like to savour that touch. It’d be ruined if it were replaced by a drizzle of chilly liquid glooping down his shaft like the snot from a February cold.
ON TOP OF THIS, let’s get to my biggest problem with this particular product: I did not feel comfortable showing my dude the bottle before getting stuck in to using it. Can you guess why? Here’s a picture.
SECOND AMENDMENT CUM TRIBUTE LUBE
Gun Oil. GUN. OIL. As in oil (lubricant) for your gun (penis). Your gun which is going to… go off in my hand? Put holes in the ceiling above my bed? Fire BULLETS inside my VAGINA?!
I know some of you reading this are American, and this shit might be common over there but where I’m from seriously… GUNS?! In my BEDROOM?! Who thought this would be sexy?! Why would I want my soft, horny, morning hand jobs to be interrupted by a reminder that guns exist?! Tools designed with the sole purpose of killing people? It makes no sense to me. I could go off on a rant here about masculinity and aggression and the ugly ways that companies stereotype and patronise men to try and flog products, but… eh. Life’s short, and this genuinely is a bestseller so it definitely appeals to a hell of a lot of people. So fine: if you want to refer to your junk as a gun and the lube you smear on it as oil, you go for it. But for me it’s such an instant ick that there is no way I’d buy it unless I myself were being held at gunpoint.
Which is a shame, because GUN OIL is actually pretty good at what it does – not as great as Liquid Silk, but way less claggy than Lubido. It glides nicely. Like a… hit man on ice skates? Like an invading army approaching from over the Alps. Like a shark cutting swiftly through the water before it eats your fucking face off.
My boyfriend’s take on Gun Oil was broadly the same: he enjoyed the texture of the hand job more than he had with Lubido, but when I showed him the bottle in the afterglow he made a face of disgust and we spent a few happy minutes ripping the branding to pieces. And sure, I know you’re probably thinking ‘oh, but this guy goes out with Girl on the Net, he’s probably a marshmallowy-soft, lefty-as-fuck, vegan kind of nerd’, but although he’d definitely lefty he’s far more masc than the dudes I usually go for. ‘Gun Oil’ still proved too much for him, though, because masc or not he’s a normal human being who doesn’t want to think about death while he’s being wanked off.
By the way, did I mention that this lube has a Recommended Retail Price of £43.99 for 250 ml? That’s more than three times as much as my beloved Liquid Silk. In fact, it’s nearly twice my monthly internet bill! One single bottle of Gun Oil costs roughly the same as two annual subscriptions to my incredibly great value Patreon page! Now that I think about it, this lubricant costs more per millilitre than the most expensive wine I’ve ever drunk, and for only slightly more money – in the right countries – you could buy an actual gun.
PLEASE DON’T.
Huge thanks to Whipple Tickle for being good enough sports to send me this, its very existence leaves me baffled and afraid.
Lelo “Personal moisturiser”: £17.99 for 75 ml (AM I HIGH? IS EVERYBODY ELSE HIGH? WHY ARE THESE SO EXPENSIVE? DOES IT CONTAIN THE JIZZ OF GERARD WAY HIMSELF?)
Looks classy as fuck though, right?
I have a slight confession here: I used ‘Lelo personal moisturiser’ incorrectly. I know, it seems bizarre that one might use a lube ‘wrong’ but it turns out that’s possible, so that’s what I did. I began in the same way I had with the other lubes – by reaching one-handed to the bedside table, grabbing it and trying to splurt a portion into my hand. It’s in a squeezy tube so that’s much easier than it was with the Gun Oil, but still meant I ended up with dollops of lube on my thighs and the bedsheets because my squirting aim ain’t great. Then, as I always do, I rubbed the dollop around a bit with my fingers to try and warm it up before softly running them over and around the head of my boyfriend’s dick…
Moany-sigh noises, I rub harder, switch around with a few different movements to try and get him to make those sounds again… lovely.
But we were doing this in the morning, and his dick was so temptingly hard, and I was horny too. So after five minutes of gentle touching and whispering ‘is this good?’, I removed my white lab coat and set about escalating to sex.
“Please can I sit on it?”
“Yes.”
That’s how easy it is for me to get laid these days. Seriously, having a boyfriend rules. I’m very smug about it. Not only did I get to sit on his fabulous cock (bareback, because as mentioned he’s my boyfriend and that’s most of the point of having one), I got to ride it in that glorious so-hard-it-hurts morning state. With the addition of my Doxy bullet I came in about two minutes. Pretty sweet, I know. I’m great at sex.
It’s only as I write up this blog post and check the packaging on the product itself that I see it is intended “for external use only.”
WHAT.
My bad, I guess. I should have read the label. But in my defence, I’m a horny idiot, and if any product in this world should be horny-idiot-proof it’s lube. Maybe that’s why they don’t call it lube? They call it ‘Lelo personal moisturiser’. Ah. OK. So yeah. They did their best to save me from myself, but I thwarted them. Lelo’s ‘personal moisturiser’ did work really nicely for a hand job though, before I ruined it by getting over eager. And the good news my mistake doesn’t seem to have had any worrying effect – this was a few weeks ago and my vagina has not yet broken out in a rash or burst into flames. Please don’t take my word for it and use this internally though: always read the label and follow instructions. I treat my own body like shit, but yours is precious. And like I say: great hand job lube.
Is it as good as Liquid Silk though? I’m afraid not. It’s roughly on a par with Gun Oil in terms of slipperiness, slightly above Gun Oil in packaging practicality. But in price terms, this is by far and away the most expensive lube. Quite frankly, it’s the most expensive thing I have ever smeared on anybody’s dick. £17.99 for a 75 millilitre tube means 250 ml would cost the best part of sixty fucking quid. SIXTY QUID. At this price I’d want it to be suitable for actual shagging – not just hand jobs – and quite frankly I’d want it to do some extra stuff as well just to justify the price. Double up as sun cream, perhaps? Cure Covid?Fuck it, at 24 pence per millilitre I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want this lube to actually get me high.
Liquid Silk is the best lube I’ve ever used
In conclusion, I am happy to consider my initial curiosity satisfied – Liquid Silk is the best lube, or at least it’s the best one for me. The purchasing habit I picked up from various men I have rubbed my junk on was entirely warranted. If you disagree, leave your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll see who’s willing to pay me to give my boyfriend more hand jobs in the name of science.
In the meantime, you should click the links in this blog post and buy yourself some Liquid Silk lube. It does exactly what its name promises: delivers silky liquid, which gives a lovely slippery glide without any stickiness. It comes in a bottle that is easier to use than any other lube packaging I’ve tried. It smells fine and doesn’t taste like arse (unless you’re licking it out of somebody’s arse). It’s water-based so it’s safe to use with silicone toys and condoms.
Above all, most importantly, the liquid itself looks like cum.
That’s basically all I want from a lube, and I was fairly sure I’d found it, but I’m delighted that I got to go on this adventure to double-check my working. You might think it’s weird of me to have done this when I was basically happy with my product choice in the first place but consider this: it’s my job, bitches. Whipple Tickle just gave me the tools to spend many happy mornings touching dick for money, and I got to do that with my favourite dick in the world. I’m hoping off the back of it that I’ll sell fuckloads of the best lube I know: good old Liquid Silk.
By the way, it’s meant to be £12.99 per bottle but at the moment WhippleTickle have it discounted to £10.99. And if you use the code GOTN10 you get 10% off anything on their website. So if you too have been buying this just because you’ve seen it on the bedside tables of your cool, sex-knowledgeable lovers, I can assure you that you’re not just jumping on a bandwagon without justification. Liquid Silk deserves its place at the top of the bestseller lists. Stock up, support my work. Help me ensure my site sponsor doesn’t regret trying to give me nice things.
Did you like this? Buy stuff please!
Lubido: Was £5.99 for 250 ml. Actual price at the moment: £3.99
Gun Oil: Was £43.99 for 250 ml. Actual price at the moment: £36.99
‘Lelo personal moisturiser’: Was £17.99 for 75 ml. Actual price at the moment: £16.99
The best one, Liquid Silk: Was £12.99 for 250 ml. Actual price at the moment: £10.99
17 Comments
Gun Oil is the one you can pretty much guarantee you’ll find on a gay guy’s nightstand. Well, pretty much guarantee *I’ll* find it there, you presumably being less likely to be sleeping with gay guys than me. Off topic, sorry.
Anyway, yeah, Gun Oil is the gay lube of choice, which might explain the ridiculous price tag. Personally, I go for Lubido, partially (mainly) because I am very very cheap, and partially because they do a 30ml one which is conveniently portable for carrying around the gay sauna I go to. Towel, locker key, poppers, lube, sorted.
My least favourites have been anything you can get at a supermarket — KY and Durex spring to mind. Sticky, stodgy and, KY in particular, noticeably medicinal tasting if a handjob goes blowy. Libido scores points there: it literally tastes of nothing, which is handy (well, mouthy).
OHHHH so Gun Oil is to your lovers what Liquid Silk is to mine? That is very useful info! And yes, you’re right, it would probably be weird of me to know this given that gay men tend to be immune to my many charms. My boyfriend should have known though, because they aren’t immune to his. Maybe a silly question but… does the ‘gun’ thing not put you off? Am I being a snowflake here? Happy to hear criticism if I am, I promise I won’t melt =) And YES totally see what you mean re the travel sizes – super handy!
And YES re: supermarkets too. One of my biggest bugbears is that supermarkets are the place most average people will encounter things like lube, yet the choices in them are woefully bad. Durex especially. Really crap on pretty much every level I care about. The ‘sex toys’ they sell in [popular high street pharmacy chain] are similar – useless, shitty, jelly, one-shot disposable plasticky cock rings with bullets about as powerful as an asthmatic fly breathing in the general direction of your junk. Makes me so so sad that this might be some people’s first (or only?!) experience of sex toys when there’s so much better on the market.
Re: KY – I did once have an ex (long long ago) who used KY for anal, and although the actual lube itself is woeful and horrible tasting… I think I have a residual kink for it just because of how eager this dude was to fuck me in the ass. He has kinked KY for me. Unforgivable, tbqh.
I confess to having never thought about it much: it’s an American brand, I believe, and I kinda expect American brands aimed at men to be a bit… well, guns and flags and the SuperbOwl and other tiresome hypermasculinity stuff.
I think it got popular in the UK due to turning up in American gay porn in the 1980s, when British gay porn was still censored so all we had was under-the-counter poor quality NTSC transfers to PAL VHS and US magazines full of ‘1-900-GET-COCK’ telephone line ads. Gun Oil was prominent in the videos and the magazine ads, in its original formulation as a silicone lube for anal, and that sort of… I dunno, fetishised it as the lube of choice? It’s become the default since then, now it’s condom-safe.
I wonder how Liquid Silk became the default for straight men to have in? I’d assume some sort of similar thing: the more you see it (in porn or on bedside cabinets) the more it becomes the one you’ll automatically grab when shopping – like Kellogg’s Cornflakes or Heinz Cream of Tomato.
Ohhh that’s really interesting! Yeah I can totally see why that spread – and I sort of like the idea that lube is one of those products, because of the fuckiness of it, where brand preferences and loyalties spread by association with other sexy things! Thank you for the kickass gay history lesson, as ever <3
Really fascinating! I think it was probably just the time I was first in the market for lube but I’ve always gotten Sliquid. They make a pretty big deal about using vegan friendly ingredients, and I’ve always found the quality to be very nice. I guess I’ve gotten used to the click bottle packaging as I’ve developed a weird one handed, flip the bottle over in thumb and forefinger technique but otherwise it works really well. The flavored line actually taste pretty good (those I’ve tried) and I love that the packaging just looks like massage oil or something in case you leave it in the living room.
I’ve been rocking Lovehoney’s own brand for years and not had any issues. What have I been missing? Now i’m thinking about it too!
I buy Gun Oil by the 32 oz bottle, but the place I get it is about $42 for 480 ML (16 oz bottle). And they have a wide variety of textures and types; their water-based cream lube is great for hand jobs.
And Liquid Silk is great because it has basically nothing wrong with it and works for almost all styles of sex, but I like something a bit thicker for anal.
Organic coconut oil heated in a glass or ceramic carafe by a mug warmer remains one of my all time favorites. I know *exactly* what is in it, it feels great, has amazing viscosity and slipperiness both, and in general gets an “A” on all styles of sex. Two things: it’s plant oil, and it’s messy and I’m careful about the surfaces (rugs, furniture, sheets) I expose it too. Good news is that it washes out of linens and clothes well.
I also almost accidentally found that BIOTONE Dual-Purpose Massage Crème with Arnica and Ivy Extracts is great for sex lube. I buy that by the gallon for home full body massages. Washes up easily, works externally and internally, doesn’t destroy any of my toys, and anything I can purchase by the GALLON … well I’m so there.
JLube is great stuff, but mixing it is a pain and keeping it emulsified until I use all of it is a pain and generally unless I’m going for a weekend marathon it’s not worth the bother.
Ooh thanks for the recommendations! I need to add (with my health & safety hat on!) that anything oil based like coconut oil is not safe to use with condoms – oil can degrade condoms (also toys) so should only be used for skin-based stuff. ‘Skin-based stuff’ makes me sound like a serial killer, but you get what I mean. I do fucking love coconut oil for a massage though, it smells so so fucking good unngh.
“anything I can purchase by the GALLON … well I’m so there.” If I could give out medals for sex, this would get one.
I am in the US (Northwest) and have no interest in guns. It’s a bad assumption to make about us. Anyway, we’ve tried many lubes. I’ve reviewed some. Liquid Silk is new to me. It turns out that it costs just a little less to order locally (a 250ml bottle is $27 from WalMart) than from the dealer you recommend. They charged $32 (current exchange rate). Yes, it’s a bit more but I want to support you. Also, I didn’t carefully check the exchange rate before ordering.
I’m circumcised, so we will have to see how good it feels for a handjob. My partner generally doesn’t use lube for handjobs. I wonder why you do. A no-lube rubbing works very well for me. I’m curious about your experience.
Ah that’s kind, thanks for supporting me by buying from my sponsors! They’re lovely people and I am v pleased to work with them. Somebody on Mastodon or Twitter told me it’s not available in US shops, so it’s good to know that it can be bought there too!
“My partner generally doesn’t use lube for handjobs. I wonder why you do.” Someone asked about this over on BlueSky too. The answer is the same as why I do any sex thing, to be honest: it feels nice for my dude. He enjoys a lubed-up hand job. I don’t think I really understand why this would be a question. “A no-lube rubbing works very well for me.” Fair play – I’ve been with people who’ve preferred no lube, and often if I’m just toying with someone I won’t get the lube out but… yeah. My boyfriend likes it, that’s why. It’s also why I buy bacon and teabags even though I don’t drink tea and am ambivalent about bacon. Just… wanting to do the nice things for the person I love, innit.
And I’m joking about the guns. It’s just one of those things we joke about here in the UK, like the fact that you guys have a very different sense of humour to us ;-) But I’m right that Gun Oil is an American brand, and I think I’m also right that a brand like that probably wouldn’t have cropped up in the UK. The fact that the lube is now popular over here is one thing, but it is very hard to imagine someone in the UK sitting down and naming a sex product after a maintenance fluid for a weapon that we do not routinely see or talk about.
That’s kind of intriguing about the popularity of gun oil with the gay male community. I kind of naively assumed that something with more value bang for buck wise would be a hit given the almost essential nature of it for butt sexxing times.
I’m pretty partial to sliquid (blue one for vulva/cock play and pink for anal). I have a pretty sensitive vulva and that seems to be the least irritating I’ve tried.
Liquid Silk doesn’t look to be readily available in Aus, but I might have to give it a go at some point. Interested in the comment that it looks like cum as Ive got an ejaculating dildo that I’m yet to road-test.
Meant to add, the one downside of sliquid is the pop cap. Pretty prone to spilling it or getting annoyed that I have to use lube-y hands to grapple with it. I do like the idea of the automated sensor dispenser or maybe just getting a generic pump pack and filling it with sliquid.
Yeah those caps are super annoying! It feels like such an easy win for companies to switch them out, but yeah I agree maybe the best way is to refill a pump bottle. Which now makes me think… why don’t they sell lube in refills that are more eco friendly and just encourage us to keep the plastic pump bottle for multiple uses?
Yes!! If I can get shower gel in refills for the pump pack, why not lube??
i just bought a Lovehoney hybrid lube to use on my beginner’s anal journey (with a sexy hot af man I’ve recently started seeing) and unlocked a new level of paranoia when, after reading your post, I went to check all the bottles of lube I have: they’re all “for external use only”! I had NEVER even thought of checking it before.
Eeek! ALL of them?! That’s so strange! Are they all LH own brand ones, or a selection?
Coming back here three months later to partially retract my recommendation of Lubido above. I bought (in the handy bathhouse-size 30ml) three tubes of Lubido’s anal-focused lube and… it’s awful.
For some reason, as they were mixing in the “soothing aloe”, they also mixed in 50% superglue. 30 seconds of rubbing it, wherever you put it, and it’s like being covered in honey. 30 seconds after that and you’re moving anything it touched with a sound like velcro opening. If I’d let it go a further couple of minutes, I suspect that my hand would be permanently attached to my dick and my plug would need surgical intervention. This stuff sets.
I’m glad I tried it out on my own and not with my husband or at the sauna because… well, imagine. Such a shame. Still, I bought more of their 30ml ordinary lube to replace it.