America Unzipped

by Brian Alexander

  “G.U.E.S.T.” she says. “Who knows what G.U.E.S.T. means?”

  Wait, wait, what page is that?

  “Greet, Understand, Educate, Suggestive Sell, Thanks,” Kira says.

  Before I can finish writing the acronym, Trista moves on. What comes after “Greet”? U? What’s the U stand for again? “Can you go back?” I plead. “To the G.U.E.S.T. part?”

  “Brian,” Trista says with exaggerated patience, “it’s in the handout in your packet. Have you read your handout?”

  I have not read my handout. I was supposed to read my handout earlier today, to be thoroughly familiar with my handout, but I slacked off in a nearby taco shop. “I haven’t had a chance yet,” I say. Trista raises a scolding eyebrow.

  At least I grasp the main idea. The store is dedicated to customer service, and through some magic technique no doubt gleaned from a sales consulting guru, part of my job is to bump sales by communing with shoppers about their sex lives. This will allow me to sell additional items by suggesting products to match my patron’s particular sexual menu or, better yet, expand the menu. The idea is making me queasy. It’s one thing to sit in my office far removed from readers and write a column in which I quote experts doling out advice, but quite another for me to go mano a mano over a penis pump with somebody who may be much bigger than I am. Am I really expected to “find out if there is a specific fantasy that he is trying to realize” when a male shopper is thinking of buying a love doll? The booklet suggests I “help that customer complete their fantasy by suggesting additional items like matching bra and panties.” I am not a shy person, but I do not want to have a discussion with a guy about why his new vibrating Aria Giovanni “love goddess” with vagina, ass, nipples, and mouth, should be outfitted with a nice lace demi underwire. Nor do I aspire to suggest all the good uses for Sphincterine Ass-tringent, a product promising to give your ass a “fresh minty flavor.”

  The nature of the merchandise also complicates my longtime phobia of the term company policy. The last time I worked in anything remotely resembling retail sales, I manned a Standard Oil station on Memorial Drive in Lancaster, working the 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. shift. You wouldn’t think there would be much challenge in sitting all night behind bulletproof glass, speaking through an intercom, and turning pumps on and off with a keyboard, but I quickly became overwhelmed. I liked my blue gas station shirt with the attached name tag because its rugged bravo cachet appealed to girls, but I turned it in after a drunken guy ignored my repeated warnings about exact change and then handed me a twenty for five bucks’ worth of gas. When I kept the twenty he ranted from the other side of my protective window, and I picked up the phone to mime calling the police.

  “I’ll go!” he screamed, pointing a trembling finger at my nose. “But I’ll be back.” I told my manager that being threatened by guys with bellies full of beer at three in the morning was my reason for leaving, but really, it was my inability to follow company policies regarding the cash register, organizing the credit card slips, and figuring out the drop safe. I am flashing on that experience right now and not liking it. Back then, I didn’t even have to try to “sell” anything while complying with company policy. People either needed gas or they didn’t.

  Nobody really needs Sphincterine. At least I don’t think so, and I seriously doubt I will be able to pitch the need for a minty-fresh ass with a straight face. Add all the injunctions Trista is giving us now about the corporate structure, our pay rates, our uniforms, our break periods, and time clocks, and I am becoming embarrassed by the mere anticipation of my failure as a romance consultant.

  This whiny nervousness is not what I expected when I formulated the half-baked idea of working here. While much of the fundamentalist community may be debating the pros and cons of masturbation with the diligence of medieval scholastics, it seems to me that much of the rest of America is no longer worried if self-pleasure, or any other sexual activity between consenting adults, will land them in hell. Judging by the mail I receive, my reticence about discussing the nitty-gritty of sex with my potential customers makes me a fogy. Could that be true? What sort of person consumes the products Edward de Santiago believes put his daughters in danger? Are these the people James Dobson thinks are creeping around our houses right now? Are they worthy of the government crackdowns social conservative voters and political pressure groups advocate?

  I have chosen this Fascinations store because it is big, a sexy Costco, if on a somewhat smaller scale. Middle America, I have been told by members of the industry, is flocking to such stores. Fascinations is one of several growing chains billing themselves as a new kind of adult establishment, offering comfort to the bourgeoisie. No more skeevy guys sitting behind messy counters smoking and reading back issues of Mature Nymphos magazine, no more peep booths with dim lighting and sticky floors, no more parking two blocks away on the bad side of town out of fear somebody will see your car out front. Fascinations’s local rival, Castle Megastore, a chain with seventeen outlets in Arizona, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, and New Mexico, spent over $500,000 in 2007 upgrading its own facilities to make them more couple and female friendly. At the store where I am working, the parking lot is large and well lit and at the moment it is hosting several SUVs, a Volvo, a beat-up Chevy, and a few Toyotas.

  But I am not thinking about this big picture now, I am trying to avoid humiliating myself in front of my fellow trainees. At twenty-five, Jennifer is the oldest. She is single. She had a baby seven and a half weeks ago, but I would never have known if she hadn’t told me, because she is thin and rangy with black hair hanging in stringy curls down her back, a couple of tattoos, a pack of cigarettes at the ready, and a sandpaper demeanor that suggests the American lottery of fate has directed her to an adult store. She’s not happy about it, and she’s not unhappy about it. There are worse places to work, and who knows, it could be fun.

  Marlena has just turned twenty-five. She applied for the sales position here as a second job to make a little extra money. Kyle is twenty-three and recently arrived from Alaska. He’s pudgy and opened-faced with the buzzed blond haircut of a high-school varsity baseball player. Kira is a pretty, heavyset girl from Yuma. Like Kyle, she’s new to Phoenix, just looking to land a job in her new city. Ashley is twenty, overweight, and dresses like a goth long-haul trucker with black combat boots, a black flattop haircut, some facial piercings, and eye makeup suitable for the Grand Ole Opry before it went pop. I am the only nonsmoker.

  And then there is Trista, who is explaining that we’ll be given two sales goals, one for every shift we work and one for the entire day. These will be posted in the break room. If a shift makes its sales goal, 2 percent of that shift’s total sales will be divided among employees as a bonus in addition to our $8 per hour wage.

  But there are rules. No facial piercings that show, please. No strange piercings at all unless you can cover them up somehow. If you do have a facial piercing, like Ashley’s eyebrow ring, you’ll have to wear a clear, plastic “keeper” during working hours. Cover your tattoos. Wear your uniform at all times, including the official maroon polo shirt, khaki or black pants or skirt, brown or black shoes. Name tags at all times. We are professional consultants.

  For some of my new coworkers, working in a sex shop represents a step back from edginess and into the pastel embrace of corporate image.

  No matter what you might have thought before you walked in here, Trista tells us, our clientele are not lonely middle-aged perverts. The customers are women, mostly. Only a third are men. Most are in committed relationships. Forty percent are college educated. These people do not want to be served by punked-out goofballs or scary guys with sketchy hygiene. They want young, fresh-faced, eager sexual educators, which, by the way, is what you will become in addition to your romance consulting. You will have to learn all about the toys because two-thirds of the customers buy them. Lubes, oils, lotions come next, but do not forget the DVD sales and rentals. By item volume, as opposed to dollar value, porn is a bi
g part of the business.

  The one sure way to get yourself fired, Trista says, is to fail to check customer identification when someone walks through the door. Every person must show a driver’s license or some other official ID to prove he or she is at least eighteen years old.

  Trista gives us a quick overview of the store’s products. There are about 8,000 items in all, over half of which are DVDs. Customers can choose from 1,354 different sex toys. Until this moment I had no idea 1,354 sex toys existed and I have no idea how one would use 1,354 sex toys. The most expensive toy is a mysterious item called a violet wand, at $449 with attachments. The store also stocks lots of joke items—drinking straws shaped like penises are always popular at bachelorette parties—naughty greeting cards, books on sex, skin magazines for all persuasions, Japanese porn manga, lingerie, and costumes.

  “This place is crazy at Halloween,” Trista says. “Every girl wants to be slutty at Halloween. It’s like it’s okay then. There will be lines out the store waiting for dressing rooms.”

  She directs us to our employee packets and the twenty-page “Introduction to Products.” “Customers place a great deal of trust in your suggestions,” it says, a frightening thought if true. I glance through the booklet’s lists of product benefits. Almost every item promises to enhance sex in some way or other, but even the store sounds skeptical about some, like Tighten Up Shrink Crème, which is supposed to “provide the sensation of a tighter than normal vagina.” The description smacks of bet hedging to me.

  Then Trista escorts us on a field trip through the store. We start in the dungeon room, a small section devoted to riding crops, whips, padlocks, nipple clamps, and other devices used in bondage, domination, and sadomasochism (BDSM). A love swing hangs from the ceiling and I think back to Kathy Brummitt and the Sinclair love swing video.

  “Does anybody actually buy these?” I ask.

  “Oh, sure,” Trista says. “Not many people buy the violet wand because it’s so expensive, but some do.” She opens a glass case and takes out a small brown handheld device resembling an electric screwdriver. A glass tube terminating in a pancaked disc juts from the wand’s tip. Trista plugs the wand into an outlet, turns it on, and right away we hear a whirring sound. The glass tube glows neon purple. Trista holds it half an inch above her forearm and sparks fly from the glass tube to her skin. She demands we all try it, so we’ll know what we’re selling, and it feels like being hit with needles of static electricity.

  I suspect the violet wand is here mainly for show, to burnish the store’s credibility among the BDSM set. I have no way of knowing that before my walkabout through American sex is over, I’ll be seeing much more of the violet wand.

  When we leave the BDSM dungeon, Trista talks enthusiastically about the porn DVDs, or, as we are trained to call them, “the adult titles.”

  “The new titles go here,” she says, resting her hand on a small display shelf at the end of a row of bins stuffed with thousands of them.

  “Oh, that’s awesome,” Jennifer says, laughing, when she spots one new title. “The Da Vinci Load!”

  “Okay, over here are the BDSM DVDs. They generally do not have sex in them,” says Trista, who, I am about to learn, has a very restrictive definition of sex. “I did not know that, and then I rented one and was scared out of my mind…Over here, there’s squirting. I never knew what squirting was until I started working here,” she says, referring to female ejaculation. “My boyfriend’s favorite porn star is Teagan Presley. My favorite porn star is Cytherea because I’m really into squirting and she is, like, the squirting queen! I prefer gonzo and wall-to-wall” DVDs, she says, describing videos free of plots or characterization. “Oh, and I really like Belladonna,” she says, holding up a DVD titled My Ass Is Haunted. “These here are oral mainly. They don’t have any sex either, or almost no sex, just oral. Foreplay.”

  The magazine rack is peppered with titles I’ve never heard of: Bizarre, Taboo, Tight, 18-Year-Old Hotties, Just 18, Leg World, Mature, D-Cup. An entire comic book series revolves around mother–son, grandfather–granddaughter, brother–sister incest. I could spend days reading titles from the book section to learn how to do everything from bukkake to extreme bondage.

  During our review of the love dolls, there is some serious discussion about a material called CyberSkin and one known as Futurotic, ultrarealistic, high-tech compounds that are meant to more closely duplicate the feel of real human flesh. Trista removes a CyberSkin product from its box and all five of us reach out to fondle and squeeze the molded ass of porn star Chasey Lain.

  “Um,” one of the young women asks, “how do you, um, clean a doll?”

  “Well,” Trista explains without hesitating, “a lot of guys do not ejaculate in the hole.”

  Some of us aren’t so sure. We feel the need for discussion. What strategies should we recommend to any man who says he will indeed be spilling his seed into the rubbery depths? Some of these dolls are pricey, and a guy is going to want more than one lovemaking session for his money. At least this is the general consensus of the class members. The doll will have to be cleaned. We have taken Trista’s oath to customer service seriously and we want to provide a good answer to any man who asks.

  “Swabs?” suggests Ashley.

  “You could squirt it with a hose,” Kyle offers.

  We pitch one suggestion after another until Trista finally says, “Like, okay, whatever,” a rhetorical trump card that silences the class. We move on.

  The next section contains small missiles of rubber and silicone, most of which Trista describes with some variation of “and this thing goes in your butt.” She holds up a leather harness belt with a steel ring meant to be worn over the pubic bone and demonstrates how one of the large dildos fits through the ring to give the wearer a strap-on penis. “A lot of guys like it when their girlfriends wear ’em.” Trista explains. “They like it in the butt.”

  In dongs and dildos, scores of outsized replicas of disconnected penises hang from hooks like hunting trophies. A few of these have porn-star endorsements, too, and when Jennifer sees one molded from a guy named Julian, she recognizes the name right away.

  “Oh, he’s hot.”

  As we walk, Trista exhorts us to keep an eye on the gay and transgendered toys and magazines. Many straight men, or men pretending to be straight, are shy about their interest in homosexuality, to say nothing of being comfortable enough to walk up to a cash register manned by a fresh-faced young woman, so they steal these. Don’t pressure anybody. Get a price range, talk about the qualities of each item, listen carefully. Try a compliment. Say, “Wow, I love those shoes. Where’d you get them?” Create a conversation so a customer will relax and realize there is nothing scary or odd or shameful about shopping here. It’s all perfectly normal. Everybody does it. Just like a trip to Toys “R” Us.

  In 1945, at the very end of World War II, Beate Uhse, a twenty-seven-year-old German woman trained as a pilot, fled Berlin in a Luftwaffe plane. She settled in allied occupied territory and the next year reinvented herself as a sex educator and entrepreneur. In 1962 she opened what is thought to be the world’s first sex shop, the Institute for Marital Hygiene, a name chosen to deflect accusations of prurient appeal. Dildos, condoms, and educational literature were health aids, therapeutic for people who needed therapy.

  The appearance of sex shops took longer in the United States and depended on a confluence of events within the overall sexual revolution. Most important, in 1965 the United States Supreme Court, in Griswold v. Connecticut, found that a Connecticut law forbidding the provision of contraceptive information, techniques, or treatment to married couples was unconstitutional. Griswold effectively overturned, at least for married people, the nearly one-hundred-year-old federal Comstock law, named for Anthony Comstock (who, coincidentally, was born in Connecticut), a Christian antiobscenity crusader who believed talk of contraception fomented lust.

  The first sex shops were really “adult bookstores” selling skin ma
gazines. Sometimes a headshop would stock cheap vibrators and dildos along with the blacklight posters, roach clips, and bongs. But slowly, court decisions and the growth in numbers and kinds of sex-related products gave potential shop owners both the right to open and the merchandise to sell. In 1970 what is thought to be the first porn movie (aside from stag films) released in the United States, Mona (about a virgin who apparently thinks oral sex doesn’t count), made a brief appearance, followed by others, most notably porn’s first big hit, Deep Throat, in 1973. American counterparts to Beate Uhse’s store began peppering the landscape, often near new adult movie theaters. But the liberalizing court cases left one regulatory caveat: zoning. Cities were free to regulate stores by ghettoizing them into low-rent parts of towns. Sex shop owners responded by living down to the reputation. They played up sleaze and skipped any effort to appeal to customers with niceties like decor or service. Sex sold itself. What more did anybody need? All you had to do was throw up a few purple lights, paint the windows black, hang the goods from the wall, and charge three times what the stuff was worth.

  Feminism changed the paradigm. In 1973, about the time the fundamentalist Christian community was trying to come to terms with the sexual revolution, Betty Dodson, who had earlier mounted exhibitions of erotic art, founded women’s sexual consciousness-raising groups where attendees were invited to admire their own genitals. In 1974 she self-published a book called Liberating Masturbation: A Meditation on Self-Love. That same year, Dodson acolyte Dell Williams opened a shop called Eve’s Garden in New York.

  In 1975 Joani Blank, a thirty-seven-year-old San Francisco activist and sex therapist, founded a publishing company, Down There Press, to publish a book she wrote called The Playbook for Women About Sex. The male version followed the next year, and in 1977 Blank opened a tiny retail store in the city’s Mission District called Good Vibrations. The idea of the store was to give women an alternative to unsavory sex shops and to provide them with reliable information about sex and sexual pleasure. Sales gradually expanded and the store opened two more branches, another one in San Francisco and one across the bay in Berkeley.