| "If you’re embarassed about this, we don’t have to go in." Outside the Stampede Roundup Centre’s Hall B, a young woman gives her man an out. She’s dragged him to Taboo: The Naughty But Nice Sex Show, a sexposition of massive proportions. It’s not the size of the trade show that matters, it’s whether or not she can coax him in. But the old in/out ain’t as simple as that – as the Baroque profusion of sexual decorations within will prove. She uses further reverse psychology – a go-home option, that really means "I will be soooo mad if you and I aren’t pawing over vibrators and sexy whatnots, pronto.’"
"Just tell me now and we’ll go home."
"Well, I am embarassed," the guy crabbily admits. "I don’t wanna go in."
I stroll past the pair into the busy hall. Although a few of its kiosks are sexless space-fillers, the place is chockablock with sex-related trifles and gewgaws. The unwilling husband’s embarassment is echoed in the eye-contact avoidance of those wandering the aisles, but his intransigence is not likewise in evidence. Crookedly-grinning couples keenly rifle through fetish underthings and dutifully listen to a sales pitch for a love swing – a decidedly adult Jolly Jumper. Pardon my premature conclusion: today’s couple takes a healthy and open approach to sexual life. That, and I’m pretty sure they’re perverts. Just listen:
Wickedly-moustachioed jewelry and adornment salesman: This part holds your labia apart, exposing the clitoris. And, the crystals dangle back and forth – it’s like a tuning fork. It’s a wonderful sensation.
Woman: Tune me in!
Underthing saleswoman: So, you want to buy a teddy?
Short, bearish man wearing leather pants, leather cap: Yes.
This is not the perfunctory sexmosphere of our sod-busting pioneer forefathers/mothers, with the blushing exception, methinks, of the sod part. Attendant Albertans are mad for pan-coital window-dressing. Everywhere one turns: sexaphernalia. Alone in a glass showcase, as if friendless, but more likely because it’s got a medieval spookiness about it: a teak penis.
"Hey, check this out," demands a young man of his friends. He holds, for their bemused inspection, a box picturing a crookedly-grinning dude wearing a prosthetic male member secured to his chin by means of flesh-coloured straps. Everywhere, there are such devices. In fact, this event has more chin dongs than a Chinese phone book. Down the aisle a naked poster girl extols the virtues of, "The only pussy shaver I will ever use." Say, wasn’t Pet Expo last week?
"OK, put this on your hand," entreats a lubricant salesman who wears a single purple neon earring. "Now rub that in. With some lubricants you’re going up and down and you can’t even feel it when it comes out. With ours, it’s more sensationable."
Onstage at the hall’s east end, a troupe of leathered, laced and chain-mailed women – The Nasty Girls – hold a shirtless, dog-collared man at their mercy. "Do you people wanna see these ladies whip the shit outta this guy?" bellows the performance’s MC.
I’m going into sensationable-overload as I wander back through Taboo’s kiosk rows. I pass a young woman sporting a Victorian bustle and having some difficulty with its great weight. "Yeah," she implores a friend, "someone’s got to hold my ass for a while." Amid all the sod-busting tilation, it’s reassuring to know that some asses still simply prefer to be held. The show’s profusion of ways and means, however, continues unabated. In fact, these people are master unabaters.
A cluster of people, mostly men, have gathered around a table full of pretty girls clad in white T-shirts. T-shirts emblazoned with cryptic hieroglyphic symbols: the letter I, a heart, a map of the province and a cat. Throw on a www and a .com and the ladies pitch for an e-commerce-capable website with a 100-per-cent local-content tag line.
Good Listener: Is that guaranteed? There’s no, say, Manitoba uh….
T-shirt girl: It’s local. They haven’t done anything else that I know of.
GL: Good to hear. That would be morally wrong.
One of the gals, Dawn, has her own erotic website, her friend explains.
GL: What’s it all about?
TG: It’s mostly her and her husband – movies, webcam pictures. She’s all-natural – no tattoos, no piercings, no silicone.
GL: Is the all-natural aspect a big selling feature?
TG: Some men really enjoy the all-naturalness.
GL: Perverts. |
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