I'm Just Saying

Some neighborhoods have ice cream parlors, pizza places and corner drug stores, all within walking distance. The owners know your first and last name. Parents feel safe letting their kids ride bikes to meet their friends for hot dogs after school. Running groups gather at the coffee shop post-jog for organic green tea and whole-wheat cinnamon scones. 



Well. If you walk down my driveway turn left, go past four houses and hang a right heading straight, in about a block you’ll run smack into the back entrance of the neighborhood sex shop. What’s weird is, I live in a pretty decent neighborhood. In fact, if you walk in the opposite direction from my driveway, you’ll run into a golf course belonging to a country club, which is next to a lake where we walk the dogs, and my daughter feeds the ducks.

We don’t really know how it came it be, but surreally yes, there is a porn store over in my neck of the woods. Directly across the parking lot from a sweet little nursing home (which, I am sorry, is just plain mean), sits a building that, for years, hosted an Italian restaurant. It was one of those wonderful family-style places draped in tufted red vinyl, plastic ferns and Chianti bottle chandeliers.



This sex shop has been there now for about a year. And, from what we’ve heard, it was almost shut down by the city. But having recently appealed their case, the place has erected (eh hem) a massive 30-foot tall pole into the sky topped with a purple sign with a red heart in the center. Every time I drive through the parking lot (it happens to be a great cut-through to the main highway), I suffer a brief panic wave like I’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere, and I impulsively reach for the door lock. But I’ve always been curious about what’s in there.



So one weekend, my husband and I were cutting through the parking lot on our way home from running errands, and I casually suggested we check it out.



After a quick recovery from my minor whiplash, we exited the car and made a run, or swift walk, for the door. The main room was tame enough. Secondhand mannequins in tacky, cheap lingerie. A broom-haired blonde looked at me as if to say, I know I look ridiculous. Can I come home with you and wear something warm from your closet? Another—a brunette who I swear flared her painted nostrils and raised the part of her right eyebrow that had not yet been rubbed off—looked at me with an almost audible, You think you’re better than me!?

“Yes! I sure do.” I said from the side of my mouth as I passed her and headed for the next room. That is before I was stopped by an attractive, surprisingly un-stripper-like woman who asked for my I.D. Now, even though I use great skincare products and exercise regularly, I rarely (never) pass for under 21. I thought to myself, It’s because we are so normal. We are the type who’d never enter a place of such sorts. She thinks we’re neighborhood narcs. With that, I was empowered and proudly dawned my driver’s license. I turned to my husband waiting for him to follow my regal lead. He informed us he’d left his wallet in the car. “Let’s just go,” he said, giving me a look. “Okay,” I shrugged. But he darted, roadrunner style, out and back into the store waving his driver’s license like it was the golden ticket, all before I could even take a step. Okay, so I totally made that last part up. He did make excellent time. 


If I typed up in a detailed description the things we saw in that room, I could be kicked off this blog site. Yes, there were DVDs for every fetish and then some. And “toys” that seriously seemed more like creatures from a bad space movie than like something you’d allow in your bed. “Hey! What’s this for?” I whisper-yelled at my husband, as I twirled a bendy, two-headed, purple “baton” high above my head. “Stop it!” He shushed, snatching it out of my hand and hanging it back up next to a silicone replica of a female “down-there,” which I had no idea they even made or still don’t know how it might even work. “Let’s get out of here. This is creeping me out,” he said. I shot him an are-you-gay look and zoomed over to the chubby chaser DVD collection. 



I then made my way down the wall to the classics. There was The Devil and Mrs. Jones. I had heard of that one. And there was something filmed in the seventies featuring Sylvester Stallone. Huh. Then, among the modern best sellers, I found a double feature in which the premise was a group, or posse you might say, of women who seduce men, use them up, and then kick them to the curb, ruining them for all other women. That wasn’t exactly what it said on the cover, but that’s the message I got. They wore cut-off shorts, fitted leather vests, cowboy hats, dusty boots and carried a lasso on one hip and a canteen on the other. (It’s important to stay hydrated when emotionally castrating a man). “I want this one!” I yell-yelled.



After a mildly embarrassing scene of having the case twisted out of my hand like I was a toddler holding a pink Daisy razor, I was discreetly led by my elbow toward the exit by my husband. After we crawled to our car on our bellies to avoid running into any neighbors making the cut-through, I said “Prude! I was going to buy that! Why couldn’t I get that movie?” He turned to me, “Be-cause! This is in our neighborhood. Places like this damage housing values. It’s not good for the area. And I can’t believe you are, all of the sudden, okay with it.”

Right away my clarity returned. “Oh crap, you are so right. I really don’t know what got into me. This place could attract sex offenders and hormonal trashy teenagers. That was stupid of me to even think about supporting it in any way.” I slumped down in my seat and stared out the window, steeped in shame.

As we headed up the driveway, I heard him say, “Well yeah that. And it was ninety bucks.”