Little Victories

So before I do anything, let me say how wonderful our hosts were. I cannot say enough good things about JT Stockroom and the Erotic Museum. It delights me to no end to know that in Hollywood there is a museum dedicated to the preservation and advancement of erotica, run by the sweetest Russian couple and staffed by folks who are like family to them. They made sure we were fed, having fun, and even tried to fix me up with a date for Saturday night. By the end of the weekend we wanted to come work for them too.

Now I have always had a great deal of respect for JT Stockroom, their products are fantastic and well the folks who make up the company are even cooler than should be allowed by law. I’ll tell you more about them later.

I suppose I should tell you about the rest of the show. Tell you how it was a HUGE sea of conformity. A veritable wasteland of fake tits, fake tans, faked orgasms and fake sincerity. I also should rant on and on about how the sea of frat boys with cameras would stop and gawk at us when we did out demos. Confused and often flummoxed we heard more than one of them say something like, “dude that is fucked up! Let’s go see if they have any DVDA porn for sale next door” (or something to that effect.)

No, I’d rather not. Instead I want to tell you about the little victories. Those moments when we broke through the noise and glare of fake sex and made connections with customers. What do I mean? Here let me give you an example that I think says it best.

It is 10:30 on Saturday night. We have been doing this for almost 12 hours now and I’m beaten down tired. I think someone said that the box office clocked in at 20,000 people that day. So many folks, in fact, that the snack bar ran out of French fries. How the fuck does a place the size of the LA convention center run out of French fries?

We had been doing demos all afternoon. This day we taught 4-hour block classes, did something like 6 hog-tie demos, and 3 suspension demos. The Strumpet (a sweet English girl I met at Shibaricon) had been there all evening helping us out so I put her up as my last demo of the night. As I was just pulling her down from a inverted suspension (her first ever), when Griffin came over and told me that there was someone at the booth who wanted to meet me when I was done.

Her name was A and she drove almost 2 hours up from San Diego just to meet me. She came to the show earlier with her boyfriend in the hopes that I would teach him some ties, but alas we were gone from the booth. Undaunted, she took her boyfriend to work that evening and then returned to the show where sweet talked the security guards into letting her back in even though she did not have a re-entry stamp on her hands.

This girl was determined. What was she after?

A suspension scene? Perhaps a quickie behind the table?

No, all she wanted was for me to teach her some ties so that she could take them home and teach her boyfriend how to use them on her.

And so there we sat, cross-legged on the tiny stage they set up for us to teach on. I’d bind her hands and then talk her through how to bind mine. Back and forth till she was confident that she could do it. As we sat and talked I could hear Griffin suspending out host Jennifer. (This too was to her first rope experience and he made sure it was a great one.) Finally security wanted us out. The show was long since closed and folks needed to leave. So with a big hug she thanked me for sharing this with her. She had never been tied up before but now was eager to take her new knowledge home to her lover.

Funny thing is, this happened several times over the weekend. Tiny victories like this. Eyes opened and perspectives changed.

From a business aspect, the weekend was about a wash. We made enough money to keep the Abbey in San Pellegrino water and organic granola bars for another couple of months, however on the personal level the weekend was a HUGE success.

If it is my job to change the world, one bedroom at a time, then by our count southern California has a dozen more converts.