Good thing I went out to the art trade show today–they were sold out of the sizes I wanted, and I barely was able to snag a couple smaller ones. Damn, those went FAST. That’ll teach me to dither.

From there I went off to lunch with a buddy of mine and her daughter. (Note to self: Small children find the fuzzy socks irresistible.) Said buddy chose that particular restaurant because it was located next door to a sex shop.

For those keeping score at home, this is the second time in as many weeks that friends have taken me out to places carrying adult merchandise. I am beginning to wonder if I am giving off some kind of this-woman-needs-an-orgasm-stat! vibe, and my friends, dear helpful people that they are, are attempting to help in the only socially acceptable fashion available to them.

Now, oddly enough, I have reached the ripe old age of thirty without ever actually visiting a sex shop. I have acquired my rather limited number of sex toys* entirely through a buddy who does the adult equivalent of Tupperware parties (which are a blast, and she’s great at it.) Since my friend had her small child with her, I was propelled through the door alone and instructed to take my time.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d like to attribute this to my maturity, self-confidence, and acceptance of my own sexuality, but in actuality, I think it was because the place was also a head shop. (Sort of one-stop vice shopping.) There were cases full of hand-blown glass bongs, andcases full of hand blown glass…things that weren’t bongs. There were rolling papers. There was patchouli and nag champa incense. There was even a little tie-dye.

I may be woefully lacking in my adult store experience, but I grew up in Oregon and married a stoner, and honey, what I don’t know about head shops ain’t worth knowing. So with a spring in my step and a sense of familiarity, I wandered through, and found myself staring at rank upon rank of things that attached somewhere and went in something–don’t ask me what, I couldn’t even tell what gender it was for, if that even applied–went around another rack, said “Hey, that’s a damn good price!” (It was, too. Very reasonable.) went around another rack, found myself face to face with something that looked like the light saber of a really interesting Jedi, turned around, saw something which I could not imagine being used on anything smaller than a female elk–(The label read “Manrammer.” How…tasteful.)–looked down, wrenched my eyes immediately to the ceiling while my sanity told the rest of my brain that whatever I thought I had just seen was almost certainly a weather balloon or the planet Venus, inched out of that aisle while staring at the light fixtures, spent five minutes trying to figure out what the hell something else was for, as the pictures on the box did little to assist my comprehension–(Some kind of harness, I think, but it looked more like one of those old menstrual belts.)–started down another aisle, saw the words “strap on” on every side and decided to skip that one, and was finally spit out, dazed and bemused, somewhere in the vicinity of the nipple clamps.

So that was an adventure. Since this seems to be a theme the universe is pushing on me lately, I almost shudder to think what the escalation will be.

And now I’m gonna go paint roosters.

*Which will not be discussed here. Mom, Dad, you can keep reading in relative peace of mind. Kinda.