That Takes Ovaries! (13 page)

The show, meanwhile, was a subtle comedy of miscommunication, an understated
Who’s On First?

Host:
“If I hear what the experts are saying, you are in denial, you have a maturity problem… yet you decide to put your face all over television. Let me ask you, why are you okay with a mansharing relationship?”

Me:
“Honestly, I feel I’m more than okay with it; it’s natural for me to be in a state of openness in my relationships.”

Expert #1:
“I think you can glamorize that you have commitmentphobia, or other issues, so that even you believe you know what youre doing.”

Expert #2:
“There is a price to be paid when you are subjected to the abuse of mansharing, and the price for most women is their self-esteem.”

Host:
“Some make the argument that women are involved in this because there is a shortage of available men. Your thoughts?”

Me:
“No, it’s something very different from that. This is the organic development of my way of loving.”

Expert #1:
“What do you mean by
organic?”

Host:
“Do you maybe stay with your man because he takes you out, buys you nice things?”

Though it seems we missed talking to each other (and even about the same topic) by quite some margin, I believe we all accomplished what we set out to do.
BET Tonight
aired a show on a controversial topic that doubtless did well in the ratings. The therapists expressed their opinions and plugged their books heavily. I had the opportunity to articulate something that is rarely voiced: We have choices, actual choices. We can live according to our inner guidance. We can love fully and completely without limitations imposed on us by others.

The final statement by one of the therapists, paraphrased, was, “If you’re sharing your man, you only have a piece of the pie.” I say this: Our emotional/sexual/romantic selves are not pie graphs. By loving, we are not divided, nor are we diminished. To give to one, to give to more, cannot deplete something eternal.

The bell over the door chimes as a woman enters. She’s in her midthirties and dressed in a neat button-up blouse. When she approaches the counter, where I’m busily hand-stamping the
words PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER on a stack of grocery bags, she speaks quietly, so no one else can hear: “I’d like to buy a … a
vibrator,
please.”

My eyes meet hers, then turn to the shelves that line the tiny room I call my store. She follows my gaze and we laugh at the same time. “I guess that’s about all you sell here, isn’t it?” she says in a relieved tone.

“Yup,” I answer, smiling broadly.

I didn’t set out to open the first women-oriented sex-toy store in the country, but in 1977, I wasn’t that surprised to find myself doing it either. I’d worked with the Sex Counseling Program at the University of California at San Francisco for several years. Much of my work was simply teaching women to have orgasms through masturbation, so naturally vibrators were an important part of our conversations. But it was difficult for my clients to make the leap from discussing vibrators to actually
getting hold
of a real live one to try. At that time, women’s only choices were to order sex toys “sight unseen” from a men’s catalogue or to visit an “adult store.”

Usually located in seamy parts of town, these stores were run and patronized by men. The only women appeared in lurid pictures on the covers of porn videos lining the walls. Even when women from my groups braved this sexist atmosphere, their gutsiness was often met with more intimidation. When one of my clients asked a store clerk if she could examine a vibrator under the glass countertop, he leered in response, “Boy, you must need it bad, lady.”

After I heard that story, I complained to a feminist colleague who was known for her innovative and bold actions: “Toni, you should open a vibrator store for women.”

“Too busy,” my friend characteristically replied. “You do it.”

It made sense. I had recently left my job as a sex counselor, and my living expenses were low enough that I could afford to run a store that just broke even for a while. With full knowledge of the fact that most new businesses folded within a year, I scraped together enough to rent a little storefront on the edge of
upscale, family-oriented Noe Valley, and plunged into the risky world of a small business owner. I ordered vibrators from wholesalers and placed a few discreet ads in the local paper, calling my shop
Good Vibrations:
“A vibrator store and museum, especially but not exclusively for women.” I bought brown paper bags without our name on it, so folks could hide their purchases if they wanted (but for fun we stamped PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER on each bag). I even put together a catalogue—a crummy little mimeographed fold-over sheet featuring two plug-in vibrators, two battery-operated ones, and a few books:
Our Bodies, Ourselves; For Yourself
(a masturbation handbook); and the sex workbooks I had written,
A Playbook for Women about Sex,
and a similar one for men, both published by my own outfit, Down There Press (get it?).

My mission was simple: to encourage women to take charge of and have fun with their sexuality; this in a society that deemed nonsexual women pure and good, and sexual women tramps. I also advocated that men be full partners as their women lovers explored and experienced their sexuality. I planned to exploit people’s interest in sex rather than their anxiety about it.

When I opened the store, I never considered, “What will people think?” I was married at the time, and my father-in-law
did
seem rather confused about what I was doing. (“What exactly are you selling, Joani?” he asked at one family gathering. “Vacuum cleaners?”) But the vast majority of reactions, from friends and strangers, were supportive or curious.

“And what do you do?”

“I sell vibrators.”

“Oh.” Pause. “I see.” Extended pause. “Great! How’s business?”

Perhaps my bold move did not meet with much resistance because San Francisco in the 1970s was a place of sexual freedom and feminist consciousness-raising. The attitude was “anything goes”—though to protect the privacy of our customers, we placed curtains in the storefront window. What modesty we
did have took the form of keeping a few realistic-looking dildos in a wooden cabinet, which customers had to inquire to see. People would look all around and then ask “Do you have anything else?” and I knew that meant dildos.

From the beginning, the store attracted a wide range of customers, from heterosexuals who heard about us through the grapevine to lesbian couples who lived in the area. Lots of men, eager to learn about sex from a woman’s perspective, came in alone, too. I admit, I got a certain perverse pleasure out of talking with customers about “shocking” things, like dildos and masturbation, in a no-nonsense, straightforward way. And it was a relief for others to realize they could talk about those things. No one I spoke to about my work and mission was so conservative that they couldn’t at least respect what I was doing. Most, in fact, sang my praises. Mine was an idea whose time had come. It had been a sexual wasteland for women out there. My clean, well-lighted store, a discreet shop with nice curtains, was an oasis.

One of my favorite memories from those early days is of a man who came in one afternoon when I was the only one working. He walked over to my one little shelf of books and stood in front of it for the longest time, totally still, with just his head moving back and forth looking at the titles. After a while, I started to feel slightly nervous.
Is this guy a creep?
I wondered. We did get those from time to time. Just as I was working up the nerve to ask if I could help, the man turned to face me and said in an awed voice, “I can’t believe I’ve gotten to be thirty-six years old and I obviously still don’t know the first thing about sex.”

“Well,” I responded heartily. “You’ve come to the right place.”

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is a real pain if you’re in retail. But there I was, working on the busiest shopping day of the year, and on what was supposed to be my day off, too. It was a bad,
bad
Saturday. I was pushed, shoved, yelled at, and on my feet since opening at 7:00 that morning. By 2:00, I was ready to deck a few halls, not to mention a few surly customers. Stella, my sympathetic manager, took pity and gave me the rest of the day off. I had to relax. I needed coffee.

It was chilly outside and I tugged at the thin sweater I wore and smoothed my skirt against my legs. Stella liked the store tropically warm; anything more than a bikini was overkill. But now that I was outside… brrr. I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed for the corner coffee shop. That’s when I saw, halfway between me and the café at the other end of the block, the group of men standing in the middle of the sidewalk as if they owned the universe.

These guys were unreal. There were usually a dozen or so of them standing in front of the bar, their home away from home. Within the thirty-five to sixty-five age range, they smoked cigars, talked loudly, guffawed like donkeys, and made wild gestures when they conversed with one another. At work, we called them
“those
guys,” and I avoided them whenever I could because, frankly, they were kind of scary. In their dark glasses, shiny suits, and black leather jackets, they looked and sounded like escapees
from a Martin Scorsese movie. But, alas for them, because I was
in a mood,
I had to (wanted to!) walk right through them.

As I got closer, I kept my stride even. I was thinking they could probably smell fear. When I was within ten feet, they all stopped talking and turned to stare. The congregation parted like the Red Sea so I could pass, and more than a dozen pairs of eyes burned holes into me. At one point I was surrounded, which was so intimidating because not one of them said a word. I became very conscious of myself and felt awfully small and alone.

I walked the disturbing gauntlet in total silence. After I passed, I heard the
Oooo, babeeeee
’s and kissy-kissy noises start up. One even said, “That is one BEE-YOO-TEE-FULL piece of ass.”

Now before I go on, you should know one thing about me: All my life I was taught that “nice” girls never spoke up or voiced an opinion about anything, even things that were bothering them. That was how I was raised. But the last line—that one specific line—was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It filled me with a blinding, unstoppable fury that
had
to be released. I’d been taking abuse from harried holiday shoppers all day, and now I had to listen to this crap from these bastards … and just let it slide?
Absolutely not.
I stopped in my tracks and turned to face them.

Heated blood surged through my body. I felt my skin flush and my eyes narrow. I planted my feet apart, put my hands on my hips, and asked, “Did one of you assholes just call me a BEE-YOO-TEE-FULL piece of ass?”

They certainly weren’t expecting this response. They looked incredibly surprised I had said anything at all.

“How dare you talk to me like that. You don’t even know me! What gives you the right to talk to
anyone
like that? How would you feel,” I continued, “if someone talked that way to your daughters? Well, I’m somebody’s daughter, too, and I demand the same consideration.”