Hands Off The Merchandise: A Guide To Adult Boutique Etiquette

By Shawn Baker / Friday, April 23rd, 2010

We all have our limits in life.

I can’t add in my head. I can’t sleep in an unfamiliar place. I will never get the appeal of Glee.

Also, I have a problem with frequenting adult retailers.

I don’t know how common a situation it is for others, but it’s not unusual for straight men in my life to ask me to purchase porn on their behalf; apparently, having a gay guy act as their procurer mollifies the guilt many straight men associate with buying smut. Though I’m partial to mail order myself, I personally get a kick out of going to a newsstand and paying for a copy of Barely Legal or Juggs and having the vendor look at me before his gaze wanders to Torso or Honcho. And yes, it’s hard not to laugh as I choose a title like Sex-Starved Fuck Sluts, H.R. Muff ‘N Stuff, or Big Trouble In Little Vagina that fits his/their specifications.

The problem is other men. Please — please — don’t try to pick me up in a sex shop.

The first time it happened to me, I was vaguely bemused, as this setting is ironically the least sexy locale for me. When a man puts the make on me in the heart of 42nd Street, I can’t help but think the worst, wondering if he’s a serial killer, a furloughed ex-gay, an Amish guy on his Rumspringa, or a Family Values politician. So even though I know I have exactly T minus ten minutes and counting from the moment I step under the neon sign to the time he starts to circle, I’m still going to offer some sage advice for that guy who thinks the intersection of Eastern European wrestlers and West Hollywood musclemen is the ideal place to make his move.

1. I really don’t need to know about your personal collection.

Porn really is a rather private thing, and though we may bandy it about with close friends, it’s never the best way to break the ice. I’m not suggesting it’s anything to be ashamed of, though. Just don’t offer unless asked. When a strange man approaches me about his porn cache, it’s not a revolving DVD shelf I picture in my mind. Frankly, what I envision immediately is a basement rape den.

2. Please presume that I’m in said establishment for the prescribed purpose of buying pornography only.

A sample conversation elapsed over eight seconds I experienced with a man a mere month ago while in the straight section, specifically standing in front of the tarty teenage babysitter subgenre:

“What time is it, man?,” he asks.

“Ten,” I politely reply.

“You see anything you like?”

“Just looking,” I deadpan.

“You got a place nearby?”

“We can’t go there! I only just managed to slip out of that electronic monitoring bracelet on my ankle.”

But thanks, mister. Now as I walk home, it’ll be your face I picture as I look over my shoulder and feel just like Dee Wallace in The Howling for at least the next seven blocks.

3. I am not a Scandinavian model, a slutty college student, a farm boy, or an aspiring starlet.

Those people are stock characters in porn movies, you see, and a sex shop is only ever a great set piece for getting it on in that universe. It’s fab that you think you hit the jackpot and that I’ve stepped off of a DVD sleeve in some XXX variation of a-ha’s “Take On Me,” but an adult store is the sort of milieu where men need their space to roam in quiet anonymity. It can’t work any other way. Vignettes that function seamlessly on DVD — think propositioning a police officer, laying into your gym teacher, or trolling truck stops– tend to fail to execute in reality.

Even if you’re a debonair, well-heeled brunet stockbroker, you might as well be wearing a name tag that reads “Hi. My name is Patrick Bateman,” and I should have “Eigil Vesti” stamped on my forehead. Should I accept your offer for a moonlit stroll through the park or a quick drink, when I wake up days later in a factory in Argentina and find myself involuntarily headlining a snuff movie alongside my cowled co-star Mega-Scourge while handcuffed to a pipe, all I’ll be able to tell myself is, “Well, I walked right into this bitch, didn’t I?”

4. Yes, I am too young, too pretty, and too innocent to be in a place like this.

Or am I? I could be a 21 Jump Street-style undercover rebel cop – too hot-headed for the captain to rein me in, too pretty for the other officers to take me seriously. Maybe I’m like Sara Pezzini and mouthed off to the brass one too many times, or got sexually harassed by my Irish-Italian brethren — fuckers — and as punishment, my tight little ass has to patrol the red light district, busting would-be johns who just happen to have a few sawbucks burning holes in their pockets. Maybe I’m this close to nabbing the Smiley Face Killer, who killed my best friend a year ago, thereby causing me to seethe “You crazy basssstard!” over his half-frozen corpse.

So when I arrest you after you offer me twenty bucks for a rusty trombone, you suddenly get all classy and claim entrapment down at the station, causing me to go all Olivia Benson as I scowl, “I’ve got you over a chair now, you little freak!” Then my partner Elliot Stabler intervenes, taking me firmly but gently by the arms and saying, “You don’t have to prove anything to me, Blue Eyes. I know you’re more than just an incredible set of dick-sucking lips and legs that won’t quit.” Then I’ll get all up in his face and sneer, “Stay outta my way!” before I storm out and call my bureau-mandated anger management therapist, who thinks I have a problem with profanity and male authority figures.

And I hate that cocksucker even more than I do my father.

5. Don’t exceed the recommended occupancy of the video booth.

Please don’t invite me into the booth you’re entering with a cock of your eyebrow and and arch of your neck. It sickens me. You’re talking to a claustrophobe and a mysophobe, man. I got more symbolic, rooted-in-childhood neuroses than you can handle, and I don’t want to cut in on your action with the spooge mopper. I’m gonna take my Hungarian paratroopers and my gang-banging firemen and I’m gonna go home, turn on my Febreze Scentstories Player, break out the Fleshlight, and slowly edge my way through a quivering series of twenty to thirty injaculations over a two to three hour span before finally spraying all over my own face in a full-body eruption, that, like an Icelandic volcano, has a way of shutting down the tourist trade indefinitely.

Matty

SO who is telling the story? The fat fuck in the video? Because if he can’t keep ‘em off. Maybe I should stop going to the gym and start overeating. If he ain’t in to you , he ain’t into you. I get it. But if you think everyone wants you and your body. There is more of an underlying problem. BTW if you are so frickin hot guys can’t keep anything off of you, you can be porn via internet. So get over yourself and worry about others’ getting a clue.
Trip

You must be new. To the site. Also to humor and irony.

Welcome.
David

I feel for you Shawn, though I do think that you may be somewhat parochial in your mindset. Anyone who’s half way attractive has gone through much of the same stuff as you have mate. Heck, try being hit up upon whilst innocently perusing some of the merchandise at a major museum of modern arts’ gift shop, simply looking for a book in a library, or just picking up skis.Things like that can happen anywhere Shawn. It simply depends upon how attractive you look to the bloke(s)in question. Cheers, D.
marco

I can relate to the creep factor of this. If you live in a big city, you get the out of towners with wives and kids who want you to be their walk on the wild side, especially if you have a young and ‘innocent’ look [I do]. Vultures tend to pick out the sleaziest places to perch. I understand how my female friends feel when they complain about losers in clubs zeroing in on drunk girls or guys with camera phones trolling the beaches wanting to make home movies to post online. Sometimes men of either persuasion can be really gross.

But I would love to be hit on in a museum though.
Thorn

Try getting hit on by a defense attorney after sitting on a jury all day about someone being arrested for walking down the street in his underwear.
salieri1969

I’m sure getting hit on all the time is annoying. But consider for a moment what it’s like never to be hit on.
Marshal Tee

I’m never approached in these kinda places, and it’s such a relief. I consider myself good looking and in decent shape, so it’s not like a troll problem. I simply don’t have any interest in ‘meeting’ someone under those circumstances and that intention is somehow conveyed to those on the make for making a connection. it’s a vibe thing.
rawhidetreat

It seems that there’s a lot to be said for mail order (especially if overnight delivery is available).
Matt

Please get over yourself.

There was a time when these were the preferred places to establish a little rendez-vous, and now that’s predominantly going on online. There are still some people too oldschool or socially inept (and too socially inept for the internet is scary) to operate that way. I could see if the problem was people not taking no for an answer or being overly aggressive, but this is really pretty innocuous in the grand scheme of things. If you want less people to talk to you when you’re out in public, stay home or dip your face in a tub of acid.
Krisper

It’s still creepy.
ivan

“If you want less people to talk to you when youâ€™re out in public, stay home or dip your face in a tub of acid.”

Now imagine if you applied that lovely sentiment to the ladies and told them that venturing into “questionable” parts of town and looking ‘purdy was code for them asking for it from every socially-inept creep in a raincoat.

He’s exactly right not to feel flattered.
http://nightcharm.com David K.

Wow, I think you should approach THORN, and talk to him about writing up his experience with the defense attorney, Shawn. Might be a great piece for Nightcharm. That’s probably a whole new world to explore/expose. Talk about attorney-client privileges.
Sam

It’s obvious the guy in the other booth was hitting on him! The man has a right to be left alone if he wants to!
Greg

This nasty little article begs the question why.
Why would you even consider stepping in an adult store when these chance encounters disgust you so?
I’m sorry to say I think this is one way your inflated ego gets it’s feeding.
And no it was not funny just mean.
http://www.nightcharm.com Shawn Baker

@Greg

This sounds like ugly guy talk, but anyway:

It is conceivable that one might be there for the physical product, in the same way that you might be in a bar to actually have a drink or go to a strip club just to hang out with friends. I’m not sure you necessarily have to be sexually available to frequent such establishments.