At the Feminist Porn Awards Wolf Hudson told us how he had been held at the airport for 2 hours on his way into the country because, as he said “I was honest” about why he was there. I don’t for a second doubt this. In the wake of a recent professional awakening I have been trying to own what I do. Not say “well, I’m trying to” or “I want to do…” So, on my way into Canada, when asked why I was there I said business and when asked what my business was I said “I am a sex blogger and I’m doing a tour of North America’s best sex shops”
This led to a litany of questions that I have to wonder if a journalist on a tour of, let’s say, pretty parks would have faced. Finally, I was (kind of begrudgingly) allowed in. Would but that were the end of the story.
24 hours later I’m back at the airport heading out of Canada and I hand my customs form, passport and boarding pass to a gentleman at a counter and end up having much the same conversation with him except it keeps going and he starts commenting that I seem nervous which I wasn’t¹ I actually kept trying to get him into the whole thing “There are these two awesome shops right here in Toronto!” Nothing. He implied that my reason for traveling seemed implausible (“I’ve never heard of a store that has classes… are these, like, porn places?”) and I seemed shady. I was marked to be searched.
So, I got taken to the back room and handed off to another gentleman to go through my bags and here’s where it got fun. At this point I actually was a bit nervous but I remembered that the day before I left, Lanae St. John (aka The Mamasutra) had posted something about enjoying bringing sex toys through TSA because of the potential for teachable moments. I liked that. I knew that my choice was to be freaked out and embarrassed about this random Canadian touching my sex toys or I could take the sex positive route as modeled by Lanae and find the teachable moments. So, the agent asked what I did for a living and I said “I’m a sex blogger and educator²” and he said “Sex educator? Doesn’t sex come pretty naturally?” And we were off!
This story could get long so here are the highlights:
- The first thing he found was the stack of We-Vibe 3 playbooks. He looked said “What’s..oh…” (he would say this several times in the course of our interaction) and then looked closer at the picture and said “Wait, but for a woman or a man?” My cue to explain the We-Vibe!
- He found my brand-new Vixen Gee-Whiz and again with the “what?…oh” followed by “I was going to say ‘how do you drink out of that cup?’”
- He opened my rolling bag and said “Why do you have two full bags if you were only here for a day?” I explained the tour and he said “Is there a store like that here?” I got to tell him that there are TWO.
- He found my pirate vibe and was most confounded by its simplicity, he kept looking to see if it had more parts. Finally he said “Is this it?” I was like “Dude, it has pirates!”
- As I was re-packing my bags he asked “How often to do come into Canada?” Me, thinking I was about to be warned about something, was like “Pretty much never” He said, “Oh not like every month or something to give your tours and stuff?” At that point I suspected we maybe had a potential Superhero Sex Shop patron on our hands. Squeeee!
Finally, he gave me my papers and I slipped him the info for Come As You Are and Good For Her and he said “I have no idea why they sent you in here, but I’m glad they did!”
PS- When we make the film of my life I want the douche-y agent to be played by James Spader (or whoever is the modern equivalent. Who is the actor directors use these days when they want us to immediately know someone is a douche?) the nice agent would be played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (because I’m doing the casting and I wanna) I would, obviously, be played by Emma Stone.
¹It’s worth noting though that of late I have developed a tremor in my left hand. My brother has had one forever so I haven’t thought much about it. I mostly don’t notice it but it does kick in when I’ve been carrying stuff -like say a suitcase- or doing other physical stuff- I first noticed it when I started having a hard time putting condoms on folks
²First time I ever said that publicly…
