FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Travel

Things I Learned at the London Sex Expo 2011

Things are going to be very different for me in 2012.

Last weekend, I went to the London Erotica Expo. Not for any real reason. You can get into stuff like this for free if you're a journalist, and I didn't have anything to do that day. It's true!

I don't really know much about the world of sex stuff. I'm not sex-negative or nuffin (a term which I assume is the opposite of "sex-positive"), I just prefer to have sex without spending £500 on accessories first.

Advertisement

Clearly I had a lot to learn from the Sexpo, so I opened my eyes, ears, mind, and mouth and tried to inhale as much sexy knowledge as I could. Here is some (but not all) of what I learned:

Lesson #1. Sexy clothes for men are not as sexy as sexy clothes for women. Could whoever came up with this stuff not put a teensy bit more effort into it? I'm imagining myself in those pants on the left, and it don't look pretty.

Lesson #2. There is such a thing as "The Guild of Erotic Artists." They're like The Actors Guild, but with an esoteric approach to capital letters and, presumably, boners.

Lesson #3. In spite of the guild, "erotic artist" still looks like a pretty lonely place to be.

Lesson #4. You can buy a wedding dress at a sex convention. Though I didn't see any sell that day, eventually someone is going to buy their wedding dress here. And that person is going to get married in it. And people are going to ask them where they got their dress from. And then they're going to have to tell them ;_; (That's me, crying.)

Lesson #5. There was actually something more depressing than a wedding dress on show at this thing. These dancers performed a few times each day over the course of the weekend. Can you imagine how big their dreams were when they first laced up a pair of tap shoes? I bet they didn't involve wearing square booty-pops and glitter wings while simulating sex to a dance remix of "You Give Love a Bad Name."

Advertisement

Lesson #6. Fetishists LOVE furniture that looks like something Shania Twain would've had in her house on a late-90s episode of Cribs…

Lesson #7. …And if it has strangely-untoned "models" pretending to have sex on it, even better.

Lesson #8. Some people still aren't sure what the word "sexy" means (means the best £20 I ever spent).

Lesson #9. There are enough people on Earth interested in sleeping with a piece of square plastic in their vagina for this product to exist.

Lesson #10. There are people on Earth who are so horny that they're able to stop laughing long enough to have sex with someone wearing one of these.

Lesson #11. There are people on Earth who've had it rougher than the Native Americans and the Aborigines combined.

Lesson #12. There are fetishes so specific, they only have one person interested in them. Which I guess makes this guy a wanker by default.

Lesson #13. People will take any current retail trend and try and make it sexy for a quick buck. This stall was in the same section as one selling erotic vodka-mix drinks (so you can get erotically drunk) and another selling erotic piñatas (so you can be erotically violent around children). What next? Wank socks that enjoy it too?

Lesson #14. There is one young, hot(ish), FEMALE adult baby out there! Something I didn't see coming in a billion years.

Lesson #15. And there's also a person out there, in 2011, who thinks this shirt is funny enough to wear. So funny, in fact, that she's wearing her laminates backwards so everyone can enjoy the joke.

Advertisement

Lesson #16a. Inflatable sex chairs double as the perfect spot to kick back and enjoy a burger…

Lesson #16b. …This chair, not so much.

Lesson #17. Unicorns exist but they don't want us all to stare and whisper and basically make a big song and dance about it every time they leave the house, alright?

Lesson #18. That old myth about rich and successful businessmen wanting to relinquish control in their sex lives is actually a complete lie.

And, with all those lessons learned, I went home. Thanks for opening my eyes, guys!

@JLCT