Christmas shopping at Fascinations

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The holidays are nigh and the season of gift-giving fast approaches. This year, I wanted something that would please me supremely.

All I wanted for Christmas was a man that could rock me in bed. But unfortunately, you can’t keep a man wrapped in a box under the tree till Christmas. I hear that’s illegal, or at least not very nice. So I began my search for the next best thing: A vibrator.

Not wanting any of those cheap plastic ones you could get as a teenager at Spencer’s, I was determined to get one of the fancy, spectacular ones you see on “Sex and the City.”

My roommate also wanted to be pleased supremely for Christmas. But when I assured her that men couldn’t (and shouldn’t) be kept in stockings either, she agreed to come with me to Fascinations so that together we may exchange vibrators instead.

We arrived later that evening at the Fascinations on 28th and Bluff. The parking lot around the back was empty and spacious, so we felt like total lonely perverts walking into the store. But shortly after, the lot began to fill with other customers, and as we passed through the doors, we quickly realized why they had all come as well.

It is because sex shops are awesome. Not like Sephora awesome, but pretty close.

I’ve never been in a sex shop before, not in the U.S. anyway, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I imagined that it would be super sleazy and sketch, with sticky used magazines and cheap blow-up dolls. Instead, it was a brightly lit and friendly establishment, filled with wondrous and colorful things, like candy-flavored lubes, sexy costumes and bouncing boobies galore.

The nice lady at the front desk directed us to the wall of vibrators toward the back. There was a whole wall. I was kind of excited.

We initially made a plan to come in for 15 minutes and walk out with our vibrators. The logistics, then, would be for us to walk straight toward that wall and complete our objective, but when you’ve never seen all the crazy things that people get into, you just can’t.

Take fake rubber butts for example. So I’ve seen whole sex dolls before, but never a disembodied butt. I was perplexed, but I suppose such a purchase is rather economical when you consider how difficult it would be to stash a whole rubber person under the bed, or wherever people keep such things.

There was only one thing in the whole store that pissed me off, and that was the “Man Calendar.” I understood beforehand that there would be a disproportionate level of marketing toward men versus women, but this was ridiculous.

There were open vaginas and fake boobs everywhere I looked, but for visual pleasure for us straight women, there was but a single “Man Calendar” sitting alone on a shelf next to the foreign porno DVDs.

“Where the hell are the naked dudes?” I asked in frustration. I flipped open the calendar in search of justice, but there was none. Instead, there were just photos of fully clothed men doing useful things around the house, like mowing the lawn and unclogging the kitchen sink. The arguably sexiest photo was of a man in a white T-shirt and jeans holding a plate of strawberries and whipped cream.

First of all, if these guys are going to be clothed, at least put them in some Calvin Klein’s. Secondly, who the hell thinks household activities are so arousing that they put them in a “Man Calendar?” Because they need to swallow some battery acid.

Speaking of batteries, it was at this point that I made a beeline to the wall of vibrators. I forgot all about the injustices of sexual marketing and giggled in delight at all the pretty phalluses on display.

I never realized that there were so many different ways in which an object could vibrate, twist or pulsate. There were vibrators discreetly shaped as lipsticks, others that looked like devices you could rob an alien space station with, and ones that were simply giant, veiny, rubber penises. And by giant, I mean you could please a Pleistocene Megafauna for Christmas.

We were both pretty set on one called the Japanese G-Spot Squirmy. It was a “rabbit” type of vibrator that twisted in different directions that you can set at six different speeds and intensities. I liked it because it did everything I wanted but didn’t look like it could transport me through time.

However a single unit of the Japanese G-Spot Squirmy was priced at about $50. We were poor, and poorly disappointed. I joked that we could get a double-ended dildo to save money.

Choosing to be able to feed ourselves over supreme pleasure, we left the store and decided to shop for them online instead.

I learned many things that night at the Fascinations store. I learned that sex shops aren’t necessarily the dark and sticky establishments I would imagine, that all kinds of different people come and buy things there, and that they have everything between racks of fake orifices to horrible “Man Calendars.”

Most importantly, I learned that sex should be, and can be, totally fun (if you can afford it), and that you don’t have to ask Santa to box up a nice man under the Christmas tree to make it happen.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Natalie Bui at Natalie.bui@colorado.edu.