Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Freeassurance?

Most folks like to portray themselves as completely self-assured in regards to their sexual interests. No one wants to reveal themselves as knee-quaking, gibberingly terrified of their own sexual urges. No one desires to expose the mass of insecurities and anxieties that may lurk just below the surface. So they try to ignore the little whispers murmuring to their tender ears alone that they're doing it wrong. They can't really please their partner. Their partner is secretly pining for something else. What makes them hot is sick. They're the only person on the planet who gets off on that.

Thus is born the wide, ever-expanding sphere of sexual help resources. As long as they can procure the advice of some perceived expert anonymously and discretely, the public's appetite for revealed secrets to sexual bliss will never be sated.

However, that is a tangent to be run to ground another day, for there is another symptom of this wide-spread libidinous insecurity that I run across continually. Damned near every patron who wanders through an adult store will ask at least once in the course of their visits for some gesture of reassurance from the staff. They need that outside voice to tell them they're fine, that they're normal, that they aren't the hideous deviant they suspect they truly are.

Where else are they going to secure any outside verification of their sex life? The subject is considered to be intensely private. Say what you will about the influx of sex into popular media and fashion, but there is still a solid core of assumption that sexual congress is not an acceptable conversational topic. Even with very vocal elements who state that we need to cast a light on that facet of human existence still seem unable to divorce the subject matter from being a "mature," "serious," "non-trivial" topic. Therefore, folks typically will either adopt the gravity to discuss in generally dry, diagnostic terms or to treat it as a forum for a continuing run of jokes. So one has the choice between information so impersonal as to be untranslatable into personal life or wildly inaccurate if not utterly sensationalized reports.

They could ask a lover or close friend, but that runs the risk of losing that relationship if they reveal something too outrageous for the other person to accept. Not to mention that there is always that suspicion that what they will tell you is biased toward preserving your feelings regardless of their true feelings on the matter.

Instead, they have us, the porn store employees. We're strangers or familiar faces at most. We're surrounded by sex in all its myriad flavors. We are also disposable. Therefore, it's less of a risk to ask us about damn near any sexual fetish or dysfunction than pretty much anyplace else. They could argue that we have the necessary credentials to make the determination for them and at the very worst, if we totally recoil in revulsion screaming that they are a sick, twisted little fuck-puppet, they can simply leave that store never to return and never to share that bit of themselves again. Honestly, I've never seen such a worst case scenario ever come to pass, but it would still have to enter into the customer's mind even if only on a subconscious level.

If they don't have something in specific in mind, they'll instead make some comment about how "we must see all kinds of people/freaks." They're looking for confirmation they aren't in the freak category. Such questions or comments are designed so we, the clerks, will provide them with a yardstick to compare themselves to those around them. Beside the titillation of sharing in some hopefully lurid misdeeds of someone else, it gives them specifics to draw upon in calibrating their normative scale of sex.

It can be absolutely amazing how often a quiet reassurance that the item the patron is considering is no big deal and "typical" is the tipping point for that person to make the purchase.

Yes, indeed. If you buy from us today we'll not only sell you the aids to your orgasm, but we'll toss in the personal affirmation so you can enjoy it more absolutely free.

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