America Unzipped (14 page)

A woman about sixty rushes into the store on one of my day shifts and heads straight for the dildos made of Pyrex glass. I've been trying to sell some of these since I started working here, because at a hundred bucks, they are one of the more expensive items.

I start a small sales pitch, but I needn't bother. “Yes, yes, these are great,” she tells me as I struggle with the keys to the case in which they are kept. “They last forever if you don't drop them on the tile of the kitchen floor.” Seems she fumbled hers after warming it up in the microwave. I don't imagine she tells this story to her bridge club.

I wait on a mother and daughter shopping for their son/brother's birthday party. He'll be twenty. They've decided porn and a couple of sex toys are exactly what a twenty-year-old man would want. “What's on these DVDs?” the mother asks me as we stand by the bins.

“Lots of sex.” I half expect her to recoil.

“Well, duh! But what kind?”

I do my best to explain wall to wall, gonzo, couples, interracial, mature, BDSM, anal, fetish, Japanese, alternative, retro, gay, cream pie, voyeur.

“What do you think he would like?” the mother asks the daughter.

“How should I know, Mom! Ones with girls.”

I pick out three DVDs at random and hand them to the mother, saying, “These. He'll love these.”

People come in harried, sometimes, like the young couple rushing to get home after having a meal out. I am showing them a butterfly-shaped strap-on vibrator (Joani Blank invented the first one) when their cell phone rings. “Is Brendan in his pajamas yet?” the husband says. “Okay, we'll be home in about fifteen minutes.”

“Babysitter. Look, this'll be fine.” And off they run, leaving me to wonder about the emergency vibrator purchase.

One or two regular customers make a habit of visiting the store late, near closing time so they can jabber with the employees. Artie comes in about three nights a week. One night we stand around the porn bins and he leafs through the DVDs, rattling off more porn trivia than I had ever hoped to know. Artie coaches baseball and looks the part with his athletic shorts and T-shirt. He's about thirty, short and square with black hair shaped in a military-style cut, and he really does have an astounding mind for porn. Artie can tell you, if you want to know, what video featured Janine's first girl-girl scene, when Tera Patrick made her first movie and who directed it, when Devon first went anal and with whom. He owns over two hundred DVDs. Currently he is working on placing every one of his DVD covers in plastic slips so he can assemble them in three-ring binders.

“You know, Artie,” I say, “it's possible you are getting a little carried away.”

“I was just thinking about that today. I guess this is my fetish,” he answers as if everybody has a fetish, has a right to have a fetish, and this may as well be his.

On those late shifts, groups of couples sometimes come in after eating and drinking at nearby restaurants. Something about tequila seems to convince a lot of people that a naughty excursion is a wonderful idea. I come close to selling a love swing to a woman who is part of one such group. She eyes it as I lean back in it, looks at her husband, eyes me, and starts laughing a little too loudly.

“Interested?” I ask.

“Oh, I would never!”

“Tonight she almost had enough to drink,” her husband whispers to me. She is just one tequila shooter away. They'll be back.

Another woman seems interested in the vibrators. “Isn't this the one from
Sex and the City
?” she asks, holding the rabbit vibe.

But she can't buy, she says. She coaches kids in a sport. If a few of the parents ever found out she was even in this store, they would ask questions she would rather not answer.

I don't think she has to worry. I don't think the school-board member or the aspiring deputy or the firefighters have to worry either.

Take Good Vibrations. Joani Blank is no longer a part of the operation. For a long time it managed as a co-op, a few hippie women and lesbians and sex activists fighting a good fight. It's a regular California corporation now, the Ben & Jerry's of sex toys and porn with a values statement that says, “Sexual pleasure is an important part of all of our lives…everyone should be able to live the sex life that's right for them. We take it as our mission to respond to all forms of sexual shame and support people as they discover their authentic sexual selves.”

Good Vibrations used to be more Birkenstocks than Ferragamo, but new bus ads show a well-dressed suburban woman swishing a signature Good Vibrations shopping bag. The marketing director used to work for Restoration Hardware. The new merchandising manager was formerly at Pottery Barn.

About eight months from now, the
Arizona Republic
is going to ask the mayor of Tolleson, the nearby town where Mr. de Santiago accused the store of endangering his kids, how the city feels about the presence of a romance superstore. Adolfo Gamez will declare himself a fan.

The store will have made donations all over town, become “a model for others to follow.” “As controversial as they were when they came in, you don't hear a lot [of negativity] anymore.” Hizzoner will claim he's not actually been in the store but he's, you know, “heard” the store is very nice and that it sure seems to do a lot of business.

“They've been nothing but good for us.”

CHAPTER
4

From the Bedroom to the Bank

I C
ADDY FOR A
S
EX
T
OY
S
ALES
T
ITAN

I see a definite spiritual revival that is touching the standards of conduct of the entire society, which has gone too far toward sexual freedom.

—Pat Robertson, 1986

S
ix days before I arrive in Kansas the Shawnee County District Attorney has indicted adult stores in Topeka with multiple counts of promoting obscenity. The indictments resulted from a campaign called Prairie Wind by a group of fundamentalist Christian ministers. They used a Kansas law mandating a grand jury be impaneled whenever enough petition signers want something investigated. With the collective mass of their followers, the ministers reached the minimum number of signers; the jury set to work, and soon arrived at the indictments.

Something similar had already happened in Wichita, where Operation Southwind, another project of conservative churches, forced the convening of a grand jury in 2005. But Southwind ended somewhat disappointingly for the ministers there, because, though the petition called for his office to investigate just about every adult store in the city, the local district attorney handed down only one indictment, against a Priscilla's:

The grand jury charges:

That in the County of Sedgwick, and State of Kansas, and on or about the 9th day of September, 2005, A.D., one
KELLOG GIFT SHOP, INC
. d/b/a
PRISCILLA'S
and
ROBERT FLOYD
did then and there unlawfully or recklessly possess obscene materials, to-wit: a DVD entitled “Sucking Cock Is Good for Your Health” a/k/a “Sucking Dick Is Good for Your Health” with the intent to sell, lend, or deliver said obscene material.

There is no mention in the indictment of whether or not sucking cock really
is
good for your health.

The fundamentalist constituency was not satisfied by a single indictment over a single DVD making a dubious health claim. It became even more disgruntled as the trial date receded into the far future thanks to procedural maneuverings.

The indictment yield was paltry, apparently, because the state's obscenity statute had earlier been ruled unconstitutional for being so broad it could be interpreted as criminalizing sex. So the ministers persuaded the state legislature to change the law. The new law was passed in July, the Topeka indictments handed down in August. In his statement announcing the indictments, Shawnee County DA Robert Hecht summarized the rule changes:

The statute criminalizes selling, giving, delivering, or distributing obscene material which is material, taken as a whole, [that] appeals to prurient interest, which means material, applying contemporary community standards, [that] would be found to have patently offensive representations or descriptions of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated, including sexual intercourse or sodomy or masturbation, excretory functions, sadomasochistic abuse or lewd exhibition of the genitals and which lacks serious literary, educational, artistic, political, or scientific value. Obscene devices, by statute, are defined as dildos, artificial vaginas designed or marketed for the stimulation of human genital organs and not for the purpose of medical or psychological therapy.

Of course, this was exactly what I had been doing in Tempe, Arizona, assiduously promoting obscenity by trying my level best to sell vibrators, dildos, and porn where genitals were most lewdly displayed. When the grand jury was convened, it found the same thing was happening right there in Topeka.

Phillip Cosby, the Kansas City–area director of the National Coalition to Protect Children and Families, an organization devoted to moving “the people of God to embrace, live out, preserve and advance the biblical truth of sexuality,” hailed the change in the state's obscenity laws and the Topeka indictments. (His biblical truth, apparently, is somewhat different from Joe Beam's or the Penners'.) He rallied his troops, telling the faithful of Wichita, “I predict your current obscenity trial against Priscilla's porn outlet will soon stop treading water in pretrial continuances and be moving forward.” He then told his Topeka followers that Hecht was chomping at the bit to get some grand jury indictments. “The scriptures, the Federal and Kansas law[s] agree,” he told his followers statewide. “Obscenity is illegal and immoral and should be exposed for the danger it is…the only variable is our resolve. If not you, Who? If not now, When? If not here, Where? I am only a phone call away to help.
STAY STRONG
!”

The indictments and the organized campaigns against adult stores are just the sorts of things that would seem to prove the people of the Heartland, my former peeps in the fly-over states, the states annoyed by the liberalism and arrogance of the coasts, were firmly opposed to American sexuality as practiced by the people I have met so far. But the press release from Robert Hecht hardly seemed that of a DA eager to launch a small war on “obscenity”:

Our citizens, speaking through their representative legislature, have decided that obscenity, and obscene material or devices, should be, and are, outside the reasonable protection of the First Amendment and should be prohibited. Clearly, where to draw the line, and how to so define the material is not easy which is why, in my opinion, such charges should not be brought only by a District Attorney exercising his/her discretion, but by a Grand Jury as the bulwark between government and citizens and the best expression of community standards and values.

Call me cynical, but to my mind, this required very little insight to gloss. “Our citizens” (a group of religious zealots), “speaking through their representative legislature” (state politicians who would never want to be seen opposing a “morals” law), “have decided that obscenity, and obscene material or devices, should be, and are, outside the reasonable protection of the First Amendment and should be prohibited.” (When this gets overturned by the Supreme Court, don't blame me.) “Clearly where to draw the line and how to so define the material is not easy” (why don't you just let me prosecute crooks?), “which is why, in my opinion, such charges should not be brought only by a District Attorney exercising his/her discretion but by a Grand Jury as the bulwark between government and citizens and the best expression of community standards and values.” (Like Pilate, I wash my hands.)

Maybe Hecht really was eager to start prosecuting, but if he was, and if he was sincere in that release, he worried me. I've never trusted a jury of my fellow citizens to tell me what is legal to say or write or what art I can create, and what isn't.

In 1973 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote: “To many the Song of Solomon is obscene. I do not think we, the judges, were ever given the constitutional power to make definitions of obscenity. If it is to be defined, let the people debate and decide by a constitutional amendment what they want to ban as obscene and what standards they want the legislatures and the courts to apply. Perhaps the people will decide that the path towards a mature, integrated society requires that all ideas competing for acceptance must have no censor. Perhaps they will decide otherwise. Whatever the choice, the courts will have some guidelines. Now we have none except our own predilections.”

Douglas lost that battle,
Miller v. California,
which upheld a California obscenity law by a reasoning that has proved so unworkable in real life that California is now the porn capital of the world. From what I have seen so far on this journey around America, though, Douglas has been vindicated. As he suggested, many Americans have decided. They like sex toys, especially sex toys “marketed for the stimulation of human genital organs.” The more stimulation, the better, thanks. A lot of people seem to like porn, too.

Still, maybe it's different in the Heartland.

 

M
issouri and Kansas have many signs making sure you never forget that you are, in fact, in the Heartland. You start seeing them soon after leaving the Kansas City airport, located on the Missouri side of the Missouri River: Heartland Propane, Heartland Presbyterian Center, Heartland Barbecue, Heartland Humane Society, the American Heartland Theater.

I am headed to Shawnee, Kansas, a place that was once a pioneer outpost, then a small manufacturing and agricultural town. Now it is part of the suburb-o-plex of Kansas City. I am driving to Brooke Reinertsen's place. She and her husband, Tracy, and their children live in a new subdivision on the western edge of town, beyond the Applebee's and the Boston Market and International House of Pancakes and the T.G.I. Friday's.

Brooke's neighborhood is brand new. Some of the lots, carved out of what used to be farmland, are flat spots of dirt waiting for a building. Some of the houses are empty, ready for their first occupant. The Reinertsens live in one of these brand-new houses, and when I pull up to it late in the afternoon, the place looks grand with antebellum touches like soaring rooflines and columns. An enormous carnival-colored play center dominates the backyard. An equally enormous Cadillac Escalade fills the front driveway.

I ring the doorbell and a boy in a peewee football uniform answers. He is Brooke's stepson on his way to practice. When I walk into a small foyer with marble-tiled floors, a male voice, Tracy's, tells me to come on into the living room. Tracy is sitting on the couch watching the PGA Championship on a big, flat-screen TV. We make our introductions and Tracy says, “You're really doing this, huh?”

“I sure am.”

“Oh, man.”

Tracy is about thirty-five, a good-looking guy with short dark hair. He's wearing sweat socks. He looks like the kind of guy who might object to another man he has never met accompanying his wife to a party, but instead he is sympathizing because the party I am attending tonight with Brooke is a special kind of party. Brooke is a Passion Consultant (everyone in America being a consultant—are there no more salesmen?). During tonight's event Brooke will sell sex toys, lotions, and lubes to a house full of women. Tracy has no desire to be within ten miles of such a gathering. He foresees my testosterone draining away into a puddle on some woman's kitchen floor. I'm not too sure of the wisdom of the idea myself. Eventually, I did warm up to romance consulting at Fascinations, but I have been trying to convince Brooke to let me become one of the very few men to sell Passion Parties products, in the Heartland, mind you, while prodding women to tell me about their own sex lives. Now, thanks to the Kansas legislature, there is the added worry of committing a crime. I doubt I'll be arrested, but at least one woman in Texas has been. Cops in Burleson charged a Passion Consultant there with obscenity. After a court fight, the charges were dropped.

“She'll be down in a minute,” Tracy says. “You want a beer?”

“No, thanks,” I say. And then, looking at the big screen TV, “Who's leading now?”

We talk about a relative unknown golfer named Chris Riley and speculate how long it will take before he collapses and Tiger Woods does what Tiger Woods always does. Standings, though, are really beside the point. Tracy is helping me man up before my first party, a form of inoculation, I guess.

Passion Parties is a Las Vegas–based multilevel marketing home party company organized along the same basic line as Tupperware, Avon, and Mary Kay Cosmetics. Brooke is a leading light in the network. Tracy sells construction materials and makes a decent living at it, but Brooke, who has just turned thirty, makes hefty coin, over $100,000 per year. She and her “downline,” the women she has brought into the Passion Parties fold, will sell well over $1 million worth of adult joy, mainly in the states of Kansas and Missouri. This may be the Heartland, but some people in the buckle of the Bible Belt must have an appetite for the devices the Kansas legislature has declared obscene.

Brooke's shoes clack onto the marble tile in the foyer. She seems frazzled, a little out of breath. Beads of perspiration are rising on her forehead. It is a hot afternoon, and Brooke is rushing to be on time for the party, but the house is air-conditioned. The real problem is that she gave birth to a little girl seven months ago and the pregnancy played havoc with her body. She gained weight she is struggling to lose, and her hormones have gone completely haywire. But even with the extra weight Brooke has a pretty, uncomplicated moon face surrounded by blond hair she has tied up off the back of her neck in an effort to stay cool. She's wearing business attire with a long-sleeved blouse, which isn't helping with her overheating, and low heels.

“I feel sort of underdressed,” I say after our hellos, referring to my jeans and buttoned shirt. Exactly what does one wear to a suburban sex toy party?

“No, no, that's okay,” Brooke says pleasantly. “Everybody else will be casual, too. I try to wear business attire to project a professional image.”

The image is very important to Brooke because she wants to communicate how much fun a woman can have with the products she sells, without veering into sleaziness. Like wearing a maroon shirt and khaki pants and a name tag at Fascinations, wearing business attire says, “I'm not one of the creepy people and so neither are you.” More “permission giving,” as the folks back at Phil Harvey's place would say.

Tracy has already loaded Brooke's bags of samples into the back of the Escalade, so Brooke urges us to hurry because we have a long drive to make. We're headed for Missouri. Brooke and I hustle to the Escalade, ascend into it, and drive off into the early Kansas evening.

Tonight Brooke is presenting in a small town on the other side of the river, Grain Valley, Missouri, another farm community turned Kansas City suburb. Brooke thinks the trip will take longer than it does and she hates being late, but I wish she'd slow down a little. A Cadillac Escalade is a cruise ship of a vehicle. Brooke is driving it like a ground-hugging Formula 1 machine even while searching for the correct off-ramp in downtown Kansas City to hit Interstate 70. The headline will read: