Unleash Your Inner Sex Goddess

We sent one reporter—and closet prude—to get an erotic education. Here, she happily shares her spine-tingling discoveries.
Sarah Miller

Decorated in optimistic tones of pink and yellow, the Seattle branch of the sex-shop chain Babeland brings to mind a stylish girl's kitchen, where she cooks up not food but hot orgasms. I'm here to take the store's "sex educator" employee training, and I'm feeling resistant. The truth is, I've never set foot in a sex shop.

My supervisor for the two-day training is Babeland's sex-education coordinator, Audrey McManus. She's a veritable sunflower of a woman, but facing me, she clouds over.

"You write about sex, and you've never been in a sex shop? Isn't that, like, part of your job?"

"Look, Audrey," I say. "I know where my clitoris is, and with all due respect, I can probably find yours as well."

I indicate a lacquer tray with a couple of boomerang-shaped vibrators designed to stimulate the G-spot. They're pretty and colorful, but I'm almost sure I don't have a G-spot, and I don't care. I pick up a Rabbit. (The Rabbit, in case you missed the famous Sex and the City episode, is a vibrator with a rotating head for penetration and wiggling attachments for clitoral stimulation.) "I mean, if you taught this thing how to operate a cash register, it could work here."

Audrey blinks at me. She doesn't think I'm cute or funny. She picks up a toy large enough to bludgeon a school of hammerhead sharks and, like a dirty schoolmarm, smacks it against her hand. "Now, let's get started with a little anatomy lesson."

I'm corralled into a tiny office with some Georgia O'Keeffe stuff on the walls, some Asian erotic whatnot. "That's a 16th-century Japanese woodblock print depicting female ejaculation," Audrey explains. I'm relieved all I see is a walrus lying in bed brushing his teeth. Audrey pins up a diagram of a vagina. I'm expecting "Here's where you pee out of, here's where you do it," but this has so many lines and zones it looks more like a map of the Chesapeake Bay. I dutifully point out the clitoris and the G-spot. She starts talking about how I said I don't have one. "I think you probably do," she says. She points out the urethra—the tube in front of the vaginal opening where urine exits the body. "This entire passageway is wrapped with erectile tissue," she says. "People make the mistake of looking for only the G-spot—when it's not just a spot but part of a whole sensitive area. And sometimes that area—the lower part of the front wall of the vagina—needs to be stroked before you can even find the G-spot."

Audrey pauses. "Are you blushing?"

"Of course not," I say. "I did not know that."

I get a brief smile, for humility, I guess. "Now we're moving on to lube," Audrey says.

I am about to tell Audrey that I am afraid that even touching lube will bring on early menopause. And that so far, I don't have any, uh, problems, when—splat—I've been slimed. "Rub your fingers together," Audrey says. The entire Babeland staff has gathered around, each eager to show me a favorite brand of lube. Status likes Maximus. "It's nice and thick," he says. Audrey is partial to Sliquid Silk, a water-based lube. "Doesn't that feel like your own natural wetness? Taste it," she says.