A lot of people take part-time evening jobs to pay the bills while they continue their education. Some work in the food-service industry, others become couriers or move boxes around in warehouses. Me? I sold plastic wangs in Hollywood.
Dildo salesman isn’t the sort of job that creeps up on you. I didn’t wake up one morning, look around, and say “Hey, how the heck did I end up doing this for a living?” No, I’m afraid it was a deliberate decision. Believe it or not, it wasn’t my most disreputable career choice by any means. In 1980 I had an actual shot at becoming a porn director, but the, um…, “connections” of some of the people I’d be working for made me reconsider. Compared to that, dildo salesman is almost wholesome. Here’s how it happened:
In 1984 I decided to give college one more try. My girlfriend was attending a small agricultural college in the west end of the San Fernando Valley, and I thought I’d attend classes there myself. I quit the low-paying-but-fascinating job I had at a science fiction bookstore and enrolled. I remember having some vague idea that the whole food-and-rent thing would work itself out somehow.
Two weeks later my growling stomach was loud enough to get complaints from the neighbors. I had to do something. My girlfriend, being somewhat more practical than myself, suggested that I find a job. But hypnotized by the wonderful mirage of an academic existence untainted by menial labor, I decided to try to sell some of my paintings instead. Since what I painted was mostly naked people doing what naked people do best, my options were limited. (I would like to say in my defense that I’m a decent indecent artist, and have shown paintings and sculpture in several galleries, both in Las Vegas and San Antonio.)
The only venues I could locate were The Pleasure Chest on Santa Monica, and a place called The International Love Boutique on Hollywood Boulevard. Since guys wearing black leather chaps and not much else is considered appropriate attire at The Pleasure Chest, and most of my paintings are of nude women, I settled on the latter.
I arrived one bright morning with my portfolio and asked to speak to the manager. After I explained the purpose of my visit, she showed me the small erotic art gallery they had upstairs. My hopes rose. Then she shot me down, telling me that for legal reasons they only displayed work by established artists represented by well-know agencies. However, she had a part-time position on the sales floor available, and asked if I was interested. I acceded to the inevitable and took the job.
She took me around the premises, including a complete torture dungeon in the basement that was rented out for parties and film shoots. It looked like Hannibal Lecter’s rec room. She gave me the ground rules, the two most important of which were:
- NEVER hit on a patron under any circumstances, and
- Don’t lounge around doing nothing. I had to be either helping customers or straightening shelves at all times.
To illustrate how delusional I was back then, I honestly thought that rule 1 would be the most difficult to live with.
And so it came to pass that I spent five days a week riding the bus from Hollywood almost all the way to Camarillo, attending a few classes in history, sociology, philosophy and ceramics, riding the bus back to Hollywood, putting on a cheap polyester vest and circling the aisles of The International Love Boutique until quitting time at 11 PM when I could stagger home and collapse. I literally spent three hours a day on the bus.
Good lord, the no-lounging-around rule was a bitch. I was already dead tired when I arrived, and had to stay in motion like a shark or I’d get fired. This was also a time when Van Halen was inexplicably popular. I have to say, it’s a peculiar form of hell trudging between racks of cheaply-made lingerie and endcaps piled with boxes of rubber penises while David Lee Roth does his patented weird squeaky-toy squeal on the store’s stereo system.
Most of the customers were either couples or women shopping in packs, since the raincoat brigade generally preferred to practice their perversities in less pretentious venues, so gradually I lost any lingering traces of embarrassment over what I did for a living. One night, in a kind of twisted epiphany, I decided that if I was going to sell dildoes, then by God I’d do a really good job of it. It was kind of like Scarlett O’Hara’s “I’ll never go hungry again” moment from Gone With The Wind, but with vibrators instead of turnips.
And you know what? It worked. The customers liked having someone unashamed to be selling sex toys helping them. The biggest seller was something called “Mr. Squirmy.” It was your basic vibrating fake penis, but with a flexible wire running up the middle attached to a motor. You put a little bend or two in it (ouch!), turned it on with the remote control, and the thing wriggled as only a squirming vibrating fake penis can. Or so I’ve heard.
The routine usually went something like this: I notice a couple of giggling women pointing at things in the dildo section. I walk up to them with benevolent confidence, like you approach a nervous horse.
Me: Hi. Can I help you find something?
Them: Oh, no, thank you. (more giggling)
Me: Okay. Let me know if you have any questions. If this is your first time here it can be a little intimidating. (At this point I start straightening things a few feet away.)
Them: (giggling, but quieter because I’m around)
Me: (as if just thinking of something) You know, we’ve got one thing in this section that’s very popular.
Them: Oh, that’s okay…
Me: No, it’s no trouble. Here, I’ll show you. (I grab the Mr. Squirmy demo off the shelf) Open your hand. (I set it on her hand)
Them: (more giggles)
Me: Okay, now close your hand around it and shut your eyes.
Them: Why?
Me: Just trust me.
Them: Okay.
Me: Here we go. (I turn it on)
Them: (pause, during which there are no giggles) I’ll take it.
Eventually the late hours, sore feet, scary walk home through Hollywood at night and my burgeoning eternal hatred for David Lee Roth led me to quit the job. But, for one brief shining moment, I was the very best dildo salesman in the entire world.
