I've never gone on a vacation specifically for sexual purposes. The single time my husband and I made a sexy stop while out of town was our visit to an all-nude strip club in Key West, but that wasn't planned in advance.
One day I was innocently reading the music magazine Venus and happened upon an ad for a place called Early 2 Bed. It was supposed to be a feminist sex toy store. I liked that idea. It would have been easy to visit Early 2 Bed online. But when I noticed the Chicago address, I filed it away in the back of my mind that my husband and I could visit it in real life on our next trip to Chicago. (We live about 100 miles to the east.)
As it turned out, we planned a two-day trip to Chicago for our third wedding anniversary that year. We bought a package of tickets for all of the major tourist destinations (the museums and such). We did some of the tourist stuff the first day, in between a visit to the art gallery district and a martini break. Once we got back to our hotel room, I called Early 2 Bed. A woman there gave me the name of the nearest elevated train stop (Berwyn), and we were off on our sex toy adventure.
Riding the El is something of an adventure in itself for two people from a city without a subway. It was crowded with all kinds of people, and goes through some fascinating neighborhoods (including Chinatown), seeming to veer dangerously close to the old brick walls of apartment buildings at times. But we reached our stop safely. Then it was just a few blocks' walk to North Sheridan Avenue.
In my mind, I'd been expecting something dazzling, a sexual emporium with bright lights, colorful signs in the windows, and aisles upon aisles of every woman-friendly sex thing one could imagine, teeming with women of all ages and from all walks of life. The reality was much more modest. It was more similar to a bakery your friend's mom opened: small and humble, but well-organized, and with a friendly staff.
The legion of women I'd imagined, gratefully browsing all the products designed and marketed especially for us, turned out to be a lone lesbian couple, shopping for a new dildo. Early 2 Bed did have a huge selection, alongside an impressive assortment of vibrators and anal toys. The clerk, a woman in her twenties, took the couple into the back so that they could try on a strap-on.
While the clerk was helping the lesbians, I flipped through the pages of a coloring book of vulvas, while my husband browsed the different colors, textures and flavors of lubricants. I passed on the coloring book, but he threw a pump-bottle of cappuccino-flavored lube into the shopping basket.
Then we looked at the rack of DVD movies. Porn movies are something of a sore subject in my household; my husband and I never agree on what we want to watch. He had some movies from before he met me, and we watch them sometimes. But the sex is a little vanilla, the production values are far from up to Hollywood standards, and the plots are ridiculous. I'd bought us a movie a few months before. The sets and costumes were a little better, the characters more realistic. But the cast was all female.
"We need something that has a guy in it, too," my husband said. "I need someone to root for."
So, as we looked through Early 2 Bed's movie collection, we argued about what we wanted to see. After the lesbians made their purchase, the clerk came and suggested some films. We ended up with The Opening of Misty Beethoven, a "classic" from the 1970s.
Misty Beethoven, by the way, is not a "feminist" porn flick. The male lead continuously insults the Misty of the title, calling her a "dumb cunt," among other things. That she leads him around on a leash at the end makes me feel minimally better. It does have a somewhat interesting plot, borrowed from Pygmalion, and the European locations are fun. But my search for a film that's not too soft-core, genuinely sexy, well-made and woman-centered (with guys in it) continues.
With the bottle of lube and Misty Beethoven in our basket, we headed to cash register. As we rounded the last bend, one final product caught our eyes: a proud display of cock rings. We picked up the accompanying literature, provided by Early 2 Bed.
"What is a cock ring?" the purple, postcard-sized sheet read, beside a drawing of an erect penis. "A cock ring is a ring that restricts the flow of blood out of the penis. This can make some men's erections harder & longer lasting. Many men find the tightness and pressure to be an enjoyable sensation."
My husband liked the sound of that. I was feeling adventurous and curious too, so the cock ring went into the basket
Shortly, we were back on the El. We stopped for dinner and headed to one more tourist stop: the Hancock Building. The view from the glass-enclosed observatory deck on the 96th floor is spectacular at night, the city lies on one side and Lake Michigan on the other.
But the real fun was getting back to the hotel room to try out our new toys. Misty Beethoven would have to wait; the room didn't come with a DVD player. We set that aside and went for our new toy.
To our pleasurable surprise, we discovered that the cock ring brushes up against the woman's clit during sex. What an enjoyable sensation indeed! And to think that I never even imagined my husband would wear a cock ring. We also learned that cappuccino is a great flavor for lube (almost as good as chocolate sauce).
See, kids, we learn all kinds of things when we go on field trips!
Early 2 Bed
5232 N. Sheridan
Chicago, IL 60640
773-271-1219
www.early2bed.com
Originally published July 2007 - "Sexy Success"