Once the preserve of the plastic-mac brigade, sex shops seem increasingly respectable. Eoin Butlerpays a visit.
These days, it seems, nothing says "I love you, darling" better than handcuffs and a gag. Because this weekend thousands of us will be slipping into sex shops to look for St Valentine's Day gifts. The adult retail industry has grown enormously in the past decade. Dublin has dozens of sex shops, and there are many more outside the capital. They appear to be growing in respectability, and business is booming. Is all this evidence of a new-found maturity in Irish attitudes to sex? Or does it indicate a slide into moral degeneracy?
"This is not a Joke Shop," warns the sign at the entrance to Basic Instincts, in Temple Bar. "This is an Adult Fetish Shop. Serious shoppers only." With as much solemnity as I can muster I press the buzzer and am admitted. The shelves are stocked with adult DVDs, magazines and toys. Commanding pride of place at the front of the store is a mind-boggling array of bondage and S&M paraphernalia.
Over on South William Street I rifle through the DVD rack at Miss Fantasia, where I find films, such as Crimson Mansion, involving convoluted plots and bizarre costumes. All About Asses is more self- explanatory. Many would not allow description here, but one begins: "Maria continues to disappoint Mistress Brianna and so is confined to a cage . . . "
Miss Fantasia is windowless, and one feigns nonchalance while browsing the more salacious material. Apart from its products, the place is little different from any shop on a busy Saturday afternoon. Couples walk between the racks, pointing as they go, picking up items and examining them. (Later I ask Marie Daly, a psychosexual therapist with Marriage & Relationship Counselling Services, if she would recommend sex toys to her patients. No, she says, but she sees nothing wrong with them per se. One danger "would be if one partner felt coerced into something they're not comfortable with".) In the changing room, a woman being fitted for a corset calls her friends for their opinions.
Justin Parr, Miss Fantasia's owner, is happy to answer my questions, but he asks that I don't approach customers. Disappointingly, he says there isn't an actual Miss Fantasia. (One envisioned a bookish, serious young lady, uninterested in smut, who drifted into the industry on account of her surname.) Parr founded the business with his partner, Jacinta Feely, in the mid-1990s, as a costume manufacturer. Since then it has expanded its range to include adult toys, body jewellery and magazines, and moved to central Dublin.
"After Utopia in Bray, we would have been the first in the Republic," Parr says. "But it was only in the last five years that we have started stocking DVDs. We started off with the Alexander Institute, which were educational videos. Then we got into the fetish end of things: rubber, leather, PVC, transvestism, foot fetish."
Most of the shop's customers are female. Parr shrugs. "It depends on the time of day. Early in the morning it would be men; late in the evening, too. But in the middle of the day it's all women."
After Miss Fantasia I hit a few more places in quick succession, from Aungier Street to Capel Street to Phibsborough and Drumcondra. In one I talk to an employee about what it is like to work in a sex shop. "It's a job," he says, shrugging. Has he ever become disenchanted with sex, given his overexposure to it? "I have a normal relationship with my girlfriend," he says, laughing. "This is just a shop as far as I'm concerned. This is all just stock to me."
Ann Summers, on O'Connell Street, is selling two versions of the Kama Sutra. But the shop's staff never talk to the press, and the company's press officer in the UK won't answer questions over the phone. Not even the differences between the original and the modern Kama Sutras? Come on, girls: not even a hint? No chance. Actually, Ann Summers's stock is fairly mild. But that isn't the case for all of its competitors.
There's no glossing over, for example, the horror of Tina: The Inflatable Fantasy Companion Doll, variations on which retail for about €100 in most sex shops. Buyers are helpfully advised that Tina should be washed before and after use with a warm soapy cloth. This would kill any romance, you might imagine. But no: so many variations on Tina are for sale - some at enormous prices - that it suggests inflatable fantasies are enduring.
Back in Basic Instincts, the fetish shop in Temple Bar, there's one contraption I still can't figure out. One part is shaped like the handle of a skipping rope. The other is a bulbous rubber hand pump, the sort doctors use to measure blood pressure. The two are connected by a transparent plastic tube. As a man of the world I should be able to work this out. But I can't. I pick it up and turn to the sales assistant. "Excuse me," I say nervously. "What does this thing do?" "You really don't know?" I shake my head. "Well, it's basically . . . " he begins, but he falters. "Well, it's popular with straight guys, too, but . . . "
I tell him that it's okay, that I've figured it out. He nods and turns away. In truth I haven't figured it out, but, from his acute embarrassment, what I have realised is that, where sex shops are concerned, there are some things you'd prefer not to know.