HIGH HEELS AND HERNIAS

HIGH HEELS AND HERNIAS

We never miss Erotica and plan our yearly calendar around it. One thing you have to understand is that ordinarily I loathe shopping. I’m not like your average woman – I break out in a cold sweat at the thought of visiting Brent Cross, or spending more time than is absolutely essential in any high street store, but Erotica is shopping in a different realm. Imagine the large hall at Olympia, filled wall-to-wall with stalls selling every product related to sexual pleasure that you could imagine, and gadgets and gizmos that your imagination hasn’t even ventured anywhere near! It’s retail therapy for the carnally courageous.

One needs to train for Erotica – it resembles a triathlon, and by the end I always feel as if I’ve completed a kind of indoor Outward Bound. On the subject of bondage, you can get very good tape at cost price...
I have one piece of advice if you’re considering booking for the first time – wear comfortable shoes! If you find yourself with sore feet after a couple of hours, you’ll be stuffed. The only footwear you could possibly acquire, from the dozens of shoe stalls available, is cheap, high and plastic (you can, if you get there in time, find flippers at the hard-core fetish stall that specialises in army standard gas masks and full body rubber suits). When I say high, we’re talking eight-inch heels, four-inch platforms, stilettos that could pin a rhinoceros to the ground... The first year I visited Erotica I arrived in heels, with no back-up thinking, “If I can’t show off my legs at this event, when can I?” I ended up without shoes by three o’clock, anticipating a drawing pin in the sole of my foot at every step. I escaped unscathed, rather miraculously considering I’d been trodden on by more than one over-enthusiastic shopper.
When I say it’s crowded, that’s an understatement. Friday’s the easiest, but Saturday and Sunday make Oxford Street on Christmas Eve look like a relaxing day out. The payoff is that you get to buy clothes and toys that you’ll never get sick of, don’t go out of fashion and will last you the rest of your life
One walks for miles at Erotica. Just when you think it’s time for a sit-down and a nice cup of tea, you remember that quartz-crystal dildo that they had only one left of, and you rush back over to try and find the trader who was installed somewhere between the bespoke latex hood retailer and the man who hand-crafts kangaroo hide whips. On the way you get distracted by the pole-dancing show that’s going on in aisle six, then swept upstairs to catch the Fantasy Boys who are about to perform their last show of the day, which you absolutely cannot miss.
It’s worse when you’re with a partner. Then there are two agendas going on side by side. This year we tried a sort of master and slave arrangement. I bought a collar and heavy lead and encouraged my partner to do Erotica ‘his way’ for a change. Off we went, me in tow, my dominant alpha male looking very pleased with himself. This lasted all of five minutes. After I’d tugged on the lead a few times, saying “Wait! I just want to read this!” Andrew threw the lead back at me.
“Why are you doing that?” I asked, genuinely perplexed, “Don’t you want to lead me?”
“It’s embarrassing,” he said,”trying to drag a woman around who keeps yanking on the leash and bossing ME about!”
I could see his point - I’ll have to work on my inner submissive female I think.

Erotica is an exercise in creative expression. The exhibitors push out the boat, the merchandise demonstrators (sexy, attractive girls and muscle-bound, hairless men, who I'm sure have been hired from some standard agency, their work experience probably having stretched to spraying perfume on passers-by in Selfridges or handing out car promotion leaflets in shopping malls) seem happy to be dressing up in Torture Garden style outfits, selling sex. You should have seen the 'live show' at the lingerie stall, involving two girls and a chaise-longue. You'd never bother with Marks and Spencers lingerie department again.
Tantra it aint, but one can bring a state of meditative awareness to anything - even at the point when the sandwiches have run out and one's forced to chow down on the last remaining food in the whole of Olympia - pork sausages. I'm generally a vegetarian, but i'm sure that if I was on a survival course in the bush (or a Vision Quest, if I were a New Ager) if I was about to die of starvation and a pig and a fire presented itself to me, I wouldn't think twice, right?

This year, the highlight for me was Dita Von Teese. She is a truly remarkable woman. Not least for the fact that she basically gets paid (a lot!) for parading a perfect body around the stage, wearing some rather fetching outfits, and waving a couple of large feather fans about. Tough job but someone’s gotta do it. Dita is an icon, a living legend. If you could have seen the men’s faces in the audience you would know instantly that this creature is something special. My beloved’s mouth was open for most of her show, and I’m sure I saw him dribbling at one point. My friend Nisarg, who is a connoisseur of Goddessness, paid a hundred quid this year for a VIP ticket. Although one of perks was that you got free champagne in some dismal VIP lounge (they ran out by four o’clock), the primary reason for him paying 83% more for a ticket than me, was so that he could (maybe) get to meet Dita Von Teese. Perhaps one day I’ll have that kind of pulling power...
A few Tantra Club friends and I watched the show together, marvelling at the whole spectacular phenomenon that is Dita Von Teese. We ooh-ed and aah-ed along with everyone and applauded when she removed another layer. She didn’t ‘do’ anything that amazing really (apart from taking a shower on stage and looking as perfect post-shower as she had before she got drenched – quite a feat! You try it!) and yet we had to admit – she’s got it. Whatever ‘it’ is... hard to put one’s finger on it, but I’m sure there isn’t a man on this planet who’d refuse to try...