BUZZ BUZZ, COWBOY

A pandemic-era career shift from horses to bondage gear? That was something I’d never have heard of back in San Francisco.

There are many things to figure out after moving to a new city: where can I find the closest grocery store, pharmacy, and weed dealer? How friendly do I need to be toward my neighbors so that they’ll come to my aid upon hearing my blood curdling scream in the middle of the night, but not so friendly that they ask me to babysit their kid on a Friday evening? Which gas station is the cheapest, and how do I know what streets to avoid at rush hour? Why is everyone so hostile/friendly/hot/fashionable/[any other observation] around here? How do I make friends, and what’s the dating scene like?

These questions each come with their own learning curve, and depending on where you’ve relocated to, some are steeper than others. In Austin, Texas, for example, where I moved last summer, I didn’t know anyone when I arrived, but getting to know my neighbors was easy. My landlord welcomed me to the neighborhood with homemade mincemeat pies, and the guy at the grocery store greeted me with a freshly rolled joint when I ran into him by my house after work. Evidently, the weed dealer question had worked itself out. While I liked the friendliness here, the Southern hospitality threw me at first—I’d grown up in San Francisco, where I found strangers were generally polite but not friendly, and lived in New England for seven years, where they were usually neither. 

But despite how welcomed I felt in my new city, there was one barrier to my assimilation that I could not seem to overcome. It reared its ugly head as I laid awake at night, changing the batteries in my dying vibrator and wondering whose nightstand drawer my lost handcuffs were sitting in back in San Francisco. After enough restless nights, I realized what I had to do: it was time to find a local sex store.

Back in the Bay Area, this was never a challenge; sex and sexuality were always really visible around the city. S.F. has one of the most iconic and enduring gay neighborhoods in the world, The Castro, where rainbow flags hang from the street lamps and gay and leather bars line the streets. Kink culture has a strong presence too. The Folsom Street Fair, an annual BDSM and leather subculture festival held every September, caps off the city’s Leather Pride Week. I remember stumbling across the fair downtown as an eight-year-old. My brother and I entertained ourselves as my mom ran errands by competing to see who could spot more fully or at least partially clothed people. I thought I’d won when I finally saw a guy in what looked like leather pants until he turned around, revealing that they were actually assless chaps. 

Experiences like this usually made me laugh as a kid, but they were never traumatizing. And because of how I grew up, I actually feel more comfortable now in settings like Folsom than in extra buttoned-up, conservative ones. That’s partially why I like queer-owned sex shops that prioritize handmade items from local vendors. The price tags are generally higher than what you’ll see in the personal massager department at Walmart, but I’ve met plenty of friendly salespeople who’ll throw in free perks and discounts. More than anything, I want to leave a store feeling excited about what I’ve bought, not humiliated like when I got condoms for the first time as a high school freshman in Concord, New Hampshire. The pharmacist who gave my boyfriend the side-eye as she rang up my pack of Trojans probably would have fainted if she’d been at Folsom with me and my brother. 

Unlike Concord, Austin is known for being a progressive, queer-friendly city, so I was surprised that finding a store here ended up being so difficult. Most places on Yelp belonged to big chains and were located in rundown shopping centers off the highway, next to dingy liquor stores. Selections were limited and catered to straight men. Discouraged by my options, I nearly gave up and ordered my replacement handcuffs online.

My luck changed at a thrift store shopping center on Austin’s north side. I was driving home from work one night and spotted a collection of stores with brightly colored signs and funky vintage clothing in the windows. The shops stood out because they sat on a boring, fast-moving street, otherwise empty except for one bar with lots of motorcycles parked out front. Curious, I pulled into the parking lot, where glowing red and pink neon letters caught my eye. They read, “Forbidden Fruit: Keeping Austin Kinky.” A quick Google search revealed that I’d stumbled across one of Austin’s oldest woman-owned-and-operated adult stores. Their site advertised “toys, sexual education” and “a safe place.” Hopeful that I may have found the answer to my horny prayers, I stepped inside.

I walked through a sparkly purple curtain and was immediately greeted by a friendly older woman with eccentric dangly earrings, a glittery top, and the thickest Texan drawl I had ever heard in my life.

“Howdy, sweetheart,” she said. The two massive wolfdogs by her side in the photo at the register stared back at me. “Can I help you find anything?” 

It was like the moment in The Wizard of Oz when Glinda the Good Witch appears to Dorothy in a floating rainbow bubble, if Glinda were a dominatrix. 

Trying to keep my cool, I said I was just looking, thanks, and began browsing. The store was organized into distinct sections. One wall featured BDSM toys and harnesses, and another was devoted entirely to butt plugs. The back wall displayed internal and external vibrators of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and a case at the front of the store had the biggest lube selection I had ever seen. A black cowboy hat sat behind the register. This place was perfect.

I picked up a pair of handcuffs from the bondage gear wall and examined the smooth black leather and soft Velcro straps. The store attendant saw me and rushed over. “These are my favorites,” she gushed. “A girlfriend of mine from our days on the horse ranch was having a hard time because of COVID, and her saddles and bridles weren’t selling too well. She started making bondage gear on the side, and I told her we’d carry it at the store.”

A pandemic-era career shift from horses to bondage gear? That was something I’d never have heard of back in San Francisco. I was sold. I brought the cuffs to the front of the store along with a box of condoms, a new vibrator, and a massage candle.

“I’m Jeri, by the way,” the woman said as she rang me up. “Been here since the ‘90s, when we were one of the only sex shops in town. We had body piercing, too, back then, but now we just focus on the store. Me and my sister own the place.

“You’ve got some nice things here,” she said. “Come visit us again once you get bored.”  She winked and handed me a free bottle of lube along with my receipt. 

“I will!” I said, shocked that we were now on a first name basis. I smiled as I walked back through the purple curtain and out into the parking lot. Loud country music poured out from the bar next door, where there were now even more motorcycles parked out front. 

Heading back to my car, I realized that I might come to find a different version here of the community I grew up with in San Francisco, with more cowboy hats and even a kinder, more welcoming attitude that matched the friendliness I’d otherwise encountered so far. Finally, Austin was starting to feel like home.

AUTHOR: A.W.

ARTIST: Lucid Clairvoyant