This weekend, hundreds if not thousands of closet perverts will leave the ‘burbs in their minivans and go to quite possibly the most hardcore sex event of their lives….The Everything To Do With Sex Show.

Now, I really shouldn’t be giving the vanillas too hard of a time. At least they came to a building filled with dildoes, floggers and scantily clad Got Ass? girls. Yes, they came: married couples, dating couples, bff’s buying their very first vibrators to drive the memories of the last jerk they dated from their neglected loins. There was much giggling, amazement and embarrassment in the vendors booths. And much money exchanging hands. A great result for everyone involved.

For many people, shows like this are their first experience into the myrad of options, kinks and fetishes sexually-hyperaware people like myself take for granted and consider almost, shall I even say it….vanilla. Floggers and restraints were very common and very popular in most booths. Once they had worked up the courage to even touch one, folks would, almost reverently, remove one from the hook and take a few tentative swings, usually making contact with their own hands or their companion’s bum. Then, as slow as they took it down, they practially threw it back onto the wall in fear that the others at the PTA meeting would know what they had done and where they spent their Saturday afternoon.

But, I couldn’t help feeling jaded as I wandered the aisles. Who were all these people who were tiptoeing around in MY world, one of the few situations I feel I can truly be myself and feel totally at home? Dammit, shouldn’t they be at home, mowing the lawn or something, not blocking my access to the table with the stainless steel butt plugs?

In a time where popular music extols the virtues of threesomes in Britney’s “3” and fetish in Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, why am I surprised that more and more people are venturing out of their sexual comfort zones and hefting a flogger, even in a playful way? Well, I guess it is because I have felt like a freak for so long, to see Mr and Mrs Hockey Night In Canada on my turf is kinda disorienting. Maybe, just maybe, I am not as weird and alone as I have always felt. Maybe there are actual people, in significant quantities, in REAL LIFE even, who have similar interests and I am just too shy to notice.

Or maybe society in general is becoming more desensitized and accepting towards non-missionary position sex. Gentle floggers, some nice soft cuffs and a blindfold are great tools to explore the big, scary world of kinky sex. But then again, is pain/sensation play even kinky anymore? If everyone does it, does it still count?

The play dungeon was pretty much empty the entire time I was there and was totally curtained off, presumably to not offend the masses buying rubber weiners. And the most edgy booth on the floor sold enema-play products. There was no blood, no bondage/suspension, no humiliation…i didn’t see a single person on a leash. Come to think of it, aside from ShastaGibson, who I was with, I didn’t see another person even wearing a collar.

So maybe all is not lost for pervs like me. Maybe we let the ‘burbs have their Saturday sex nights, complete with floggers and blindfolds. But the minute they start buying violet wands and branding irons, I am turning in my freak card.