From around the corner, I hear two men talking. I decide that I've been at the store long enough to be bold. They are standing by the lubricants. I approach them.
"I used to use water-based," the one with curly hair says when I ask. His friend is just there for the company. He comments, "You better be getting some for that." Lubes run from $30 to $60 on average. They look like spray deodorant from the outside.
I make small talk about flavors and texture, but then I take a deep breath. "Feel free not to answer this question," I say. I realize that this needs a follow-up when we've been staring at each other for a moment. I look down. "Is it for anal or vaginal sex?"
Curly doesn't seem fazed. "Vaginal."
"Have fun," I say. It is not in my physiology to blush, I've learned, but if it were, I'd be blushing now.
The Mood is a supermarket of sexuality. Walking from front to back, I move from the romantic to the kinky; from books to condoms; from candles to vibrators; from oils to pornography (only DVDs, I realize). I am called upon by bestselling authors like Tracey Cox and Zane (just Zane, like Madonna) to find my inner seductress, to come out as a lesbian, to treat my partner to anal-lingus, to do "bondage on a budget." Towards the back of the store, located at 531 South St., I am presented with the tools necessary for taking on such projects. I resist.
"A lot of people don't appreciate the girl ... standing like this" on the packaging of toys, says Pete, an employee on his last day. Pete poses, touching his almost concave chest with a sultry stare. He is a graphic design student, so he looks at the encasing with a critical eye. And he's a little bit coy, blushing when I ask him about products like 'The Clone,' a simulated vagina. "Let's stop looking at that," he says.
"Just because there's penises around" doesn't mean people have to get "crude." But maybe it's just the "shtick of South Street," he says.
"Everyone's a pervert ... just in different levels," Pete will say on the phone a week after he resigns his managerial position at The Mood. He decides to leave because he's become disillusioned with the quality of the store. Pete doesn't go for trash, even in a sex shop.
"I long for places [to] engage in a conversation with some guy you've never met before," he says. It's why he likes New York City.
But now, we are standing by the sale section, which includes produce-shaped "massagers" and banana-flavored nipple arousal gel.
"This guy ... " he says, referring to a vibrator. He fidgets with the display Rabbit Vibrator, making sure it is upright.
Most items look like they could be sold at fashion accessory store, Claire's. They are neon pink, fuzzy and obnoxiously cute.
But some are not. In glass cases stand leather whips (braided and unbraided), strap-ons, phallic and functional glass art (ranging from $47 to $295) and 'Rock Hard' erection spray that desensitizes the penis, allowing it to remain erect for longer. A German company, Fun Factory, with the motto 'Love yourself!' printed on all of its boxing, occupies its own section, a well-lit corner of store space.
There is decoy pleasure, I learn. Vibrators that come in fake banana cases for discretion -- the incognito lipstick vibrator. There are vibrators that come in mock candy packs and vibrators that fit inside your handbag. Who are these women, I wonder, who carry a 'Mini Bullet' alongside their wallets and identification cards for cigarette breaks in the bathroom? A part of me envies such balls.
Each different type of toy implies a kind of buyer. I try to imagine these people. A gorgeous lesbian couple, I decide, buys the packaged strap-on. A housewife picks up the "lipstick" one afternoon, asking the cab to stop a block before and walking the rest of the way.
* * *
Earlier in the day, The Mood starts out slow then fills up by around 4 p.m. after work and school. They keep the radio on pop channels. I am surprised. I think I expected sexy music, but then again, I think I expected nymphomaniacs with S-E-X tattooed onto their unmentionables (not that there aren't, I am sure).
As I scan the titles of shelved pornography, three teenage girls walk in. One of the girls is here to get ideas for when her boyfriend returns from the Marines. He has been away for seven months.
She likes the Rabbit, though she did not learn of it from Sex and the City, which brought it to pop culture prominence. I tell them to have fun and walk away to give them space, though I was the one who needed it. I hear them laughing by the electronics section, and I wonder which one in particular they are testing, but I can't see behind their bodies, which are huddled together in an enthralling hedge of knee-highs, military jackets, black boots and sexual proficiency.
An older man and a younger woman walk in together. If I saw them at the train station, I'd assume they were father and daughter. I've learned to question my instincts at The Mood. The couple stops by the bondage glass case for a minute, not talking. Then they move on to porn.
The pornography section at The Mood keeps the DVDs, jackets and all, on the shelves. "One blow job is worth a thousand words," advertises one cover. ("This porn emporium ... is kinda ridiculous," Pete has said to me. Only 10 of them are "good, decent films.") I try not to stare and then remember that everyone in the section is staring too. Little computer-made labels on the shelves divide the pornography into sections: amateur, boy/girl, all boy, all girl, virgins, anal, fetish, classics -- "Antique Erotica" features a nude Renaissance looking woman.
* * *
Kevin walks into the store, sporting a pony tail. He is known as "Mr. Customer Service." By this time, Pete is gone and has a new job at a gelato place in Center City. Kevin has the Aquarius sign on his left wrist but wants something in Spanish on his other arm. His friend, he tells me, wanted "a butterfly around her clit but I told her not to." Kevin's pants are tighter than mine.
Where do I go to school, he wants to know.
Me: "I go to Penn."
Kevin: "I go to Penn."
Me: "Oh really?"
Kevin: "No, to party."
I lean over the cashier counter, feigning relaxation. I hope that my insides will follow the lead. What do they do for closing time, I ask.
"We have a worksheet," he says with sarcasm, I think. Vacuuming front and back, untangling hangers so they're question mark-shaped, restocking and wiping down the lubricant section.
"It kinda shits all over the glass," he says. On the sheet, I see G-D for cleanup on Tuesday.
"God?"
No, those are somebody's initials, he says. Gretchen's. We laugh.
Some people just mess things up, like the books, Kevin says. They read and don't buy. I feel guilty, remembering the secrets of lesbian love I learned just half an hour earlier, crosslegged on the floor. Kevin notices a mosquito near my hair and murders it by clapping. He dances to the music, like we are in a club. Not knowing what to do, I rummage through containers on the desk -- sexual impulse shopping.
He notices me fingering a plastic case of something. It's Orgazmix, a clitoral stimulator.
"We give it to customers before we give them the others," Kevin says, "because it's 50 percent effective and because the other one is too strong." If you use too much, he warns me, "You prolly won't wanna be touched."
Kevin tells me that some staff members' wives wait for them at the end of the day. I imagine these women, standing by the oils, not making conversation.
What's the strangest request he's gotten, I want to know. "It was weird selling condoms to a priest," he says.
* * *
In the evening, The Mood's oldest customer of the day walks in. She covers her white hair with a winter cap that involves too many colors. With the tone of voice I'd use when talking to my grandmother, I ask her what she's here for. Anything in particular? I ask, as though we're in the produce aisle of the grocery store.
Why does she like this store best? "I could look around. They don't bother you." She is missing a tooth and has clown-like circles of blush pasted onto her cheeks. "I like candles."
"Anything else?"
"No. Just the candles." She is standing by the sale section. In it hang erection rings, discount vibrators and, to be fair, at the very bottom, some fuzzy leopard candle holders. Later, I see her picking up a pair of perfumed panties to examine them. Maybe she likes the smell of nice things.
It has just gotten dark. Gretchen, the other manager, walks in the door. Crew cut. Soft face. Gorgeous. She's been working at The Mood for 14 months. She is all about education. The Mood is about making them comfortable and safe when it comes to sex. Even the layout works to ease people in, no pun intended. I ask her about other things, but she is too well-trained to be subversive.
There are invisible members of The Mood as well. Gretchen talks about the "product knowledge guy upstairs" who updates the staff on safety, materials and any new information involving toys or merchandise.
There are also invisible customers, I learn, scanning The Mood's internet site which features forums on which people of all orientations and sexual interests post questions, comments, propositions and advice.
"I have been with my kids father for six years, and we have been having rough times lately -- no trust , boring sex and it's all just a lie!! But why in the hell can't I let go. I love him with all my heart, but I hurt more than anything," says "legz" in the relationship section.
Fatty Girl responds: "Everybody we meet are not meant 2 be our soul mate."
My second day here, a tall girl in a miniskirt and knee-highs walks in. She just came from Condom Kingdom (Mood's sister store) and Mood was next on the list. She takes a small container that looks like eye drops out of a plastic bag. Orgasmix.
"Does it work?" I ask her. An emphatic yes. Condom Kingdom has a store down the street, and Pete told me on my first day here, "They're a joke ... They hate us and have some ... I was gonna say fucked up [he hesitates but I tell him not to censor] vendetta against us ... It's all lame."
As I scan one more time, someone in the lingerie section breaks up with her boyfriend over the phone. "Go home before I call your mom," she says when the person on the other line apparently protests.
* * *
Before I leave, a group walks in: two women, a man and two young children. The man pushes the younger one in a carriage. The toddler runs off. Her mother grabs her by the hand, picks her up. Holding her girl, the woman hums along to "Lonely No More" which plays on amplified, just loud enough to obscure any awkward conversations customers might have with the customer service, each other or themselves. The other woman walks shyly by the glass encased bondage section, then moves on. Her boyfriend is waiting.
The toddler of the motley group reaches into a condom box. They look like prize boxes at amusement parks, where you come to trade in your tickets. The woman with the boyfriend says to the one without, "You told me you left the phone off."
"I'm gonna have to pick up, yo."
"Why?" she whines.
"I don't want him to be mad ... I don't want him to be mad."
"Tell him you left it in the car."
The woman with the toddler and no present partner has moved to the floor by the entrance. She waits for the others with her toddler. "Uh, uh, uh," she says to her daughter. "You're not going anywhere."
The girl is wearing pink, and I think her ears are already pierced. They block only half the entrance, so small are their bodies combined. As I walk out, they are dancing -- the mother sitting down with her hands extended, the girl swaying a little, the way children do before they become aware of their knees -- to the rock music that has started on the radio.
Sometimes, says Gretchen of the Wednesday night shift, the store plays "adult favorites." I must have raised an eyebrow because she adds, "Frank Sinatra." It's a good time, she says. I picture the staff singing along to "Fly Me to the Moon," while untangling the hangers of the candy striper outfits.
