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CHARLES BATTERSBY.
The author at the Kinbaku Studio booth.
BY CHARLES BATTERSBY
The annual Brooklyn Sexual Health
Expo was held in Greenpoint in late
September, bringing more sex toys
than you could shake a dildo at. Although
there were naughty delights to be had,
it also offered educational experiences, plus
some of the nicest dominatrixes around.
The Brooklyn Expo Center hall was buzzing
with excitement as well as vibrator demos, including
a $1,500 Cowgirl motorized saddle at
the Babeland booth. Nearby was a booth from
Vibrators.com boasting “the world’s largest vibrator.”
The company was raising money for the
Common Ground Sanctuary’s suicide prevention
program. For a modest $1-fee, attendees
could mount a device the size of beer keg, with
a pony saddle on top.
The machine is called the Bombshell, and
Tom Nardone, president of Vibrators.com, told
Gay City News that attendees “don’t seem to
mind paying a dollar. It’s a great sisterhood type
of thing. If there’s two or three girls they’ll all
ride it, laughing and smiling.”
Some booths were demonstrating services,
rather than products. Kinbaku Studio was
showing the art of rope bondage. Attendees
could sign up to be bound and suspended right
in the expo hall. This intrepid reporter volunteered
for a session and was securely bound
and hoisted in the air without pain. Attendees
lined up for the same treatment all weekend
long.
Lady Lyonene, co-owner of Kinbaku Studio,
explained, “We practice body positivity and acceptance
of everyone.”
Many people who go to the studio, she said,
CHARLES BATTERSBY
The scene at the Taillor Collective booth at the Brooklyn Sexual
Health Expo.
thought they couldn’t deal with being tied up
and suspended.
“Primarily it’s a body image issue,” Lady
Lyonene said. “They’re either bigger or they’ve
only seen petite small girls being tied... that
doesn’t matter to us. The only thing that stops
you from being tied is a lack of knowledge and
a lack of self-confi dence. Everybody is beautiful
in rope.”
Attendees were also offered spankings and a
variety of photo ops throughout the expo.
A signifi cant amount of the expo fl oor space
was devoted to vendors selling sex toys, some of
which use outlandish designs. A representative
of Bad Dragon talked about its line of fantasy
dildos, which he described as “orcs, unicorns,
dragons, tentacles. You name it, we make it.”
The company’s booth was seemed to practically
squirm with colorful appendages made of
soft materials suitable for intimate use — as
well as display. Staff members at the booth said
that the hentai-style tentacles and the Studded
Dragon were big sellers.
As a gift for the ultimate narcissist, there is
the Clone a Willy kit that lets the user create
a mold of their erect willy and create a silicon
replica. How one chooses to use the vibrating
end product is up to each user.
Workshops were taught throughout the weekend,
on topics including oral sex and rimming.
More cerebral discussions about using breathing
to enhance sexual pleasure also took place.
Charlotte Taillor, who teaches workshops with
the Taillor Collective, a “femdom collective” in
Brooklyn, led a session on BDSM.
Gay City News asked Taillor about how this
expo is different from other events.
“We have been getting more and more ‘vanillas’
CHARLES BATTERSBY.
The author at the Kinbaku Studio booth.
at work,” she explained, adding that the
expo was “a little less diverse on the sexuality
spectrum,” than she expected.
“The crowd here is the people that go to expos,
like book fairs and mainstream events,”
Taillor said.
Although most of the attendees were from the
cis hetero community, Gay City News discovered
several exhibitors attentive to the LGBTQ
community. Sliquid was showing its Ride line of
lubricants for gay men. The company also has a
special collection of products made specifi cally
for transgender men. Endorsed by adult star
and activist Buck Angel, the T-Collection also
has non-sexual grooming products for trans
men, including beard oil.
One of the sponsors of the event was Satisfyer.
Megwyn White, the company’s director of
education, said of the expo — without irony —
“This one is much more stimulating. You have a
lot more people asking questions and inquiring
about the products for themselves.”
White added, “A lot of people have been curious
about things that are on the fringe. The
anal toys; we have a lot of tools for males as
well. That is newer in the market, and newer
for people in general. There is a tendency for sex
toys to be for female audiences, and we have
been doing a really good job in leveling the playing
fi eld in a way of creating products for men
and women and anyone in between.”
Exploring fringe and fetish aspects of sexuality,
White said, “gives people an opportunity to
curate their sexuality and learn about themselves.
Which ultimately makes us less scared
in life as well. Sexuality is at the root of our
health, but it’s also how we express ourselves
and how comfortable we are in our skin.”
GayCityNews.com | October 10 - October 23, 2019 41
/Vibrators.com
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