People are often not comfortable walking into sex shops
Sexual wellness expert Jonti Searll is on stage mixing technique, humour and hygiene tips to demonstrate the art of fellatio.
“If you focus on the feeling of this thing in your mouth, think about the sensation, the heat, the throbbing, how that feels against all the parts of your mouth … “
Searll, South Africa’s “premier teacher of sexuality and sensuality”, according to his website, is delivering a workshop on fellatio, at the Sexpo exhibition at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.
As Searll speaks, the rows of white fold-up chairs gradually fill up. A white teenage couple slip into seats in the back row. An elderly white couple sit in one of the middle rows against one end, betraying no emotion. There are also rows of blonde women and white couples.
In the front row, slightly to his right, a group of middle-aged black women use lollipops as they follow Searll’s instructions. A black man, presumably a partner of one of the women, hesitantly follows Searll’s act before self-consciously giving it up.
“If you concentrate on what you’re experiencing, it changes the blow job for you radically,” says Searll.
Sex accessories and porn
The exhibition, now in its eighth year, has morphed from a predominantly sexual health and lifestyle show into one that is largely a marketplace for sex accessories and porn films.
In the local world of adult films, for example, the Film and Publication Board classified 400 new titles over the past year, but film producers speak of abandoning the DVD as a medium.
In the world of sex toys, lingerie and accessories, boutique retailers report plummeting turnover, which in some cases has dropped by as much as 50% over the last year.
Launched in 2007 as a local franchise of the Australian brand, Sexpo was initially staged in this country by Expoworks, which then sold it to Adult World owner Arthur Calamaris in 2010. “Adult World were one of our biggest exhibitors,” says Silas Howarth, who was a partner in Expoworks.
Howarth says the company grew “very profitable very quickly … We would get about 40 000 people over four days. We were charging R150 at the door,” he says ahead of the opening this week.
“So we were making a fair amount in cash. For smaller stands, the exhibitors would pay between R15 000 and R20 000 for the entire festival. Bigger exhibitors could pay R100 000 or more.”
Former family event
A floor manager, who worked on some of the earlier shows, says: “In those years, quite often I’d see an entire family – adults and children [over 18] going to the Sexpo. It was blowing the lid on sex. Later they included things like cage fighting. Now people are only browsing dildos and porn videos.”
Howarth doesn’t fully agree with the criticism, arguing that it needs to evolve.
Calamaris, a veteran of 40 years in the adult industry, says that he has done just that. He baulks at the suggestion that he has turned the show into a “smut fest”, as some have called it.
“When we first got it, it was a very basic show with two lounges. Since then the variety of stock that’s being brought into the country has grown. We’ve just been growing it to people’s interests, including unique stands for unique toys.”
To illustrate his point about growth, Calamaris, a hulking man with a deliberate manner of speech and an Australian accent, walks down a corridor in one of the two adjoining halls.
New lounges
We pass a string of lounges and he points out the new ones: the Voyeurs’ Lounge (featuring erotic dancing and erotic art), the Rainbow Lounge (for gay visitors) and the Provocative Lounge (a strip poker lounge where patrons can also have their photographs taken) and the No G-String Club, which will feature male strippers.
Then there are the new shows that include the Swingers’ Ball and the Sexiest Varsity Party, a competition geared towards students.
“We’ve increased the stage shows and tried to make it international. We’ve brought the Lalas, a burlesque group from Las Vegas, to beef up the local acts. We’ve tried to put more entertainment on our main stage, to keep more people coming,” says Calamaris.
If it were not for the lounges, walking through Sexpo feels like a stroll through the aisles of a mega mall that sells inexpensive goods. Some exhibitors proffer bargain basement products such as R20 eyelashes and nails or R100 pocket vibrators. At the other end of the spectrum, items such as the Tantric Chair retail in single product booths for R6 000.
Also, powerful distributors and wholesalers bring their considerable buying power to bear on the proceedings. Smaller retailers, such as Temco Trading, sell lingerie and sex toys called Mystique Mistress.
‘Anonymity in numbers’
Jenni Holdsworth of Bella Rouge says one of the differences between Sexpo and the other expos is that “Sexpo is about selling. People are often not comfortable walking into sex shops but here they can find anonymity in numbers.
“It’s difficult for us to compete [against the big retailers]. I’ve made a deal with Mystique Mistress, who are one of my suppliers, so that we don’t compete price-wise.”
Sharon Gordon, of Johannesburg boutique lingerie and sex-toy brand Lola Montez, says: “It’s become less financially viable, even though there are more people coming to the show. It cost us over R100 000 to be there for four days and our turnover has been halved in the past year. Sex toys, in particular, are aimed very much at the middle class, [and] those are the people being squeezed in every respect.”
Gordon says the boost fostered by EL James’s Fifty Shades of Grey erotic novel series was short-lived: “There was the backlash because the books were bad. You couldn’t find one person who [would say that they] had read them and enjoyed them. It’s was like trying to find a Nat now that the ANC is in power.”
Despite the issues, there are still those niche practitioners such as Searll of Eros Life, who the sees the value of setting up shop, year in, year out: “What I do is concerned with the educational part of Sexpo. We give workshops on better sex, more intimacy, sexual energy things like that. The more people doing something similar to what I do, the more that raises [sex education].”
The rise in the number of black patrons has not translated into more black exhibitors. Black South African porn poster boy Tau Morena, who is also the proprietor of adult website Sondeza, says he participated for two years in a row when his first film Mapona had just been produced.
He says when he attended Sexpo in 2010 and 2011, he was the only black entrepreneur. He was not sure transformation was part of the agenda. “It’s not like somebody was trying to give us a leg up.”