sex

"I was a Sexpo virgin until yesterday. And boy, did I learn some things."

When my editor told me that instead of coming into the office on one sunny Friday I was to go to Sexpo in Melbourne instead, I had two immediate thoughts go through my head. Firstly, this is the price I must pay for working at a workplace that is happy to discuss sex over the lunch table, and secondly, how do I explain to her that not only am I the most inappropriate person to send to this thing, I also only learned what a butt plug was last week.

Oh, and thirdly? My nana just got an iPad and dad just taught her that the combo of the words Zara McDonald + Mamamia means she gets to read anything and everything I write.

With that in mind, you can imagine how this entire ordeal was about to go down.

Learn about all things sex with our podcast The Prude and The Pornstar. Post continues after audio…

So because I process my emotions through words, and am also in the mood to help you out and give you the kinds of life/sex/etc lessons I learnt very quickly and via baptism of fire, I have compiled the six most important things I could possibly take from a morning that my Catholic primary school upbringing did little to prepare me for.

1. No-one goes to Sexpo at 11am.

I will happily admit this perhaps isn’t the kind of earth-shattering kind of revelation you would expect. But I will also happily admit it was exactly that for me. So here you go: People don’t tend to walk through the doors at Sexpo at 11am like I did. And probably for good reason. Because walking into a room where you receive a free VR headset to watch 3D porn with upon entry and have giant inflatable penises waving hello to you is the kind of activity I imagine you need to be relatively awake for.

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(And for anyone who was there at 11am? I began to wonder why the hell these people didn’t have to go to work.)

2. This guy’s name is Pricasso and he can make paintings with his penis.

For real. If you thought the name Pricasso was inventive, then you need to take a look at the paintings he can produce using nothing more than the tip of his penis.

The guy is a talent, and particularly efficient at his craft. I did, of course, wonder whether the entire exercise was hygienic and whether his peen ever got too tired to keep painting, but I was quickly re-enthralled by the entire exercise and proceeded to forget about the health of Pricasso's glans. (I just Googled that, it's the tip of the penis and you're welcome.)

3. We're doing condoms wrong.

Ha. Sucker (sorry). This might be a clever marketing ploy from one of  the stalls at the expo or something that could actually blow (sorry) your mind. Apparently, our condoms need to have hexagonal patterns, pleasure our male friends a little more and we should be paying about six times more for them than we do right now. Enter the Hex condom by Lelo who argue they have completely "re-engineered the condom".

I was assured by the person trying to sell me the Hex that this was the next big thing in condoms and that I shouldn't be deterred by the $13 price tag. I didn't quite have the heart to tell him that until a boy starts paying for my pill, I am not buying his condoms. Alas, note this one down. We could be doing condoms wrong, or I might've just been a sucker for a good sales pitch. You be the judge.

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4. Virtual reality porn is a thing and it's not going anywhere.

If you've ever thought that searching for porn online is good, but it's just not quite enough, then virtual reality porn might be a thing you're into. Put on some goggles, put yourself into a porn scene and send your thanks to the technological gods that can essentially let you do sexual things without needing a friend to help you out.

And while you're there, try to navigate the debate about whether inserting yourself into a virtual reality porn world could be classified as cheating. It's a minefield.

5. If you use a sex toy and you injure yourself, it's probably on you.

One kind man I did meet was a guy by the name of Michael, and he manufacturers and distributes sex toys. From the moment the idea was born, all the way to the moulding of the toy and right down to the testing, Michael understands sex toys better than you or I do.

And according to Michael, if you mess yourself up when you use a sex toy, it's probably your own fault. So many sex toy injuries, he says, are simply due to human stupidity rather than an unsafe toy. Sure, sex toys don't come with extensive instructions (Michael says surely I can rely on my common sense? Clearly Michael hasn't met my common sense before) but using them should be pretty straight forward.

So if you hurt yourself and are looking to lodge a pricey lawsuit, check yourself first. It could be on you.

6. People get tattoos here.

See.

Sexpo is on this weekend at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The exhibition tours the country. For more information, click here.