A slender woman in a leather catsuit posed gracefully on a crowded convention show floor—her whip gripped in an outstretched hand as if ready to strike. She smirked as a trio of men holding smartphones snapped a quick photo of her.
Granted, porn stars autographing photos of their own bare breasts for eager middle-aged couples or vendors hawking bath soap in the shape of dicks and vaginas is bit more risque than, say, superheroes clad in snug spandex at Wizard World—but the difference is fewer than 50 shades of grey. Full nudity and real sex acts aren’t allowed, and in a world where we have an encyclopedic access to depictions of every profane act imaginable in the palm of our hands, it’s possible to witness more explicit carnality in the bathroom of Exxxotica via our smartphones than on the show floor. A woman at the anime convention dressed as “slave Leia” was separated by only a few square inches of fabric from the skimpiest outfit I observed at Exxxotica.
And what’s more Republican friendly than a second-generation business owner from a small town? Bunny Lampert of downstate Champaign was busy spreading the gospel of her father’s sex machine from a booth near Exxxotica’s entrance. The Sybian, which she calls “the Lamborghini of sex toys,” resembles a stool with various penis-shaped attachments that can be vibrated at various speeds and settings for a woman’s pleasure. The female orgasm machine was created by Dave Lampert way back in the 80s, at a time when the sex industry still was almost exclusively obsessed with the male libido.
I left Exxxotica thinking that if Dallas wants to preserve conservative values, it shouldn’t ban this relatively tame and life-affirming sex convention. It should ban Republican political rallies instead.
