Am I the only one who finds the employees at sex toy shops to be annoying? No? Didn't think so. Every time I've gone into a toy store, I find myself face to face with either a woman in Buddy Holly glasses and two frizzy buns on either side of her head or a svelte, genderless individual with tattoos aplenty, some weird hat, a faint mustache and a voice that cracks.

"Hello, and welcome to (insert store name )! Let me know if there's anything I can help you with today. My name is (insert bogus pseudonym), and I'm here if you need anything. Anything at all. Just thought I'd let you know, today we're having a huge sale on anal beads."

"I'm cool, thanks," I say, as I grope every vibrator, dick and whip in sight, sticking my finger in the hole of the chotch they have on display. (I think it's like a poor man's blow-up doll; you only get the vadge.) Then I'll peruse the wall of harnesses and, before I know it, a sales clerk will be all up in my biz yet again.

"These harnesses were hand-crafted by a queer Estonian craftswoman in the Blue Mountains of Estonia. Some are organic leather, and some are entirely vegan!"

"Thanks," I say, praying to God that they'll stop blabbering about shit I don't care about and go away.

"Have I mentioned that on Tuesdays and Thursdays we have intermediate and advanced fisting workshops? Right here, every week. Tuesdays and Thursdays! Also, we just got an erotic dice game in, and people seem to really dig it!"

Why can't I shop in peace in a sex toy shop? Why can't the people who work in these stores just leave me the fuck alone? I was talking to a friend about it last night and she said that she'd stopped into a store on the LES to buy a new cock cause her new girlfriend didn't want her to recycle the one she'd been using in her previous relationship. Before they knew it, they were bombarded with unwarranted assistance from a lip-ringed sales clerk: "That dildo comes in nine different colors!" (s)he shouted. "Make sure you remember to boil it!"

Now, I get what these toy store workers are going for. Ideologically, it's kinda sweet. I'm sure there are plenty of people who venture into these shops for the first time, a little unsure of themselves, wondering if they're a total pervert because they want to buy a vibrating rubber duckie to keep in the tub at home, while hoping that no one they know sees them entering or exiting said shop. But isn't there something to be said for a customer's body language? For intuition? If I come charging into your sex store with bedhead, a huge bulldyke and a vintage copy of On Our Backs under my arm, isn't it fair to assume that I might have done this before? That I don't need my hand held through the process?

I have an ass vibrator and an extensive porn collection. I've eaten edible underwear in the flavor guava. I have every slutty book known to man and boxes of tit-shaped pasta in my pantry. I have a remote-control egg and a two-sided dick and leather restraints and a paddle that leaves a star-shape on the ass of whomever's ass is getting beat.

Besides the egg, I don't necessarily find any of these things to be all that hot or necessary in the bedroom, but it makes my blood boil when I'm given that practiced smile and spoken to in a way that screams, "Hey, inhibited straight girl! Welcome to ______, a place that'll undoubtedly blow your mind. We're all so sex-positive here, you have no fucking idea. You probably don't even know what sex-positive means! Let me help you pick out your first vibrator. I bet you want the rabbit cause of Charlotte on Sex and the City!"

Dude. Eat me.