There’s no sex in the champagne room. Chris Rock said so. In my limited and humble experience, well, Chris Rock is right, but he didn’t say anything about orgasms.

Right around the turn of the 21st century, I was 22 years old, living in a large American city, working my first job after college and I was still a virgin. Not for the lack of trying, I just hadn’t been lucky in love to this point. I had grown up a bit sheltered but I’d had girlfriends, but had never gotten past first base, maybe first and a half base if you count some over the shirt rubbing.

Working downtown gave me a nice opportunity to explore the city. Almost every lunch break I’d take a walk, looking for different diners to grab a bite to eat and seek out interesting shops and city landmarks. On one such occasion, I happened to stroll right past a tucked away shop with a burnt out neon light that was supposed to be flashing the word “sex”. Obviously intrigued, and oversexed, I decided to investigate further. The store was a few feet below street level, so I nervously walked down the handful of stairs and opened the door to the vestibule where a large man gave me a look-over then opened the inside door for me. Once inside, my assumption was correct, it was a sex shop and I was like a kid in a candy shop. Up to this point in my life, my only excursion into the seedy underground of sex purchasing was at a regular magazine shop that also had an adult section. When I was in high school, some friends and I learned that the guy who worked there on weekends, never asked anyone how old they were and never carded anyone.

This shop, though, had it all, videos, magazines, trashy lingerie, sex toys, S&M paraphernalia, you name it, it was there. I noticed there was a male cashier behind the counter and a few other men dressed in business attire perusing the merchandise. Even though it felt creepy, being out in public in a room of only dudes, I could feel my cock hardening in my pants as I examined the dildos, porn star’s replica pussies and various other sexual toys on display. This was also a time before the internet porn explosion, so while the idea of buying a porno tape was exciting, the thought of hiding a tape somewhere seemed like too much work so I made my way over to the magazine section and picked out a couple I thought would make a good addition to my jerk-off material. Hustler and Penthouse were always favorites and today was no different, except I chose a Barely Legal instead of the regular Hustler. Heart racing, I brought my magazines, still wrapped in the plastic to the checkout counter, and paid – in cash of course and was handed my new treasures in a discreet, brown paper bag.

I was about to leave when I noticed a sign behind the register that pointed to a stairway which said “Wrestling”. The first thing that popped into my head was that scene from the movie Stripes where John Candy mud wrestles all those girls and ends up untying all their bikini tops.