THE QUESTION PEOPLE ALWAYS ASK
Some jobs are fairly self-explanatory. Doctors talk to sick to people, accountants add up numbers, and journalists write stories. But what if you’ve got the kind of job people have burning questions about? Emily Winstanley spoke to five such people.
Some jobs are fairly self-explanatory. But what if you’ve got the kind of job people have burning questions about? Emily Winstanley spoke to five such people.
I actually studied fine art, so I was an artist and in my second year I was asked,
“Please stop painting quite so many genitals.” After I finished art school I just kind of went from office job to office job. One day I happened to go into a D.Vice store. I’d been going there since I was
16. The day I turned 16 in fact, because that was the age limit on the stores. I caught three buses and I went to buy my first vibrator.
And I remember thinking then that the women in the store were just the coolest people I’d ever met. Ten years later exactly, I walked into the store, I talked about how I loved what they did and they said, “Well we’ve actually got a job opening.”
“Party agent” is my official title but when people ask me I usually say I do sex toy parties. There tends to be a bit of an explanation that follows. Basically, I go to private homes and I do a short presentation, then we do a Q & A and we have a pop-up sales shop where I can do one-on-one consultations and sales. People react very positively, once I start talking about what makes D.Vice unique and what drew me to it in the first place. The fact that they’re a really ethical company, founded by women, run by women is just a very different approach to adult retail. People seem to think it’s a great idea and I end up having to do on-the-spot consultations for a lot of people.
I’m a combination of a priest, a doctor, their best friend. People just open up right away as soon as I tell them about my job, and that’s really what I get the most joy out of. I do help people. Once I’d worked for D.Vice for quite a while, I found the education and talking to people part was what I really liked, so that’s when I went to study as a sex coach, which is now what I do in addition to the toy parties. A lot of people do ask me basically any sex questions they’ve ever had. “What kind of toys are most popular?”
I get that one. This is where it gets complicated — it really depends on what for. People ask me, “What is your number one recommendation?” The thing is, rather than trying to sell them our best selling or our most expensive product, we ask some follow-up questions to find out what they really need, because sexuality is so highly individual.
I came from a very conservative, religious family, so I basically had to do my own sex education. I was very into the internet, still am. I am a millenial and so I’m a good example of what does happen when you don’t give sex education, [kids] might end up going really far with that and learning everything themselves and then vowing to teach others. It’s kind of weird to say, but it is my dream job.
I’m a combination of a priest, a doctor, their best friend. People just open up right away as soon as I tell them about my job. Teddy Curle