It’s 11:30 on Friday night. I’m walking down Chapel St looking for inspiration. Passing trendy bars… Perfect haircuts, expensive beer, sophisticated conversation. But I’m looking for the other side of Chapel St. Hotted up Skylines with mags, pounding subwoofers, and FUBU tracksuits. Macho guys driving slow laps, wolf-whistling at scantily clad women, or doing burnouts in the car park behind Coles. I head straight for the cultural hub of this subculture, Chapel St KFC. But the eating area is closed. Around the corner in the car park, there is no smoke, no smell of rubber. There are no modified cars, glimmering tracksuits, or Ali G look-alikes. 11:30pm, perhaps it’s too early. I keep walking. Past bleary-eyed people stooped over their hamburgers, out for one last grease fix at Hungry Jacks. Chapel Street is depressingly empty. I spot a hive of activity inside a solitary shop on the opposite side of the street. I’m hypnotised by the iridescent sign; drawn in by the flashing neon before I can register the implications of its name. Condom Kingdom.
There are seven or eight customers, mostly women, browsing the shelves with items like penis shaped chocolates, pasta boobs, and dicky sipping straws. A cacophony of electrical grunts, groans, and moans reverberates around the store. One young woman stands with two friends, expertly explaining the merits of ice condoms. Her friends look on with great interest.
Terry Maloy and Andy Lee, behind the counter, explain to me that they bought Condom Kingdom one month ago. They agree to give me a tour. Terry begins while Andy attends to the customers. He looks early 30s, well dressed with a thick Norwegian accent. He used to be a postal worker, he tells me, and has a degree in Languages. With the authority of a museum director, Terry shows me their biggest selling items: Candy Panties $9.95 and the Love Cuffs, also $9.95. He takes me to the back of the store and we duck behind a see-through curtain. Here the toys look a little more threatening. He shows me the Smart Vibes $99.95, which he assures me has a greater work rate under resistance than the Lady Finger $59.95. I baulk at the offer of a demonstration.
Andy takes over for the rest of the tour. He says most of the customers are females aged 18-30 and puts this down to the softer, more open image that the shop has in comparison to other stores that sell similar items. ‘We’re not a sex shop, we’re a gift shop,’ Andy tells me repeatedly. He shows me some of his favourite products. Mr Old Butt, a penholder with six different grunts when you push the pen, Humping Dog, and Lusty Linda with eight orgasmically funny sayings. A proud look comes over his face when he shows me his newest stock, the Turd Range, a collection of faeces figurines featuring Tough Shit and Stone Shit. Next to the figurines, I see an alarming gadget, the Shock Tank, $150. ‘Not for kids,’ Andy points out.
In the corner of the store are two machines: the sex meter and the sex reactor, which will measure your sexiness for $1. I choose the sex reactor, which gives the participant a rating from one (cold fish) to ten (sex maniac). I put my hand on the machine. It calculates for a few seconds and gives me my sex reading. Ten!
But as I exit the store into the icy Winter night, I feel more like a cold fish.
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