i’ve been held at gunpoint twice
Not the thing you thought you’d get tonight? Well buckle up.
I’ve been held at gunpoint twice.
You think you’d spring into action and remove yourself from the line of fire. You think your body would use those unknown fight skills. No. Your body becomes frozen in terror and everything moves really slow, even if it was only for a split second.
This happened around 2010–2011?? I think. Both a few months apart.
I was working at The Pleasure Chest in the West Village as a sex educator/sales associate.
To their credit, to give advice on the products in the store you had to go through rigorous training in order to know what products can work with / satisfy specific anatomies, what lube can be used on certain materials and condoms, what to recommend based on gender-affirming asks, and how to navigate an array of allergies, kinks, embarrassments, fear, and jokes thrown your way every day.
The Pleasure Chest years
I loved working there but I was very angry.
I was angry at my body. I was so sick all the time. Binging purging binging purging.
I was angry at my skin, forever breaking out and trying to manage cystic acne. The bulimia probably wasn’t helping.
I was mad at my situation: I was working all the time, 10–6pm every day in retail, three days a week from 7–3am as an overnight production assistant at Viacom, and then grad school Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
I never went out. I couldn’t do anything but work and try to be thin.
I was emotionally very young. Naive. A try hard. I still feel this way now. There is a big, thick, embarrassing current that runs through me and I can’t stop aligning myself so hard with Chrissy from Now and Then.
As an aside, I love plus-size women who are mean. I adore you. I want to be you. I haven’t figured out how to make people emotionally suffocate under my silence, how to not give 10000000% all the time in hopes that people will like me, enjoy being around me, trust me.
I was very trustworthy at The Pleasure Chest. I cared a lot about people and what they were going through and what they wanted to accomplish in their sex lives.
You think it’s just giggles and fun and being surrounded by butt plugs. It is, but also you’re handling women who want to use a vibrator during sex but their boyfriend is ADAMANT they can’t.
You’re spending time with celebrities who just want to privately purchase their wares.
You have the once-a-week teen who comes in knowing the store is 18+ and who can’t buy condoms where they live.
You are watching people overcompensate, nervous laugh, worry if they are too much.
I’ll never forget the woman who thought something was wrong with her because she never had an orgasm, and I spent two hours walking around the store with her to explain everything I could, to land on a simple mid-price-range product and lube that I told her how to use (in the most appropriate way). And I told her to take herself out on a date. Take a bath. Have some wine. Watch some porn, or better yet read some erotica. To give herself permission to feel good.
That woman came back and hugged me the next day.
You’re a therapist and doctor and counselor and support for people, even if you’re also cleaning end caps and dusting dildos and reorganizing the lube.
It gave me this sense of purpose and confidence. I had a new skill set and basically an informational degree in anatomy and pleasure. When I could, I would teach workshops and do bridal showers. It was fun.
The first robbery
When the first robbery happened, it was at night. I was alone on the sales floor cleaning up different sections.
Two men came in quickly and pointed a gun to my head and told me to open the cash register. I put the Windex on the counter and opened the register and said “okay okay” and backed away.
I will never forget their hands in front of me grabbing at money (which was also so dumb because we had a displayed $2k gold vibrator in the case just sitting there).
They left after the pillage and said “have a good night” as the door closed.
I called up the manager from the basement (who was doing restocking work) and I sank to the ground in shock. The police were called, I had to give a statement, and I had to testify in court and relive the whole thing.
I was withdrawn from everything.
I would have panic attacks if people moved close to me too fast.
And it just made me angrier.
I took a week off and came back. I had to pay rent and go to school and keep up my grades. I should have quit and figured something else out. But at the time I couldn’t even think of a next step.
The second robbery
The next time it happened, it was broad daylight, like 10:45am.
These two must have cased the place and known the schedule because The Pleasure Chest in the West Village would have the Sex and the City tour pop in upwards of 5x a day.
It’s the spot the Rabbit, an elastomer pink dual vibrator that spins on the inside for g-spot action and flutters its little ears on the clit, is introduced in season 1, episode 9.
We sold a ton of them.
It wouldn’t be my recommendation for dual vibrators, but it is an excellent entry point into the world of sex toys, so we have to love it for that.
Well, these two must have known we were in between the tours because that’s when someone has to go downstairs to grab all the restocks from the tour while the other person checks the till and makes sure all the bills are the right way, and checks to see if we have ones.
Same thing, they came in quick, but this time one of them grabbed me and held me in the corner behind the register and shoved the gun into my stomach.
I saw them from the corner of my eye come in and instinctively backed up and didn’t shut the register.
My heart was pounding. I was so scared.
What I regret
I’m around 25–26 during this. I wasn’t in my career yet. I wasn’t skinny yet. I wasn’t dating yet. I was still angry. I wanted to get back at the store. I shouldn’t have felt that way.
I was a bit immature and still naive, but these two moments took away my safety. They made me have fear. I ended up taking a freelance job at Condé Nast and left The Pleasure Chest.
No notice. Nothing. I didn’t care.
I’m sure it was a slight at the time to the people I worked with. I admit it: I meant it to be.
In my immature, hurt, traumatized, life-flashed-before-my-eyes way, I wanted them to be slightly inconvenienced by the fact that, out of nowhere, they didn’t have a full-time employee to backfill.
It was dumb and I shouldn’t have done that. I have made amends in time.
What I carry now
The Pleasure Chest gave me so much. It got me to do eating disorder group therapy. It helped me learn so much about myself and sexuality. It allowed me to be an empathetic communicator and care about the people around me in my career as a creative director.
It gave me knowledge to write my book: My Pleasure: An Intimate Guide to Loving Your Body and Having Great Sex.
It made me both more afraid and less afraid of the world.
And now you can ask me anything about sex toys, products, lube, porn, genitalia, and anatomy and I most likely know the answer, or the way, or people to help.
I say all this because I am helping a friend in her retail space here in Beacon. I did one shift to support and I had the best time. I was happy to chat with people, to give advice, to vacuum.
And it’s not that those fears are gone. But I’m not angry anymore. I am proud of my tiny little journey through space where I’ve learned to manage my fear….where I’ve become more cautious and smarter and stronger….where I’m a kind person knowing that people are always going through something.
And where I’ve realized something simple.
Fear doesn’t mean I’m weak. It just means I survived. So while it was two of the most terrifying, life altering moments of my life, it gave me me even in my most try-hard ways.
xx
Laura 💋