The Digression Sessions - Ep. 154 - Jacq Jones of Sugar (@SugarJacq)

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

Hola Digheads! This week Josh Kuderna and guest cohost Alex Braslavsky sit down for an interview with sex educator and owner of Sugar, Jacq Jones! We talk sex toys, 4 Play, vagina pillows, and more! Follow us on Twitter & Instagram! Josh Kuderna - @JoshKuderna Mike Moran - @MikeMoranWould Podcast - @DigSeshPod Like the Digression Sessions page on Facebook. Rate and review us on iTunes & Stitcher! And check out the rest of our network at ThunderGrunt.com 

hey everybody i'm josh kaderna and i'm mike moran and you're listening to the digression sessions podcast a baltimore-based comedy talk show hosted by two young, handsome stand-up comedians slash improvisers. Join us every week as we journey through the world of comedy and the bizarreness of existence. As we interview local and non-local comedians, writers, musicians, and anyone else we find creative and interesting. Yes. Who's the guest this week jack jones is the guest on this week's podcast alex i i had fun with her yeah and you're the guest co-host filling in for one mike moran just one just one had a good time thanks for having me yeah thanks for doing it jack jones runs the uh only sex toy shop, sex shop, educational sex center.

I don't know what you call it. Is it the only one? On the avenue here in Baltimore. It's called Sugar, and you can go to sugartheshop.com or you can follow Jack on Twitter. She is at Sugar Jack, J-A-C-Q. And she was really cool.

We learned all about the sex toy industry, how she got into selling sex toys. Yeah, her whole start. Yeah, the most popular toys. She runs a show with Prescott Gaylord of the Baltimore Improv Group called Foreplay, which on May 6th, they'll be doing a live show where they talk about one topic related to sex.

I think the next one is may 6th kink kink and it's gonna be be about kink at the baltimore theater project and i also got my braces put on the day of this podcast so that was perfect timing right there to talk about sex at the sugar stop terrible yeah oh boy it was Braces are a kink though, I think. Hey, I hope your girlfriend enjoys them. We're going to find out. Joshua! No braces!

It hurts me. But yeah, this was a really fun talk. So we just went to Sugar and talked to her in the back of the office. And yeah, it was good. So I hope everybody enjoys it. And go check out the shop. Go get a dildo. Yeah.

Just go get one. Do something enjoys it. And go check out the shop. Go get a dildo. Yeah. Just go get one. Do something with it. Do something with it. Get a paperweight. Yeah. And Alex, you and I have a show coming up this Wednesday. Wednesday. Shuckle store.

8 o'clock. Mm-hmm. Tax day. Tax day. April 15th. Bring your forms. Yep. There will be.

There will be an IRS agent there. Ready to help you. And laughs. Mm-hmm. Those 1040EZ forms, not that easy. Okay, so bring them in. We'll help you out. $5 at the door.

Drinks. Specialty drink. Mystery specialty drink. Yep. What else can you say? It's going to be like 90 minutes. Big deal. Yeah, there's going to be stand up, sketch, whatever.

Who cares? Right? And people who are going to go are already going so we're not convincing anybody nah nah nobody's nobody's hearing this for the first time they know they know but uh alex thank you uh thanks for doing the podcast again i'm excited for chuckle storm and i got another show coming up this saturday i'll be in salisbury with a bunch of fucking assholes these fucking dickheads of big time in comedy. And I just, ugh, they're the worst.

There's this guy, Eric, right? He helps run this thing. What? What's that? Who is? Eric. Hey, Eric. Hey.

Hey, good to see you. I was just talking about you, man. I see that. Yeah, you and you and stuff yeah i'm excited for the show in salisbury roadie joes yeah man yeah i've heard good things man yeah it's it's we have a really good audience and uh super engaged and they're ready for some solid chuckles over there oh boy um well maybe the chuckle storm will move from baltimore down to salisbury yeah i mean it's it's close to tax day of course you could probably pull in some of those late folks yeah so how are you feeling eric how do you feel i'm hurting we had a show last night

uh-huh easton at uh stoltz listening room it's good room yeah no it was really really good room we packed the house um and uh yeah you know wendy wendy uh, it was a really, really good room. We packed the house. And yeah, you know, Wendy Townsend was a part of that show, so you know how that goes. Yeah, she said she's going to get braces soon, too. So all the cool people are getting them. All the cool people. You and Wendy. Yeah, the coolest people. Got it.

So yeah, this show at Salisbury, you guys have good crowds, I was told Tommy said he had a lot of fun I'm going to split a hotel room with Jeremy and my girlfriend, I think He doesn't take up a lot of room so you'll have plenty of space Really? You're splitting a hotel room? Yeah

Oh, who's that? Who's that on the line? Oh, we got a phone call here Oh boy, who's calling in here? that on the line? Oh, we got a phone call here. Oh, boy. Who's calling in here? I hope it's not that... Hello? Hi.

How's it going? It's going good. Who's that? Is this Stefan? It sure is. Not that piece of shit Stefan you work with, though, right? Maybe. No, no, no.

This is his gay lover. Oh, whoo. Okay. I was thinking it was just a giant free train of a black man okay that's what i was picturing i'm just glad it's not that stephano big time in comedy at big time in comedy.com perfect perfect well uh i know you just called in but i think we're wrapping this thing up. So thanks for calling in, you piece of shit. It's been a real pleasure to all of us on the receiver. No, plug the show. The headliner is Missy Grig...

I'm not going to work here anymore? Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce her last name as many times as I've heard it. Missy Grinkowitz. Grinkowitz is going to be the headliner. And she's a teacher, I think, right? Doesn't she is going to be the headliner. She's a teacher, I think. Doesn't she work at a school? She's a teacher by day.

She's going to be ready to cut loose. Salisbury, that's the spot to do it. She's actually from that area. She has people coming. She may have people coming. Grinkowitz, what nationality is that, Eric? I don't know. You're the one from Serbia. Well, it's true.

It's not Serbia. It might be Jewish. Maybe. Maybe. All right. From like the western side of Germany. West side. Okay.

Well, we're all just human beings. Yeah, at the end of the day. At the end of the day. Some of us better than others. You know? Like Americans. But hey, you know? It takes all kinds. Doesn't it? Doesn't it, guys? All better than others, you know, like Americans. But hey, you know, it takes all kinds.

Doesn't it? Doesn't it, guys? All right. Well, let's wrap this intro up. All right. Are we ready to wrap it up? Yeah, man. So bigtimingcomedy.com.

Yep. And you guys do shows a lot, right? We do a lot, yeah. You got some monthly shit. Monthly. So again, Rhodey Joe's this Saturday, the 18th, 8 o'clock. Looking forward to it. We have this guy Josh Coderna on there as well.

I haven't heard a lot about him, but we'll see how he goes. Look at his fucking braces. What a loser. What a fucker. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I don't know. I'm going to try to cut out all the S words from my set. So,

thanks guys for coming out. Start high school soon. Thanks, guys, for coming out. Start high school soon. All right. Well, Stefan, Eric. Stefan, thanks for calling in. Eric, you went the distance and came over and hung out in the basement.

I did. And you're all hung over. And look at you. It matters. It really does. It really does. Some of us care. Some of us.

Clearly, I don't give a shit. Yeah, it's that type of commitment that's going to put big time and comedy on the map. All the way. It really is. And that's what we're talking about here. The tippy top. Yep. Yep, absolutely.

All right. Well, thank you guys. And Alex, thank you. Thanks for having us. Hey, Josh, we're going to see you next week, okay? Yeah, we'll talk. We'll see. We'll talk about it, all right?

Okay? All right. It'd be really great if you could show up. Well, yeah. I didn't show up for you today, but go all the way. Hang up on him. Can you hang up on him? Just hang up. Oh, great. Thanks.

I think there's a problem with Stevan's line there. I need to have that boop, boop, boop. Yeah, boop, boop, boop. All right, but yeah, thank you to everybody that's listening. Go to digressionsessions.com slash calendar for all the other upcoming dates. Follow us on Twitter. I'm at Josh Coderna. Mike Moran is at Mike Moran Wood.

Alex is Sweep Alex. He never tweets, though. Eric, you on the Twitters? Is there big time in comedy? Yeah, it is. It's at big time in comedy. Nice. And then Facebook as well.

So we're climbing the charts. The Facebook charts. Oh, and there's a Mike Moran right there. All right. Wow, this is getting crazy. Rest in peace, Better Robot Records. All right. Thank you to everybody that's listening.

And I think this rambling intro is over. Let's talk to Jack Jones. And yeah, thanks, guys. Bye-bye. Get in there. Now, Jack, when you left the room, Alex was going to ask if you had sugar, and I thought he was just kidding.

But it turns out he actually needed it, and you guys had it. Wow. We did. We had it way more accessible than... Uh-huh. As advertised, there is sugar. And now I'm going to drink my coffee with a straw because i just got my braces today so i can't stain my teeth it's gonna be a terrible time to

podcast all right so this is it we're just gonna start like this and i'll do an intro later but jack jones thank you for joining us thanks for having me You and a fellow member of the Baltimore Improv Group run 4Play Which is a monthly show here in Baltimore The next one is May 6th May 6th You're just going to learn What you can and can't say

By the 6th Podcast Can you say podcast? Podcast I'm going to say it's podcast you'll you'll get it can you say podcast podcast no podcast yeah you nailed it i'm gonna say it's two days after may 4th no i can't do that also known as may 6th yeah thank you thank you jack thank you yes and i like that exactly and it's the one about kink yeah and it's gonna be at the uh what's that theater why am i I blanking on it? The Baltimore Theater Project. Theater Project. And our guests are Violet,

who is a local comedian. Violet Gray, yeah. And Jackie Griot, who is a educator on kink around the country and happens to be from Our Fair City. Oh. Yeah, it's a fun show so that the audience can ask questions and then we just kind

of talk to them and then talk about the subject and that type of thing i had a really fun time doing it last time i didn't know what to expect but alex you did the first show i know it was the first guest ever and that was all about very brave masturbation yeah yeah i don't know how I was chosen for that. Yeah. Cause you haven't right? Yeah. And then that's another episode. Ours was about oral sex. So that was, that was fun.

And, uh, yeah, I got a message from somebody afterwards. They're like, you did a good job kind of walking the line of not being rude, but being funny. And I was like,

whew, cause I was afraid to offend somebody. Like, I think I said chick at one point and Prescott's like, did you just call a girl a chick? And I was like, Iew, because I was afraid to offend somebody. I think I said chick at one point, and Prescott's like, did you just call a girl a chick? And I was like, I say that, but I don't mean it degradingly. Yeah, you start to realize that you say things that could be perceived in a certain way.

Yeah, and that are flippant to other people, but to you, you're like, oh, I'm just fucking around. I think I do struggle with that. I think I struggle with pronouns and slang terms for men and women. Jack, any trouble with that? Well, if a friend's transitioning, sometimes I have trouble keeping up with their pronouns. Right.

But that's for me to fix and to try to hurt them as little as possible in that process yeah um but otherwise i think i'm okay yeah but is that is that just a conversation to have like is that the best approach is just to flat out ask the person like what would they like to be called like on a personal basis yeah absolutely and like a lot of spaces like especially people especially like at conferences just to flat out ask the person? Like what would they like to be called? Like on a personal basis. Yeah, absolutely. And like a lot of spaces, like especially people, especially like at conferences and whatever,

people will go around the room and be like, hi, my name's Jack. I prefer she. And then sometimes even name tags will say like, Jack, she. Jack, she. That kind of thing. So that you don't fuck it up.

Can I swear? Yeah. Okay, good. You'll just edit it out. Yeah, I'll edit it all out. This is a Christian podcast, but you burn in hell. That's fine. I'll work on it.

I'll work on it. I'll be there with my friends. Lots of your sex shop buddies. So you run Sugar here in Baltimore in the lovely Hamden. And we're recording live recording live from the office in the exciting off back office so sexy everybody wants to know what happens back here one outlet one outlet a lot of stuff goes into it though into that one outlet there's a lot of

tools file cabinet a printer piles of paper so what i'm i'm more interested in is like how do you get into this business what's the evolution for somebody to run their own sex shop well i think yeah i think it's different for everybody um and especially when it's like a mission-driven education focus store our paths tend to have some more overlap than like the people who run the more traditional right stores right um but so i worked in reproductive health care and sex ed um pretty much after i graduated from college and are you from maryland no where you from um i grew up in ohio and then i lived in minnesota okay um i kind of claim minnesota as my home state more than Ohio. I'm more culturally Minnesotan. And then I went to college in Minnesota and then stayed for a while and then

ended up in Baltimore for work. And I was working for Planned Parenthood at the time as a clinic administrator. And then eventually moved into, ended up needing to move to New York for relationship reasons. And basically went to Babeland, which is a sex positive store that at the time had one, had a store in Seattle and a store in New York.

Now they have three stores in New York and a store in Seattle and a pretty healthy website and so i basically begged them for a job and eventually they gave me one really yeah so what what attracted you to that was it the like working in planned parenthood and kind of seeing people that weren't educated in that area or of sex or where it was like too taboo well actually it was um when you work with a disease-based model of sex education it can get exhausting because you're constantly coming at it first of all you're often coming at it after the fact when you're working in

clinics right so you're like and i've said the following like a bajillion times but really like it is way more fun to be like hi this is a butt plug here's some lube completely safe put this in your butt have fun instead of like hi you have gonorrhea let's talk don't put anything in your butt is that what you did at Planned Parenthood like was that your yeah you just you just talked to them about kind of breaking the news so it wasn't preventative it was more more like, well. We definitely did prevention as well. I mean, don't get me wrong, but then when you're working in a clinic, you're also dealing with the positive test results

and all of that. And then also I worked with abortion care as well. So you were all over the place. Yeah, exactly. Wow. And it was lovely and rewarding, but it's also lovely and rewarding to be able to do the same kind of work, but from a very different perspective.

Right. And something that's a little more, I don't want to say fun, but I mean, it kind of is. It is more fun. Yeah, definitely. No question. It's definitely more fun. Sugar, more upbeat than Planned Parenthood. Exactly. But Planned Parenthood's awesome. like and I learned so much from them and they do such amazing work yeah but also one of the other things that I learned before I opened the store because I was a clinic administrator and then I worked for the state health department and I did

and before that I worked for a community-based organization in Baltimore overseeing different grants and working with folks who were doing street level outreach um and so by before i opened the store i knew how to do a budget i knew how to do long-range planning i'd already managed people you know like all of those kinds of things that i think and i'd also already worked in retail so uh-huh i think those are a lot of things that sometimes people forget are important to running a business right where no it's actually a business right where. Where it's not just like, yeah, get a butt plug. How much is it? I don't know.

What's our inventory? Who knows? Exactly. What's the margin? See, I'd like to set up, I have this grand idea to set up the worst business ever. Just open up a store

of just like Jack Black memorabilia. But I think you're right. I think I don't have all that knowledge. Yeah. Yeah, but you might be surprised. A store of Jack Black memorabilia might be astonishingly successful.

That's what I'm thinking. I don't think anybody's ever done this where they just try to set up a horrible, horrendous store just to see how long it can last. Like if I can just break even. There's no way you would break even. You don't think so?

No, no. I think you might. Really? Now, Jack is a business owner. So why am I listening to you? I only have a failed business. Better Robot Records won. Oh, right.

Right, so I used to be a business owner myself. Yeah, you were going to make comedy albums and stuff like that? Yeah, it turns out people in the D.C., Baltimore, Virginia area, not ready to make albums for the most part. uh if they do it's only a couple was that was that a tough blow and no not really i mean uh i had a comedy record label for a little bit and then uh i was like yeah i'm gonna release you know these people are gonna want to do an album and then somebody would move away and then be like no i don't want to burn material and like the cds that i did put out made their money back we made a little bit of money but the like taxes at the end of the year

like my uncle is like he's my accountant he's like hey you owe six hundred dollars and it's like why he's like just because you're a business pretty much and i was like all right let's shut this thing down how about we shut that down because i don't want to spend 600 a year just to you know but now i'll make like records for friends and stuff, but it's not on a label per se. Jack, have you been there before? Like have you, I mean, it seems like this is a pretty successful store. Yeah, I mean, for those listening, it's on the Avenue in Baltimore,

which I'm sure isn't cheap to rent a space on. No. No. And this was your first, I think I heard that it moved at one point, right? Yeah. We were, until about a year ago, we were across the street in a much smaller, less, harder to find location. And then we had the opportunity to move over here and we jumped at it.

Yeah. Because this used to be a memorabilia shop for Jack Black. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Somebody did it. they were doing too well they had to move into a huge thing yeah yeah they actually moved into the royal farms arena it's all just jack black stuff it's all in there it's pretty great though tenacious d

terrible yeah yep uh so um i noticed that the the windows they're like opaque and frosted. Is that a rule for when you open a sex shop? No. We do that on purpose because one of the things we're really interested in here is consent. And so that has to do with the consent of the people walking down the street

and what they choose to see and the consent of the people in the store who are buying things and whether or not they choose to be seen by people walking down the street. So we just make the windows opaque so that we don't have to... It makes it easier for everybody.

Yeah, and it's just, I feel like, and privacy matters. Especially today, you share all of the information in your smartphone because it's shared by different corporations. And our privacy is eroded in so many ways that we try to make sure that we respect it as much as possible here. Right. Yeah. You don't want to have somebody just, you know, thumbing through dildos and be like, oh, hey, Frank, see you at the office on

Tuesday. Exactly. And I feel like, you know, if you're, if you run into somebody that, you know, in the store, you're both in the store, who cares? Right. Yeah. But it's a different thing when like I saw so-and-so be like, right in the window yeah at the register yeah and and also the other huge benefit to like having the windows opaque have you ever had to do window displays no oh huge pain in the ass just avoid it completely yeah exactly don't have to do it probably builds interest too like oh what's in there sometimes sometimes people think we're not open yet. Oh. And I'm like, really?

Okay. That's weird. Yeah. So I have to figure that out a little bit better. Maybe light the windows more. Do you think that's somebody just lying when they come in? Like, oh, I didn't even know if you were open or not. But I'll take 75.

I don't think that happens. But there definitely are people who walk through the door and they're like, oh, I didn't. I had no idea what could possibly be in here. Oh, Lord, oh, my. And I'm like, okay, so the frosted windows and the you must be 18 to enter, not a clue. But I think sometimes people need to have that kind of,

oh, I didn't know, to give themselves permission to walk into a place like this. Because honestly, sex is scary for a lot of people and people have a lot of issues around it. It's a terrible thing. So like having, you know, if they need to make up a reason why they walked in this store,

that's fine. That's cool. Cause you're a business woman first. Buy that. No, I'm just kidding. Exactly. But also like,

you know, I always try to remind, like one of the things we tell all of our staff when they come on board is that we need to remember that, and this is going to sound cheesy, but literally every person who walks through that door is taking a risk and giving us a gift by bothering to walk in the door. And so we need to respect that. And people walk in sometimes in different ways. Sometimes people walk in ready to act right.

And sometimes people walk in ready to act right and sometimes people walk in ready to act in not appropriate ways and um so usually people are able to like when we model appropriate behavior usually they're able to like start acting sorry what does that mean to act right and act um so i think sometimes because of the way we talk about sex in our culture we talk about all the time but we talk about it in ways that aren't necessarily focused on healthy and consensual sexuality so sometimes people will come in and they'll be like super loud and like mocking of toys or edible panties yeah exactly and like trying to like and women do it too but i mean but it's kind of like the whole like bro character um and you know and i think that's honestly because people believe that that's how they're

supposed to be. And when we show them other options, 99% of the time they start acting like themselves. They're like, well, can I help you? Yeah, sure. Sorry. Do you have edible panties? Yeah, exactly. No, really.

Exactly. Edible panties. Sorry, excuse me. Very hungry. Have you ever tried those no it was like really bad fruit roll-ups i that's what i heard yeah yeah they look like it's like a piece of cakes yeah shots fired i heard your your cakes look cool but they don't taste that great well it's a lot of fondant in there the fondant i don't don't like fondant, but let me tell you, they made my wedding cakes. Really?

Oh, really? Yeah, actually tasty. How long did that take? One of them took a while, and the other one was more of a traditional cake, but one of them was a rat on a manhole cover. Oh, nice. And that one took a minute, I think. Yeah.

Is that the more romantic one? Yes. Is that the one where you two cut together? No, we did? We did. We did. Because everybody was, we cut the tail off and everybody was all around chanting, cut the rat, cut the rat. It was nice.

You mean like rubbing rat cake on each other's face? Like, oh, so cute. There was no rubbing of the cake. Okay. Okay. I'll save it for my wedding. How long ago was that? That was at my, our first wedding um which was not legal um

in uh 2006 2006 so if it's not legal was it just a ceremony yeah another tough word for brace theremin did you play a theremin at your ceremony at the time the only place where we could legally get married was massachusetts and it was like a little questionable if you were married when you left the state or if your marriage was actually legal if you weren't a massachusetts resident when the marriage happened and also nobody ever wants to get divorced but you know it's a possibility there was nobody had any idea how the fuck that would work um so we were like, you know what? We should wait so we can get married here. And then we didn't actually wait to get married here.

We got married in D.C. when it went legal. Oh, cool. Cool, cool, cool. And I can't actually tell you what year that was. No? No. Okay. It just kind of happened.

It happened. But we did it on our wedding anniversary. Oh, that's nice. I can't remember multiple dates. That's good. Was that just a courthouse thing? Like let's make it official or yeah yeah no it was just me and my wife and the officiant on the steps of the lincoln memorial how did that how did that feel was it not a big deal or was it super exciting i was like yeah it was no big deal i just went to subway

after where it's got a foot long oh i'm kind of i'm tired let's get on the mark train the officiant was like all excited about like what the words we're going to use I'm like we're using the same words we use the first time I'm like all I really care about is I want to hear you say by the power invested in me by the district of Columbia like I was like that's the part I want

I think right now so my girlfriend I just celebrated six years yeah congratulations yeah congrats I think that's where amanda and i are too you think so i think oh no who knows your time flies when you're having fun you know uh so we got massages and then we went to california tortilla and had a horrendous meal hey shots fired california your food is crap um i thought you were gonna say we took a trip to california that was one of the saddest sentences I've ever heard.

We went to California. Quarry Lake. Tertina. But I definitely, I don't know how I feel about marriage right now. I think, I just, I don't even want it to exist in my head, but I've definitely entertained the idea of just going to the courthouse and just like signing just so I can be on her insurance. You're romantic. She does not go for it no amanda same thing i was like man you know

because my parents got divorced twice so i'm just like right we've been together such a long time and twice from each other uh no no like my mom got married twice and i think my dad and stepdad was married twice you know yeah as as everybody As adults do. Everybody's doing it twice. Everybody's doing it. And so I was, you know, it's like we lived together. I mean, mostly back in the day you got married because it's like,

oh, it'd be improper and that type of thing. And, you know, we're 28. I just got braces. I'm not looking. But I mean. And she still has braces, right? Yeah, she has Invisalign.

Brace couple. We're nerds. A couple of brace faces. And, but we were talking about it and I was like, yeah, I just feel like it's so Brace couple. We're nerds. A couple of brace faces. But we were talking about it. And I was like, yeah, I just feel like it's so old-fashioned. Like, I love you. We're going to be together. And she was like, oh, yeah, I agree.

And I was like, I mean, maybe we'll get married at some point. I just don't want to put a pressure on it. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there was like a beat. And she goes, but I mean, if we're together in like five years. And I was like, yeah, yeah. And when was this? Like over the summer. Oh, okay. It was over the summer five more years but her saying like if we're still together in

five years is her way of saying let's do it tomorrow you know what i mean like i think you know and i think that's her calling right now i mean like joshua where are we gonna do it i don't think we've ever talked about that on the on the podcast but that's the voice you do for amanda yeah hopefully she's not listening it could be anything i don't like doing it behind her back for a long time you and i are writing uh writing scripts about uh it's called that's my spider and for some reason that would always come up with you like yo boys write about that spider get them out of here because yeah we're writing a script about it would be like leave it to be your boat with a spider and he gets adopted by a family and we were trying to put together the

logistics of how you would have a spider in a sketch and it's like maybe we could put them in like a freezer and then unfreeze them and have them like walk real slow and then you're like joshua what are those spiders doing in my freezer so one last thing about this and then we should move on to jack but yeah i i just realized that uh so we filmed a sketch where you and her played a couple on their wedding day yeah no we took pictures too like we were married it didn't it didn't mean anything no it was fun you could i had a lot of fun i was like i could do this again her mom saw we posted on instagram because we we did a sketch where her and i were going to get married the bride and groom so we dressed up the whole the whole nine that's fun and her mom saw the picture she's like hey why weren't we invited she's like oh no mom it was it was a sketch she goes yeah it would have

been nice to be invited to the sketch too she thought it was like a rehearsal yeah yeah yeah she's no she knew it was like for like a web video but she's like we would have liked to come but yeah it was it was fun my buddy jamel he goes man did you fake marry your real girlfriend yeah i guess he's like you're stupid i guess it sends mixed signals a little bit um okay so you're married how how long you've been married so you said it was 2006 2006 it'll be nine years in october wow yeah that's a long time i guess right that's almost a decade i know it's crazy and i've known each other how long before that oh we knew each other for approximately a minute we did like the classic lesbian u-haul um like we met in lesbian u-haul i'm not going urban dictionary right now we met in april and started dating in may um and bought a house in july

and then got engaged in september and then got married year later. So like we were engaged for a year, but wow. And did you, this is going to sound really weird, but the last, uh, foreplay, you mentioned something like over the last decade,

I've got to know, what did you say? Like you made, like, it seemed like you hadn't been a lesbian that long or something or like you made, I don't know what it was i mean i was married to a man previously right okay yeah and um we were we we met um second semester of our

first year in college right because because the whole thing was about oral sex and you're like i become with women i become much more familiar over the last decade i was like the last decade really yeah no i mean it's a little longer than that but um but let me see um my ex-husband and i uh got divorced in 2002 maybe maybe 2003 i'm not are you asking us because i have no i brought some paperwork here that I want you to look over, Jack. You were like, I checked it out. You Googled the Maryland court records. That's what I do about all of our guests. It wasn't just because of you. It's standard here at the Dig Sesh. Around 2002, around 2002. Yeah, and I honestly had been out as a lesbian

for years before we got divorced. Oh, that's interesting. But for some reason, it still worked. And, you know, gift horse's mouth, whatever. I'm not going to. And there reached a point where it just didn't. And we had to get divorced. So when you guys got married, did he know?

Or did you know? Were you out about it? We got married when we were 24. Okay. See, this is why you don't get married in your 20s. Yeah, exactly. All of a sudden, we're going to turn 30. And Amanda's like, I'm a lesbian now.

It could happen. And I won't look a gift horse in the mouth for very long, exactly. All of a sudden, we're going to turn 30, and Amanda's like, I'm a lesbian now. It could happen. And I won't look a gift horse in the mouth for very long, but it's going to happen. Exactly. It's going to happen. Exactly. Joshua! Joshua! At the time, I identified as bi.

Okay. And over time, my orientation got more narrow. I don't know why, but it did. Right. And then also, I come from a place place of like gender is a social construct and so i was like i don't know why this matters um meanwhile your husband's like oh i can think of a couple exactly exactly so did it end amicably like sort of sort of yeah i mean i think you know anytime relationships end and it's usually ends with somebody with

both people being hurt. I mean, like I, I cried so hard that like I burst a blood vessel in my eye. That's real cute by the way. Like it turns like part of my eye was like fluorescent pink for a while. It was nice. Sounds beautiful. Yeah. But we worked it out and I mean,'re not close now but we're still right

civil civil friendly right okay and had you did you have the shop at the time too no no no no no i the shop has been open for eight years wow that's great man eight years long time i know i'm not sure how it happened it feels like yesterday are you the only or is this the only you are you the only sex shop like in Baltimore oh god no there's tons of other really sex shops are you tight with everybody no I mean and and not for any particular reason I just don't know any of the other owners well that's not completely true like um chain desires is a really awesome store that is primarily like kink and bdsm stuff and i'm friend friendly with them and we send each other customers um but the rest of the stores in baltimore are are more of the traditional kind of focus store and so just your mom and pop sex

shop traditional right like with you know booths or um oh yeah is that like down by the block yeah i mean i'm asking for yeah for a friend yeah yeah more like a block block style gotcha kind of stores and honestly like there's definitely people who come into our store here which is more of like a boutiquey like kind of store. And also you said like the educational part too. Right, exactly. You want to know about Benoit balls? We'll explain them. Exactly.

And some people don't want that, right? So there definitely are people who sometimes come in our store and they're like, where are the booths? I'm like, we don't have them. They're like, where's the movies? I'm sorry, we don't have them. Where are the magazines? Don't have those either.

I'm really sorry. Did you ever have any of that stuff? There was a time when we had movies, but there's a thing it's called the internet yeah um and hold on let me write this down and so that sort of made carrying dvds obsolete yeah for us it makes sense for other stores and it does it i feel like i can't imagine anybody who goes and buys yeah dvds now people do i mean we have people that come in here looking for them. Really? But the problem is that we would never buy them in the volume that would enable us to get the kind of prices where we could sell them at a reasonable cost.

So like our DVDs, when we were selling them, were like $45 to $75. Nobody wants to pay that when you can go online online and get porn for like $10 or free. Don't get your porn for free if you like porn. Oh, for the listeners at home, she pointed to me with her index finger as she said it. And then she pointed to a gun. Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. Exactly. People work hard. That's hard work making porn and it should be selling ads it's just their chain it's like spotify but the actors don't get any of that yeah well but they they get paid i know they get paid up front yeah well no they do get paid up front but the bottom line is if it's a stolen clip site right um like just like any other form of of media right so if somebody's like if it's a

torrent site right um no it's one of those where you just stream it right which is fine if it's actually like and it's like mostly like amateur porn uh whatnot i don't know it's uh i've never been to one of these sites but uh from what I've heard from Josh and other people. I read an article in New York Times about it, and that's my information. And I don't respect the liberal media. The liberal scum, so you can't trust them. There's really great places you can go to pay for clips

or to pay by the month. And that way, if you're doing that, there's a better likelihood that it's not pirated and there's a better likelihood that the um that the people who are performing are making a decent income because one of the things that the internet has done is with there being so much volume of porn available it's basic economics right like there's like a ton of porn out there so the performers um are getting paid less uh than they used to to do more work yeah that's why they're all doing those uh

like not clip sites but the uh cam sites yeah all that stuff yeah the web cams yeah yeah uh one of one of amanda's friends that she met while she was in chile uh lives in canada and came down to visit for a little bit and she was telling us how she'll go chile uh lives in canada and came down to visit for a little bit and she was telling us how she'll go on reddit meet a couple fellas and be like hey i'll do a cam show and they just pay her directly and she'll like masturbate while her boyfriend's in the other room like wow that's fucking crazy yeah i've found this cool thing at the trade show i was at the other day it's this new thing by Fleshlight and it's a vibrator

that's insertable, right? So somebody can either run their hands on it or put it in their vagina and the muscular contractions on that are then sent to another device that's like a

masturbation sleeve for a penis. So that's on and like that person's getting the feedback from the vibrator. Wow. That's going to really change long distance relationships, I think. It's like, honey, I'm going to work.

Okay. And they both put their sleeves up. Right, exactly. As he's driving away. Oh, God. It just crashes. Let's rethink how we use these also changes cam shows yeah

so that people can control the thing and pay a little extra vice versa yeah this girl she had it figured out too her and her friend the same thing they went on reddit they're like hey we're trying to take a road trip to so and whatever place. And we need gas money.

We'll send you topless pictures along the way if you send us money. Fantastic. And that's what they did. And they never took pictures of their faces. And these guys were like, okay, we'll give you 50 bucks per picture. So in a way. And that just paid for their trip. In a way, I'm kind of helping this whole thing and trying to do away with the porn industry as a whole.

Exactly. It's the sharing industry as a whole. Exactly. It's the sharing economy. Yeah. Thank you. You're the lubed up. I'm the Malcolm Gladwell of our generation. I was going to say the lubed up guiding hand of the market or whatever it is. What is it?

Like the free hand or whatever. You know what I'm talking about? No. Oh, there's something. Dirty though. Yeah, that's true. What is it? A lubed up hand?

Well, lubed up was my way of saying it. Was your aim screening? Lubed up lax boy? 2K2. Yeah, that was me. That was me. Okay, so circling back to the people that come in that are like, hey, bro, that type of thing.

Name names. Just out all of them. What percentage of your clientele is that it's small small yeah do you have a lot of repeat customers uh-huh when 50 because it's got to be all like word of mouth i guess because you know well it's word of mouth and also like the way that the the way that media works these days like it's not um advertising and print is less there's less bang for your buck than there used to be. We advertise one place in print. City paper? City paper, yeah.

Right. And have, and that works for us. But otherwise, we're relying on word of mouth and social media. Oh, so you do have a social media presence?

Yeah. Cool. Facebook? Tweeters? Tweeters. Lots of tweeters. Instagram? Instagram.

I'm working on my Instagram game. It's not that good. Oh, you can do it. What's the sugar Twitter handle? At Sugar Jack. Okay. J-A-C-Q. Nice.

Nice. When Fifty Shades of Grey came out, that was a research mission for you, right? Didn't you go to see it just to see what they're using? For sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I read all three books for the same reasonhuh did you see an uptick in people buying stuff or anything a whole lot really and i actually was interested like the the books were a huge huge thing in sales um like there was one toy that we actually um it there was a

national shortage of benoit balls wow and yeah you mentioned benoit balls yeah yeah and so that was they're hot right now they're hot um but that those weren't even in the movie um which i thought was interesting they're in the book though they're in the book um did they have merchandise like get your official 50 shades of gray benoit eventually el james did um license with um love, which is a really good British toy manufacturer. And they make good stuff at a really accessible price point, which is nice. Nice. So, yeah, there's an entire Fifty Shades of Grey line, and we do carry some of it.

Cool. Often when people are buying it, they don't even realize it's Fifty Shades because in our store, we don't have the boxes on display. Right. So they'll be like, this is a nice butt plug and i'm like why yes it is and that was it that was a choice to just not have the box yeah um often stores like ours don't have boxes on display um when they first started doing that they would um some of the other stores that certainly like a lot of the model the way our store is set up i didn't think of on my own um other stores have been doing it like that and a lot of the packaging um still a lot of the packaging is like deeply misogynist and racist um and oh yeah um and um how's how's

that well first of all i think it's on a very basic level. It's racist when all of the people that you see on the packages are white. And so like that, that's the first problem. Second of all, the words that they'll use like around describing a toy that happens to have a certain color will be really disturbing to me. Like the copy, like the marketing copy that's like on the box, it's just, and also like sometimes a lot of stuff around,

there's a lot of fetishization of certain ethnicities. And so like we won't, there's products I've sold that i would i wouldn't even in addition to not having the package on display i would take the packaging away i'm like i can't hand this to somebody in good conscience that's really interesting um and obviously i would try to look for a similar product that didn't have that issues because I would prefer to not support those manufacturers but there are times where I will um if it's like the only one or if it's the only one or if it's a really good quality product for the price because I want to always make sure that um people have access to toys and that's a class issue as well so obviously you know

if you're poor enough you're not spending even five dollars on a sex toy but if you've got a little bit of extra cash and you can afford ten dollars on a toy i want to have something for you um that's awesome good yeah but so that's the other reason like i mean we're a 60 african-american city i'm sure as hell not going to have a store that's like full of white bodies right yeah that's creepy what uh when you say the way you set up your uh the way you set up the shop is there a certain way to do it because like there's certain things that i know like grocery stores they'll put flowers and their vegetables up front because subconsciously you think it's fresh do you have the benoit balls up front like

oh this is fresh this is like is there a way like to do it like psychologically or well i mean there's everybody does that part differently i do try to put the books close to the front so if somebody comes in and they're nervous they have a place to go okay so they can just detour real quickly you guys sell the bible and part of the reason i do that is the first time that i walked into a sex positive sex toy store, I turned bright red. Was this Babeland? It was Babeland. And like I was terrified, like bright red.

I'm probably turning red right now even just thinking about it. And I went over to the books and like I had to stand at the books and like pretend I was reading a book for like 15 minutes before I could even like look at the rest of the story. I feel like the books are trouble too though because you're like I'm just reading double anal like you're not really saving yourself too much but I guess it is a nice well it depends on what book you're reading too like are you reading the book that's like um when your sex drives don't match right or did you pick up um the ultimate guide to anal sex for the ultimate ultimate guy yeah you should get some like dummies

books like so you've wandered into a sex store right okay um exactly what do we do next yeah yeah uh okay all right um what was god what was my next question alex yeah so so what was that embarrassment well where was that yeah yeah yeah i, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. What brought you there in the first place? Well, I had been in one other sex toy store that was more of the traditional kind. And I was in there for about 30 seconds. And I looked at my boyfriend at the time. And I was like, I'm out later. Interesting.

And then I worked at a video video store they used to have those um and we had a porn section in there um and you know that was whatever it was always great um but i think i was just i don't even know what all of it was like i've always been somebody who's like comfortable with my sexuality but also come from a pretty religious background um and so was there a bit of reservation there probably like yeah some of that are like shame or like am i supposed to be doing this kind of thing and then also i think that there was like probably an extra layer of you shouldn't be feeling weird about this why are you feeling why are you feeling weird about this you shouldn't be feeling weird about this why you know exactly let me check out the books

and then pop the blood vessel in your eye so religious background yeah pretty religious my dad's a pastor oh wow okay how are you guys now are you guys cool yeah we're cool yeah yeah i mean it's not like he's a pastor. Oh, wow. Okay. How are you guys now? Are you guys cool? Yeah, we're cool. Yeah? Yeah. I mean, it's not like he's a Baptist pastor. He's a Lutheran. Okay.

And I went to a Lutheran college. I mean, like... Are Lutherans a little bit more liberal and... Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends on the kind.

There's several different kinds of Lutherans, but he's an ELCA pastor, which is Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. They're the largest branch and they're pretty mainstream. So a little more progressive. Yeah. Like, you know, like they ordain women. Oh, good. But did it take him some time to get used to it or was there...

Well, I mean, I started working at Planned Parenthood right after I graduated from college. So, and then it was, that was in 94 and I didn't open the store. Like, and I started working at Babeland in 2000. That wasn't... But he was privy to what your trajectory was with all this stuff. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I was in college, we had the Lutheran college that I went to, St. Olaf in Northville, Minnesota.

Shout out to her. I heard that Minnesota right there. And they, at the time, and I hope this is no longer the case, um, didn't a lot, the health,

the health services didn't distribute condoms. Um, so some folks started a thing where different people would like have condoms available for giveaway in their room and so i joined that and um and when that happened and then there was like a big thing there was a big fuss about it and we ended up in the minneapolis star tribune and just about condoms like yeah these wretched kids giving away condoms in their dorms it was 1989 um and um right right it's just so weird to think about now like i know right yeah that's also have you heard of hiv i mean like for real

like back then you got hiv you usually died yeah so it wasn't yeah that's prime time yeah exactly so you ended up in the star tribune which is the minneapolis paper and after that my dad started calling me the condom queen condom queen which is funny because i was in a loving way yeah exactly i had thanksgiving dinner i was my daughter she's a condom queen queen passed the potatoes i wasn't one of the organizers i was just like a little cog but condom queen cog were there any uh ramifications to that or we didn't get in trouble or anything but there was just some some attention it was just like look at these naughty kids yeah no it was more like what's wrong i i mean also like what's up with the administration like these kids are trying to

practice safer sex oh that's good what's up with that right but lutherans come from a long history i mean like we lutherans originated with a dude who thought the Catholic Church was doing stuff wrong. Martin Luther, right? Yep. And so he nailed his list of these are the things you're doing wrong to the door. Right. And Lutherans tend to come from a place of questions are good. Okay.

So yeah, so there's some room there. It's like, yeah, my daughter's a business owner. It's a sex shop, but she's a business owner. Yeah, we did have a little thing because they put in the Christmas letter one year that I owned a gift and bookstore and I'm still a little pissed about that. Oh, no, what?

Gift and bookstore. I'm like, what is it, a fucking Hallmark? I mean, nothing against Hallmark, but like- No, shots fired. For real? Hallmark, your cards are shit. I want to see. Rather eat California tortilla than read your cards.

The CEO of Hallmark is listening. He's like like god damn it's not again a condom queen so you i feel like but correct me if i'm wrong like you've kind of toyed with the toyed pardon the pun buddy uh you know i there was a year a few years ago there was a thing with this store that was more like just accessibility but have you always kind of had this you know like where was the Planned Parenthood that you worked at

I worked at Planned Parenthood of Minnesota South Dakota and St. Paul and I worked at Planned Parenthood of Connecticut and I worked at Planned Parenthood of Maryland so all over the place. Yeah. And was there, was there ever, uh, any kind of, I don't know, like turmoil or. Oh yeah. So, so you've kind of been through that for a while now and I don't know if you still experience that. Well, I mean, owning a sex toy store is a hell of a lot safer than, um, running an abortion clinic. I mean, let's be real like that. People

still walk through picket lines every day and the rights to access to abortion are quickly being eroded in significant ways across the country like it's not okay and you saw that face on um the clinic that i worked at in saint paul before i worked there on had been burned to the ground on an ash wednesday like 10 or 15 years before i worked there the clinic i managed in annapolis um was in a different location because its first location had been torched in annapolis jesus and while i worked at planned parenthood of minnesota south dakota somebody set our brainerd clinic on fire which by the way did not provide abortion services um three three separate venues yeah burned down uh the yeah the brainer clinic was burned down

yeah yeah they're terrible the clinic in saint paul was rebuilt in the same location but by that third time that you've been through it i mean well i wasn't there oh you weren't there i wasn't there for the for the two that happened yeah i was working for Planned Parenthood when the Brainerd Clinic was burned. Oh, and they tried to burn our South Dakota clinic too. They tried to. You were just aware of their plans? No, they tried. Diesel fuel's not actually very flammable.

Seriously, the store was like, ha, nice try. Should have gone unleaded, idiot. Should have went to St. Paul, seen what they did. Learned from the best. You dopes. Come on. Communicate. Do you run into any of that like on a lower scale here? let it idiot went to saint paul seeing what they did learn from the best dopes come on communicate

do you run into any of that like on a lower scale here i mean anytime anybody's dealing with sex because there's so much stuff around that um you run into that kind of thing i mean like we deal with um there's banks that won't take our money. There's credit card processors that won't process our credit cards. And all of the ones that do charge us extra. That should be illegal. How can they do that? It's totally legal. You can discriminate against people as long as it's not a protected class, right?

So I could legally say that I won't sell anything to somebody who's wearing checkered socks. You know, like that's completely legal. Check my socks to see if that was a dig at one of those. You know, or I could say that I won't sell to somebody for, you know, like for whatever reason, as long as it's not religion, sexual orientation in this state. Right. There's most states you can discriminate on sexual orientation. Damn. Man, banks not taking your money.

That's crazy. Yeah. It's like what they're going through in Colorado. Exactly. All the pot shops and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. They just have a ton of cash stacking up.

Yeah. And they have the same problem with credit cards too. Yeah. I bet. I bet. What's your highest selling item here? Right now it's the WeVibe 4 Plus. And that's for your Nintendo Wii? Exactly. Almost. So the WeVibe is kind of shaped like a C, like a small C. One part of it goes on

the G-Spar, one part of it goes on the clitoris. The part that goes inside the vagina is flat on the part that's exposed in the vagina and it's very thin and it's designed to be worn during vaginal intercourse um so everybody's getting vibration it has a remote control so you can change the pattern and change the intensity of the pattern while you're wearing it it's like a massage chair yeah it has internal massage from brookston except it also has bluetooth um and you can control it with your smartphone you can design um vibration patterns with your smartphone and with your permission somebody else who has the app on their phone can control your vibrator from anywhere in the world jesus i'm picturing like the fitbit do you know what those are no yeah

well the fitbit it's the thing those are? No Well the Fitbit It's the thing that you wear So when you go running Oh right You track your time Yeah Is that where this is going to go eventually? Like last night we did like 35

Which is good But you know Jack is it bouncing off? I'm totally bouncing Because I'm excited Because there's a new product We're getting in And remember we were talking about

Benoit balls right? So Benoit balls are used One of the beautiful things that they do is they help people with vaginas work on their PC muscles, the muscles along their pelvic floor. Those muscles are an important part of orgasm. They're also an important part of not peeing on yourself, keeping your vagina healthy and tight, and keeping your uterus where it's supposed to be. And there's different levels of weights, too. You can start out with a smaller amount, then you get stronger and stronger. And then you can break a cucumber in half.

Exactly. Right. It's just like going to the gym. But there's a new one that's coming on the market shortly that comes with an app and you can see how strong your contraction is on the app. It's got like a little thing that goes, and you can like see. So you can see all that stuff online and like track your progress.

You can track your progress. Exactly. Amazing. It's like a Fitbit for your vagina. It's going to become an Olympic sport. Yeah. It's good. Technology's merging.

I did see one of those BuzzFeed videos where it was a bunch of women trying to carry something. It was like a string attached to their... And it had a weight on it or something? I guess so, yeah. And they were using some kind of product to see if it could improve over time. Yeah. I want to find that BuzzFeed video. It's kind of, yeah.

It's in there. It's in there. We'll post it. There's the strength. We'll post it on iTunes. Yeah. We'll post it on iTunes. Yeah, go check it out, guys.

Go check it out. BuzzFeed. Okay. So what was it called? What was the most popular thing? The Wii. The Wii Vibe 4 Plus. Wii Vibe 4 Plus.

How do you find out about this stuff? Are there conventions do like salesmen come in like have i got a vibrator for you the bros come in like look at this bullshit hey i want to sell you something yeah this shit's terrible all right no if people come in the store trying to sell me something they get like the minnesota cold death stare which is like terrifying for people on the east coast because they're used to like getting yelled at and we just like get quiet and like just kind of shame them yeah it's terrifying for people on the East Coast because they're used to getting yelled at. And we just get quiet. Just kind of shame them.

Yeah. It's terrifying, apparently. Sure. So yeah, there are conventions and trade shows. And I actually just got back from a trade show last week. Did you find anything good? I did. And I got in a box of stuff today we're very excited about.

All right. Oh, also, too, circling back to like, this is a business. The show we did last month, you guys were talking about how like, what's going on in California at the docks. They did like a slowdown with the union. This is crazy to me. And it's affecting all of the sex toy industry. It's like, yeah, the docks are slowing down so we don't have the fucking lube coming in and we're getting this bullshit lube from europe or whatever it was

wow let's really so can you talk about that a little bit well actually they they they fixed the contract so the slowdown's over but now there's all the backlog right um that's coming through and then there's also something like also there's a uh in china the chinese new year is apparently a big deal um and so that affects production because people don't work for a period of time around that it's like a whole week um yeah so it's all of that because most sex toys these days are made in china and um or if they're not if the toy itself's not made in China, often the packaging is made in China. Okay. And so it all has to come through the dock. Yeah, through California.

Yeah. Mainly the packaging comes from China. Well, China, you know, what's going on with all the racism and the misogyny on the packaging? Yeah. We're trying to sell good products. Unfortunately, I think it's us who tell them

what is to be on the package. Well, you know, who's to say really? It's not the blame game. Yeah, USA. That's not what we're doing. We're not here to blame, but USA, USA. So how did that affect you? Did you have to get like subpar products or were you just waiting a lot longer?

No, it wasn't really that bad. I mean, for us, sometimes we'd be like, there's like a products that like i haven't been able to get for like months um but overall like they were able to get in okay some stuff i mean it was we were lucky it was a slowdown not a shutdown right right right right yeah it's so interesting to think about like that a sex shop like it's just a business and same stuff happens like shit's not coming in the docks we don't have a product you know right it's like the wire season two you know that's what it was i had to talk to marlo get this shit going yeah and that was apparently a really cold season oh season two yeah yeah you haven't seen it no i mean just the people who are working oh yeah i got you got you got your point oh yeah that had to be um what is uh what's the most surprising customer you've had?

Or are you of the mind that you're pretty much open to everybody? One of the things I really love about this job is there was a time in my life where I thought I knew everything there was to know about sex. And I realized that I will never, ever know everything there is to know about sex and I'm constantly learning from our customers. Is that because you think every is like everybody's just unique in their own way or there's just so much snowflakes. Yeah. Yeah. No, we are.

We're all precious precious. The sexual snowflakes. Hey guys. But you know, there's somebody somewhere like who has a fetish about something um that has never crossed my mind sure um and they have a website and a community and all that right and it's awesome so they'll come in and ask you a question about it and be like what are you doing high heels like or something like that like it just blows you away right exactly and then it's

my job to like sit there and like one of the things we do a lot here is we call it hacking toys um we don't actually hack the toy but the toy will be like for this purpose and we'll be like oh but you can use it this way or this way or if you like tie this to it you can do that with it and you know like like always like i was just talking about the weave vibe for well another way you can use that is you can wear it underneath a harness and so then the person who's wearing the harness is getting g-spot and clitoral stimulation at the same time that they're wearing a harness and penetrating their partner um and so you know like that what's the harness a harness is a way to attach attach a dildo like on top of a clitoris to be able to penetrate somebody. But also we sell harnesses that are designed for folks with penises because sometimes those could be used for double penetration.

But also they can be used for. Talk about hacking. Talk about hacking. Guess who has two penises all of a sudden exactly I'm the king no longer

insecure about anything else exactly and one of them can be whatever the hell size you want and you can change the size

right I would get the smallest one possible and be like look at this thing I'm crushing this thing can't compete with

the real thing baby that would be a good thing to do is get your girlfriend or I'm crushing this thing. Kick a beat with the real thing, baby. Exactly. That would be a good thing to do is get your girlfriend or significant other any of the smallest products you have here. Like the battery's terrible too. It barely vibrates. You're just sitting in the corner just like, hey, I'm available.

I'm all natural. I'm all natural. I don't trust technology. You might need a partner. Go organic. Yeah, exactly. I'm all natural. I'm all natural. I don't trust technology. You might need a partner. Go organic. Yeah, exactly. Go organic, baby. Are there any practical uses for any of these?

Well, I mean, the one that I was just talking about. What do you do? Like a paperweight? Eating your spaghetti with it? Well, everything is a paperweight. But anyway. Well, the other thing you can use a harness for that's designed for someone with a penis is if somebody has erectile dysfunction. Okay.

And there's lots of reasons that people can't if somebody has erectile dysfunction, um, then they, and there's lots of reasons that people can't take medication for erectile dysfunction. Um, lots of health conditions that are contraindicated. Yeah, exactly. Or if you're a Scientologist,

you, you anti, uh, anti pills, right? Is that just anti, um, psychotropic medication?

Uh, what about like John Troll to his, his kid? I think he can get it. I think that was a psychological thing. Let's move on. But did you see Going Clear? Because that was fucking awesome. I haven't seen it yet. Maybe I'll watch it tonight.

And while I don't eat popcorn, I can't do that anymore. What else can't you do? Can't wear a harness, right? Not on my mouth for a while. No more mouth harnesses. No, dude. I tried to eat sushi and General Tso's shrimp and rice. Rice and braces do not fucking mix.

Oh, you already tried that today? Yeah. It was like as soon as I was done because I didn't eat breakfast. Soup? I know, but I wanted something hearty because I knew my teeth were going to be so pissed. So pissed. I was going to say in so pain. They're going to look good, though.

Yeah, two years? Two years. We'll do another podcast in two years in this room, and I'll show off my new harness and my new teeth. It'll be quite the day. It'll be like the, what is it called? The We Vibe. We Vibe, like seven plus.

Yeah, exactly. By that point. That'll be a great victory. It's going to make the four plus look like a turd.d it's true that's what they say that's what they say you know the four they're on the four like literally it's the we vibe four because there was a we vibe one yeah there was a we vibe so it's like a two and a three and a four and there was a four and now there's a four plus yeah i'm picturing it like the iphone like the commercials like the next big thing is here and it's the vibe and it just vibrates across like a stage.

Totally like that. That's incredible. So what is, do you plan on opening another shop? Are you content with just this one? Is it too crazy already maintaining all this? I don't know what the future holds, but I am never content.

Right. I always feel like if you're not growing you're dying small so uh what's the plan no plan as of yet just kind of maintain yet just um and also like one of the things i mean i'm my my big plan for the year is to upgrade our website okay by the way yeah um well it's seven years old. And then Webland, that's like... Ancient. A million years old. It's like Stone Age.

It's like E-bomb's world. We'll be doing that in the next couple weeks, the next couple months. Cool. And what is that? Sugar... Sugartheshop.com. Nice.

Sugar the Shop. Before we let you go, any crazy stories that have happened over the years? People coming in, like just anything weird or silly off the top of your head where you're like, wow, that was a crazy day. Anything there? Or is every day just a unique snowflake? I think I'm going to go with snowflake.

Okay. It's just a business. It's just, yeah. No, I mean, it's a business where we get to interact with people and they actually like they people walk through the door and they honestly have so much courage because they'll walk up to a stranger and be like, so and then spill really intimate details about their sex life. Yeah. And that they probably haven't told anyone else. Right. Exactly. And not even their doctor.

I mean, although sometimes we I mean, we do get referrals from doctors, but. Wow. But, you know like what a great doctor like uh actually my heart i need to like go to sugar sugar get a harness exactly exactly yeah so i'm just really grateful yeah and your staff is super nice and like supportive very sweet i work with awesome people yeah you'm really lucky. I forget her name. Was it E.T.? Yes.

She told me about Benoit Balls the last time I was here. And she was very informative and nice. And she's like, oh, then you can move up weights and talk to your girlfriend. She'll like it. This is the one I use and all this stuff. I was like, okay. I'll let her know. She's awesome.

Yeah. So it was very cool. So, Jack, thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for having me. I think I'm opening the show on the 6th. So I'll see you again and I'll talk about kink. I got to figure out something to talk about. Maybe I'll buy a harness and try to get a story going before the 6th.

Hey, we're at the show. Yeah. Why not? Look at this thing. I'm away from your braces. If you're embarrassed about them or own them. Yeah. They should sell those at orthodontic

offices. There's probably a braces kink website. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. You should look into that. Joshua! I checked your history. How come you're on the cover page of BraceFace.com? What are you doing? Get off there. You're supposed

to be a sexual snowflake. What's this cam site? Take that camera down. Okay, so it was sugartheshop.com and then it's sugarjack as the Twitter and then there's a Facebook page. And Instagram is getting better every day. Instagram is at sugarjack too. It's going to happen.

And when are you guys open? Pretty much every day? We're open seven days a week. Sundays 11 to 6, Mondays 11 to 7, Tuesday through Thursday 11 to 9, And when are you guys open? Pretty much every day? We're open seven days a week. Sundays 11 to 6, Mondays 11 to 7, Tuesday through Thursday 11 to 9, and Saturday and Sunday 11 to 11. Nice. And you do classes and all that stuff too, right? We do.

You got the vagina pillow out there and all that stuff, right? I love the vagina pillow. And that just has all the anatomy and all this stuff. Exactly. And you're like, hey, this is labia, right? Yep. Yeah. See, I've taken a class. I get it.

I get it. So people can go to those classes. Alex, we got Chuckle Storm happening. Yeah, we do. Next week. April 15th. When is this coming out? It's going to be out on Monday.

So yeah. Yeah. There you go. Wednesday. This week. Be there. Tax day. Tax day.

IRS agent will be there to help you out. If need be. And there'll be stand up and sketches and but more importantly an irs agent an irs agent that's the autobar 8 p.m um anything else for you alex no just uh you know um california tortilla you know come and find me i stand by my statements and hallmark and Twitter handle, right? Hallmark and whoever. Go at Gays and Cakes or whatever. Yeah, Duff Goldman, if you want to come at me, come at me. I'm starting beef on Dig Sesh.

I like this. I like this. I love you. I've got to figure out how to get that on for these mobile things. Sure. So go to digressionsessions.com slash calendar that has all of our

upcoming dates. I'll be at Chuckle Storm and then I'll be at Magoobies the 23rd through the 26th opening for Greer Barnes. Whoa.

That should be fun and hopefully I'll be writing a bunch of jokes about braces because that's going to be fun to deal with on stage and follow me

on twitter at josh gadern i'm also on instagram you know if you need help jack let me know i'll help you out on the instagram that's sweet alex i haven't posted in months yep and uh check out the rest of thundergrunt.com our lovely label here in baltimore podcast network and thanks everybody for listening bye bye we love you all right be better robot records oh yeah Thank you. I'm out.