Australia- Sexpo event organiser David Ross’s life changed the day he was hit by a car. With his insurance payment the mechanic bought into a brothel.
“That wasn’t a career I wanted to be in long term,” he says. “Prostitution is more demeaning for men than it is for women, to be completely honest. I sold out of it and started doing PR for the adult industry.”
His association with the Club X adult entertainment chain led to the first Sexpo in 1996 in Melbourne. They did face some opposition at first.
“Originally we tried to book into the Melbourne Convention Centre and we were knocked back because there was an accounting seminar on there at the same time and it wasn’t appropriate,” Ross says.
“Clearly, accountants don’t have sex.”
Since then the show has grown from attracting 5000 people to about 60,000. It is a cornucopia of things sexual – “marital aids”, videos, onstage shows from male and female performers, lingerie, spa baths, even a breast-enlargement stand.
Ross says the great attraction for the public is being around like-minded people with a normal, healthy interest in sex.
“They think, ‘S—t, we’re not deviants after all, there’s other people like us,'” he says.
Intriguingly, there is also furniture for making love on. They’re not beanbags, are they?
“No, no, basically, it’s pieces of furniture shaped so that people can easily get into the required position,” Ross says.
“So you’re not getting the spring in your back or the head’s not scrunched up against the elbow pad.”
Sexpo will feature Penthouse Pets and adult porn stars such as Silvia Saint, who Ross says is “bigger than Texas” in the industry. For the ladies, Queensland strip troupe Bad Boys will also hit the stage.
Reading the Sexpo literature is an experience in itself. I had no idea that siderodromophilia was the arousal from riding in trains. Or that most turkeys and giraffes are bisexual. Or that, as exhibitors Polestars Australia claim, “There is a pole dancer in every woman, waiting to get out.”
Does Miss Nude Australia 2004 Arianna Starr, [pictured] who will co-host and strip at Sexpo, think that inside every woman is a pole dancer waiting to get out?
“I’m not sure about a pole dancer,” she says. “Pole dancing can be quite hard. It takes a lot of strength and conditioning and muscles you’ve never used before. I think there is a showgirl – there’d be a dancer, an entertainer, a bit of sensuality – in every woman. I’m not sure about a pole dancer.”
What about furniture to make love on? Any recommendations?
“I think they’ve got the swing, the ‘sexual swing’, a swing that has stirrups and hooks and loops. It’s like the any-position swing. I haven’t tried it out myself, but it looks like a lot of fun.”