Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-03T04:02:54.040Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Shopping for Sex

Situating Work in Soho’s Sex Shops

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2019

Melissa Tyler
Affiliation:
University of Essex
Get access

Summary

Michael, one of the many participants in the study on which this book is based, described how, on a rainy Monday morning, he had spent time explaining the relative merits of a small selection of soft-porn DVDs to a recently widowed elderly man who had never been in a sex shop before but who was in need of some ‘company’; he had been asked to model a pair of leather chaps for a gay couple looking for party wear (finding out only some way into his modelling session that the party they had planned was for three, if Michael was interested?); and he had been invited to try on the newly delivered store-branded T-shirts designed to convey the sexual eclecticism and corporate identity of the store in which he worked on Soho’s Old Compton Street, known as the United Kingdom’s ‘gay capital’.1 And a ‘local’ (the term used to describe regular customers rather than people who necessarily live or work in Soho) had asked Michael if he would let him have the socks he was wearing, as the customer said he wanted to smell them while he masturbated. For reasons unknown to me at the time, and seemingly to Michael, this was not an uncommon request.

Type
Chapter
Information
Soho at Work
Pleasure and Place in Contemporary London
, pp. 72 - 116
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Shopping for Sex
  • Melissa Tyler, University of Essex
  • Book: Soho at Work
  • Online publication: 05 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316875704.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Shopping for Sex
  • Melissa Tyler, University of Essex
  • Book: Soho at Work
  • Online publication: 05 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316875704.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Shopping for Sex
  • Melissa Tyler, University of Essex
  • Book: Soho at Work
  • Online publication: 05 December 2019
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316875704.004
Available formats
×