My Wife Wants Me to Spank Her: Tales from selling sex toys
I sold sex toys at a boutique store in a large city for ten years. I interacted with thousands of people, helping them with some of the most intimate parts of their lives. Here are some of my most memorable interactions and why they’ve stuck with me:

One of the weird things about selling sex toys is that you work in retail. But also you are a sex educator. Walking the line between worrying about your conversion rate while still making sure the customer gets what they need is definitely a struggle. Mostly I tried to just go with what the customer needed, hoping that if they felt like they were getting an authentic experience from me, the retail side of things would sort itself out. And it mostly did.
This particular story is one where the customer left without buying anything and I 100 percent didn’t care. At all. In fact, as he walked out the door I felt elated.
It was a quiet afternoon when a man in his 60’s walked up to me. Sixty year old men were not our most common customer so I was already intrigued. I asked him what I could help with and he leaned in close and said:
“My wife just told me she wants me to spank her. We’ve been married for 30 years and she’s never asked for anything like this before. What is going on? Why does she want me to do this? What do I do?”
He was legitimately scared and I could see why. When our partner asks us to do something new in the bedroom it can set off a wave of emotions: Do they not like what I’ve been doing? How long have they been feeling this way? What if I’m not good at it? What if everything changes? It’s a lot. Standing in front of me was someone who was still reeling with all of that.
The thing that was hardest for him to understand was why she would want to feel that sensation so after validating that this was big and new, we started off with that, talking about the lines between pleasure and pain and how blurring them can be fantastic. For some people. He also wanted to know how to go about it so we talked through some simple ideas for asking for consent, setting up the scene, checking in with her, positions, and more. A very basic primer. I made sure he knew he could come back to talk anytime.
Then it was on to implements. Leather, wood, plastic, thin, thick, furry, flexible, stiff… there were a lot of things to consider. I left him in front of a wall of various paddles, slappers, crops and other equipment and went off to help other customers. I knew that sometimes people just need time to think, touch, and imagine.
About 15 minutes later he came back up to me. I asked him if he’d made a decision and he said “Well, I hope this is ok but I thought about it and I think the thing I want to spank her with is a wooden hairbrush. It just feels right.” This darling man had not only accepted that his wife wanted him to spank her, he’d imagined the tool that would help him get most into the mood. He seemed cautiously excited about it, even.
I sent him off to the nearest corner store with a huge grin on my face. When it comes to trying something new with a partner, especially someone we’ve been with for awhile, even bringing it up can feel treacherous. But, we’ll never know until we try. May we all be as lucky as this woman. I hope she loved the hairbrush.