The Montrose Center’s annual St. Patrick’s Day event raised more than $23,000 for LGBT homeless youth services — and we helped!
The Bringin’ in the Green Pleasure Kit was an opportunity to show gay men that Mystiq isn’t just ‘aware of’ them in a vague sense, nor are we tepidly ‘tolerating’ them— we LOVE gay men, and we’re committed to serving them better than anyone else in Texas.
Mystiq provided a Pleasure Kit for the BitG silent auction (sold for $275)
The event drew about 320 people, ultimately raising more than $23,000 for LGBTQ homeless youth services (proceeds went to Hatch Youth).
We’d like to extend a very special thanks to Lead Sponsors Glenn Dickson & Justin David Dickson for hosting the event at their home (which was lovely, spacious and warm — the perfect location), to Bob Burress & Tom Seymour for their work on the Host Committee and to Kent Loftin, Meleah Jones and the numerous hardworking, selfless volunteers from The Montrose Center, without whom there would have been no BitG, or at least not one worth having.
My objective
We at Mystiq believe that there are numerous communities/demographics that are poorly served by the one-size-fits-all, heteronormative, gender-binary-affirming sex-shop business model that currently prevails in Houston:
- radical, queer feminists
- married lesbians
- 2-bear, 1-otter, houseboy-couple triumvirates
- asexual cosplayers
- young women of color shopping for their first vibrators
- anyone/everyone who couldn’t be mistaken for Tom Hanks at 80 yards distance
In other words: if you aren’t a white, straight cisman between the ages of 30 and 60 (or trying to get one of them off), it’s easy to feel like an afterthought at some of the soulless, seedy sex shops around here (raise your hand if it’s the same where you live… I thought so).
So I reached out to Kent Loftin at The Montrose Center (natch) to ask about events and causes Mystiq could support and contribute to, in order to begin to get the Mystiq brand in front of the people we want to eventually bring into our stores! He told me about Bringin’ in the Green, the annual St. Patrick’s Day mixer and silent auction (in its 18th year, if I’m not mistaken), and I was thrilled! In doing some market research, I discovered that gay men often reported they didn’t necessarily feel welcome at, or embraced by, most of the ‘adult novelty’ retailers with whom they had done business.
The Bringin’ in the Green Pleasure Kit was an opportunity to show gay men* that Mystiq isn’t just ‘aware of’ them in some vague sense, nor are we tepidly ‘tolerating’ them— we LOVE gay men, and we’re committed to serving them better than anyone else in Texas.
*The event drew all kinds of wonderful folks, but is consciously and intentionally aimed at gay men 35-and-up, and the pleasure kit was meant to reflect that, as well as our commitment to reaching out to ALL sex-positive Texans (and Americans, as we grow).
Mystiq is, and will forever be, for everyone.
The winner, who generously bid $275, but wished to remain anonymous (100% fine with us — we get it), took home the first-ever Mystiq Pleasure Kit. There will be many, many more, but there will only ever be one first, and this was it.
The centerpiece of the kit (aside from the kit, itself: an eye-catching faux-leather Devine Toys Playchest — no longer in production… what one might call a ‘collector’s item’): The Prostate Rabbit from The Rabbit Co.
How’d we do?
Click the hyperlink or any of the three images above for a spreadsheet with individual images and descriptions of all of the items in the pleasure kit. It is set up so that anyone may comment on it, so if you have feedback — positive or negative — please leave it on the Google Sheet I’ve linked to, and I’ll be going over all that in preparation for our first store opening in about two months’ time…
The Sex-Positive Survey & the Mystiq outlook
Weighing in on the Pleasure Kit is just one way to get involved, as we try to tune into — and really hear — the wants and needs of sex-positive pleasure-seekers both in Houston and elsewhere in the country. We’re listening very closely to a wide swath of humanity.
Houston is the most diverse city in America. As a lifelong Houstonian, I’m proud of that, and I — along with my fellow employees here at Mystiq — intend to lean into it. Mystiq is for everyone!
Mystiq is for everyone!
And for us to be good at serving that many people with that many discrete, unique sets of desires, dislikes and peccadilloes, we need lots and lots of input, data, etc. Helping such a diverse, wide-ranging group realize their desires is a tall order — but with the smorgasbord of digital tools at my disposal, and my enthusiasm for understanding what gets people off and helping them to improve their sex lives… I think it’s doable. Ambitious, but doable.
We mean to create safe, nurturing, comfortable, non-judgmental sex-positive spaces in our retail storefronts, and in order to do that well (and not like everything else that exists out there), we need to know things! So if you’re inclined to do so, please consider filling out this 3-min survey (The Sexy Survey!), which would help us tremendously.
To take the survey, just click below here on the green silhouette of a monkey to jump right to the survey, and one survey respondent will be (randomly) selected to win a free Classic Rabbit vibrator (or a CalExotics Extension, if the winner prefers) when our first storefront opens at 2720 Southwest Freeway Houston, TX 77057 sometime in May.
Once again, we’d like to thank The Montrose Center — especially Kent Loftin and Meleah Jones — and the gracious hosts of Bringin’ in the Green 2018. We can’t wait for next year, and just wait… we’re going to put the ‘pleasure’ in ‘pleasure kit’ in 2019, I guarantee it…
