By Jen Lahey
Imagine a woman in her mid-twenties. She has worked up the nerve to attend a workshop on oral sex. She arrives, shakes off her coat and looks furtively around the room, trying not to make eye contact. Suddenly, her eye catches someone over in the far corner. She is horrified to realize that it’s her mother.
An Ottawa woman recently had this nightmare-ish experience, says sex educator Colette Coughlin. After the shock wore off, daughter and mother each asked the other if she should leave and let the other one stay. Each was worried about making the other uncomfortable.
“Eventually, this woman and her mother worked it out, and they both stayed in the workshop,” Coughlin says. “I think she finds it funny now, just maybe not at the time.”
Potentially embarrassing run-ins aside, the popularity of workshops designed to improve clients’ sex lives is growing, says Shelley Taylor, who runs Venus Envy, a sex shop for women.
“The ‘Going Down Guide to Fellatio’ workshop is the most popular sell-out,” Taylor says.
As well as being the owner of a sex shop, Taylor heads up some workshops offered at her store.
Workshops include erotic drawing, oral sex, the use of sex toys and how to find the G-spot. After trying out one workshop, customers often sign up for more.
“Once people realize that we’re for real and have their best interests at heart, they get onboard,” Taylor says. “We always say it’s nice to know more and have fun with sexuality.”
According to Taylor and Coughlin, workshop attendees vary in age, although Coughlin says the crowd for her workshops tends to be older, with many clients in their forties and fifties.
The workshops are most popular with groups of women, who make attending the workshop a “girls night out” sort of event.
“More women than men use it as a fun night out. Although once a group of straight men came to a cunnilingus workshop, and they were very supportive of one another,” Taylor says.
Regardless of gender, participants are showing up with the goal of acquiring new skills and ideas that will lead to more fulfilling relationships with their significant others.
At her recent workshop in erotic drawing, Coughlin drew a crowd of only two. Participants Lise Couture, 64, and Darlene Smith, 31, have both come to partake in the artistic explorations being offered in Venus Envy’s small store space.
Three walls are lined with volumes of sex-related manuals, guides and literature. The fourth wall is a mosaic of brightly coloured sex toys, ranging from the subtle to the outlandish.
This workshop is not designed to turn its participants into great artists. Instead, it aims to get the participants to question their own assumptions and beliefs about the human body.
Over the course of an hour and a half, Coughlin has the women sketch drawings of how they perceive their own naked bodies, an image of what their partner looks like, or alternately what the women themselves would look like if they were male.
Coughlin asks them to draw a picture of the first two images, connecting them somehow.
Holding up a picture of a hand aggressively grabbing a derriere, Smith explains that it’s a picture of her and her current boyfriend.
“That’s sort of how we met,” she says, laughing. “He came and grabbed me. It was a rather unexpected move. I don’t know about romantic, but it worked.”
As the grand finale to the workshop, Coughlin whips out two file folders.
One contains gentle, sepia-toned images copied from a book of photographs of sexual positions. The second contains images of very explicit, pornographic sexual encounters Coughlin has downloaded from the Internet. The women carefully sift through the images and choose ones they want to draw.
Both women involved in the workshop agree that it will improve their sex lives, and in turn their relationships. To Coughlin, it’s a no-brainer. She says using drawing to change perceptions of the human body can do wonders for her clients’ sense of self.
“I think if you better your relationship with yourself, you better your relationship with your partner. If you get more comfortable with your body and your sexuality, it makes it better for whoever you’re with,” she says.
“Drawing changes your perspective. Instead of it being a mind thing, it becomes a body thing. You’re using your hands and your eyes and your senses to draw,” Coughlin says.
“(Coming to workshops) really helps relationships.”
Smith agrees. She says workshops like this one serve to enhance her already healthy sex life.
“Sex is my favourite hobby, so I thought I’d draw it,” she says.
“I already like to draw. I found out I liked to draw naked people and I take it all into my relationship with me. My partner was actually the one who signed me up for this workshop.”
Couture says that participating in sex workshops has translated into big improvements in her relationship with her second husband.
“It does help my relationship a lot. Now I allow myself to look at my sexuality, to draw it, to learn about it, not just look fast and then hide,” she says.
The workshops have also turned out to be a hit with tourists. Taylor advertises her store and the workshops in local Ottawa hotels.
She says there is a very simple reason why tourists have latched onto the notion of sex ed for adults in the nation’s capital: people feel more comfortable browsing in a sex store or taking a risque workshop when they’re not in their hometown where they might run into someone they know.
The public appetite for workshops has increased so much that Taylor recently renovated the upstairs of her store to create a new seminar space that seats 25. The newest workshop on offer?
One that provides participants with the know-how to ‘bump and grind’ — otherwise known as erotic dance.