But the show, it turns out, was rather tame. Exhibitors were given a set of printed rules forbidding actual nudity and even the depiction of penetration. Compared to what used to be available in nearby Times Square, this stuff seemed positively apple pie. One of the more puzzling no-no's on the list forbade customers from opening their purchases until leaving the convention hall. The thinking seems to be that it's better to be hailing a cab on 10th Avenue with your newly bought cat-o'-nine-tails than showing it around to other sadists inside the building. In any event, the sanitization worked -- the show had the dreary Willy Loman ambience of a convention of dental supply manufacturers. Jackie Henderson, an erotic artist who has attended the much raunchier Erotica shows in London, where visitors dress up in high-fetish style and naughty bits are everywhere in evidence, complained, "There's hardly a dildo in sight. There's too much business here and not enough fun."

The theme of the show, emblazoned on banners and T-shirts, was the Socratic query, "What Is Sexy?" It wasn't clear whether exhibitors like AT&T Cellular and the various plastic surgeons were intended to provide an answer or whether visitors -- who paid $30 for admission -- were meant to ponder this weighty question with colleagues around the water cooler for weeks to come. Chances are, if you were one of the loner males thronging around the stage during the lingerie fashion show, you know what is sexy. Sexy is getting to look, maybe touch, but not having to talk much afterward. One chief source of amusement was to watch as one barely dressed, pneumatic-chested porn actress waded through a cluster of my fellow testosterone factories. (Take a wild guess about the conversation skills of the burly sensualist with a shirt that read, "Proud Owner of a Nine-Inch Cock.") With her formidable breasts acting like the prow of an icebreaker, she easily parted the sweaty mass of guys who, with their hands stuffed in their pockets, struggled mightily not to gawk openly, but instead sneaked rapid-fire peeks as they studied their shoes or the intricacies of the glass ceiling. For some of these guys, no doubt, it was like seeing their fantasy girlfriend out on a date with another few hundred men: They were embarrassed and maybe a little hurt. After all, sex goddesses aren't supposed to traffic among mortals.

Aside from these tepid carnal visitations, this trade show -- which will be moving on to South Beach in Miami and Las Vegas -- was mostly about trade. Jay Servidio runs Teleteria, a porn Web design and programming company that really wants you to profit from the Internet boom. Jay and the gang at Teleteria will set you up with a dripping wet Web site, provide you with "live video streaming of girls, Asians, guys, transsexuals, amateurs and dungeon," and ensure you direct billing of "100% of the commission." When I asked Jay how many porn sites the Web could support, he launched into his spiel with a button-holer's gusto. "Do the math," he says. "There are 150 million people on the Internet and only 30,000 adult sites. Every day another 20, 000 people sign up. Every 500 hits yields a membership, Christmas, Chanukah, every day of the year." As if offering his own ringing reply to the big question, "What Is Sexy?" Jay bore down close on me and declared, "Making money is simple."

Another potential Web-sex moneymaker was the much publicized "Cyberdildonics" at the SafeSexPlus booth. All the local news and cable film crews stopped there. It's a natural news hook -- a vibrator you can operate over the Internet. So you could be in Milwaukee and a friend could be in Cairo and you would be able to control a strategically situated vibrator with your mouse. Why the big whoop, it's hard to say. My limited experience suggests most folks want control of their sex toys to be as immediate -- at hand, shall we say -- as possible. I mean, it can be hard enough to make precise adjustments in speed and duration from under the same bed covers let alone from across a continent. Nevertheless, the cash register frisson brought on by joining the words "Internet" and "Sex" is, judging by the crowds at this booth, an irresistible shiver.

Traditional sex toys -- those requiring actual bodies in contact -- were also plentiful: tantric sex swings in which a woman or man dangles weightlessly, handcuffs, chastity belts ("Access Denied" is the brand name), the ultimate dildo and porn star Ron Jeremy were all for sale (Jeremy just signed autographs), although I saw little cash exchanged. The guys circulating around the show were like most convention attendees, be they anesthesiologists or Trekkies -- they glommed up as much free stuff as they could, pausing chiefly to view product demonstrations. A desultory whipping being given by one leather and spike-clad girl with pigtails to a similarly garbed young lady attracted only bemused attention. Here was the inescapable sense that this routine was old hat. More than 20 years ago there were jokes on "Laugh-In" and "Love, American Style" about a rabbi being beaten with chicken soup noodles, and the New Yorker recently respectfully profiled a dominatrix. For its participants, the current S&M scene may be a kick, but for everyone else, it's a cartoon setup for punch lines like "beats me." The baroque, "Edward Scissorhands" look of the bondage wear undercut its potential allure with the loud claims of originality by the designers. Instead of sexy -- in '50s bondage mags, clothesline and baby oil were the only accouterments -- these deviously turned-out costumes felt parodic rather than priapic.

Indeed, it was the most chaste demonstration that mustered the most shock. For those rarefied souls whose sexual delight requires full-body restraint, there exists a hard-framed latex envelope: After someone lies down between the shiny sheets, a vacuum cleaner sucks all the air out until every fingernail shows in sharp relief. Aside from an erect hose positioned over the mouth, the body is completely encased. I'm not sure about the rest of the wide-eyed audience, but for me it was claustrophobic terror that held me fast to the spot. Even though the guy who was operating the vacuum chatted on about things you could do with a vibrator to the trapped body, whatever mild excitation the lingerie models had inspired promptly fled my lower parts. I thought longingly of Jay Servidio and the good times we'd had. "What Is Sexy?" I wondered. The pyramid schemer, or the vacuum cleaner salesman?

Erotica USA very much wants to go mainstream. Even with videos and magazines catering to female wrestler buffs ("Steel Kittens"), submissives ("Bitch Mistress Magazine," "Trampled"), foot fetishists ("Sole Desire"), enema enthusiasts ("Flash Floods"), voyeurs ("Peeping Toms Get Spanked") and traditionalists ("Bald Beavers," "Ass Blaster" and "Goo Guzzlers"), the message, says Kimberly Chigi, one of the New York show's organizers, "is that sex is healthy and there's nothing dirty here." And she's right, unless you think lucre is filthy. The overheard talk all around the convention hall was about franchises, turnkey sites, distribution networks, synergy and "the power and profit of sell-through." In the booth of the self-proclaimed "Baroness" you found tourniquet-tight rubber clothes, but whatever lubricity they began to cook up in your autonomic nervous system was quickly short-circuited by her poster announcing how we could learn how to clean, shine and take care of our latex garments from the Regal One. What is sexy? Well, money can be, but cleaning up definitely isn't. How those latex briefs and bras might get dirty is what you want to explore at something called Erotica USA.
salon.com | April 20, 1999

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