In 2005, I began working in an adult store in Brisbane/Magandjin; its butter-yellow colour was synonymous with the trade. I was 22. I had a fine arts degree that I didn’t know how to use, and a need to be a writer even though I wouldn’t pick up a pen for years. It was in the last dying days when porn was still bought from a store.

My favourite customers were the ladies. The best of all? The elderly ladies who would cautiously step in, all cardigans and white hair, and glance to where I would be seated behind a desk and say, “Oh! I’ve come to the wrong place – didn’t there used to be a curtain place here?”

I’d come round the counter and say, “Now you’re here. Why don’t you have a look around?” With a quiet voice and no sales agenda, I’d carefully avoid the back of the shop – filled to the brim with porn, butt plugs and blow-up dolls – and instead take them to the massage oils, lingerie and Kama Sutra products. Sometimes, they would stay, and we’d look at the clitoral stimulators. My favourite time was when a woman in her late 60s looked at me and said, “I didn’t really wander into the wrong store, love. I wasn’t sure if I could go past the front door.”

I lost count of the women who told me they’d never had an orgasm. Not once – even though they were married, with grown children and grandchildren. At those times, the store became my favourite place in the world, and I really felt that even though I mainly sold porn, sometimes I sold something else.

Before internet porn took off, if you wanted to watch porn, you had to go to a store. You’d have a little butter-yellow swap card (the fifth swap was free!) which we’d stamp like a coffee card. I was too young and naïve to understand the delicate debate about whether porn is ethical and under what circumstances. I was young and dumb.

We sold it all: mags, DVDs, video cassettes. If it was between consensual adults, we sold it. The most expensive DVDs were the box sets based on blockbuster movies – like pirates and gladiators – but the most popular DVDs were cheap and gonzo-style.

I was always asked if customers ever made returns. And they did – regularly. So many sex toys were returned. I guess when you buy a $200 vibrator, you want it to work. Sometimes, I tested the vibrator with a plastic bag over it, glove on hand, and a line of customers waiting. One time, a guy brought back a used blow-up doll because there was a puncture in it. I put it straight back in the box and sealed it shut. Even I had a limit to what I’d test out.

The dolls didn’t sell regularly, but they did sell. It was a big day when we sold a $700 one. Sometimes it was for men with minimal social skills who were sexual. At times, it was a kink. Sometimes it was mothers buying for middle-aged sons who were disabled or without a partner. At the end of the day, if it was for an adult, it was OK. There was no stigma.

Each year the store manager and owner would go to a convention where the stores would stock adult products, porn and lubricant. The porn star Jesse Jane was at a convention I went to once. Somewhere, once upon a time, I had a picture of her and me smiling and laughing. She was, without question, the most beautiful person I’d ever seen. Like a vampish porcelain doll with glistening eyes. Jesse died from fentanyl poisoning last year. I felt so sad when I read the news, and I couldn’t really explain why. I didn’t know her. But I remember her being the biggest thing in the room, even though she was so very tiny.

Co-workers would come and go. It took a certain type of person to work at the big yellow store. You had to be a woman. You had to exercise enthusiasm with a lack of shock. You had to be able to say cock, sheath, vaginal, clitoral, orgasm and kink without breaking a sweat. My co-workers were a mix of young girls, mums, grandmas, gay, straight and bi folk.

One of my co-workers, Lilah, broke my heart. When she was a kid, she’d been a ward of the state. She was only 20 but already had three children in care. She was hard yet kind; and unlike the rest of us, she never drank or smoked. She was terrified of all drugs due to her childhood. She’d had a set of really shitty circumstances thrown at her from birth.

One time, Lilah brought in some of her files from childhood that she was trying to decipher. She couldn’t read. I read some parts to her and excused myself. I was sick in the toilets. The shop didn’t just teach me sex positivity – it also taught me to not judge others before I’ve walked a day in their shoes. Lilah left after a few months. I never saw her again. 

There was another co-worker who was like a mum to us all. I thought she was just very good at cleaning, but it turned out she had a full-on addiction to speed. And then she had a full-on breakdown. After she left, the store was never as clean as it was when she worked there. 

Sometimes, at the store, we laughed so hard we cried. Sometimes it was boring. Sometimes there were creeps. But mainly, there were people who just wanted to be themselves. Twenty years ago, I worked in a porn shop and I learnt not to judge. I learnt to let people be who they are. Sometimes I miss those days.

This story comes straight from the pages of issue 128. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.