G-spot
“The public seems to like our little c— stimulators. They are all very discreet, and beautifully packed, and they can carry it anywhere they want without being fearful of anyone catching them with such a possession.”
A Japanese schoolgirl costume hangs on the wall. Panties dangle from hooks around the big square table, a silky carnival of apple green and polka dots, ruffled garters and ribbons and slinky black net. There are purple furry handcuffs, and boxes of ribbed Trojans, plastic penis rings and Sta-Hard Cream, latex love dolls, raspberry-flavored stimulating gels, packages of yellow vibrating bath sponges and a 4-way self-stimulator called the “Heart-shaped G-spot.
Eleanor Leung calls The Pleasure Place a sensuality boutique, instead of a sex shop. “We offer an array of beautiful and sexy lingerie, makeup, we also have jewelry and shoes, everything that makes a woman feel good and beautiful, inside and outside. Of course, we have a huge selection of all kinds of toys that can enhance your sex life. We have over 200 toys in the house.”
The voice is clear, unhesitating, almost professorial.
“We have been here for four years, and some are just walking in for the first time. We’ve seen those faces peeping at us from the window and we never force anyone to come in. This place is an open door, it has bright lights, the windows are uncovered, so anyone can see you here. Some people would say that they don’t want to be seen here. I do tell them that you don’t have to worry about that. Each one is absorbed in their own interest when they’re in here, that they don’t even remember who was in the room with them. Many people come here alone, and visit for a second or a third time, with their partners or multiple partners, so we make sure that we remain very discreet, and as you walk in, we nod and say hello, but we never acknowledge that we have seen you here unless you talk to me, and you’re comfortable with who you are, enough to strike up a conversation.”
This is Eleanor: short, sleek hair, cut at an angle, sharply-drawn brows, almond-shaped eyes lined with pale blue shimmer, small, cupid bow lips, unlined skin, black heels with laces wrapped around ankles, and a clinging black dress that zips to the chin and leaves arms bare. Eleanor, in her early 50s, one hand with its red-painted nails and wrapped around a slim knee, says she just had a procedure done on her face.
“People come in and wonder what kind of woman runs this store. First they’re shocked that I was of Asian descent, Chinese for that matter. Second, perhaps, that it’s a woman, that’s another shocker, and the third is to find out that I am openly in a relationship with another woman.”
She had been married once, never had or wanted to have children, and never regretted her decision, “now that my biological clock has stopped ticking.” She was close to 50 and still waiting for someone to “sweep me off my feet.” One day an old friend appeared. “There it was, it all happened.”
She talks about finding love matter-of-factly. “It was magic. Like a light had hit me when I saw her.”
She and her partner decided to open The Pleasure Place. “They say, you’re not a lesbian, you don’t look like a lesbian. I hate it when people say that because it’s branding me as something. I don’t want to be called lesbian, I don’t want to be called heterosexual, homosexual. I just want to be me. I can get attracted to men, I can get attracted to women, it’s just that at this stage of my life I’ve made a commitment to be with this person who happens to be a woman.”
The people who walk through the glass-paneled door are as diverse as the collection of fruit-flavored lubricating lotions marching down the open shelves. “We have singles, mothers, married, separated, abused women, lonely women, women who feel that it’s the right time to take care of themselves, because they’ve taken care of their families for the longest time. We’ve had patients being sent here by their doctors, who say that it’s necessary for them to purchase a toy to cleanse their system. We also have women who come in from the provinces, one actually coming in here riding a bus, telling me that she’s never known what an orgasm is about, and that it was time to discover that.”
Eleanor grew up in a Catholic Chinese family, and was chaperoned all the way until she was married at 23. Yet she says her open-mindedness is not a result of living overseas.
“I had two grandmothers, and I lived under one roof with them. And they were both married to my grandfather, and they both treated each other like sisters.”
One grandmother would sit at the head of the table. “She was the one always talking about sex and how it should be about and how she did it herself and so it was a laughable matter. Everyone had fun when we talked about sex. She talked about who was oversexed, of friends she knew, who was sleeping with whom—we talked about sex because it was real.”
It was at nine years old when she found out about sex. “Children today could even go younger, because there was a 7-year-old who walked in her with her mother. Bear in mind, this was a Chinese couple, with their 7-year-old. She had only one question for me. She wanted to know if her mother was having sex with her lover. She’s 7 years old. If you’re not going to tell her what’s happening, she’s going to churn around in her head different thoughts and go insane thinking about what’s happening behind closed doors—or talk to her friends, who are also 7.”
Eleanor believes children deserve to be told about sex early. She feels it is her responsibility to educate as many young people out there—“not to say that the older generation doesn’t need a bit of education”—but she feels it is “a moral obligation to return.”
She sees nothing strange about a sex shop in the middle of Catholic Manila. She talks about why women fake orgasms, and writes a sex column for Fudge magazine. She talks about bondage, and dominance, and empowerment, and the art of pleasure.
“I always tell people I don’t have a sex educational background, nor did I attend sex seminars. It’s just that when people come in here and we talk, there’s such open communication that more and more would come in here, and tell their friends to seek me out.”
She does, of course, have several particularly important qualifications.
“A lot of people just assume that I enjoy a healthy sex life, and it would be hypocritical to tell everyone I don’t have a good sex life. I do. To be able to talk about it intelligently, one must practice it.”
