This is a story I’ve shared a handful of times in real life, but had never thought to write it down until Babeland reached out and asked me to recount an experience with their products.

Babeland, at the time called Toys in Babeland, is responsible for my sexual awakening and very first orgasm and I cannot think of either of those lifetime landmarks without picturing their candy-colored Seattle storefront with artificial ivy lining its windows.

Growing up, my mother taught me a very warped view of what sex meant. In her misguided efforts to keep me “pure” she told me my virginity was a “gift” to give my husband on our wedding night, and that sex itself was “just something you have to do to keep your husband from leaving you” Sex, as I understood it, was something that was painful and forced on you, an unpleasant chore you simply had to do, like getting a pap smear. There was no mention that I may have my own desires, that my own pleasure may somehow be included in this marriage/business transaction. In addition to this misinformation, I also had some painful vaginal afflictions as a child that made me associate that area with suffering.

Around the age of 16 or 17, I became aware that other girls my age not only did, indeed, feel sexual desire, but were actually acting upon it. In the locker room or huddled in groups in the hall, they’d talk about how far they’d gone with partners or even… by themselves with their own hands? Huh? How did THAT work? At this time I was also starting to feel uncomfortable aches that I would attempt to cure by awkwardly shoving my dry finger inside my equally dry vagina. I made valiant, unpleasant efforts that left me feeling like I was missing a fundamental part of my body that everybody else seemed to posses. I wanted what “all the other” girls said they were able to do, I wanted to know how my body worked, I wanted to orgasm, damnit!

Which brings us to the brightly painted Toys in Babeland shop, with its playful, inviting window displays of vibrators suspended to look like they were flying with little taped-on wings and pun-y signs and that artificial- though not tacky- ivy lining the edges of the glass. Located at 707 E Pike, not more than three blocks away from my high school, my best friend (and sort-of girlfriend, though I wasn’t ready to realize that at the time) and I would nervously-bravely poke inside during our lunch breaks in 12th grade, which is when senior students were officially allowed to go off campus between classes.

Inside there was always one or two queer-looking ladies with short spikey hair, glasses, flannel and chunky boots (this was the late ’90s) who would greet us. They never sized us up, never made us feel like trespassers and, without being over-enthusiastic, they welcomed us. They encouraged me to ask questions, patiently and kindly explaining all the exotic and confounding objects they stocked, never patronizing me or making me embarrassed for my lack of basic knowledge.

I will always be grateful to the young woman -probably in her very early 20s, though at the time she seemed like a total adult to me- who gave me her email address and offered to answer any more of my questions that I may think of later, outside of the store and away from my friend. She didn’t need to do that, she was only being paid to work in that shop, volunteering her personal time to answer a teenager’s basic, obvious questions was definitely not in her job description when she signed on to work there. But she wasn’t offering this to me because it was her job; she genuinely cared about sex education and saw an opportunity to help a young girl learn about her body, about sex, about pleasure.

I don’t remember her name, but I’ve appreciated that act of kindness for a decade and have tried to pay it forward to others any chance I can, especially in my comics.

Enough about the customer service, lemme tell you about my very first sex toy.

The Silver Bullet Vibe.

Given that I was a high school student without a job, I didn’t exactly have access to large funds. My purchases were dictated by their affordability, and the $9.95 price tag of the Silver Bullet made it, I think, my only option in the store. It’s one of the most basic vibrator models you can find; a silver plastic egg connects through a black cord to a control stick that fits easily into one hand, with a sliding, heart-shaped button that you push up or down to increase the power of the egg’s vibrations. It remained hidden in its discreet brown paper bag in the bottom drawer of my wardrobe for three days until I worked up the courage to pop in two AA batteries and turn it on.

You know how in sci-fi movies, the villain will point a giant laser at a planet and the entire surface of it gets spiderweb cracks with brilliant light shining through, moments before it explodes?

That is exactly how my body felt as I touched down that vibrating egg, on its lowest setting, to my vulva for the first time.

Over a decade later the memory of my first orgasm is still vivid to me. I remember feeling all the nerves in my body flood with electricity, experiencing blue and white light shatter through my skin and loosing all control of my body as it convulsed in a turbulent fit.

After my first orgasm had concluded, I couldn’t move. I lay there paralyzed, panting, feeling like I’d been hit by a Mac truck.

That was the first time I loved my body.

In the decade since my sexual awakening, I’ve tried out many other toys, fancier, more expensive ones. I’ve learned how to orgasm from my hand and with a partner. My body comes from stimulation to my nipples, my clitoris, my vagina, my anus, from performing oral sex on a partner and, in some cases, from not even being touched at all. I know my body well and it delights me.

I shudder when I think about the lies my mother told me, the sex life she was training me to have. I could have been robbed of all this, of the love and pleasure I’ve experienced since I bought my first, tiny vibrator as a scared, ignorant teenager.

Babeland is a business, yes, but to me they will always be more than that.

When I see their logo online, when I pass their brick and mortar shops, I always take a moment to silently tell them “Thank You” in my mind. Thank you for your fun, brightly lit stores. Thank you for your kind, welcoming staff. Thank you for my first vibrator. Thank you for my first orgasm.

Thank you, Babeland.

Thank you.

This essay was generously sponsored by Babeland but the opinions expressed are Erika Moen’s and not Babeland’s. Read Erika’s 2005 comic about her first orgasm with the silver bullet here!