Never having visited one I had glorified sex shops, seeing them as inextricably linked to some kind of erotic, excitable pleasure. I often wondered what kind of titilating mystery took place inside when passing the inconspicuous store fronts of "XXX World" and "Pleasure Dome". Last week my curiousity was satisfied when a group of friends and I decided to venture up the badly carpeted stairs and enter an adult store for the first time. Needless to say, it was not the hedonistic haven I had in mind. The expected arousing, oversexed ambiance was absent, replaced instead by a suspicious stench. A seedy man browsed the "literature" section, and the desparate employee watched us intently trying to make a sale. Instead we gaped down rows of fetish DVD's (a naked, obese women in her fifties sitting on a bed with a bucket of chicken stared out to me from the cover of "Big Ol' Bitches") until we reached the erotic toy wall, where the 50cm dildo named "The Punisher" took pride of place. Scarlett whimpered at the leather whips and cuffs in the bondage section, Brodan spied a butt plug, and we all ran gagging from the squalid, sleazy premises. This whole experience served not just as a wake-up call that pornography is unenticing, but as a means of hampering any future erections for the rest of my life.