Sin shopping
I remember a time when I was mortified to buy tampons. This was before self-checkout was widespread, and there were no real ways to work around that slow, petrified slog up to the register to hand the cashier unassailable evidence that I had a vagina, and that stuff came out of it.
Then I got over it, laughed at myself, and was afraid to buy condoms and spermicide products. When I filled my prescription for birth control I could tell myself a little story about how I was really on it to regulate my periods so this wasn’t about sex, even though it had this amazing side effect of greatly reducing my risk of pregnancy! But the condoms, the contraceptive eggs: those decisively pointed to the fact that stuff also went in my vagina, and that I was doing everything I could to facilitate the process.
But after you’ve bought condoms enough dozen times that wears off too, and the scariness goes out of the adventure. You don’t have to buy other stuff to buffer the potential shock a cashier might have, thinking that maybe you’re going to leave that store and go have sex immediately, forsooth! You don’t have to avoid the male-manned registers in fear of leering smiles. You just don’t care anymore, unless they happen to not have your favorite brand in stock.
My last hold-out was lube. For a while there, I could buy almost anything without a blink, save lube. See, I usually only use lube for anal play/sex, so there’s an extra stat boost in transgression that a cashier might judge you like really harshly, and oh wait, they don’t fucking care what I buy!
I think it’s part of growing up to realize that it’s not that big a deal to buy any product in a store that routinely stocks it.
