How Does Someone Become a Sex Expert?

How Does Someone Become a Sex Expert?

 Become a Sex Expert?

When people ask me what I do for a living, they are usually shocked by my response. I am a Sex Expert. With raised eyebrows and eyes as big as saucers I can see a cartoon bubble flash over their head exclaiming, “Did she just say sex?”Desperate to compose their features, they inevitably nod their heads and respond with, “Interesting…”

Next people ask how I chose a field like sexuality. Well, simply put, I believe it chose me. I am the last person on earth one might consider to be an up-and-coming expert in sexuality—being the consummate uptight-whitey-woman from small town nowhere. How it all came about is still a mystery to me.

Several years ago I was out on a dog walk with a friend. After an in-depth discussion around sex, he looked at me and said, “You should give a workshop on sex.” And I thought, “You’re right.” At that moment, everything clicked into place and it seemed such a natural segue from a career in corporate Canada to a career as a Sex Expert. That is about as deep as my epiphany goes.

Yet it was a clumsy liberation into my new occupation. Before I started all of this, I could not say body parts like “vagina” or “penis” out loud without giggling or stumbling over the words. I could never explain what I wanted in bed. And I always struggled with having the-made-to-look-perfect romance novel sex.

Not knowing where to start, my first step was to buy Lou Paget’s How to Be a Great Lover. In her book Paget describes techniques on how to pleasure a man. And I thought, “Well, if I am going to teach this stuff, I might as well learn it myself.”

Too embarrassed to go to a sex shop, I went into my local Safeway and grabbed two cucumbers and a tube of KY lubricant. For half-an-hour I walked up and down the aisles of Safeway convincing myself, “Don’t worry Trina, the check-out clerk won’t figure out you’ll be practicing hand techniques on the cucumbers.”

The hardest part of becoming a Sex Expert was telling my parents. It took me four months to buck up the courage. To break the news I treated them to dinner at a busy restaurant—no chance of yelling or crying fits that way.

As I sat across from my folks I felt like a 12 year old. A cool sweat spotted my brow. When the words, “I’m-gonna-be-a-sex-expert” came out in a garbled, high-pitched squeak, I was looking at my shoes. Worse yet was explaining that I would be writing a newspaper column that all of their family and friends could read. To this day I have a hard time talking to my parents about sex.

People often ask what qualifies me to be a Sex Expert. I have a Doctorate of Human Sexuality from a school in San Francisco. Yes it’s true. There are a few schools inNorth America that give out graduate level degrees in sex. Can you imagine?

Being a good (a.k.a. naïve) girl from the prairies, I almost did not go back after my first semester. The school’s calendar did not explain how mind bending their “education” would be. For example, durin