The Amazing Thai
BY JACOB HALLADAY-GLYNN
This is an interview focused on getting to know the fascinating sex shop owner known as Thai. If you would prefer an interview focused mainly on her shop, Patricia’s, I’d recommend the following StudLife article: "Sex at Patricia's."
Soon after meeting Thai, she puts on a mock Southern accent to give me some background info: Thai: I go by Thai, but my real name is Leela Lacey Cornwell and I come from a very prominent family. My grandfather was the President of Washington and Lee and involved in VMI, while my father, he taught at Brown University which is a very proud Ivy League school. So in order to have respect for my family and not make ‘em feel like I was working in a very dirty business, I do so under the name of Thai. Jacob: Forgive my ignorance, but you mentioned VMI? Thai: Virginia Military Institute. Washington and Lee is where you go after Virginia Military Institute if you’re good. This is a Southern thing, okay? If you are a Southerner, a prominent family in the South, then your sons – these days your daughters can too but that wasn’t an issue when I was a kid – you send your sons off to Virginia Military Institute. And my grandfather, not only was he president of Washington and Lee but he’s the one who buried Traveler! Jacob: Traveler? Thai: General Lee’s horse! The one he rode through the entire civil war! When General Lee died, they had Traveler taxidermized and put him in his stall on Washington and Lee’s campus. By the time my grandfather got there, Traveler was over 100 years old and looking a little moth-eaten. So my grandfather made a big event out of giving Traveler a Christian burial. Jacob: So, your father was a political science professor at Brown, and you decided to join the sex industry. Is there any connection there? Thai: You know what? I don’t think there’s any connection at all because I did not intend to work in this industry. I was going to school in Illinois when I moved to Champagne, and actually opened a Pagan shop. Jacob: A pagan shop? Thai: Yep - we sold herbs, oils, incense, other oddities, but our lawyer ended up stealing that from us. Jacob: The lawyer stole your shop from you? Thai: The lawyer basically tricked us, me and my co-owner, into signing over more of the owner’s stock to him than we had. He took over the store, and I shrugged and I got a few different jobs. At one point, I didn’t have transportation and ended up as an arcade janitor. Jacob: An arcade janitor? Thai: An arcade shop is a porn store with the movies, videos, and toys out front, and a backroom. You get tokens to go into the backroom and there are various permutations of booths: little rooms, TV, somewhere to sit, that’s it. Jacob: And you were a… janitor there? Thai: I started off mopping the floors there. Elise*: Literally, she was a cum-mopper. Thai: So yeah I’ve worked my way up from… jizz-mopper. "So yeah I've worked my way up from...jizz-mopper." Elise: Okay, look - back in the day all porn stores had a backroom and you could go back there, watch movies, people like meeting up in there, there’s holes in the walls – glory holes. They don’t do that anymore, but she comes from the time where they still did. Jacob: Well what made it change? Thai: It is because of the laws in Missouri that they don’t have arcades here. Arcades do a late-night business. Because about 25% of their business is people actually doing what they’re supposed to be doing in there - which is watching porn videos. And an awful lot of it is people who have an anonymous sex kink. This is a safe place, rather than picking people up in bus stations, it’s a safe… well, relatively safe. Use a condom people, please. But yeah they would basically go back there, they would pick up anonymous sex— the glory holes and that sort of thing. And I wasn’t tired of the people, although I do have funny stories involving the people and I’ve seen an awful lot of naked human beings. But… really the thing that was annoying me was trying to get a bunch of dvd players to continue playing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Jacob: That’s an unexpected reason to want to leave the arcade. Thai: Wasn’t the sex, wasn’t the people, wasn’t even the people flashing me. It was 32 DVD players. You see, at the arcade I started working behind the counter. I was a good salesman so then I got promoted to clerk and then up to manager. And we had 32 DVD players that had to be playing at all times. If the power blinked, I would get a call at 3 in the morning to go back to my store to restart 32 DVD players. Invariably, I would get halfway home when the power would blink again because it was a windy night, and all of a sudden I’d have to go back to the store and restart all 32 DVD players again. So, I moved to St. Louis. Jacob: And started your own sex shop. Thai: Exactly. And you see here in Missouri there’s some interesting laws that regulate classy stores like mine. Because we sell sexually-explicit products, we have to close by midnight. "Because we sell sexually-explicit products, we have to close by midnight." Jacob: Midnight? That seems kind of arbitrary. Why is it any better for you to show me sex toys in mid-day than it would be at, say, 2am? Thai: Well, I don’t know. But it’s nothing like the laws in other states – in Arkansas you need a prescription to purchase a sex toy. Jacob: A prescription? Like, from a doctor? Thai: Oh, absolutely! Jacob: I can’t imagine what that doctor’s visit must be like. Elise: Right? Like, ‘Doc, I really need a fucking vibrator right now.’ Thai began to showcase some of her favorite wares. Elise: That’s the drilldo Thai: We just got this one today! The actual toy is the attachment, and the drill – they gave us the drill – you can get a drill, or you can use your own drill, and attach a special dildo to it! Don’t get this thing close to your hair, or your skirt, or somebody else’s skirt.. Elise: That’s what I’m talking about! She got my skirt earlier and I was like THAI! Thai: Yeah it was pretty funny – almost pulled it off her too! Jacob: Was she walking around using it – Elise: No! She intentionally did it! Thai: Here Jacob, bring your sleeve over and I’ll show you. Thai: So, you know what these are. They’re pretty obvious, right? You know what to do with one of these, whether you like butts or you like vagina. I had a gentleman who was standing in front of one of my masturbator sections and he was standing there, and he was standing there, and standing there. And I’m like “Okay well this is really not that hard, so maybe I’d better go see what’s going on.” So I said, “Do you have any questions sir?” And he said yeah. At the time I had two different masturbators in the shape of feet. I had one that had 2 feet glued together and another that were two separate feet. And he said, “When people buy these, do they cut the feet apart?” Well no sir… And I stopped and I thought about it and said, “Sir, a foot fuck is pretty much the same as a titty fuck. You hold the two together and go in between them.” And he said, “OH! You go in between them!” And he bought the separated feet and left the store. I’ve been puzzling that one over ever since. Thai then walked me over to her extensive movie collection. Thai: My name’s Thai. Right? There’s one thing I won’t let anyone call me and that’s…amazing. This, this is the Amazing Thai. She picked up a film, and on the cover was a woman having sex with a truly massive penis. Thai: That individual’s name is ‘Amazing Thai.’ Jacob: Wow. Thai: Yes, this is the amazing Thai. I am just plain, ordinary Thai because she has talent. I do not, and she’s way older than I am so we’ll let her keep that description. Jacob: So, what would you say is your favorite movie then? Thai: My favorite movie? Fashionistas. Fashionistas is a fashion-style movie, but it is a BDSM-flavored porn movie. But it is a high production movie. Some people have heard of Pirates. Pirates is one of the most famous porn movies ever made, because it’s a pirate movie that happens to be a porn as well. Fashionistas was the first of that genre. It was the first time they thought, ‘Let’s try throwing a lot of money at it, making it almost up to Hollywood-standards, and then having sex and see what happens.’ This won every award available. This launched Belladona’s career, because she was a pornstar who could really act. Jacob: So it’s a classic. Would you say it’s better than Pirates? Thai: If you like BDSM, then yes, and also if you like looking at pretty clothes, then yes. In general I think Pirates 2 is better than Pirates 1 though, because Belladona was in the second one and like I said, she can act. Elise: I used to really like Pirates, because it was funny to see all these porno actors up to pirate shenanigans . Thai: They actually did real sword fighting for that movie. Elise: Yeah! It was a good movie. Pirates. It was funny, they actually acted, and every once in a while there was a sex scene. Jacob: Just like real life. Jacob: Any PSAs? Thai: Sugar should not go in a vagina. Most women already know this, but sugar’s what yeast eats and if you wanna get rid of something, you don’t feed it. Jacob: When does sugar usually get in? Thai: Oh, chocolate sauce… Elise: Whipped cream… Thai: And as I said, most women know not to put that stuff right on their vaginas, but my personal favorite is: “We use chocolate sauce to make the blowjob taste better then go ahead and flip n’ fuck n’ go!” "We use chocolate sauce to make the blowjob taste better then go ahead and flip n' fuck n' go!" Jacob: RIP. Thai: Just take a quick shower after the chocolate blowjob. Jacob: Do your black dildos sell better than your white ones, or vice versa? Thai: So, I tend to try to solve this pigment problem with party cocks. As you can see, I’ve got a lot more purples and greens than blacks and whites here. Now one time I got into a little trouble with this policy because I have had at least one woman scream, “Black cocks matter!” and run out my door! Jacob: Really? Do you think she meant it as a joke? Thai: It was 100% real, she was extremely upset with me. I was doing my best to work it out, but I can’t help it – I have more purple than I have black. Thai went on to show me more of her favorites, like a sound-activated vibrator and her collection of whips. I also got a brief history of the evolving chemical composition of dildos, plenty of personal sex advice, and a promise to be given secrets about the DuPont family the next time I return. *“Elise” is my stand-in name for Thai’s coworker. |