So, bit of background. I’m 19, female, and just a tad anxious. I’m also a switch, and I’ve been carefully cultivating my toy/gear bag since I got into college. There’s a leather shop in the next town over that’s pretty well-known, and I’ve been in there once before to buy rope.

Now, most of their stuff in the front is pretty generic. Leather jackets, leather boots, stockings, piercings, masks, all kinds of stuff. It’s always fascinated me but it’s a little out of my ~aesthetic~. Their backroom is all sex/BDSM stuff (of varying qualities, I saw some pretty skeevy-looking jelly rubber dildos mixed in with an actual Romanian gas mask). Now, most of their stuff is behind glass cases, so you have to actually talk to the person at the register to bring up buying it. Last time I was in I absolutely FUMBLED my way through it, asking a few questions about the hemp rope I was going to buy after anxiously ambling around the store for a few minutes to psyche myself up. I don’t mine talking to store employees, I don’t mind talking kink with people, but this is.... not my thing.

I bring this up now because one of my other partners wants to go back with me in a few weeks, and I’m a little worried I might have to endure this a second time. How the heck can I get over this extremely specific problem?