Prod of the O.C.: eXtreme Restraints

Because I am the coolest person you know, I knew that my trip yesterday to the Orange County headquarters and warehouse of hardcore adult products purveyor Extreme Restraints would not yield medieval scenes of people zapping each other’s nipples while archiving QuickBooks files.

Still, in the way certain people will make a show of wiping their hands upon learning that I am America’s Beloved Porn Journalist, I felt compelled to be That Asshole when I walked in.

“Don’t tase me, Bro,” I said.

Read more about my visit after the gap.

Extreme Restraints was founded in 2000 by Ari Suss and Kelly Eberhard. Both are knowledgeable about the BDSM lifestyle but both, contrary to popular depictions of BDSM fans, are approachable, businesslike, and not terrifying.

“I was living in Oklahoma and he was in Maryland,” Eberhard said. “I was doing the sales and he was doing the shipping.”

“…and our first warehouse was in a 10′ x 10′ spare room,” Suss added.

The current warehouse occupies 15,000 square feet of XR’s building in Huntington Beach. Warehouse Manager Corey Jarvis has added seasonal help to his regular staff.

“From around November to Valentine’s Day is our biggest time of year,” he said.

“Not Halloween?”

“No,” he said. “People into this stuff don’t keep it to one day a year. This is a big time because people are giving these products as gifts.”

I took a hog crop, a sturdy cane staff with two leather flaps at the end, to maintain discipline at the office.

“The two flaps make a really satisfying sound when they connect,” Eberhard said. “They get you a little red.”

“Do people use this on hogs?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “The hog refers to being a Pain Pig.”

“Gotcha.”

In addition to the lubes and jellies, standard issue and high-end vibrators, and a small cache of DVDs from enema movies to Pirates, XR specializes in heavy duty bondage gear and, more and more, muscle stimulation, TENS, and electrosex devices adapted from less sexy pursuits, like cattle drives.

“They got me with this when I started,” said Jarvis of a three-foot cattle prod. “They got me right in the neck.”

I looked at a stack of cattle prods and pulled one down. The four-“C” battery tool was made for cattle but appropriated for BDSM enthusiasts. What was weird is that the prod is sold by veterinary supply stores as the “Magic Shock Cattle Prod” and XR simply calls it the Large Shock Prod. I noted the lack of taffeta and prettification on the products.

“Naw, the people who buy from us are serious,” Jarvis said. It is fun to imagine a leather-clad vegetarian dominatrix in her L.A. dungeon and George W. Bush on a whistle stop to Crawford using the same device at the same time.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the adult industry is its extraction of the sexual from everyday life. No longer do all porn stars look like hookers; niche porn capitalizes on the people in your neighborhood who might not be hookers. And now cattle prods have moved from factory farms to the bedroom, where they should be.

I asked to see some of XR’s bondage models but they more than often contract out for them, using sites like Fetish Nation. A couple of the guys in the warehouse now and then model some of the products, but I am not a groovy enough person to want their pictures.

I asked about demographics. Who buys what kind of products?

“We send a lot of butt plugs to military addresses,” Jarvis said, the top two branches being the Navy and Marines, respectively.

The rest of the office looked like any corporate office. Cubicles, carpeting, a water cooler, strap-on phone headsets for the call center. There was a room with a plasma TV and a Wii setup that “the warehouse guys monopolize.” No one hanging from the ceiling.

“Is everyone here into BDSM?” I asked.

“Not everyone,” I was told, “but no one hates it.”

Marketing director James Medina summed it up. “We’re the same type of business you’d see anywhere else, except with huge dongs.”

Previously: Counting floggers on the wall: Mr. S Leather
See also: Extreme Restraints