Pleasure seeker

Toronto writer shares how sex can triumph over ableism and breakups

- BRIONY SMITH

Kaleigh Trace works as a couples' and sex therapist in addition to her writing.

Rent was due. Kaleigh Trace was 22 and had just graduated in the midst of a global recession with what she discovered to be an “utterly useless” BA. Venus Envy, Halifax’s local sex shop, was hiring. And they had a great book selection. Trace didn’t care if she was selling dildos or drumsticks or DVD players: a job meant she could keep a roof over her head.

But, slowly, she came to love discussing the dildos with customers — and everything else they liked playing with. “I found that talking to people about sexuality was amazing. I loved, and still love, the intimacy inherent in speaking about our desires,” she said. “And I love an opportunity to normalize the stuff that shames us.”

In time, Trace became one of Canada’s bolder voices on the erotic front. In 2014, she published her extremely frank memoir, “Hot, Wet & Shaking: How I Learned To Talk About Sex,” five years before she became a couples’ and sex therapist (nonmonogamy and kink quandaries welcome).

While it wasn’t the first book to foreground sex and disability — she is quick to namecheck trailblazers like Loree Erikson, Eli Clare, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Mia Mingus — it remains a rare dive into both the ableism and orgasms one can experience as a femme, queer, disabled person.