Tasting notes with:
Matie Fricker.
Occupation:
Owner of Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center.
Venue:
Nexus Brewery, Albuquerque.
Drinking:
8 of 9 Blood Orange American Wheat beer (Nexus Brewery, seasonal).
Music/art pairing recommendation:
Lizzo, all day every day.
Why this drink?
I’m forever in love with seasonal beverages, and this is very summery. Blood orange feels kind of romantic, doesn’t it? Even though it’s just an orange that’s darker.
What was your first job?
My very first paid job was working at the Orange Julius at the county fair. Never eat the chili. Trust me.
What’s new with Self Serve these days?
We recently expanded to open the Self Serve Classroom. We host classes and community events there.
What events have you hosted there lately?
So we’ve done a lot of our regular sex ed classes, but we’re able to say yes to more touring educators and work within their schedule and do things. So we’ve done everything from erotic poetry readings to free classes for survivors of sexual assault. This last weekend, we had a fundraiser for Brave Hearts, which is a Tucson-based LGBTQ prisoner group in a federal prison. They had a silent auction and a dance party in the space and raised $1,785.
When was that move?
In April. I’m still catching up on sleep. But we’re in a beautiful new space. I love it. We have more than twice the space we had before at the Central location.
Well, don’t tell your family you’re going to go to law school and then open a sex shop instead
What’s something new you want to work on this year?
I’m going to personally work on strengthening and toning my pelvic floor. I’ve turned forty this year, and I feel like I’ve been talking to people about their pelvic floors for fifteen years and not walking the walk. So now I have to actually do it myself, I guess.
Your job can be kind of emotionally taxing. What things do you do to take care of yourself?
I’m forever working on it. I work to spend time with the people I’m closest with. I very much value platonic intimacy these days. I also binge-watch a lot of trash TV.
Do you have any pets?
I have two perfect pets. One’s name is Fern—you can find her at Self Serve, she’s frequently napping in her suite or inappropriately barking at people when they come in. She’s four pounds of dynamite and is the world’s best dog. I also have a cat who’s on the edge of feral. Her name is Talullah. When she picks you, you feel like the luckiest person in the world. And she picks me enough that there are piles of cat hair all over my house.
How did your family react to you opening a sex shop?
Well, don’t tell your family you’re going to go to law school and then open a sex shop instead. That took a minute. I come from a family of educators; nobody in my family has a small business. Everybody else in my family has advanced degrees, and I’m the sex shop girl. But now they’re proud of me, because I am actually in education. I teach every day.
Were you actually considering law school?
Yeah. I took the LSAT and everything. I did pretty good. Well, good enough that I could have gone [to law school]. All I needed to know was that I could, but then I didn’t actually want to go.
Why did you pick Albuquerque?
I moved to New Mexico [from Boston] after hunting for a year doing market research about what community I wanted to call home. And it was a combination of everything from weather, to economic forecasts, to the cost of doing business, to the fact that I can have a dog here. I’ve lived in some of the most expensive cities in the world, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. I wanted to find the community that really needed a store like Self Serve.
