Is that a wallet in your pocket?

Bored stiff at the lurid mall that is Sexpo, Claire Keeton resorted to some waxy masochism to wake herself up

'Trust me. I won't burn you," said the mellow dungeonmaster as he tied a pink blindfold around my eyes. He was telling the truth, in the strictly medical sense of the word "burn".

And if it weren't for him and his candle, Sexpo wouldn't have been worth the trip.

I write about sex and HIV, and I was curious. So last Saturday night, in the afterglow of the Bok match, I dragged my partner to my first Sexpo. Perhaps the final night didn't give an accurate impression of SA's "premier health, lifestyle and sexuality exhibition". But it said a lot that the final minutes of the Boks' win over the Wallabies were more arousing than the proceedings in that soulless hall in Midrand.

Sexpo was devoid of eroticism, energy or laughter - with the exception of Pricasso, who amused himself by painting portraits with his penis, as he does.

The setting had all the erotic frisson of a suburban mall. Fantasies were scarce: merchandise ruled. The liveliest event was a fetish display in which a topless woman sporting bondage gear was being tickled, while another flaunted feathered needles in her nipples.

Porn-star lookalikes strolled about, looking just as bored as we soon felt. And the sculpted men were less sensual than store-front mannequins.

So the 50 Shades of Black KINX Lounge seemed a good place to escape the general torpor. But let me be clear: the brand of S&M popularised by Fifty Shades of Grey holds zero appeal for me.

After signing a waiver, I was ushered behind black curtains. The lounge offered narrow, sweaty benches for observers - voyeurs don't deserve couches, it seems - and a four-poster bed surrounded by an array of ominous props.

A man in a faded black T-shirt was dripping candle wax onto another dude's back. A woman in lingerie was vigorously whipping a skinny oke with a cat o' nine tails.

I became curious about the sensation of molten wax on skin. And I have an urge to push boundaries: hence my love for adventure sports. But I soon found that a masochistic scalding is less fun than extreme sport. And it's hard to be passive. It took serious commitment to lie still on a black plastic sheet and wait for the wax to come.

As he lit his candle, the dungeonmaster offered an instruction: "Embrace the pain. Try not to avoid it, as we do in our lives."

His calm professionalism led me to relax a little, and I lasted longer than my predecessor. But as the intensity of the heat on my skin climbed, I had to steel myself not to leap off the bench. Apparently, I was clenching my fists.

Time slowed to a standstill as I waited for the ordeal to be over. At long last my tormentor scraped away the wax and cooled my reddened shoulders with an ice cube.

It was enough of a novel experience to call it a night and walk away. But I won't be back until Sexpo becomes an event about real people and real sexuality, and not mainly about shifting products.