Reba the Diva gives an anatomy lesson during a Blow His Mind! class in May. (Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

Being a sex consultant requires props.

It’s rare to see Reba the Diva without her collection of sex toys, which she rolls into rooms in a black box that looks like a fishing kit on wheels.

At a February presentation about using toys with partners, she’s performative as she explains the functions of various vibrators. One goes “buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz,” she says, while another goes “buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” She says that she tests all of the toys before adding them to what one attendee jokingly calls her “petting zoo” of products.

In comparing the powers, functions, and feels of the toys, Reba shares her personal experiences with them—which positions are best for stimulation, the different ways to use them. The conversation moves from logistics to a stickier wicket: how women can introduce these pleasure products into the bedroom without making their partners feel insecure or inadequate.

Like so many others in the region, Reba Thomas is a consultant (a cursory LinkedIn search of consultants in the metro area comes up with more than 200,000 results.) Unlike the people who work for Deloitte, McKinsey, or other government-adjacent firms, she is a “sexpert consultant” who goes by “Reba the Diva.”

She meets one-on-one with clients looking to learn about sex and seduction and holds sessions on introducing kink or anal play into a relationship, in addition to teaching her flagship blowjob classes and hosting bachelorette parties.

Like any good consultant, sometimes she’ll drop acronyms (ike “PIV,” which means “penis-in-vagina” sex) into everyday conversation. She’s had some training from the Indiana University’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion, and constantly reads up about new sexuality studies. She quotes Masters and Johnson and Esther Perel in her workshops.

But the biggest weapon in her arsenal is her ability to make people feel comfortable talking about what they want.

“Honestly, we can all Google how to give head and we can get the Cosmo articles and the blogs about what people experience,” Reba says over lunch. “But really, people want to know that they’re quote unquote normal and also, that they’re doing the best that they can.”

Reba gives a demonstration using a toy called the “Love Rider.” (Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

One Friday night in March, a woman treks all the way from Delaware for the Blow His Mind! Workshop. She doesn’t like fellatio and is looking for ways to improve her experience.

“I do it and then the whole time I dread every moment of it. It feels like something I have to do,” says the 38-year-old nurse, who found the class through an online search and journeyed down to D.C. with a friend. “I want to get to a place where I enjoy it, if I can.”

Reba, who has a special part of the class dedicated to “Your Pleasure,” says that her big secret is putting herself first, even when she’s giving a blowjob.

During class, the thirty-one-year-old is more likely than not wearing a jaunty hat—a camel-colored bucket hat or a Parisian felt hat or a newsboy cap—and she has a penchant for animal prints and bright colors. Her big eyes can just as easily widen in faux-surprise as they scrunch when she belly laughs, which happens a lot.

“What I’ve learned from being in these circles and doing these dinner parties and talking to various women about sex is that we feel like it’s more of a chore because we don’t put our pleasure first,” she says when we’re eating lunch on 14th Street later, and I ask her about the Delawarean.

But the bigger problem, Reba argues, is that so many women don’t actually know what they like in bed. “There are women who will never even know how to please themselves and I feel like it’s impossible to have a great sex life, or even a good one, without being able to explain to your partner what you like, so you’ve got to start within yourself,” she says.

As the #MeToo reckoning has recast many sexual interactions through the lens of power, illuminating all of the ways in which women who say “no” are ignored or tossed aside, Reba is trying to navigate the landscape of the enthusiastic “yes.”

It takes her back to the night she lost her virginity. When she was 14, she met a guy on Myspace and, after exchanging some messages, went over to his Greenbelt apartment.

“I know what I’m there for: we’re going to have sex,” she says. She was right about that, but the experience was not what she had expected. It was painful and confusing, and not pleasurable in the slightest. “If that was sex, God, I don’t want it,” she remembers thinking afterward.

But Reba is careful to clarify that incident wasn’t a #MeToo moment. “We need to stop equating bad sex with coercive sex,” she says. “It’s when you aren’t satisfied versus when you feel like you can’t say no. People are using the term ‘bad sex’ to mean a lot of things.”

Before classes and discussions, Reba lays out some of the toys and products she sells. (Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

Reba gives her spiel about the buzzing vibrators at Women Uncorked, a meet-up for women-identified people of different backgrounds to have frank conversations about sex. It was founded by local filmmaker Jennifer Beman nearly two years ago and happens monthly at Rhizome DC, a community arts space in a Takoma home (there’s also a spin-off discussion that meets in Park View).

After Reba’s talk, a slew of the two dozen women in attendance line up to order some of the merchandise from her assistant. One married woman in her early thirties, a Takoma Park resident, buys a set of cock rings and some other toys, which are sitting in a warehouse in New Jersey and will arrive on her doorstep in a few day’s time. (At the next month’s Women Uncorked, she gives an update: the cock rings were a big hit. “It was the most fun thing we did,” she says with a smile.)

But for some of the attendees, the toys were not the takeaway. It was about finding people who candidly talk about sex.

“I used to feel like a very sexual, confident, open person, but being married and having kids … I didn’t think I’d be as shaken by it as I am,” says one woman after the February meet-up. She’s a stay-at-home 41-year-old married Takoma resident with two young kids. “Every time I get drunk with a group of moms there’s complaints about sex, but everyone pulls back because our kids have playdates.”

These are the people that inspire Reba to be a sex consultant. At a lunch her husband, Gari, Reba says, “I want to reach those people out there who are miserable. I tell Gari, ‘I’m changing the world one orgasm at a time.’”

“And I am behind that cause!” Gari chimes in with a laugh.

But her business Sexpert Consultants didn’t start out that way. While working full time as a grant writer at a local non profit, Reba began selling sex toys—a vocation that, for many women, has become the 21st century equivalent of tupperware or Mary Kay parties.

“At first, I was thinking about ways that I could sell my sex toys without hawking them on the street,” Reba says. “But also, I was really interested in the education part.”

Cribbing from the book Tickle His Pickle: Your Hands-On Guide To Penis Pleasing, one of the products she sold, Reba crafted a presentation that she workshopped with friends before taking it to the broader public.

“Even back when Reba was starting and coming up with the formula, she was always able to connect [with customers]. ‘These are my experiences, bad and good, but the bad ones help you get to the good ones,’” says her cousin, Kayla Cunningham, who saw the class at the outset. “When I saw how many women were coming out and leaving so pleased, I was like, ‘Okay, you have something here.’ They wanted more.”

Reba says she was scheming ways to expand her business when she was laid off last September. She took it as a sign. “I sat down and I thought—what experiences do I really want to give? And I realized that I want to create a community, a place for women to come and be free to talk about sex without any taboo or shame or judgement.”

She says that her business currently brings in about $60,000 annually.

Her speciality is telling an intensely personal story that opens the floodgates for others to do the same. “I’m an open book, and that’s part of my brand,” she says. “I’m the friend who knows.” It works during her workshops, sessions, and discussions, but participants are often still wary about broadcasting their involvement before or after.

On one Sunday afternoon Blow His Mind! Workshop, for instance, the four participants are local women in their late thirties and forties. They all have long term partners, but only one of them has told him where she is. They’re also worried that buying the tickets on Eventbrite would post the class to their social media pages.

I’ve granted all of them anonymity to discuss their feelings and motivations for attending Sexpert Consulting events. Even Reba’s assistant, Sydney, a publicist in her early twenties who helps with logistics and social media for about two hours weekly, asked that I not use her last name in this piece.

But there’s at least one person who’s comfortable with his sexual business out in the world: Reba’s husband. They’ve known one another for 15 years, after meeting on the D18 bus when Reba was 16 and Gari was 22. They were in contact on-and-off for the next decade before getting serious in 2013.

The two live in Cheverly, Md., renting out the basement of Reba’s childhood home from her parents, with three kids (two from prior relationships of Gari’s)—an 18 year old, a nine year old, and a three year old. The younger two kids just know that “mommy teaches workshops.” Reba’s cousin, Kayla, lives there too.

Gari comes up in every class Reba teaches or discussion she leads: what he likes in bed, their methods for communicating their desires, how they’ve incorporated a certain toy into their sex lives.

Gari doesn’t know exactly what she says about him when she is Reba the Diva. “She tells me I’m a big part of the presentation,” he says. “I’m okay with it, because I trust my wife.”

As participants in the Blow His Mind! class carve out penises from cucumbers, Reba draws one on the whiteboard. (Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

It’s Friday night and a couple has taken an Uber from Maryland to the Dupont Cove, a co-working space on Connecticut Avenue where Reba hosts most of her classes and one-on-one sessions. Tonight is date night, and they’re here for a private 50 Shades of Play: Intro to Kink workshop with a bottle of sangria in tow.

The duo has been married for 15 years and the husband booked the session as a surprise for his wife. “I’m a methodical person,” says the husband, who’s in sales, by way of an explanation. “I’m going to go in the baby pool first.”

This experience is also a first for the wife, who does marketing—she’s never even been to a sex toy party. “What this helped show him is that [BDSM] doesn’t have to be dirty or scummy,” she says afterwards. “It’s just another way to explore your sexuality. I bet our parents have used some of this stuff before.” She gestures at the table, full of Reba’s toys and the bottle of sangria, now empty.

After the couple leaves the Cove conference room, Reba clears the BDSM toys off the table and washes off a now-dried splash of sangria. Her night isn’t over yet. She’s still got another class to lead. This one, a pleasure mapping class, has couples chart out their ideal sexual experience. It’s still a work in progress—only one couple signed up that night.

Reba says the biggest misconception about her work is that she hosts sex parties. One friend compares her to the central figure in one of the city’s most salacious scandals. “I am not the D.C. Madam,” Reba shakes her head.

She is trying to build a community of like-minded women, including a training program to teach others to lead the Blow His Mind! Workshop. The D.C. Women’s Business Center has been helping her with licensing.

“I want to be able to pass on the knowledge I have and help women educate their networks,” she says. “This business is word-of-mouth. There’s not an internet ad or a billboard campaign I can run that’s going to work the way that a consulting network would work. ”

Whether ads would be effective is one question, but she’s also worried that sites like Instagram would reject them altogether over their sexual content. And building the network is proving difficult.

“It’s hard to find people who are willing to say, ‘I want to be a sexpert consultant,’” she says. “I am willing to put myself out there as someone who teaches sex because it’s still very taboo.”

As she ramps up the plan, she continues to hold about three or four public Blow His Mind! Classes every month. Plus, summer is bachelorette season and Reba has a slew of them booked.

At one Friday night Blow His Mind! a 40-year-old Woodbridge resident is bummed that Reba didn’t bring any sex toys that she could take home with her, and instead will have to wait a few days for the products to ship.

“It’s a 40 minute drive back,” she says. “And I’ve got a USB charger right in the car.”

Reba smiles. Now here’s a woman putting her pleasure first.