Erm, my pockets are full of condoms, lubricant and other people’s business cards? What the flying fig happened last night? Huh? It’s Friday? The party was Wednesday… oh it’s coming back to me now. The launch party for Sexpo, the “sexuality lifestyle expo”, in Sydney Wednesday night.

I do recall a purpose for my visit. The sponsor of this bacchanalia was the company behind the new .xxx internet domain for adult sites.

When first proposed in 2000, it looked like .xxx (pronounced “dot triple-X”) wasn’t going to happen. Social conservatives opposed .xxx because it would legitimise online smut. Some in the adult industry were concerned it would create an easy-to-block ghetto. Domain manager ICANN rejected the proposal more than once. In 2010 the entire process had to be restarted with renewed due diligence following procedural problems.

But on 18 March 2011 .xxx got the green light. The vote was nine in favour, four against, with three abstentions. The ICM Registry went live late last year and is now selling .xxx domains through a few dozen retailers.

To keep things legitimate, businesses wanting to operate in .xxx must agree to community guidelines and the rules of the International Foundation for Online Responsibility (IFFOR).

On Wednesday night I was after a progress report, but I returned with a blur of images.

Platinum-blonde pneumatic-breasted women wearing bikinis with extraneous straps and metal rings, shoes with six-inch heels and make-up applied in that immediately-recognisable look that I hereby dub “pandaslut”. American p-rn stars (sorry, adult film actors) including Nina Mercedez, Alexis Texas and the infamous Belladonna who, I was reliable informed, would find that most of her ouvre is firmly labelled Refused Classification here in Australia.

Over-muscled male strippers from Hunkmania wearing singlets or athletic tops, fake tans and bored expressions — even when they were being paraded on stage. “Bodies like condoms full of walnuts,” noted our MC, comedian Russell Gilbert, whose Lowes-grade checked shirt gave him the look of a bloke who’d just popped in from the shed. (The condom line is stolen from Clive James, incidentally, and originally referred to Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

The three-metre high Penisaurus. The Tittiesaurus, whose entire head consisted solely of two weather-balloon-sized breast-eyes — Oedipus complex meets bad acid trip. P-nis Man, whose pink latex costume sported 26 eight-inch erect p-nises, including one on the toe of each of his ugg boots. A middle-aged bloke with a waxed and tanned body wearing a pink latex top hat, pink latex vest, pink latex briefs and pink latex cowboy boots. He’s the P-nis Picasso. He, erm, uses his penis to paint portraits.

There were drinks, of course. And speeches. Educational speeches.

Our favourite sexual position is not missionary but doggy, apparently, followed closely by cowgirl. A bit further down is jackhammer, explained Australian Sex Party convenor Fiona Patten.

These and other factoids came from The Great Australian S-x Census conducted by dating site redhotpie.com.au, this year surveying more than 15,000 people — though it’s not clear how representative they are.

“It’s really interesting for sex educators,” Patten contends. “It’s really interesting for governments to see what Australians actually are doing in their bedrooms, very often with the lights on, and very often with mirrors there too …

“The majority of us do support gay marriage, we do believe that gay couples should adopt, and we do believe that lesbian couples couples should have access to IVF.”

Then came The Great Porn Debate. On one side was Craig Gross, a pastor from XXXChurch whose projects include bibles labelled “Jesus loves p-rn stars” and the Internet Accountabilty System that allows you to share the p-rn you watch with your partner, mother, children or anyone else you’d like to open that dialog with. On the other was legendary p-rn star Ron Jeremy, who entered the venue flanked by two of the women with pandaslut eyes wearing violet LEDs threaded through their hair, shiny blue bikini tops and mini-tutus, and two blokes with fake tans the colour of Uluru wearing nothing but leopard-print briefs, vast fake afros and over-sized shades.

The debate was presumed to be fascinating, but the strippers were looking bored and started checking out the chicks, the booze continued to flow well ahead of any solid sustenance and, well, it’s all a blur after that.

This morning my head cleared sufficiently to get an Australian adult industry perspective on .xxx.

“The industry recognises that .xxx is here now, but we’re still somewhat ambivalent about the effect it’ll have on regulation,” Patten told Crikey. “You could see Senator Conroy use it as an easy out, for example, you could block all .xxx domains.”

But not everything in .xxx is X-rated. Some early registrants have used .xxx to imply a bit of edginess in their brand. One example is kite.xxx for the supposedly extreme sport of kitesurfing.