It's Valentine's Day at Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium in Vancouver. Crowds gather, and the bars of tingly oils are selling like hotcakes.

Owner Jim Deva stands at the counter bantering with locals. He asks a regular, "Got plans this weekend?" The man says "Yeah, going away." Jim cluck-clucks and says "Gotta leave town to get laid, eh?" The store erupts in laughter.

Leaving town and crossing borders are timely subjects at Little Sister's. On Dec. 15, 2000 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the store's fifteen-year battle with Canada Customs had not been in vain. Customs officers had treated the store unfairly, the justices agreed, regularly seizing incoming shipments and not returning them on grounds of obscenity, or releasing them after the sale dates on magazines had passed. Now, Customs has a time limit for returning a seized shipment, or else it goes to court to defend itself.

The onus is no longer on the bookstore to fight for its rights. And if Customs loses its defence, it pays the store's legal fees, plus punitive damages for dragging the issue into court in the first place. That is radical. Imagine if Eli Langer could have charged Toronto's morality squad for disrupting his life?

So the mood of celebration runs high at Little Sister's. But a new development in the story is putting a slight damper on the festivities. A letter has been released by Canada Customs containing newly added "indicators" of obscenity. This amended policy on censorship is effective Jan. 15, 2001.

Manager Janine Fuller kindly shows me the letter. Some of the categories listed are the same as the old ones: sex with violence, snuff, bestiality.

But here's a new one: fisting.

Fisting is "the insertion of a fist into the anal or vaginal orifice." This might sound bizarre to the newly initiated. But sliding your whole hand inside your lover's cunt is practiced among certain segments of the small-handed population. And anal fisting (or "handballing") is not uncommon amongst gay men. (Remember Mapplethorpe?)

"Historically, fisting is significant," Fuller explains, "as it's a safe form of penetration in the age of AIDS." A gloved hand takes many forms (it slides in "swan"-shaped), offers maneuverability and tenderness, and doesn't ejaculate. It also produces the most profoundly filling and humbling fuck of one's life, if done slowly, wetly, and carefully.

We're not talking bestiality or necrophilia here. Fisting is a fully legal thing to do, points out staff member Mark Macdonald. "Unlike, say, operating a grow-house. You can write about growing pot, an illegal activity, but now you can't write about fisting, a legal activity."

A similar contradiction was ironed out of the law on child pornography recently. Kids between the ages of 14 and 18, who are old enough to have sex, can now legally make an image of it. Why this paradox around fisting then?

I try a different angle. A section in D-911 (the Customs law) states that "sexual aids and toys" are permitted. Couldn't pictures and words be called aids and toys?

"Apparently not," Fuller says. "And do you know what? The store ships over the borderŠto sellŠlatex toys shaped like fists! No problem!"

How does this affect visual artists? Canada's obscenity laws are unforgiving if "community standards" are seen as compromised. (That's an artist's job in the first place, you say?) But the laws can flex if artistic or educational merit is argued. (Thank the Canadian Conference for the Arts and PEN Canada for their statements in the Little Sister's trial.)

So I have a suggestion. Now that we won't be able to get images or descriptions of fisting from the U.S. or Europe, we'd better start making some ourselves. Wondering what it looks like, or how to do it? Look at A Hand in the Bush by Deborah Addington, Trust by Bert Herrman, or The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex by Cathy Winks and Anne Semans. You can get these books from Little Sister's (1238 Davie St., Vancouver), or at Toronto's Glad Day Bookshop (598-A Yonge St.).

Otherwise, we might not have to leave town for the weekend to get laid, but we'll have to if we want stimulating imagery.