PERSONAL ESSAYS

  

  

ecstatically with a white plastic phallus in The Slums of Beverly
Hills, and when there's a kinky little leather shop on nearly every
block in my neighborhood -- but I did not own a vibrator until last week.

    

I think I was turned off by their nursey-white smoothness, or else by
their anatomical aspirations. The ones I had personally inspected always
seemed designed to assert clinical sterility, like some dry-fingered
dental hygienist was offering me expert stimulation. Otherwise they
fetishized the cock in such exaggerated detail I felt mildly nervous
about their perpetual states of engorgement -- as if they might pop in my
dresser drawer and spew plastic cum all over my panties.

    

My friend Barbara had found her mother's vibrator (or was it a dildo? in
any case, a big plastic cock) in a drawer when we were fifth graders, and
we actually convened a small conference on the playground to discuss the
possible uses of that rubbery erection. It seemed to us more like a
symbol of castration than a symbol of virility or self-sufficient
pleasure. Ick, we agreed. Why would Barbara's mom want some leftover
penis without a man attached?

    

Well, I'm thirty-one now, and the leftover penis is starting to seem more
interesting. Plus, everyone has one but me. I order from a catalog, even
though the shop is just a subway ride away.

    

Then I wait.

    

And wait.

    

And wait.

    

For weeks. Turns out my choice is on backorder -- the "eroscillator" is
an extremely popular toy. (That's what it's called, the eroscillator, and
it comes with four attachments in different bulbous shapes and an

instruction manual by Doctor Ruth. Also, it doesn't technically vibrate
but oscillates, if you know what that means. I don't.)

    

By the time I find out about the backorder, I am itching to gratify my
gadget fetish, but I manage to make due with my Cuisinart and a cool
garlic press for another month before calling up the sex shop. Where is
it?

    

"We delivered the item," says Dolores, on the other end of the line.

    

"You did? I don't have it."

    

"Someone signed for it in your building. Let me see." She looks it up
with a rustle of papers. "Do you know someone named Carlos?"

    

"No." It's true, I don't, but I think of this young guy who goes in and
out of the basement apartment and sometimes messes with the recycling
bins. We don't really have a super in my building, but this kid takes
care of the trash. Maybe UPS felt he was the right person to take charge
of an undelivered eroscillator.

    

I tell Dolores I'll call her back and spend the next three days tapping
on this guy's door at various intervals. When I finally get him he shakes
his head. "No package came here, miss." I do not get his name.

    

Dolores is shocked. "You really don't have the item?"

    

I tell her someone named Carlos is eroscillating himself into a frenzy at
my expense.

    

"I'm bringing it right over on my way to my mother's after work," she
tells me. "Will you be home this evening?"

    

"You don't have to do that," I say. "You can just mail it."

    

"No no. I have a car. And you really should not be without the item."

    

I have been without the item thirty-one years and I am hardly in a state
of extreme sexual frustration. My boyfriend's not that obsessed

with Tomb Raider, and he knows where to put it. But Dolores lives in a
world where sex toys are like food and shelter. She does not want me to
be lacking for a moment.

    

But I am going on vacation for two weeks, so I put her off, and she even
calls me at my grandmother's house to see when I'm coming back because
she so sincerely wants me to have it. When I do get back she zips over
promptly -- again on her way to her mother's -- and I pop down the stairs
to meet her so she won't have to walk five flights.

    

Dolores is a Latina lesbian with acid-wash pants and about sixteen
ear-piercings. I am a nervous white lady with a brand new sex toy, we
smile at each other, and I blush. I take the package from her. She has
wrapped it up like a birthday present -- floral paper and a cheery bow.
"I didn't want you to be without it," she says kindly, and trots back to
her car.

    

The eroscillator is bronze. I couldn't tell from the catalog, which was
printed in black and white, but it glitters like a miniature Porsche,
like the cock of C-3PO.

    

I turn it on.

    

It's a little disillusioning.

    

The eroscillator has to be plugged in to a socket, and it makes an urgent
buzzing noise. Now it's less like a Porsche and more like an electric

drill. The four attachments have to be kept in a zip-lock baggie so
they stay clean. There's one that looks like a paddle and mimics digital
stimulation; one is cup shaped, and promises a suction effect; one is
a fat aggressive arrowhead designed for anal penetration; and one is a
flowery stalk-like shape that hits the G-spot.

    

I pick the flower, and it takes some doing to attach it properly. But I
persist, get it up and running, and try to work with the toolbox
aesthetic. I imagine hard-hatted construction workers building a gazebo
with no clothes on.

    

It works. I get off, and it's even hot -- in a zippy, rushed, gadgetty
way. Everything stays pretty dry and when it's over I unplug my tool,
wipe it down, pack it up, and zip up my baggie.

    

I find I like this procedure. It's like having a penis of my very own to
care for and keep in working condition. There are post-coital maintenance
chores, then it goes back behind its zipper.

    

I also like how synthetic and jangly the eroscillator experience is, so
different from the warm oozing of oral stimulation or the urgent friction
of manual. It's a new activity altogether, like the pleasure of that

cheese-in-a-can that squirts onto crackers in little floral shapes. Fun.
Tasty. Quick. But not filling, nor exactly satiating, because it's hardly
even cheese. It's just a snack.

    

Most of all, I like owning that big bronze toolbox cock. I like the idea
of being a person who has sex toys. Its very adult to purchase things
you didn't even know existed as a child, plus it makes me feel that sex
might be simply one of several things I get done in a day, a way to kill
time if I'm waiting for a fax to go through. It doesn't have to be full
of feelings and fondlings and nudity. No fantasies required (though
naked workmen don't hurt), no lubrication, and almost no time. It can
take less than a minute, and I don't even have to take my pants off.

    

Of course, I knew sex could be quick and easy before I got the
eroscillator. But the item reminds me I've got options, that a penis can
be a toy as well as symbol of power or desire or potency. It reminds me
that there is a future for sex -- that technologies and fashion will
change our fantasies and practices. It's a golden goose at the end of a
string of mail criminals, trash boys and customer service
representatives. And it's mine, mine, mine.

©1999
Emily Jenkins
and hooksexup.com

I'm ashamed to admit this in an age when Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern discuss masturbation and breakfast cereal in the same breath, when every other chick-zine waxes poetic on the merits of electrically assisted stimulation, when Marisa Tomei and Natasha Lyonne gyrate