March 18, 2004
the pink pussycat problem
Are you familiar with the new kind of Tupperware party? It has nothing to do with Tupperware, but it does have to do with the format. I'm sure you've heard of the candle parties and the Pampered Chef parties and who knows what all, but this one, my dears, is a category requiring its own category.
The sex toy party.
Yes indeed. A whole bunch of people, in my experience women, sit around sipping wine and holding tiny plates delicately on their knees. You might expect that the plates would have food on them.
You would expect wrong.
In fact, the tiny plates contain smidgens and droplets of massage oils, body paints, body butter, sweetened sprinkly dust, and a few things I'm sure I'm forgetting.
While all the tasting is happening, the woman who brings the paraphenalia to the host's home begins showing, in an astonishing array of colors, textures, sizes, capabilities, electrification options, materials, the false phalli.
These are sci-fi creations. Some looked to me like a combination of a lava lamp and a strand of DNA. One, which still haunts me, was full of gently colored pearls. The pearl-filled shaft, when turned on, so to speak, bent slightly and turned so the pearls clicked against each other and underwent the circus ride from outer space.
Why does that one haunt me? It sounds kind of pretty in the abstract. Lava lamps, pearls, soft clicking--like meditation, really.
But here's the thing. I'm not sure if it was the same one, but in my mind they've become one. It had two different switches. One was on and off. I expected that. What I didn't expect was the second switch. That was the one for the voices.
Hearing voices, you say? Why yes! As the pearls undulated and swirled, you could flip a switch and a voice would say, "Oooooooo, oh yeah, mmm, oooooooh." That kind of thing. A woman would say that. If you pushed the switch one more click, a man would say it.
Haunting me. I hadn't realized how far my biases reach. I hadn't realized how much sex toy designers considered the interchangeablility of toy use.
How clever to put both voices on! Any woman, any man could purchase the item and hear the vocalizations of his or her choice.
So egalitarian.
I was telling a friend of mine about it after we'd been invited to such a party. She started laughing a little and said, "What if you switched with the answering machine?"
And I started cackling thinking about some woman beginning to wonder if the man inside her answering machine had taken up residence between her legs. "Why is he always asking me to leave my name and number? They never call, anyway."
Then imagine her mother calling. "Uh, Hon? It's your mother? Are you home? Is this your number? What are you doing? Who is that with you? Will you call me, please? Hon?"
Posted by dotty at March 18, 2004 11:55 PM