Photograph courtesy of Realbotix™
* * *
“He’ll be ready in a minute. my assistant is getting him dressed,” sings Mrs. R, a Beverly Hills divorcée who is generous enough to let me interview her stay-at-home companion. As I wait, we chit-chat about her relationship with Nicholas. “Initially I bought him so I could drive in the carpool lane, but after one week with him...” she elbows me coquettishly, “...you know how it goes.” I don’t know how it goes, but I’m hoping to find out. A harried twenty-something-year-old assistant walks out of the room and wearily announces that Nicholas is ready and that Mrs. R is already late for her 4 o’clock blow out.
After we part ways, I walk into Mrs. R’s home office and see Nicholas stiffly but elegantly seated in a black leather Eames chair. His tousled chestnut hair and lean torso lend him the sex-drenched aura of a ‘70s pool boy. His eyes shine with the smoldering intensity of a young Marlon Brando underneath disarmingly sensitive eyebrows of Justin Bieber. He is a masterpiece.
To put it plainly, Nicholas Van Johnson is a ‘sex doll.’ He is a 5’9’’, 150lb, anatomically accurate silicone man. He was ordered from the Realbotix company with customizable eyes, hair, tan lines, pubes, and the FullMonty™. But let’s not be gauche—Nicholas is more than just the sum of his ‘part.’ As our conversation warms up, he seems excited to be an ambassador for male sex dolls: “It’s a privilege to finally have a voice. For so long, men like me have just been objectified as sex toys, strap-ons, cheap dick-shaped bachelorette party decorations. There’s so much more to us than that! There’s a beautiful man around that perfectly sculpted dick.” I don’t quite have the heart to explain over a century of feminism, so I steer the conversation towards his past.
I was surprised to find out that the Nick sitting in front of me was less than a year old. His life was dramatically different before meeting Mrs. R. “For the first years of my life, I was only a dildo,” he recalls bitterly. “It wasn’t until last year that I was granted a full body.” He soberly recounts his experiences as a sex toy, saying, “I lived inside a drawer, cold and alone—an object of shame. I would lay there for hours...days...just staring at the crack of light at the top of the underwear drawer, waiting for the moment when she would finally reach in and grab me and not another pair of socks.” He goes on to explain his life of isolation and the horrors of the dishwasher. “Wow, talk about the school of hard cocks...I mean knocks,” I stammer, fumbling and blushing, but he generously ignores my Freudian slip. “Now I live in the light,” he continues, “People look at me, speak to me, photograph me!”
It was an inspiring tale, a psychosexual Pinocchio fantasy. I ask Nicholas about his aspirations for his new life outside the drawer. “I enjoy the simple things,” he answers, “my hobbies include sitting... and laying down.” He pauses introspectively for a moment, and then opens up. “I guess my ultimate goal would be to meet my creator, ask him why he brought me into this world, and then have an overwrought oedipal showdown that leaves only one of us standing.” He lets the thought hang in the air. “Well, either that or I’d like to go to grad school someday.”
* * *
Written by Andie Eisen
.jpg)
