ADVENTURES IN THE SEX SHOP (REDUX)

I recently re-posted an old video of me on Facebook in which I sing Elvis Presley’s “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” at a karaoke show while dancing with a blow-up doll, who I named Mercedes. It brought back memories, and I suddenly recalled that I’d written a blog about me purchasing Mercedes from the local sex shop. I thought it might be worth revisiting the blog, which is so old it originally appeared on MySpace. (www.myspace.com/tabardinn, if you care, but be warned, I’m almost never there.)

I edited it down a bit because there was a lot of stuff in there that wasn’t important to the main story, stuff about work that no one will give a fuck about. I first posted this thing on the morning before I went on stage with Mercedes, so I also cut out my invitation for people to come out to the bar and witness this train wreck in person. I left the rest of it alone, even though I wanted to tinker with it a little.

Without further ado, here’s “Adventures in the Sex Shop,” originally posted on April 23, 2009:

The atmosphere inside a sex shop is always a bit strange. There are all these toys and novelties and such hanging off the walls, and none of the customers can look each other in the eye. They ignore each other as much as possible. They fondle the wares in absolute silence. They furtively crouch to see items on the bottom shelves.

Some of these toys are so large you can’t possibly imagine using them on someone, unless you planned to beat that person to death with them. But clearly there are women who can accommodate these enormous objects, as a nearby magazine demonstrates.

One patron accidentally brushed up against another, and they froze like scarecrows. Neither met the other’s eyes. Everything went silent for a moment, and their mouths worked as if they wanted to say something. But they didn’t. They turned away from each other, not a word spoken, and continued perusing the shop, intent on seeking out their respective pleasures.

I found an entire bookshelf dedicated to blow-up dolls of all kinds. All of them were female except for a lonely John Holmes model. Much to my surprise, almost all were small enough to fit in a box roughly the size of a VHS tape. Could these things be really full-sized? I needed a doll that was at least five feet tall, as I intended to dance with it.

I looked all over one package, but I couldn’t find out how tall this thing was. I went from box to box, and none of them said anything more than how the doll was shaped. Many of them were made for doggie style. Some had pictures of porn stars on their faces. But no practical information, aside from which holes were available.

And then, near my feet I noticed a few packages that DID say how big the dolls were: three feet. At first I thought it was pretty funny. Who would buy something like that except for people who wanted to bone midgets? But then I thought about who else might want to buy small blow-up dolls: pedophiles. My stomach turned. Well, I thought, if they have to fuck something, why not a fake kid? That would be so much more acceptable than actually fucking real live kids. Maybe there was a social use for mini-blow-up dolls, after all.

I grabbed an Asian blow-up doll, mostly because she was advertised as not being bent over for doggie style. I needed the doll to stand up, so I could dance with her. I brought the box up to the counter and asked the cashier, “How big is this thing?”

She was very polite, as someone who works in a sex shop must be. She offered to open the box for me and show me how much material was in there. With two quick slits made by a box cutter, she pulled out the doll and showed me that they could actually fit a lot of doll into such a small box.

I told her I’d think about it. She sealed the box again, and I went back to browse some more. This time, I found a pregnant blow-up doll, which was really creepy. Distantly, I wondered if there was another doll inside her belly. And then I saw the alien blow-up doll, which was purple and had three tits.

Yeah . . .

And then I saw a bigger box hiding behind the John Holmes doll. Ah! This one actually stood up to full height! She had huge tits and even clothes! I knew I had my winner, but I wanted to look inside, just to make sure.

The cashier opened the box for me and showed me the flattened doll’s body. “Aw, look!” she said. “She’s got hair! You can do her hair, if you want.”

Darkly, I said, “It’s not her hair I plan to do.”

She laughed. “I think you make a great couple.” And she rang me up. While I was waiting for my receipt, I noticed a warning on the bottom of the box: PLEASE PRACTICE SAFE SEX. DO NOT SHARE YOUR LOVE DOLL WITH ANYONE ELSE.

Could an STD really survive inside a sex doll in much the same way as it does in a person? And besides that, who the fuck shares their blow-up doll with someone else? If such people do exist, would they resort to wearing a condom while swapping dolls?

I got in my car and started driving home. It was only then, as I found myself easing into traffic, that I wondered what would happen if I got into a car accident. The paramedics who would pull me from the wreck would not understand the presence of a blow-up doll at the scene. If I died, my grandparents would have to go to the morgue to collect my belongings, and they would find my blow-up doll. As they put my corpse in the ground, they would wonder what kind of pervert they had for a grandson.

I obeyed the speed limit and came to a stop behind the white line at red lights.

When I got home, I thought I’d inflate my doll to take her on a test drive. NO! Not like that. You people have a lot of growing up to do. I just wanted to make sure I could dance with her and pull a few moves while still holding a microphone.

A few things took me by surprise.

I never expected blow-up dolls to lack fingers and toes. It looked like she was wearing mittens and booties.

I never expected blow-up dolls to have a cherry. Not just one, but two. Both the vagina and the anus each had a cherry one could pop. Some of you are drooling and saying, “You bet.” The rest of us are saying, “That’s fucked up, when you think about it.”

I never expected blow-up dolls to have hair. This one’s was like a Barbie doll’s, except it was only attached to her forehead. The rest of her pate was bald. I was tempted to shave the rest of it off.

I never expected blow-up dolls to be so . . . tight. No, I didn’t test it with my dick; I used my fingers. I popped the doll’s front cherry with my fingers and then tried to push them all the way in. I could only fit the first two digits of my index and middle fingers in, and that was at a vertical angle. Horizontally, I could only do one finger. The same held true for her mouth. [EDIT: For the record, when Mercedes popped a few weeks later, her back cherry was still intact, so I never tested her back door.]

There’s no way I could have fit my dick in this thing. Only a micro-penis could get in this doll. Now clearly these things are popular. They’ve been sold for who knows how long? But can there be that many dudes with micro-penises out there? And even then, those guys would have to make their peace with the slightly sharp edges of the vagina. I don’t see that happening.

Anyway, I learned that she would most definitely do for the onstage performance I had in mind. Time to deflate her. I pulled the tab in her back, and air came hissing out, but not fast enough. I pressed her against the floor in an attempt to speed this up, and when that wasn’t as helpful as I was hoping, I pushed her face down into the carpet with all my weight and folded her legs behind her head. As her air blew into my face, I suddenly felt ashamed, as if I was assaulting a woman for real. It reminded me of a story I’d written in college about a guy with a wife-beating habit who went to a shrink for help. He was then instructed to start beating pillows instead. It worked at first, but he got tired of it. The pillows weren’t good enough anymore. He went out and bought a bunch of blow-up dolls, which he then proceeded to beat mercilessly. I never got the chance to market it, though, because shortly after, I read Hunter S. Thompson’s SCREWJACK, which features a character with a similar background.

I shook these horrible thoughts from my head as I bunched her body up into a ball and stuffed her back in her box. I hid her in my closet, where she will wait until my performance tonight.

[At this point, I invited everyone to come out and watch me serenade a blow-up doll. I should make note that, as evidenced by the video, the crowd loved it. However, it turned out that management at that bar was not pleased with me. Instead of talking to me about it, they bitched out and talked to my friend, who ran the karaoke show. I had to play nice from then on out. A few other stunts I pulled: changing Weird Al’s “My Bologna” to “My Salami” and pretending to go down on myself onstage, dressing up like Dean Stockwell in BLUE VELVET and singing “In Dreams” to a cardboard standup of Freddy Krueger, and singing Denis Leary’s “Asshole” in an attempt to win a $1,000 contest. I also did Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling” with a pair of bells hanging from my belt. I was originally going to wear a dildo for this performance, but I heard back about the Mercedes incident, and I toned it down so my friend wouldn’t lose his gig.

It’s a good thing I did. That night, I was picked up for DUI after leaving that bar. Explaining a dildo to the arresting officer would have been next to impossible. If he’d busted me a week before that, I would have had to explain Mercedes to him, because she was sitting up in my backseat like a person, wearing a seatbelt and everything.

For those interested, you can find my DUI Diary on this very site. Start here.]