Season 1, Episode 2: A Big Brown Box

When I said I bought the item in question from a company in China, I was actually oversimplifying a bit.

What's truer is to say I used a vendor.

I found Sid, a guy online at some forum I'd meandered into while surfing the internet who was a dealer in, er, exercise equipment of a specific type, and after doing some extensive if not-particularly-expert research, decided to engage him via email.

That was an education. But after a long back and forth about what I was looking for, he told me about a specific manufacturer of sex dolls we'll call the Z Company.

"For a couple of grand more than what we've been talking," he said, "we can enroll you in an experimental trial they're running. You won't just get a doll; you'll get a Factory Girl."

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"Well, I can't really say. I haven't seen one in person yet. And this is really brand new. Two weeks ago they didn't even have this available so it's a real guinea-pig type thing."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I said. "I get it, this is new. But what is it?"

"So it isn't just a doll. It's, ummm..."

"It's a robot? It walks and talks? Does dishes? I can get a blow job?"

"I don't want to overpromise. But basically, I think what you said is pretty much right."

"Seriously?"

"Like I said, I don't know how far along this is. And a lot of these companies will dump product on the market essentially as a way to do quality control experiments."

"That doesn't really sound like a strong business practice," I said.

"Well, maybe not, but if you think about it, they'll sell you something knowing you won't send it back. And it's not like they're gonna get sued for a product liability claim, because who's going to admit they own a sex doll anyway? So there isn't a lot of downside. Sell a unit, wait for feedback on the forums, figure out what to fix and maybe you send a replacement for a defective one."

"You're making me less interested in doing this," I said.

"I'm just being honest with you, OK?" he told me. "Now, the flip side of this is you'd be getting something that isn't even really on the market, and what's even close is selling for upwards of 50 or 100 grand."

"So I'm a guinea pig for pennies on the dollar," I said, "and worst-case scenario I'm overpaying for an ordinary sex doll. Is that the pitch?"

"Pretty much. So what do you think?"

"Screw it," I said, thinking about the string of atrocious dates I'd been on over the previous year and the desperate need to do something different with my sex life. "Fine. Sign me up."

What could be worse than Crazy Maddie and George the Chicken? I thought.

"OK, cool! I'm actually fascinated to see how this works. I've been at this for a few years and these guys are the first ones to take the plunge into a real-life companion robot. Can't wait to see how it plays."

"Yeah, me neither," I said, with not a small amount of trepidation.

So he sent me a PayPal invoice and I paid it.

And then I got an email from the Z Company with a Terms and Conditions sheet that I was supposed to digitally sign.

I expected it to have all kinds of liability waivers and so forth, but it didn't. All it said, beyond the usual boilerplate, was that records of interactions with its Factory Girl unit were to be gathered and stored on a cloud for research and development purposes.

That seemed somewhat sinister, but on the other hand I couldn't really think of much that the Z Company could get on me through their Factory Girl that would affect U.S. national security or my own well-being, so I typed my name into the PDF form and paused before sending it back.

Was this a bad idea? Probably, I thought.

Then my phone buzzed. It was a text from Brenda, my old business associate's wife. "What did you do to Maddie?" she asked. "She's very upset."

"Nothing," I said. "I didn't appreciate her pet chicken and I wasn't interested in a lecture from her about abortion, and I decided she wasn't the one for me."

"That's it?" she texted back.

"Yeah. Why?"

"She said that you were very forward and inappropriate with her."

"That's an absolute lie. I was the opposite of that. Tell her it's a very bad idea to be pushing this on you or anybody else, because I'm not the type to sit by and get defamed."

"Oh," came the response. "I didn't want to get in the middle of anything."

"I agree. Tell her that. And tell her that I'm not interested in her and she needs to drop it."

"OK. I'm sorry I did this."

"Brenda, you're fine. You've been great. I appreciate you playing matchmaker; I do. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't."

"She really has a chicken?"

"I couldn't even make that up."

"You're right. OK, I'm done."

"Tell Brad I said hey."

And after that exchange, I sent the form.

The next day, I got a confirmation.

And a week or so later, this showed up in my email...

Hey, I thought. That isn't bad.

But what they didn't send was a video of this thing doing anything other than some eye movements. Just a few still shots of various body parts and regions. All of which looked pretty good, and all of which made me chuckle at how far we'd come from the glorified, and glory-holed, plastic balloons everybody would laugh at when they showed up at bachelor parties.

"You've got to forward your approval," Sid said in the email, "so they can box your girl and ship her out."

"Done," I emailed back. "We're good."

Then I waited six weeks.

It was strange, because this thing monopolized every free minute of my thoughts. Mostly because I felt like a mark for having plunked down a hunk of cash on a mannequin.

So I did a bunch of surfing on sex doll sites, and discovered a culture which was... not quite my usual social set. But on the other hand, what I found wasn't what I expected.

A lot of older guys who'd been taken to the cleaners in a divorce and were just done trying. A not-small number of guys who said they'd been diagnosed with autism and weren't comfortable trying to date. Some married guys whose wives weren't into sex and who found a sex doll as a compromise between cheating and... whatever the other alternative might be.

They weren't freaks. I guess I wasn't, either.

And then I found out that the whole industry was centered in China not because that's where everything gets manufactured cheaper but because there were something like 100 million more reproductive-aged men than women because of the one-child policy they had for all those years. Culturally, sons are valued more than daughters, so when you can only have one kid and it's female you have an abortion. And 20 years later, there aren't enough women to go around so all the Chinese guys who can afford one get a sex doll.

I'd fallen down the rabbit hole and a rabbit was now on its way to meet me.

Holy shit, I thought, when I got the "out for delivery" notification from UPS on my phone.

And later that day, there was a knock on the door, and a somewhat pissed-off driver made me sign for a package he had on a dolly.

"What the hell is in here, anyway?" he asked.

"It's exercise equipment," I said.

"Oh," he said, and I think he believed me. "Well, enjoy it, I guess."

I didn't particularly enjoy dragging that box up the stairs, but looking at it after that exertion, I felt a weird rush of anticipation...