Quantify the effects of the experiment.

Aaron and I arrived at Real Dolls' San Marcos "facility" at one in the afternoon. We drove past the abandoned-looking premises a couple of times, certain I had the wrong address. After triple checking, we parked out front and walked up to the entrance. A young guy got up from the reception desk, opened the door and returned to his desk without a word.

"Hey," I said, cutting the leaden silence of the waiting room. "I'm Grant Stoddard from Nerve? I'm here to see Matt McMullen?"

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"I'll be with you in a second," the receptionist drawled in a SoCal monotone, staring intently at the screen. He seemed both frustrated and determined. Aaron and I were motioned in the general direction of some pink leather sofas. We sat down. The reception wasn't the only thing that was chilly: the room was dim and freezing. It was ringed with silicon miniatures of naked women, each about sixteen inches tall. In the distance, the phone rang and a female voice answered. While Aaron loaded a roll of film, I listened in on the conversation.

"No, sir, there is a twelve- to sixteen-week waiting list . . . well, every doll is handcrafted, sir. . . well, you can pay a fee to expedite, but you can't jump to the top of the list . . . You can cut the wait time to eight weeks . . . that fee is an extra fifteen hundred dollars . . . you wanna go ahead and do that? . . . alrighty then, it's a Mastercard?" This was certainly a testament to the product. People were parting with twice my rent to get their grubby mitts on a fuckdoll a little sooner.

I asked the receptionist for the bathroom, and he pointed me down a long, dark corridor. Halfway there, I noticed a door was ajar and poked my head in. What I saw gave me a jolt. Dozens of Real Dolls were hanging from the walls by metal hooks in the back of their necks. They stared blankly at each other and at me, their mouths agape. It looked like a mass lynching at the Playboy Mansion.

I wandered around the room, mindful of the prominent "Do Not Touch" signage. This was my first face-to-face encounter with Real Dolls, and I was taken aback by how realistic they seemed. All the major races and pubic hair options were represented. I walked back to the reception area. We'd been waiting for about fifteen minutes when the guy at reception introduced himself as Matt McMullen, Real Dolls' founder and president. "Sorry about the wait," he sighed. "Computer issues." I was expecting him to be much older and said so. "Yeah, I get that a lot. Let me get you your date." He ushered us into a room containing a sofa, TV, coffee table and "Karen," who was coyly sitting on the sofa. Karen had a type 3 body, a type 2 face and a type-A personality.

"Here she is," Matt said, straightening her sheer blue dress, fussing with her hair and taking an admiring step back. "Go nuts. I'll be back in a half hour." He turned to leave, but I suddenly felt a little ridiculous and decided to stall. "Um, Matt? Can I ask you a few questions about the dolls first? I asked. "Sure," Matt said after checking his watch, fiddling with one of his face piercings and perching himself on the arm of the sofa.

Then I remembered where I'd seen Matt before. He bore a striking resemblance to the male Real Doll featured on the website. I asked him if the doll was created in his likeness. "Actually, a friend made the face for that doll," he explained. "The original version was a total replica of my face. I thought having this fabricated version of me was just too fucked up and made him change it."

"Well, it still looks like you a bit, don't you think?" I probed.

"Matt?" A woman's voice in the background.

"Okay, have fun, guys. If you want to change her position, come get me and I'll do it. Because if you damage her it's like . . . y'know?"

We did. Sort of. Aaron looked at me sheepishly. "Maybe you could leave me and the lady alone for five minutes?" I said. Relieved, he bolted from the room. Karen and I were alone at last. I touched her bare thigh and looked up at her for approval. Even though she was inanimate, I thought it terribly gauche to grab for the rude parts with no attempt at conversation.

A bit of background. During my time at Nerve, I've been sent many products intended to feel "just like real skin." Almost all of them don't, unless they're trying to replicate the mealy flesh of an Ebola sufferer. I got so many of these products, I almost came to expect prosthetic buttocks to be waiting on my desk every morning. The packaging usually said something like, "Molded from Chasey Laine's pussy and ass — feels just like the real thing!" As I scarfed down a bagel and coffee, I'd give the cheap toys a quick feel, then spend the next hour worrying about the state of the porn starlet's health.

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Real Dolls are certainly more natural. The skin responds to a squeeze like a healthy nineteen-year-old Midwestern girl's might. The shocking difference — something I hadn't really anticipated — was that my date was stone cold to the touch. (Matt later told me that Real Doll owners put the dolls under electric blankets or in the tub to heat them up; apparently, silicone retains warmth.) Undeterred, I popped a boob out of her chiffon dress. This would be the true test of anatomic accuracy. I breathed on Karen's perky orbs like a grandmother cleaning her spectacles, attempting to take the chill off. I took one in each hand, and it felt good. Really good. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine I was feeling a real woman's C-cup boobs. Oddly enough, aside from the slightly tacky feel of the silicone, these boobs felt more natural than the fake sets that reside on real people. I was so zenned out that I didn't notice Aaron sneak back into the room. "Looks like you've made friends," he said, jolting me out of my daydream.

Think removing a real girl's clothes can be tricky? Karen was not only uncooperative but insanely heavy. I never really understood the term "dead weight" before. With Aaron's help, I eventually got her naked and positioned her head in my direction. Grabbing her hand, I shrieked. Karen's skeleton was discernable through her flesh, just like a real person's. Regaining my composure, I moved my hand between her legs.

I figured a Real Doll's vagina would probably take the brunt of the consumer's attention, and thus would be the key to its ultimate realness. Slowly, I slipped a finger in. The cavity was super-snug and, aside from being cold, certainly felt real. I squeezed out a dollop of Astroglide from the tube I'd brought along and applied it. Probably from friction alone, the area started to warm slightly. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. I got a little excited at the thought of having sex with it . . . I mean her.

Aaron left the room while I put on a condom and got between her legs. The initial pleasure of Karen's tightness was tempered by the feeling that I was humping a cadaver and was about to experience my first morgueasm. The sound of her wig rubbing against the back of the sofa was chilling.

Aaron, understandably reticent to be in the same room while I used the world's most luxurious masturbatory device, returned to take a few posed shots. "Um . . . what's it feel like?" he said, using his camera primarily to avoid making eye contact. I gave Karen a few hard pumps to illustrate. "Y'know what?" he said, taking shots as he backed toward the door. "You can tell me later."

I was creeped out, Aaron was creeped out, and by the looks of her, Karen wasn't thrilled with the situation either. With every thrust, her entire form shifted up and down. Only her breasts seemed to move naturally.

With some effort, I tried to manipulate Karen's legs into a few unrealistic positions, as I'm wont to do with actual people. But holding her leaden, lifeless limbs for more than thirty seconds sapped my strength. (Plus, I was reluctant to go too crazy: I knew that tearing the doll meant I'd have to purchase it. YIKES!) I remembered the FAQ page boasted of a "special suction effect" and its ability to induce "intense orgasms." I was eager to experience that for myself. The effect was purportedly strongest upon "oral entry," which was just as well. A sex doll with a sucking cooter sounded like some Freudian nightmare.

I hesitated before putting my pride-and-joy into the Real Doll's mouth, which featured a dangerous-sounding "hinged jaw." Luckily, Karen's teeth were made of soft silicone like the rest of her. I eased in and immediately experienced the sucking feature. I committed the ultimate sexual faux-pas: I put my hands on either side of her head. Evidently I got a little too tactile with her cranium, as I ended up snagging her wig on my fingers and pulling it askew. Her blonde bangs fell below her nose.

I called for Aaron to fetch Matt, so he could put Karen in another position. Matt appeared about five minutes later.

"Are you planning on going through the Kama Sutra?" he asked, fussing with Karen's disheveled platinum locks.

"No, just one more should do it," I assured him.

"Well, how do you want her?"

"Um, doggy-style please." I hoped I'd never use that exact sentence again.

"Okay, I'm going to prop her on the arm of the sofa. She should be pretty sturdy like that." Matt left the room and Aaron circled Karen, capturing her from every angle. While he snapped away, I stood by the door and imagined that I'd walked in on a Hustler shoot. With Karen's face obscured, it became hard to tell whether she was real or not. I came up behind and entered her slowly. Aaron took a few more pictures and left me to hammer away at poor Karen.

A Real Doll's primary selling point is that you have a choice of three ever-ready inputs. Feeling naughty, I slipped my dick in her bum without asking. Though still snug, it wasn't that much different from her vaginal opening. My overexuberance in this area that almost cost me a prosthetic arm and a leg. I was giving it to Karen, Oz-style, when her elbows slipped off the sofa. The rest of her body almost topped over as well. With some effort, I managed to haul her back up. Luckily, she was no worse for wear, but the jolt had made her wig shift, revealing a large metal hook protruding from her skull.

Someone must have heard the commotion outside, because within thirty seconds Matt was knocking on the door. Like some pimp Gepetto, he asked if I was done. To tell the truth, I'd barely been able to maintain interest after seeing Karen's cranial hook, so I gave up and asked Aaron to help me dress her. When we returned to the reception area to grab our stuff, Matt was busy on the phone. I motioned "thank you" and "goodbye" in a sort of ad hoc sign-language, and we left.




First, I have to say that Real Dolls are amazing and totally eerie. I've never seen or felt anything so human that clearly isn't.

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Part of the reason Real Dolls are so amazingly lifelike is that McMullen didn't originally conceive of them as sex toys, but rather as high-end fashion mannequins with articulated skeletons. It was only when the dolls started to cause a stir among a certain demographic that he and his wife decided to reposition the dolls as something one can shag.

So what are the advantages to having a prosthetic lover? You can be completely selfish and not worry about anyone else's fun. Of course, none of us — myself included — are strangers to being self-centered in the sack, but it's quite liberating to know there's absolutely no chance your partner du jour will resent you.

A definite disadvantage: certain acts that seem naughty and transgressive — anal sex, for example — are less so when they're trumped by the transgressiveness of fucking a lump of latex. Speaking of transgression, Matt told me about a couple of potential customers who requested some seriously whacked-out customizations: one wanted a facsimile of his own mother and offered thousands of pictures from which to work. Another wanted a woman covered in apelike body hair. One chap even wanted a replica of a canine. "He offered me $50,000 to do it," Matt confided, "but y'know . . . I just couldn't."

To each his own. This is where I'm supposed to say that Real Doll sex doesn't come close to sex with a human, and all you need is love, etc. etc. Of course. That sort of misses the point. The Real Doll is a sex toy, and a fine one at that. It's light years away from screwing an Aerobed, and sometimes, that's all you need. According to Matt, for his customers, one of joys of the product is that it's just an approximation of a fantasy. It's one of the rare sexual situations in which close does count.  n°

Photography by Aaron Schmidt.