LOOKING FOR LOVE… WITH BATTERIES

There it was sitting in my bedside drawer, cold and lifeless.

I didn’t know what to do. I had never experienced this before. Do I attempt to commence CPR on the poor little fellow? However will I live without you? We’ve had some good times and some hit and misses just like in real life, I guess, but now it’s time to say goodbye.

So long, farewell. Adieu. Goodnight.

It has been good while it’s lasted.

No, I’m not talking about my latest relationship breakup. I’m talking about my vibrator.

Hugh Dancy and Maggie Gyllenhaal in Hysteria, a movie on how medical management of hysteria led to the invention of the vibrator. In cinemas now.

We’ve been together for nearly four years now and suddenly on Thursday evening our relationship came to an abrupt end.

He’d had enough of me. I didn’t understand why.

He didn’t even give me any notice. Just poof – gone – never to see the light of day (or night) again.

I tried to save him but it was no use. His time on this earth was over. Sadly he’d moved on to vibrator heaven. I wonder what else goes there?

We came together by accident really, as chance meetings do. I attended my first ever Sexpo and found that this guy could work better than the other pink one I had at home. I promptly handed over my $20 (what a bargain!) and snuck it away in my handbag. I don’t know why I hid it when close by two women were naked in a boxing ring with a bucket of water and suds. Go figure.

I realised that to make the little guy come to life I needed C batteries. Now, whatever else do you use C batteries for? Nothing, that’s right. So instead of getting just the batteries from Coles I disguised them with a whole range of stuff I didn’t need – milk, bread, you name it, to help conceal the fact I was buying batteries for my SEX TOY.

When I finally got him home it was on like Donkey Kong.

I didn’t understand how I had managed to live my life without him. It was love. I was like Charlotte from Sex and the City where she becomes a virtual recluse after being introduced to the “rabbit” vibrator. Suddenly she had all these “special appointments” and she couldn’t hang out with her friends. She was obsessed.

I’ve been to sex toy parties and even wandered into those seedy sex shops from time to time. I bought my first porno from one, before the internet streamed porn for free, and I felt dirty. I know I shouldn’t, but I did. As I handed the DVD to the guy behind the counter he smirked, looked at the title and then continued watching Neighbours on the TV behind me.

Just your regular Wednesday night.

Now, I was never obsessed and it didn’t replace my sex life, but it helped me work out what makes me tick.