Just like a woman

Thousands of men are shelling out $6,500 for hyper-realistic dolls that answer all their needs -- and don't talk back.

By Meghan Laslocky

Oct 11, 2005 | Davecat keeps a picture of his girlfriend in his wallet. She's pretty, with long black hair, an alluring mole under her left eye, and glossy red lipstick. Her sheer tank top shows off her full breasts and the hoop through her left nipple.

Ask Davecat about Sidore -- pronounced She-doh-ray -- and he'll tell you she's everything that turns him on: beautiful, loyal, a great listener. Si-chan, as he affectionately calls her, is half British, half Japanese, which is nice because he's always had a thing for both British and Japanese culture. Even their clothing style and taste in music is simpatico -- they're both Goths.

Like many born in the sun sign Cancer, Sidore is a homebody, but then, she couldn't leave the comfort of the bed she shares with Davecat even if she wanted to because Sidore is a 100-pound solid silicone Real Doll.

Go ahead. Flinch at the notion of a man having sex with an imitation woman and classify him: lonely loser. Pathological creep. Misogynist. Potential rapist. Sicko. True enough, some men who have sex with Real Dolls are creepy, the kind of guys you wouldn't want to be alone with. But not all. Many are simply lonely -- some tragically so. Others are disfigured or infirm. Some are oddly sweet, like Davecat, for whom a Real Doll is a "teddy bear with benefits." And others proclaim their normalcy and defend their Real Dolls as no different than a 3-D version of a Playboy centerfold.

Many doll lovers -- or "iDollators," as some of them call themselves -- participate in a confusing online subculture where the lines between art and pornography, the ludicrous and the tender, and fantasy and fetishism blur like watercolors. Spend time talking to Real Doll aficionados as I have over the past year, and you come to understand that behind every Real Doll is a man with a reason.

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Sidore and her plastic sisters are like Barbies dosed with growth hormones and plumbed with orifices (three). While there are other brands of deluxe love dolls, dolls like Sidore are considered head and breasts above their competitors because of their quality and realism. At the Real Doll Web site you can choose among nine body types, 14 faces, five skin tones, six eye colors, a palette of makeup colors, 10 wigs, and three different pubic hair styles. Save your pennies, and for $6,499 plus shipping, you can have your very own synthetic woman sent directly to your home.

Matt McMullen is the Dr. Frankenstein and Henry Ford of love dolls. The founder of Real Dolls is in his mid-30s and dresses like a skateboarder, with multiple piercings and a pretty face. A decade ago, McMullen was a struggling sculptor, making 12-inch nudes out of resin in his garage. For a challenge, he decided to build bigger nudes with poseable bodies that were softer, inviting to the touch. When he posted photographs of his work on the Internet, e-mails poured in asking whether his creations were sex dolls and if so, how much did they cost. After 10 different men offered to pay McMullen $3,000 for converted sculptures, he couldn't refuse, and it was back to the drawing board to design soft breasts and penetrable genitalia. "I had to make it feel good," he says. "As good as rubber can feel." His early adopters were thrilled with the results and soon launched their own photo Web sites. With that free viral promotion, McMullen became the leading purveyor of solid-body silicone love. With $2 million in sales last year, McMullen now employs 14 people at his San Marcos, Calif., company and makes about six or seven dolls a week, each requiring 80 hours of labor.

According to Davecat and many other Real Doll owners, sex with a Real Doll is quite good. "For the most part, it's just like sex with an organic woman ... who doesn't say anything and is brimful of Quaaludes," Davecat writes on Sidore's stylish Web site.

Thirty-two-year-old Davecat is no basement perv. Garrulous and imaginative, he affects a British manner that comes across in e-mails, on his Web site, and in the word choices -- "arse," "bloke," "fecking" -- he uses in our many telephone conversations. Davecat is African-American, lives in Detroit, and is studying to become a court reporter.

When Davecat was a child in a department store, his mother emerged from a dressing room to find him talking to a mannequin who was wearing a short tennis skirt. "I was trying to chat her up," he says. "I remember the beauty of her stillness." With Sidore, he's gotten past just chatting: "I like having her in bed beside me, holding her, cuddling her," he tells me. "I like to sleep with my doll. I'll be blunt: She's a girlfriend."

Because Real Dolls' silicone flesh holds heat well and becomes more pliable when body-temperature warm, Davecat toasts Sidore with an electric mattress pad all day. Aside from getting up for occasional photo shoots, she mostly stays in bed, lying on her side to keep her butt from getting flat and so she's spoonable. She also frequently wears an athletic bra to keep her 34D breasts from sagging.

When referring to their coital habits, Davecat uses terms like "make love" or "have sex" -- and safe sex at that. "I'm one of the rare [doll] users who uses a condom," he confides, adding that while he feels a bit cheated having to use a prophylactic, it would be too much for him to haul Sidore into the shower every time they have sex. Until Davecat can bench-press 200 pounds, he says, Sidore will have to live with sponge baths.

Davecat admits that Si-chan's personality is not without flaws. He thinks she might be manic-depressive because she's "relentlessly perky at times" but also, given the amount of time she spends in bed, prone to narcolepsy and laziness. But generally, she doesn't disappoint. Davecat imagines that she's open-minded, a bit sarcastic, an artistic intellectual who, were she real, would walk around with Sylvia Plath books under her arm and go out drinking and dancing with her girlfriends. In short, Si-chan is a girl who Davecat thinks he could never meet. "If I were to go to a bar and try some pick-up lines, the chances of coming home with someone like her are highly unlikely," he says. "No real woman seems to think I'm good enough for them."

Next Page: Some doll owners have no interest in "organic women"

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