Susie Bright believes that the newness of the big machines is the real turn-on. "The unfamiliarity is 90 percent of the excitement or the revulsion." What makes the machines look horrifying to some is exactly what makes them titillating to others: "It's about the fear of being fucked by a machine," says Bright. "It panders to that fantasy or nightmare, depending on your point of view. Taboos that are fearful are also exciting. This is the nature of taboo sexual fantasies."

In the great tradition of zillions of obfuscating Internet pornographers before them, the guys behind FuckingMachines.com refuse to say how many people use their service or how much money they're making or losing. But someone gets turned on by this, judging from the discussions on the site's forums. Sample request: "Show the machines being adjusted for the girls, and show the girls getting ready to take the machines."

There's an element here of naughty boys getting out of hand with hardware. It's horny gearheads run amok! "You almost expect Tim Allen to pop up on 'Home Improvement' with one of these," says Bright. "It appeals to guys who love tools." The machines themselves seem more handyman than high-tech. The manufacturers sell them for between $1,500 and $4,000, but most of their parts can be found at Home Depot.

Isn't it just like the guys to take a perfectly good technology that does what it's supposed to do -- the vibrator, the dildo -- and reverse-engineer it to make it bigger, flashier, more expensive and not even work that well? That's the comic aspect to all this humping stainless steel. Like any sexual partner, it has its own performance quirks. The Trespasser, the one that gets its thrust from a KitchenAid, comes with this product warning: "not a real smooth stroke." Another one just can't hold still: "At top speed, the Intruder must be strapped to a massive object. Otherwise the energy of the bar jolts the entire machine."

That just won't satisfy the true tech-fetishists. Violet Blue, a member of Survival Research Laboratories and the Good Vibrations sex store collective, finds the roughshod workmanship a turnoff: "If you look at them, they don't look particularly sturdy or well-constructed. They're just these things that are C-clamped onto boards and pipes."

Is it possible that the machines found here are the primitive ancestors of robot love slaves of the future? Peter Remine, the founder of the only partially tongue-in-cheek American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, sees nothing to worry about -- yet. "At this point, the machines aren't sentient, so there's no cruelty involved, just creepiness." But he is concerned about the fate of the droid sex slaves that these machines foreshadow. He foresees the sad day when a joke e-mail with the subject line "50 Reasons that a Robot Makes a Better Lover Than a Man" will be nothing to laugh at.

Already robot fetishists show their devotion by taking existing pinups and morphing them into robots and cyborgs, according to M. Christian, the editor of "Eros Ex Machina," an anthology of stories about "eroticizing the mechanical."

Queen sees the robot lover as a given, if the robots ever get their act together and come alive: "I'm sure that there are people standing in line right now willing to mortgage the house to get a love droid."

But that's what makes the love machine dream exciting -- the sense that technology has already gone too far, and there's no going back. "They said the same thing about the Hitachi Magic Wands 20 years ago," says Bright.

More conventional sexual machines, like vibrators and dildos, have become too commonplace for their own good. "They're practically like tea cozies now. There's not much shock about a vibrator anymore," says Bright.

Perhaps one day the gigantic sex machines may suffer the same fate, leaving jaded thrill-seekers searching for their next outlandish orgasm. "If these things became common, they would feel the same way about them as they do about patio furniture," says Bright.

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