State your hypothesis in the form of a prediction that can be verified by the results of the experiment.

promotion

I'm guessing that, at least once per relationship, your partner will ask you if he or she is being used just for sex. Even if you're inclined to stop humping their leg for a minute and deny, deny, deny, more often than not, their gut instinct is well founded. If this is a recurring theme in your relationships with people, you might consider investing in a Real Doll, a high-end humanoid love toy that is guaranteed to love you long time — or, indeed, any time. A little creepy? Somewhat degrading? Sure, but so is making nice at Thanksgiving with the family of the person you can barely stand to look at anymore.

Please list all the materials required for this experiment (including, if applicable, how they were obtained).

Real Doll (one)
Lube

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In this portion of your report, you must describe, step-by-step, what you did in your lab. It should be specific enough that someone who has not seen the lab can follow the directions and recreate the same lab.

You know that one book, painting, album or play that "speaks" to you in such a profound and personal way that you can only imagine it was created with you in mind? I call this "having a Roberta Flack moment." Everybody has at least one. Many have found their life sung — or pain strummed — in the work of Salinger, Cobain or Kerouac. At fifteen years old, I was being killed softly by Anthony Michael Hall in the film Weird Science.

For those unfamiliar with the piece, here is the plot: unpopular dweebs Gary (Hall) and Wyatt face the very real possibility of dying with their virginities uncompromised. Their solution: harness the power of a 486, the Chicago power grid and a Barbie doll, and create a beautiful woman (Kelly LeBrock) to hook up with.

Although the plight of the characters in Weird Science mirrored my own, our methodologies diverged. Instead of creating a human being out of bedroom bric-a-brac, I consoled myself with compulsive masturbation and the music of Iron Maiden. It was rumored, however, that two resourceful twin brothers from a neighboring town constructed a lo-fi sex surrogate by taping a close-up picture from a girlie magazine to a ratty old cushion with a hole cut in it. Clever.

Somewhere between Ms. LeBrock and the McAlister brothers' sodden pillow, there are Real Dolls. You've probably heard of them via Howard Stern, HBO's Real Sex or dozens of magazine articles. I hadn't, and until I visited the company's website, my impression of a sex doll was an inflatable piece of tarp with a gaping mouth. I couldn't imagine the depths to which a person would have to sink to hump a glorified Aerobed with a surprised expression. If I think about it too hard, I get terribly sad, even now. But Real Dolls aren't like that. So insisted my friend David, who said that if I could get a "professional discount" on one, he would split the cost with me on two conditions: a) if he could "use" it on weekends and b) if I got one with "huge tits."

Just looking at the models on realdoll.com, I found myself incredibly aroused. Not surprising, really. At least aesthetically, Real Dolls live up to their name. If you squint a bit, it's difficult to discern whether they're flesh and blood. They're so realistic-looking, in fact, that the company produced a spinoff site showing the dolls getting it on with each other. People are paying to jerk off to inanimate objects that have been posed to look like they're fucking. If that isn't brilliant, I don't know what is.

The first question that springs to my mind is, "Just who the hell is buying these things?" It turns out I'm not the only one who wonders: that's the first question on the website's FAQ page. While the company's answer is "futurists, artists, art collectors, filmmakers, scientists, health professionals, housewives, you name it," I think a better idea can be gleaned from reading the frequently asked questions, which are frequently scary. Here's what I came up with:

Can you pull on her nipples hard without fear of tearing them? The masochistic

How much weight can the doll support? The big and tall

What if I don't fit with RealDoll's sex parts? The wishful thinker

What happens when "the honeymoon is over" and I feel that the doll is not for me and wish to return it? The flake

Do you have any rejects or used models I can buy for cheap? The pennywise

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I'm a cross-dresser interested in a full body silicone female skin. Can I buy a REALDOLL skin or can you tell me where I can get a silicone female body suit? What the fuck?

Seriously, what the fuck? I don't know what's scarier: chatting to a hot chick in a bar before a hairy-ass dude unzips himself out of a woman pelt or the fact that this question is apparently asked "frequently." I'm no expert on fringe sexuality, but I've seen Silence of the Lambs, and I know that men who express an interest in wearing a woman's skin end up having bodies exhumed from their crawl spaces.

You must be a relatively well-to-do perv to own a Real Doll. Female versions start at $5,999, male versions at $6,999; custom options can cost thousands more. That's a lot of money, especially when you're probably the only person who'll ever know about the purchase. But according to the website, a great many of Real Dolls' customers don't even use the doll for sex. I've been thinking about it, and I could only come up with one economically viable non-sex use: being able to ride in the carpool lane. In the state of California, the minimum fine for traveling in the HOV lane without a passenger is $271. If your synthetic friend fools Ponch and John more than twenty-five times, he or she is actually saving you money. Score!

On the showroom section of the site, each model is named, and both her face and torso are assigned a number based on type. Sonya has face type 1 and body type 2. David would definitely push for a girl with a type 6 body.

With curiosity eating me like Ruben Studdard at a breakfast buffet, I got the Real Doll people on the phone, hoping to score a date with one of their girls. Although they were hesitant to let me get freaky with one of their creations, they did say I could "see how I got along" with one of their prototypes that had "been around the block a few times."

"You know what I want to do with her, right?" I asked the women on the phone.

"Well," she replied, "just be nice to her, and we'll see how it goes."

And here I thought the advantage of a Real Doll was that she'd always be up for it. I talked my photographer friend Aaron into taking pictures of me and hightailed it deep into Orange County. Aaron agreed to take pictures so long as he didn't have to see my unit.