sex on acid
Music: Curve: Cucoo (1993)
When I was in high school I "dropped" a lot of LSD on the weekends. I was not a "druggie" in the sense that I was always getting "fucked up," but me and my pals did get fucked up. I think my senior year we "tripped" our gonads off almost every weekend. It was lots of fun, and I got to meet God too.
I don't endorse doing acid; I mean, Timothy Leary is dead, right? ("Oh no, he's just outside looking in!") And he did not go gentle into that good night either---clearly his brain got all mushy. Besides, the last time I did "hard" drugs was over a decade ago (and the last time I smoked pot was when I was 24 hitching a ride with David Beard back to the hotel at RSA from two ladies we "hit on" at a dance club). Nevertheless, while I do not regret doing all the drugs I did because it led to who I am today (and my thoughts about the world and reality are unquestionably informed by my psychedelic experiences), I do regret one thing: I never had sex on acid. I've had sex stoned and drunk, which just means you can extend the usual six minutes to an hour or so (or not, since both taken to excess gets nobody excited). But the really neat thing about sex on acid has got to be synethesia, or the melding/confusion of more than one of our senses. One of the things LSD does is smush all one's sensations together: colors have sound and taste, smells have color, bodily touch produces wafts of smell and color, and so on.
Now where am I going with all this? Well, DJ Smokhouse Brown sent me a link to inevitability: the iPod dildo. Unfortunately, the website does not have any demonstration videos. Mirko and I have already written an essay about why this sort of thing is "overdetermined"---the idea someone would invent this is of the "no duh!" variety---so I won't rehash that argument here except for a thumbnail: bystanders hate others with iPods in public because the iPod user is publicly enjoying the device.
What is interesting is that the "inventors" (as if!) of the iDildo (or the "OhMiBod") make the process of marketing it transparent on the website (see the "evolution" link and the FAQ). Part of that marketing ploy is a new variety of the classical emotional appeal: "The OhMiBod vibrator is a whole new way to enjoy your iPod® or any other music player. Everyone loves music. Everyone loves sex. OhMiBod combines music and pleasure to create the ultimate acsexsory™ to your iPod." (It is not true that everyone loves sex or music, but we'll go with it for now.)" It's a synesthesia appeal, the notion that multiple drives can be stimulated at once!
The appeal to synesthesia is not new—this is what the cinema is about, frankly, as well as Playstation's vibrating hand controllers. What is novel here is the deliberate confusion of the senses, that the genital drive and the invocatory drive are supposed to be, well, "remixed." Apparently the dildo vibrates to the beat of your favorite tunes; the website encourages "users" to share their iPod "playlists" with each other (immediately I think that only dance music would really work all that well, but if anyone has experience to suggest otherwise, please tell me!). One can imagine the conversations: "oh, what did you cum to?" "Well, last time it was Underworld's 'Push Upstairs,' but I think I’m going to try a little Brian Eno next time so that I can, you know, take my sweet time."
What's also fascinating to me is the argument for public enjoyment that the designers are using to promote this device: "More than just a pleasure toy, OhMiBod harnesses the iPod movement and popularity to bring a higher level of acceptance and openness about sexuality in a fun and liberating way. Young or old, single or partnered, people from all walks of life are experiencing an amazing new way to connect and share the pleasures of orgasmic play." This is just plain silly, however, the politics implicated in these statements are pretty dead-on: the iPod has resurfaced discussions of stranger sociability vis-à-vis narcissism on the public screen. Coupled with the appeal to synesthesia, this politics points up a pretty interesting challenge: the thing about enjoyment is precisely that is wholly individual, that it is entirely self-focused. For example, whether you are a man or a woman or something inbetween, the moment of orgasm is really all about you, no matter how you try to maintain a sense of "mutuality" before and after the tingles. Yet here are these OhMiBod people appealing to stranger sociability ("acceptance and openness") with a device that does just the opposite (unless, of course, the argument is for men and women everywhere to masturbate on park benches and such . . . which would be interesting, if not messy).
In a sense, this is the sixties returned in the age of gageteering. The "hippies" of the 60s appealed to community by pushing drugs—drugs that, by their very nature, encourage self-enjoyment at the expense of others, or at least during the "peak hour" Is this not the dead end of addiction, sheer solitudinous enjoyment? I suppose I worry about arguments in favor of public enjoyment; they are patently absurd. Case in point? Witness this mock-up of iPod advertising. Although the point is well-taken, the actual practice is absurd (warning: this is NOT safe for work . . . but then again, a lot of daytime television is not safe for work either):