The First Thing He Gives Me

torture, defecation, etc.

“Dollie doesn’t have real feelings, not yet,” I said, “but you need to treat her with respect, as if she does. I know you guys have mothers, maybe sisters, and girlfriends and you understand what I mean.” My standard speech. Deaf ears, mostly. “The way you behave with an android says a lot about how you behave with women in general.” “Yeah, right,” said Cliff.

And then Dollie was gone. No riding with dignity in the back seat, buckled in, but stowed in the trunk like property, out of shame’s sight in her carrying sack, carefully holding her compact position while saying nothing and biding her time.

I often imagine stories of how each of the girls, Dollie and Lucy, came to be working in the sex-trade business, though these fantasies all involve active choice, if also a strong measure of male social coercion. For Dollie, it was a lark. She did a mock strip tease at a college sorority fundraiser and liked it and ended up as a high-class escort to make money during college. Lucy grew up in the projects and started turning tricks with rough, unsophisticated boys to avoid getting mixed up with drugs.

But I also have darker fantasies about the girls’ origins, that Daniel is a sex-slave trader and has kidnapped each of them under different circumstances. Dollie was kidnapped from a suburban mall in broad daylight, drugged and forcibly seduced into a dependence that has developed to a fearful and slavish Stockholm devotion. Lucy he keeps in tow by threatening members of her large extended family, having begun an affair with her, then converting her slowly and painfully into outright prostitution. My own history is nothing so extraordinary. I was fascinated with computers early on and took up programming as a teenager, belonged to the computer club at school. I was recruited by Daniel soon after he started his company. I was appalled and fascinated at the same time. The more real the girls become, the better the AI interface, the more excited I am despite the sexual end that much of my work comes to. In the future, these dolls will be robots first and sex dolls second. There will be a whole range of personalities, not just their sexual acrobatics. Sex will be part of it, but they will have opinions and limits and likes and dislikes, independently. This is the robot I want to create: the whole person, the companion with sex as the foundation.

The intimacy of people, if primarily men, with sex dolls doesn’t have to be vulgar. It could be about sex and sex only, or it could be about loneliness and isolation, even for those who don’t see a sex doll as their only option. Daniel has even designed and shipped several dolls for free to people he thought really needed them as companions

but couldn’t afford them. There was a man in Idaho who lived alone and was rarely able to leave his house after his mother died.

42 This morning, I have set Dollie upright into her stand upon her return, so I can take a good look at her condition. She might be a tousle-headed daughter come home from a forbidden night with her boyfriend, caught in the act, chagrined but safe.

Daniel stops in briefly. He shakes his head, as he often does, saying, “I can’t believe you’re still working here.”

“You know I like the work,” is my usual reply. I’m really not sure what else to say, why I would be here beyond the technical challenges.

Brooding, balding Daniel Periwinkle, PhD, who refers to himself as “Doctor” and always wears a white lab coat with his name in script over the pen pocket. The pen pocket is usually empty, though it sometimes might hold a small body part or two, a finger, a nipple. He’s part mad scientist and claims never to have sampled his own wares, as I have not, though I admit to having been tempted. One of my boyfriends wanted me to bring a doll home so we could have a threesome. He’s not my boyfriend any longer. Another wanted to watch me having a go with our male dolls, Adam or Robbie. He’s no longer my boyfriend either.

As soon as Daniel’s gone, I do something I’m not supposed to do, but which I find myself doing more and more lately. I push the playback button on the recording from last night, removing the skull panel from the back of Dollie’s head where there is a four-inch screen. I know I shouldn’t get personal about this, but I can’t help myself. I watch the evening play out, fast-forwarding past the slow parts where there is no speaking for Dollie’s audio to record.

Dollie is sitting in a chair in the hotel room. I see the room as she sees it, the boys gathering suspiciously around her, keeping their distance, approach-avoidance, as she comes to life. The room is beautifully decorated with art hanging on the walls and a large fresh flower arrangement on a coffee table. I have to wonder who sent that. One of their mothers? I can see that it’s a corner suite, with windows on two sides. There’s a doorway beyond that must lead to a bedroom and bath.

“Where would you like to start?” she asks them. “I see there are three of you. I guess it’s going to be a long evening.” Dollie would give a wry smile at this point, if I know her.

“She’s really kind of beautiful,” Rob, the groom, says. “So perfect. I mean, you’re really kind of beautiful.” And then he adds, “Dollie.”