Will Cybersex Be Better Than Real Sex?

BY JOEL STEIN
That depends on what lights your diodes. But judging by the quality of today's — "teledildonics," some things (hooray!) will never change

There are two fields in which i'm anxious to see technology improve: medicine and hard-core pornography. And since I'm not sick yet, I'm pretty focused on the porn thing. Luckily I am not alone in my stunted vision of utopia. The desire for newer, better smut has long been a major impetus behind technological progress: vcrs, dvds, Web development and I believe X-ray glasses were all spurred by prurient desires.

The holy grail of pornography, though, has always been a machine that delivers a virtual experience so real that it is indistinguishable from sex, other than the fact that it isn't at all disappointing. Though prototypes have appeared in films (the Pleasure Organ in Barbarella, the Orgasmatron in Sleeper, the fembots in Austin Powers), reality has remained painfully elusive. In his 1991 book Virtual Reality, Howard Rheingold devoted an entire chapter to "teledildonics," his not-so-clever name for devices that allow people to have sex without being in the same area code. Rheingold imagines putting on a "diaphanous bodysuit, something like a body stocking but with the kind of intimate snugness of a condom" and having a virtual-reality sexperience over the Net. "You run your hand over your partner's clavicle and, 6,000 miles away, an array of effectors are triggered, in just the right sequence, at just the right frequency, to convey the touch exactly the way you wish it to be conveyed."

Other than his fetish for Chinese clavicle, Rheingold is able to provide little that's useful in the way of information or specs. And in the nine years since he published his personal fantasies, there has been surprisingly little progress. Vivid, the world's largest producer of adult entertainment, promised to deliver an interactive bodysuit last September but missed its deadline. Sure, it had a $200,000 black neoprene suit with 36 electrodes stuck to the chest, crotch and other special places, but the suit didn't look very appetizing. Nor did it do anything. Vivid says it's waiting for fcc approval (interaction with pacemakers seems to be a concern), but the real reason it is lying low on the sex suit is that Vivid is a proud company, and it's not going to continue trumpeting a technology that is at best a long way from happening.

But there are less proud pornographers. SafeSexPlus.com sells teledildonic devices that, it turns out, look a lot like dildonic devices. The company promised that if I used these gizmos in conjunction with their iFriends.net website, I could have a sexual experience over the Net. I got SafeSexPlus to send me the equipment and figured I'd use it with my girlfriend — until I realized that was the dumbest idea I'd ever had. Thinking more clearly, I decided this might be my one chance to get a porn star to have sex with me.

Wicked Pictures, a major adult-entertainment company, set me up on a cyberdate with one of its actresses, Alexa Rae, star of Porn-o-matic 2000 and Say Aaah. I had never seen Alexa's work, but I was assured she was a complete professional. SafeSexPlus.com sent both of us toys, and we made an e-date.

I cannot fully describe to you the absolute repulsiveness of the sexual aid I was given — both because this is a family magazine and because the English language is not equipped for the task. It was supposed to be a disembodied part of a woman, but it was more like part of a really expensive Halloween outfit to which someone had haphazardly taped a lock of Dweezil Zappa's hair. It felt like wet latex, smelled like wet latex and looked like something Sigmund Freud might have used to make a very twisted point. I figured it was designed for men without hands.

The device plugged into an electrical outlet and came with suction cups. This frightened me even more than the Zappa hair until the people from SafeSexPlus explained that I was supposed to stick the suction cups on my computer monitor once the "cyberdildonics box" popped up. This box could be made darker or lighter by Alexa's controlling the box on her screen and would make my latex gizmo vibrate at higher or lower frequencies depending on how much light she decided to give me. I don't know what sexual experience was supposed be replicated by a vibrating disembodied female body part, but I didn't want any part of it.

I was to have the same sort of control over Alexa's marital aid, which I assumed would be somewhat less terrifying.

I assumed wrong. "It's a little scary," Alexa confessed as we talked on the phone and I squinted at a live picture of her on a tiny, fuzzy box on my screen. I'm pretty sure she's pretty and possibly blond. "It looks like it might hurt me. And it's making these ramming noises. Like a jackhammer." I had never prided myself on being a gentle and considerate lover; "ramming noises" and "like a jackhammer," however, were not phrases I was used to hearing.

Alexa, ever the playful one, told me she'd take off her top if I could make her light box change colors, so I got one of the tech guys at work to help me. Soon I could see her yawning on my monitor. This, I thought, was getting to be more like the sexual experiences I was accustomed to.

After 20 minutes, I think I got the color to change and the scary jackhammer noise to increase. "I get turned on by anything sexual," Alexa purred as she took off her top and jeans. "But not this."

We talked some more, and she told me she'd named herself after Billy Joel's daughter, which I thought was in bad taste. Then I realized, looking down at the giant latex pudendum jumping around my desk, that I wasn't in a position to comment on matters of taste.

Still, in the name of science I concentrated on the image of Alexa on the screen and tried to act sexy. "You are driving me crazy," I told her.

"Really?" she responded.

"No."

"Damn."

This was the high point of our encounter — that and when I admitted I was incapable of having phone sex. "Having good phone sex is just saying how you feel," she told me.

"I feel silly," I confessed.

"Not like that."

Eventually we decided to stop. "It has nothing to do with you," she said as she pulled her jeans over her hips. "We're just asking each other technical questions, and it takes away the sexiness." Virtual sex was indeed eerily like real sex for me.

Even if the technology vastly improves and if Alexa and I can one day consummate our awkward phone conversation, I don't think teledildonics is the next generation of pornography. Perhaps it might replace 900 numbers, with men paying to control the toys of women they can see on their screens, but that's about it. Most people will still want to enjoy their sexual fantasies alone, because even a programmable robot is going to be just an annoying, unsuccessful intermediary — not to mention a very difficult thing to hide in an underwear drawer.

And as far as real sex goes, no high-tech device can ever replace a living, breathing person. Because even if a machine felt real and looked real, it could never reproduce the real thrill of sex: knowing that another being is freely giving herself to you and that at least for a few minutes, you're not alone.

Now, why couldn't I come up with something like that when I had Alexa on the phone?

source: time.com