Dorothy Black

It seemed like a good idea at the time. We were drunk and I’d been talking about it for a few months, threatening to just go ahead and do it. I was also a little tired of my girlfriends’ jaws dropping every time I said I’d never tried it before.

There was a group of us. Safety in numbers. There’s a first time for everything, right? It wasn’t far to go, though as I stumbled down the street to that place, you’d think I might have reconsidered and chosen a more sober-minded moment to go ahead with this.

But we’d gotten the guys in on the idea, and they were even more excited than us. It’s not that I wasn’t okay with the idea, it was just so personal and now I had an audience, people would see what I was into. It started freaking me out a bit. But suddenly we were there, my friends were giggling and awash of beer-fuelled bravado pushed us through the entrance.

Adult World. That bastion of cheap ‘n nasty, a wank warehouse. My friends grabbed my hand, pulling me to The Great Wall of Dildos—an expanse of candy-coloured plastic and jelly creations, with glittering rubber vulvas and B-grade porn stars gasping and pouting from cheap cardboard inserts. There my friends left me to find ‘The

One’ (it’s so personal, after all).

I’d just broken up with my boyfriend and, not having any other starting point, scanned the wall looking for something that vaguely resembled his proud member. Thin and long, no. Veiny and blue, no. Bubbled and curling with lights, um…nope. Then, suddenly, in a burst of luminous pink jelly, I found my ex’s plastic penile doppleganger. I took it out the packaging, fitted my hand around it and measured it for girth. I almost put it in my mouth.

My friends, back again from squealing over gaping anuses and poking fake tits, gathered around me, sizing up my choice. They found it good. We went to the counter, where a helpful, unwashed old man showed me how to insert the batteries, working his palm up and down the shaft without taking his eyes off me. Had I not been sufficiently liquored up, I probably would’ve wanted to vomit.

But I had just bought my first vibe with an audience and had not gone cheap, baby. I’d spent almost R200 on this buzzing fucker and was thumbing my nose at my ex’s member in the process. I was practically invincible and nothing could scare my vagina. Also, there’s nothing a little boiling water and soap can’t fix. I named it Percival and it was good.

Dorothy Black is a sex journalist and supporter of sex-positive thinking. Like most South Africans, Dot enjoyed a religious, sexually fraught and emotionally uneducated upbringing, and stumbled into sex and adult relationships in much the same way we all do—badly. After much experience, therapy and opinionating, Dot did what every self-respecting egoist does: Write about it. And here we are.