Idollators

Many things sprang to mind when I first saw this article. How funny, sick, desperate, perverted, lonely, and sad.

Salon.com Life | Just like a woman: "While he does do custom work on occasion for customers who are willing to pay the price or have legitimate needs, say a paraplegic who needs a lightweight doll he can easily move around in his lap -- McMullen does sometimes put his foot down. No lactating dolls, urinating dolls, amputees, 7-foot-tall dolls, Britney Spears replicas, or dolls with armpit hair or heartbeats. And no dogs either, as was the request of one prospective customer.

'He asked me if I could make him a silicone dog, because he was a breeder, and he didn't want to hurt his dogs anymore, he said. He talked like right out of the movie 'Deliverance.'' McMullen's surfer-dude lilt plummets into a pungent drawl, ''Aw, I don't want to hurt ma dawgs, I like ma dawgs ... kin you make me one so ah kin still use it fer the sex?' And when I realized that he was legitimate, I was shocked. And I just politely said no, I'm sorry, gotta go, click.' Another prospective customer sent nude pictures of his 60-year-old mother, wanting a custom-built replica. Then there was the surgical pathologist who wanted a vagina duplicated from a specimen he had in a jar.

As for the frequent requests for child dolls, those are also flatly rejected. 'I don't get into debates, scolding them, I just say I can't go there, sorry,' McMullen says.

McMullen believes that, for the most part, his dolls are therapeutic transitional objects for men (female customers are few and far between). 'By and large, most customers buy a doll because they just broke up or got a divorce and they don't want to go out into the dating scene, but they still have physical needs.' A doll, he says, gets them through difficult times, and often they move on. Other customers have used a doll to overcome premature ejaculation."

I'll bet female customers are few anf far between. You may not have to cook for it or do laundry, but you still have to clean it and it doesn't seem to be power driven so you have to do all the work. And the difference would be?

This article is ripe for snarky comments but it is also sad. The idea of being so lonely that you would build a life around a silicone object, preferring an illusory relationship and withdrawing from society, says that we didn't give these people the skills and opportunities when they were younger and it isn't going to get any better as they get older.

We are fracturing into dysfunctional pockets of personal angst. It just so happens that in this one the loneliness is overwhelmingly in your face.