Organ Grinder:
News for Pervy Little Monkeys

I love my job. This is what being the local sex columnist is like:

Scene 1: I'm at the Van East Cultural Center and an acquaintance walks up to me. We have conversed amiably in the past. He has not been to my house for dinner. You get the picture. So he walks up to me and says, "You really have to lay off about telling straight boys to enjoy their prostates. Some of us already do, you know. Is it really that taboo anymore?"

Scene 2: I'm at a house party, enjoying some fine hallucinogens, watching burning brown sugar drip slowly from a spoon into a glass of absinthe. I am holding forth, unbidden: "A vagina is pretty finite… I mean, an object can get stuck in there, but it's probably not going anywhere past the cervix. Your bum is not so finite. There's a good six feet of colon up there. That's why you should never stick anything in your bum that doesn't have a handle… Where's the bathroom in this place?"

Scene 3: Same party. My friend Denise comes up to me and says: "I read your article last week. You know, sometimes I really wish I didn't know the author (or presumably the author's boyfriend). You know sometimes that's just too much information."

I'll drink to that. This, God save me, is the final week of International Dildo Month. So, let's recap: we've gone through a brief history of the dildo, how to buy one that's right for your needs, how to take your boyfriend from behind, and this week I'll about what to do with your new best friend when it's not being used for its intended purpose. In the news lately: several arguments for the dildo as … art.

I'm one of those people that stash my gear away, tucked into coy little jewelry boxes or stuffed into the night table. Visitors to my house would do well to beware of opening just about any drawer, actually. I have friends who have a locking suitcase so that their son doesn't just happen upon the nipple clamps while looking for a pen or something. But according to representatives of London "Sex. Life. Accessories" company Myla (www.myla.com), all that is about to change.

The Myla site is stylish enough to make a New York fashionista topple over her Manolos. Their hottest new line is coyly called 'Toys.' Not 'Sex Toys' and most certainly not 'Vibrators' (though every last one of them is), but simply 'Toys'. Designed by UK style magnate Tom Dixon, 'Bone' looks like an elongated bottle-green hourglass and is allegedly based on an ancient fertility symbol. 'Ring', according to the website, is "a piece of fine jewelry that is also a vibrator. It is made from Sterling silver and contains a micro vibration motor and watch battery." According to the designer, the toys are "so exquisite they can be displayed on coffee tables". At £149 the Bone is proving so popular that Myla is taking orders now for Valentines Day 2002. Wow. The rich aren't as dull as I'd previously suspected. The only question left is how to be seen conspicuously consuming the Bone. I guess you leave it under the Warhol and beside the limited edition Helmut Newton book: on your coffee table.

Pardon my sardonic tone. The toys are undoubtedly beautiful. Not a cheesy phallus in the bunch. There is the Seed, and here is the Pebble… the kind of objects you might observe in a Japanese rock garden and not blink an eye. I guess that's my problem with them. Mari-Ruth Oda, designer of the Pebble, says "I am interested in how the body becomes a negative space when moulding itself to the positive space of a human form. This interest encouraged me to make an object of beauty that would be tempting to hold and to explore, or explore with." You know, I hate to deride a sentiment so simple and pretty, but doesn't this seem just a tad …well, precious? It's a vibrator, ladies, if you can't face up to that fact, you don't deserve to be sticking it in your pussy. I know, I shouldn't be so critical. If the pretentious fashionistas and the stuck-up art-fuckers like it, who am I to complain? I wish them the best, really. Screaming orgasms so rarefied they forget their credit card numbers for a week.