Guys and Dolls

Yesterday morning.

Michelle and I went to pick up Naimah from her aunt's house and playing on her NEW, big ass flat screen television was this strange, quirky film called "Lars and the Real Girl". I love those obscure, thought provoking films so this was right up my alley. It's basically about a guy with a severe lack of social skills who has an intimate, emotional relationship with a life-sized "realistic" doll instead of a living, breathing woman. We weren't there long enough to see much of the film, but the scene I caught showed him taking this doll over to his friend's house for a dinner date. You can imagine the awkward scene with his friend staring into the lifeless face of a doll and what crazy notions must have been swirling around in his head. I thought to myself, Whoever came up with the idea for this movie is pretty imaginative! Who could think up something like this? Little did I know, his idea wasn't quite as original as I thought.

Last night.

I'm sitting in front of the dummy box (a.k.a. television), bored off my ass, scanning between the "Rock of Love II" reunion show, NBA playoffs, baseball and CNN. I came across the BBC and they were showing an hour long documentary entitled "Love Me, Love My Doll". Uh Oh..... So me being me, I decide to watch it and what I thought was a director's creative idea in the fictional "Lars and the Real Girl" is actually a REAL phenomenon. The doc features the stories of grown men from all walks of life who have collections of life-sized, anatomically correct (or embelished) female dolls that are stand-ins for real girl friends and wives- at a cost of up to $10,000. Of course, they all had various reasons for their desire for dolls rather than women:

- "They are much more consistant than a human. They are always there, and I need that consistency."

- "The sex is so realistic and intense!" (Come again?)

- "Guys who say they'd never have sex with a doll probably would" (Uh, no we wouldn't)

- "You'd think women would go for guys who like adventure, but all they want is a guy with an pint in one hand and a fag (cigarette) in the other. So now it's just me and my doll"

- "It's just a higher form of masterbation." (Ok, he got me there...)

People, I swear I'm not making this up! Now I can understand (kinda) if someone wants to get off by masterbating in a different way- if that is the real motivation. I mean, sometimes I use my left hand instead of my right (ok, TMI, but bear with me), sometimes I watch a flick, sometimes I don't. That's "normal"....I think. But these men actually have EMOTIONAL attachments to these inanimate human forms, one guy saying "I miss her already!" kissing his doll on the forehead as he's packing her into a crate to be shipped off for repair, (yes, they have a guy that fixes the dolls too!) Another guy had his "girl" sit in his car while he went handgliding so she'd be waiting there when he got back.

I ran upstairs to get Michelle so she could watch too and this started a lengthy conversation about people's REAL motivations for substituting rubber and wigs for the REAL THING. Her psychological conclusion was that they are missing some social components in the brain and are in need of some serious counseling....kinda like pedophiles. Ugh. I suppose she's right in a lot of ways because it's the same motivation that causes a person to think it's perfectly fine to fondle a young human being inappropriately. What could conceivably cause a man to forego "regular" relationships, alienating himself from all women (and probably from friends and family as well) to spend his life with a mannequin? I guess it's kind of like pretending to be someone else online- except it's the other "individual" who becomes the person you want them to be, or....ummmm.... Hell, I don't know. I wish I had the answers (like I normally do!) but I'll let you all speculate on this one for a while cause I'm stuck without a rationale.....