People make a big deal of the first time you have sex, the time when you lose your virginity. But, the reality of two confused, hot and bothered teenagers trying to “get it on” is often not a pretty picture. Well, at least that was true for me. I was 15, and had run away from home in order to “finally” go through this very “special” event that I equated with love. It lasted all of 5 minutes, including the fierce tongue foreplay that led to the rough, dry humping. Suffice to say, I was disappointed after the deed was done, and my then-puppy love and I looked awkwardly at each other, wondering if that was all there is to it. Even subsequent tries sucked as well. But of course, at that age, you have no mental benchmark with which to measure each performance and you don’t know enough to understand what you should be doing. Basically, you eat each other’s face off, tear off the other’s clothes and you hump. That’s all sex was.

But as you get older, as well as more experienced, and your body and mind go through significant maturation and growth, you start to understand what it is your body wants and seek information on ways to satisfy that need. You learn that the mind is really the most powerful sex organ and that vivid fantasies are more useful than aphrodisiacs. You also learn that there are ways to have good sex — or simply to satisfy that gushing surge — with or without a partner. A partner with whom you have a strong emotional connection and share your sexual needs is great because you are able to explore the heights of pleasure together. But such partners, who fit your every criteria, are hard to come by.

I have an unfortunate number of criteria, such as looks, intelligence, education, wit, neither too young or too old, too fat or too skinny, etc. etc. You get the point. And perhaps, it is harder for women, especially someone who considers herself a “catch”, to screw like a man, who when in need often goes for anything with two legs and a hole. Before you stand up and scream “foul” for men, I didn’t say that; a friend of mine told me that men really don’t consider looks or in fact that much else when they want to fuck. Unlike for many educated, attractive women, all that matters to men in the same demographic is availability. Hey, his words, not mine.

After years of unsatisfying sexual experiences, beginning with that first time, and years of “celibacy” in a marriage (married people, you know what I’m talking about), I was egged on lately to get myself some in a sex shop. Of course, my knowledge of sex toys and indeed sex was confined to the six seasons of Sex and the City and the subsequent “women’s sexual liberation” after which it became less of a taboo for women to satisfy their urges without being burnt at a stake. After Sex and the City, you hear women everywhere talking about sex (yes, even here in sexually repressed Singapore), and vibrators and dildos are suddenly an acceptable, unabashed topic of conversation, often initiated by women who revelled in being the bold new-age woman. Me? I was always a little shy and conservative, and until recently, I believed that sex was an unfortunate requisite for love, marriage and stability. And sex toys? My husband had me conditioned into thinking that it was something women who couldn’t get some used and that the husband satisfied the wife’s need. Well, years of being in a stale-sex marriage changed my mind.

As I opened the door to the sex shop, wary of eyes darting my way as I entered this dungeon of sexual fantasies, my heart throbbed and my mind entered a whole new dimension. It looked like any other store, with a shopowner who looked like he would be more comfortable fixing computers than selling sex toys. Like the conservative I was, my eyes scanned each object in the store carefully and slowly, worried that I might reveal my inner “filthy” desires to the busty shopgirl and the geeky owner. The shopgirl chipped in every so often to explain the products on display and almost every time, we tried to contain girlish giggles about the absurdity of talking with such technical precision something so intimate and almost scandalous. Looking at the weird and wonderful things on display, my mind travelled to wondrous places where I imagined the ways a particular object could be used. I was excited, to say the least, almost like a kid in a candy store, and wondered why I had never dared venture a sex store before, especially in my years of sexual frustration.

I knew what I was looking for before I entered that store, but I ended up with a fun bag of stuff that I’m glad to have become acquainted with. What struck me the most of this experience is that in this high-tech world that we live in, sex no longer has to be confined to the usual parameters of the “can’t get it up, better next time” cliche. Orgasms can be reached with the aid of couple toys, lonely nights could be soothed with a jack rabbit, and the craving for a well-endowed man could be solved with a lifelike 8″ vibrating dildo. And the problems of finding the right partner? Gone. Feeling of being judged? Gone. Worries of being a slut? Gone. Having to soothe your partner’s ego about his size? Gone. No more of that awkwardness with a new partner or perfunctory gasps and screams with a stale one. No more boring sex. Yippee.

Tonight, feeling lonely and honestly a bit frisky, my own eyes darted to my fun bag and I pulled out my lifelike 8″ vibrating dildo, already excited by the possibilities of playing with that toy. The only experience I had with a thing of such girth (although not 8″ of course) was a married French-Italian glib who mesmerised me into his bedroom, and then shocked me with his erect cock, which is still the biggest I’ve ever had the chance to see. He was also the only lover I ever had who fucked me again and again and again from dusk till dawn. The pity was, I was 20 or 21 then and had so many hangups about having sex at all. The mornings after were filled with self-loathing for having slept with a married man, for having slept with a “filthy ang moh (white guy)”, for having had casual sex, really for just having sex.

Some women don’t care about size, of course, but when you’ve had a big one, you will never forget that satisfying fullness of such a thing inside you. Oddly enough, the soreness that makes walking an impediment and the ecstasy and fulfillment, like a deep hunger satisfied, are the things that I always fantasise about and have never found again. Until tonight.

Yes, there is no man attached to this dildo. But we’re talking about satisfying a particular fetish… the need to reach that spot inside you, to get that high, to feel something that you once did. And that I did. We’re not talking about emotional connection; sex with passion and emotional connection is great, when your partner is open and giving, and when you have the time to explore each other. But sometimes, a girl, like a gay man, just wants to feel a full cock inside her, and perhaps it’s much easier to work with pulling and pushing that vibrating thing inside her, and coming on her own, rather than having to work with someone else to get there. And of course, you don’t have to worry that he won’t call. The dildo will always be there, when you need it. And unlike a man, it vibrates.