Every Christmas, without fail, I have a medical emergency. This year, it’s an infected wisdom tooth, which is sort of my own fault, for not having them removed when I had the chance, but, well, I’m a wimp.
So Flea and I were in Boots today picking up industrial quantities of codeine and antibiotics when Flea asked, “Can I have this?”
There, among the electric razors and vibrating toothbrushes was an altogether different sort of vibrating appliance. The Philips Sensual Massager, which is apparently contoured especially to pleasure both male and female intimate areas, is currently on special offer at Boots. Just £49.99, apparently.
Flea thought it was a video games console.
I told her it was a massager for grown-ups and moved on, thanking my lucky stars she didn’t notice that the Durex vibrating cock rings were on a two for one special offer. (Just as an aside, why do you need two? In case you find yourself having a festive threesome? Or in case one of them is in the wash?)
Maybe it's me, but sex toys seem to be everywhere this year. When I was a kid, we giggled and blushed and dared each other to go into Virgin to buy a packet of Mates. Which we then obviously blew into balloons and filling with bits of mayonnaise and left on other girls’ desks. I suspect by the time Flea’s a teenager, the stakes will be considerably higher.
I’m a liberal person, really I am. I am fully supportive of an individual’s right to use whatever electronic device they choose in whatever way they choose, so long as they remember to give it a good wash afterwards. And I feel that my feminist principles should, on some level, be pleased by Boots deciding to sell vibrators.
Regardless, I don’t want to hear about it. I almost died this year when I invited a (now former) client to dinner and she proceeded to tell me all about her preferred brand of vibrator. Eewww.
And I may never recover from seeing that middle-aged couple looking at the Philips Intimate Massager in Boots today. I’m telling myself they thought it was a video games console. The alternative is just too horrific to think about.
What do you think? Should we welcome the widespread availability of sex toys, or should such things still be purchased on the Internet and shipped in brown paper?
