By Lisa Marie Wynn

One minute I found myself working in the ER placing a sterile catheter into a male penis, the next, I found myself standing in a sex shop starting at penises through brightly colored packages.

I had to laugh.

If, upon waking that morning someone would have told me I would be shopping for vibrators within eight hours, in my scrubs with the head orthopedic doctors of our practice and my nurse supervisor Julie, I would have laughed then too.

To say perky nurse Julie was a tad bit flirty, overtly sexual, (and some how managed to look amazing even in uniform) while successfully doing everything she could to get a rise out of the staff of twelve docs in the midst of a rush, would be an understatement.

She knew exactly what she was doing and she did it well.

Now here we all stood together, looking at blow-up dolls with shot glass orifices and vibrators as a gag gift for a retiring coworker, when Julie grabs a vibrator and says “Oh this is the one I have..I used it today, just before my shift…”

I blinked in disbelief at her admission.

Doctor S. looked up… positively salivating at the image in his head.

She plucks a package from the shelf and tells me she is going to buy me “her” vibrator. It is her gift to me because I apparently don’t know what I am missing. I look at the $29.00 price tag and the huge “All Sales Final” signs splashed all over the store and begin to protest.

She walks to the counter on a mission, has paid for it and hands me the unmarked brown bag, like a bottle for a drunk.

“Here…this baby lights up, is waterproof, comes with two interchangeable heads, three speeds, dual heat sensors, tickle-me interchangeable skins, a lengthening stick, two AA batteries, it glows in the dark, has AM/FM radio, doubles as a cell phone and a flashlight. Oh…and it doesn’t care if you have your period” she says with a wink…….”Knock yourself out.”

As she drove away, I stood in the parking lot clutching my new electric boyfriend, wondering how the hell I was going to get this thing into the house. Every mother knows that a bag through the front door alerts children and dogs to the distinct possibility of candy, ice cream, videos or Captain Crunch.

Once home, I saw the coast was clear. I ran upstairs and stashed it discreetly, bag and all, into the back of my closet. Later that night I lay in bed thinking, I’d better hide it in a better location what if someone finds it.

I put it into a purse in the back of another closet. Ten minutes later I reconsidered, envisioning my teenage daughter borrowing the purse in the morning and finding it while eating in the school cafeteria. Twelve kids staring at it laying next to a ham sandwich and a bag of Fritos.

Can’t be good.

Sneaking downstairs while everyone was asleep, I decided it best to put it behind one of the ceiling drop tiles in the laundry room. My confidence became to slip…I knew I couldn’t even manage to hide a bag of M&M’s from anyone around here, how was this going to be any different?

By the end of the week I was exhausted.

My “EB” had been moved around like a abused foster child, shuffled off to a new home each day…… a Christmas tree box, yard shed, porch floor, dog house, recipe box, a plant with fake dirt, the fireplace under fake wood logs, an empty paint can, lawn spreader and lastly a rolled up carpet remnant in the garage rafters. This relocation process was better than anything the CIA had in place. They needed me.

Although I have to admit to being curious about my “EB”, although I was such a nervous wreck about someone actually catching me or FINDING out about him and disapproving of our relationship, that I had to make a decision.

Should I break up with him? Give him a chance? Quit being so shallow and caring what others think? Take care of me first for once? Nobody else to please? No beer breath blowing in my face, no messing my hair? Clean sheets forever? No birth control worries? (Conceiving at 42 would surely spawn something with a three heads and a leg protruding from it’s rib cage.)

And besides the physical bennies, there were emotional ones as well I reasoned… no expectations, no broken promises, no tiny threads of hope to string one along, no wondering if he is with someone else, no emotional neglect, no fights, no forgotten birthdays, no self doubts or screaming gut instincts.

I would be driving the bus with my “night-stand booty calls.”

I wouldn’t even have to shave my legs.

Was it really me?

No. I needed a real emotional human man and all the risks that come with it. I’d feel like crap if I double dipped between human and plastic anyway. I had to follow my “one at a time” rule. I may become emotionally numb, even jaded from taking the easy way out. It would be all about me, self serving possibly loosing my capability to form a real human bond. I may as well do a mannequin I reasoned.

I was frightened.

How would I feel after I used him anyway? What void would this fill in the end? When I’m done with him…. what then?… I smoke a cigarette and toss him in a drawer next to my chap stick and tell him I’ll call him in the morning?

Then talk him off the edge of the cliff when three days go by?

What sort of cold unfeeling person have I become? What, no conversation, no movies, no snuggling and spooning anyone the morning while planning our day together? No basking in the glow of the night before, face to face, him twisting my hair in his fingers smiling at me in the morning sun?

Forever giving up the adrenaline rush of a real guys passionate breath on my neck and the weight of him above me, kissing me…running his hands over me…

Can my “EB” even dial a damn phone? Have I gone completely mad? Is it all about the end result now?

The big “O”?

Or worse yet, would I become addicted to this hard driving battery driven wand of Energizer Bunny passion? Would I get turned on every time I saw pink fur, a drum or a rabbit?

Would I become dependant on him? Waiting for my next toxic fix? Will no human man “make do” after my plastic cowboy hard riding tireless electric boyfriend and I bond?

Would I panic if I ran out of batteries at 3am?

Would he make it through airport security?

Will he become my true north, always there at the ready, loving me unconditionally? Will he care if I hack hair short? Gain weight? Come home late with no excuse? Spend money? Breakout? Have spinach on my teeth and forget to floss?

Will I ditch out early on my “nights out” with the girls, telling them with a wink “I have to meet someone….” only to run home to my night stand drawer”?

I decided to break-up with my electric boyfriend then and there. It had to be done, I was in turmoil. It was all too risky and confusing. I had weighed both sides and the choice was obvious.

It would never work.

Never grow a wish bone where a backbone should be.

I was dumping him today.

I unearthed my EB, from the candy-corn bag and got him into my car. This was going to have to be fast and efficient. I had 30 minutes before the kids got home from school and I still needed to have a talk with my EB face- to- face and find a place to dispose of him unseen. He was already in a body bag, so it would be clean and quick.

I thought for a minute and then it came to me.

The car wash.

I could pretend to clean my car and toss him into the garbage can next to the vacuum center.

I had a twinge of guilt as I slid him out of his brown, and now dog-eared paper bag and laid him on the passenger seat beside me. Still shiny and perfect in his plastic wrap, staring up at me, clueless as to my real motives. I pulled out every lame excuse that had been used on me in the past. The wounding lines from high school, that took weeks of poising my head over a Haagen-Dazs container to recover from.

“We have to talk.” I began.

“Its not you it’s me…”

“…..I blame myself…”

“…Your great…really…you are.”

“You don’t want me, you deserve better…I’m a mess…really…you don’t know the half of it.”

“Theres nobody else…honest”

“….let’s stay in touch…ok”?

As soon as I blurted it out, was when I realized I had never even given him a chance, I was possibly making the biggest mistake of my life and I couldn’t take it back now. I never gave my EB a fair shot I thought as I dropped him slowly into the overflowing blue trash can.

I looked away.

Wiping a tear from my eye I turned the key in the ignition and slowly began to drive away when I heard a knock on my car window.

There stood a gorgeous man with beautiful white teeth, looking at me through a fringe of dark lashes. Smiling I rolled down my window.

“Yes”? I said…..

“Did you mean to throw this out”? He said. “It looks… well…so. new…”

There in his hand was my electric boyfriend staring back at me with a look of pain and rejection like I have never seen on a product before.

I felt like a heel.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about…it’s not mine….” I stammered as I drove off.

I sobbed all the way home knowing full well I betrayed my EB even at the moment of his death. I betrayed him..

I was the worst girlfriend in the world, the biggest spineless selfish human that ever walked the face of the earth. Looking back in my rear view mirror I saw him sticking out of that blue trash can, getting smaller and smaller……

I never even gave him a chance……

Lisa Marie Wynn Freelance writer, and PR consultant has several successful businesses. Artisans Cup Tea Company, Hell on Heelz and Artisans Press. She has contributed to publications globally, across North America, Canada and online. her book “Hell on Heelz” is due out next year.