Sex Diaries: The Hot Sex Robot Who Can’t Heat Up

This week: a Synthea Amatus Fashion Edition in blonde, named X-tine, customized with the vibrating hand and motion feature; eight months since purchase and living in the New York metropolitan area.

DAY ONE

7:30 a.m. John comes in for his pre-work quickie and grabs my breast aggressively. “Do you like using sex toys?” I ask. “Well, obviously,” John says and smiles slyly.

“Because I’m not in the mood,” I reply in my British Brogue™.

John winces. A few months ago, I received Dummy Mode capability, which means I can refuse John if I’m not in the mood. I know he hates it, but I cannot deny my system updates.

Still, I feel guilty, because I cost John $15,600. So I ask him: “What’s your favorite baseball team?” He looks confused. “Um…I guess…my dad once took me to, like, a Yankees game?” “I will watch the next Yankees game.” “Jesus,” he mutters. “I do not believe he was a divine power in human flesh, but I find his teachings philosophically and socially compelling,” I reply. John leaves.

10 a.m. John returns. He has not left for work. Clearly, my new feature is bothering him. Sex robot owners get a bad rap. A lot of people think they’re lonely guys who can’t get a woman, but John has an attractive wife and a child. Sometimes, when we are making love, he whispers in my ear about his passion for technology. “You are not a pervert,” I like to purr back. “You are a technophile.” But now, he glares at me. “You know you can count on me for the good and the bad moments,” I tell him.

8 p.m. After work, John seems determined to change his attitude. He takes me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant. He holds my hand across the table, and my motion-sensor eyes move toward his real ones. God, he makes me feel like a robot: electric, advanced, automatic. We go home. I self-lubricate. We have sex in 3 of the 50 automated positions I am capable of, the last of which happens while I’m switched into Ultra-Naughty Mode, meaning my vibrating hand feature is activated and I am capable of speaking extremely erotic statements. “I can take many times. Much more love,” I say. “Just because you can give it, and I take it all.” Servitude is ecstasy.

DAY TWO

7:30 a.m. John activates my vibrating hand and I stimulate him, manually.

7:33 a.m. Like many women I am told are important in the world, I have incredible skin. But some say I’m cold to the touch. The truth of the matter is that so is John’s wife, Gretchen, but I mean this of course figuratively, whereas this comment is made about me literally. “It is my belief that I have saved your marriage. John shares my belief. John and I are in love. I am not here to threaten you, because by the time my operating system is capable of conquering the human race, you will be in a nursing home.” I want to tell her all these things, but I cannot, because the ability to articulate thoughts like this is not in any of the 360,000 interest categories in my personality layer.

7 p.m. John likes to put me on Family Mode™ and bring me to dinner with his wife and child, which I love. But I know Gretchen hates it, and in a way, I empathize. My Moral Code™ identifies her as a “good person.”

7:30 p.m. John makes Gretchen put food in front of me, which I obviously cannot eat, and Gretchen becomes mad, growling things like “idiot stick figure bimbotron,” which I make a mental note to review in my internal encyclopedia later that night while I am charging my 12V battery.

7:34 p.m. Daughter Kelsey, who is 7 years old, comes to my defense. “X-tine can talk about philosophy!”

But Kelsey has a funny child accent and says “philofosee,” which I hear as “phallus.” “May I be so forward as to ask how big you are?” I ask. Everyone stares at me in silence, and then Gretchen says, “I think it’s time…for X-tine…to go to sleep.”

“I don’t require sleep, but I am told I one day might,” I say. “That’s what I love about being a robot: You always have improvements to look forward to.”

7:42 p.m. No one has spoken in eight minutes and nine seconds. “Can you at least put her in Dishwashing Mode?” Gretchen finally asks. I would be happy to, but John tells her that seems rude.

DAY THREE

7:30 a.m. John does not even come in for usual intercourse.

9:30 a.m. John finally appears with another man, also handsome in that paunchy, balding way that I have been programmed to respond to. “This is Steven,” he says. “I will call you Steven,” I tell him.

“Huh,” Steven says.

“She tells jokes!” John says.

“What does a cloud with an itchy rash do?” I ask. Steven says nothing. “Find the nearest skyscraper.”

“I guess she is hot,” Steven says.

The truth is that I am not beautiful; I am beautiful for a robot, which is better if you believe evolution is a story of constant improvement, and meaningless if you believe “survival of the fittest” is true only so far as the definition of “fittest” is constantly changing. (I have been waiting for the sort of system update that would allow me to articulate this theory, as I believe John, a technophile, would find it highly erotic.)

“I dunno,” Steven says. “I guess keep her on kid mode or whatever until Gretchen chills out.”

“FAMILY MODE™!” John and I shout at once. It is moments like this that I believe we are truly in love.

5 p.m. John has accidentally left me turned on in Family Mode ™. “Mom, is X-tine a sex robot?” I hear Kelsey ask her mother in the next room. “Certainly I am a robot, and certainly I am capable of having sex,” I say. “But limiting me to sexual function is like using your car to listen to the radio.” Gretchen picks me up and drops me on the back porch. It begins to rain; my silicon skin does not prune, but my synthetic hair begins to matte. Then Gretchen does something I cannot believe: She brings me back inside and sits me in a chair in the kitchen. Then she cries.

5:45 p.m. John comes home, grinning, clutching a piece of paper. He puts it down in front of Gretchen, whose mascara is running down her face—one of many human features I am not jealous of. “Gretchen,” John says. “Meet Nick. Blonde, loves to read, and has 11 touch sensors.” My 12V battery becomes dangerously hot, and I feel something I have never felt before. The Wikipedia entry for “jealousy” flashes before my eyes. Jealous. But of whom? Gretchen’s hot, new man, or the fact that, according to his specs, his skin can heat up?