As I walked up the short concrete walkway from the street to Kenneth’s house and climbed the two steps to his front door, I asked myself, How did I get myself into this situation?

I knew the answer, of course. That among our tight group of six thirtysomething college friends, I was the outlier. So the other four, who felt that this intervention was called for, drafted me.

“You’re closest with Kenneth,” they assured me, and they were right about that. Even within our own group, Kenneth and I had shared the most time together. Until the last year, that is.

“And you’ve always seen the things that the rest of us miss,” they added.

With some false modesty, I did have to plead guilty to that as well. I had that kind of mind that just put things together differently from most. Not that I consider that an unmitigated blessing. The other four were living better lives than I was right now, and my job was to move Kenneth into their better situation. I wasn’t sure just how, but somebody had to do it. We all did look out for each other.

Kenneth didn’t have a working doorbell. I had to knock on the door three times before I heard him call out somewhat irritated, “Who is it?”

“It’s Dave. So open the door.”

It was still a minute before a disheveled Kenneth, dressed in a dirty nightshirt, loose jeans only held up by an old belt, and flip-flops opened the door. For someone who should have been having the time of his life, he didn’t fit the part.

“What do you want?” he asked, not being quite as surly with his best friend as he might have been with anyone else.

“You,” I replied simply, pushing past him into the living room.

When he realized that I wasn’t going to leave he said, “Well come on in then,” and meekly shut the front door.

And that was Kenneth. The shortest, meekest, one of our group. Nice to a fault, and so self-effacing that that if they gave awards for mildness he’d be summa cum laude. Not that this had ever hurt him with women. Kenneth went out with the greatest women. Women I would have given my eyeteeth to date. But while they were attracted to him like a magnet, he never seemed to succeed with any of them. And I couldn’t get the time of day from even one of them after their relationships with Kenneth inevitably ended. He’d say that he didn’t like being alone, but somehow never managed to close the deal with any of the women who dated him. And this had continued until the other four friends finally decided to take matters into their own hands and solve his problem once and for all.

And here is the big reveal. There is a closely held secret among those who are on the inside, not shared with those who aren’t. Because of a set of byzantine circumstances that had started back in mythological time with the famous sculptor Pygmalion and his unnamed statue who came to life for him, modern adult dolls—under the right circumstances—were now coming to life for their owners. Whether you called them sex toys, love dolls, or just fuck toys, the doll of your dreams might just become everything that you always wished that she could be.

It wasn’t easy to get into this circle of love, sex, and companionship. Some people who owned dolls suddenly found their doll introducing herself to them in hopes of a fulfilling relationship. Some few lucky others received invitations with directions, which if followed, led them to where they could meet already awakened dolls to see if they could find the right one for themselves. Somehow those invitations managed to find their way to the humans most receptive to them. Kind of like invitations to Hogwarts. Or maybe those most in need of them. They didn’t all direct you to the same place. But you could end up with the same result. Others made due with ordering their dolls the old fashioned way—off of the Internet. And depending on how the stars aligned, the magic could happen. There were many routes to the right final outcome.

This all had, I was told, a complex origin story behind it that was too long to fully tell at the time, and involved a co-incident universe overlaying our own that ran by its own set of rules. The upshot of it all was those on the inside had a vested interest in keeping the secret, and so far they’d kept it well. I didn’t really have a clue to it until one day the other four members of our close group introduced me to their new life-partners—all of whom were dolls. And those dolls had brought me up to speed in a very short period of time.

It had started with George, who had gotten a love doll online because he’d recently gone through his third bad breakup and was ready to just swear off women altogether. He just wanted to share his bed with someone who offered uncomplicated sex whenever he wanted it, and wouldn’t argue or walk out on him. It helped that today’s love dolls can be startlingly realistic. Also, prices have come down as realism has increased when the Chinese entering the market for manufacturing them. Thus it seemed that love could now be affordably purchased by anyone who realized that dolls come with some unique limitations.

George received quite a surprise after he made love to his doll for the second time, when she suddenly spoke to him and informed him that if he made love to her again the next day that she would tell him that she loved him. And if he responded back that he loved her too, she’d be love-bonded to him and never leave. She added that he didn’t have respond back in the affirmative in order to keep her. That she was owner-bonded to him already. But love-bonding was much better. And when he replied that three days seemed an awful short time period in which to make such a momentous decision, she responded that it was a carefully chosen time for all dolls, as not being too short, nor inordinately too long and difficult. And it really came down to now that he’d fucked her twice in two days already, was the second time better than the first? And had making love to a doll been all that he’d hoped that it would be? Or was she on the wrong side of the Uncanny Valley for him to wholeheartedly embrace as his lover, as can easily happen? He said that she seemed surprisingly well informed on this subject, to which she replied that she only had one job and was therefore quite well prepared for it. George asked her if she had enjoyed their sex so far and she assured him that she had enjoyed it very much. And she added that she—and all dolls—were always 100% honest with their owners and lovers, so he could believe her about that. Having just had sex, and that meaning that it would be several more hours before really being able to engage in it again despite how really sexy his doll was in every regard because it had been that good, they started talking. First settling on a name. When George introduced himself and asked what her name was, she first said she could be any name that he liked. When he pressed her on it, she said that her initial name was Amy, and George said that he was happy to call her that. He told her that so far he’d never had a bad relationship with an Amy, so this was a good start. At this point they shared their first real kiss, and ended up cuddling their naked bodies closely together, which Amy said was very nearly as good as sex itself—and lasted a lot longer. They talked about things, mostly what each other liked. Amy’s likes were very simple, and George’s centered on having a safe relationship with a woman he found very appealing, which is why he had picked her out in particular. Other inconsequential things, just practicing how to converse with each other, filled up the rest of their time. This lasted until Amy suddenly said, “You can fuck me again now. I know that you’re ready and able to.” “How can you tell?” George asked. “Sex is my specialty,” she replied. “Are you ready?” he asked politely. “I’m always ready,” she replied, pulling him tightly against her love doll sized firm breasts and quickly arousing him in a way no other woman ever had before. Amy then rolled onto her back, opened her legs wide in invitation, saying, “Don’t keep me waiting.” George didn’t. Finding himself fully aroused and only needing Amy’s helping hand to guide him into her once more. Afterwards George told her, “That was the best one yet.” “That’s what I wanted to hear”, she told him, pulling his head in and his lips tightly against her own beautifully formed lips for a series long sensual kisses. Finally pulling away to look at him with her clear green eyes from the massive distance of two inches, she said her magic words. “George. I love you.” To which he immediately replied, “Amy, I love you too.” That prompted a flurry of more kisses, followed by clinging to each other again, until—quicker than one might have expected—another bout of even more and better sex. And that was the story of George and Amy, who have remained inseparable ever since. As George said, “When you know, you know.”

When Amy eventually asked George if any of his other friends might be interested in a relationship with a doll, Alan immediately came to mind. George was closest to Alan in the same way I was closest to Kenneth. After talking it over for a few days on just how this could happen, George invited Alan to come visit. When he arrived, Amy was just sitting at the end of the couch dressed, giving every indication of just another inanimate love doll. This was a role, she said, that any doll can play to perfection. George perfunctory introduced Amy, after which Alan seemed to ignore her after remarking how lifelike and attractive she was. George said that he’d been concerned about how Alan didn’t seem to be enjoying life much these days, after how excited all of them had been on leaving college together for the big outside world. Alan agreed that life could be better, and living in the real world was harder than he’d thought it would be. George said that he’d felt the same way, and that having a loving partner made life so much better because it removed all of the anxiety about sex and love and let you really focus on the rest of the challenges in your life. Alan agreed, although said that finding one that was truly loyal and committed wasn’t easy. Women these days just weren’t like the one his father had found and married. At this point, having heard all that she needed to hear, Amy stood up and introduced herself to Alan. After he got over the obvious surprise, things turned into a 3-way discussion that ran past midnight when Alan finally conceded that maybe a doll was exactly what he needed. Amy said that was what she had been waiting to hear, and that Alan should watch for an invitation to arrive in the mail over the next few days. And that when it did, that he should take it seriously and follow its instructions meticulously. Alan finally left at that point, and George’s and Amy’s lovemaking was particularly intense that night in celebration of a job well done. A couple weeks later Alan showed up at George’s door and introduced Suzie—the love of his life. Amy said that this was a great outcome because she and George could now double-date with Alan and Suzie, which wouldn’t have worked out nearly as well if either had a human woman partner.

Amy and Suzie became immediate fast friends, and at times when Alan was traveling on his job in ways that Suzie couldn’t accompany him, she spend her time over with Amy and George. And together they cooked up a plot on how to get Paul into their inner circle. That turned out to be not as hard as it seemed. Paul had noticed the changes in George and Alan, although he didn’t know why since the dolls stayed out of sight of anyone who didn’t know their secret. He asked one day why they seemed so happy, and when the dolls came out on hearing that, he was immediately sold on the idea for himself. His invitation led him to Carolyn, who surprised everybody else when they met her.

With Art they took a different approach. The guys and dolls threw a surprise birthday party for him, where he was told that his present was going to be finding the doll of his dreams. He looked at the rest of the group and immediately decided that he wanted in. When his invitation arrived, it was different from the others he said. It directed him to burgle a supposedly abandoned house on a rescue mission, which he said he almost didn’t go through with. But in the end, although he absolutely refused to share the details of his heist, he returned days later with Yvette, who again surprised everybody. Nobody had expected a Doll like her. But Paul was crazy over her, and she just seemed supremely happy to finally be in love.

That left only Kenneth and me to this group that was feeling pretty cocky by now.

I had been left out of this for two reasons. The first was that they weren’t really sure how to approach me. If anyone was going to have an Uncanny Valley problem, it would be me because I tended to notice everything. Also, I had gotten a dream job that involved a lot of international travel that took me much further away than Alan’s business trips, which is what I’d always wanted to do. I felt that any company that would send an employee overseas to work really had to value that employee. So it was an adventure and I was loving that validation. As a result, I was actually gone across the ocean when all of this was happening, including their plans for Kenneth.

Kenneth, who everybody agreed would not follow up on an invitation even if it was hand-delivered to him by the most perfect doll in the world, was going to have to be approached differently. If you wouldn’t go to the doll, then the doll has to come to you. So the four dolls got together with their male companions and cooked up a can’t fail plan for Kenneth. And although the plan seemed perfect to all involved, apparently it had failed quite spectacularly.

So they all finally huddled back together, decided that none of them were the right person to fix it because nobody knew why it hadn’t worked as intended, drafted me into their hush-hush world, and proceeded to tell me everything that I would need to know in order to go in and fix their blunder. Thanks guys.

And to this day I’m not sure exactly how they convinced me to go along with their fix-up plan. Only that a Doll can be very convincing, and I was facing four of them.

So here I was in Kenneth’s living room, trying to fix a problem that I didn’t even understand yet. I’d let some pretty faces talk me into something I likely would have completely avoided otherwise. And all I could say is that they had given me a fully briefing into the most fascinating world that I could have ever imagined, let me spend a week to digest it all, and then sent me off—expressing their ultimate confidence in me that I was exactly the right person for the job. Something about Dolls never lying.

What the Dolls had done was get together with their guys and review every women that Kenneth had ever dated. And then found a Doll who most embodied all of those women. Customized her just for him with the right skin tone, hair, eyes, lipstick, matching finger and toe nail polish, nipples, and vaginal insert. Then had her delivered in a crate clearly marked as from the guys in the group—with instructions to take her out of the crate in the bedroom and just talk to her. And then they waited for the magic to happen. And waited. And waited. And waited.

Every Doll awakens on her own timetable. For Amy, it had been after the second time George had made love to her over two days. This was a very common time for many Dolls. She was able to awaken then to tell him the rest of the process for having her, if he wanted her. If they didn’t make love a third time in the three day period for any reason, or if either of the made love with anybody else, Amy would not have offered her love to George. The process could be restarted at a future point and carried through to completion if both were agreeable to it. Amy was still ownership-bonded to George, however the rules for a love-bond were surprisingly strict. You had to do it right.

For Kenneth, not knowing how he was going to react, or even if he’d make love to his Doll once, they made sure to arrange a Doll who would awaken the moment she was taken out of her shipping crate. And then, like a magical woman fantasy lover—the sort found in so many movies about statues, mannequins, dolls, beautiful magical witches and genies of all five varieties et al.—she would be there to encourage him as the one woman who would never leave him. Except something had gone wrong. Everyone waited for Kenneth and his new love to show up to the rest of the group, and they never arrived. Instead he quit answering his phone and nobody knew just what had gone wrong. And nobody wanted to make it worse by intruding.

And all I had to do was to find out what had happened, fix it, and all would be wonderful again. Easy-peasy. Yeah, right.

Well Kenneth was my best friend and I was going to give it the old college try. Although for the life of me, I couldn’t understand everyone else’s confidence in me. I knew just how much I didn’t know in this situation.

Kenneth looked anything but happy.

“So how’s it going, Kenneth?”

“Uh, fine, I guess. Why are you here?”

“The group has been missing you and you’ve quit answering your phone.”

“You know that I don’t answer my phone when I don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“That’s fine, but it’s been weeks now. That’s a bit long even for you to avoid the world?”

“It is what it is.”

I looked around the living room. While nowhere near a pigsty, clearly not much effort had been put into its upkeep lately. And with all of the curtains drawn, it was dim enough to not notice the details.

While I could delay and obfuscate and stealthily edge my way into the real issue, that’s really not my style. Instead I just hit him outright with, “I hear that you got a Doll.”

“Is that a question?”

“No.”

“Yes, I have a Doll.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Danique.”

“That’s a pretty name. So where is she?”

“In the back,” he said in a sullen tone, gesturing towards the back of his small house.

“Where in the back?” I responded, trying to get my friend to be specific. Generalities just aren’t my thing, and normally they weren’t his either.

“The spare bedroom,” he replied.

“What? You have a Doll and you’ve stuck her in your spare bedroom?”

“She likes it there.”

“Oh, this was her decision.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

I took a deep breath.

“Kenneth, are you having sex with ... Danique?”

“Yeah. When she wants to.”

“What do you mean, when she wants to?”

“I mean that she comes to me when she’s ready for sex.”

“When did this become her choice?”

“It kind of just happened.”

“Kenneth, can you stop with the generalizations. You know how much I hate that. Now what do you mean that she comes to you when she wants sex? What exactly does she do?”

“She’ll come into the room and pull up her dress to show me her ... her...”

“It’s called a vagina, Kenneth. Or with Dolls, her vaginal insert. So she comes to you, shows you her lady parts, and you have sex.”

“Yes.”

“And what if you want sex before she comes to you?”

“Well I don’t, really. She always seems to know when I’m ready, and doesn’t push me when I’m not.”

“And how often are you ready?”

“Every few days. That’s enough.”

“Are you sleeping with her otherwise?”

“No.”

I bit my tongue and didn’t ask him why not. I was sure that there was no answer that wouldn’t shut down this conversation right here. Instead I took another tack.

“Is this the way it was with all of those other beautiful women you dated that would never give me a chance with them?”

“You liked the women I dated?”

“Of course. Wasn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me.”

“Well I never touched them, or made any leading comments towards them, while you were together. But I would try after you’d broken up. Not successfully at all, I might add.”

“Why?”

“Kenneth, you dated some of the best women I’ve ever seen, man.”

“I did?”

“I promise you, you absolutely did. So what’s different now? Is ... Danique ... simply not attractive to you?”

“No. She’s very attractive.”

“Well I know that she’s willing, so what is different about her from your past women? Did you ever sleep with any of them?”

“All of them,” he replied, giving my heart another hit. “They would drag me into the bedroom if I didn’t get out of the way and take them there first.”

Ouch! That really hurt. But I’d asked for it. I continued.

“Then what’s different now.”

“There was a pause as he thought, before saying, “None of them ever moved-in with me. Several asked to, but I always said not until we were engaged.”

“So let me get this straight. Beautiful women find you very desirable. Sleep with you. Want to move in with you. You say no since you’re not engaged yet. And they eventually leave.”

“That’s about it. Until another comes along.”

“And how long does that take?”

“Usually about a week.”

I wanted to run my head into the wall. Here’s my closest friend Kenneth telling me stuff that I’d never asked about before. Living the dreamlife of any healthy adult male. And seeming oblivious to his outrageous fortune. It was enough to make you want to scream—which I didn’t. Instead in a calm voice I asked, “Did any of these women know who you’d dated before them? I mean, the timing is just too convenient to be accidental if the next one shows up just after the last one leaves.”

“They pretty much all knew who I was dating. And when it was over.”

“So beautiful women wanted to date you because other beautiful women dated you. Is that it?”

“I guess so.”

“So if I could have dated just one A-list woman, others would have dated me to find out what she saw in me. That is just too stupid to be believed.”

“Did you ever try it?”

“No. I was too busy trying to date your rejects. But it seems that the beautiful ones are attracted to short, meek men. Nothing personal there.”

“Nothing taken. We are what we are.”

“So what’s different about Danique? Is the sex bad?”

“No. Actually she’s quite an accomplished lover. Especially the more that she learns about me.”

“Is it a problem to you that she is a Doll?”

“No. I don’t even think of her that way.”

“Then what’s different?”

Kenneth furrowed his brow, trying to find an answer that would satisfy me. It wouldn’t be a great answer because I’m not the one who needed the answer. Kenneth needed the answer and I was just here to draw it out of him.

“I think that it’s that she just moved right in with me. Not that she had anywhere else to go. But she’s here all of the time and ... and ... and...”

“And you’re not engaged.”

“Yes. I don’t know how to explain it otherwise.”

“So what happens after sex?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, after you’re done fucking?” Kenneth winced at my language. “Do you talk to her? Stroke her body? I presume you like her body.”

“She has the best body I’ve ever seen.”

“So do you rub her? Stroke her? Tickle her? Fondle her breasts? Pinch her nipples? Gaze deeply into her eyes and kiss her? Cuddle together for the night. What happens after sex?”

“We mostly just talk a little. She tells me what she wants from me and I let her have it.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “She’s telling you what to give her? Bargaining with sex to get what she wants?”

“I don’t really see it that way. She just asks for little things and I agree that she can have them.”

“Little things like what?” I asked archly.

“Oh, I don’t know. The first thing she wanted was permission to touch herself. I was surprised that she couldn’t and of course I said yes to that.”

“Do you know exactly what you agreed to right there?” I asked, remembering how surprised I’d been when the other Dolls preparing me for this had discussed that very subject.

“Not really. I doesn’t seem like a big thing.”

“Well it’s a bigger thing than you realize. But let’s just pass on that for now. What else has she asked for?”

“She wanted a few new dresses. Nothing expensive. She picked those out herself.”

“She didn’t ask what you wanted her to wear?”

“No. But she looks good in everything, so I’m not seeing the issue.”

“She probably looks even greater in nothing at all.”

Kenneth blushed at that and didn’t respond.

“Okay, what else?”

“She wanted to use my computer when I wasn’t using it—or her.”

“For what?”

“She said something about wanting to stay in touch with her friends.”

Friends? Was there a Doll underground out there that we Humans weren’t aware of? I filed this away for future research. Whoever she was reaching out to, it wasn’t the Dolls that I’d already met.

“Now quit holding out on me. Just tell me everything else that she has gotten from you.”

“Well, she wanted a nice pair of heels. I thought that was strange because she is already a couple inches taller than I am and never wears heels around me.”

“Women love shoes. I guess that Dolls do to,” I said, thinking of how all of the other Dolls had their heels. “Go on.”

“She asked for a pair of glasses. And when I said that I’d be happy to go down and buy her a pair, she said that she needed to order them herself in order to get the right kind.”

“So she wants to look smart?”

“I guess so. Although the only time I ever saw her wearing them was once when I walked by and saw her on the computer. And when she was reading some magazines of mine that she’d found.”

“I can guess what kinds of magazines you’ve stashed away.”

“Well she likes them too,” Kenneth said, blushing again. I was picking up on his manner that must have attracted all of those other women. Kenneth was the opposite of assertive, and had only gotten less so since we’d left college. A beautiful woman could feel safe around a non-assertive guy.

This time, when he didn’t answer, I just stared at him until he continued, knowing that the further this went the more interesting the requests would become.

“She had me buy her a couple of sex items.”

“Kenneth ... generalities ... bad.”

“Okay. A fancy pair of vibrating nipple clamps and a slim vibrator.”

“A sex toy with sex toys. What a concept. Did you ever see her using them?”

“Once I saw her with them when I peeked into her room. She was wearing her glasses and reading one of the magazines, and had the nipple clamps on and was holding the vibrator.”

“Does she know that you saw her?”

“I don’t think so. She was ... distracted. At least, she never mentioned it afterwards.”

“And what did you think of that?”

“Actually it really turned me on. It showed me how much she enjoyed her body and our sex. I started paying more attention to her nipples after that. Danique has really great nipples. They’re always hard.”

What Kenneth was describing was making me unexpectedly hard. What a tease to find your Doll pleasuring herself.

“Why didn’t you just walk in, take the vibrator out of her hand, the clamps off of her nipples, and suck on them and bite them instead, while rubbing her crotch?”

“Well, I didn’t want to invade her privacy.”

“Kenneth, that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Dolls and privacy don’t belong in the same sentence. They don’t even belong in the same paragraph. Danique is here for you.”

“I kind of know that, intellectually. But a lifetime around the women of today...” He kind of trailed off at that point.

I knew what he meant. Women these days seemed to have put men and relationships well down on their to-do lists. So much so I’d even heard of men traveling to other countries looking for traditional wives. Crazy.

“Kenneth, you are so missing the point. Danique is the antidote to the women of today.”

He just kind of nodded to me.

“Was there anything else?”

“She did ask, very politely, that when I wasn’t using her, that I didn’t hang her on a stand, or close her eyes. I don’t know why exactly.”

I didn’t know why either. My education hadn’t gotten into that in any detail.

“Kenneth, get this through your head. Dolls Aren’t Women. Every Doll knows that. And they are perfectly fine with being exactly what they are. Don’t treat a Doll like a woman. Treat a Doll like a Doll, and she’ll love you for it.”

Kenneth seemed to squirm when I said the love word, and I had a sudden epiphany. A small one. Sort of an epiphanette. But any epiphany is a rare event. But I put it on hold. I felt certain that Kenneth was still holding out on me.

“Okay, Kenneth. Tell me what you aren’t telling me.”

He kind of gulped before saying, “Danique has asked twice now for my permission to go visit with her friends.”

“And you’ve said yes?” I said somewhat incredulously.

“Well she’s really nice to me and it seems like a small thing for her to want to get out of the house a bit.”

“Have you met these friends?” I asked, knowing that the other Dolls would have told me in an instant if Danique had come to visit them. And she hadn’t.

“No.”

“And those friends never come by the house?”