Matt McMullen has almost single-handedly changed the world of sex toys with his startlingly lifelike RealDolls—which sell for $5,000 and up. Vanity Fair gets an eye-opening look at Abyss Creations, where McMullen and his team build some body to love.
It’s a beautiful morning in Huntington, West Virginia, but David Mills wants to drink beer in the same ramshackle house where he has lived since birth. In the other bedroom is his ailing, nonagenarian father. Mills the younger is best known for writing Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism. In the foreword, Carl Sagan’s son Dorion praised Mills’s “impeccable logic, intellectual bravery, and professional clarity.” Richard Dawkins gave the book a blurb—“an admirable work”—and mentioned it two times in his best-seller The God Delusion.
In his introduction to a new edition, in 2006, Mills gleefully informed readers that he has been publicly condemned as a spokesman for Satan, a disgrace to human dignity, a moron, a shrimphead, and, his favorite, a “pitiful middle-aged man, embarrassed by his lifelong unemployment, and frozen, emotionally and intellectually, in early adolescence.”
At 55, he is tired of atheism activism, which he’s been doing since the late 1970s, and ready for a career reboot. Recently he became the owner of a RealDoll—the Rolls-Royce of sex dolls, created two decades ago by artist and entrepreneur Matt McMullen. Mills, who learned about them from an episode of the sitcom Family Guy, visited the company’s Web site and was convinced the photos were of models, not dolls, because they all looked so realistic. More research proved otherwise.
“I thought, Well, gee, I would enjoy something like that!” he recalls. “I mean, I love women. God, I absolutely love women.” And especially their legs. “That’s what attracts me to a woman as much as a face, if not more.” Big problem, though: “My fundamental personality conflict is that I really like women but I don’t like to be around people.”
A loner since childhood, he met his first wife in 1984 in Communist Poland through a mail-order-bride catalogue and was with her for 18 years, until he met his future second wife online. That marriage ended right before she was arrested by the F.B.I. for a white-collar crime. Mills has avoided relationships ever since. He estimates that of the approximately 180 women he has had sex with, a little over half were prostitutes. That profession has gone way downhill in Huntington over the years, so Mills thought a RealDoll might do the trick. He ordered a “Body A” RealDoll2 model (83 pounds, 33–24–35 measurements, custom freckles) and named her Taffy the same day he mailed a check for $7,149 to a factory in San Marcos, California, called Abyss Creations.
Three and a half months later, a coffin-like crate arrived. Thrilled, he pried it open, tore away the plastic, and screamed. The extremely human-like doll was looking right at Mills, and it reminded him of theTwilight Zone episode where William Shatner comes face-to-face with a monster on an airplane wing.
Then he became aroused.
RISE OF THE SEXBOTS
In the new sci-fi thriller Ex Machina, a young employee of a Google-like company (Domhnall Gleeson, who played a sweet-natured synthetic manbot in an episode of the highly acclaimed British TV series Black Mirror) visits a secret research facility in the mountains, where a reclusive tech mogul (Oscar Isaac) shows off his latest creation, a very attractive, emotionally intelligent android named Ava (Alicia Vikander). Believe it or not, something goes wrong.
As for robot sex partners, which Abyss is in the early stages of developing, Mills has been skeptical. He likes the way the dolls are now and can’t envision a walking, talking sexbot indistinguishable from humans happening for 500 years. “It’s just too horribly complicated,” he reasons. “I just think the more moving parts you have with anything, a car or an airplane, the more problems you have, and if you can’t send it back to the factory … shit, I couldn’t even get a plumber for goddamn two weeks. Am I going to call the local RealDoll repairman?”
Then, suddenly, he warms to the idea of having one. “Well, I hope. I mean, yes, that would be one more option.”
“Modern technology has now progressed to the point where factory-built partners are at least as good as human partners,” Mills says later at a downtown bar. “Not everybody wants to be in a relationship, especially an emotionally draining, costly, anxiety-filled one. If a man says, ‘I don’t want to be in a relationship,’ most of the time that’s probably a fucking good decision! And he can order a RealDoll, which will end up being a helluva lot cheaper than the women he was dating! If a man has a hundred or no girlfriends, RealDolls are a good option no matter what.”
A hovering waitress says, “Last call.” Mills orders a beer and returns to a pet peeve. “Women have enjoyed sex toys for 50 years, probably 5,000 years, if the truth be known, but men are still stigmatized! We have to correct that! I want to be the Rosa Parks of sex dolls! Men are not going to sit in the back of the bus anymore!”
ENTERING ABYSS
Closer up, these replicas of two Wicked Pictures porn stars look ready to break through their plastic cages to embrace or tackle you. But like all the other dolls here, these Wicked Girls have neck bolts for hanging purposes and so they can’t move during transport. Behind them on the wall are stunning framed portraits of what must be A-list models or actresses. Annette shakes her head. I refuse to believe it. She insists they are the work of Stacy Leigh, a pioneering photographer of sex dolls, owner of nine, and authority on the subculture.
Another extraordinary sight in the showroom is a male doll playing air guitar on a red upholstered throne. “You might recognize the face because he just walked in a few moments ago,” she says. “That’s Matt.” Her boss has to talk to someone working on a history of the sex doll, which often begins with Pygmalion, picks up steam with Dutch sailors’ dolls in the 18th century, continues to famous doll owners—artist Oskar Kokoschka among them—and then focuses on Matt McMullen.
It wasn’t Matt McMullen’s intention to invent “The World’s Finest Love Doll.” It was a fluke. Before he came on the scene, not much progress had been made beyond unrealistic, hideous-looking blow-ups, which were more novelty item than gratifying sex toy. In the 1980s, Japan began producing high-end dolls, but because they were made of plastic, they didn’t feel real or have the illusion of being real from 10 feet away. Their parts were separate—the upper and lower leg had a visible seam between them—and they were popped together like a G.I. Joe. You always knew it was a doll.
By 1994, when he wasn’t working odd jobs or playing in grunge bands, McMullen, who had studied art in college, was sculpting a female figure at home. Just something he was driven to do. “I started this whole thing in my garage as a hobby, a project, and it kind of took on a life of its own,” he says during our first conversation. “It started as a concept I had for a posable sculpture—a highly realistic mannequin, I guess, is the best way to describe it.” In the past he has said it was more of a “joke” or “funky art piece” than anything and became a sex device only because of “the public’s demand.”
Nevertheless, it was McMullen who, with his own hands, created the first silicone sex doll with a completely accurate, fully articulated skeleton that was posable. And when he began selling them for $3,500, in 1997, there was nothing at that level anywhere in the world. That same year he was invited on The Howard Stern Show, and “the King of All Media” asked “Leonardo Da Vagina” to make him a doll. When it finally arrived, Stern was ecstatic. “Best sex I ever had!” he said. “I swear to God! This RealDoll feels better than a real woman!”
In 1999, HBO’s Real Sex ran a segment on RealDolls that has since aired countless times. In 2014 the adult-entertainment Web site Lustocracy called the episode “a cultural moment in time that marks the dawn of the next tech-enabled sexual revolution in America. Viewers were both repulsed and attracted.” According to Abyss, McMullen’s dolls have popped up on more than 20 other television shows—among them CSI: New York, My Name Is Earl, TLC’s My Strange Addiction, Sons of Anarchy, House, and 2 Broke Girls—and co-starred in 10 films, including Totally Busted 3, Rubberheart, Regarding Jenny, Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis as an F.B.I. agent hunting down the killer of androids, and 2040 (when sex is outlawed, androids replace porn stars).
But it was 2007’s Lars and the Real Girl that put RealDolls on the cultural map, when one of McMullen’s dolls landed a role opposite Ryan Gosling, who played the quirky, socially stunted lead. Lars becomes less reclusive soon after Bianca shows up in a crate. He begins wheelchairing her around to family dinners, a party, and church, much to the delight of the tolerant townsfolk, then later drowns the now “terminally ill” Bianca in a lake.
THE CURE FOR LONELINESS
According to Abyss, the Department of Defense has purchased dolls from the company—minus the dirty bits—so soldiers can practice saving the wounded in war games. Psychiatrists have used them in therapy sessions. Parents have ordered them for their autistic or otherwise challenged grown-up children. Add to the list very wealthy sheikhs, princes, a NASCAR driver, a Nobel Prize winner, and Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil, who showed off his $15,000 customized Body A on MTV’s Cribs.
The company is “fiercely” protective of the privacy of all its customers, not just celebrities, who usually demand a non-disclosure agreement or have a doll purchased through an intermediary. Deep sources there confirm that an actor with “anger-management issues” bought five at once and was seen sunbathing with them on his yacht.
Most owners aren’t that ostentatious. Like proper Victorians, they take care of business in private and then hang their dolls back up in the closet. Some married men use a fake name when they order, have it shipped somewhere other than their home, and say, “Don’t call; don’t leave a message; don’t e-mail!” But what has long been considered a fetish for major pervs has become more accepted as the perception of “sex doll” has changed, largely thanks to McMullen, who prefers “love doll” and “work of art.”
Annette Blair, who also serves as the tour guide at Abyss, unlocks the “engineering and parts room.” The walls are covered with schematics of what RealDolls look like inside. “No one’s really allowed in here,” she says, quickly moving on to another room filled with body parts, all made of a unique blend of high-quality silicone.
Annette points to the stairs leading down to the production floor, where the dolls are put together and brought to life. That is the destination for a dozen hanging from an overhead conveyor and dangling a few feet off the floor. It’s like we just missed a mass slaughter at a dry cleaner or meatpacking plant. But these aren’t even RealDolls yet, she clarifies—they’re poured dolls waiting to be bathed by Schuyler Dawson, who is scrubbing away on a Classic RealDoll Body 4 (four feet ten, 77 pounds) before doing some finishing touches, perhaps some French-manicured fingernails, freckles, or fluffy, glued-on mohair pubic hair.
Between the Classic and the RealDoll2 models, customers must decide which of 11 different body types and 31 faces they want. They choose from more than 30 styles and shades of nipples; skin and lip type; hair and eye color; pubic hair (trimmed, natural, full, shaved); eyebrows (fake, human hair); removable tongues, tattoos, piercings; oral inserts (e.g., the seven-inch “Deep Throat”).
Untold thousands of configurations are possible, and prices go up the more custom options that come into play. A man with a body-hair fetish once requested to have individual hairs meticulously hand-punched on a female doll to make it almost ape-like but balked at the $10,000 price. McMullen declined an offer of $50,000 to make a sex dog for a “very Deliverance”-sounding hillbilly, though he suspected it was a radio-show prank. He refuses to make animals or children.
Another area where McMullen’s personal morals intervene is celebrities. He will make a doll that roughly resembles one but not a complete copy, unless he gets permission. Annette remembers a woman who ordered a Sweeney Todd doll with a ghostly white wig that looked as much like Johnny Depp as possible. Female customers are in the minority (less than 10 percent). Some buy female dolls. Dangling in front of us now is a standard male, a Ken-like doll for which a woman paid extra to jump the line and to get custom features: cat’s eyes, fangs, natural toenails, and flaccid and hard penis attachments.
Many unusual products here were created in direct response to requests by customers. Gay men were presumably responsible for the existence of the compact “Bottoms-Up” toy (shapely cheeks, dangling testicles), available in five skin tones. Hermaphrodite-doll enthusiasts can be picky. Some want the vagina and the penis. Some want the penis, the vagina, but no testicles. Others want removable genitals so they can go back and forth between genders. When they’ve had enough of the penis they can remove the attachment and put the regular vagina back in until they get tired of that.
UNCANNY VALLEY OF THE DOLLS
According to the “uncanny valley” theory in human aesthetics, such a response can occur when humans first come into contact with lifelike dolls, robots, or near-perfect digital imagery. More time spent around them, though, can lead to positive, empathetic feelings. It’s true. When I return to Abyss the next month, a beautiful, mysterious Body D will have a hypnotic effect on me. Circling and admiring “Brooklyn” from different angles, I will work up the nerve to stroke her back, pat her butt, and feel no shame.
Standing by a wide variety of body parts scattered on and around a table, a beaming, prosperous-looking 50-ish man is picking up his $9,000 doll, a volleyball-playing California supermodel type. Annette met with him and his wife for hours, helping them to create it. They were very particular about hair, eyes, and skin tone. The delighted husband is telling Blake Bailey, the production manager, how beautiful it is, and doesn’t wish to speak to a reporter. According to Stacy Leigh, owners are “very leery of the press, almost to a fault, where the guys you want to speak to you won’t speak to you. They’re afraid of losing their jobs, so you’re left with the fringe, who are almost crazy.”
X-RATED TICKLE ME ELMO
“Sure, it’s fun—there’s worse things you can do with your day,” he says. For the Wicked Girls it’s a “difficult” process, according to Annette, but they feel honored when their likenesses are unveiled at the A.V.N. Expo. “We’ve gotten to know them pretty well, the company and the girls,” Matt says. “Great people.” His phone rings; one of his kids. On the table between us is a book of photographs by Helmut Newton that includes several RealDolls. Under it is Diamonds & Pearls: Dolce & Gabbana—the designers met with Matt before deciding to use his dolls instead of mannequins for this 10-pound doorstop.
He’s here every day but can’t oversee everything and often feels spread thin. It takes time and effort to put himself in the right creative mode to, say, sculpt a new face. Then he’ll get sidetracked by a multitude of things. Phone calls. Clients. His second wife. His ex-wife, who owns 49 percent of the business (she’s not involved in operations). Someone wants his approval of a makeup job. A doll isn’t fitting into a crate. Meanwhile, he’s trying to sculpt a new face.
Given his druthers, Matt would spend all his work time creating new things. Down the hall is Phoenix Studios, Abyss’s sister company, which makes Boy Toy dolls, the line of smaller sex dolls he created in 2008. Phoenix is getting more and more into prosthetics for mastectomy patients and fetishwear for drag performers and transgender individuals. “We just made this product line—it’s basically a boob shirt that you can wear, and it’s made of silicone, and it looks completely real,” he says. “It’s like a wearable doll’s skin, and this is something that people have asked for for years.”
He wants to show off the wearable breasts and “gurl shorts,” with built-in genitalia, that can convincingly change one’s gender. “This is a separate venture from the doll thing—it’s kind of a new avenue,” he says in the studio. “Here I am, making a living with boobs! That’s what I do. They come in all sizes and shapes. See, we’ve come up with all these different nipples to meet what people ask for, because no matter what you have, there’s always somebody who is like, ‘No, I want my nipples on there to be puffy and red.’ And you’re like, ‘Red?’ ‘Yes, red like a fire truck.’ So there you have it, red nipples.” A chart on the wall lists the many nipple colors and designs from light red to hot red to pink, chestnut, bronze, peach, tan, brown, black, Standard Mini, Mini 1 and 2, Perky, Super Puffy, XL Puffy, XXL Puffy, V Puffy, “Texas,” and “Big Mama” (about the diameter of a coffee cup).
Less excited by robotics and artificial intelligence, Matt feels pressure to move in that direction. People keep asking when the dolls will talk back. “I’m torn, because that sounds really cool, but at the same time I like the old-school-ness of what it is now,” he explains. There is also something pure about the way his customers interact with them now, and that, too, could be lost when sexbots become available.
“I think that will take away from the reality of what real relationships are with the doll where it’s mostly imagination,” he continues. “You program a doll to agree with everything you say, do everything you say, always be nice to you and go along with what you want, it’s boring. I’ll tell you in a heartbeat, dolls could never replace a real woman. I mean, half the challenge and half the battle of a relationship is that constant tension between men and women that we all know is there.”
It too was a nightmare to install and turned out to be like an X-rated Tickle Me Elmo. Instead of “That tickles!” the doll said things like “Ow!” and “Oh, that feels good” or simply moaned. “We did that for a while and it was cool—some people loved it,” Matt recalls halfheartedly. Others didn’t think it was worth the $1,500. “But more people said, ‘Well, I don’t know if I want her to talk.’ I kind of like that it’s just a doll, and that’s kind of where sometimes I feel I am. You start adding all these other things, it’s not really just a doll anymore.”
The thought of getting back into robotics now is exciting but also intimidating and anxiety-inducing: “I feel like 10 years ago when I was doing this, I was completely content. I made dolls and I made them as beautiful as I could and it was a very free feeling. …. I guess in a sense it makes you long for the simplicity of what used to be.”
IT’S ALIVE!
“Across-the-board, human sexuality is expanding into these other avenues and frontiers,” he says. “We like to experience different types and flavors of sex, and that is our nature. And so I don’t think necessarily this is something that needs to be a high level of concern. There’s this big gap between what people fantasize about and what’s possible even in the next decade. You know we’re not quite there. When we’re able to build a starship Enterprise, we’ll have these kinds of robots that people fantasize about, but there’s going to be a lot of steps between here and there.”
Is animating dolls or giving them emotional intelligence the greatest desire?
“Well, the idea, the goal, the fantasy there, is to bring her to life, ultimately,” he replies. But he admits that, given the choice between a beautiful woman and an animated doll, there are some who would still choose the latter. “They have a fetish for the doll. It has nothing to do with dehumanizing anyone. They have a fetish for this doll to be animated, and it has nothing to do with possessing them or controlling them. I mean, there are people out there who have sex with their car. There are people who have sexual fetishes about items of clothing or pieces of furniture—that’s out there and doesn’t dehumanize anyone. That’s just their thing, man. So again: relax.”
So women shouldn’t be worried about being replaced by synthetic versions of themselves?
“No. Nor should men be worried that they’ll be replaced by dildos.”
DON’T FEEL SORRY FOR DAVID MILLS
Inside a booth at Red Lobster in downtown Huntington, David Mills is looking around for a waitress who used to be a stripper. One thing he will say for the Huntington area is there are some pretty good strip joints. People come from Charleston and all over. Every couple of months Mills goes to either Lady Godiva’s or Southern X-Posure, where the strippers are fully nude onstage and give wonderful private lap dances.
“The only problem I have is there are a lot of fat strippers and they have tattoos,” he says. “I mean, that just doesn’t do it for me, though usually in an evening they’ll have one or two that look really good and kind of classy-looking.”
He says he isn’t drinking tonight. Gets too carried away. Usually he will buy one 22-ounce bottle. “And that’s all I have. But if I have like a 12-pack, I drink until I throw up, so I rarely drink.”
Was he being serious about his offer to wash Taffy so I could test her out? “Yeah—I mean, that’s fine with me,” he replies. “That’s perfectly fine. There is absolutely no possibility of catching anything at all. You can do it now or later when you come back. I was not kidding.”
The only downside to Taffy is her weight, but “you can’t demand a life-size doll that looks and feels exactly like a woman and expect the doll to weigh 10 pounds and throw it over your shoulder.” Another issue is that dolls assume the ambient temperature. He is very interested to learn that McMullen is finalizing a design for a remote-control internal heating system so his customers won’t have to use an electric blanket.
David doesn’t sleep with Taffy. She stays on her tripod. What does he think of the term “love doll”? “That’sperverse, man,” he says, laughing. “You people from the big city disgust me.” The waitress brings the check and soon we are in the park by the Ohio River.
“Lewis and Clark sailed right past there,” he says, adding that there used to be prostitutes here before the police cracked down. It’s idyllic now. Gorgeous sunset, intoxicating air. Nice people strolling, children laughing, someone flying by on a Jet Ski. He finds the small plaque he bought to honor his second ex-wife (ANDREA + DAVID).
We end up at Roosters bar. The outdoor table overlooking downtown offers a view of the skyline and a peaceful, Norman Rockwell-like scene below. David shows off some cell-phone photos. First Taffy, then his first ex-wife looking voluptuous. Today it occurred to him that they look alike. He swipes past some “porn-related” photos and stops at the last woman who had sex with him before Taffy arrived—and, later, with him and his doll.
The waitress asks if we’re O.K. He orders his first beer of the night.
What’s an average day like for him now?
“Well, somebody will send me an e-mail: Oh, it’s just so sadddd. I know you’re such a sad person with thisdoll and I feel sooo sorry for you,” he says, mocking this individual. “Well, here’s how sorry you should feel for me: I sleep till 11, and if I want, maybe later. I get up. I sit around a couple hours, watch TV, maybe have lunch with my daughter if she comes. You know, go out to a restaurant and have a good dinner, come back, maybe watch some porn or TV. Maybe have a late-night snack, a beer or two, and go to bed. So don’t feel sorry for me, for Christ’s sake.”
At 10 P.M. the waitress lets us know it’s last call. “If I am the perv here, please remember you traveled halfway across the country to talk to a man who has a sex doll,” David says, provoking laughter. “So, who’s the perv here?”
Source: Vanity Fair