I want to…try out a fucking machine

I’ve been having sex with myself for 15 years, and my masturbatory sessions have gotten a little predictable. (Clitoris: “Ugh—you again, Hand?”) So tonight I’m lighting candles, putting Bill Withers on repeat and making sweet love to the Pogo Stick Fucking Machine ($140; extremerestraints.com), a contraption that’s just what it sounds like: a pogo stick that you bounce on with your vagina, instead of your feet.

Foreplay with the PSFM takes the form of assembly, since it arrives by mail in pieces. I follow the directions, screwing the cradle onto the spring-loaded pole, the seven-inch rubber dong onto the cradle and finally the dong into me. (It’s like assembling an Ikea armoire but with more penetration.) Although the instructions provide 11 different positions in which to jump the toy (including doggie style and sitting), I stay true to the art of pogo and start in a standing position. Then I push the “passion grip” up and down like an air pump, to control the speed and intensity. It’s, in a word…uncomfortable? Weird? Gross? Demoralizing? Actually, that’s four words, and here are a few more going through my head: I’m home alone on a Friday night with a pogo stick in my vaginal canal. Somebody kill me.

Not yet completely defeated, I take it to my bedroom to see if I’ll have more luck with the missionary position. I lay down with the PSFM on top of me and start pumping it against the wall. It’s a little more comfortable than the standing position, but it’s still awkward to have a squeaking stick doing boyfriend duty—it’s like getting railed by Olive Oyl with a strap-on—and I’m entirely unstimulated. I give it a couple more pumps before I quit, frustrated and ashamed. But mostly, I’m wondering where the hell in my tiny New York City apartment to store a four-foot sex toy.

*Writer’s name has been changed to protect them from their mother.