I am at Forever 21 trying to pick out a new crop top, but I am having a hard time deciding which one I like, because I have a vibrator down my pants, and it is distracting. It is shaking around down there like a recently-disturbed wasps's nest, keeping my lady business in time to the Iggy Azalea song playing over the store's PA system. I make a lot of questionable decisions — it's kind of my "thing" — but this time, I have truly outdone myself. I have decided to walk around with the LELO Siri 2 music vibrator in my pants, and now I must live with that decision. I put the crop top back. It's not a great cut for me. My pants buzz in agreement.
Lelo Siri 2 Vibrator, $143, Amazon
A mere hour earlier, I was a normal human being who only broke the social contract in fun, understandable ways, like jay-walking or lying about how many slices of pizza I just ate (five). This was all before I came into possession of the LELO Siri 2, a vibrator that offers a special function: a setting that makes it vibrate in time with ambient noises; allowing the device to pulse in time with the music you're listening to, the weird noises your radiator makes, or the sound of your neighbors' nightly argument about how they'll never get out of credit card debt if you keep spending money like THIS, BOBBY. You know — all the normal ways you get off.
This vibrator also does all the normal things a vibrator does — jiggle your parts pleasurably, make you forget about the inevitability of death for a few minutes, etc — but the ambient noise function was certainly the Siri 2's big selling point.
I could see the appeal of maybe feeling more closely connected to music you liked by masturbating in time with it, and gave it the ol' college/vaginal try with my favorite album ( Raw Power by the Stooges, for those of you who want to put me on your holiday shopping lists). The sound activation didn't work in perfect sync — sometimes it buzzed a few seconds after a beat, sometimes it seemed to be responding to some invisible rhythm that I couldn't detect. Unless you jam the clam exclusively while listening to house music, it seemed like it would be difficult to have an orgasm using this setting (for the record, I tried the other, more traditional settings, and trust me, you can definitely have an orgasm for most of them).
For once in my life, I was the creepiest person walking down the block in New York. If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, right?
I couldn't help but feel like the sound-activated setting had so much more potential. After all, I live in one of the noisiest places in America — New York City, where you're never very far from a garbage truck, a couple loudly having a drunk break-up, or a person loudly singing along to the Wicked soundtrack. Why shouldn't I be able to put this noise that had vexed me for so many years to work for my perverse sexual gratification? And that's how I ended up dropping a sound-activated vibrator down my pants and walking around New York City.
As I walked down the street, the vibrator seemed to be going off at random — with the time delay noted above, it didn't really put me in sync with the urban soundscape around me, but rather left me trying to make sure no one could tell that I had a marital aid shoved between my labia. For once in my life, I was the creepiest person walking down the block in New York. If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere, right?
In the first few moments, the stimulation felt exciting, but as I walked, I started to just feel a bit numb. I tried to subtly poke it to move it into a different position, which probably looked like I was trying to wrangle an enormous pad that had gone hopelessly rogue in my nethers. The randomness of the vibrating patterns did make it more stimulating than just steady buzzing, but surprisingly, it is hard to really relax into a sensual groove while also jay-walking and keeping an eye out for those guys who try to sell you tickets to comedy clubs.
The sound-activated feature was probably designed to be used at a club, where buzzing your pants to the beat of the music while you drunk-make out with a Finnish tourist is transcendent. The closest I ever get to going to a club is, well, singing Radiohead songs into a sound-activated vibrator in my house, so I decided to test the vibrator out at the loudest place I knew: Forever 21.
The second I set foot into Forever 21 and was hit with whatever bass-heavy pop hit was playing, the vibrator suddenly made much more sense. It throbbed in a very pleasant manner in time with the music, in a way it hadn't with my own rock picks. Is this why the kids love this music? Is it because they're all walking around all day with sound-activated vibrators shoved down their pantaloons, too?
Having my vulva massaged while I looked at rompers was indeed a great way to spend an afternoon. But I figured I would not be doing my journalistic due diligence if I did not converse with a stranger while vibrating my parts, and so I bought a shirt. I did not devolve into helpless and comical moans when I opened my mouth to talk to the cashier, though I did find it a little hard to concentrate, so I doubled down on looking serious. It was not unlike trying to have a conversation with your parents while trying to pretend that you're not drunk.
As I waited for the train to take me home, I farted. The vibrator shook. Both my life and human existence hit a low point.
Still, walking around the store, I did find the vibrations pleasant. I still couldn't imagine feeling significantly turned on from this thing — I would compare my level of arousal to that I feel when I look at that GIF of Jared Leto's penis flopping around in his jorts — but it felt kind of nice to just walk around, doing my thing, feeling lightly sexually stimulated, but not in an invasive way. I wondered if this was what having a penis was like.
However, as I left Forever 21, I realized that there isn't an easy way to turn the vibrator off through your clothing. Rather than having a typical on-off button, you have to press down firmly on multiple buttons, and I soon realized that I was not going to be able to effectively achieve this in public without ending up on one of the government's less savory watch lists. And so, the thrill of being randomly, lightly horny gone, I realized that I was going to have to wait until I got home to turn off my vibrator.
As I waited for the train to take me home, I farted. The vibrator shook. Both my life and human existence hit a low point. I prayed to whatever spiritual figure protects lady perverts to not have to make small talk with my landlord on the way into my building, went in to my apartment, and banished the vibrator to a very quiet drawer.
Still, I do admit that it felt kinda nice to walk around feeling faintly, randomly horny. As women, we're often taught to understand our sexuality in terms of other people — especially, say, when you're partnered, insanely busy, and can barely find the energy to have sex with your special love bunny, let alone spend hours masturbating the way you did as a horny teen. Though at one point I had considered my sexuality one of my most important and vibrant qualities, recently, it had felt more like my ability to get grout stains out of the shower — a skill that I used to check yet another item off my seemingly endless to-do list.
The vibrator in my pants reminded me of something I would have wished for in my dream journal when I was 14, back when my horniness was free-floating and constant. The LELO Siri 2 is probably not created to wear around in your pants while you interface with the general public and/ or buy crop tops. It is designed to be a vibrator that you use mostly in the privacy of your own home, and in that capacity, it was excellent. But if you feel compelled to use it the other way — well, I can think of worse things to put down your pants.
Images: LELO, Giphy (4)
