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Real Dolls: Love in the Age of Silicone Meghan Laslocky -- 10/17/2005  [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ][ 6 ]When he reflects upon life before Si-chan, Davecat draws a blank. “I don’t remember being alone in bed. I know it existed, but I can’t remember.” Genesis in San Marcos Today is “pour-day” at the Real Doll factory, a non-descript building in a light industrial area north of San Diego. The floors are slick with silicone, and about a dozen headless bodies hang from a rack, like Rockettes at a slaughterhouse, “curing” with their legs spread-eagled to prevent creasing in the top inner thigh. There are body parts everywhere -- a torso here, breasts there, and penises of various sizes on a table for the rare male Real Doll. Green master molds hang high on the wall, and about ten silicone spheres with nipples on them rest on another work table. (These are the “booby balls” that Abyss sells on the RealDoll web site as paperweights or stress relievers.) One unpainted male Real Doll (“Charlie”) hangs from the rafters. He’s slightly deformed – a bit of his frame – a “blem” – peeks through his abs, and he resembles actor Gary Sinise. (Only six male Real Dolls have been ordered since Charlie was first developed in 2002. A Charlie doll comes with a removable penis of optional length of 6.75-, 9-, or 11-inches.) Ron, a former construction worker, arranges the doll skeletons, which are made of plastic tubing and steel joints, in the back side of molds. He’s tinkering with the joints to get them in just the right place in the snow-angel shaped molds and positioning new German-engineered knuckles – click click – that will make fragile doll fingers a thing of the past. Meanwhile, another worker, Joey, has poured the breasts into a mold. “The breasts, it’s kind of a messy job to make them, it gets everywhere, as you can see,” Joey says. Maureen, a leggy blonde, scrapes dried silicone from out of large orange buckets, prepping them for a new batch of flesh. Soon inserts will be positioned in the torsos to create anal and vaginal cavities. The two halves of the bodies will be clamped together like old-fashioned chocolate Easter Bunny molds, and silicone will be poured in. While the silicone sets in the molds for a few days, heads will be poured with inserts to create a mouth canal. Once the heads are dry, they will be peeled from their molds and fitted, like skin, over a fiberglass underskull. Then the heads and bodies will be fused, and labia and vaginal canals, constructed out of softer silicone than the rest of the body, will be inserted. All of the dolls are born of studio Eves – prototype bodies and heads that McMullen takes months to sculpt in plasticine clay. His studio craftsmen then replicate the bodies and assemble them to order. Maureen and Joey prefer making the final touches, which come later, to today’s pouring process. They like inserting the eyes; painting the makeup, toenails, life-like skin details such as veins and genital flush; and gluing on the pubic hair, if it’s ordered (although the “shaved” style is most popular). A cartoon hangs on one wall depicting a row of headless bodies, bubbles emanating from their necks saying, “This is the part we really like, when Joey paints us!” end of page 7 [ 7 ] read more ... [ 8 ][ 9 ][ 10 ][ 11 ][ 12 ][ 13 ][ 14 ][ 15 ][ 16 ][ 17 ][ 18 ][ 19 ][ 20 ][ 21 ][ 22 ][ 23 ] |
