I’m not an adventurous person. I haven’t been to a sex shop at home in decades so I don’t keep up with what’s available out there. But on vacation in Tokyo in 2023, I was at a four story sex shop in Akihabara. The top floor is exclusive to men, no women allowed up there. There are all sorts of fuck dolls and the more intense, expensive dude stuff up there.

Now, what I was not mentally prepared for was the glass display case. I don’t remember much about what else was in the case but the thing that caught my eye was what I can only call “The Device.”

The Device was a very inelegant metal machine that in any other context I would have assumed was some kind of kitchenware. But it had a nozzle on the end and it was incredibly obvious what The Device was there to do. This was not a nice machine, it was a tool with one purpose. I imagine it was incredibly good at that, too.

I was tight on cash for that trip and this thing was listed at 45,000 yen, which was about $375 at the time. I joked with my friends that it would be well worth it. It would have been difficult to get home due to size and I imagine heft. I would have taken The Device back to our rental house and let it suck the soul out of my body. I would have died on that trip and would have had no regrets.

I went back to the same store earlier this year and the glass case had other things in it, The Device nowhere to be found. Someone bought it, took it home, and was claimed by its power. The shelves of the top floors of that shop are now sleek looking plastic and silicon jerk machines that look very user friendly; exactly what you’d expect from a sex toy. But they are probably nothing compared to The Device.