I found this sex doll without genitals on Amazon. It certainly has no function as a sex doll – it’s not even pleasantly designed. It’s creepy, poorly made, smells of plastic, and serves no function. Who made this awkward thing, and for what reasons?

 

An inflated doll smiling and smelling, innocently mocks the world of consumption. I ponder and click buy-now. Other items in this room are of similar quality: five dollars trump stress ball, cheap candy-filled coke bottles, colored masking tape flimsily holding a roll of packaging air pillows on the wall, etc. Colgate smiled but melting, the subtle irony.

 

These are the items we leave behind: the quickly purchased, squeezed, talked about, and abandoned. They valued close to nothing but a gag. 

 

In the corner of the room, a screen playing grainy old Coca Cola ads loops to the sound of slow soothing 90’s Pop remixes in foreign languages, “歌 詞 が 何 を 言 っ て い る の か わ か り ま せ ん が 、 か っ こ い い で す ね…”. Cola bottles open and beautiful young people fool around a city fountain in slow motion. Forgotten, cliched music and videos of the fast consumed past are reassembled by basement gurus, to become the groove of modern-day Peter Pans. 

 

I borrowed a heavy-duty outdoor light from my 70-year-old landlady to light the room. The light is warm, powerful, and produces an immense amount of heat — the smell of melting candy and plastic mixes with the hot air to create an ambiguous ambiance. The happy stiffness (or maybe lack of oxygen) induces a self-convinced psychedelic head spin.

 

The wall-mounted writing takes an aggressive approach to the English language. It tells a story of the aliens amongst us and deems all fashion unworthy of existence. Only the Abusive Common is supreme and shall save us all – in vulgar and broken English. Picture an arrogant toddler speaking down to popular culture as that of tossed away trash. Toddlers speak crudely, ascending or descending the seriousness of the context to another dimension of feather and grasp.

 

The numbly happy toys, subsumed by grainy but soothing sounds, plastic, and candy smells, warmth, and hugging. Stepping into the room feels like dropping into a ball pit of cotton candy. Inappropriate, but sweet, soft, and sticky.

 

It is terrible, but isn’t it seductive? In the end, I’m no longer certain to be mocking or embracing consumption. Once I lay on the floor, I become soft and vague, deflate like a sex doll, joyfully smiles.