Through their design, Imboden wants to convey the sense that these are carefully considered objects--that someone is looking out for our sexual well-being, even if we have been conditioned to have low expectations. "I jokingly say this is an area where you really don't want to disappoint your customers," Behar told me. "And I think this is an industry that has treated its customers really badly." The Form 2 takes a symmetrical, organic form but they avoid emulating anatomy, because while "the penis is very well designed to accomplish what it needs to accomplish, a vibrator doesn't actually need to do those same things," Imboden said. One function it was not designed to accomplish was to stimulate a woman's G spot, but even if it did, mimicking male genitalia treads on psychological territory that Imboden would rather avoid. "While on the one hand that has its own excitement, there becomes a third person," he said, noting that some men feel threatened by an object they perceive to be a substitution for themselves. "People aren't necessarily seeking to have a threesome. Our goal has really been for the focus to be on you and your sensations and the interaction with your partner and not really to pull attention to the product itself. That's an element of why we make the products as quiet as they are. It's also why we make them visually quiet." Representational objects, like taxidermy hanging in a lodge, take up psychic space; figurative forms leave fantasy open to one's own interpretation. "Staying away from body shapes," Imboden explained, "is a way of keeping open provocative possibility, as opposed to narrowing it down to a provocative prescription."

The Form 3, the second vibrator designed with Behar, has a vibrating, ultra-thin soft silicone skin that flexes into the curve of the palm. The Form 4, the two men discussed that afternoon, should "deliver an oomph." Imboden believed they could achieve this by setting two motors to vibrate at different frequencies. Behar pondered an internal structure that would allow the vibrator to bend in various directions, similar to the neck of his Hermann Miller lamp. "Plus it makes it looks exactly like Barbapapa, my childhood hero," he said, referring to the popular French cartoon creature that looks like a pear-shaped blob and can change shape. "For each of these projects we came up with some funny metaphors," he told me. "It keeps you true to the original concept."



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From a study released in 2009 by Indiana University, the first academic, peer-reviewed study to look at vibrator use, we now know that 53 percent of women and nearly half of all men in the United States have used a vibrator. This makes it nearly as common an appliance in American households as the drip coffee maker or toaster oven, The New York Times reported, and about twice as prevalent among American adults as condoms, according to Church & Dwight, maker of Trojan condoms, which funded the Indiana University study. Jimmyjane's own sales reveal that as many men as women, as many 25-year-olds as 50-year olds, and as many Virginians as Californians, per capita, are buying vibrators. At each phase of life, a sex toy might take on new meaning; perhaps, initially, as a way to explore one's own body, but later, within a long-term relationship, as a way to sustain excitement. Today sex therapists are hearing more discussion of what they call "desire discrepancies" -- one partner wanting sex more, or less, or in a different manner, than the other. "Our bread and butter used to be orgasm and erection problems," said Sandor Gardos, a sex therapist, adding that self-help sources and Viagra have arisen to address those issues. "There's more discussion now around the subtle and complex issues of relationship and sexuality."