Music

I Wore a Music-Activated Vibrator to the Club Instead of Doing Drugs

There really isn’t a “bounce back” after you go crazy on drugs. It’s more like a slow crawl over glass shards from the primordial soup of your brain into the high-contrast world outside. Once you’re sober, heaving in the blazing sun of crippling regret, it’s on you to evolve out of knuckle-dragging addiction and become mentally bipedal with the aid of therapies, intentional living, and the realization that life is a magical mystery forever.

Suddenly, everything becomes both a trigger and a sign. From the sound of an empty Chateau Diana bottle rolling around in the wind to a girl crying behind you on some commuter train, you’re due to receive a backlogged cache of data from the universe. Returning to the life you left behind is impossible. Repressing emotional damage with 36-hour parties, anxious hugs, and blistering gossip just doesn’t work. Since you’re ostracized from the nightlife scene anyway for doing psycho shit you don’t remember while you were fucked up, you opt to spend your time in church basements with other sober people, or alone, sobbing, practicing breathing exercises, eating Twix and watching Sailor Moon.

Videos by VICE

Partying With Depression Turned My Life Upside Down

Eventually, your internal dialogue with the Devil disappears and so does that victim complex mirage world you’d been living in for the last seven or so years. Gone, too, are the delusions and hours-long panic attacks. Left with human size case of the sads, you push through each day like a warrior of the mundane, sporadically battling the urge to get high af and have weird experiences.

OhMiBod’s Club Vibe 3.OH. Photo via OhMiBod.

Then, one day, your editor-friend offers you to test a new wireless vibrator called Club Vibe 3.OH that pulses according to live sound and is specifically made for use in the club. Your every catatonic neural pathway wakes the fuck up and urges you to try it out. That’s how I wound up reactivating PTSD HQ—Facebook—and clicking through to pack my weekend with events for the first time in almost a year. I unearthed a punk show, a lecture and a queer DJ afterparty. Going out the entire weekend after having a nervous breakdown was fucking scary, but armed with my noise sensitive sex toy and bottles of White Label Yerba Mate Soda, I figured being really caffeinated and wearing a vibrator would make the experience surreal enough to handle.

I’ve always felt like an outsider—too ADHD, not straight enough. My Club Vibe, the as yet inert wireless vibrator in my bag, was a perfect example of all the stupid marketing I’m supposed to fall prey to. A tan, toned woman adorned its box appearing mid orgasm, her ample rack glistening with cis hetero desirability. This same hottie appears on the toy’s website, except with a broseph pointing the wireless controller at her like she’s a sex TV girl robot there for him to watch, unaware that genderless aliens have genitals too.

A promotional image for the Club Vibe. Photo via OhMiBod.

Weird outsider feelings made punk my first love. So on a night last weekend, I followed a girl loaded down with 40’s through a labyrinth of practice spaces toward a distantly skronking punk venue to see a take-no-prisoners girl punk band. Once inside the venue, I ducked into a dark corner and slipped the vibrator through the slit in my boy underwear. The toy comes with a free black lacy thong, but I didn’t want my experience mediated by an all-night wedgie.

I fumbled with the egg-shaped controller and tried out settings: Tease Mode lets you (or whoever is in, ugh, control) “feel the vibe” for however long the button is pressed. Groove Mode lets you make your own vibe pattern, and Club Mode responds to live sound. I clicked into Club Mode and screamed. A band had begun and the vibrator’s mic couldn’t discern any singular noise, so it revved furiously. With this whirring thing between my thighs, I couldn’t really behave normally, but thankfully nobody seemed to notice or care. The small venue was filled with drunk people screaming about destroying 8-Chan and effects pedals. I didn’t really know anyone, so was left alone to try and buzz into an orgasm through the remainder of the show. The intensity of the vibe was too great, and I left feeling numb in my nether region. Lols rang in my brain hole, ready for round two.

If I’m going to be dominated by evil corporatist overlords, I’m going to do it sober and cumming everywhere.

Next day, I headed to a lecture held in a large former factory-turned-art-space that was holding an all-day music event. I decided to wear my little friend to see if it would respond to the sound of talking. After a totally fruitful convo with my vag during the bike ride over, I arrived at the function very ready to hear the lecture. Once I sat down, it was weird pretending the silent phone I had in my hand was generating the loud buzz sounds reverberating off the metal chair I was sitting on, but people will believe anything.

One Night in Kit Kat, Berlin’s Most Notorious Techno Sex Club

After failing to cum at a human rights lecture, I set off to my favorite kind of trigger—the club—and was greeted immediately by the propulsive cuntiness of Vitalic’s “You Prefer Cocaine,” an ironic tune set against my sober entrance into the smoky queer venue packed with people slipping on their drinks and making out.

I set into a Quaker-like involuntary dancing fit, spurred on by the vibrator that seemed to work perfectly with the electroclash and ghettotech served up by the DJ. A bizarre freedom seeped into my consciousness. I was totally sober, totally sane, half orgasming, and OK with seeing several people I knew hated me. I sucked on my Blow Pop and the viscosity of time shifted. Feeling held by the moment in a comforting orgasmic gel, I spun round the room and smiled. If I’m gonna live in this feudal anime future dominated by evil corporatist overlords, subsumed by debt and badgered by Christian crusaders, I’m gonna do it sober and cumming everywhere.

Lindsey Leonard is a force of nature. Follow her on Twitter.