Dave, who prefers to keep his surname to himself, is unhappily employed as an on-line marketer at a Fortune 500 manufacturing company downtown. “There’s no reason why people should congregate in a large organization and work together,” he complains, “because we’d all rather be doing something else.” He, for instance, would rather be painting or sculpting. But he’s in his 30s, with a wife, two kids, and a house on the northwest side, and right now he needs his job.
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One day in 1998, sitting around jawing with a friend, he wondered aloud whether these tentative consumers might be more comfortable buying a dildo if it looked and felt like their own or a partner’s. The men, he figured, would feel more secure knowing their mates were pleasuring themselves with the next best thing. And for the women, well, mightn’t the pain or boredom of separation be eased by a small (or large) piece of one’s partner left behind?
From his art studies he knew a simple negative mold made with alginate–the pink bubblegummy stuff used to make dental casts–could be rendered fairly easily in the privacy of the home. Customers would just have to pour it into some kind of container into which the erect penis could be inserted. And filling the mold with silicone–the most natural-feeling material used in the sex-toy business–would be a snap.
The kit arrives in a plain cardboard box. It includes two bags of powdered alginate, a nine-inch-long and three-inch-wide clear plastic cylinder, 11 ounces of silicone base, and a small jar of the activator that catalyzes the curing process. There are also two jars of coloring, one of light skin tone and one of dark skin tone, which can be mixed to achieve just the right shade.
“There’s a lack of real entrepreneurship in organizations,” he says. “Everybody loves to throw the buzzwords–innovation, entrepreneurship. But they’re not set up to do it. There are really no new things being discussed. And maybe that’s another impetus as to why I wanted to do this. I wanted to prove to myself that you can do something on your own if you want to…with a little help from your employer.”
