Sex with Ms. Roboto

As corporate-fueled Singles Awareness Day (also known as Valentine’s Day) looms on the horizon, please don’t try to kill yourself and take solace in the advances in technology.

In the past, if you’ve been single on this wretched day, there’s been a routine to cope with all the smiling couples. Wake up, watch some television – which invariably will air some middle-aged women’s cutesy banter about Internet dating successes – stuff your face with chocolate and other comfort food, go to the bars, get wasted and go home with another lonely person. That’s all going to change now.

Last month at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, computer scientist and former Bell Labs engineer Douglas Hines unveiled the holy grail of blowup dolls, a $7000 talking sex robot. Her name is Roxxxy, and she will rock your world.

Standing 5 feet 7 inches and weighing in at 120 pounds, she’s a petite girl. Roxxxy is battery powered and literally speaks English. Hines spent three years developing the remarkable artificial intelligence that allows her to converse. She has five different personality settings too, ranging from Frigid Farrah to Wild Wendy. Yet, first and foremost, she is a sex doll and will spread her legs for anyone.

Think of Gigolo Joe from Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” to imagine what her skin looks and feels like. Made of silicone, her skin is soft to the touch. Also, she reacts to stimulation – physical or spoken. Having sensors in her genital area allows her to “feel.” Impressively, she even simulates orgasms by moaning and shuddering.

Roxxxy is a godsend for sex-starved singles. Her ability to speak demonstrates men’s sensitivity, flying in the face of the pernicious stereotype that guys hate to talk or spoon after sex. The sheer number of pre-orders, 4,000, proves that guys can be deep and that we think with the head on our shoulders, not the head in our pants.

Although the idea of a robotic girlfriend might sound creepy or perverted to some, it simply allows people to satisfy themselves. It deserves no more shame than pornography or K-Y jelly.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a hierarchy of needs, which contends that different levels of needs must be met before a person can reach self-actualization. Our most basic needs are our physiological compulsions, which include eating, sleeping, breathing, excreting and having sex.

Sex defines our biological imperative. After all, we are all slaves to our bodies; we might as well embrace it. Ideally of course, you would have real, human friends and sex partners simply because no computer or robot can match the magnificence of the human mind, the most important and powerful sex organ. Of course, if you plan on having a child, a human partner would also be necessary.

Until then, boys, start pinching those pennies and save up for Roxxxy. Girls, I’m sorry, but Hines has nothing in the workshop for you. You’ll have to make do with a tub of rocky road ice cream.