Introduction

 

What would happen if Erma Bombeck bought a vibrator? In addition to that, what would happen if she were also bipolar and hypersexual? That is the premise of this story about a middle-aged bipolar woman (me) who buys a vibrator for the first time and writes about her experiences with it. My story is not about your mother’s Erma Bombeck; but when it comes to buying vibrators, I was just as baffled as dearly departed Erma might be. I mean, where do you begin? And if you happen to get your hands on one, what do you do with it? What if you accidentally electrocute yourself, and your loved ones find you dead with a vibrator in your hand?

I’ve asked myself the same questions. You might be asking, “Who is Erma Bombeck?” She was one of America’s most popular newspaper columnists and a best-selling author. My Mom loved her. When I was in my twenties and went back home to visit her, my mother would always load me up with her old Reader’s Digests, Redbooks, and Good Housekeeping magazines as I was leaving her house. These magazines usually had an article by Erma, who liked to try out new gadgets for housewives and write about them. Erma would invariably make some hilarious mistake when she tried to use them. One in particular I remember was from the mid-1970s when the slow cooker called “The Crockpot” first came out. Erma had heard her friends rave about how convenient they were. Basically all you had to do, they told her, was chop up a bunch of veggies, put them in the Crockpot, throw in a rump roast, cover everything with a can of beef broth, set the crockpot for eight hours later, and voila: dinner is served—just in time for hubby when he comes home from work.

Well, Erma did all of these steps (except for one) and left the house to go to a matinee with her friends. When she came home expecting the nice aroma of onions and meat slowly cooking, she discovered that the house smelled just the same as it did when she’d left. “What the heck?” she’d wondered and went to look at her darn crockpot, only to find, as Lucy or Ethel might, that she’d forgotten to plug in it!!

Why am I even thinking about Erma Bombeck and vibrators? you might ask. Well, if you’ve read my other two books, “Surviving and Thriving with Bipolar: Tips from a Survivor” and “Reassuring Madness: How to Care for a Loved One with Bipolar Disorder”, you will know that one of the symptoms of bipolar disorder is hypersexuality. I have that symptom. I think about sex a lot. Probably, too much. I am different than “normal people”. It is hard to come up with anything funny to say about having bipolar disorder, but it helps if I can laugh at myself sometimes.

When it came to hypersexuality, I started very early—much to my parents’ embarrassment when they found me masturbating at only four years old. I’m sure it had to be very hard for both of them to deal with their little “wild child”. My mother even went to a doctor to try to figure out what to do with me. He warned her that she’d better be careful or it could screw up my future sex life. Basically, the way my parents handled it was to do nothing and hope for the best. I’m here to attest that they did the right thing and definitely did not screw up that part of my life. I’m glad I never had children, because I’d be just as concerned if one of my daughters or sons started “doing it” so young. I would laugh about it more than my parents did, however.

Even with all this masturbating going on throughout most of my life, I have never used a vibrator. I’ve wondered about them since I was around sixteen and got my hands on a book about groupies that talked about dildos and vibrators. Where I obtained this book, I have no idea. All I remember is that I went through a period where I wanted to have a boyfriend in a band and wondered how I might get one, like the groupies had. I did find my boyfriend in a band, luckily; and have been happily married to him for 40 years. But—I digress.

Back to vibrators. In my early twenties, I read some articles in Cosmopolitan Magazine that warned us Cosmo girls that we musn’t get too dependent on vibrators; or else someday, it might be the only thing that would “get us off”. The article said that you could grow hooked on them like heroin!

That’s the last thing I wanted for my sex life. I didn’t want to end up being a lonely old woman taking her hot water bottle along with a vibrator to her lonely twin bed every night.

Despite these warnings, why did I end up buying a vibrator last weekend? You’ll have to read on to find out.