Holy Orgasm!
Sex-toy company divine interventions is a shepherd in search of a flock.
25 December 2002

On a recent December evening, a young man walked into Castro Gulch, a gay erotica store on Upper Market. Picking his way through the brightly lit displays of adult videos, cock rings, and calendars emblazoned with oiled and rippling pectorals, he greeted the bespectacled sales assistant, hoisted a large sports bag onto the counter, rummaged through the contents, and selected an item. When the guy behind the counter saw what the man – whom I shall call Nigel R. – was pulling out of the bag, he gave a nervous little laugh and said one word: "Sacrilegious."

As the home of storefront live-sex Halloween performances, magnificent transvestites, and guys with no qualms about showing off their ass cheeks in leather chaps, the Castro District has traditionally enjoyed a healthy disregard for the status quo. Yet when Nigel R. whipped out a seven-and-a-half-inch marble-white silicone Jackhammer Jesus dildo in the shape of Christ on the cross, the Castro Gulch sales assistant blanched. It was hardly an auspicious beginning for a sex-toy sales assault.

• • •

When he isn't working his day job as an environmental lawyer for the city of San Francisco, Nigel R. (who prefers to keep a low profile as far as his moonlight pursuits are concerned) is on a mission to convince the world of the merits of sticking a Baby Jesus butt plug or a Virgin Mary dildo in those places where the secular among us tend to find religion.

Nigel R.'s entrance into the world of religious erotica started innocently enough one night circa 1994 when he mistook his roommate's Jesus-shaped night-light – a gift from a Catholic girlfriend – for a dildo (an easy mistake). Realizing he'd found an unusual niche, he spent the next five years raising the $15,000 necessary to buy materials, conceive and develop molds, and build himself a Web site. And in 1999, he founded Divine Interventions (www.divine-interventions.com), a company that makes and sells dildos in the shape of spiritual icons. Since the company's inception, Nigel R. has turned everyone from the Buddha and Moses to Judas and the Devil into silicone pleasure tools.

Some designs have been more successful than others. The first incarnation of the Buddha dildo, for example, wasn't a satisfying shape. "There wasn't enough texture," Nigel R. explains. "Texture is very important. Mary needed a cape, heart, praying hands, and ripples in the back of her cape." When the model for the Baby Jesus butt plug came out, the baby was disconcertingly cute. "It looked like Gary Coleman wrapped in blankets," Nigel R. says. Happily, the Jesus Jackhammer was a perfect incarnation.

Despite the fact that people are drawn to the Divine Interventions site for its novelty value (Nigel R.'s marketing strategy relies almost entirely on word of mouth), curiosity doesn't translate into hard sales very often. The Divine line is featured in online sex-toy purveyor Blowfish's catalog, and recent mentions in Maxim, Playboy, Bizarre, and Buttman may help. However, aside from the pre-Christmas rush, Nigel R.'s site averages 2,500 hits and five sales a week, and in the past two years the entrepreneur has spent $60,000 and made $20,000.

What's the problem? It could be the fact that at $54 for a glow-in-the-dark Diving Nun or $65 for a "well-hung" Judas (available in "tainted white" and "fuck me pink"), heavenly pleasure does not come cheap. But many of the toys on the walls of Good Vibrations are just as pricey. And sex and religion have an enduring relationship: from the orgiastic ravings of Christian mystics like Julian of Norwich and St. John of the Cross to Linda Blair's erotic crucifix-fondling in The Exorcist – not to mention all the Catholic schoolgirls running around at the Folsom Street Fair – matters of the body and the spirit have always been inexorably intertwined. Could it be that Divine Interventions crosses the line for people who didn't even know they had one? Whatever the case, Nigel R. needed some counseling, and an R&D trip to San Francisco's most sexually open-minded neighborhood seemed like a good way to canvass opinion and potentially drum up some business.

• • •

When the sales assistant at Castro Gulch recovered from the initial exposure to Jackhammer Jesus, his only useful comment was that "cheap is better." Nigel R. was indignant. "Silicone is expensive, but it's high quality. It's resilient, retains body heat, and is easy to clean," he said, after leaving the store. "Men don't think about quality; they buy cheap rubbish that breaks."

In Auto Erotica, on 18th Street near Castro, a pudgy sales assistant who described himself as "jaded" snapped defensively when Nigel R. showed him the crucifix. "Christianity is a straight theme," he said, pointing at the dildo and adding, "that thing's not designed to feel good in your butt. Animals are popular though. You should do a horse or a dog."

Around the corner on Castro, erotic emporium Rock Hard displayed a "Make Your Own Dildo" kit in the window for $59.95. This looked promising. Inside, the blond, bearded sales assistant pursed his lips when Nigel R. opened his bag. Out came the Jesus Jackhammer. "That might sell," he said, "because people hate the Catholic Church around here." Then he caught sight of the gold marble-effect Buddha dildo, and his face fell. "There are lots of Buddhists in the Castro who would be offended by this."

Divine Interventions was striking out.

Tonight wasn't the first time Nigel R. had met with rejection at the hands of a local sex emporium. After Good Vibrations found out about Divine Interventions, it asked, on two occasions, to see samples. The first time around, Nigel R. was still very new to the delicate art of dildo-making and had only a couple of products to flash at the Good Vibes aficionados. They told him to come back when he had expanded his line.

The next time, Nigel R. delivered a larger selection, and the company presented samples in its Mission District store. Customer response was not altogether positive, and Joyce Solano, Good Vibrations' toy buyer, didn't think Jesus and his silicon brethren cut it. As you might imagine, Solano has seen some creative uses of silicon in her time, and she thought Nigel R.'s products were unique. "Aesthetically, the dildos were neat," she says. "But we worried about function – the shapes weren't as easy for insertion, and the material was still a bit rough." Good Vibes decided to pass for the time being.

Nigel R. suspects that the store's reluctance may have had more to do with the taboo theme. "[They] said the line would offend their customer base and wouldn't carry it," he says.

Solano maintains that price and functionality were the main criterion for turning Divine Interventions away, though she acknowledges that the religious theme might have antagonized some of Good Vibrations' customers. "Some of [them] might have seen the humor and erotic appeal in these dildos," Solano says, "but we were concerned that there would be a backlash from the religious Latino community in the Mission. It's not just an issue of offending people, but we are conscious of our community, and that has come up."

• • •

Unsurprisingly, Nigel R. has dealt with a range of opinions on whether the Virgin Mary is a suitable subject for a sex aid. The Guest Book section of the Divine Interventions Web site is a battleground where satanists spar with nymphomaniacs and where fundamentalists vent their rage. On Nov. 12, for instance, someone calling him- or herself Vestal Masturbation wrote, "Ohhhhhh ... How the Holy arouses me!!!! Just seeing Jesus all sweaty and nearly naked on that cross ... made me kind of hott." To which an enraged Christian known as Revengetaker replied, "You wanna tell me what's christian and what aint christian? I think you should better look at yourself. I hope that your Jesus Jackhammers will melt inside of your dirty body into hot wax and burn you from inside."

Nigel R. is a responsible and likable guy. If he's not defending the city of San Francisco against bloodsucking power titans or stirring silicone in the warehouse where he operates his dildo business, he's hanging out in Oakland with his girlfriend and five cats and eating vegan. At first he was startled by the hate mail, but he's learned to cope with the likes of Revengetaker. Although he generally doesn't respond to negative comments, he's happy to enter into a debate with anyone who requests it. "I understand the sentiment, 'How can you do this to my God?' " he says. "But if you're going to believe in a God, why believe in an angry God? You need a God with a sense of humor."

Fortunately for Nigel R., not all Christians take the hard-line approach. "We as Christians have to learn to lighten up a little bit!" Alison, of Bedford, Texas, wrote in the guest book Dec. 4. "Thanks for giving all of us cross carriers a little something to laugh about within the symbolism of our faith. I go to church every Sunday, and I have to say, I don't think I'll ever look at a crucifix the same way." It's not for nothing that Divine Interventions products sell particularly well in the Bible-hugging states of Florida and Texas.

• • •

Texas and Florida notwithstanding, Divine Interventions might never be more than a niche product, a titillating birthday gift from one good-humored fetishist to another. For one thing, Nigel R.'s day job doesn't leave him the time and energy to give Divine Interventions the attention it needs and deserves. If he could afford to hire someone to take care of the dildos, he would. But so far that's not an option. There are also design questions to consider. Though Blowfish attests to the high quality of the products, other sexperts have taken issue with the shape and texture of the dildos, and it seems Nigel R.'s line may be falling between the cracks. He remains certain that the Divine Interventions target audience exists, but where is it?

Images of devastation caused by religious conflict and the misdemeanors of Catholic priests flash daily before our eyes. Against such a background, it's actually amazing to see how negative people's reactions to a harmless bit of savior-shaped silicon can be. If there's room in our culture – or at least in San Francisco – for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, surely there's a market for dildos in the shape of the Grim Reaper or the Mother of God. And perhaps if people could buy a Baby Jesus butt plug over the counter at Walgreens along with a box of aspirin and a pack of fruit-flavored condoms, there wouldn't be so much unhappiness in the world.

Meanwhile, back in the Castro, Nigel R. was running out of stores to visit. It was well past 10 o'clock, and the buyers had all gone home. John Waters winked from the window of A Different Light. A silver new-edition Volkswagen Beetle with personalized plates that said "ZPUNKY" waited patiently for its owner outside a bar. The evening's business might be over, but Nigel R. wasn't going to give up. "Next time we'll try Pottery Barn," he said, picking up the sports bag and heading toward the Mission.

Copyright 2002 The San Francisco Bay Guardian

Holy Orgasm! selected by the UTNE Reader as one of the best articles of 2002.