Is this really what men want?

I know that Christofascist Zombie Brigade men want women who will just shut up and service them, but what about the rest? Not to get all Carrie Bradshaw on you folks, but are silent dolls really what men want?

Davecat keeps a picture of his girlfriend in his wallet. She's pretty, with long black hair, an alluring mole under her left eye, and glossy red lipstick. Her sheer tank top shows off her full breasts and the hoop through her left nipple.

Ask Davecat about Sidore -- pronounced She-doh-ray -- and he'll tell you she's everything that turns him on: beautiful, loyal, a great listener. Si-chan, as he affectionately calls her, is half British, half Japanese, which is nice because he's always had a thing for both British and Japanese culture. Even their clothing style and taste in music is simpatico -- they're both Goths.

Like many born in the sun sign Cancer, Sidore is a homebody, but then, she couldn't leave the comfort of the bed she shares with Davecat even if she wanted to because Sidore is a 100-pound solid silicone Real Doll.

Go ahead. Flinch at the notion of a man having sex with an imitation woman and classify him: lonely loser. Pathological creep. Misogynist. Potential rapist. Sicko. True enough, some men who have sex with Real Dolls are creepy, the kind of guys you wouldn't want to be alone with. But not all. Many are simply lonely -- some tragically so. Others are disfigured or infirm. Some are oddly sweet, like Davecat, for whom a Real Doll is a "teddy bear with benefits." And others proclaim their normalcy and defend their Real Dolls as no different than a 3-D version of a Playboy centerfold.

Many doll lovers -- or "iDollators," as some of them call themselves -- participate in a confusing online subculture where the lines between art and pornography, the ludicrous and the tender, and fantasy and fetishism blur like watercolors. Spend time talking to Real Doll aficionados as I have over the past year, and you come to understand that behind every Real Doll is a man with a reason.

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According to Davecat and many other Real Doll owners, sex with a Real Doll is quite good. "For the most part, it's just like sex with an organic woman ... who doesn't say anything and is brimful of Quaaludes," Davecat writes on Sidore's stylish Web site.

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When referring to their coital habits, Davecat uses terms like "make love" or "have sex" -- and safe sex at that. "I'm one of the rare [doll] users who uses a condom," he confides, adding that while he feels a bit cheated having to use a prophylactic, it would be too much for him to haul Sidore into the shower every time they have sex. Until Davecat can bench-press 200 pounds, he says, Sidore will have to live with sponge baths.

Davecat admits that Si-chan's personality is not without flaws. He thinks she might be manic-depressive because she's "relentlessly perky at times" but also, given the amount of time she spends in bed, prone to narcolepsy and laziness. But generally, she doesn't disappoint. Davecat imagines that she's open-minded, a bit sarcastic, an artistic intellectual who, were she real, would walk around with Sylvia Plath books under her arm and go out drinking and dancing with her girlfriends. In short, Si-chan is a girl who Davecat thinks he could never meet. "If I were to go to a bar and try some pick-up lines, the chances of coming home with someone like her are highly unlikely," he says. "No real woman seems to think I'm good enough for them."

So what's this about, anyway? Is it simply a healthy way of not having to deal with the awfulness of dating, or are men really this simplistic?

Mr. Brilliant and I have been together for 22 years and married for 19, and I don't think it's being presumptuous to say that the fact that we are both good conversationalists has a lot to do with why....well, that and separate bank accounts and no kids...that helps a lot too.

But how widespread is this? Are these just a few thousand freaks, or would most men just as soon trade in their wives and girlfriends for a rubber doll that keeps her mouth shut and accepts a penis in any orifice a guy wants without complaining?