Bad Vibes

T is the moment I knew that the whole vibrator thing had gone too far: It was about a year ago, and I’d ordered a replacement rabbit, the model I’d fallen for around 2007, amid the vibrator renaissance brought about by Sex and the City .

An early episode of that zeitgeist show features the prudish Charlotte, having reluctantly bought a “Rabbit Pearl” on the advice of her friend Miranda, becoming so addicted to her new toy that she stops leaving her apartment, thus turning the rabbit into a cultural icon for female pleasure.

More than a quarter century had passed since that innocent moment, and the rabbit—once a battery-operated device with a clunky rotating shaft and dainty bunny ears that shivered with astonishing proficiency—had turned sleek and space-age.

The rabbits I ordered had USB chargers and a variety of speeds.

They had safety locks and silencers, like guns.

I didn’t want all these added features—22 speeds was about 20 too many—but I could never remember the name of the most recent one I’d ordered, so I had to Google best rabbit vibrators , a quest that once upon a time had taken me to niche women’s websites but now took me to The New York Times ’ Wirecutter.

It’s not that the newer rabbit models don’t work; it’s that they do too much.

I mean, I wouldn’t buy a spatula that also dusted the floor.

My latest model was so fancy and complicated that it took me a while to figure out how to switch it on, but the real problem was that, once it was on, I could not figure out how to turn the thing off.

The day I received it, I was about to record a podcast, a detail that sounds irrelevant until you realize what I was up against: I could not have a vibrator droning on in the background of an hour-long audio conversation.

I spent minutes that felt like hours desperately pushing three buttons in alternating sequences only to be thwarted—the rabbit would not turn off.

It thumped, it jittered, it whirred round and round.

I determined that the only way to shut the damn thing up would be to run down its battery.

Racing to beat the clock before the podcast began, I bolted to my front door to place the infernal device outside, where its insistent whirring wouldn’t be picked up by the mic.