My First Vibrator Experience

Do you remember your first experience with a vibrator?

Perhaps it's yet to happen (I can help with that 😉)

I was gifted my first vibrator for my 18th birthday.

Let me take you back to that time ...

Once my 18th birthday party had died down, I was heckled to open a present I was previously told to "hide" from my parents. But I was a few drinks in (six Vodka Cruisers was pretty wild back in 2005) and I decided to open it in front of friends and family.

I nervously tore through the wrapping and there it was, my first sex toy. Generously gifted in all its glory, by my friend Nick. A fluorescent red vibrator. It measured about 20 cm and had a gooey rubber texture. Hellooo Big Red.

Laughter filled the room as we all passed the vibrator around. My mum giggling as she held the toy. My dad, rolling his eyes with a smirk on his face. My friends joking about me using this “big boy”.

While we had a laugh and it was all in ‘good fun’, this experience also felt embarrassing, shameful, and as if in some way, gifting a vibrator could only ever be a joke. The friend who gave the gift had intended it as a gag and the people I unwrapped the present with only enhanced the humour of the situation.

Almost 20 years on, my good friend Nick will still mention “that big red vibrator” with a cheeky boyish laugh. I always smile back because it was funny. But something else happened when I received Big Red that wasn’t funny.

An awakening.

Weeks passed and I didn’t touch Big Red. The shame from the opening experience stuck with me and turned me off the idea of using the toy. Then one night instead of using my finger, I took Big Red out of its box. I pulled two AAA batteries from my TV remote and turned the black switch at the base. Big Red was alive and began to vibrate.

What came next, was me – obviously. But also, a period of the most intense orgasms and self-exploration I had experienced at that time in my life. This ‘joke of a gift’ paved the way for me to discover my preferences and to understand my body in a whole new way. I felt confident with my sexuality in a way that before Big Red, I never had.

While I was having the best orgasms of my 18 years of life. Something else was also happening and it’s only looking back that I understand what it was.

Embarrassment.

My girlfriends would often tease me about Big Red. Asking only in jest if I had used my toy. I felt totally unable to answer with the truth. As much as I wanted to say “yes, I use it almost every night, and climax over and over again!” I always answered back with sarcastic denial and an “as if” followed by an eye roll.

Why did a perfectly pleasurable gift have to be such a joke?

Why was society making me feel embarrassed about something so normal and healthy?

In 2023, I went live with That’s The Spot– a zesty and vibrant online gifting space that offers recipient centric vibrating hampers that can be gifted in the same way you might have traditionally sent flowers or food.

That’s The Spot offers a dedicated gifting space unlike any other, where gift givers and recipients are empowered to experience pleasure in a positive and shame-free way. Stories like that of my 18th Birthday can thankfully be just an anecdote from the past.

The above is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Ramona Mag. Visit my friends over at Ramona Mag to read the full story and find out what became of Big Red (I know you're curious).