Prostitution may be the "world's oldest profession," but, if the historical record is accurate, the sex toy industry certainly wasn't far behind. Literary fragments from the third century B.C. show that traders based in the ancient Greek city of Miletus on the Turkish coast were peddling olisbos-dildos fashioned from stone or wood-throughout the Mediterranean as a form of sexual solace for lonely ladies. By the time of the Renaissance, the olisbo had morphed into the diletto (Italian for "delight"). Stone models had given way to more ornate versions in leather or polished wood, but it was still a crude art form-comfort dictated that copious amounts of olive oil be used for lubrication.

Surprisingly, the prudish Victorians proved to be real innovators in the realm of sexual pleasure. Embracing the spirit of progress that characterized the dawn of the industrial age, they used new technologies to create both the modern version of the dildo and its busier cousin, the vibrator. A breakthrough noted for its "life-like appearance" and "comfort," the first molded rubber dildo made its appearance around the mid-nineteenth century. When electricity became available in the 1870s, vibrators reached the market as a medical tool sold to physicians as a means of providing massage therapy capable of curing "hysteria" in women patients. Based on a reinterpretation of the Greek word for a suffering uterus, the Victorian medical definition of hysteria was a catchall that covered everything from irritability, fantasy, and anxiety to excessive vaginal lubrication. With diagnosis and vibrator in hand, doctors would treat the condition by massaging the vaginal lips of a patient until relief was achieved in the form of a climactic "paroxysm."

By the early twentieth century, the vibrator had moved out of the medical profession and onto the pages of popular magazines in the form of advertisements for the self-treatment of hysteria at home. The 1918 Sears Roebuck catalog touted one vibrator as an "aid every woman appreciates" and an issue of Hearst's magazine urged men to buy the devices for their wives as Christmas presents to keep them "young and pretty." Today, thanks to a free market and the concept of sex as a popular form of entertainment available through any number of "adult" venues, the sex toy business boasts a wide array of choices in design and materials. A quick tour of the sex shops in any average-size American city will turn up everything from an old-fashioned vibrator in a rainbow of color options to a multipronged device with more horsepower than a lawn mower.

But it's not the greater range of products that's driving the business to new heights; it's the absence of shame that lies in the shadow of discretion that the Internet provides. Compared to the prospect of going to a local porn shop and being seen and/or embarrassed, the Web provides an anonymous place to peruse and purchase the kind of items most people won't tell you they possess. That's why, even in a down economy, the online sex industry is posting annual sales in the billions.

Just as the Internet has enabled the sex trade to attract a new kind of customer, it's also provided a fertile ground for a different kind of entrepreneur. These days, anyone with a little ambition and a new angle on an old fetish can reserve a domain name and get into the game. "Nigel" (not his real name) is a classic example of this new breed of sextrepreuners. Nigel's not a pervert or a sleazeball, just a young environmental attorney with the dream of leaving his day job to start his own law firm in order to sue energy companies over pollution issues. He had developed the basis for a lawsuit against several large oil companies, but hadn't been able to generate the funding through independent grants and he needed a war chest to get the litigation going.

With the dot.com era at its peak in the late nineties, Nigel watched a friend raise enough capital to start his own restaurant by launching a porn site and raking in a small fortune in a few months. "It seemed as if it was a time when all one had to do was cobble up a Web site, stick your hand out the window, and grab a few handfuls of the Internet dollars floating by," he says. "I thought I'd just throw up a site, sell a few thousand dildos, and be on my way." Environmental altruism aside, Nigel's approach to the business produced a singular line of sexual aids that definitely have the edge over a crowded field of competitors when it comes to delivering the offbeat: Divine-Interventions.com offers high quality silicone sex toys bearing the likenesses of a host of religious icons. It's a unique niche that has attracted everyone from religious fetishists to legions of lapsed Catholics looking to avenge their repressed childhoods, but the original inspiration had little to do with either religion or sex. "It was all about having a few laughs and making money," Nigel says. "But it's turned out to be a little more involved than that."

Tom Byrnes: I'm familiar with Christianity and sex toys, but never thought about putting the two together. Where did the idea come from?

Nigel: An old roommate's Baby Jesus flashlight. I took one look and thought it was a dildo. The juxtaposition of the two images was hilarious. Once I stopped laughing I thought I'd produce a few. It's not like there was a lot of competition in that area, so I thought I'd make a little money. The original concept wound up becoming the model that everyone always talks about--the Baby Jesus Buttplug.

TB: How did you produce the first few models?

N: I started off in my apartment working on my kitchen table. I had a friend sculpt some pieces that we molded and then I began experimenting with different materials. I tried a stovetop solution, but that caught on fire. Then I tried heat-molding them, but wound up destroying a microwave in the process. I finally came to silicone, which is the best material for these things but very expensive-it's about four thousand dollars a barrel. When it comes to materials, silicone is the cashmere of the sex toy business. The big advantages are that it's nonporous, has great texture, can be molded in stunning detail, is hypoallergenic, and retains body heat-just put it in warm water and it'll keep your feet toasty on a cold night.

TB: What happened when you launched the site?

N: It was an absolute disaster. It was just like that dot-com commercial where all of the twenty-somethings are huddled around a monitor celebrating their company's first online sale. Then the tracker that counts orders starts whizzing wildly and they're overwhelmed because they have no inventory to meet the demand. One look at their faces and you know it went from a brilliant success to a nightmare in a matter of seconds. That's what happened to me. The site was up for three days and then I shut it down because it got more than twenty-thousand hits. I was totally unprepared for the response. I had my dining room table covered in dildos and butt plugs for inventory and that was it, not nearly enough to meet the demand. I also didn't have the ability to crank up production or even ship them off quickly.

TB: You misjudged the market?

N: What can I say-I went to law school, not business school.

TB: But you had found a niche that needed to be filled.

N: I thought so. That's why I retooled my approach. I realized right away that I couldn't possibly make that many dildos myself, so I contacted a women's crafts group-you know, these people who enjoy working with their hands making all sorts of things-and enlisted them. We'd meet in my apartment and have brainstorming sessions about model names, I'd hire a moldmaker to create a mold, and then we'd get to work. It was great fun. I wanted to build up a significant backlog of product to meet the orders and we were making them all in my dining room in this sort of assembly line. I have five cats and they loved to play with everything, so it was a bit tricky at times. We finally went back online on January 17, 2001-a day we have come to celebrate as Wank Wednesday in honor of our efforts-and things have been going pretty smoothly ever since.

TB: How would you describe the average Divine-Interventions customer?

N: Lapsed Catholics are my biggest market and, for some reason I don't understand, Texas is the biggest source of customers. The orders from Texas outnumber all the others four to one. The people who buy from me are split evenly between men and women and include everyone from religious fetishists to Wall Street types. Really, you'd be amazed at who buys my products. I never took religion particularly seriously, I knew nothing about fetishism or dispossessed Catholics, but I've been thanked countless times for providing this outlet. All you have to do is look at the haiku page on the site to see how people feel.

TB: The haiku page?

N: That started as a marketing idea from a friend. We give away a free dildo every month for the best haiku and I'm always amazed at the responses it generates- very funny stuff, and our mailing list is absolutely huge.

TB: Given the nature of your product, it can't be all a chorus of hosannas.

N: This may sound naïve, but I've never understood why people would get upset about my stuff. I'm not a Catholic. I'm a Brit who grew up in the Church of England and never had any sort of strict religious upbringing that would leave me with a religious ax to grind. I've always thought this stuff was funny and my friends think it's hilarious. If you think about it, there are so many real things to get upset about: war, AIDS, famine, poverty-you name it. How could anyone get upset over a silly sex toy? The way I see it, God's inside each of us or in nature. You don't need to go to church to worship a crucifix. That always seemed so tacky to me. Then again, shoving the Lord up your butt or vagina isn't really painful at all. In fact, some people find that it can be quite pleasurable.

TB: What about hate mail?

N: That seems to come and go in waves, but if I've gotten any consistent backlash it's been from the Republicans. They're a group that seems to be quite short on humor. I received a letter from a lawyer who said he represented the pope. Well, I'm a lawyer too, and I know that you can't copyright Jesus. He's been dead for quite some time and the copyright laws are limited to 125 years when it comes to the likeness of a personage. Then it becomes part of the public domain. I ignored him and never heard another word.

TB: You come up with the model names by committee, but which ones are your best sellers?

N: My biggest seller by far is the Jackhammer Jesus model, he retails for sixty dollars, followed by the Baby Jesus Butt Plug, which goes for thirty dollars. I don't know why, but no one bought the Judas or Moses models. They were well designed and had great copy promoting them, but they just didn't move. I thought the copy on the Judas-"If he fucked the Son of God, just imagine what he can do for you!"-was quite catchy, but perhaps it wasn't inspirational enough.

TB: I notice that you've branched out a bit beyond the domain of the church and have begun offering a Buddha's Delight model. Given the timeliness of all things Islamic, I'm surprised not to see a Muhammad version in your lineup. I'd think it would be a big seller during Ramadan?

N: I've thought of that, but passed. Life's tough enough and I don't need a bloody fatwa. I mean, look at that poor fellow Rushdie-wrote a book that not all that many people read and he wound up with a death sentence. Just imagine what would happen if I started offering a Prophet that people could shove up their butts?

TB: How about political personalities? In light of his background as a Pentecostal preacher's son, an Ashcroft model might give "snake handling" a whole new meaning.

N: Considered that as well, but passed again. I did think quite a bit about sending a shipment to the White House as a political contribution, but I'm afraid the retribution factor would probably outweigh everything else.

TB: Perhaps you could send some to that rehabilitation clinic in Florida? Noelle Bush seems to be a frustrated young woman with a lot of time on her hands these days.

N: There's an idea! The poor girl-and to think her father didn't even attend her arraignment, the bastard. What kind of family values do those Bush people have?

TB: What about your family? Do your parents know what you're doing?

N: Oh yes, they're very supportive. They've always been wonderful in that way. I'm sure they're quite quick to tell people that their son's a lawyer in the States rather than play up my other interests, but the family knows all about it. In fact, my grandma has a gold Buddha's Delight I made for her-it's my biggest model-right on her mantelpiece in the living room.

TB: Does she know what it is?

N: Of course. She may be eighty-nine, but she's got a memory!

TB: What about the other people in your life? How do you tell new acquaintances what you do?

N: Well, I don't mention it at work, but all of my friends know about what I'm doing. Outside of the office, I think the only place I was really reluctant to bring it up was with women I'd just begun dating back when I was starting out. I'm in a relationship right now and quite happy, but when I was single I'd usually try to wait until around the third date or so because one never knows what kind of reaction you'll get. But if you came over my house, it's rather hard to escape the truth when there are dildos everywhere you look. Plus being in this kind of business does give you certain notoriety.

TB: How so?

N: When you make and sell sex toys, you suddenly have an entrée into this strange parallel universe of porn that exists in America. It's world that's everywhere, but certain elements of it are not open to everyone. There are these parties, the kind of events that most men fantasize about going to, but they're really only accessible to people in the trade, and suddenly you find yourself at them wondering, How did I get here? I mean you're making dildos in your kitchen one day and the next thing you know you're at a sex party or getting covered in magazines. So you're sort of famous, but not really. For instance, Details ran a picture of me in a priest outfit holding a dildo with some silly caption. Because of the lead times with a magazine like that I had completely forgotten about it. Then a girl I was dating showed it to me. She was absolutely shocked, just horrified, and that was the end of the relationship. She was a Catholic, but I'm not sure that was the real problem. In retrospect, the relationship wouldn't have gone anywhere, so it was really a blessing in disguise.

TB: What was that like-to be thrust into the sex trade?

N: I grew up conservatively, in what most people would consider a very normal background, so being immersed into the commercial world of sex has been strange. As a single man it was quite alluring and tempting at first. I threw a few parties to get the site rolling and became somewhat infamous. Really, telling people, "I'm a lawyer who makes dildos for a living" was a huge pickup line back when I was single. Absolutely massive. You know, this casual "law by day, dildos by night" line had the women lining up. I got a lot of mileage out of it, but the appeal of all that only lasts so long.

TB: Prior to all this, had you been a sex toy enthusiast in your own life?

N: Oh, I suppose I had the odd experience or two back in my twenties like anyone, really, but nothing more. When it comes to these things, I tend to think of myself as more of a businessman with a keen sense of the absurd rather than an enthusiast.

TB: Tell me about the business part of the sex industry.

N: I'm online and sell direct, so I really don't deal with the seamier side of the business. But I do sell to a few sex stores and the buyers are quite nice. Regular folks, really. That may have to do with the fact that I'm selling a higher-end product than you typically find in a porn shop, but there is a side of the business that I wasn't ready for at all. I can remember going to a trade show and having a woman drop her pants and stuff a Jackhammer Jesus right up inside herself in front of me. It was really astonishing to see. Nothing could have prepared me for it.

TB: Was that your most embarrassing moment?

N: Hardly. That would have been when I was flying to L.A. and I had ten dildos in my carry-on. I was going for the weekend to see friends and didn't need to take much in the way of clothes, but I was going to drop off some product at a shop down there so I just tossed them in my bag. I didn't even think of it until I reached airport security. There was a small woman running the X-ray machine and the look on her face was pitiful-she didn't know what to do. She kept looking at the X-ray screen and then at me, but my expression never changed. Poor girl, she was very uncomfortable. As luck would have it, I got searched but I didn't say anything to the security guard. He's absentmindedly going through the bag with his hands and I'm watching him as he starts grasping these things. He pulls out a Buddha model and the look of shock on his face was truly something to behold. I just smiled. He didn't say anything. Not a word. He just put it back in my bag, zipped it up, and said, "Have a good flight, sir."

TB: You're a long way from suing oil companies. How do you feel about that?

N: I find that my thoughts frequently drift back to where I was ten years ago and wonder how I got here. I can't help thinking. I'm a normal guy-this kind of thing doesn't happen to me. But it has. Now all of my buddies want to go to sex parties with me, but I'm too tired.

TB: Too tired for a sex party?

N: Look, I practice law all day, make a batch of dildos after work on some nights or tinker with the site on others. That's enough. I'm just like everyone else who works two jobs. All I want to do is go home, have some dinner with my girlfriend, watch a video, and go to sleep.

TB: What about the Almighty? How do you think he regards what you're doing?

N: There's no doubt that these products sit at the nexus of two of the greatest forces in human history-sex and religion. If there is a God, then he certainly must have a sense of humor. I'd like to think we're the proof of that.

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