Imagine driving through town and seeing the above contraption placed in front of your neighbor’s garage. What in the hell is it? Who made it? And more: What are they doing with it? Fret not. Author and photographer Timothy Archibald explains it all to you in his fascinating book Sex Machines.

OK, so chances are you wouldn’t see that dildo device outside someone’s abode. But Archibald does take us inside the homes of dozens of sex machine builders and users and details their stories and dreams — their histories and schemes.

As writer Jerry Stahl observed about the book: “If Popular Mechanics had done an Alfred Kinsey issue, it might have looked like this.”

Yes, the garage-built erotic devices are astounding — but it’s the personal stories that fascinated us most.

There’s the laid-off tech guy who turned a thrift store pasta maker into a high-powered sexual appliance. And launched a new career for himself in the process. The orders for the device just keep streaming in!

Even wilder is the Dooms Day visionary who created his sex machine as a prototype for the female survivors of a soon-to-be world without men (talk about apocalyptic!)

And our favorite — the mid west cowboy who created his love machine as a tool for Christian-based marriage counseling. What would Jesus do?

He explains: “I will require anyone ordering a machine from me to provide proof of marriage and a signed statement of intent to use only within that marriage—kind of like a gun dealer that requires proof of age and proof of passage of a firearm safety test before selling someone a firearm. Sexual arousal is a doorway to a person’s very soul and isn’t to be messed with lightly.”

In fact, many of the inventors are ordinary family guys who were inspired to help repair rocky relationships or simply enhance their wives’ sexual pleasure. Other inventors have expanded their hobby into thriving cottage industries, selling their creations on eBay and adult stores online. (I’m bidding on one right now!)

Without question this is the perfect Christmas gift for the jaded know-it-all who thinks American ingenuity is on the decline.

Archibald’s Sex Machines shows us that our culture’s sexual underground is a fount of hardcore originality — booming and banging — rocking and thrusting.

Strap yourself in!

All photographs by Timothy Archibald. © Copyright 2005.