“Bonk” by Mary Roach
Warning:
Do not read this book on any form of public transport, while consuming beverages, or during any form of solemn congregation.
Title:
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Author:
Mary Roach
Previous publications:
Abstract
This is an examination of the scientific examination of sex. We learn a lot about sex and sexual behaviour and the history of sex, but mainly we learn about the nerds who strapped on goggles and gloves and clipboards to record how the good bits fit together.
Some of them reduced sex to subject numbers and data points. Some of them took photographs. And some entered the fourth dimension, notably the author and her husband, having sex for research purposes under the gaze of an ultrasound wand manipulated by a gent with spikey hair.
This book is every Weird Science nightmare. There’s a French princess who had her clitoris surgically transplanted into an optimum position for maximum stimulation. There are sex machines with chains and pumps and speed controllers and a fan club who build their own devices. (I’d give a lot to get their wives drunk and talkative.) There’s Dr Alfred Kinsey filming 300 paid male volunteers to masturbate on film so that he can measure the ejaculation distance. Most slopped, a few made it a foot, the record was just over eight feet. Mrs Kinsey’s comments on cleaning the carpet the next day are not recorded.
It is the wry eye of Mary Roach that makes this book. Her description of an unfortunate encounter is a good example:
…the Houston man was taken away, on his back in an ambulance, with a large water tank from a public commode stuck on his penis. “The patient had attempted intercourse with the water-tank hole,” reports B H Bayer, MD, in one of those rare, shining moments when urology approaches high comedy.
I think the author gets far too much fun out of all the statistics, sex on camera, Rube Goldberg measuring devices and coyly-worded requests for research funding. If the situation is absurd enough on its own, Roach will improve it with a well-chosen word or two.
The chapter titles give a teasing notion of the contents:
- The Sausage, the Porcupine, and the Agreeable Mrs. G.
- Can a Woman Find Happiness with a Machine?
- The Princess and Her Pea
- Does Orgasm Boost Fertility, and What Do Pigs Know About It?
Honest, this is about science, but it is also screamingly funny. Mary Roach has a sense of humour that made her first book about dead bodies an hilarious best-seller. I emphasise the warning given above. Be very careful where you read this book.
For the record, I found the chapter about pigs to be the funniest. I was gasping for breath half way through as assembly-line artificial insemination was described.
The training video includes a shot of a handsome, suntanned Dane lying on a sow, his chest pressed to her back. With one hand, he reaches down beneath her to rub her mammaries and squeeze her teats. A close-up highlights a gold wedding ring, as though to reassure the viewer that nothing untoward is going to happen between these two.
The most valuable chapter? Right at the end. The secret to amazing sex is to have it with someone of your own gender. Someone who knows what you like, because they have the same equipment. Someone who isn’t going to pound your clitoris into submission, or be too soft with your penis. Someone who will take their sweet time when required, and beat a faster drum at the right moment. Alternatively, talk to your partner. Tell them what you like, when you like it. Find out what they like. And, though Mary Roach doesn’t say it, the message is implicit on every page. Make them laugh. Make them love you.
Mary Roach has written three books now. If she ever publishes a fourth, I am going to be like those crowds of children beating down the bookstore doors for the latest Harry Potter. I am going to be first in line. And I am not taking the bus home.
Narrative
I bought this in Compass Books at San Francisco International Airport. On special (hardback) for $6.98. A few days later I was in a laundromat with Grl in Fort Worth, watching our underwear spin around together. I was reading Bonk and she was reading Tuesdays with Morrie
A few days later, Grl and I flew back in, and I took her straight to Compass Books – highly recommended for books that are a sight better than your average airport sex thriller – where we discovered that the hardback specials had vanished but paperbacks were available. I bought two. This is another one of those books that you force on friends, saying, “You gotta read this!”
I gave one copy to Grl, on the spot.
–Guy Sez
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