Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
by Mary Roach
Norton. 319 pages, $24.95
IN HER NEW BOOK Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach reveals that the road to the birds and the bees wasn’t just paved with racy feathers and erotically-dripped honey. Over the years, many erroneous beliefs about erogenous zones have been held, including that the essence of life came from a man and that women had little to contribute to the system, and that impotence could be cured or caused by a witch. Masturbation was severely punished; young widows and women without partners were thought to be prone to hysteria; and a release of “she-semen” would cure feminine problems. Even Leonardo da Vinci sketched some dubious theories about “doing it.”
Pruriently or not, but quietly, early scientists spent lots of time watching the wild thang, ostensibly to gather information. Odd contraptions popped up in bedroom laboratories, including a mechanical phallus and see-through camera tubes that were invented in the name of learning. Gynecologist Robert Latou Dickinson took extensive medical histories of his patients’ intimate lives. Researcher John B. Watson trained a student to take “readings” on her physical responses as the two had sex.
Famous researcher Alfred Kinsey once set up a bare mattress on a floor of his attic and called it a “laboratory” and was said to get up-close and personal, within inches of his subjects as they were otherwise occupied. In his further studies, Kinsey interviewed 18,000 Americans about their sex lives, including gay men, prostitutes, heterosexual couples, and staff members. Masters and Johnson came along and disproved some of Kinsey’s theories with a little poking around of their own.
These days, laboratories are still fascinated by the featherbed fandango. Researchers have given us Viagra, MRI images of active couples, clitoral suction devices, literal sex machines, and implants so we can all have a ball in the bedroom. We can get jiggy artificially, alone, or with help from surgery. We know what the old in-and-out does for upbeat moods, all because a few intrepid souls got into someone’s pants.
Getting horizontal in the hammock this weekend? Then grab this book and get ready to nail some laughs. Author Mary Roach is one of the most subtle funny writers you’ll ever have the pleasure of reading; her asides are hilarious and the situations she puts herself (and her ever-patient husband) in are straight out of a for-grown-ups-only sitcom. Roach is willing to follow a surgeon into the operating room (men beware, it’s not for the squeamish), she asks to meet sex researcher Virginia Johnson (she didn’t), she spoke to the maker of the clitoral suction device (they gave her one to try!), and she visits a sex-toy factory and a sex museum in Indiana, all the while giving us the sense that this is real research, but done in good fun.
While it’s sometimes tempting to ignore footnotes, don’t do that when you’re reading this book. Roach is a sneaky writer, in that her humor comes when you least expect it and, knowing that, you can expect to enjoy Bonk. Although obviously not a book you want to leave lying around for polite company, this is a don’t-miss for the curious. If you’ve ever done the deed and wondered who studies that kind of thing, Bonk will make you positively vibrate with happiness.
