Everybody Do the Bonk!

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex - Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the kind of science writer who really gets into her research, although for Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex one might more accurately state that her research gets into her. Literally (and I mean that in the true sense of the word) "into" her: in her latest book, an improbable glimpse into the laboratories and lives of sex researchers, Ms Roach volunteered herself as a test subject in not one but two studies. All of which takes participation to new heights (or lows, I suppose, depending on one's viewpoint). Bonk follows on the heels of Stiff, Roach's investigation into the post-mortem "careers" of cadavers willed to science; and Spook, in which Roach pokes into scientific studies of the afterlife. As in her earlier books, Roach brings to the subject insatiable curiosity, in-depth research, and a willingness to do anything - and I do mean anything - to get the story.

Though most adults have by now heard of Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson; perhaps the twentieth century's most (in)famous researchers on human sexuality, far fewer realize that study of the subject continues to this day in laboratories worldwide. Besides her research into sexual psychology's history, Roach also interviewed current experts in the field, such as University of Texas researcher Cindy Meston, and (where allowed) viewed their experiments. When she couldn't interview participants in the subject, Roach made do: inserting "Cinderella's tampon" (a photoplethysmograph) for a study of vaginal lubrication in response to visual stimuli (XXX movies, ya know); and more famously talking her husband into participating in a study that created an ultrasound "blue movie" of the couple... errr... ummm... "coitally linked."
Any allegedly titillating behavior of its author aside, however, Bonk is for the most part a first-rate example of what popular science writing is supposed to be: a balanced combination of education and entertainment. The education component hasn't been dumbed down, but neither is it inaccessible to a lay reader from overuse of jargon and the turgid phrasing used by so many scientists. The entertainment component arises from a generous sprinkling of Roach's dry wit; although she occasionally seems almost sophomoric, as though aiming at a teenaged male demographic. A quick glance through the table of contents should give one an idea of Roach's flair for the double entendre:

• The Testicle Pushers: If Two are Good, Would Three be Better?
• Re-Member Me: Transplants, Implants, and Other Penises of Last Resort
• Mind over Vagina: Women are Complicated
• What's Going on in There? The Diverting World of Coital Imaging

While there are few places Roach won't go, there are some where a few readers may wish she hadn't. A chapter on Danish hog farming (hog inseminators are trained to stimulate sows to orgasm after insemination) is a bit on the strange side. Her visit to a Taiwanese surgeon who specializes in penile implants is very hard to read... at least for men... none of us will ever be able to see or hear the word "gloving" again without cringing.

Where Roach goes most of the time, however, is straight into that curious coupling of learning and laughter. Most of the giggles will come from her literary asides in the footnotes, in which she demonstrates not only the results of her far-ranging research but also a gift for groaners:

"I always assumed that Priapus was a god of something manly - war or shouting or chariot customizing - but in fact he was a god of fertility and gardens, One mythology website calls him 'the protector of all garden produce.' Clearly troubled by the girly job title, he took to wearing robes slit high enough to display his enormous cucumber... Encyclopedia Mythica reports that outside of Rome, Priapus was 'never very popular.'"

Still more humor resides in the text itself: of that photoplethysmograph experiment, she writes,

"...I take the probe out of the bag. An LED and some wiring are encased in a round-tipped, bullet-shaped piece of clear acrylic. 'Cinderella's tampon,' I write in my notebook, a notation that I will, weeks later, stare at dumbly for several moments, having no clue what it means. Where the string would be, there is a stiff, plastic-coated cable that leads to a computer. I follow the instructions I was given, and now the cable is curling down the front of my chair. I feel like a bike lock."

All that funny stuff aside, Bonk is also a cogent review of the current state of the study of sexual psychology. In its pages, Roach skillfully shares the current thinking and understanding of a knotty subject, one about which few people on earth know half as much as they think they do. As Roach often observes, "women are complicated." As she also hints, so are men - at least in their interactions with those women. Perhaps this bit of reading could help you understand your partner better - it couldn't hurt!

Summary

Plus: educational and entertaining
Minus: the humor's at times a tad sophomoric
What They're Saying: We rarely see the curious coupling of learning and laughter, but Bonk is one of those cases. Mary Roach's witty work succeeds as both education and entertainment.

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