Book Review: Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

She doesn’t know it, but I named one of my characters after Mary Roach.  I was reading her book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers while I was writing the first draft of Dead Hungry.  Reading about all the ways corpses can be used in medical and forensic work (not to mention airline safety and plastic surgery) seemed a fitting topic when I was writing about cannibalism (I still get creeped out by macerating a body with honey).  Using her name is in no way meant to be disrespectful; I’m a huge fan of her work.  It’s just that the name Roach was a perfect fit for one of the more Ghoulish characters in the book.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is her 2008 work on, well, just that:  the study of sexual physiology.  She reviews some of the earliest research by Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and Robert Latou Dickenson.  But their work is just the tip of the iceberg.  Researchers have been trying to figure out the nature of orgasm, the medical cures for erectile dysfunction, and the somewhat mystical workings of the vagina (I was surprised at the amount of theorizing still going on about women’s reproductive systems; I assumed things had been figured out a long time ago).
The thing about Roach’s reporting is that she can take a potentially disagreeable and/or unsettling topic and make it fascinating.  She knows where to find the most unexpected research (coital imaging, the penis-camera, pig fertilization techniques) and describe it in accessible and at times irreverent terms.  Many times the particulars of the research can get me squirming, until she throws in a tongue-in-cheek analogy that makes it more palatable. 
Author and Test SubjectNot surprising, I had difficulty getting through the section on Dr. Geng-Long Hsu’s work.  He is developing a surgical solution to erectile dysfunction which involves suturing off particular veins in the penis to redirect blood flow.  Doesn’t sound too bad, except Roach describes in detail what the operation looks like:
“Once the anesthesia takes effect, Dr. Hsu will begin ‘degloving’ the organ.  The verb ‘skinning’ would get the idea across more efficiently, but it is more pleasant, I suppose, to picture an aristocrat gently loosening the fingers of his opera gloves.”
Okay, I’m still squirming.
There could be something very prurient about sexual research, except there isn’t.  The researchers and their subjects approach their tasks with high degrees of professionalism, even when performing somewhat unorthodox experiments.  Roach excels at focusing on the importance of the work, even if on the surface it might look like quackery.  The scientists clearly are driven to understand why the body works the way it does.  And there is definitely still a lot to learn.
Still, it’s Roach’s dry humor that carries the reader through:
On Kegeling:  "Kegeling has since been taken a step further, in the form of vaginal weightlifting.  The idea being: You don’t just flex your muscles if you want to build them up; you train with weights.  I once tried the Feminine Personal Trainer for a story.  It came with a slip of paper telling me not to be overwhelmed by its weight.  I wasn’t.  I was overwhelmed by its size.  Suffice to say, this is the only workout on Earth that calls for vaginal lubricant.  The directions tell you to insert and contract, causing the FPT to rise up inside you until all that can be seen protruding is a doorknob-shaped piece of steel, as though you are giving birth to a hardware store.  I use mine as a paperweight.”
On vaginal lubrication:  "Dickinson's descriptions of the female secretions read, in places, like a WD-40 advert:  'It is clear as glass, tenacious and persistent, without being sticky.  No other lubricant can compare with it in efficiency for a certain smooth and slippery quality ... '"
She certainly knows how to cut through the jargon.