Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

by Mary Roach

Handily, the gag reflex is eliminated, even “among individuals who are quite prone to gag when objects are placed deep in their mouths.” (Objects! Har.)

The Female Sexual Psychophysiological Laboratory is run by Cindy Meston. For the past seventeen years, Meston has made a career out of figuring women out—and figuring out how to help them. Possibly longer, if you count the prepsychology era spent traveling rural Canada as a sewing machine sales rep.* “I’d come to town and do sewing demonstrations and advice programs on the local radio stations. Ladies would call in and say, ‘Well, I’m sewing with Ultrasuede, and my stitches are skipping, what should I do?’ And I’d go, ‘Well you need a Schmetz size-eight stretch needle with a leather tip….’” Meston tried to tell me the name of one of the programs, but was laughing so helplessly that it took a while. Finally, she came up for air: “Sewing and Serging with Cindy.”

If it’s any solace, even female rats have trouble focusing. I give you a sentence, my favorite sentence in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey, from Sexual Behavior in the Human Female: “Cheese crumbs spread in front of a copulating pair of rats may distract the female, but not the male.”