IF YOU GO
What: Mary Roach talks about Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science at SexWhen: 8 p.m. WednesdayWhere: Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral GablesCost: Free.Info: 305-442-4408; www.booksandbooks.comHer latest obsession began with the discovery of the penis camera.
Reading an issue of Film Quarterly, journalist Mary Roach was startled to learn that researchers Masters and Johnson had created such a device in order to record female physiological responses during sex from a new, interior perspective. Roach had a vague idea who Masters and Johnson were, but the image of the thrusting mechanical camera seduced her.
''To me it epitomized that weird tradition of mixing the intimate and the scientific,'' she says by phone from a friend's house in Austin, Texas. ``How do you study something in a lab that's so personal and private? How could you figure out the mechanics and physiology of intercourse?''
Fortunately, plenty of inquisitive souls have pondered the same questions, from Leonardo da Vinci (who experimented with cadavers) and Alfred Kinsey to the creators of Viagra. They all appear in hilarious, mesmerizing Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (Norton, $24.95), about which the thoroughly entertaining Roach will talk Wednesday at Books & Books in Coral Gables.
Author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Roach packs Bonk with unforgettable characters and painstaking, if not downright selfless, observations. Her wry reporting covers a wide range of topics: the history of sex research; the weirdness of shopping for synthetic vaginas; the effects of Viagra on the sex-research industry (huge); the occasionally grisly aspects of corrective surgery. A chapter on penile implants is so explicit (''Dr. Hsu . . . then tries to feed the remaining end into the incision. . . . It seems to be stuck . . .'') the most stoic male reader will become a pretzel of empathy.
''I'm possibly underestimating how difficult it might be for men to read that part,'' Roach admits. More gently, she writes that to use the popular AMS Malleable 650 Penile Prosthesis ``[y]ou just bend it into position like a gooseneck lamp.''
Roach, who lives in Oakland, Calif., also makes the uncomfortable admission that in order to gain access to a London doctor's experiment on ultrasound coital imaging she had to volunteer herself and her husband as test subjects. ''Ed,'' she writes, perhaps unnecessarily, ``was wary.''
Asked to describe the experience, Roach goes with ''awkward.'' She could add ''extremely,'' since she will inevitably discuss the event during her Wednesday appearance, which she expects her in-laws from Delray Beach to attend.
Overall, though, ''it's fun to talk about afterward the way it's fun to talk about anything traumatic and hideous in your life afterward,'' she says. ``But it's not fun while it's going on. It's awkward in the same way it's awkward to go to a doctor's office. You never know what position they're going to put you in. . . . Ed is such a tremendous sport. He would really do anything for me and my books. But I do feel I'm always going to owe him a big favor now.''
SMELLS FUNNY
The famous coital ultrasound is only one of the bizarre situations Roach has endured as a writer for salon.com, Vogue, Outside, GQ, Reader's Digest and other publications. She was a ''guest sniffer'' at a market-research company that tests deodorant and cat litter. 'They bring people in, and they sniff strangers' armpits. Some have worn deodorant; some have not. You have a clipboard. They say, 'Take little bunny sniffs.' '' She was also a subject in a flatulence test at Beano corporate headquarters. ``They fed me this pint of beans, and then I had to inflate a Mylar bag. . . . You blow into it. The hydrogen on your breath will tell them how flatulent you are. It was very strange.''
Though her odd resume invites raised eyebrows, Roach believes Bonk makes her seem more normal after two books on death, particularly given that Stiff's ominous opening line is the unforgettable ``The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken.''
'People think, `What?! Cadavers! That's gross.' It makes perfect sense that I'd write about sex, because sex sells.'' Cadaver stories do, too; Stiff was a New York Times bestseller. Roach was shocked. ``I thought it would make history as the book not one person bought. I couldn't picture a scenario where someone walks into a book store and chooses a book on cadavers.''
Roach's books may be steeped in science, but their appeal lies in her sly humor.
''Some of the material is hysterical, and some of it is appalling, and that's where the humor lives,'' says Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck. ``I think that's the key. When you delve into other people's obsessions, science or otherwise, it's often funny if you play it reasonably straight. . . . [Roach] does for science what Bill Bryson does for travel, deliberately capturing the worst moments and most bizarre encounters.''
DEATH BY ZUCCHINI
Bonk's footnotes could easily be fleshed into chapters. In one aside, Roach mentions the unfortunate Australian gentleman who died a victim of autoerotic asphyxiation via zucchini ('from his wife's garden, admittedly a nice touch''). She goes into more salient detail over the lurid, unsettling trend of angry Thai wives who hacked off the penises of their adulterous husbands. Good on-the-job training for Thai doctors intrigued with the practice of reattachment. Bad news for the husband, especially if the wife tossed the offending member into the livestock pen, a common practice. Great news for the ducks, Roach writes. The birds' appetites inspired 'the coining of a popular saying: `I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.' ''
''I wish I had spent enough time in Thailand to hear someone say that,'' she muses wistfully.
Vengeful wives and hungry ducks aside, Roach says she's limited in the subject matter she tackles.
''I just don't understand or have the background for 75 percent of science. No molecular biology or physics or geology. . . . I can't understand the papers. I probably wouldn't be able to have a lot of fun.'' She can, however, relish such straightforward journal offerings as ''Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature,'' which cites a list of inserted items that can still make her laugh: a parsnip here, a plantain there, plus ``spectacles, suitcase key, tobacco pouch, and magazine.''
Science may never answer the secrets of arousal, so personal and intimate, or find a universal solution to help women reach orgasm, Roach says. ''It's gonna be tricky.'' Science has not hit upon a successful female version of Viagra yet, either, but if one surfaces, maybe Roach will write about it. After all: ``People by now know me as a weirdo with an overactive curiousity.''
