Bonk: the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

It took me a while to write this review with a newborn and also having recently gone back to work (while breastfeeding), and I'm not superwoman. I borrowed this book from a friend (it's in the back of my car, I'll bring it back soon, I promise). My first real conversation with the book's owner was about this book. He highly recommended it and then months later I finally got a chance to read it.

I wasn't sure I wanted to read a book that took something I find so sacred and science-ified it. After reading the book, devouring it really, I am so glad I gave it a chance! It was really just a history of sex research in no real particular sort of timeline. It covered early sex research which focused on animal sex to the almost deviant beginnings of human sex research.

Did you know that a woman's ability to orgasm during sex has everything to do with the distance between her clitoris and vaginal opening?
Or that panda bears have a penis the size of a man's thumb and no aim so they have a hard time even finding the vaginal opening?

There are a million other interesting factiods to be had in the book, but I won't ruin it for you here. Read it!

Metaphors - Sylvia Plath

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

After reading a lot of Plath as a angst-y youth, I always found her to be immature. She always seems to be whining or complaining about everything. I assumed that she had a bad attitude and a terrible lease on life and, although I still feel about the same as I always have, I now realize that she actually has some insight into life and a freshness of perspective that I hadn't seen before. At this time last year this poem would have no significant effect on me. Being pregnant and mostly isolated from the loving support of others usually associated with pregnancy makes even a cold person warm to the pain of others. If only they can directly relate to the precise feeling and origin of the pain. Pain and suffering are pathetic and selfish emotions. Pregnancy is not a blessing, motherhood is. Pregnancy is a time of selfish and pathetic inner reflection where the expecting mother sees either nothing but the definiteness of supreme and all-encompassing happiness in the perfection of their future or, toil inside trying to find the lofty and higher power they ascribe to mothers and find none of in themselves. I am nothing but a means, a stage and getting fat. The stretch marks, constipation, indigestion, nausea, fear, loneliness, fatigue and constant agitation are all symptoms of this blessing that is supposed to occur sometime in the future. Lovely.

I always considered myself very lucky. At the young age of 22 I discovered what takes a lifetime for some people and never happens for others. I discovered that I am beautiful, not beautiful in the way that all young women are transiently beautiful, but beautiful in the way that a person with an astounding soul lights up their face from the inside when you look into their eyes. My soul can always use some improvement, but what makes me a little different is the ability I have to see the inside with clarity. I am honest with myself and that translates to my behavior to other people as well. There is no need to make myself try to appear more attractive than I am in search of a mate because the difference between myself and most any other 20something woman I know is stark. I have no shame in my body my features which will all change eventually into something less than the beauty of my twenties. I have been blessed with great genes and will probably look more or less as I do now for some time, but it helps to be self assured. Women who age gracefully and over time letting the gray hair and wrinkles take their place as they are earned are so much more beautiful than women in their twenties who are beautiful for now but will grow into a different woman with time. The choice is for each individual to decide how graceful the aging process is.

Pregnancy has changed all of that. It is possibly the hormones or it could also be the misery. I had hoped that my changing mind and body wouldn't rock me to the inner but just be another part. It is a huge paradigm shift. Books read differently and conversation leads to morals and truths and higher thoughts. Any trivial conversation later tastes like sucking on a bag of pennies. It is just distasteful and lingers as an unpleasant memory.

A Longing for Ginsberg’s ‘Cock and Endless Balls’

I woke up next to him with my tits pressed hard against his chest. It was warm and my nipples were hard. He didn’t notice. The sun was shining through the ten million windows in the room and I inched my hand deeper and deeper under the covers looking for his cock. The alarm went off. FUCK.

We dated for eight months. Not even a goddamned year. Before I met him I used to write poetry. Terrible droning woman poetry. I though I knew something about love or truth or whatever highfaluting over romanticized concepts related to beauty that all women are fed. Well, raped with actually. He was a man of purpose and reason and concrete and black and white and gray and ohmygod is he dull. Within a month I realized that we had a major difference that we would never get over. I wanted to fuck. All the time. I wanted cock in the morning, cock in the evening. I wanted cock at night and during any time in between.

I knew I had little time to fuck him before he obsessed about getting to work on time.
“What time is it?”
He rolled over grabbed his watch/barometer/lifepartner and set the alarm to snooze. Another ten minutes till I hear that noise again and he gets more anxious to leave.
“8”

I thought about it for a minute. Ten minutes for him to wash his hair and brush his teeth, twenty for me to make him breakfast before he leaves, and about an hour of time that every day that gets lost or misplaced in the ether. Twenty minutes for him to walk to the post office and the back to work. Ten minutes for coffee. He works at 10. It’s 8. FUCK. Exactly two hours.

Two months ago I woke him up everyday with his cock in my mouth. That was the only way to get his cock inside me, to put it in my mouth first. Groggy and mentally devoid of any sort of lust, morning sex initiated (launched really) only by fellatio and his cock telling him to get off, his performance was not up to par in the morning. Not ever in the morning. If I wanted to come I had to make him do it the right way pushing against him to correct the rhythm he should have known by heart. In his sleep even. Apparently not.

I pressed my tits harder against him and slid my hands under his pants. He wasn’t hard. I hoped for morning wood. No beans. I left to pee and then snuggled up to him until the next alarm. It was entirely out of the question this morning. I would have to make his omelet while he got ready and then let the sexual frustration cause my hair to fall out. Literally fall out of my head after he left. Everyday my hair fell out of my head and my clit screamed at me for attention. Nothing could be done.

“Omelet or oatmeal?”
“Omelet.”
He always said omelet.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

This was another of the many books found in the library of my house when I moved in. One of my co-workers told me that it was a “travel book” before I had even opened it and I was feeling a little apprehensive, but the title, like all of Troost's titles, was intriguing and I thought that it was worth a quick read. I soon realized that it was basically a less side splittingly hilarious, more intellectual version of Chelsea Handler's books; if Chelsea Handler lived in Kiribati and had a lot of diarrhea (which is a word I can confidently say I would never spell right but for spell check).

The plot is something like this: author goes to grad school, does not know what to do with his life, girlfriend gets job in Kiribati, for lack of any other plans he joins her, fails to write fiction novel, has a lot of insanity come into and out of his life, moves back to the states, adjusts, hates it, moves to Fiji, has kid, mushy new father sweet ending. Oh, spoiler alert. Too late? Oh well. The plot is not really the point of the book. After finishing it I realized that my coworker was right, this was a travel book. The author travels to the end of the earth and finds himself in the most unlikely place, a place where most people find only fish, fish, fish, and la Macarena. Maybe some occasional digestive discomfort and WWII relics from battles past, but mostly fish. It was a little cheesy (especially at the end) even in its gross honesty, but not so much as to detract from the point which is probably: visit Kiribati, it will be interesting at least, or respect the people from Kiribati they are an interesting group of people troubled by issues that would be unheard of in the states.

The novel is very funny, well written, and despite the many less than glamorous aspects of life on the equatorial Pacific, and Kiribati in particular the reader is (or should be) left with a feeling of familiarity and longing for life as he lived it on the tiny island of Tarawa. I certainly feel as though Kiribati is somewhere I would like to visit, though I know it would be a test of my mental and emotional fortitude to do so (not to mention the strength of my insides).

And as a final aside, this book is neither about sex nor cannibalism. I have lived with or relatively near my younger brother for all twenty years of his life. Not once
has he ever shown any interest in what I was reading or for that matter anything else that can be read except for maybe the script of a video game he was trying to beat (don't get me wrong he is very literate, and intelligent, but he spends his brain power on other things, such as being totally hilarious). A few days ago I allowed him to borrow my car on the condition that he bring me my books from it first. His car died, and the truck my father gave him to replace it actually has no brakes, so I let him take mine for the day. When he delivered my books he actually asked about this one. That may not seem like a big deal, but it really is. The title alone is genius, and the book is a good read.

The Last Sunday in January

I awoke with the sun this morning. Jeremy just got up to have his morning pee. In the immortal words of my younger brother, “not everybody takes a shit every morning, but everybody in the world has to pee.” Indeed. Nearly as soon as he left my side the dog, which had been sleeping on the floor next to my side of the bed, stood up walked around the bed and without any introductions, jumped right onto the place Dan had just left warm with the heat of his slumber. Resisting the sun I moved closer to my new bed mate and attempted a few more minutes of rest. He was much smellier than I was used to sleeping next to, but then again I have refused to wear deodorant or perfume for years, a custom which has become so ingrained in our culture that to disregard that rule becomes almost as unspeakable as incest or parricide. It is hard to understand how wearing a substance that makes my underarms smell like rain became a necessary part of modern society, but that is where we’ve landed. Either way, the dog most certainly has slept next to people whose odor was sweeter than my au naturale scent I have been trying to promote, rather unsuccessfully, for years, but he has more than likely smelled worse, and he moved a little closer so as to absorb my heat more efficiently.

Virgil, our friend’s dog, is a nice companionable dog who is neither incredibly friendly nor incredibly unfriendly. He had never really noticed me before this week. I had met him several times during the summer and he never so much as looked in my direction, but he has recently decided that I would make a great partner in the crime of lazy weekends of which we are both huge fans.

I was invited to breakfast with Dan and Ryan, his best friend from the age of three,, before their hiking epic of the day. So I dressed, or dressed in a fashion by throwing on a pair of socks and ambling downstairs in my pajamas without saying much of anything to the man I share my bed and much of my life with. I waited for Jeremy to take Virgil out to pee, and hopefully poop as he had neglected to do so all day yesterday, until I realized that he was too caught up in packing and planning and did it myself.

Even though I grew up in the middle of nowhere in the cold and frozen parts of the country, I am always caught unawares by just how cold it is the morning after a cold night during the deepest depth of winter. My mind refuses to this day to believe that the sun does not always mean a warm day, and in the winter without the insulation of the clouds, a sunny day is usually even colder. Virgil didn’t like the cold winter air either judging by the fact that he didn’t want to stop moving long enough even to pee until we were nearly back to our house when he must have decided it would be better to be cold for thirty seconds than have to pee all day. It was sunny, so by noon when or if I was ready to hike it would be much warmer. We both shuffled back into the house frozen. Still no poop.

In our coastal town there are few establishments of any kind open year round. Most businesses just stay open for the summer and cut their losses and hole up in little houses with wood stoves, or if they’re lucky, they escape to warmer and more civilized locales during the winter. I prefer a lack of civilization myself, so I chose the former. This morning in particular I mildly regretted my decision. The three of us Ryan, Dan and myself, were looking forward to a delicious breakfast made at what I am convinced is the most underrated breakfast location in the country, Two Cats. They are open all year; use fresh and real ingredients and have a well lit and laid back dining area. They also have the most deliciously innovative recipes and new takes on your traditional favorites. And did I mention delicious yet? The first time I went there was the morning after the Fourth of July and I was so hung over that I threw up the carrot and water I had used to try to quiet my stomach until the food arrived. The wait staff, if they noticed, seemed not to be bothered by this, as if that sort of thing happens all the time, which I doubt. My vomit wasn’t repulsive being made of two benign ingredients and the food that arrived at our table shortly thereafter was so good as to entirely shadow the experience of throwing up carroty water behind a restaurant at ten in the morning. “It’s going to be so delicious it will be like four cats” Ryan kept repeating all morning. “It will be five cats it’ll be so good.” But when we arrived there were no cats. They were 'unexpectedly closed for the season and will reopen in April,' so we went to the only other place that was open, a crummy diner-like place attached to a convenience store, gas station, laundromat bonanza. The food was average and we all left full more of butter than of real food. “Well that was definitely Five Cats” Ryan remarked as we headed to separate cars. They went for their hike, and I headed back to my house and the dog.

I had planned on hiking all day with a friend who lived an hour North, but he never showed up, and I was able to enjoy the soul of a Sunday that can only be felt while doing nothing and basking in the glory of that nothingness for hours. He had visited me at work yesterday on my lunch break and mentioned something about his roommate finally deciding to move in tomorrow. He asked where we were hiking tomorrow. “Beech Mountain, it is the last mountain on the island that I haven’t hiked. The last that has trails on it at least.” Now that it was tomorrow, I can only assume that he either decided to help his roommate move in or he happened to go outside and realized that it was too cold for a short walk around his house not to mention a long hike which would be light and enjoyable during the summer or fall months, but made arduous by the wind, crusty snow, and freezing temperatures of January.

Sunday and January two such intimately related concepts that it is hard to think of a January without Sundays. Of all the January’s I remember during my childhood I can only remember Sundays. January Sundays are always cold and usually gray and windless. All of my January Sundays were at least, but this Sunday was the exception; unseasonably cold, sunny and beautiful and still all I wanted to do was cuddle with the smelly dog and read books until Dan came back so I could bake bread and drink beer. It’s no wonder that Sunday is a day most people reserve for God. As Virgil twitches from his dreams on the floor and I lay in a sunlit room on an overly large couch it is hard to see anything else but a profound spirituality in the still of a cold and sunny Sunday alone.

Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea

This is the second Chelsea Handler book I have read. There are only two, so I will have to read something more intellectually stimulating than stories about midgets, redheads, the horrors of aging parents next, but this, if possible is actually even funnier than the last one. I especially liked the chapter about when she dated a redhead. I myself am dating a redhead, but he refuses to admit to his handicap. It’s true that his hair has gotten to be a color closer to a sand color as he’s aged, but his beard and pubic hair are both still a little too red to be called ‘dirty blonde’ like he wishes they were. I remember having a conversation about how he is most definitely a redhead while getting drunk with my friends. After numerous attempts to deny his gingerness, I started yelling “Red. Your hair is red! I find them in my vagina!” while my friends laughed uncontrollably at him. I mean the guy has red pubes. That makes him a redhead.

Anyways, this memoir (I call it a memoir because I am assuming that the stories are at least partially true, and if you want to purchase either of her novels at your local Borders you would look for them in the memoir section) was much less depressing than the first ‘My Horizontal Life,’ which was upbeat about how silly and slutty her actions were at first, but ended with her feeling like she should put an end to her shenanigans and get married but doubting if anybody could ever take her seriously when she can’t even take herself seriously. I mean she is a comedian… She doesn’t need to be serious. She is paid not to be.

I was once again left with the impression that I could have written this if I were funnier, crazier, and more willing to share the stories that literally make me sick to think of. I have stories that are just as funny, embarrassing, and insane as hers, but I don’t feel like sharing them with the world. Chelsea Handler has balls. Also, every time I tell a story that is funny in my head it comes out sounding like total idiocy. I have taken to letting other people tell my stories for me because they do a better job with them and usually embellish just enough so as to make my craziness seem likable and fun rather than off-putting and offensive. But those things aside, I could totally have written this. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

The bottom line is similar to that of her first novel/memoir. This is not a piece of literature nor is it intended to be. It is hilarious, interesting, a quick read and totally worthwhile. As long as you do not intend your brain to get any exercise while reading it most anybody will be able to enjoy this book. Unless you’re a prude, then you should probably just be a social recluse and not burden society with your lack of a sense of humor and ability to allow anything to be fun. Or you can join the Republican Party.

My Horizontal Life

The same day that I bought Ana Karenina I finished reading Chelsea Handler's collection of one night stands and barely remembered vodka induced shenanigans. I feel like I could easily have written this book. It certainly makes me miss my vodka induced shenanigans and one night stands and just drunken whoreishness (not a real word, but should be). Like the time that I got so drunk that, on the way to the bathroom, I pulled down my own pants, peed on the floor, and then passed out in my own piss where campus security found me much later. My friend Ben then tried, unsuccessfully, to start a rumor around campus that I hadn't actually peed in the hallway but that Ronnie, another friend, pulled my pants down and peed on my and then ran away. I'm not sure which version is worse, but neither is flattering. This was, of course, during my vodka and wine phase where I would drink shitty cheap vodka out of a plastic jug and chase it with box wine. I would love to go on for days like this but this is probably one of the highlights so we'll leave it there.

Either way, Chelsea Handler has an honest and hilarious perspective on the world and reading her sexploits makes me miss both my own sexploits and my drunken idiocy. MEMORIES! Not good ones, but they're... well they aren't there. I do remember the after effects. I am looking forward to reading her next novel Are You There Vodka, It's Me Chelsea.

Bright Lights, Big City

This is a book I have been meaning to read for a long time. It is post beat style writing, and like much of the work of the Beat Generation also about New York City, drugs and loss. It is about the City, and pointless jobs and more loss. The writing style was mostly in the second person. It was interesting to read. I heard Mark Twight compare one of the essays he wrote about some mountaineering trip to the style of this novel. It makes sense now. I got a staff copy for free from Vintage Books and now refuse to part with it. It is a super quick read, well written and laugh out loud funny (if you have a dark sense of humor). I believe the commentary inside called it a 'modern classic' or the like. I entirely agree.

This Poem is a Cliché

I washed my hands for ten minutes today to watch them turn red like lobster’s claws. The change over time isn’t even noticeable. Time, it’s just sand in the wind. Don’t let them tell you life is short. It took forever to turn my fucking hands red under a faucet of scalding hot water, and I’ve had one hell of a ride so far. I think I’ve lived twice as much life as you and you’re the one saying it’s short. You still have that pretty girlfriend right? The one you’d rather fuck than me. The one you can’t leave because she’ll have a nervous breakdown, an emotional meltdown, and while we’re both down, in the dumps that is, hows about we talk about this. No, I want to talk about it I don’t see anyfuckingreason not to. Let’s bake this Clam, and blow this Popsicle stand, and while we’re at it ‘Ahoy, there’s land.’ Let’s get out for a walk. I’ve always liked sunset walks on the beach. That’ll be my personal ad in the paper ‘loves sunset walks on the beach with you.’ I don’t believe you when you say you love me. Beauty can be measured by looks, that’s what beauty is, skin deep, and we both know I’m no brown eyed girl, no buxom beauty, no dream girl. I bet if you’d let me though, I’d make your toes curl. But love is the most beautiful flower of all, even more than the red red rose. When I want something to grow, I put shit on it. Real shit’s the best. So let’s shit on our love and watch it grow, baby. If I live twice the life, I wonder if that means that I only have to do it for half as long? Seventy is the average life expectancy; I’m shooting for thirty-five. Fuck it, thirty. Who wants to live forever? I’d use the sorcerer’s stone to throw through your window to see you look out at me. They thought Florida held the fountain of youth. Tell that to the retirement communities down there. Doesn’t seem to do them any good. You think this is how I feel, and you think I hate your smile and smell, dear. But that’s what I am, and I’m really just caught in your headlights. The cornered animal fights the wildest, and like a caged beast I’m fighting against you, so hard you can see my fingernails scraped off on the side of your cage. There isn’t a key, because I gave it to you, and it was lost before it was gone, and my heart is gone, too, but what? Is it just my fingertips or is it all of the parts you’ve touched? Your hands are an acid to my skin that burns forever after it’s gone. My hands are white now, the water dry, and you don’t even know how much I’ve hated you in your absence. You don’t know how much I’d love to smell your skin, and I am just a walking cliché when it comes to you. A comet may only come once in a lifetime, but I don’t know of any lifetime that has what we had. Just throwing caution to the wind, don’t give away any part of yourself that you need to survive. A pound of flesh, but what part to give, I like my ears, my eyes. I need my hands, my feet, so I gave you the thing that makes us bleed. And you still have me hypnotized. Your bones and flesh my home. I’ve given my heart with both hands.