Bonk (20 page)

Marty steers us to a small conference room, where it’s quieter and we can talk. The walls are bare except for six 8-by-10 aerial photographs of the Topco building, a squat, anonymous-looking 12,000-square-foot chunk of Chats-worth, California, business park. Tucker himself looks very much like what he is: the chairman of a successful multinational manufacturing firm. His cuffs are monogrammed so ornately as to be unreadable. He wears an unsubtle diamond ring on each of his ring fingers, a navy blue suit, and a tie with a travel motif of foreign flags. A New York accent grabs hold of his words.

“So what can I do for you?”

I had sent Marty a detailed email asking about the relative merits of clitoral suction and vibration and about whether both of these, regularly practiced, could improve a woman’s responsiveness. Yet somehow I have given him the impression that I have come to write about him. And possibly I should have.

I repeat my intended mission. Marty listens. “Okay. Suction will pull more blood and make the clitoris more sensitive. That’s what suction does.” He refers to the sex toy whose patent I mentioned, which turns out to be very simple: a ring that encircles either a real penis or a phallic sex toy and, attached to it, a suction cup. “So the ring can be worn by the guy, and when he’s inside of his partner, the suction cup is against the clitoris.” Marty pronounces it cli-TOR-is, rhymes with Lavoris.
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The item is no longer sold.

I ask Marty if he has any reason to believe that regularly bringing more blood to the crotchal area—with suction, with vibration, with any sort of masturbation—would improve a woman’s responsiveness or—Word of the Hour—orgasmicity. It’s a fine opportunity for him to promote sex toys as therapeutic devices, but he doesn’t take the bait. He says he hasn’t heard anything to that effect.

On the way back to the lobby, we stop on the factory floor again, in the baking area, where the molds in their plaster casts go in and out of ovens. The countertop is Pollacked with drips and spills of liquid plastic. The noise is deafening: clankings, thrummings, pneumatic exhalations.

“HERE YOU HAVE AN ANUS.” Marty says it’s a model of porno actor. Porn stars come in to Topco, to a special room, where the staff make plaster casts of their penetratable regions. This includes their faces, which can be purchased separately or put on a doll body. The top stars get a royalty for each orifice sold.

Marty’s hand rests on a model that is cooling in its mold, buttocks-down. “YOU CAN FEEL THAT THE MATERIAL IS STILL WARM RIGHT NOW, IT’S STILL SOFT.” From the back, it looks innocent, edible, like a chocolate dessert product. It’s all I can do not to take a bite.

m
asturbation therapy for women is not altogether new. It is, in fact, altogether old. Genital massage was a common medical treatment for sexually frustrated women as far back as Hippocrates’ day. The Hippocratic physician, of course, lacking batteries and Topco catalogues, had to make do with his fingers (or, often, those of a midwife).

For centuries, medical texts included long discussions of a condition called hysteria, a sort of vaguely defined sexual dysfunction based on spectacular misrepresentations of female anatomy and sexuality, and treated by, among other things, manual manipulations. The ancient Greeks, as we’ve learned, thought that women produced their own semen, released at the climax of intercourse, and that the mingling of male and female seed formed the basis of conception. Young widows, with no sexual outlet and a consequent log jam of womanly seed, were said to be especially prone to hysteria—or “womb fury.” (The widower was spared because he regularly jettisoned some during nocturnal emissions.) The notion persisted for centuries. Audrey Eccles quotes a physician in
Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England:
“It is most commonly the widowes disease;…when the seed is thus retained it corrupts, and sends up filthy vapours to the brain.” A typographically deranged colleague named Maubray concurred: “By a long
Detention
there, [the seed] may be converted into VENOM, or a
Poysonous Humour.
…”

The cure, logically enough, was to contrive a climax. Though no one came right out and said that that’s what he was up to. Chapter LXVIII of
Aetios of Amida: The Gynaecology and Obstetrics of the VIth Century,
A.D
. outlines tactics for triggering the release of she-semen. “The midwife having taken [various oils] with her fingers, she should…rub the part gently and for a long time….” Eventually, “much thick and viscid sperm [was] expelled, and the woman was freed without delay from her distressing affliction.” Presumably, Aetios was mistaking vaginal lubrication for semen. Gynecology was but a sideline interest for Aetios (best known for his eye, ear, and nose texts), and it showed. Women who came to him for contraceptive advice were told to wear a piece of cat liver in an ivory tube attached to their left foot. Though I suppose this might well keep you from getting pregnant, in the same way that wearing Birkenstocks might.

While awkward to be sure, genital manipulation was preferable to hysteria’s other treatment: the evil smell. This line of attack was based on the belief that hysteria was associated with a retracted uterus; foul odors were inhaled to repel the uterus, in the hope that it would retreat back down the body cavity into its rightful position. For ten-plus centuries, the womb was considered less an organ than an independent creature, able to move about the woman’s body like a badger in its den. Aetios of Amida prescribed the following: “Place at the nostrils a pot of stale urine.”
Soranus’ Gynecology
describes anointing the patient’s nose with “squashed bed bugs.” From the Tudor era, we hear that “also highly esteemed was a fume made of ‘the warts which grow upon Horses Legs….’” Overall, it was hard to escape the suspicion that the early gynecologist was not the caring and supportive creature that she is today.

Evil odors came and went, but “pelvic massage” for hysteria persisted all the way through the Victorian era to the first half of the twentieth century. The earliest vibrators weren’t being sold to women; they were being sold to physicians to make their job easier. Depending on the practitioner’s skills and the woman’s inhibitions, manually instigating climax in a doctor’s office could take upward of half an hour. The vibrator was a godsend, reducing the chore to a few minutes.

Rachel P. Maines, the sort of historian the world needs more of, wrote a book on this topic.
The Technology of Orgasm
is packed with amazing information, but none more so than this: “There is no evidence that male physicians enjoyed providing pelvic massage treatments….” It was, she said (and sort of still often is) “the job nobody wanted.” I had imagined doctors getting caught up in, and turned on by, their patients’ reactions. But Maines found no evidence of this. She states that most of these physicians did not even understand that the climax of the treatment they were providing was an orgasm.

When vibrator manufacturers finally came out with home models, the ads were predictably opaque. While some made oblique references to the devices’ true charms (“makes you fairly tingle with the joy of living”), most dispersed a smoke screen of vague health claims. Others ventured deep into the ludicrous. Maines’s book includes an ad from 1916 showing a woman with a vibrator held up to her cheek, the caption claiming that the device would “bring social and business success.” A pair of Star Vibrators were advertised in 1922 as “Such Delightful Companions!…Perfect for weekend trips,” as though they could serve up witty repartee and spell you at the wheel.

Even today, vibrators are sold as “massagers” to women who are uncomfortable buying sex toys. The small appliance company Wahl, for instance, sells a trio of massagers on its Web site with no explanation of what they’re for. (The fact that nitetimetoys.com is the first listing that comes up when you Google “Wahl massagers” provides a hint.)

The company bio of the late John Wahl notes that he served not only as Wahl president but also in a leadership capacity at St. Mary’s Catholic Church. And that his brother Raymond Wahl is a monsignor. I’m not saying there’s a link between Catholicism and sex toys. I’m just saying I’ve got a brand-new interpretation of Isaiah 49:2 (“The Lord…hath made me a polished shaft”).

w
hy weren’t hysteria sufferers simply told to go home and masturbate twice a week? Because, as you will recall from chapter 6, masturbation has a long history as a shameful, dangerous, and much-discouraged act.

But now that we all know better, should gynecologists be recommending masturbation as a treatment for sexual dysfunction? Are orgasms the ticket to sexual health? I called Cindy Meston, whose laboratory we are headed for shortly. Her answer was yes. Her graduate student Lisa Dawn Hamilton recently completed a study that tracked the testosterone levels of women in long-distance relationships. (Testosterone is the hormone most closely linked to sexual desire, and is sometimes prescribed to women who complain of a low libido.) Testosterone levels were significantly higher when the women were having sex, as compared to the days when their partners weren’t there. (The participants promised not to masturbate for the duration of the study.) “It’s looking like sex in and of itself can be therapeutic,” says Meston. “It makes you enjoy sex more and want to have sex more. I think the whole use-it-or-lose-it thing definitely applies to women.”

Meston agreed that a $25 Micro Tingler from Marty Tucker’s warehouse probably affords much the same benefits as a $400 Eros Therapy Device. However, she made the point that there are women out there who would be uncomfortable with a treatment that consists of masturbation, with or without a sex toy—not to mention doctors who are uncomfortable prescribing it. For them, as Meston says, “the guise of it being an FDA-approved medical device takes some of the taboo out of it.”

The taboo issue might also explain the impressive sales records of some of the quack powders and oils sold online as arousal boosters for women. While they sometimes contain spices or chile extracts that create a mild tingling sensation, the key ingredient, Meston says, is more often one’s own hand. “They come with these instructions like, ‘Apply to clitoris and labia and rub
really well
for an extended period of time. Make sure you rub
really, really well.
…’”

i
n 1999, somewhere in the state of Israel, a man began hiccuping and could not stop. He tried the silly things his friends suggested. He pulled on his tongue and rubbed the roof of his mouth with a Q-tip. He tried chlorpromazine, metoclopramide, defoaming antiflatulents even. Nothing worked. The man grew increasingly anxious. He could not sleep or concentrate on his work. On the fourth day, still hiccuping, the man had sex with his wife. His condition persisted all the way through the act, and then, once he ejaculated, the hiccups stopped.
Canadian Family Physician
published a case report about the man, under the title “Sexual Intercourse as a Potential Treatment for Intractable Hiccups.” Unattached hiccuppers were advised that “masturbation might be tried.”
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Are there other nonsexual health benefits to be derived from orgasm? Affirmative, say Rutgers University sex researchers Barry Komisaruk and Beverly Whipple. Their readable and comprehensive
The Science of Orgasm
says that people who have regular orgasms seem to have less stress and enjoy lower rates of heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and endometriosis.

They also appear to live longer. British researcher G. Davey Smith and two colleagues calculated that over a span of ten years the risk of death among men who had two or more orgasms a week was 50 percent lower than among those who had them less than once a month. (Obviously, the researchers had to control for factors like social class, smoking, and age.) Catholic priests, as compared with their noncelibate Protestant counterparts, have higher rates of early death. This last bit was reported—though without a source—in a 1990
Sports Medicine
article entitled “The Sexual Response as Exercise.” The author, a psychologist named Dorcus Butt,
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then at the University of British Columbia, states that the muscle tone, strength, and straining involved in orgasm are similar to that of “jumping, gymnastics, tennis, football….” Yet one more reason the Catholic Church should condone sex, or jumping, among its clergy.

Orgasm may be, as Butt says, “the most basic form of physical exercise,” but that doesn’t mean sex is a particularly good workout. In 1984, psychiatrist Joseph Bohlen brought ten married couples into a laboratory at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and measured the men’s heart rate, metabolic expenditure, and oxygen uptake during five different sexual activities: foreplay, intercourse (once in the missionary position, once with the wife on top), fellatio, and masturbation. Bohlen concluded that sex was, at best, “light to moderate” exercise of short duration. However, given that “the mask used to collect the husband’s expired air kept him from kissing…, and the ECG electrodes and blood pressure cuff hoses restricted body movement,” it is possible that the sex being had in Dr. Bohlen’s lab was less exuberant than usual.

People with spinal cord injuries may derive a unique benefit from orgasm. If you are paralyzed, say, or you have multiple sclerosis, you may find that orgasm relieves you of the leg stiffness and muscle spasms collectively known as spasticity. Alfred Kinsey noticed this during his attic observations of men with cerebral palsy. Apparently, the benefit lingers for some time afterward. Researchers have found that a session with a rectal probe electroejaculator dampens leg spasticity for, on average, eight hours.

You may be curious as to who got the idea to look into this. The rectal electroejaculator
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is, after all, a device intended for use on livestock. Artificial inseminators electroejaculate bulls and stallions to obtain the semen used to artificially impregnate cows and mares. Men with spinal cord injuries—who often can’t ejaculate in the usual manner—have themselves electroejaculated, in fact, for similar reasons. It all began in 1948. A team of doctors at the Cushing Veterans Administration Hospital in Massachusetts, hoping to obtain sperm that could be used to impregnate the wives of paralyzed veterans, revved up a McIntosh No. 5005 portable, wall-mounted electrophysiotherapy machine. (Electricity was a fad health treatment popular from the late 1800s to mid 1940s. Rachel Maines describes an advertisement for one such device, showing “electrodes for every conceivable bodily orifice.” Presumably, the Cushing team was aware that ejaculation was a common side effect of rectally administered electrotherapy.)