Today we kick off our Bonk book club! As I explained already, everyone is invited to contribute to the conversation–even if you’re not reading along. My hope is that readers will offer ideas and insights on each topic or suggest a different direction about something else you find particularly fascinating. Eventually, we’ll develop an ongoing conversation that will evolve over several threads. And now we explore what’s going on between the jacket… What better way to dive right in than explore the subject most discussed when Bonk comes up in conversation: ‘Is that the book where she has sex with her husband in the machine?’ Yes, it most certainly is. So we turn to
Chapter 5: What’s Going On In There? The diverting world of coital imaging
As Roach describes, it is a simple and noble goal: To reveal more information on how various body parts work during sexual intercourse. She goes on to review the work of several artists and doctors who have attempted to document the deed starting with Leonardo da Vinci in 1493. Attempts range from intriguing to what-were-they-thinking? Eventually Mary successfully recruits [coaxes] her husband Jupp into a trip to Europe to participate in an experiment involving coitus in Dr. Jing Deng’s MRI machine. She describes the experience in clinical detail and explains that other than the parts involved, the experience bears very little resemblance to what actually goes on between the couple. ‘Sex is far more than the sum of its moving parts.’ But it was particularly interesting to read where Roach marvels at the beautiful images produced:
Not so much a passport photo for daily use, but surely a shot that shows so much that it makes me speechless. There, it’s my womb and surely, on that place is Jupp, naturally in a way as I know from my own sensation: below the cervix. Two days later I’m feeling a kind of pride: we tried and succeeded!
With that, I’m very interested to hear other’s reactions to the topic–even if you haven’t read the book. Would you volunteer for the experiment (let alone document it?) And furthermore, could you convince your partner to join in?
