Sexology 101

You spend years intensely researching these books, is it all-consuming?
Yes, I get really immersed. After I wrote "Stiff," I got an e-mail saying you got a good review in the Kirkus Review. But I heard that as "You got a good review in the Carcass Review. "I thought, oh, OK, that's nice that the industry liked it. Now, I'm so used to saying penis, vagina, orgasm, that I forget other people aren't.

You must be fun at parties.
I have to be careful. When unsuspecting people asked about my book I used to launch right into clitoral this and penis that, and I'd see that they were sort of stunned. I guess they were expecting a little bit of foreplay first.

Is it impossible to avoid double entendres when you write about sex?
I really tried to avoid them, but my editor said, Mary, I think there are too many puns in here. I didn't even realize it. For example, you can't use the phrase to come, you can't use the adjective hard. There was a guy doing an orgasm study in New Jersey, and he said to me, "You could be a subject." Basically I would have had to masturbate inside an MRI machine. I said, oh, OK, if I have to. I didn't end up doing it, but I wrote to say I'm looking forward to coming and then realized I can't say that.

You're writing about some pretty complicated science—were you writing to pass muster with scientists, or relate to lay people—I mean nonscientists?
The scientists who are in the book realize the value of having the material explained to the lay people. Oh no, I guess I can't use that phrase now. [Laughs.] There's a guy in "Spook" who felt that there should have been more statistical detail. Some researchers might think that by omitting stuff, I'm compromising what they're doing, but I think they find that there's value in getting the public excited about their subject. We'll see what they say about this one, I haven't sent it out to them yet.

You use some pretty explicit colloquial terms for sex, did you worry that might cause problems?
No one has complained so far. And I think I only used "f--k" once, and that was in a footnote.

And what about interviews, is it harder to talk about some of the graphic details than it was to write about them?
I was on NPR yesterday, and I actually had my publicist ask in advance: "Can I say 'clitoris' on NPR?" And she said yes, so I did. Afterward I asked them, "Did I go too far?" And they said: "No not far enough!" Apparently everyone's OK with it.

Well, let's see how much of this interview gets into NEWSWEEK….
[Laughs.]