Sexperiments II: Case Studies in Perversion

Humans are an Ingenious, Restless, Horny Species. While lower organisms have been content to have sex the same old way for eons, we seem to be on a perpetual quest to discover fresh ways of experiencing nature's five-ticket thrill ride. Never mind that this experimentation frequently defies common sense, the laws of nature and the limits of most health insurance plans. The resulting case histories--strange and beautiful, grand and gross--are written up in obscure academic journals by ER physicians and coroners and filed away in the dusty corners of medical libraries. After a little digging, that's where we found them. Editor's Note: This article should not be read before sex. Or dinner.

Masturbation Bloopers

A 40-Year-Old Man visited an emergency room in Pennsylvania, complaining of "man trouble." He dropped his pants so a urologist could unwrap three yards of gauze covering his genitals. The patient's scrotum had swelled to the size of a grapefruit, and a jagged laceration extended down its left side. A testicle was missing. The patient, who worked at a machine shop, said that several days earlier he had been injured on the job. After further questioning he admitted that he had gotten into the habit at work, after his co-workers left for lunch, of holding his erection against a canvas drive belt. One day, as he reached climax, his scrotum became caught between the pulley wheel and the drive belt of the machine, tossing him several feet into the air. The man closed the wound with eight shots from a staple gun and went back to work.

A Coroner In Cardiff, U.K. reported in 1988 that a 59-year-old cross-dressing antiques dealer with a weak heart had accidentally killed himself by inhaling nitrous oxide from a dental machine. The coroner discovered two other dental machines in the man's flat, along with a full canister of gas (and seven empty ones) and a supply of porn depicting sex and bondage in dental chairs.

In 1985 A Coroner In New Orleans wrote about a security guard who'd rolled himself tightly into giant sheets of industrial cling wrap, with his hands over his genitals so he could masturbate. A snorkel protruding from one end of the cocoon provided an airway, but the mouthpiece had slipped.

Sex on the Brain

* A 1983 Study in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry discusses three patients taking the antidepressant clomipramine who had orgasms whenever they yawned. One woman came even when she forced herself to yawn. A male patient wore a condom all day because the drug gave him a frequent, intense urge to yawn and he came in his pants every time he did.

* A 42-Year-Old Schizophrenic visited a clinic in Sheffield, U.K. for an impotence drug. The man returned the next day, complaining that the drug caused him to hear women singing sadly and men reading from the Koran. The doctor cited the case as an example of "erection-induced hallucination"--which is the opposite of what most men experience.

* Two Doctors In Washington state described a 72-year-old stroke victim with "alien-hand syndrome"--a perception that one's hand has a mind of its own. The man said his left hand would grab at the TV remote or fix his collar even if he told it not to. His wife expressed the greatest concern about the alien hand's habit of masturbating its owner in public.

Been There, Transmitted That

* A Woman riding a hotel elevator in Madison, Wisconsin kissed an elderly man's bald head, telling him, "You're too old for anything else." The man developed a lesion on his scalp, which turned out to be syphilis.

* A 19-Year-Old Woman with swollen, burning lips visited a doctor in Virginia. Her condition was a mystery until the next day, when she noticed that her boyfriend had poison ivy on his face, hands and penis. A few days earlier he had gone hunting, and she welcomed him home with a blow job. The doctor surmised that the boyfriend had gotten poison ivy on his hands and then touched his penis while urinating.

* After Three Months at sea a skipper with gonorrhea visited a doctor in Greenland. The skipper said his symptoms appeared two months after leaving port but that he hadn't slept with anyone on board. When pressed he reluctantly told his story, which the doctor shared in Genitourinary Medicine: "He had roused his engineer in his cabin during the night because of engine trouble. After the engineer left, the skipper found an inflatable doll with an artificial vagina in the bed and had sex with it." The engineer, who also tested positive for gonorrhea, admitted ejaculating inside the doll moments before his boss knocked.

Superheroes of Sex

A 35-Year-Old Father of four contacted sex researchers at Rutgers University and claimed he could have rapid-fire orgasms. He said he came at least five times a day. The scientists hooked the man to instruments to measure his heart and breathing rates, then watched through two-way glass as he viewed a porn video. Thirteen minutes into the video he began touching himself; 18 minutes later, while resting his chin in a strap so his pupil dilation could be measured, he ejaculated into a specimen cup. Over the next 36 minutes he came five more times without losing his erection. He told the researchers that he had stopped only because the room was getting stuffy.

Beginning In The Early 1970s two researchers at the Center for Marital and Sexual Studies in Long Beach, California attached laboratory monitors to the vaginas, anuses and pelvises of 469 women and asked them to bring themselves to orgasm. Their star attraction came 134 times in an hour, or two to three times a minute. She then attempted to snuggle for three days.

Cat-Scratch Fever

In A Lengthy 1998 Article, a New York City psychoanalyst offers this case history: "During the third year of analysis it was discovered that Mrs. A. found it necessary that her cat be in the room when she was having sex with her husband. More precisely, Mrs. A. preferred to have one hand on the cat during sex and would become anxious and unable to continue if the cat escaped. Mrs. A. had already revealed that she was unable to sleep at night unless she held its tail between her legs." The analyst concluded that the pussy represented Mrs. A.'s desire to have a penis. All that for just $200 an hour.

Explorations

In 1981 British Doctors made note of several victims of vacuum cleaner injuries, including a 60-year-old man who said he'd been cleaning his house in the nude while his wife was out shopping when the vacuum "turned itself on" and sucked in his penis. A 65-year-old man said he was picking up his tools when a vacuum that happened to be running sucked in his penis. A 49-year-old man said he had leaned over to unplug the vacuum when his gown fell open and the machine sucked in his penis. Each man suffered cuts to the head of his cock. The skeptical doctors noted that in at least two of the cases, the vacuum fan blades were located six inches from the inlet.

An Article Published In 1743 in the Journal of the Royal Academy of Paris lists objects through which men had slipped their flaccid penises without sufficient thought of escape, including a wedding band and a ring attached to a skeleton key that dangled down to tickle the subject's balls. Three centuries later doctors are still being amazed. Last year in the journal Urology, doctors from Bonn University in Germany provided several modern examples of "penile strangulation," including one involving another wedding band. In two instances--a 67-year-old who squeezed into a bull ring at a gay club and a 26-year-old stuck for four days in a hammerhead--the objects had to be removed by the fire department with high-speed electric saws.

Sexual Healing

* A 40-Year-Old Israeli received a shot for back pain. Six hours later he began hiccuping. He tried a variety of home remedies, but nothing helped. Four days later, still hiccuping, he had intercourse with his wife. The hiccups stopped the moment he ejaculated.

* A Diagnosis Of Blue Balls, from a recent issue of Pediatrics: "A 14-year-old male presented to the emergency department with a history of severe bilateral scrotal pain of one and a half hours' duration. He described the pain as sharp, stabbing, constant and unaffected by position. Several weeks later telephone follow-up revealed that the patient had begun to have sexual intercourse with his girlfriend, and no further episodes had occurred."

* Writing In A 1978 issue of Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality, a Florida psychologist recalls a 20-year-old patient who beat off 17 times a day and said he could not control his sexual urges. The man had been fired from a gas station because of his refusal to go near female customers and from a theater for masturbating in the bathroom. Three weeks after therapy began the man caught his wife and his father in bed. A week later he began sleeping with his mother-in-law. Five years later they had three children and the man said his impulsive urges had long since disappeared.

Instructions Not Included

In 1982 A Doctor at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston recalled a patient being treated for infertility who had been asked to collect and submit a semen sample. Instead the man submitted a vial of urine. "Questioning the patient and his wife about their knowledge of human sexuality revealed total ignorance," the doctor reported. A physician cured the man's impotence by explaining the difference between going and coming.

A Georgia Man suffering from coronary heart disease found that placing a nitrate patch on his chest as prescribed gave him headaches, so he put it on his leg. He also rubbed a used patch against his penis for five minutes and found it gave him a hard-on. "Sexual intercourse with his wife followed," reported doctors from Emory University. "Several minutes later she wondered why she had the worst headache of her life."

Two Physicians in Sheffield, U.K. note in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy that a 65-year-old patient suffering from erectile dysfunction had constructed his own penis pump using $6 worth of materials: an eight-inch acrylic tube, plastic tubing, electrical tape, superglue and the cap from a bottle of hair spray.

Rise of the Machines

In A 1972 Report in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, the medical examiner of Nueces County, Texas describes a case of autoerotic death by automobile. An airline pilot told his wife he was going pistol shooting. Ninety minutes later a fisherman found the pilot's nude body chained to an idling 1968 Volkswagen at the end of a rural road. After careful examination of the scene, the coroner determined that the victim had attached himself to the rear bumper with a harness connected to a 10-foot chain. He fixed the steering wheel so the car would drive in circles, then put the car in low gear. The pilot apparently found it arousing to jog nude while chained to his Bug. But he made a fatal error: After he'd been satisfied, he didn't unhook himself. The chain became slack and wrapped around the back axle, dragging him along the ground and crushing him against the left rear panel of the car. His wife said she knew he'd purchased a customized chain harness but never asked why.

In 1993 the same journal documented two autoerotic fatalities involving tractors. In the first case a man was found suspended from the raised shovel of a backhoe. The victim's parents said he visited the tractor every night before bed, and a search of his belongings turned up a lengthy poem written in tribute to the machine, which he'd named Stone. In the second case a farmer, nude but for a pair of eight-inch red heels and stockings, had duct-taped his ankles to a pipe with his legs spread. Using ropes attached to the tractor controls, he had planned to suspend himself upside down. Instead, the scoop crushed him.

The Earth Moved

In 1996 seismologists in western Canada noticed that the readings from one of their earthquake meters were off the charts. The instrument had been vandalized in the past, so they asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to investigate. According to a report in Seismological Research Letters, police found a young couple, unaware that every thrust was being recorded 80 miles away, generating "love waves" on the surface of the concrete vault.

Leaky Pipes

In 1982 doctors at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina recounted in Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality the case of a 65-year-old patient recovering from prostate surgery. Seven years after the procedure, the man noticed he wasn't producing as much semen. He also noted a milky discharge from his posterior. Apparently a hole had developed between his rectum and the duct that carries semen to the penis, and he was coming out of his ass.

The Birds and the Blades

Doctors In South Africa treated a 15-year-old girl after a fight in which an ex-boyfriend stabbed her in the abdomen. Nine months after, surgery, when the girl returned to the hospital pregnant, it was discovered that she had no vagina. Following the delivery of her baby by cesarean section, the girl explained that because of her birth defect she had always fellated her boyfriends. In fact, she'd been stabbed when her ex caught her going down on a new lover. The child strongly resembled the new boyfriend, leading the doctor to hypothesize in The British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology that his semen had made its way down her throat and then into her reproductive organs by way of the stab wound.

The Kinky Old Days

Odd Sex has been around forever. A century ago Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) was its patron saint. A professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Vienna, he compiled the sexual histories of 237 deviants in his book Psychopathia Sexualis.

Case 33: "Patient had a woman dressed in a ball gown lie down on a low sofa. He gazed at her for a while, then sprang excitedly on top of her and defecated onto her bosom."

Case 48: "A married man presented himself with numerous scars on his arm. When he wished to approach his wife, he first had to cut his arm. Then she would suck the wound and during the act become violently excited."

Case 108: "At 15 his attention was attracted to an apron hung to dry. He put it on and masturbated behind a fence. From that time, if he met anyone with an apron on he ran after them." To avoid aprons the man joined the military and later the Trappists. Eventually doctors sent him to an asylum, where he said "his dreams were filled with aprons."

Keep on Sticking

Sexual Explorers have been recklessly inserting objects into their bodies for centuries. In a 1986 issue of Surgery, doctors from the University of Wisconsin Hospital said they had collected 182 cases involving 700 objects and 200 patients. Even more fascinating than the objects in question is the explanation of how they reached their destination. Some Highlights:

Object: Perfume Bottle

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: Couldn't remove with back scratcher.

Object: Epoxy

Inserted into: urethra

Explanation: "Mistook for medicine."

Object: Fresh Concrete

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: "Fooling around" with lover. Ping-Pong ball inside mold.

Object: Deer Tongue

Inserted into: vagina

Explanation: Lost grip during masturbation-by-venison session.

Object: Cucumber, Parsnip, Apples

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: Unknown assailants inserted cucumber and parsnip, but patient admitted to the apples.

Object: Cold-Cream Jar And A Lemon

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: Hemorrhoid treatment (no indication of hemorrhoids found).

Object: Dice

Inserted into: vagina

Explanation: Boyfriend wanted to hit "something hard" during sex.

Object: Glass Jar

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: Slipped in shower.

Object: Lightbulb

Inserted into: rectum

Explanation: Won $100 bet.