Mark Leyner - Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

I cross the crowded room and find Leyner conducting a focus group on homemade and alternative lubricants. As I reach the front of the group, Leyner is now meticulously mixing exact proportions of Tabasco, runny Brie, and a dash of his sacred tequila to form what he now calls his “spicy sex balm.” I try to suggest that the Tabasco may cause contact dermatitis on the more sensitive parts of the body, but Leyner chooses not to heed my medical advice as he leads his new “special” friend to his ad hoc laboratory.

I am left behind to answer a sudden barrage of questions about sex. With anatomically correct dolls, Sex and the City, and Internet porn, you’d think there’d be nothing left to learn. But there are still some questions people are afraid to ask until they’ve had that third martini.

You are what you eat. In this case, it is somewhat true, as sperm contains important genetic material. But sperm, despite its important load, is not particularly nutritious or fattening. The average ejaculate, about one teaspoon, contains between two and three hundred million sperm. Total calories: about five. These calories are derived from protein, including enzymes and sugars (mainly fructose) secreted into semen by the prostate gland to provide the sperm with the energy to swim.

Other good stuff found in semen includes water, vitamin C, citric acid, phosphate, bicarbonates, zinc, and prostaglandins. A veritable breakfast of champions.

Gberg:I still can’t believe we ended up with this title.

Gberg:I still miss “Cocktail Party Medicine.”

Leyner:I know… I can’t even look at my own nipples anymore without blushing with shame.

Gberg:Or if you had your way, it would be “Is Sperm Fattening?” That would be even worse.

Gberg:It hurts the neck to stare at your nipples for too long.

Leyner:I still love that title.

11:50A.M.

Gberg:That would have meant the end of my medical career.

Leyner:To the contrary — I think it would have landed you a Surgeon General nomination in the Hillary Clinton administration.

In the 1970s there was an after-school special on TV where two girls were talking about whether you could get pregnant from kissing a boy while wearing a wet bathing suit. That definitely isn’t true, but the answer to this question is a little more complicated.

The basic answer is yes, you can.

First, not all bleeding is a real period. Sometimes a woman can have spotting during ovulation and that would be a very easy time to get pregnant.

Also, if a woman has a short menstrual cycle (about twenty-one days), then she could be ovulating on day seven of her cycle. This would be the seventh day from the first day of her period, and if her period lasts seven days, then it is possible that her period is ending just as she is ovulating.

Confusing? It is definitely easier to practice safe sex.

Oysters definitely do resemble a certain anatomical part, but this doesn’t make them stimulants. There are a lot of different foods and substances that are thought to be aphrodisiacs. Though there is no science to prove that any of them work, there are some theories on oysters.

Oysters are full of many vitamins and minerals, especially zinc. Zinc controls progesterone levels, which have a positive effect on the libido. Other foods and products that are thought to get your mojo working include:

chocolate

strawberries

champagne

Spanish Fly

animal crackers (but only if consumed during sex and dunked in Spanish fly)

When I was in Spain, I learned that the Spaniards believed that the distance measured from either side of your nose across the tip to the other side hinted at your penis size. As the owner of a rather large schnoz, I, Billy, was happy about this. But, by this same measurement, Geppetto must have had quite a task making pants to hold Pinocchio, and Cyrano de Bergerac wouldn’t have had to waste so much time writing love letters for others. Unfortunately, none of this is true.

There also seems to be no evidence that hand size is related to the size of your package.

When it comes to foot size, two urologists, in a study in the British Journal of Urology, measured the stretched penile length of 104 men and related this to their shoe size. They found that there was no relationship.

As for other size issues, a small penis expands more than a big one during erection. And since a woman’s sexually sensitive parts are in and around the outer third of the vagina, a big penis is not necessarily needed to satisfy her. Size doesn’t really matter, ladies.

You must be referring to nocturnal tumescence! Or do you mean Private Willie Is Playing Reveille, or perhaps Morning Glory? There are many names for this morning starter, but only one good explanation for its presence.

These erections are experienced in the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of sleep. REM sleep is more frequent just before waking up.

Erections can also happen at other times without any stimulus. There is no scientific reason why these spontaneous erections always seem to happen in the most embarrassing places (parties, holidays, movies, weddings, funerals).

Professor Leyner has written extensively on the subject. The noted scientific research journal Maximum Golf contained this exerpt:

Announcer B:If you’re just joining us, Michael Neubauer is still in bed — but we’ve got an interesting development here.

Announcer A:That’s an erection, Bobby. That’s a classic morning erection. You couldn’t diagram it any better than that. The corpora cavernosa and the corpus spongiosum are engorged with blood and rigid. Absolutely paradigmatic. What do you think?

Announcer B:I think you just have to give it a good whack here, Chris.

Announcer A:Apparently you’ve got the ear of Michael Neubauer, because that appears to be precisely what he’s going to do.

Announcer B:I really like what he’s trying right now. He’s running this frenetic montage of actresses, models, and athletes through his mind: We’ve got Renée Zellweger, Neve Campbell, Liv Tyler, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Britney Spears, Salma Hayek, Foxy Brown, Niki Taylor, Lil’ Kim, Melissa Joan Hart, Charlize Theron, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Zaha Hadid, Benazir Bhutto, Se Ri Pak, Karrie Webb, Serena Williams, Anna Kournikova, Jelena Dokic, Mary Pierce. Now he’s going way back: we’ve got some high school yearbook action; we’ve got some baby-sitter action. He’s just totally scouring the memory bank here — there’s one of his grandmother’s mah-jongg partners with the arm wattles….

Announcer A:What are you trying to do in this situation?

Announcer B:You’re trying to get some erotic traction. You’re looking for that face or that body that just clicks, y’know, that you can fixate on, and then you try to get the voice, the incantatory exhortations, “Michael… oh yeah… oh Michael… oh my God!”

Announcer A:How do you like his mechanics right now, Bobby?

Announcer B:Excellent. He’s got a very good rhythm going right now.