Gross Anatomy

by Mara Altman

  “When they poop,” I told Ryan, “it apparently sounds like they are having hot sex.”

  “That’s interesting,” he agreed.

  Since I’d read that detail, I’d been mulling it over and would soon learn that it was another piece to the puzzle; monkeys aren’t the only ones with that issue, after all. People also grunt in circumstances other than sex. People grunt when they lift a heavy box, open a tight jar, or go running at the gym. Many a Hollywood movie tricks us with sounds we think are from sex only to open the door on someone playing tug-of-war or struggling to reach something benign under a bed. We, like yellow baboons, even grunt when we go to the bathroom.

  I talked to a friend, one who demanded anonymity, about that. “I really wish I didn’t make that sound, but I do,” she admitted.

  Was it possible that the strained bathroom grunt shared the same origins with the titillating sex moan?

  * * *

  I spent days looking for someone who could speak knowledgeably about the genesis of grunting. Luckily, grunt experts exist and I actually found one to speak with.

  Lorraine McCune has been studying the grunt at Rutgers University since 1987. She explained that the grunt is a physiological response to exertion, an epiphenomenon occurring when the body needs more oxygen. What happens, more or less, is this: “Under conditions of metabolic demand, activation of the intercostal muscles to maintain lung inflation during expiration sets in motion reflex contraction of laryngeal muscles, creating a system under pressure that lengthens the expiration phase of the breath and enhances oxygenation of the blood. Expiration against the constricted glottis produces pulses of sound.”

  Translation: In the right circumstances, the sound just happens.

  Now you can tell people the next time you get up from a sofa that you’re not just being dramatic. The grunt is legit—you’ve got a tense glottis.

  McCune went on to explain that tennis players often grunt when they hit a ball off their racket and that trying to stop the sound can actually hurt their game. “When you squash the grunt,” she said, “you’re having to use energy that you could have used for your stroke to suppress a vocalization.”

  There is even a study that proves McCune’s point. Researchers from the University of Nebraska Omaha found that professional players increase the ball’s velocity by 3.8 percent if they grunt while taking their shot.

  When I read that, I got a little jealous—theoretically, during sex, the people who grunt enthusiastically can add force to their hump.

  McCune’s main focus is on how children develop language, the first step of which she believes is her beloved and oft overlooked grunt. Think of a preverbal toddler pointing longingly across the room at a ball: “ugh ugh.” In light of this, she told me that she had about zero percent interest in discussing how this laryngeal sound—yes, verified to be the same one that often accompanies a strenuous bathroom session—can transform into a full-blown sex-sound storm.

  This led me to Barry Komisaruk, a neuroscientist and the author of The Science of Orgasm, a man I knew would have no problem waxing poetic about these mechanisms. “No question,” he said. “Sex sounds are a physiological response to exertion.”

  To tell me how sex sounds evolved from a small grunt into the screaming spectacle we know them to be today, he began by telling me a story about seagulls. “When a seagull begins to take off, it flaps its wings,” he said. “Each time it flaps its wings, it makes a sound.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Ahh ahh ahh,” Komisaruk squawked, imitating the bird. “The vocalization is synchronized with the movement because the exertion creates sound.”

  This is where it got interesting: What begins as a simple squawking sound soon evolves to mean much more, he explained. A member of the seagull’s flock that hears “ahh ahh ahh” will interpret it as a signal that his bird buddy is taking off.

  “The sound serves as a type of communication, even though it wasn’t the original intention,” Komisaruk said.

  The same goes for sex sounds, he explained. They may have begun as a series of small respiratory releases, but they have been adapted into a form of communication between partners. When a woman exhibits them, for example, they inform her partner about her level of pleasure and enjoyment.

  “The sound is a representation of the intensity of excitation,” Komisaruk explained. “If a partner gets excited hearing a shout during sex, then that can be a rewarding communication that bonds the partners and encourages them to do it again.”

  I’ve found that your lover can also be encouraged if you just take off your pants and awkwardly stare at him.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, I’d become intensely attuned to all the amorphous noises coming out of people’s mouths. I was focused. The moan, in particular, caught my attention. It was similar to a grunt yet didn’t require any prerequisite exertion.

  Moans were in more places than just the bedroom. I was hearing them everywhere.

  We moan when food is delicious, sometimes even before we take a bite. I myself got just about porny over a hamburger one night. We moan when we get a massage and the masseuse hits the perfect spot. We moan when we stretch our arms up, and we give a little “mmm” when a latte is just right. Why were we moaning like that?

  I asked James Higham, an anthropology professor at New York University who specializes in communication, why we revert to amorphous moaning in these situations versus using the gift of articulate language, which we’ve developed almost miraculously over many millennia of painstaking evolution. In other words, why do pleasurable sensations make us go lexically Neanderthal?

  In turn, Higham explained the law of brevity. The law of brevity states that the words we use most frequently are very short and the words we use rarely are long. “If every time we wanted to talk, ‘yes’ was replaced by ‘sesquipedalianism,’ then our sentences would be absurd,” he said.

  The briefest and easiest form of communication, he explained, of course, is a sound.

  “I don’t have to say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s the spot right there, no wait, just slightly up,’” he explained. “I can just be quiet until they hit the spot and go ‘mmm,’ and there you go—they know.”

  Higham gave about twenty-eight examples about when moans could be helpful.

  “If your mom makes you lasagna and you moan,” he said, “she’ll know to make it frequently.”

  There might be a lesson here: If you want something to happen again, punctuate the activity with a vague low-range vocal hum.

  After talking to Higham, I discussed the theory with a friend. During our conversation, she realized that she used the law of brevity during sex, too. Moans were a form of GPS for her lover. If she becomes quiet, then he knows he’s lost his way. As long as he continues to follow her moans, he’ll reach her desired destination. Essentially, they were playing a game of hot and cold with her genitals, except that in place of “hot” she used various copulatory vocalizations.

  “Totally works!” she said.

  The moan, then, was not only an exaggerated physiological reaction or an antiquated way to get attention, but also a shortcut—a way to be efficient. The moan, that little mush bucket of stretched-out vowels, started to seem even mightier than I’d given it credit for.

  * * *

  Another way to understand the significance of the sex sound was to investigate why women faked. I had never thought about it this way before, but women wouldn’t go through all the trouble to put on such a performance if these sounds didn’t wield significant power and influence.

  Gayle Brewer, a professor of psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, coauthored a study about fake sex sounds. In the unimaginative yet fittingly titled study “Evidence to Suggest That Copulatory Vocalizations in Women Are Not a Reflexive Consequence of Orgasm,” Brewer found that all her seventy-one respondents faked some of the time, while 80 percent of the women faked 50 percent of the time.

  “They were doing it quite a lot,” she said.
/>   She found that women tend to fake for two different reasons.

  One was that they wanted the sex to end. They were over it and ready to move on. This could be because they were pressed for time, tired, rubbed raw, or bored.

  “It can become very abrasive,” Brewer said of sex.

  Brewer explained the method tends to work, too. Because sex sounds give a signal to a woman’s partner that she’s had her orgasm—which she usually hasn’t if it’s during intercourse, because, let’s admit it, the clitoris is about a two-hour drive from the point of penetration—he feels like he can go ahead and let ’er rip.

  “By vocalizing,” explained Brewer, “women are saying, ‘It’s okay, you can go ahead and finish now.’”

  So faking a state of euphoria, as counterintuitive as it sounds, is actually a polite way of communicating “Get the fuck off me now!”

  The other reason women tend to fake is that they want to give an ego boost to their partner. The sounds act as an audible pat on the back, an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

  “They are trying to reassure him that they are satisfied,” Brewer explained, “and positively affect his self-esteem.”

  I wish I’d read this study earlier in my life. I’ve always gone with the theory that giving your lover the silent poker face makes him work harder.

  The researchers posit that by boosting the man’s self-esteem, he’ll be more likely to come back for seconds. Seconds might turn into thirds. The more sex, the more chances there will be for a condom to break and thereby aid in the continuation of our species. (In the study, Brewer worded that differently, though she made the same general point: If a woman and man have a lot of sex, they will be more likely to procreate.) I would bet a lot of vocal women didn’t realize that their vocal chords were trying to get them pregnant.

  Ultimately, I felt mixed about all this news. In one sense, it made lady sex noises seem inauthentic. In another, it made them brilliantly strategic—like over the millennia women have expertly harnessed their vocal chords and turned them into a type of superpower. Using fake sex sounds should come with a cape and a leotard. With her voice, a woman can make a guy fall in love and/or ejaculate on command.

  It seemed like sex sounds weren’t the only thing that evolved—using them strategically did as well. Maybe these sounds deserve a little more respect. Instead of calling them fake, maybe we should make them sound a little classier and call them faux.

  But no matter what we call the sounds, the message from Brewer’s study is clear: A lot of moaning occurs when there isn’t much to moan about after all.

  * * *

  The only question I had left, and maybe most important to me of all, was whether or not I was actually missing out on something by not being vocal. Did sound do more than just communicate and in fact actually enhance the sex experience? In other words, when I’m eighty and tucking in my grandchildren for the night, will I be tempted to warn them about the mistakes in my life? “Dearies, I only have one regret: Grandma should have fucked louder.”

  I found experts—people that I suspected would have intelligent input.

  Nan Wise didn’t hesitate a moment. She thought I was missing out big time—said it was a scientific fact. Wise is a neuroscientist at Rutgers who studies the female orgasm and also moonlights as a sex therapist. She told me about this thing she called the “throat-to-pussy connection.”

  “When you gag, like say you’re giving a blow job and you gag,” she said, “sometimes you will feel a contraction in your vagina.”

  I hadn’t had that experience exactly, but she assured me that it’s a thing that happens with regularity. She said this connection is also common knowledge in birthing classes where coaches will often tell moms-to-be that a relaxed throat will also make for a relaxed vaginal canal. “Everything is interconnected,” said Wise. “When you activate the throat during sex, it can actually be very pleasure enhancing.”

  “How about when people talk during sex?” I asked. “Does that help?”

  Wise said that talking was a whole different beast and not necessarily a pleasure-enhancing one. “Some people are just chatty motherfuckers,” she said.

  Then there was Barbara Carrellas, a sex educator and the author of Urban Tantra, who was on the same wavelength as Wise. “Obviously no one has ever died from not making sex sounds,” Carrellas assured me, “but they add so much to the erotic experience.” She explained that if you’re not making sounds, then you’re probably not breathing very much, and breath is absolutely critical for an expanded orgasmic experience. “All sex is about energy and sound brings energy,” she said. “I mean that in the physics sense, not in the woo-woo sense.”

  I’d always felt that I should make sounds only if they were so powerful that they could not otherwise be stopped—that’s the only way I felt that my sex sounds would be authentic. The physical sensations, in my mind, had to lead to the audible.

  Wise and Carrellas were saying it was okay and even good to try the opposite. Sometimes it was the vocalization that could actually drive, augment, and incite the physical response.

  I continued to speak with an inordinate number of people—voice teachers, prenatal yoga coaches, sound healers, Taoist gurus, and even a group of women who call themselves sensualists; they spend a large part of each day having orgasms. It was unanimous. Every single one of them lauded the sex sound. They weren’t advising to do it to please a partner or to playact sexy and over-the-top like a sexpot porn star; they believed that our own unique sound—whatever that may be for each one of us—could legitimately expand our own pleasure.

  Donna Reid, a voice teacher for the past twenty years, even got metaphysical: “When you free the voice, you free the self.”

  The feedback was becoming quite compelling; it sounded like it paid off to be a vocal woman.

  Over the next few days, I digested all this information, and some surprising emotions emerged. Even though being loud had obvious advantages and was something that I’d aspired to since a young age, I began to feel righteous about my place in the vocal continuum. I felt like one of the little guys who must stand up stoically for a different way of life, like Amish people. No matter how silly their buns might look covered in their little bun caps, they do it because, gosh darn it, that’s who they are. I even thought about starting a silent-sex chat room in order to give support to other silent sexers all over the world. We could band together and petition for our kind to be represented in Hollywood films.

  But then one evening my curiosity got the better of me—I decided to do it like a baboon.

  * * *

  I’d warned Dave that things might be different, but he wasn’t prepared for what happened that night. He laughed a lot. I laughed, too. It was uncomfortable. I sounded a bit like Pee-wee Herman trying to use a toothpick to till a large garden. No one told me that it might take a while to find my sex voice, but as with most art forms, I think that it’s true.

  Back when I’d spoken to Wise, I’d asked her why a woman might not make a lot of sound. First, she theorized that this woman might be repressed, but then she said something else I found quite insightful. “Maybe she wants to concentrate on her own sensations,” she’d said. “It can be a way to be focused on the inside, on what’s going on for you.”

  I liked that reason and it resonated.

  When people go blind, their other senses often pick up the slack, leaving them, for example, with super ultrasonic bat levels of hearing. Maybe if you aren’t busy hollering during sex, you have the space in your brain to develop advanced sensory sensitivity in your vagina.

  I’m not saying I’m not a little repressed as well. I’m obviously a little repressed. I also refuse to do karaoke or let loose on a dance floor without giving myself alcohol poisoning first. I guess what I’m saying is that I’ll keep experimenting with sound—I will—but at my core, I’m a silent fucker for life.

  5

  The Big Dripper

  During much of my adult life, it has not
been uncommon for random people on the New York City streets to ask me, out of the blue, if I had a good run. I look around confused—I’d just walked to the mailbox or grabbed some lunch—until I realize that they are staring at, and trying to find context for, the beads of sweat swimming down my forehead. I give in. I don’t want to have to explain that actually I’m just disgusting.

  “Yes, great run,” I lie.

  Throughout my life, sweat has caused me numerous moments of discomfort. There was that job interview: I finished it up feeling great about myself, only to look down and discover that I’d had armpit sweat spots the whole time. I looked like a paper towel commercial, but instead of a paper towel, it was my shirt that was touting its absorbency after a spill. Two circular pit lakes had combined right in the center of my chest to create one massive heart-shaped spot of shame.

  I did not hear back about the job.

  My wedding was another sweaty situation. While most brides are concerned about DJs and flower arrangements, my biggest concern in the weeks before the big day was how I could be sure that my white dress would not look like I had won a wet T-shirt contest. To ensure dryness, I used a product that will probably give my child, if I have one, eleven fingers.

  And yes, it was worth it.

  I’ve learned how to hide behind tree trunks and jam my hand down the top of my shirt with a napkin to take a swipe at drying my mid-chest boob sweat without anyone seeing. Before getting dressed, I first imagine what my outfit would look like with wet splotches. My wardrobe, because of this, is mostly made up of black. In a very self-defeating practice, I’ve been known to keep my jacket on, despite being hot, just to cover whatever mess my skin has already made inside. Of course, things only get worse. Of course, I never learn. At least I no longer make the mistake of trying to dry off my sweat with a bathroom hand dryer. Never, ever do that. Not ever. Any drying progress you make is ruined almost immediately by the intense heat of the dryer, which only makes you sweatier, coupled with the anxiety sweat that occurs as you consider the possibility of an acquaintance imminently walking in on your precarious position.