Sometimes she talks in weird voices or tries out goofy accents. She has a dry sense of humor but isn't afraid to be silly.

In person, Roach, 49, is exactly as she appears on the page: witty, down-to-earth, inquisitive. The researcher's answer was maybe, but with a proviso: ' You get the human subject committee approval for that one.' In a rare moment of her books colliding, she even asked a researcher whether it was technically possible for a beating-heart cadaver to have an orgasm. But, as in her previous books, Roach manages to work her way into the most unlikely places: a dildo factory, a penile enlargement surgery room in Taiwan, a park bench next to a woman who can have a hands-free orgasm and was willing to demonstrate. It is an unholy marriage: As one can imagine, the laboratory is not the preferred location for humans to mate or be observed mating. Roach, an Oaklander who also wrote the best-seller 'Stiff,' about the fate of cadavers, and 'Spook,' about the scientific study of the afterlife, spent two years researching and writing on sex and science.

I didn't really ask any more questions about that.' 'He said that people were returning the toothbrushes after they broke and clearly had been used as a vibrator. 'I asked him, how do you know women are using them to masturbate?' Roach said. Woog, who also invented the first electric toothbrush.' Apparently, after Woog heard that women were repurposing the toothbrushes for masturbatory use, he decided to just make a vibrator himself. 'This is in the book,' she says, picking up an Eroscillator package.

On an adjoining table is a modern device named the Eroscillator, with the catchphrase 'the science of pleasure.' One looks like an electric mixer, and another is oddly named the Eskimo. Roach takes a peep at two glass cases full of antique vibrators. The exact source of the floral scent was unknown, but the display of lubricants and body oil might have had something to do with it. Indeed, it was a sweet-smelling store filled with sex toys.

Bonk stiff