76
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
✖ ✖ ✖
Found
in the bark of an African tree, yohimbine is a popular
“herbal” aphrodisiac known in pharmacology circles as a
“selective competitive al-
pha2-adrenergic receptor an-
tagonist.” And while that
doesn’t make it a love potion
per se, the rapid heart rate,
high
blood pressure, and
overstimulation that result
from high doses of the stuff
do tend to
feel
like arousal. If
those side eff ects aren’t de-
terrent enough, however,
consider that the drug is at
its most eff ective when, um,
directly injected in the you-
know-where.
✖ ✖ ✖
Th
e Snake King Completely
restaurant in Guangdong, China, serves snake 100 ways, ev-
ery one of which is supposedly a libido lifter. One popular fa-
vorite is a hot wine in which fi ve snakes have been pickled.
And while each snake should help on its own, they’re suppos-
edly even more eff ective with their numbers combined. After
all, fi ve
is a lucky number in China, which should aid the
drinker’s chances of getting lucky. Th
e Vietnamese also rec-
ognize the snake as an aphrodisiac, but prefer to swallow the
still-throbbing heart of a cobra,
with a little blood, from a
shot glass. Luckily, they limit themselves to the lucky num-
ber one.
The Avocado
“Down Low”
Somehow those Aztecs al-
ways seem to have their minds
in the Mesoamerican gutter.
So much so that they couldn’t
help but look at avocados
(which admittedly hang in
pairs) and conclude that they
looked a lot like human testi-
cles. In fact, they named the
fruit-bearing tree the
ahuacatl
—
or “testicle tree”—from which
we get the English word
avo-
cado.
77
✖ ✖ ✖
Despite what its name might have you believe, the Spanish fl y is
neither Spanish, nor a fl y. It’s a beetle
found primarily in south-
ern Europe, which, when dried and crushed, makes a powder
that’s been used as an aphrodisiac since Roman times. It’s actu-
ally an irritant, though, and when ingested and passed through
the kidneys, the Spanish fl y causes not arousal,
but a painful
swelling in the urinary tract. It has been said the Marquis de
Sade fed bonbons laced with Spanish fl y to women during an
orgy, accidentally poisoning them. Who knew the marquis was
so romantic? Now we can’t speak for everyone, but hearing his
tale defi nitely puts us in the mood for
a good old-fashioned love
story. . . .
09
Secret Romance Novelists
Before becoming the Vatican’s top dog in 1458, Pius “the cool-
est-pope-in-history” II was an adventurer who traveled
abroad on spy missions for the papacy, a smooth-talking dip-
lomat, and a prolifi c writer. (Th
ink of him as a kind of medi-
eval James Bond with a slightly diff erent collar.) His
Eurialus
and Lucretia
is still
read today, partly because it’s an excellent
early example of the epistolary novel, but mostly because it
was written by a man who became pope—and it’s
dirty
! Full
of erotic imagery and surprisingly funny, it’s comprised of
salacious love letters between Lucretia (a married woman!)
and Eurialus, servant to the Duke of Austria.
✖ ✖ ✖
One of America’s greats,
Joyce Carol Oates, has become
synonymous with high-falutin’ literature. So what’s a writer
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: