The ED
I was sitting around
the sorority house discussing senior projects with my sisters when
the synergy hit.
It was a comment by Arlene
that kicked off the whole discussion, "Kelly and I have an
idea for a great psychology experiment, but we are running into
a problem with taking some of the measurements."
"What kind of problems?"
Nicole asked.
"Erection problems,"
Kelly put in and then laughed at many thoughts her answer evoked.
"I never had a problem
with any of my boys maintaining an erection." I managed to
choke out between laughs.
"No, no, it's not
like that," Kelly went on, "We have a problem measuring
erections."
"Haven't you girls
ever heard of a tape measure?" Pam said.
That broke off a side
discussion on how a penis should be measured. Some of the girls
were quite opinionated when it came to this topic.
Arlene finally brought
the conversation back to the original topic, "It isn't the
length we are concerned with for this experiment; it's timing when
a guy gets an erection. It's easy to judge a completely flaccid
penis, not that I've seen many of those," she added with a
wink, "and it's not difficult to tell when a guy is completely
hard. It's that area in between that's difficult to define. When
does a prick go from not erect to erect?"
"What are you girls
up to," Pam asked, "that makes timing an erection such
a critical thing?"
Kelly described their
proposal, "For the last three years, Arlene and I have been
studying psychology. Between the two of us, there hasn't been a
course offered at the university on human sexuality that we haven't
taken. And in all those courses, there has been a fair amount done
on male sexuality. However, little has been addressed about male
sexual response to stimuli, and in particular, male susceptibility
to fetishes and fetish objects."
"What Arlene and
I propose is to take males in various stages of development, and
expose them to familiar fetish objects such as leather, rubber and
silk. We need to measure response time; that is time to erect, in
the presence and absence of these objects."
"Part of the experiment
is to measure mean time to ejaculate, in the absence of the object,
while masturbating in the presence of the object, and while being
masturbated with the object. This measurement is fairly easy to
obtain. All we have to do is measure the time from the first stroke
to the first squirt, and we have our data."
"However, erections
are another issue. When a boy gets hard is very subjective. We need
a better way than just physical observation."
Here Arlene turned and
asked, "Pam, you're a pre-med student. Isn't there some clinical
definition of an erection?"
"Technically speaking,"
Pam said, "an erection happens when the penis becomes engorged
with blood. This is caused by the constriction of muscles around
the base of the penis that traps the blood and prevents it from
going out as fast as the heart pumps it in. When it gets full, it's
hard."
"That still doesn't
answer my question."
Pam continued, "If
you are asking me for a definition of now it's erect," here
she snapped her fingers, "now it's not. I can't give you that."
Now it was my turn to
jump into the conversation, "You say that the best definition
of an erection is that the penis is full of blood. Is there any
way that we can measure how much blood is in the penis?" I
couldn't believe how casually we were talking about this subject.
It belied the jittery stomach I knew I had.
"I suppose we could
use the old Archimedian principle of displacement." Pam said.
"Simply have him dunk his member in a glass of water and see
how much it displaces."
Arlene frowned, "That
won't work. It will interfere with the experiment. Is there any
other way?"
"Well, so much blood
in so much volume, should raise the blood pressure in the organ.
I suppose we could measure that."
The bulb went on in my
head, "So you are saying that all we have to do is put a little
blood pressure cup on his penis."
"Essentially, yes."
Kelly interrupted us
again, "That won't do either. Wouldn't that be the same thing
as clamping down on his dick and preventing the blood from leaving
- sort of like a penis ring? Wouldn't that create a 'false' erection?"
"Penis ring?"
I thought, "What has Kelly been doing on her dates?"
Pam never got to answer
as I jumped in, "Suppose there were a way to measure the pressure
passively. Would that do?"
"I guess so."
Kelly admitted.
Pam asked me, "How
are you going to do that?"
"You told me a moment
ago that erections are caused by restricted blood flow, right?"
Pam nodded.
"Well, in the unerected
state, blood flows through the penis, right?"
Again the nod.
"In the erected
state, the flow is slower."
Pam prodded, "and?"
The electrical engineer
in me took off, "Well, the blood has electrolytes in it. These
ions, as they move, constitute a current. The faster the blood flows,
the higher the current. All we have to do is measure the current.
It should start off high, and decrease as the penis erects. When
the penis is full, it should level off."
"How high a current
are we talking about here?" Pam asked.
"You tell me. Give
me figures for the ion concentration in the blood and an idea of
the average speed of the blood, and the amount of blood in a penis."
Pam quoted some figures.
I tapped numbers into my calculator and announced, "It ought
to be in the neighborhood of nanoamps."
"Nanoamps?"
Arlene and Kelly announced at once.
I figured it was time
for a basic lesson in electronics, "It takes a couple of amps
to run your hair dryer. A milliamp is a thousandth of an amp. A
microamp is a millionth of an amp. A nanoamp is a thousand times
smaller than even a microamp. Now, bear in mind my calculations
are crude, and I might be off by a factor of 10."
Pam chuckled, "Times
two at least. My figures are a good guess at best. I'd have to do
a lot of research and calculations of my own." She hesitated
and added, "A nanoamp? Can we measure something that small."
"Not yet, but I
think I just figured out my term project. There is a lot of application
for this besides measuring erections."
And so the Erector Detector
(ED) project was born. Officially, and for the school records, ED
stood for "Electrolyte Displacement."
Pam helped me a lot with
the physiology portion of the project, particularly showing me where
to place the sensors to get the best pickup on the blood flow. I
learned more about penises and how they operated than most men will
ever know.
The nice thing about
the ED is that it could work on any body part we could wrap it around.
Our initial experiments were done using arms since they were easily
accessible and the large volume of blood going though them assured
a decent current. I was right, when we got our figures put together,
the current was in the order of tens of nanoamps.
Had we stopped at measuring
the current in an arm, we would have gotten an A+ for sure. However,
we went on to experiment using fingers and toes. If we could have
success there, then we would most definitively do well with the
much larger penis.
Success was ours and
we had an analog signal that measured the blood flow in real time.
Our first experiment with a live male subject on a live male member
was conducted with a volunteer named George. Actually his girlfriend
volunteered him. He had no idea that half a dozen girls would be
watching his performance. You could tell I'm an engineer I spent
as much time looking at my gauges as I did his penis.
It took a while to convince
him to disrobe for us. Candice, his girlfriend suggested alcohol,
but we didn't want the effects to interfere with his ability to
get an erection. "Come on baby, I'll make it up to you,"
she said. Blushing and sweating, he eventually agreed. After all,
it was all in the name of science.
That was the first time
we ran into other psychological factors. Kelly was first to comment,
"He's already erected. That's not good."
"So what's the problem
with that?" I asked.
"Like, duh, we're
supposed to be measuring how long it takes him to get erected."
"I forgot about
that. I'm so used to seeing them this way." Nichole put in.
"I guess we will
have to let the boys stay naked for a while so they get comfortable
with it." Arlene suggested.
"I don't know,"
Kelly said, "would you be able to get it down if you were a
guy naked in front of a roomful of girls?"
"Well, it's not
like we're naked or anything," Nichole said. "So why would
they be excited."
"It's not that easy,"
Kelly explained, "Erections can be caused by physical stimulation
to be sure, but most of the time they are caused by purely psychological
factors. Looking at something sexual is only one way men get erect.
Other emotions can also stimulate an erection. Embarrassment is
a very powerful emotion."
I had never thought of
that, but putting it together with what I recently learned about
female domination, it began to make sense.
"And we may have
the opposite problem. Sometimes strong emotions can hinder the erection
process. Either way we are going to have to keep the boys naked
for awhile before we can start our experiments."
Although we were looking
at him, we weren't really paying much attention to George. Here
he is standing naked in the presence of a half dozen fully-clothed
girls and we are discussing his penis as much as we would be discussing
a rash on the back of his hand. George, the man, had ceased to exist.
George, life support for a penis, was born.
Another problem with
the project was all the preparation. Not only did we have to put
the collar on the penis, we also had to hook it up to the computer.
The sensor, after much design and redesign was manageable enough
and came in sizes to fit comfortably on toes, fingers, necks, legs,
and arms as well as penises. Nonetheless, it had wires attached
to it, and the subject was tethered to a computer. Hardly a portable
device, and hardly a romantic setting.
Nonetheless, this was
good enough for Arlene and Kelly's experiment. The hard work we
other girls put in was rewarded by being able to participate in
and observe the experiments. Of course I had to be there to babysit
my device.
Then there was the "fetish
parade." That was the point of the experiment after all. As
worldly as we girls liked to think ourselves, we were really didn't
know anything about fetishes other than what we were able to read
about.
We had a problem with
this part of the experiment. What fetish objects should we use?
The internet provided us with more than we could ever imagine. While
searching these nooks and crannies, I came across the topic of female
domination. So that's what we were doing! Or was it?
We knew that there were
women who had a lot more experience with fetishes than we did. Unfortunately
we couldn't afford to hire them to put on the shows we needed. Instead
we hired one for one time to teach us. She was only going to spend
a few hours with us, but when she found out why we wanted to know,
she spent the whole day working with us.
I'm normally a jeans,
sweatshirt and tennie-runner type of girl so I really felt funny
parading up and down in front of these naked men and boys in a latex
cat suit.
Reducing a penis to a
mere object of study brought back memories when it was an mere object
of study for my kindergarten girlfriends and me. Then it was curiosity
and fascination about what the organ looked like. Now it was curiosity
and fascination of how it worked. Specifically how the way women
can make it work. I learned that I could control a man's penis and
that control of the penis means control of the man. I liked that
feeling. I liked having men naked before me.
Not that the men had
to be naked. The detector didn't care how they were dressed. Arlene
and Nichole never explained to them that remaining clothed was an
option. All they really had to do was slip the collar over their
organs and run the wire out their pants. They assumed that if we
needed to measure their erections that they needed to be totally
naked. None of us involved in the project felt it necessary to correct
that misconception.
Nor were the pictures
we took a necessary part of the experiment. They certainly were
not going to wind up in the final report!
The girls were quite
thorough in their measurements. Even with the device, men varied
a lot in their erectile capabilities. Pam found this quite interesting.
For Arlene and Kelly, it meant taking a lot of measurements on a
lot of men to average out the differences and figure out a statistical
variance.
We tested "normal"
men (as if there is such a thing), self-confessed fetishists, and
men who wouldn't admit being a fetishist, but whose penises told
us otherwise.
Men were presented with
a number of normal sexual scenarios, and their erection times were
measured. They were required to masturbate during these scenarios,
and the time to ejaculation was measured.
The experiment was repeated
in the presence of the fetish objects and finally culminated with
masturbation with the fetish objects.
At the end of it all,
Arlene and Kelly had reams of data and not a few photographs to
document the experiment in progress
|