Quick. Name the female equivalent of Viagra. Can’t do it? That’s because it doesn’t exist. The pharmaceutical companies haven’t invented a pill for getting your husband off the couch to help with the housework. (Joking. I kid because I love.) But that’s not because they haven’t been trying.

As Natalie Anger reported recently in the New York Times, the compound bremelanotide is wending its way through clinical trials as a possible treatment for so-called “female hypoactive sexual desire disorder”*:

Studies in rodents demonstrated that the drug not only gave male rats spontaneous erections, but also fomented sexual excitement in female rats, prompting them to wiggle their ears, hop excitedly, rub noses with males and otherwise display unmistakable hallmarks of rodent arousal.

Lest you think that bremelanotide is going to transform your average over-worked, stressed-out, resentful Type A woman into a raging nympho, think again:

Importantly, the females responded to the drug only under laboratory conditions where they could maintain a sense of control over the mating game. Take away the female’s opportunity to escape or proceed at her preferred pace, and no amount of bremelanotide would get those ears to wiggle. In other words, Annette M. Shadiack, director of biological research of Palatin, said, “this doesn’t look like a potential date-rape drug.”

Or, in yet other words, if you’re not in the mood mentally—because you hate your job, you’re stressed, or your spouse has let his six-pack abs become a 12-pack—you ain’t going to be in the mood physically. (To be fair, I understand that Viagra’s the same way. If a guy isn’t attracted to his partner, popping a pill isn’t going to make the little man stand at attention.)

So there you have it. When you’re standing around at that cocktail party this weekend, see if you can drop “bremelanotide” into casual conversation. For bonus points, you can mention the drug’s original purpose. (Sorry, you have to read the article.)

As for whether it will get those ears wiggling, well, I’m not making any promises.

*Try to imagine how hard I’m biting my tongue at this point.

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So I’ve been nominated by my fellow ‘Dillas (well, at least one of them, anyway) to grace y’all with at least one interesting sex fact a week. So here it is.

Men fake orgasm.

And before you start in with the jokes (and the inevitable questions), let me just point what we’re not talking about a few of them. A lot of them. Like a majority of them. In a survey that hubby and I did for our new book, What Men Really Want in Bed, 52 percent of the guys who responded admitted to faking it.

Their reasons? They were tired. Drunk. They knew “it” wasn’t going to happen, and they didn’t want to disappoint their partner. Sound familiar, ladies? (OK, I know, not to all of you. This blogger, for instance, has never faked it once in her checkered history. The reasons are numerous, and not really your bidness. Wait for the memoir.)

Anyway, when I tell people this fact, the question they always ask, agog, is: “How?” C’mon, folks. Use your imagination. In the era of safe sex, it isn’t hard to avoid the tell-tale wet spot.

So guys, ‘fess up. That’s what the comments section is for. Knock yourselves out.

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Georgia O’Keefe had her paintings. Jack Davis has his crocheted penises.

C’mon, ladies. What would you rather see when you walk into a guy’s bedroom: a Nagel print or a crocheted penis?(I just love hyperlinking that phrase.)

Triva about the crocheted penises, from the artist:

• They aren’t penis warmers.
• No one models for them. Sorry.
• It takes 3 hours to make a simple one, several months for a “complicated one.”
• There’s a drawstring in the foreskin. People have used them as change purses.
• When Davis displays them, he stuffs them with Easter eggs.
• Yes, the crocheted penises are for sale.

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