Questions mark the spot

It took decades for society to come to grips with the Copernican solar system, years to put together a complete quantum mechanical description of the atomic nucleus, so we shouldn't be surprised that sexologists still are grappling with the G spot.

A German doctor named Ernst Grafenberg first announced this female erogenous/orgasmic zone in 1950, and some people still are looking for it.

A few doctors have argued this spot lacks any of the special mythological powers attributed to it — it's like the Bermuda Triangle of female anatomy.

But over the past 30 years, Rutgers University sex researcher Beverly Whipple has been gathering scientific evidence for the G spot's erotic potential. She co-wrote the 1980s bestseller "The G Spot," just reissued by Dell last year.

Whipple says the spot can be felt through the wall of the vagina toward the front of the body. Impatient with my questions, she referred me to papers for the details, the most enlightening of which explained that you're not exactly looking for a special patch on the vaginal wall — you're trying to feel through the wall for something three-dimensional in the next room over.

Apparently you're after something that feels like a "spongy bean" and consists of glands that surround your urethra and would have become a prostate had you been a boy.

So the G spot is really just a portal to this other glandular universe.

By studying women in the laboratory, she said, she's found that for some, stimulating this area creates its own kind of orgasm with a unique configuration of internal contractions.

And touching the G spot can make the glands swell up and induce women to ejaculate a clear fluid, which Whipple analyzed. She found it's not urine and has some common ingredients with semen.

It's nice that she's found clinical evidence for a G spot in some women, but why, I asked, can't all women get their G spots to work? Do we even all have a G spot?

To this the professor grew exasperated and told me they didn't know how many women had or didn't have a G spot. There's no percentage breakdown. She said her goal is to validate the experience of women whose G spots gave them orgasmic pleasure.

"We should not set up orgasm from G-spot stimulation as a goal every couple should achieve," she said, adding that not everyone likes the same thing.

If it isn't her job to help those with recalcitrant G spots, then whose is it? Suddenly I realized I knew who had the answer.

It was two or three years ago ... I ran into the guy at the gym, of all places. It was at the pectoral fly machine. He looked about 35, with thick, longish hair and a nice face.

The conversation turned to the writing of books, because at the time I thought I wanted to write one. He said he already was a published author. What was his book about? He didn't want to tell me. He said I didn't want to know.

But I did. After some coaxing, he said the book was about how to make women ejaculate during sex.

A long and awkward silence ensued.

The book is called "The Secrets of Sensual Lovemaking: The Ultimate in Female Ecstasy," published by Signet. The author proposes in it that all women can have ejaculatory G-spot orgasms — and that this is really fun.

All you need is a lover armed with the "secrets."

It's hard to say whether our Casanova studied a statistically significant sample in order to get such a high G-spot hit rate. On the other hand, maybe some G spots shrink up upon laboratory probing but respond well to cute guys.

I never saw him again. A Google search shows he hasn't published any more sex secrets and has taken up dragon boating.

Faye Flam writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her Carnal Knowledge column appears Wednesdays in

The Seattle Times.