Rachel Kramer Bussel and a Sex/Stroke Story from My Co-Workers

Tonight, as noted yesterday, brings both the monthly Manhattan Project described in my front page’s right margin and the Mac Donald/Novak debate about God at the Harvard Club — but Saturday (Sept. 20) and next Tuesday (Sept. 23) is a whole different kettle of fish.

That’s when sex-obsessed (yet disarmingly mild-mannered and cupcake-baking) writer-editor Rachel Kramer Bussel teaches the first of her Erotica 101 classes, for those interested. And in one month, on October 16, she’ll read from her books Tasting Him and Tasting Her at the oral sex-themed edition of the ongoing In the Flesh reading series (she’s also hosting an edition taking place tomorrow night at 8pm at Happy Ending).

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One type of sex/stroke story Bussel has not written or edited, though — to my knowledge — is this item from the site WebMD that my co-workers at ACSH noticed: “Woman, 35, Suffers Rare Orgasm-Related Stroke”:

Sept. 15, 2008 — Sex triggered a life-threatening stroke in a healthy 35-year-old Illinois woman, her doctors report.

Sex- and orgasm-triggered strokes in relatively young women and men are rare, but not unheard of. They require a combination of factors and events not unusual in themselves, but which are highly unlikely to occur at the same time…

Those factors included a hole in the woman’s heart and a clotting problem. The article does not specify whether contact with the staffs of science/health organizations increases or decreases the odds of sex-related trauma.

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One other option tonight brings, by an astonishing coincidence (given my reference in Sunday’s entry to the Kobayashi Maru scenario from Star Trek II), is a burlesque performance called Revealed (at 10pm at Under St. Mark’s, 94 St. Mark’s Place) featuring, yes, a performer named Kobayashi Maru (and as it happens, I heard about the event thanks to the ToxicPop events e-newsletter co-edited by Michele Carlo, who I bumped into on that same outing described in Sunday’s entry — small world).

As for me, I’ll just be safely stationed at Merchants NY all night, but I’ll be impressed if someone out there manages to fit the Mac Donald/Novak debate, the Manhattan Project, and Kobayashi Maru and friends into the same evening. That’s why we have a whole city, not just a mountain cabin.