A few years ago, Beverly Whipple received an unsolicited call from a man who claimed he could climax repeatedly without losing his erection. A man professing enviable sexual prowess? Now that's a new one.
   But Whipple didn't hang up. She's a sex researcher at the College of Nursing at Rutgers University in New Jersey. And like any good researcher, she wants to test a hypothesis, particularly one that challenges what has long been held as scientific wisdom: the theory that the ability to have multiple orgasms is strictly the province of women.
   Ethical standards preclude Whipple (and us) from naming her research subject, but I have it on good authority that it is a 40-year-old married man who lives a rather ordinary life.
   "Bob" (as we'll call him) arrived at the Rutgers laboratory and was hooked up to various devices that would measure and record the physiological changes his body went through from erection through climax. A pupilometer measured the diameter of his pupils; a blood-pressure cuff recorded his blood pressure every two minutes and each time he reported an orgasm. He received eight cups for the collection of separate ejaculations. To help him get started, he was given erotic movies and magazines. Alone in the room, Bob was watched through an observation window.
   And so what happened? "He definitely had multiple orgasms," says Whipple. Despite the distraction of the equipment and the instructions--to say nothing of curious observers--he maintained his erection throughout the experiment, achieving six orgasms with full ejaculations. All this within 36 minutes.
   Bob insisted that he could have gone for more, but the room was not air-conditioned. By the time he achieved the sixth orgasm, he says, he was too warm and too uncomfortable to continue.

   "I've been called a liar or a bragger," says Bob. Being a guinea pig was worth it if only to finally be able to prove his claims were no brag, just fact. While other guys over the years talked about how many times they could get it up, he had told them that he had to get it up only once--because it didn't go down.
   And the rest of you guys? Although Bob is very unusual, Whipple doesn't think that his experience is unique. "Research shows that men as well as women are capable of a variety of sexual responses," she says.
   So can you do it too? Sex therapists and researchers William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian, writing in Any Man Can, describe some rudimentary techniques that men can use to become multiorgasmic. They concluded that it's possible for men to have multiple orgasms by separating orgasm from ejaculation. Orgasm and ejaculation are two separate phenomena, controlled by two different nerve pathways. Most men spontaneously learn to do both together, but there are men who can have an orgasm without ejaculating. (And there are men who ejaculate without having an orgasm.)
   To accomplish this, you need to work the muscles around the base of the penis with Kegel exercises, which strengthen the pelvic muscles and increase orgasmic pleasure. You strengthen the muscles by stopping the flow of urine. Work yourself up to 100, 200, and even 300 contractions a day. Once you've mastered Kegels, you'll be able to squeeze these muscles when you're about to ejaculate, coming to orgasm without ejaculation and enabling yourself to continue with your sexual activity.
   But even if you succeed in accomplishing this, Bob still owns bragging rights because he's a natural. First, he didn't learn to be multiorgasmic. For as long as he can remember he has always been that way. He started masturbating when he was four. "I didn't ejaculate," he says, "but I thought, This feels good; let's have another one." Second, he uses no techniques or tricks to stop him from ejaculating as he experiences orgasm. A full ejaculation follows each and every climax. This is a guy with no downtime.
   "If you have to work at it, it's not the same thing. All those methods they teach you involve interrupting pleasure," says Bob. "If I could explain it, I'd write a book and become a millionaire."
   Endless orgasms may be an appealing prospect for most men, but, personally speaking, I'm not thrilled about it. All my life, some things have been a certainty: (a) friends always drop in when the house is a sty; (b) there's no such thing as spare change; and (c) as soon as my man comes, I can roll over and get some sleep. I'd like to change the first two, but the last one suits me just fine, thank you very much.