s c i e n c e b e a t Math-O-Matic Venus Freak Macy Gray's groundbreaking work with mathematician Paul Erdös By Dave Stinton

Macy Gray's smash 1999 debut album, "On How Life Is," created a stir with its tasty retro funk and groundbreaking scientific theorizing. But perhaps the most poignant track of all is "Sex-O-Matic Venus Freak," her tribute to her friend and fellow love-ologist, the late Paul Erdös. Strange bedfellows to be sure, the brash R&B diva and the eccentric introvert mathematician joined their respective talents to unlock the mysteries of lust. Erdös's biographer Paul Hoffman paints a charming picture of their chance meeting in 1994: Boca Raton was the site of that year's International Symposium on Combinatorics, Graph Theory, and Computing. Gray gave a lecture on the work Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor were doing to patch the hole in Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Afterwards, she and several members of her entourage were at the Pi Club, writhing to the strains of Irregular Prime, a funk band made up of tenured professors from the University of Chicago. "All of a sudden," reminisces Gray, "I felt this little frail old hand on my ass. I was ready to cold-cock whatever motherf**ker was at the other end of that arm, but when I looked I saw this funny little old guy, and I was like, 'I know you!' Then it hit me: I'd seen him speak in Warsaw on Bob Marley and the Four Color Map Theorem!" -from The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, Hyperion Press, ©1998 Paul Hoffman Let's take a look at the lyrics: Superlove is something that they say is very rare Very rare indeed. Thanks to the Gray/Erdös studies, we know that only .0004% of all known love in the universe can be classified as "superlove." At first, this sounds very pessimistic, but keep in mind that superlove has extreme side effects: excessive moping, the writing of poetry, and intense "tunnelvision," a form of catatonia that often clouds a person's basic survival instincts. In a 1997 study, mice injected with concentrated superlove often flung themselves to their deaths off lab tables, killed each other in duels, or forgot to eat until they wasted away. The pupils of many of the corpses were dilated into the shapes of tiny hearts. But in the dark and in your world it's everywhere This refers to the lab conditions in which the colleagues worked. A room was built that was an exact replica of a small, isolated restaurant on a mountainside in southern Italy. The fourth wall was a one-way mirror. The lights were dimmed to 20 watts, and each of them was allotted 295 milliliters of red table wine, 5 raw oysters, and Marvin Gaye music playing softly (30 decibels) throughout the meal. Brandy-soaked chocolate torte was the dessert. Many of the sensitive love-detection instruments literally shattered at the level of love that was present. Gray and Erdös were extremely brave. And I feel like an xx rated movie star A very clever bit of wordplay. In the field of love-ology, x equals love, and xx (or love squared) equals superlove. The other meaning is that a double-X-rated movie is a filthy sex film, or "porno." It's the way you love me down It's the way you love me down In the standard "missionary" position (by no means the only one tested by our researches, but the dominant one in Western lovemaking), the man, being on top, is said to "love down" and the woman to "love up." Every time we kiss you bring out the woman in me In all honesty, Macy Gray is not a shy little flower of femininity. She has been compared to a bear. But one fascinating effect of superlove is the immediacy with which males and females are jolted into stereotypical sex roles. Gray did a lot of giggling, dieting, and shopping for lingerie during the course of the experiments. And Erdös, by all accounts a gynophobic virgin during his first 81 years, became what his good friend Ronald Graham called a "raging sexhound." Every time you holler out my name you set me free Erdös, who contempuously referred all his life to women as "bosses" and men as "slaves," spent a lot of time meditating on Macy Gray's name, not only "hollering" it but forming little poems and nicknames. "Crazy Macy" was his favorite. (Keep in mind that this phrase rhymed in his native Hungarian accent.) I am a sex-o-matic venus freak when I'm with you And I will stop it only when you tell me to I am the automatic easy freak all over you And I will stop it only when you tell me to It's true, Erdös was the one to break off the relationship once the experiments ended. Ever loyal to the theory of his sciences, he cared little for real-world applications. Gray was heartbroken, and it was years before she stopped filling spiral notebooks with the phrase "Mrs. Macy Erdös" in ballpoint pen. We are the genius of love. Another clever turn of phrase. What at first seems like an egregious grammatical flaw becomes love-ological fact when you consider the "two-in-one" nature of sex. Two become one; "we" are a single "genius of love." When we seek and hide When my hands are tied 69 positions and whipped cream all over my skin This is a fairly straightforward list of experiments and needs little explanation. The song’s radio-play length prevents Gray from listing all 69 of the positions studied, so she sticks to some of the more sensational selections. Lick you from bottom to root Love to get down with you A bittersweet ending to the song. The "root" refers to the square root of superlove, x. As the love faded ("got down") from super to conventional, and Gray nursed her wounded heart, she could only look back fondly on the privilege of sharing such trailblazing work with such a reclusive genius. The landscape of rock and mathematics may never see a worthier couple – truly a genius of love.