Endurance Condoms nytimes.com
[ on a vaguely related suffering front, you may or may not be amused by the ending of this "idea". Freud's eternal question remains forever a conundrum. ]
By DWIGHT GARNER
For men, practicing what the condom industry likes to call ''climax control'' has long meant the cultivation of a kind of cerebral, almost tantric self-restraint. Exhibit A: Woody Allen in ''Play It Again, Sam.'' While having sex with Diane Keaton, he delays orgasm by thinking about baseball. (''I couldn't figure out why you kept yelling 'Slide,' '' Keaton says afterward.) Exhibit B: Henry Miller in ''Tropic of Capricorn.'' He slams on the brakes during intercourse by calling to mind a fresh corpse.
Now there's a scientific solution to this problem. Two recently introduced brands of condom, Trojan Extended Pleasure and Durex Performax, deliver benzocaine, a mild anesthetic, to the wearer's penis to prolong lovemaking. Technology may be about to help men succeed where Cal Ripken-like self-control often couldn't. Surveys indicate that 30 percent of men single out premature ejaculation as their most common sexual problem, so it's no surprise that climax-control condoms have quickly become the fastest-growing segment of the condom market. (Trojan's manufacturer has sold 21 million of its Extended Pleasure condoms since introducing them last year.)
In the lonely back aisles of drugstores, men are about to be faced with a real dilemma. What's better, to physically numb yourself into a performance drone or to mentally distance yourself by conjuring images of Dick Cheney in a Speedo? Either way, women may have the last word.
''I can't believe most women are rejoicing'' about these condoms, one woman wrote in The Express, a London newspaper. ''After the first few months of carnal bliss, and whatever we might like the rest of the world to believe, most of us belong to the 'pull my nightie down when you've finished' school of thought, in which less is most definitely more.'' |
