Uncomfortably Numb
By Jason Feifer
Zink Magazine - April, 2004 issue, page 42

Maybe there are larger problems than being pressured into a blowjob from a beautiful girl. But for months, I was consumed by nothing else. How could I not have been? I was in high school, still lanky and awkward in a body that kept changing, and lying on a couch with my girlfriend. Weeks before, she had asked me if I wanted her to venture south, and in an insecure panic, I told her no... probably not... maybe... yes... and no. But despite her understandable confusion – and, I’m sure, her damaged self-confidence – I couldn’t provide a believable explanation. Or, at least, I couldn’t provide my real explanation.

So, when the moment came, as we were doing what normal high school couples do on a couch, she looked at me with the utmost sincerity and said the words I though nobody actually said: “What do you want me to do?” I knew what I wanted her to do. Everybody knew what I wanted her to do. Inside, I screamed it. Outside, the trees whispered it. On my shoulder, a chorus of angels sang it: “Blowjob! Oh, please, blowjob! I’m so young and this is so good!”

But alas, this was a learning experience for me, and we all learn best by our mistakes. I choked on fear and widened my eyes until they were dry and painful, moving them vertically in what she must have thought was abject fear, but what I intended to be like those men on airport runways, directing planes with their glowing orange flags. Yet, if words beget action, then this is what silence begets: her turning around, turning on the television, giving complete attention to a cartoon whose existence I will never forgive, and dumping me a month or two later – with good reason.

I never told her why that night was so awkward, but here it is: My intimacy frequency was considerably less than regular in those days, which left my body so raring to go that it camped out at the finish line. If it wasn’t over before it began, I feared, it would be literally neck-and-neck. This scared me more than anything else – and of course, had I thought of a smoother solution, that evening would have been memorable in a considerably different way.

For that reason, I can understand the appeal of desensitizing creams. For decades, these numbing creams have been the wild card of an unorthodox industry, offering a Faustian-like deal to men who are helplessly trigger-happy. In exchange for the penis’s complete sense of touch, they promise to make men last longer – which, in desperate times, can be an offer difficult to refuse. They operate under a “what you don’t feel can’t excite you” practicality, and some go as far as to promote themselves as a smear-on solution to the legitimate medical condition of premature ejaculation.

The creams contain a small amount of a numbing chemical – most often benzocaine, a local anesthetic with an arresting range of common uses, including soothing the mouths of teething babies and diluting the potency of crack cocaine. It carries the risk of embarrassing side effects, such as swelling and rashes, although the complete unpredictability of numbing such a sensitive body part is often intimidating enough. Because really, who wants to embody the grade-school insult, “numb nuts?”

Despite the uncertainty, these products remain on the market because they offer an almost irrestible duality. In theory, if men can last longer, their partners will no longer be stranded on Frustration Island, banished there by an ocean that went high and dry. It is, in some tragically ironic way, the ultimate sacrifice. That’s goal-oriented sex, says San Diego-based sex therapist Dr. Danny Keiller, and it misses the whole point of intimacy. “It shouldn’t be a goal of pleasing anybody,” he says. “Just have the process as the goal, because the process is the thing that’s enjoyable.”

There has been no extensive research done on desensitizing creams, he says, but the medical reviews he’s seen all say the creams are ineffective. That makes sense, Keiller says, because sex doesn’t necessarily take place at the waist. “I have patients who say the largest sex organ you have is your skin, the second is your brain, and after that comes the clitoris and the penis,” he says. Since sex isn’t just about the feeling, addressing premature ejaculation by numbing the penis is “really treating the tip of the iceberg, and not very effectively, I think.”

There are multiple reasons that men tend to spill their seed, rather than pour it, and author and sex therapist Dr. Alice K. Ladas says none of them are purely physical. Like a furrowed brow or a clenched fist, premature ejaculation is another way that emotions become physically tied to the body, says Ladas, co-author of the 1982 best-seller “The G Spot.” Therefore, the solution is never as simple as capping off a nerve ending with cream. Instead, a good start would be for a man to learn to recognize his “point of no return.” “I think there are better ways to treat early ejaculation,” she says. “I think the point of sex is to feel as much as possible, not to feel less.”

But Durex customers might disagree. For years, the company has been promoting its desensitizing “Maintain” cream, and it has attracted a steady niche following, says associate brand manager Tonya Cramer. In July 2002, it introduced Performax, a condom with a small amount of benzocaine lining the inside, rivaled only in stores by Trojan's Extended Pleasure condom. The condom is not intended to prevent premature ejaculation, but only to be “performance enhancing,” Cramer says. The numbing sensation from both products lasts only a few minutes, although she says the condom has quickly become one of the company’s best-selling products, scoring well in surveys and keeping its customers a little more active than they were before.

According to a Durex survey of 262 customers who used Performa, the British version of Performax, the condom extended the average user’s sex from 11.8 minutes to 18 minutes – although Durex admits the survey results had to be altered to account for an overly generous crowd, including one man who claimed the condom enabled a mind-numbing four-hour love-making session.

Still, it’s inconceivable that having number sex wouldn’t, in some way, alter the actual value of the act. For instance, if sex can’t be felt, does it become akin to cybersex – an act based more on the trust that something good is actually happening – and less on, say, empirical evidence? Or maybe having a numb penis is actually quite flattering. After all, if Novocaine at a dentist’s office creates the sensation of a fat lip, a numbed penis might feel remarkable, prompting men to leave the bedroom and show it off at the nearest sauna. And who’s to say that the real problem isn’t with the man finishing too fast, but with his partner not being able to reach orgasm?

The penis is so jam-packed with nerves that I wonder what kind of potency would be required to truly numb it. I’m no scientist, but it would seem like a small amount of benzocaine would have one of two results: it would be like spitting on a bonfire, or like shooting the perfect spot on the Death Star. I’m not brave enough to find out first-hand, but I felt like some test was necessary. So, I contacted a local Passion Parties salesman and borrowed her desensitizing cream – the subtly-named and strawberry-scented “Hard-on crème” – and nervously drenched my pointer finger in it. This, I assumed, was what most men do before using it anyway. I planned on wandering around my apartment, sticking my numb finger into obscure objects and recording the sensation. I had even set up a bowl of yogurt-covered raisins for the event, because the irrelevancy of the gesture seemed too good to pass up.

Before the test, the salesman insisted that the cream wouldn’t numb by finger because it isn’t as sensitive as the penis. But, she said, that’s not to say the product doesn’t work. She sells a fair amount of the cream at every gathering she hosts, and has received plenty of positive feedback. One customer said the cream gave her boyfriend such overwhelming stamina that she needed to forcibly remove him, mid-coitus, from her body.

After ten minutes of waving my gooey finger in the air, the effect mildly kicked in, and the cool breeze began to feel warm. Five minutes later, my finger was still generally in tact, but it had adopted a curious sort of sensory reverberation. If I poked it, for instance, the sensation would echo throughout my finger, like a footstep in a racquetball court. It wasn’t quite numbing, but it was undeniably annoying. And yes, the yogurt-covered raisins still felt disappointingly like yogurt-covered raisins. After five more minutes, my finger was back to normal – but to be fair, it smelled delightful.

Still, this isn’t something I’d want to invite to bed. Having sex while wearing this cream would be a distraction, a constant reminder of the penciled-in feelings that were once stunning Technicolor. I’d imagine it would be like having a zombie for a penis – and perhaps it is thoughts like these, and not the numbing itself, that actually makes men last longer. But then, that’s a question of quality versus quantity. The numbness only tips the scales.