CAN WE REINVENT THE RUBBER?

A man's relationship with condoms is complicated. Without them, he'd be having a lot less sex. With them, sex is a lot less enjoyable. It looks like a stalemate in the sack—unless, that is, someone can change how we feel about the rubber

Whatever you call  it—love glove, salami sling, or Casanova's pet name, "English riding coat"—nothing quite beats today's modern latex condom for cost-effectively blocking conception and sexually transmitted infections. Used correctly and consistently, an FDA-approved jimmy hat or Johnny bag can be counted on to all but eliminate the risk of postcoital mayhem, from after-hookup paternity suits and HIV, to penile warts and a feeling your urine stream has turned into lit kerosene. (That last scenario—my late Uncle Phil's description of the wartime clap he contracted after unprotected sex with an Italian prostitute—still gives my willy the willies.)

With so many problems so easily circumvented, why do most men see the rubber strait-jacket as passion's equivalent of cruciferous vegetables and dental floss? One obvious reason: Condoms are also highly effective at blocking pleasure, spontaneity, and emotional intimacy.

"Perhaps the most universal truth shared by men across the planet is that they hate wearing condoms," says Danny Resnic, an L.A. entrepreneur developing his own condom designs. "The basic design for the modern condom was developed a few years before the Wright brothers' first successful flight. Since then, advances in aeronautics have sent probes to Mars, but other than the introduction of latex, the condom is nearly identical to the way it was."

Or, to put the situation in an even more depressing light, we're basically unrolling an incrementally improved version of the barrier contraption first depicted in French cave paintings circa 10,000 B.C.

WHEN IT COMES TO PHYSICAL SENSATION, SEX with a condom may not be quite as awful as dining with a sandwich bag on your tongue, but the analogy isn't that far-fetched. As thin as latex stretches, it still blocks a cardinal feature of sex: the deliciously slippery feel of skin on skin.

Granted, this can be simulated somewhat by adding lubricants to the inside and outside of the condom. In a recent online ad for its Performax Intense condom, for instance, Durex boasts that its new product "is designed to speed her up and slow him down"—the latter courtesy of a special lubricant on the condom's interior that's been created to delay a man's climax. Not to be outdone, Trojan claims that the "ultrasmooth" premium lubricant in its Pure Ecstasy condoms allows male and female users alike to "feel the pleasure, not the condom!"

Still, for many men, latex love just isn't quite the same.

Women aren't all that thrilled with them either, says Jenny Higgins, Ph.D., an assistant professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. When Higgins surveyed 3,210 women, she was struck by how many described the drawbacks of condom sex in much the same way men did.

"I think we've just assumed that it doesn't matter as much to women," she says. "But many women complained about the same things men do: reduced sensation, decreased arousal, just not liking the feeling. In my work I use the term 'sexual aesthetics': the smell, taste, and touch of the experience. As one woman put it, 'I hate the way condoms feel. I hate the way they taste. I hate the way they smell.'"

Men, of course, have an additional burden: We must contend with the discomfort of actually wearing the things. A common lament here is that the rolled-out end of the condom is too tight—like an overinflated blood pressure cuff.

For both men and women alike, another negative is that the guy must take a break from the action to suit up. In Higgins's survey, published in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, nearly 30 percent of women reported that their arousal evaporates during this interlude. And in men, the problem is common enough to have spurred a new diagnosis: CAEP, or condom-associated erection problems.

Research has shown that as many as 28 percent of guys will lose their erection while putting on a condom—and once it's on, up to 20 percent have problems maintaining an erection during intercourse itself.