Site Presented By
Thursday, Dec 4, 2008
From U.S. patent No. 5,082,004, filed May 22, 1990:
"It is an object of the present invention to provide a male condom which will be more acceptable to the male user by providing enhanced sensation during coitus and enhanced tactile stimulation during foreplay ... In the past, such devices have been tight fitting to prevent accidental dislodgment during coitus, [and] tight-fitting condoms bind the glans penis, resulting in restricted sensitivity and loss of stimulation during coitus."
Or to put it more bluntly: Condoms, historically speaking, suck.
This is an opinion that men have likely always shared, whether binding themselves with linen sheaves, sheep gut or the latest in latex. Condom use is generally motivated not by desire, but by fear. When technological developments, like the advent of the contraceptive pill, offer (for the male) a less intrusive approach, condom use, according to trackers of the industry, drops. But when external threats, like the rise of HIV/AIDS, emerge, condom use rises.
Reddy couldn't be reached for this story, but according to published reports and interviews with condom industry executives who know him, his primary motivation for condom innovation was health related. A graduate of Stanley Medical College in Chennai, India, he was researching AIDS at the Carbon County Memorial Hospital in Rawlins, Wyo., in the late '80s when he decided that the only sure defense against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) was condom use. He apparently realized right away that the key to getting men to buy into condoms was to make more them more fun.
And so was born the first pouch-on-pouch condom: the Pleasure Plus.
According to the official patent, "the condom includes a pouch or pouches on the tubular pouch in the thin membrane material of the condom that will move back and forth on the underside region of the glans penis or in areas adjacent to and encircling the glans penis during coitus to provide enhanced stimulation and sensitivity to the male user of the condom."
The glans penis is the sensitive part at the end of the cock. Your typical condom features a constrictive layer of latex that grasps the head of the penis in a clammy death-grip, numbing all sensation. The Pleasure Plus adds a new locus of friction, a second pouch attached to the inside of a loose outer pouch so that there is, in effect, a moving part inside the condom, rubbing directly back and forth on the penis.
According to testimonials, the technique works. Outside of the relatively small community of condom inventors, marketers and manufacturers who have devoted their lives to prophylactics, the name Dr. A.V.K. Reddy is not a household word. But to those who took their contraception seriously in the mid-1990s, the Pleasure Plus condom was a revelation.
Sex expert Susie Bright, the host of "In Bed With Susie Bright" on Audible.com, and a longtime commentator on all things sexual, had never heard of Reddy. But she squeals with delight when told that he had invented the Pleasure Plus.
"I used to hoard them the way Elaine hoarded the Today sponge on 'Seinfeld,'" she recalls. "It was the only condom that offered any physical difference whatsoever. I've always said, forget the ribs and colors and all that bullshit. If the point is sensitivity and feeling good, the Pleasure Plus is the only alternative."
Adam Glickman, whose retail store Condomania was the first to sell the Pleasure Plus, recalls Reddy as "a man deeply concerned about condom effectiveness." At the time, Glickman says, "what was so refreshing and different about him was that he wasn't defining effectiveness in terms of safety and reliability, he was defining it in terms of acceptability and pleasure. No one had really defined condom performance so totally under those terms before him."
But despite the great reviews, the Pleasure Plus was hard to find. In fact, almost as soon as it became popular, it disappeared.
"It was a big mystery," Bright says. "We heard all kinds of rumors. It was there and then it was gone."
Get Salon in your mailbox!
