We have a fixed quantity of both orifices and the body parts to shove inside them. As such, I’d thought, naively, that we’d likely conceived of all possible combinations. I was, as the Balldo proves, completely wrong.
For some, the balls are either completely essential to their sexual encounters or entirely off-limits. For most others, though, the balls are superfluous. They’re there, can handle a gentle graze or two, but are mostly just witness to some generous taint slapping. But the Balldo, a device that essentially turns your balls into a phallus and begins its crowdfunding campaign in February, asks whether the balls could be the star of the show.
“I was lying in bed with my girlfriend at the time, and we were just checking each other out in post-coital bliss and she was sort of playing with my balls a little bit, which we had never really done before,” explains Jerry Davies, the creator of the Balldo. “There was always a bit of a run-away sensation with the balls for me, I don’t want them poked or licked or something like that. But I knew that if I put my hands around them, they suddenly felt sort of safe, in a way.”
Initially, it’s this sense of safety that led he and his girlfriend to experiment with ball-centric sex toys. “We’re both engineers, and we have a 3D printer, so we got to work,” says Davies. The earlier prototypes focused on a cage-like device with a vibrational component. “But I was watching a video one day, a performer called Roxy Raye on Pornhub,” he continues (it’s actually Alicia Angel). “There’s this guy trying to shove his balls inside her body, and it looked like he was trying to put an oily octopus in a bag. I was like, ‘Oh my God, they do go in, he got them in!’ But it was just awkward.”
Awkwardness aside, seeing this feat was a turning point. Not only was Davies intrigued, it proved a market existed. “On the comments of the Roxy Raye video, we split them all up in a spreadsheet. Twenty-seven percent of them said the exact words, ‘I need to try this.’”
“We thought, why don’t we try that with this thing? That’s the basis of the product today. It’s a cage that makes your balls feel safe and takes away the nervousness around having your balls touched but also makes them rigid enough to have them go inside a hole.”
Most importantly, though, Davies asserts that it is indeed pleasurable for both the wearer and the receiver. According to product tests Davies has conducted, four out of five wearers are sexually stimulated by the Balldo, many even experiencing climax from it. “I’m not a medical professional, but what I’ve learned is that the balls are basically like the outer labia, they’re made of the same skin and have the same nerve endings in them,” Davies explains. “That’s where the stimulation is coming from. You’re getting stimulation from the penetration, from the balls feeling nice and warm inside an orifice or cage, and then the third sensation of the penis just doing nothing and being fairly helpless and exposed.”
It’s this latter component that could make the experience of wearing a Balldo particularly unique. Rather than the penis itself being the center of one’s sexual encounters, it becomes almost irrelevant. “The first time I used it, I put it on and I started thrusting and I couldn’t tell whether it was my penis I was getting the feeling from or my balls,” he says. “That’s such a bizarre feeling to not be able to distinguish between the two. Then I looked down, and there’s my cock just standing up like that. It felt like it had been sprayed with a menthol spray, like it needed attention. Yet, the feeling of penetrative sex was coming from something else.”
While it may seem like a complete novelty, the ability to have penetrative sex without using the penis may also be useful for people with erectile dysfunction who wish to be able to penetrate with something other than a toy alone. Of course, the Balldo also works for double penetration, as well.
But the idea of the Balldo being a novelty isn’t necessarily something to scoff at, either. After all, that sense of newness alone is what many sex toys and erotic acts are attempting to provide. Regardless of whether everyone who wears the Balldo actually ejaculates from it is almost beside the point. After nearly a year of life at home — and a lifetime of not putting your balls inside your partner — why not?
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
