It comes at night: That unique, slightly sweaty yet also somewhat dry sensation, and the discomfit that accompanies the feeling that your balls have no true place on your body. Your brain, done with trying to make sense of where to put your ball sack after an hour of twisting and turning, begins to rebel with thoughts like, “I know, hormonally speaking, I need my balls to have sex and one day help produce offspring, but like, why do I need my balls?” and “I wonder how much it costs to have my balls surgically removed?”
To be clear, I’m not advocating for the surgical removal of my gonads: All I’m saying is that I’ve thought about it, especially when I’m lying in bed at night trying to fall asleep whilst cuddling my girlfriend who, due to no fault of her own, is crushing my nuts.
This is the same time — the time when every part of my body is comfortable and at peace except my balls — when I’ll interrogate all the awful shit that comes along with having an aesthetically hideous, palm sized, brain-like skin sack stuffed with two fragile marbles that reliably bring me indescribable amounts of pain whenever they’re accidentally tapped. If you think about it, apart from the whole “producing sperm and hormones and being one of the necessary building blocks of all human life” thing, they’re the worst. Sure, there may be some of you who love having your balls fondled and others who like to do the fondling of the balls, but would you really miss them that much if they were, say, housed inside your body, safe from a hostile-to-testicles world, instead of literally dangling in the wind?
Anyway, point is, where the hell should one put their balls when they sleep? “I have a nightstand next to the bed, and I drape them over that,” suggests one (hopefully) sarcastic redditor, a suggestion that would, in fact, be aces if balls were actually reattachable, but of course, they’re not. Others weigh in with more apt recommendations: “Resting on the bed or on one leg,” writes another redditor. “Unless I’m cold, then they sit between the thighs, and no, it isn’t usually painful as balls are designed to have one testicle hang lower than the other to prevent them squishing each other, and dicks are pretty malleable when flaccid.” All of which, I should add, is medically accurate.
Ironically, even the bodybuilding community — often recognized for their ever-shrinking gonads — is desperate for a where-do-I-put-my-balls-when-I-sleep solution. “Seriously, I don’t know if I should pull my balls toward the front, but then I feel like I’m stretching a vein or tendon in there too much, and if I pull them toward the back behind my legs, I feel like I might be suffocating my balls and not letting any blood through,” writes papishasho on BodyBuilding.com. “I’m always worried my balls are twisted or something, so I always play with ‘em to make sure they’re hanging correctly, and I shake my ballsack to straighten them out, just in case they curled up or twisted around too much and the vein closes up. I can’t be the only one.”
No, sir, you are not. In an effort to help, another member suggests wearing boxer briefs at night to help tame those unruly nads. “I have done it ever since I learned about testicular torsion,” he writes. In case you didn’t know, testicular torsion is when the spermatic cord, which carries sperm and provides blood flow to your testicles, gets twisted, causing sudden pain and swelling. According to board certified urologist Jamin Brahmbhatt, though, it’s highly unlikely for this to happen in your sleep. “That’s why your balls are saggy — so they can stay mobile,” he says. “If the way you slept caused infertility, we’d have much higher infertility. It’s all self-adjusting and cooling.”
Brahmbhatt does agree with sleeping in boxer-briefs, but only if you’re worried about bodily fluids and hygiene. “What if you have nightly secretions? Do you want them on the bed? Or what if you’re in a hotel without a guarantee on how clean the sheets are?” he says. Brahmbhatt admits, though, that underwear or not, there’s really no right way to sleep with your balls. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just sleep with them as you wish.”
Or better put (my apologies in advance), the balls are in your court.
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
