The degree of hirsuteness and the smell of the scrotum vary — a topic that was raised as early as the 1870s in the work of the American feminist novelist and campaigner Lois Waisbrooker (1826-1909). Some of today’s racy pulp novelists, one feels, should have been made to study Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying (1974) as prescribed reading. In the latter book, with disarming frankness and great literary panache, Jong (1942-) evokes the physical attributes of her lovers, ephemeral and more significant:
I once adored a conductor who never bathed, had stringy hair, and was a complete failure at wiping his ass. He always left shit stripes on my sheets. Normally I don’t go in for that sort of thing — but in him it was OK — I’m still not sure why. I fell in love with Bennett partly because he had the cleanest balls I’d ever tasted. Hairless and he practically never sweats. You could (if you wanted) eat off his asshole (like my grandmother’s kitchen floor).
And later:
We lay on his bed and held each other. We examined each other’s nakedness with tenderness and amusement. The best thing about making love with a new man after all those years of marriage was rediscovering a man’s body. One’s husband’s body was practically like one’s own. Everything about it was known. All the smells and tastes of it, the lines, the hairs, the birthmarks. But Adrian was like a new country. My tongue made an unguided tour of it. I started at his mouth and went downward. His broad neck, which was sun-burned. His chest, covered with curly reddish hair. His belly, a bit paunchy — unlike Bennett’s brown leanness. His curled pink penis which tasted vaguely of urine and refused to stand up in my mouth.
His very pink and hairy balls which I took in my mouth one at a time.
The technique Erica Jong is referring to here is called ‘teabagging’. The partner takes the testicles in his or her mouth — the testicles are first pushed downwards with the index finger and thumb around the top of the scrotum, and then the balls are taken into the mouth and gently stimulated with the tongue. The teeth are covered with the lips throughout, to avoid accidentally inflicting pain. The testicles are kept together; if they are pulled apart, it can be dreadfully painful.