Experiment: To test the love-making and partner-pleasing effects of ManDelay — no, not the casino in Vegas or the most beautiful city in Burma, but the "maximum-strength genital desensitizer." Man-delay, get it? Making my member numb and number — sounds like a treat!

Hypothesis: We all want to be bedroom Olympians — as long as it doesn't involve any taxing workout regimens. But lazy as I am, I'm still a considerate guy, and if a little gel can make me last longer for my bedmates, giving them that much more pleasure (and maybe even helping them remember my name), then I'm all for it. However, as I probably won't be feeling anything mid-romp, it might be a bit of a conditional triumph.

Materials:
• One tube maximum-strength ManDelay¯ genital-desensitizing cream
• My formerly sensitized junk
• Volunteers from the crowd

The offices of Nerve.com happen to be at pretty much the world epicenter of sexy women. Downtown Manhattan, the closest Duane Reade (at Broadway and Prince) has more models, famous people, and well-heeled hotties passing through its door than most any other drugstore in the universe. But

this is where I had to go to make my all-too suggestive purchase (should I just wear a T-shirt reading Premature Ejaculator?), and I can't say I was looking forward to it.

Not since my high-school days of working up a five-day shadow on my babyface to go try to buy condoms, beer, or cigars had I felt so awkward entering a drugstore. Mercifully, there was only one woman (a civilian) waiting to pick up a prescription and one other milling about, probably wanting to buy an anti-yeast cream or incontinence diapers once we'd all leave. No Heidi, no Gisele, no problem.

That is... until I realized that I couldn't find the stuff. It wasn't among the condoms (though I was happy to discover that they now sell jimmy-caps with built-in vibrating rings — whoa), nor among the actual vibrators (in a family drugstore!), nor next to the Kama Sutra-brand "body soufflé" in traditional Indian flavors like Chocolate Crème Brulèe and French Vanilla. In fact, it wasn't anywhere. So I had to ask the clerk — who, of course, had to be young and sexy. I muttered the product name, sheepishly.

"ManDelay?" she said. "I've never heard of it. What is it?"

"Uh, a genital desensitizer — for men. It's normally near the condoms."

"I don't think I've seen it. Hold on." Then she grabbed the store loudspeaker: "Gary, do we have ManDelay, a male genital desensitizer?"

Even if they didn’t, I feared my South might never rise again.