Peter Krupa

People talk about “lambskin” condoms as if they have something in common with soft leather jackets, or the hat I wear when it gets really cold out. I’ve always pictured them as leather tubes with an exceptionally supple texture, and maybe a stitched seam on one side. After coitus with a lambskin condom, perhaps you could even rinse it out, give it a rub-down with linseed oil, and whip it on for round two.

Like - I don’t know - a baseball glove.

This didn’t strike me as sounding particularly comfortable, and though the Romans used lambskin condoms, I was pretty certain they used them grudgingly.

But a recent conversation encouraged me to believe just the opposite- that lambskin condoms were the closest one could get to “going bareback” and gave an exceptionally natural feel. Is it possible, I wondered, that a 2,000-year-old prophylactic made from an animal product could trump modern technology? Not being one for empty speculation, I decided to try them myself.

The first thing one learns upon googling “lambskin condoms” and clicking on a few links is that they are not, technically, lambskin. Trojan (the only mass-producer of said condoms that I could find) is happy to encourage the misconception with box-top blurbs like, “The #1 Natural Skin Condom For A More Sensual Feeling.”

Look a little closer, however, and you’ll spot the word “membrane.”

They’re not specific about what kind of membrane. Bladder? Intestine? Any membrane will do, I suppose, as long as it’s from an innocent little lamb and fits neatly on a variety of different penises. On the box, they helpfully put a little graphic of a lamb wearing a crown, so even if you don’t know what part of tripe you’re rolling carefully onto your penis, you can be sure it came from royalty.

But squeamishness will get you nowhere in life, so I swallowed hard and bought a box of three Trojan NaturaLamb Lubricated Condoms (I used shopinprivate.com, which is ironic now that I’m announcing all this on my blog, but really it’s a good place to order sexy things if you still live with your parents).

The condoms arrived safely and discretely in the mail, and most of the details that immediately followed that event are private. But I will say that I like “lambskin” condoms for two reasons. First, they did feel more natural. My sources on the internet say this is because they transmit heat better than latex, and that matches with my experience. Qualitatively, membrane is roughly analogous to a plastic sandwich baggy. It wasn’t quite riding bareback, but it was pretty damn close.

The second reason I liked the membrane condoms is harder to define. It’s the same reason people prefer oak to veneer, brick to aluminum siding, wool to polyester. It’s somehow… classic. An Old World material. Quaintly enough, to keep the condom on snug you pull a little piece of string at the base. String! It felt like 1912, which I’m pretty sure is the last year people used string for anything.

Of course, membrane condoms are little-used today for a good reason: they don’t protect you from AIDS or any other virus, only babies. Being a married man, however, this suits me just fine, and I will probably use lambskin condoms as long as I can afford the luxury.

And as long as the lamb population holds up.