He wants to light your nuts on fire and laugh while you scream and try and tear your wetsuit off. Not that cool, ball chafe, not that cool.
Ball chafe is the worst. Like, the worst. Girls, you might have periods and babies, but we have ball chafe. It’s horrible. Walking around all bow-legged like we’ve been riding an extra wide horse for a week, grimacing while trying to look casual – it’s bad. And the pain! Oh, the pain! Fiery tendrils of searing, butt-clenchingly bad pain with each hesitant step! You can do the exact same thing two days in a row and have completely different results. One day, you’ll come out of the water, thighs like silk, painless and skipping up the sand humming a Julie Andrews tune. The next, the chafe just shows up uninvited, like that guy at the house party that just wants to drink and fight. Only instead of drinking and fighting, he wants to light your nuts on fire and laugh while you scream and try and tear your wetsuit off. Not that cool, ball chafe, not that cool.
But there is relief, thank God. And it’s less painful than childbirth, thank even more gods. You just have to rub some stuff all over yourself and hope it works without staining your underwear. But there are so many to choose from. How’s a guy supposed to know which is best? Are you going to trust some scoundrel-of-a-marketing guy that tells you to rub a mystery cream on your fellas? That marketing guy doesn’t care about your pain! Screw that guy! He cares about his dinner, and your balls are on the menu! So I’ve taken the liberty of testing some for you. You can trust me, I promise. I care. And no, there will not be photos.
#1 Gold Bond
First gripe: Gold Bond never sent me free samples (yeah, that’s right. Free ball cream is a perk of being in the “industry.” Man, you should see the parties! Ball cream fountains!). But I couldn’t very well do this without having them on here, so I went out and got it myself. Harumph. Anyway, this stuff could put out a house fire. Immediate relief. A gallon of water in the Sahara. In the middle of the worst burn of your life, it’s like jumping in a tub full of mint chocolate chip ice cream. There are a few different kinds, the best of which is the stuff in the green bottle: Extra strength medicated… don’t even waste your time with the other stuff. Beware though, the green bottle is similar to dropping a block of dry ice down the front of your pants – it takes a long time to melt. Their website says it has a “more potent cooling kick” than the original strength. Kick is right. This stuff almost knocked the wind out of me.
#2 DZ Nuts
Forget how the product works, the Dz Nuts are wordsmiths extraordinaire. “DZ Nuts: Proper mainTAINTance of the perineal area is essential during high level training and racing.” Taint is just a funny word, and I’m glad they were able to work it into their write up. I’m not into high level anything, and the last time I raced was to the front of the buffet line, but they’re right: Proper mainTAINTance is essential to the perineal area. And this stuff works pretty well. It’s not quite on the same “potent cooling kick” train as Gold Bond medicated, but it’s got a gentle potent cooling caress, which is nice. They also have something called InHeat, which is not what you think it’s for, although it probably should be.
#3 Fresh Balls
Yes, there is a product called Fresh Balls. I can’t look at the tube of it without laughing. This stuff is crazy – they must have had their best scientists working on this for years. It goes on as a cream and ends up as a powder. Mind blowing. The only issue I have with the cream-to-powder phenomenon is that it makes it look like you tried to eat a bag of powdered sugar with your butt. Your underwear is covered in the stuff. And while the burning sensation (that you hope is from the cream and not from that trip to Thailand) isn’t quite as cooling as DZ Nuts or Gold Bond, it lasts way longer. It actually lasts an uncomfortably long time. A half hour is kind of my limit, then I just want to wipe it off. That’s the thing about ball cream – like acid, once it’s in your system, there’s no turning back, especially in public. You can’t just reach into your pants with a wet towel and start scrubbing. The first time I used it, after about 45 minutes of “cooling” I started to get worried that I was having some kind of allergic reaction. Turns out I wasn’t, so that’s good. They also have a product called Fresh Breasts, for the woman with incredibly sweaty boobs. Weird. Or is it? I don’t know that much about boobs.
#4 Body Glide
Body Glide totally doesn’t want to be known as a ball chafe remedy. They’re hiding behind armpits and foot blisters and a handsome heroic fireman on their website, who need Body Glide to do heroic things after they slide down their brass pole. Maybe that’s it: Brass pole chafe. Strippers can use it too! But we all know what it’s for. Sure, there are other uses for this stuff. “Runner’s nipple,” is one they bring up on their website. Still hilarious, and especially PERTinent (take that, DZ Nuts!) for surfers. Ever got too much sand in your wax? It feels like Dolph Lundgren is slapping your nipples with a branding iron. But I’m not going to be the guy that stands on the beach and rubs vaseline onto my nipples, because that would be weird, especially if there were children on the beach. It also lacks that burning/cooling sensation. It’s more of a preventative measure than a remedy for already-burnt-up-balls, which is probably what a smart person does.
