Chicago Quirk

I typically hate everything about the suburbs, but Northbrook just won some points.

 

 

Northbrook man’s foreskin-restoration business to be featured on TLC
Mar 28, 2011

Ron Low is in the business of foreskin restoration. Yes, foreskin, the stuff that covers the head of a penis unconquered by circumcision.

One might think that once foreskin is gone, it can’t come back. Like virginity. Or John Edwards. That would not be entirely true. Low, of Northbrook, said the little turtleneck-like collar of foreskin left over behind the penis head, as well as some of the shaft skin, can be stretched to approximate the real thing.

“Foreskin has the highest concentration of pleasure-receptive nerve endings, and it can serve as protection for the glans (penis head), keeping it moist and supple rather than dry and toughened,” said Low, 48.

Stretching a winky’s skin tube doesn’t recreate any lost nerve endings, but Low says it allows the skin to move more during sex, which makes it feels like it does.

Low (pronounced Lau) says he does business in 50 countries, though two-thirds of buyers are in America.

He apparently sells enough to support a family of four. Three years ago, he quit his job as an industrial engineer, and his wife, Alice, quit hers as an accountant to help out.

“I help about 10 men per day start restoring their foreskin,” Low said, calling from the nerve center of TLC Tugger, his Northbrook house.

That 10-a-day rate may soon rise. He and his company will be featured on the first episode of “Strange Sex,” a TLC show airing at 9 p.m. Sunday. There is no relationship between the TLC the network — The Learning Channel — and TLC Tuggers, in which the initials stand for Tapeless Conical Lengthening.

Low and TLC Tuggers will share the half-hour show with a segment on a woman who has two vaginas.

You can find Low’s business at tlctugger.com, which sells a couple of soft silicone cones he designed that combine to clamp the foreskin after it’s been stretched over the glans.

The cones are attached to a strap that loops around the leg near the knee, or over the shoulder, Low said. Or you can clip on a weight of between 5 and 15 ounces, and let gravity do the tugging.

How much weight?

“You add weight until discomfort starts to set in sooner than 4 hours,” Low said.

Why four hours?

“After 4 hours, you take a break, then use the toilet,” Low said.

“Tugger guys are toilet stall guys, not urinal guys,” he added. “You need to harangue this elaborate equipment in your pants.”

All this for $60, delivered.

It sounds better than what Low first bought for himself about 10 years ago. It had straps, adhesive tape, and a 35mm plastic film canister instead of soft silicone.

Got a picture in your mind? No? That’s what makes cable television the wonderful thing it is.

Users shouldn’t expect to get their tugging finished over spring break. The “device is guaranteed to work for a year,” Low said. “Most do not need another device — they can tug for four years and then be done.”

Low himself wanted to get the job done because as time went by, his manly instrument was getting less sensitive.

“It used to be that sex with my wife took a very long time,” he said. “If I wanted to finish, my wife would get sore.”

Some people may not look at his situation as such a predicament. He understands.

“You might think that being able to have sex for a long time would be a big advantage,” he said. “And there are certainly good things to say about it. But I still have sex as long as I like, and when my wife is ready, so am I. She’s able to enjoy the whole ride instead of just tolerate it.”

Low is big in the outlaw-circumcision movement, saying parents don’t have a right to make the decision for a child. He thinks claims of better health and hygiene for those who are circumcised is bunkum.

“We clean our genitals for the same reason we clean our armpits — for social reasons, not for health reasons,” he said. “You would no more clean inside a foreskin than you would inside an eyelid.”