Protect Your Special Bits (In Defense of Sex & Safe Sex)

He kissed me by the taco truck and something stirred inside my underpants. The smell of sweat and tacos invaded my senses and I was rapt by the wetness of his mouth against mine. He pressed against me slightly and I felt his bits waking up too. When he asked if I wanted to get out of there I didn’t have to think twice. Not only was I in summer heat, it had been… a while, and I was feeling restless.

“Sure, but I’m not going to Park Slope,” I murmured, brushing my lips against his salty neck, “so you have to come to mine.”

I took his hand and pulled him through the crowd. We were by the exit when it struck me — I didn’t have any condoms at home. I saw the rest of the evening playing out in my head: we’d walk out the front, get in a cab, go to my room, there would be no condoms, we wouldn’t have sex and I’d have to give him a wristy instead. As inebriated as I was, I could see the stickiness of the impending situation.

A lightbulb flashed above my head. “Wait there, don’t move,” I said to him as I ducked back into the crowd.

Confused and drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing. Why wasn’t there a condom vending machine in the bathroom? Why wasn’t there a jar on the bar with complimentary condoms? They gave out free nuts — why not free protection?

I contemplated stopping at the shop on the way home but it felt… awkward. My roommates were taking the same cab home and I just didn’t feel like there would be a discreet moment to duck into a store. The inconvenience of going out of my way to a store at 2am prompted me to start asking people. I rushed back up to my friends “does anyone have a condom?”

They teased me a bit, but turned up little more than lint balls and chewing gum. Briefly contemplating making some sort of lint-gum sex contraption but resolving that would be horrible to get stuck in your pubes, I turned to the group of strangers next to me “please, does one of you have a condom?”

A girl laughed, “you go sister, and props to you for being safe!” But she still didn’t have what I was looking for.

I asked yet more people until one guy put his hand in his pocket, looking suspiciously over his shoulder and then back to me. “Yeah, I got one,” he drawled, slipping his hand back out of his pocket.

He outstretched his cupped hand to shake mine and I complied. The condom passed discreetly between us, from one hand to the other, like a bag of cocaine. Yes, safe sex was suddenly starting to feel very much like an illicit drug deal.

“Thanks,” I said, backing off, unsure as to why the whole process of obtaining a condom felt so shady.

“That’s OK,” he said, “but I should warn you, it’s a Magnum.”

So I went home and had drunk, safe sex. I felt great before, during and after. I felt no shame or remorse the following day, just a sense of relief and satisfaction (and maybe a little bit hung over). Mostly, though, I felt extremely grateful my man fit into a Magnum.

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