The Latex Tax on a Good Time

Condoms are, objectively, a great invention. As a kid they were perfect for water balloon experiments and various inflatables; slightly older, I dutifully practiced rolling them over bananas and cucumbers in whatever grim classroom context that was supposed to prepare me for adult life. Eventually they became the thing I wrestled onto myself in the dark, trying to maintain some presence of mind while navigating the narrow gap between pleasure and the cold terror of a snapped rubber and a paternity test on daytime television.

The fear got installed early. I must have been eight when I first played doctor with my best friend—entirely innocent, deeply mortifying in retrospect—and spent the following three weeks lying awake convinced I’d contracted something fatal from the encounter. We never quite looked each other in the eye again after that. Thanks, sex ed.

The problem is: condoms cost money, interrupt the moment at the worst possible time, and don’t feel like much regardless of whether they’re ribbed, ultra-thin, or strawberry-flavored—which is an insult to both strawberries and sex. Nobody chose to live in a world teeming with viruses and bacteria that want to ruin your genitals and your future. That condition was simply inherited, like a bad lease you can’t exit. So it’s entirely understandable that at a party, or after two weeks of something that feels stable enough to risk it, the little packet stays in the wallet. Men, women, and most people making actual decisions in actual moments feel the same way about the interruption. Even the Pope, in his heart of hearts, probably gets it.

Still. The invention holds. It solves real problems with admirable reliability. It’s just that solving real problems has a tendency to remove all the texture from things—which is, I suppose, precisely the point, and also precisely the complaint.