Night of the Living Condoms

The whole reason I wrote the post before this one was so that I could write about this. I couldn't write about anything so silly without first getting into the not silly reason for not writing. But now I am free to write, I am being stalked again. Somewhat less gravely yet more oddly. A march of used propylactics is beating its way to my door.

I moved apartments (and shook my human stalker hopefully for good) the day before leaving town for a tournament in Oregon. On the first day of play at this tournament I shortcutted to the portapotties through a thin glut of trees (thin enough so that watchful owners were comfortable tethering dogs there). On the way back I noticed in the ruff the largest condom I have ever seen, a magnum on jumbo juice. We are talking a three inch diameter when relaxed, and it was quite relaxed having obvisouly already performed the service for which it was designed.

Stranger still was that not 5 feet away was the Stuart Little of condoms also on the ground. This one had probably been sold in a box that also contained a wide-eyed Barbie learning about ghonnorhea. I was pretty sure it was not actually a condom but a similarly designed piece of latex with a completely different purpose, expcept it was so close to The Great One.

This is where I made my big mistake. I looked back at the other condom, to confirm the gross oddness of it all. Never look back at the other condom. I did not retrace my steps, I did not bend over; I simply turned my head. This was enough, apparently, to let all the used condoms in the world think I took an interest in them. Or perhaps it is a not so subtle attempt by my mother to gain the some grandchildren by disgusting me from safe sex forever. Or perhaps lovers the Pacific Northwest over have started living in fear of rogue bands of devout Catholics rummaging their trash bins and have started spreading their party favors out of incriminating distance of their homes -- a perimeter that apparently crosses my daily beeswax. it may be only a new awareness on my part, a sixth sense of things having to do with sex (when do you see them? all the time).

Whatever the reason, for the last month I have stumbled onto a dried condom about once a week. This is worst possible frequency because it is long enough that I forget about them and get surprised all over again, but soon enough that I can reactively conjure the image of the last one seen, forming a chain in my brain. The longer it grows the more secure the picture of each of them gets in my memory matter. I can picture the first few but don't remember where I saw them. the last two were behind the building where I work and on the crosswalk I use to get from the busstop to home. On the crosswalk. Was it actually used in a moving vehicle before being thrown out the window? Or did some guy strip it off after an especilly quick evacuation from the boudoir? And why my crosswalk?

When I was younger (really about five minutes ago and probably also currently depending on my serendipity meter) I had the feeling that my chance experiences actually were figures that summed up to my life's quest. I was too close to them to know what it was, but by staying aware I could pick up enough clues to get to wherever the great force of my life wanted me to go. The seeming coincidences in my life were actually the music of the spheres expressed in earth form.

I would rather disregard the condoms than enter them in my proofs of greater cohesion in the world, but their case is becoming pressing. My life is weaving with the paths of too many spent lovers these days for it to only be chance. Do they know each other? Do they work at my grocery store? Is finding used condoms my prelude to figuring out the cure for cancer? I am looking to shriveled latex for connections and answers (looking in my head looking, not looking at the sundried condom on the street looking). Of course, there is nothing there but what is there, but who am I to deny cosmic forces at play? so the semen whisperer walks on.