Danger: Safe Sex

Last week, on the roadway in front of my car, a bit to the left toward the yellow centerline, rested a condom. I say "rested" because, after all, this open-ended (one side) sausage casing, was tired, spent, used, discarded, exhausted of any capacity for further employment. I spied this object in the morning. What carnal circus or mayhem had taken place overnight? I was relieved to know my car was not a venue for whatever tryst or ambush or dalliance had occurred. My car was still locked and had not been broken into. I was annoyed, embarrassed, and irked at the sight of a post-coital condom. This was not a merely puritanical or judgmental response. Such objects in one's environs are hardly welcome; they don't raise the value of surrounding properties. Still, why does this particular bit of detritus rankle me more than, say, a gum wrapper or cigarette box, though I abhor all litter, as I have noted in this space abundantly? Is it the cavalier disregard of others or of others' surroundings it hints at? (What else was the penile perp to do?) Some might celebrate the object as forensic evidence of safe sex. Yippee. (Such hurray-shouters would inevitably reside from afar, proponents of No Condoms In My Frontyard, NCIMF.) So, what did I do? I went to the trunk of my car and retrieved a pair of work gloves. I daintily picked up the thing, using two fingers, squinting in disdain, averting my gaze. Then what? I wasn't going to waltz into my apartment and put it in the trash. Nooooo. It would make for a rude and uninvited guest, an awkward visitor. I walked up near the house, by some bushes, and tossed it amidst some thickets, where it can rest, unseen, for centuries, known only by me. And now by you as well.