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.

too true, too often

Provocateur / activist / friend Dan Valenti has video-chronicled pandemic neglect in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He strolls through urban scenes of weeds, litter, abandonment, indifference, foolhardiness, ignorance, indignity, and self-defeat. It all adds up to neglect that reflects a lack of care, class, or hope.

Sad.

Sadder yet is the inescapable conclusion that the locale could have been any of — what? — 137 cities in America.

I don't have a simple answer (or even a complicated answer) except to lament bygone days of community, commonweal, pride, and humanity. How does one teach or inspire those attributes? Can leaders instill those civic virtues? Can these positive energies and exertions swell upward, churning a rising tide? Or are we condemned to cumulative attrition, an oxymoron of loss and despair?

Detroit style

Several yards ahead of me and my dog, they walked. One of them carried a pizza box and ate the remains of a pizza. Little Caesars (ubiquitously missing the apostrophe). "Detroit Style." I imagined an empty pizza box being tossed as litter. Should I preemptively speak against such a vision? I decided against that. Maybe I'd be wrong, and Pizza Eater would not discard the pizza box in the park on this golden spring day. So I walked on, silent. I passed the couple. Then I reversed direction. Sure enough, the couple, including Pizza Eater, walked toward me, no pizza box in hand. I could not resist. "I'll take care of that pizza box for you," I said, looking straight at Pizza Eater. "Appreciate it," was the reply, as if Pizza Eater expected old men to serve as personal valet on litter patrol, or as if Pizza Eater was politely grateful for this correction of a mere oversight, an "accident." "Yeah, sure," I said, tugging against saying a lot more, vehement, sarcastic, righteous, angry, incredulous, instructive, despairing, dangerous. I walked on. I found the evidence, the discarded Little Caesars box. I picked it up, mumbled angrily, and carried the pizza box up the hill. I tossed it in the trash barrel. (I never opened it to confirm if all the slices had been consumed.)

Notice that I have refrained from describing the litter perps. Are there demographics detailing who litters?

Earth Day? Spare me the pious (pie-ous; get it?) cleanups. What about today?

expanded polystyrene civil degradation (EPCD)

The burly, dark man opened the driver's door of a new silver Audi in the Wegmans parking lot. I heard a plop. Citizen Utter Disregard (CUD) had deposited a large expanded polystyrene food container on the ground, by his driver's door. CUD closed the door. I walked up to the car.  I picked up the expanded polystyrene container. I did not open it. I deliberately made eye contact with CUD as he breezily drove off. My heart beat faster, realizing that my minor act of civil obedience might be deemed provocative by CUD. I deposited the expanded polystyrene food container in a trash basket in front of Wegmans.

My head swirled with rage and sadness and befuddlement, with a thousand questions as to what moves CUD, or anyone for that matter, to such insouciant disgust toward his or her own surroundings. What permits people to exercise such expanded polystyrene civil degradation (EPCD)?

(Before writing this, I was all set to describe the piece of litter as STYROFOAM [TM]. It wasn't, and never is when it comes to food containers. Thank you, Washington Post for the education.)

litteral danger

I walked outside, toward my car. Across the street, he dropped a can in a bag. Flippant, breezy. Careless. Insouciant. Without care. (Etymologically "without sorrow, anxiety, or grief; without burdens of mind; serious mental attention.") In flagrante delicto. Broad daylight. Almost twilight. I changed direction. "No direction home," to use a generational phrase from Bob Dylan. I walked across the street, telling myself silently, over and over, as if it were an incantation, a Roman Catholic litany, "Do not say a word. Don't say a thing." I picked up the can in a bag. Arnold Palmer iced tea. Near it, a Keystone Light tall boy. Not being a drinker, even to pick up that can, with its dregs and alcoholic odor, a risk. I picked it up too. The clutch of three or four bus-stop waiters staring at me, their eyes on me. "Hey," he said. I kept moving. "Hey." I focused on picking up the litter, the desecration of land not considered holy, not considered unholy, not considered at all. "Hey, mister, over here. You missed this. Hey. You missed one." Do not say a word. Don't say a thing. Do not say a word. Don't say a thing. I gathered the detritus. I held it. I stopped. I looked at him. We locked eyes. If looks could kill. I turned and crossed the street, my back to him, to them, my hands now shaking.

a surprise of snails

After my post-office errand, I walked down Solar Street, in Syracuse. I had two pieces of litter in my hand, a flattened beverage cup with straw and a flattened cigarette pack. I had already recovered and delivered to the USPS doorkeeper (closing time had passed while I was writing a check in the P.O.) a white paper plate stamped with tire tread and some remnants of plastic bag that resided in front of the P.O. (Or something else. I am already forgetting.) I did not want to bother the affable clerk to open the locked door once again. Plus, he might see me as some litter-gathering psycho. In the shade of sunny Solar, I spotted, on the border of cut grass and overgrown shrubbery, a split-open empty potato chip (or similar contents) bag. I hesitated. Why pick it up? It will dirty my hands. What difference will it make? I could do this all day and not make a dent. Just yesterday, strolling through Solvay, I passed the lawn of some young people with kids adrift and noise aplenty. At the edge of their lawn, garbage, litter, filth. I paused and looked at the detritus, angrily hoping to catch the attention of the residents. And then what would I say? And would my life then be in danger for saying it or silently conveying it? Killed over litter. Not the way to go, I guess. Or would it be a bold statement? Um, no. Walking home, I had a revelation. If they could care less about their own house or (most likely) rental property, why should I be surprised if they toss junk from their car window or from their hands as they walked? It makes no difference to them. Just as, perhaps, nothing makes much difference to them in their lives. As I picked up the shining foil of the snack bag, I was surprised to fine dozens of snails in the dirt. I jostled the shells. They all seemed vacant of snails. I guess they would be. So, it was a surprise of snail shells, not snails. I know little of snails, despite my reading of the fiction of Anthony Doerr. Naively, I expect shells like these to be found near the sea. The closest water is Onondaga Lake, and the stream leading to it, Nine Mile Creek. James Lipton compiled An Exaltation of Larks. Are snails, or shells, included in his taxonomy and lexicon?