Condomnation

Last week I went out and bought a pack of condoms. Not because I was in any increased danger of getting sex, but because I was off to an eastern european country for a week and didn't want to find myself forced to use a bit of stapled pig intestine, or whatever the local variant might have been.

Xenophobia aside, I was also a little curious. I hadn't bought any since being at Uni - walk into any student nurses office scratching your crotch and wearing the expression of a man who can't cope with child benefit payments and you'll be pelted with free packets by the fistful - and at this juncture felt it my journalistic duty to document the process. I was the Walter Kronkite of male contraception. So, coming from the gym appropriately dressed in shorts and a Batman t-shirt, I entered my local Boots and got to work.

There's a lot to appreciate about condom purchasing. It's the only item of sexual health apparatus men have to buy, and thus the marketing remains attractively simple. Whereas women have to worry about absorbency and applicators and pleated wings (I know, I've no idea either) condom marketing hasn't advanced far past the stage of STOPS SPERM to STOPS SPERM, BUT BETTER, and thus choiceaphobes like are unburdened. A spade is a spade, and a rubber fun tube is a rubber fun tube.

Brand variance is a different matter. Arriving at the relevant shelf (in the act of which the shop emptied of everyone except disapproving-looking old women) I was met with a choice between a named brand like Durex and Trojan, and the store's own brand, which was significantly cheaper.This raised the possibility of a difference in quality, which wasn't necessarily what I was after. If I by own brand cornflakes, I'm prepared to accept that they'll be just a little bit less tasty, but if buying own brand condoms means getting someone just a little bit more pregnant I might not be so prepared to fly economy. Do they work differently? Perhaps the expensive ones stop all the sperm, and the cheaper brands simply shout demotivational slogans at them as they swim through. "Call that a tail?", "You couldn't reach the uterus with a Sat-Nav", and so on.

It's the same with variety of type. All the brands offered an 'extra safe' option, which necessitates the fact that all manufacturers accept that the majority of their products could be safer, which struck me as a little unnerving, since their principal function is the provision of safety. Such knowledge makes the purchase of the 'featherlite' varieties seem not so much risky as actively flagrant. I'm surprised they don't offer one with holes in it for extra breathe-ability.

I scanned the shelf and saw that Durex offered an 'extra large' variety, demarked by a fucking massive 'XL' on the front of the packet, which seemed kind of tactless, since it meant that anyone buying them would look like a similarly gigantic tosser. I couldn't, however, see any 'XS' ones, which made sense; but then I couldn't see any on the Durex website either (this is all for research, by the way). They seemed only to be available by special order, with patronising names (it's for research, honestly) like 'Little Tiger'. All this gave the impression that having a smaller than average dick is a physical deformity requiring specialist prescription, rather than a simple fact that just under half of the male populace are faced with. Not me though, because mine can been seen from fucking space.

Finally, I observed with some bemusement the flavoured and coloured varieties. I still fail to get these on any level. For starters, I can't see any reason why someone would need to taste the condom, unless they were worried about getting pregnant from oral sex, in which case they aren't the sort of person sex was intended for in the first place. As for coloured, I've absolutely no clue. If I had to compile a list of ridiculous and humiliating-looking things I've encountered in my lifetime, both cocks and condoms would make it into the top ten. Throwing a bright, garish colour into the mix seems like the worst idea in history. You may as well scrawl a pair of school-boy cartoon tits on it while you're at it.

Anyway, after much deliberation, I made my selection (Boots own, if you're interested, but I went with the extra safe as a happy compromise), took them to the counter, and tried to look neutral and aloof as they were scanned through. At the conclusion of the purchase all the disapproving woman left to harass a fourteen year old trying to buy a porn mag at W. H. Smith's next door, and I left, glad that I wouldn't have to repeat the experience for the next six years, until moths eat through the ones in my wallet and I have to buy another packet.