The Saga of the Stray Condom, part two

(Read part one here...)

A couple of other kids were there with me, sitting in the dirt and sharing a filched cigarette. I knew them well. They were a bit older than me, yet they were also a few grades behind me. From bad homes and just a few stages above being feral, they roamed the streets at all hours of the night, looking for the few things they hadn’t stolen, vandalized or urinated on yet. These were the kids with the older brothers who got drunk and high and then raced their cars along the quiet streets whenever they weren’t in juvenile detention or big-boy jail. Staying away from them was one of my major social preoccupations. Let’s call them Frankie and Dave.

Now, ordinarily, I’d be prey for this pair, but Dave had a soft-spot for me. Not thirteen years old yet and he already had that working-class “watch out for the people on the block” thing going on. He lived just a few houses over from me and this mystically tied us together in his mind. When he wasn’t around, Frankie and his evil playmates would chase me for blocks and hurl clots of mud at me, but Dave was more-or-less the leader of that whole crowd. “H-hey guys...” I said, my voice quavering.

There was a long time where they just stared at me. I was worried that they were weighing the risks and benefits of murdering me, but they were probably really just panicking at the thought of me running off to tell their fathers where their mother’s Newport Lights were disappearing to. Eventually, Frankie spoke up: “What the fuck are you doing?”

I shrugged and said, “Nothin’.”

“Nothin’. Oh yeah?” Dave asked and, faced with this kind of ruthless interrogation, I quickly broke down.

“I found something,” I confessed and both of them perked up.

“What’d you find?” Frankie wanted to know.

I tried to stonewall. “Nothin’,” I said, but they had already gotten up.

“C’man,” Dave commanded, “Let us see, why don’t you?”

Again, my resolve crumbled. “O-okay,” I squeaked and then I led them to the rubber. On the way, I was a slightly worried that they’d find my prize babyish or silly or not worth anyone’s attention. I shouldn’t have been concerned.

“Holy shit!” Frankie shouted, “It’s one of those!”

Dave clapped his hands to his cheeks and said, I kid you not, “Oh. My. God!”

Sheepishly, I joined in. “Cool, huh?”

Dave scooped it up, yanked it out of its pack, and–with obvious relish–unrolled it all the way. I was amazed at how blasé he was about the whole germ issue, but I suppose it was clear that this was a reasonably fresh condom. I mean, it hadn’t been used or anything. The idea of it being put to use led my mind down all sorts of forbidden corridors, and so I tried not to think of it.

“It’s so long!” Frankie marveled and this made Dave laugh.

“It’s not long! You think that’s long?” he howled, shaking the flimsy, lube-coated thing in the air, “Do you think that’s long, Kevin?”

“Ummmm...no?” I guessed.

“Frankie thinks it’s long!” Dave cackled. By this time his friend had turned twenty shades of purple.

“It looked long with the sun in my eyes, asshole!” he growled, and then he hit Dave in the shoulder.

Dave punched him back, saying “Watch it, shithead.”

“You watch it!”

“You watch it!”

“I said watch it, bitch!”

“Bitch, you watch it!”

It went on this way for quite some time, before something caught all our eyes...

(To be continued...)