Ignore the Smell of Cheese

Like all young boys in the act of purchasing contraceptive thingies for the first time, I was acutely embarrassed.

Mingling in the shop a while, I picked up a pack of Niknaks crisps, a chocolate bar and a litre of milk. Joining the back of the queue and then leaving it when an old lady got behind me.

Eventually, when the store was deserted again, I attempted to casually rush to the counter.

As the lady rang up my items I looked over her shoulder and asked for a pack of Peter Stuyvesant Filter, a box of matches… and a 3-pack of Rough Riders, please – which I immediately hid underneath the cheese-flavoured Niknaks when yet another elderly lady walked in and stood behind me.

It was New Year’s Eve, 1991, and I was fourteen.

Before you get any ideas, the condoms weren’t for me but an older friend who imagined he was getting lucky that night. To spare his own embarrassment I’d agreed to make the purchase for him.

A few years later, when the opportunity of getting jiggy with a lady was at least a possibility in my universe, I felt the same nervous guilt when sliding a pack of ‘Wet ‘n Wild’ across the counter – always attempting to hide it amongst some other unnecessary items in case God saw and ejected a bolt of lightning from his index finger through the top of my head.

Well, not really, as I’ve never believed in a stuffy, fundamentalist God. If anything, it was probably because I imagined the till jockey would take one look at awkward me and think, “Who’d have sex with you?”

Only later in life did I come to the realisation that if the cashier was a woman she should commend me for being safe and respecting the other party’s right not to suffer a surprise pregnancy; and if the shop assistant was a guy he should give me a thumbs up as if to say, “Right on, brother.”

My brother’s art teacher must have known this and had the right idea when every Friday he’d put a big jar of Family Planning condoms out so the boys could be safe over the weekend without the mortification of actually having to ask for them.

Another friend of mine’s dad always kept the house well stocked with what he called “dong-bags”; however, I’m not sure if they were for the use of his son or rather for the couple to make sure they didn’t have another naughty little shit.

I suppose some parents might think that keeping one’s children in a steady supply of rubber sheaths would amount to encouraging promiscuity, but I’m also pretty sure those same parents would be too conservative to have that much-dreaded ‘sex talk’ with said offspring.

Sex was taboo for so long, and now with AIDS and all that keeping oneself protected has needed to come out in the open. Maybe if society just agreed that it’s the one thing we all have in common it would make it easier to talk about it. And it would certainly make it easier for the poor, clammy-palmed teenager on the other side of the counter.

The only foreseeable problem would be a downturn in the sales of Niknaks.