Protection - Ian

When the condom breaks, it’s the first in a long line of things to break.  The bough comes next, followed shortly by hopes, dreams, that holiday you wanted to take, any license to excusable immorality and derpavedness, a full night’s sleep and disposable income.  Or so I imagine anyway.  This is the Left Behind narrative, the survival tale that plays spin-art on my mind the moment when, grunting coarsely into her neck I feel the latex peel back.  I bet if I could see the rift form and the material recede from the site of the break, the flesh emerge, the scene would bear a strange symmetry to the birth which, in my head is now inevitable.  But that’s not where condoms normally break, I tell myself.  Not at the top. They tend to split at the sides.  This realization buoys me momentarily, floating me just enough above 'Oh shit!' that I can act.  Immediately, I freeze. 

The board game Operation was first launched by Milton Bradley in ’65, but the rights were later acquired and it’s now produced by Transformers outfit Hasbro.  The game was originally based on a fun fair skill game popular at the time.  The goal of this game was to maneuver a metal ring up and off of an electrified metal spiral without touching it.  If the metal of the ring came into contact with the metal of the spiral, a circuit was completed and a tiny electric buzzer would sound.  To make things more interesting, the spiral itself would spiral, corkscrewing around and around to play devil with even the steadiest hands. 

Pulling myself and the broken condom out is like continuously losing this carnival game while trying really, really hard.  I can’t help but touch the metal spiral.  I am completely wrapped up in metal spiral.  Except in my mind, the tinny hacksaw of the electric buzzer is instead the screaming of a baby.

“What’s the matter?” she says.

I raise myself up on my elbows and toes, planked enough above her to come completely out.   I look down into the space between our two bodies and see the soft rise of her stomach.  I don’t think it at the time, but since I have wondered whether the distance between us then would have been enough to clear the bump.

“Uh, I think it broke,” I say.

“Oh, “she says.  “Get another one.  I’m on the pill.”