A lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that from her teens into her later twenties, she habitually carried a flask with her. She'd have it in her backpack or her messenger bag, and it would be filled with Belvedere vodka or Maker's Mark bourbon. The flask itself was engraved, though I forget the exact motto. It may have been Ad Alta, To the Highest, the motto of her posh school, or Semper Paratus, Always Ready, which I suppose goes with the flask. I always admired her for that, and I rather envied her the flask and the party girl life it went with.
My friend told me about the flask, but I never asked her another party girl question. Did she carry condoms with her? She may not have. She once told me that she'd had so much unprotected sex in her teens and early twenties without any complications that she was afraid that she wasn't able to become pregnant at all. It is something I should ask her, though. I've known girls her age who carried a couple of condoms with them at all times--- just in case, they'd say, or you never know what you never know. I've known other girls who always regarded a condom or two as something that was an essential thing for going out. An ID card, $20 or $30 in emergency cash or taxi fare, a debit card, a lipstick, and a condom or two--- those things would be all they'd need for a night at their favourite local bar.
Condoms are something of a mystery to me. I remember the Plague Years of the Eighties. I remember when clubs were filled with PSA placards urging everyone to "cover up". I will admit that they remained something on the edges of my own experience. That's probably something like straight privilege--- the Plague was something that happened to other people, to, well, Others. It's also that my own outlook on sex was shaped before the Plague Years. I thought about contraception in some way, I suppose, but I hadn't had to consider the Plague or even the non-fatal kinds of STD. In my late teens or early twenties, I took it as a given (and this may be a generational thing) that girls all went at sixteen or seventeen to be put on the Pill, that they and their mothers connived at a belief that the girl's periods needed to be regulated, or that the Pill was good for some hypothetical acne issue. I took it for granted that when a girl arrived at university, she immediately used her student health services plan to get on the Pill. I may well have been in grad school the first time a girl handed me a condom, and I was clueless enough about how to put it on. That's a long way from the days when student groups had bowls of free condoms at informational tables on campus.
I do want to ask my friend in New Zealand about condoms. She was born at the end of the Eighties, and I have no clue what she was taught about using protection at school. She was a posh party girl, though, and I do wonder if she kept a couple of condoms available...just in case. I wonder if she keeps one or two in her messenger bag or her bedside table even now.
This takes us to someplace else, though. Condoms are about contraception and STDs, about "protection". But there is something else I wonder if girls carry--- something I worry about for myself, too.
I'd always assumed that on any date night, or when a lover was coming by for a sleepover, that you showered and shaved and shampooed. Those things were essential and taken for granted. Right now, though, I've developed a new set of hypochondriacal fears. I've been reading question sites and blogs where girls (inevitably) complain about male behaviour. And now I have a set of hygiene fears. What if showering isn't enough? What if it isn't enough at all? The human body is an unreliable thing, and its design is haphazard at best.
A couple of years ago I discovered that porn actresses have been known to fast before certain kinds of scenes and then eat only boiled white rice. Boiled white rice serves to prevent unpleasant after-effects from scenes with sodomitical (or strap-on) practices. It seals them up against loss of control or leakage.
What I've come to worry about involves not boiled white rice but wet wipes. I've seen blog posts and AMA questions about the use of wet wipes for male hygiene. I'd always thought that a long, hot shower and body wash would be sufficient to take care of any male hygiene issue, but the things I've been reading suggest that I may be wrong. I've seen answers and blog posts that suggest that a girl should wash and/or wipe down anything she's planning to put in her mouth. Carry a pack of wet wipes, the suggestions go--- wipe him down before you put anything in your mouth, and do it for all guys, not just the uncut. Well, now I have something new to fear.
I need to ask my friend whether she carries a wet wipe or two with her when she might meet someone while she's at a party or a club. A quick glance at the Walmart or Target websites shows that there are wet wipes (cotton, flushable, "for adults") that are marketed as "feminine hygiene" wipes. But the question here is about the male body. Should the male partner keep wet wipes in his bathroom and excuse himself to go use them before sex? There is a brand of wet wipes called Dude that very obliquely markets itself as a product males can use to do exactly that. The brand has a competitor called Every Man Jack--- a brand I'd never be able to buy without some mixture of shame and barely-controllable laughter. No young companion, no partner, has ever made any kind of complaint relative to hygiene. I know that. I know that I'm relentless about showers and body wash. But...what if? What if? So I do find myself staring at the Target website (or Amazon--- Amazon carries both brands) and wondering if I'll have to re-write my own history and wondering about shame, self-loathing, and how many abject apologies I might have to make. This is hypochondria, but it's paralyzing enough.
My friend in Wellington is fond of sodomitical practices and of analingus as well. An email she sent me back in late fall just noted in passing that she'd become really into eating ass and wasn't sure why. So I wonder if she keeps wet wipes in her backpack or her messenger bag to deal with any cleanliness issues either for herself or her partner. And...would she be the only one? Are hip twenty-somethings carrying a small pack of wet wipes with them on adventures in the urban night?
I've seen a fair number of things on line about why sleeping naked is the best way to sleep...but also about recommended procedures for making sure that sleeping naked doesn't lead to stains or skid marks on the sheets. This is not something you need to read in tandem with fashion articles where lovely actresses and models enthuse about the sensations and delights of sleeping naked under expensive Egyptian cotton sheets. Yet another thing to sit and let gnaw on your mind until you're terrified of your own body and shower habits.
In any case, I must ask my friend in Wellington (as well as various lovely young friends here) about wet wipes. Do they ever carry them? Do they ever use them on male companions--- or on themselves ---prior to sex? What are the social rules about such things these days? If you're reading this out over the aether, let me know what you think. If you're a lovely girl who may find herself meeting a potential new companion at a bar or a party--- do you carry condoms or wet wipes just in case? And do you have any problems telling a new companion what the wet wipes are for?
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