Condom Catapult

During my final semester at college, I was a senior who in typical senior fashion, got screwed over by school policy. Despite it totally being their fault, it was up to me to solve the problem. To prevent paying for a summer course or, in my worst nightmares, another semester at college, I signed up for a special cross-campus course. In Boston, there’s a system called Colleges of the Fenway. Essentially, it was a collaborative organization between several different schools. My school was a part of it as was the notable Simmons College.

For those of you who don’t know, Simmons is an all girl’s school save for their graduate programs and courses that fall under the Colleges of the Fenway organization. I’d already made a few friends from that campus, and a lifetime family friend also attended there, as well as an ex-girlfriend but let’s not get into that, shall we?

So I went through the rigamarole of signing up in the COF, getting a Simmons ID, getting books from their library, and jumping into a forensic science course that had already been ongoing for about a week. The professor, a guy who looks like your nerdy uncle if you have one of those, welcomed me with open arms. As for the rest of the class, they could have cared less after the double-take they gave me when they saw me sitting at my desk for the first time.

I became friends with a junior Simmons student who happened to sit next to me. Her nickname was Kat. She was short, brown-haired, rosy-cheeked, had a somewhat big nose that didn’t seem right for her small face, and she was very short. The top of her head came up to the bottom of my chest, if I recall, and I’m by no means a tall man.

At first, she was a bit reserved. Her voice was a little deep, not a baritone by any means, but definitely not light. She wasn’t timid or shy in the way that I was and still kind of am. Just because we shared a conversation on that first day, we became lab partners on the second. You see, the class met two times a week; Tuesday and Thursday if I remember correctly. Tuesday was the lecture day, confined to a second floor classroom overlooking the academic campus of Simmons. Thursday, we went to a separate building for the lab. Some days we started in the class then ventured over there after a brief break, but that was rare. Technically, the lab was supposed to last for three stinking hours but we usually got out of there an hour to an hour and half early.

It was at this first lab, examining different types of chemical solutions through microscopes and drawing them, we became comfortable with each other. Neither of us could draw and we both had trouble operating the microscope. So we started to make fun of ourselves and each other. By the end of class, we were lost in our own little world of failure and laughing hysterically.

We learned a lot about each other very quickly. She was from Rhode Island but it took me a while to remember whether she was from Rhode Island or Connecticut. Oh, she hated it when I misremembered it as Connecticut.

“Oh, whoa-whoa-whoa buddy,” she’d say, jokingly. “Don’t confuse me for some Connecticut bitch. I ain’t no Connecticut bitch.”

I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. Now that I think about it, I never asked why she bore such antagonism for the state. But she liked people from Massachusetts, which was lucky for me!

Kat was studying to become a nurse, so part of her week was spent working in one of the local hospitals. I can’t remember which; it might have been Beth-Israel or Boston Children’s. She’d always hit me with a new story every time we sat down in class and they were colorful indeed! One that really stands out to me was an encounter she had with a non-English speaking mother and son. Kat only knew a smattering of Spanish and was unable to communicate that she needed to take the son’s rectal temperature. Finally, unsure of what to say or do, she just made an upward-thrust motion with the thermometer. I’m sure we’ve all made it once or twice with our hand; index-finger forward, hand sweeping upwards from a low angle. The mother understood and gave her a thumbs-up.

Kat took a little pride in herself for being able to do her job without an interpreter. But mostly, we found it funny. Stories were a great source of humor for both of us. She loved it when I’d tell her about all the medical events in my life, such as being sent to the hospital by a cat, almost drowning a couple times, and weird doctors I’ve had.

Most of the time though, we just made our own fun during the lecture portion of the course. Now, something you should know about me: I was a little goody two-shoes in the classroom. I’ve always did my best to respect my teachers, even the ones I didn’t like. I remained quiet, raised my hand when I wanted to speak, delivered my work on time, all the stuff that teachers wanted out of their students. I wasn’t a model student; by the end of college I was really tired of school and I was putting in minimal effort with everything but my main coursework. Plus, exams and I have never quite agreed with one another.

But for some reason, the professor of the class, whom I will call ‘Professor H,’ was really goofy. Not on purpose either, he was just kind of awkward and didn’t realize it. To be honest, I wish I could live with that kind of lacking self-awareness. Maybe I wouldn’t be so dang anxious and self-conscious all the time. He paced very oddly around the room, struggled with the computer, said silly things very seriously, said serious things in a very silly way. Just about everything about him was doofy and we genuinely loved him!

We loved him so much that we couldn’t help but make jokes under our breath. These jokes weren’t unkind or malicious, but they were still jokes that, if he heard them, would be at his expense. I don’t even remember them being particularly hilarious but we died every time we made one. It got to the point where he would just gesture or commit to one of his weird mannerisms, of which there were too many to even bother listing here, and we’d just start cracking up.

Even though we sat in the front row, we thankfully sat at the far left if you were looking at the whiteboard. Professor H never quite walked that far and I think he was a little hard of hearing. So we got away with it every single time for several months. Come to think of it, when we realized he genuinely didn’t notice us, it just made the whole situation funnier to us.

“Uh-oh, I think he heard us that time,” I’d whisper to Kat, and she’d start giggling. “Here he comes, here he coooomes...” She’d be silently laughing into her hand at this point. “...not this time, he’s walkin’ away, phew, that was close, oh no wait, I think he knows!” At this point she’d grab my arm and whisper for me to stop while she quietly wheezed.

See, that’s the level of friendship we got to in a short amount of time. Stuff that was funny to no one else was hilarious to us.

All of that contributed to raising our friendship to another level very quickly. However, in budding friendships like these, I’ve found there tends to be one very prominent act that suddenly catapults it from a 5 or 6 to 11. What turns two friends into best friends is different for everyone. For Kat and myself? It came down to a little sandwich baggy with a note inside of it.

Whenever I was at the academic campus, I was with Kat. We were rarely seen apart. We were always lab partners and partners for projects. Even when we were working on projects for the class that didn’t require partners, we ended up working together. Many long hours were spent in the Simmons library, heads bowed over our notebooks.

Kat was one of those people where no subject was off-limits. We talked about bad breakups, the things our family did that annoyed us to no end, and, obviously, sex. We talked about our previous romantic partners, of which I only had one prior to my girlfriend at that time. She had a couple. At the time, I was in a committed relationship with a girl at my school and Kat was single. I never talked too deeply about what my girlfriend and I got up to.

Well, except for a time where we couldn’t have intercourse. See, my girlfriend had a host of medical conditions, which included a host of allergies. One of those allergies meant she couldn’t take the traditional birth control pill. So we relied on several other kinds which, due to the ever-evolving nature of her health, steadily became untenable. It got to the point where no birth control was safely available to her.

Then there were condoms. Problem was that she had a latex allergy, too. In our area, the pharmacy sold only one brand of non-latex condoms. I could give you over half a dozen reasons as to why this option was a no-go. To save me some time and you some awkwardness, let’s just chalk it up to bring poor college kids and comfort issues as the primary reasons, okay?

So we just flat-out stopped doing it. Needless to say, the situation sucked!

I, having few people to complain to and unwilling to complain to my friends at my school about it, felt comfortable moaning about it to Kat.

“I mean, it’s not like we need to have it!” I explained one night in a library study room. “It’s not the most important thing to me in our relationship. But not doing it all really blows.”

“Aha,” Kat snorted. “Blows.”

“Shut it, this is serious business,” I said, putting my hand down on the table hard. “I need to figure something out,” I said, dragging my hands down my cheeks before face-planting on the table. “We’re both going nuts.”

“Well don’t you guys do—”

“It’s not the saaaaame,” I complained. “I need more than that. I need romance, Kat!”

“That can be romantic, though.”

I glared up at her and she shrugged. I rested my head back on the table in disappointment. Kat tilted her head and craned her neck to try and meet my gaze.

“How long has it been? Be honest.”

“Almost four months.”

Look, if we had been long distance, it still would have sucked but at least the situation would have been more tolerable. If you’re long distance, neither of you are getting any. But we lived together! Sleeping beside each other every night, showering together, seeing each other naked all the time; that’d drive you mad! We didn’t have distance as an excuse, okay?

“Phew, that really sucks.”

“It’d be different if I was single,” I said. “If I was single and it’d been four months since my last time, I wouldn’t give a shit.”

“You say that now. What would you do?”

“I don’t do the whole one-night-stand thing, Kat,” I moaned into the table.

“What about friends with benefits?”

“I dunno, I’ve never done that. Wait, I’m not even single!”

“You will be at this rate. If you don’t start giving your girlfriend what she neeeeeeds...”

“I hate you.”

Kat giggled and tugged on my earlobe.

“You looooove me.”

Now, it could have ended there. I complained to my friend about my lack of sexy times, she made fun of me like a real friend would, and nothing more was said. But that conversation took place on a Thursday and Kat had to go work in the hospital between that day and Tuesday.

Next Tuesday, I arrived at class early. That was nothing new. I’ve always been the weirdo who shows up twenty to thirty minutes early for just about everything. Dentist appointments, blood draws, classes, etc. I took my usual seat, front row, second desk from the left, and started listening to music while I read from a book. Then, I got sidetracked, started watching a video, and then I heard the rear door to the classroom open.

Kat entered the room, wearing the red sweater I liked so much, in a bit of a huff. At first, I thought something was wrong because she came in breathing a little heavily and her face was somewhat serious.

“Oh, hi Kat,” I greeted cautiously. She released a relieved sigh and smiled at me.

“I’m so glad you’re here early!” she exclaimed.

“I’m surprised to see you,” I admitted. She was never early.

Kat slid into her seat, took off her coat, and started sifting through her bag.

“I got you something!”

“A present?” I asked, surprised.

“Yeah, kinda.”

Kat dropped a plastic sandwich bag on my desk. A white piece of paper was folded around something in the middle of the back. Written in black ink on the paper was, ‘For Zack.’

I opened the bag and I died laughing. Inside were four condoms in bright yellow packaging.

Kat quickly explained she hadn’t bought them. During one of her shifts at the hospital, she had been walking through an office to collect something. The clerk was away from the desk at that moment. Just when she was about to leave, Kat spotted a bowl on the desk. It was filled with condoms. Instantly, she thought of my predicament, grabbed a handful, jammed them into her pocket, and left like she was shoplifting!

I quickly put those away.

“I can’t believe it!” I wheezed.

“Yeah, I saw them and I just thought of you!” she said with a wave of her hand, as if she had gone window shopping and came across an item I’d like. Then, pretending to be serious, she put her hand on my forearm. “Use them, Zackary. Don’t let them go to waste. I went through a lot to get those.” She could barely finish that line without cracking up.

“And they’re latex free!?”

“Latex free, baby.”

We laughed a little bit more but we stopped talking about it once other students started to arrive. But we couldn’t stop smiling and bursting into laughter. It was that kind of laughter that makes you hot so I ended up having to take off my sweater and my over-shirt over the course of the class. It was so great. But eventually, as Professor H began his boring lecture, I looked over at Kat. She was still smiling as she scribbled in her notebook. Her brown locks kept falling over her red cheeks and she continually swiped them away. Whenever she sighed, which she did somewhat often, the little necklace she wore over her sweater swayed ever so slightly.

I leaned over a little bit.

“You’re a great friend, Kat,” I said without any sarcasm. Kat blushed as red as her sweater and waved her hand at me.

“Shut up,” was all she said. I just laughed.

I couldn’t wait to get back to my room that night. I practically kicked open the door, more excited to tell my girlfriend the story than anything else.

“Honey, my friend Kat got us condoms!” I yelled. My girlfriend, laying on the bed watching a video on her phone, jumped out of her skin.

“Whaaaaaat!?” she exclaimed. For a split second, I realized it might have come off very weird for me to come back with condoms given to me by another woman. Thankfully, my girlfriend didn’t go down that route and found it as funny as I did.

That was the event, the little moment that broke down our remaining barriers. Kat and I became the best of friends. It might seem trivial and weird because, you know, condoms. But it’s those weird, odd little things between people that draw them together. Small events, strange objects. Things that make only you laugh. Those enter a kind of language, a vernacular only you and one other person know. Your own personal lore, a historical canon and verbose lexicon of friendship terms that mean something only to those involved. Kat and I had that bond already, but a bag of condoms exchanged in the spirit of friendship and safe sex, was what cemented it.

As for the condoms, what I will tell you is that I still have three of them. Yes, nearly five years later and I still have three condoms from a Boston hospital ‘stolen’ by my friend. I keep them in an Altoids can in the drawer of my desk. Oh, because I know the thought of the expiration date passed through your mind, they expired June 30, 2022. Man, it was like throwing away historical artifacts!

As for Kat, she and I haven’t spoken since Spring 2018, the last day of finals for me. Sad, but that’s the way some friendships go, even the really, really great ones. Life draws people apart, new experiences take up the present. It’s sad that such a fun and quality friendship is in the past. But you know what, having good memories is an important part of life. We need them so that when we look back at ourselves and the things we’ve done, we can smile and laugh like we did then. I laugh my heart out and my day is brightened whenever I think about that bag of condoms, and about all the good times I spent with Kat, especially.