I am sitting on the edge of the tub naked, holding it in my hand. Each night I wait until I hear that particular little catch of breath, a small soft noise that she makes before her breathing goes slow and regular. What is that noise? I worry about it.

I slid out of bed and took it off. Easy on, easy off. She used to reach over and pull it off of me, jump out of bed, and come back to snuggle against my warmth. She stopped. I worry about it. I picture her turning it inside out, massaging and pushing its trapped liquids into her waiting womb, the ticking of the biological clock deafening her caution. I would look in the trash can in the mornings but they were never there. Maybe she flushed them. Or maybe she saved them up in the freezer wrapped in aluminum foil and deceptively labeled hot dogs or chicken or pork chops. Saved up until she had enough for what? And why has she stopped?

I lift the lid of the toilet and start to drop it in. I can picture it twirling around and around as it starts its whitefish migration down the pipes. I worry about it. I can picture it caught on some rusty bump on the inside of my old pipes, open, filling with water, swelling like a balloon angioplasty, thoroughly blocking the flow. Too strong to break. Water backing up all over the bathroom. Or, if it moved farther down the line, sewage backing up in both bathrooms, or the whole neighborhood. Trucks and men with spotlights and long metal snakes searching out the blockage, pulling it out, holding it up to the cheering crowds like a trophy largemouth bass.

I knot the end and pull it tight. I picture the sewage treatment plant. I can see the worker using a net to fish them all out. I worry about it. He's wearing, no, she's wearing a brown uniform. What other color could it be. She's heavy-set, stocky, and her dark hair pulled severely back and tied recklessly in a pony tail. As she scoops, she remembers leaving her young fair-haired lover abandoned among tousled sheets, her firm small-nippled breasts barely covered by the thin cotton. Never have a child of our own she thinks as she scoops them, once filled with life and now with waste, into a white plastic bucket. Both of them turned down period after period for artificial insemination. Shit happens, she thinks. Then one carefully knotted, its contents uncontaminated. She digs it out, dirtying her hand which she wipes on her brown uniform. She puts it in her pocket, washes it off in the ladies room, packs it in her brown paper lunch bag in the small refrigerator. A chance she thinks, no paperwork, no questions. Maybe contaminated, maybe deadly. She takes it home and lovingly ejects its contents into her lover.

Miracles happen. A child forms. My child. I don't even know that it, he, my bastard son, exists. He wonders why his mommy and daddy are both mommies. His friends pick on him. I worry about it. He learns enough to wonder about who his father really is. A man sitting naked, pondering a knotted condom never enters his mind. Movie stars, Axl Rose, American Gladiators are what he pictures. He grows and becomes famous. I watch him one night being interviewed by Jay Leno totally unaware that he is my son, and then climbing out of bed, I die cold and alone in a bathroom.

I stand up and slip on the rug. It scoots out from under my feet on the tile floor, its rubber backing worn from age. I sit back down hard on the side of the tub. I feel the impact as a sharp pain along my spine. I worry about it. It goes away and I try standing again, make it this time and open the medicine cabinet. With the little cuticle scissors, I cut the knotted end off and watch it drop into the toilet bowl. I start to drop the remainder in after it but remember the clogged sewer line. I once saw a show on safe sex where the narrator stretched a condom first over one hand, then over the other, then pulled his condom-clad hands over his head, down over his nose, the latex stretching almost clear. With the condom over both hands and head, he exhaled through his nose, inflating the condom until it shot off his head and buzzed across the room. Strong little bastards. I cut the tip off with the small scissors and drop the pieces into the commode.

I think about getting a new condom and pulling it over my head, working it up as a party trick or something, but I picture myself being unable to blow it off, slowly suffocating. I worry about it. The ambulance crew, when it finally arrives, finds me dead and blue and naked, my hands tightly clasped over my ears, held in place by the still intact condom, my eyes rolled back into my head. They load me on a stretcher and carry me down the steps. In front of the house, a crowd of neighbors, drawn to the flashing lights like moths, hovers to watch the excitement. The sheet covering my body catches on the worn copper weather stripping of my front door and is yanked off. The two attendants try to untangle it and I lie on the stretcher on my front porch naked and blue while my neighbors titter at my latex bound head and hands.

I start to flush the toilet, and remember how much water I'm wasting. Five gallons a flush? More? I worry about it. It can wait until tomorrow morning's additions. What was that they said in New York a few years ago, if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down. What if it's latex? I stare at the three pieces. They float on the surface, making small undulations like a jellyfish mom and her two smaller offspring. If I don't flush will she wonder why its in three pieces? If I do flush will it wake her up? I flush. The toilet seems extremely loud, a ferocious rush, a gigantic gurgle, the incessant running of water to fill the tank.

I turn out the bathroom light and am blinded. I feel my way back to the bed and climb in. She rolls over and pulls the sheet up over my shoulders. Did I wake you? I ask. Don't worry about it, she tells me. She reaches her hand down between my legs. I feel in the open night table drawer for the familiar package.

"Flush" first appeared in Djinni, Fall/Winter 1993.
Copyright ©1993, William Feustle, All Rights Reserved.

Writers such as Martin Amis, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Michael Benedikt, Kim Addonizio, Michelle Chalfoun, Armistead Maupin, John Irving, Anne Rice, and Elizabeth Benedict, all of whom contribute to this collection, have described in story, novel, or poem the sometimes touching, sometimes funny moments that confront their characters when dealing with this artifact of contemporary civilization, the condom.