Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Old business cards are like old condoms.

At some point, you throw them away.

I’m not talking about used condoms. That falls under the category of Eeeew. They’re disposed of immediately, sort of like the Dutch-date guy.

I’m talking about carrying around condoms in your purse and not using them.

Like just about every other American woman, I carry around a purse that fills with detritus as I move through the world. Artifacts of my business and personal life are all mixed together. There is essentially no form of organization. It’s just a mélange of objects small enough to carry around with me until they age sufficiently to discard.

If I’m bored, waiting at a doctor’s office, for example, I might sift through it and toss out the most useless items. Sometimes, I drop my purse, and the contents spill out, giving me the chance to throw out more stuff.

The easiest thing to discard are old business cards. I have no idea who these people are anymore. I also find old Mapquest directions, the dregs of various kinds of makeup, dead batteries, expired coupons and notes to myself. (Note to self: write a blog entry about the contents of your purse.)

There is, however, one object that puts me in a keep-it-or-dump-it conundrum because it makes me reflect upon my life: my secret stash of condoms.

When I became single, it was damned exciting to put a few condoms in one of the purse’s secret compartments. Was one enough? Probably not. If you need one, you need two. But if you need two do you need three? That’s my ex’s reasoning. I figured if it was good enough for him, then it was good enough for me.

But they ride around with me and get old, since opportunity has yet to present itself. The closest I’ve gotten is hmmm, he’s gonna kiss me, should I let him do whatever he wants?

But here’s the thing. If a stranger picks me up in public somewhere, I may sip coffee with him at Starbucks and listen to his attempt to seduce me. I consider myself a connoisseur of seduction techniques.

When I go on a date, there is plenty of warning ahead of time that something could happen, and never has a guy said, “Gee, I didn’t bring any birth control, do you have any condoms in your purse, baby?”

So, do I really need these condoms in my purse?

They just get old and replaced by new ones, which also get old. But unlike old business cards, I’m going to keep the condoms. Is there anything else in there that I’d need to be able to scream in ecstasy? Nah, whether I use them or not, they’ve become the most important thing in the purse.