This month’s theme:
Love and Lust: Wrap that Rascal!

We’ve come a long way in recent decades. When I was in high school in the mid-1980s, you NEVER would have seen a condom ad on TV. Thanks to far-right social conservatism—with its foundation of a complete intolerance for the beliefs and values of others—we are woefully far behind where we should be as a society. Even today some fight to control a woman’s body, crusading to prevent abortion at all costs—while working hard to deny people contraception or even learning about it in schools, instead believing (erroneously) that abstinence is the only (or best) answer.

Screw them—but screw them with protection! It’s difficult to override the biological imperative to have sex. We’re SUPPOSED to have sex, and evolution has given us a strong sex drive to make it happen. We SHOULD have all the sex we and our willing partners want, but we should be smart about it. There are many forms of contraception, but here we’ll do a bunch of stories about that simplest and most convenient form: condoms. I’ll even end with a moral to each story just in case there are any intolerant far-righters who might be reading.

“It’s Just Condom Sense”
Sci-fi
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Matt came to town with nothing but the clothes on his back. The innkeeper was surprised that he had no horse, and commented that his attire seemed strange.

“I’m from away,” Matt said. “You have prostitutes here?”

“Aye, five beauties available. What sort are ye wanting this evening?”

Matt pulled a small leather bag from the pocket of his breeches and upended it on the counter. A pile of shiny silver coins clinked out, and the innkeeper’s eyes widened. It was more money that he probably earned in months.

“All five, all weekend long,” Matt said. “I have a bit silver more to tip the ladies—and for you when I leave, if you treat me well.”

“That’s enough to pay all the king’s taxes for years!” the man cried. “Why, yes, sir, I’ll close the inn for the weekend and send all the girls to your room right away!”

*   *   *

Matt disrobed in his room. It was the vacation getaway he’d always wanted! The room left something to be desired—big, empty, a bit chilly, with an oversized bed. The mattress was basically a big cloth sack overstuffed with hay. Primitive, but it would work. He willed his intraocular computer awake, and saw the display projected onto his retina.

“Time until event?” he asked.

“Two days, eleven hours, twenty-three minutes,” the computer replied.

“That should work,” he said, even as the door to his room burst open. Five beautiful, smiling faces flocked in; they were all gorgeous, and all wore dresses that showed off cleavage and ample hips. They tumbled onto the bed with him and began tearing off his clothes.

“Before we begin,” he said, clawing his way out of the pile of flesh, “I just need one thing.”

From out of his pocket he pulled a long strip of three dozen connected condoms in a wide range of bright colors. The women oohed and aahed at them.

“Wot’s those, lad?” one of them asked.

He tore one off the strip. “Just some protection for all of us. None of you fine ladies will get pregnant, which could really muck things up.”

*   *   *

It was a raucous weekend. Sunday morning, he finally disentangled himself from the sleeping pile of naked ladies on his primitive bed and got dressed. He scouted the area before he left, and sure enough found an errant used condom that he’d missed. He snatched it up and checked his computer. Minutes until the event.

He left another bag full of coins for the ladies and hurried downstairs to leave what he had left for the innkeeper. Then it was out the back, bolting for the woods, and he had barely cleared the treeline when he heard the computer’s alert beep inside his ear and felt the telltale sizzling on his body. It was like rampant static electricity building up, the kind where your hair stood up and you didn’t dare touch a metal doorknob. He stopped and waited, and soon his vision turned blue as the recall field bathed him in crawling electricity.

Then there was a flash of light, and the woods were gone. He stood in the transparent cylinder in the big, circular room, which was filled with such cylinders. His wife was waiting for him, smiling, wearing a toga. Behind her, the team in white lab coats stood.

“How was your vacation, sweetie?” Trina asked as she opened the pod.

“Fantastic,” he said, clambering out. “I spent the first week just exploring the world of five hundred years ago. And the last few days…” He reddened a bit. “Well, you know…”

“And you were careful, right?” she said with a knowing grin. “You used the condoms?”

“Every time. And they were right—even with the required vasectomy, I felt a lot more at ease having those things handy.”

They came together and hugged. “I’m glad you had a good time,” she said. “Now it’s my turn.”

He kissed her, and she climbed into the pod. “Remember, if you get into trouble, tell your internal computer to recall immediately. And you have condoms?”

She patted the leg pack concealed under her toga. “Of course!”

The lab techs sealed her in, and Matt watched as they initiated the temporal sequence. The inside of the pod glowed blue, and he and Trina locked eyes as she crawled with electricity. They mouthed “I love you” to each other, and then she was gone, sent back to ancient Rome for her vacation.

“That’s absolutely the epitome of an open marriage,” said the lab tech to his right. She was young and cute.

“That it is,” he said. “You know, I have a few condoms left from my trip, if you’re free tonight.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“I have a wife.”

“I don’t think my significant other would approve.”

Matt shrugged. “Bring him along. I can always get more condoms.”

She raised her brow with interest.

*   *   *

MORAL: As long as everyone consents and you’re responsible, it’s none of your business what everyone does in bed. And it’s really none of your business if they’re not responsible.

“Truest Love”
Zombie
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Darius walked down the dusty road, and up ahead he saw two zombies shuffling toward him. He unholstered his gun.

But one of the zombies was waving his arm.

“Don’t shoot!” the man cried.

Darius didn’t reholster his gun, but he approached cautiously. As he got closer, he could see that the man had a leash on the woman—a chain that was attached to her belt. She was a zombie, gnashing her teeth and snarling, clawing ahead and trying to get at Darius. The man held her back.

“Please don’t shoot!” the man called again. “It’s my wife. I have her under control.”

They closed to a dozen feet. The zombie woman wore a football helmet, so she couldn’t get her teeth at him anyway.

“What are doing man?” he asked.

“She doesn’t hurt me,” the man said. “She won’t bite me. Won’t even try. I feed her what I can. But she knows me. Somehow, she knows me. She’ll cuddle up with me at night, hold my hand, even hug me. And…”

The man trailed off, looking wistfully at his undead wife. The woman growled and kept trying to get at Darius.

“And what?” Darius pressed.

“I’m trading,” the man said. “What do you need? I have an extra handgun. I’ll trade you for condoms. You got condoms?”

Darius thought on it. He’d never had anyone willing to trade a gun for condoms. “I have lots of rubbers, man. Plenty. Don’t want to end up with an STD in the zombie apocalypse, you know? Ain’t many doctors’ offices around these days.”

“That’s why I need them. It’s for me and… and for my wife. She’s got the virus, and they say you can catch it if you… you know… with a zombie.”

Darius backed up a step. He’d met some crazy people in his travels, but this poor bastard…

The man saw the look on Darius’ face, and he shook his head quickly. “It ain’t like that, man. I ain’t some freak. We were married seventeen years when she got bit and turned. We were so in love. We still are. And she’s in there, somewhere, somehow. She KNOWS me, man. She knows me. And when we make love, she doesn’t growl or bite or anything. When I lay her down, she… receives me willingly, and she holds me. She makes little sounds, like… like she’s enjoying it. Like she’s at peace. Like she knows it’s me, and she knows that our love is eternal. I just… I just have to take care of her, so I can’t risk…”

The man began to cry, and he sank to his knees, and his wife immediately stopped trying to get at Darius. She turned to see her husband, and her gray eyes widened. She began howling, like a hurt animal.

Darius dug into his pack and pulled out a handful of condoms. He tossed them at the crying man, and they littered the road around him. “Take ‘em, man,” he said. “Be well.”

He gave them a wide berth, but the zombie woman didn’t give him a look. She just kept howling as she shuffled back and forth by her kneeling husband.

*   *   *

MORAL: You don’t have to approve or even understand. It’s not your relationship to nose in on.

“Ticket”
Dystopian
By David M. Fitzpatrick

Rex stood on the sidewalk at night, bathed in the red and blue of the police cruiser’s lights. The cop was searching his car. “You’d better tell me if there’s something to find before I find it,” the cop called back.

“There’s nothing there,” Rex said. “No drugs. No weapons. Nothing illegal. And all I did was a few miles over the speed limit.”

“And that gives me probable cause to search you and your vehicle,” said the cop, but then he cried out, “Well, what have we here?”

He clambered out of the car and held up the incriminating evidence: a condom in its wrapper.

“You’d better have a permit for this, son,” the cop said.

“In my wallet.”

The cop, who had the wallet, sifted through it and came up with a condom permit. He glared at Rex. “This permit is only good if you’re married.”

Rex held up his hand and waggled his ring finger. The white-gold band flashed in the cruiser’s lights.

“Marriage license?”

“Wallet.”

The cop dug through and found it. “And nonreligious objection? You need one in order to use a condom at all, regardless of your permit and marital status.”

“Atheist card in the wallet.”

He could tell the cop was getting annoyed at being stopped at every turn, and he looked even more annoyed when he fished out the ID card that showed him to be a registered atheist. “Well, looks like you have a goddam answer for everything,” the cop snapped. He stepped forward until his barrel chest was in Rex’s face. “I’m not allowed to discriminate, but you people who have recreational sex disgust me.”

“Well, cops who talk like that disgust me.”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. The cop could kick the crap out of him, hit him with some bullshit charge, or anything. But the man merely glared down at him with wide eyes and flaring nostrils. “You think it’s funny? You think that people who believe that condoms are wrong are laughable? You think people who believe that sex is for reproduction, as commanded by God, are wrong?”

“Yes—to all counts.”

The cop flashed a sudden smile and whipped out his tablet. “Two tickets today,” he said, tapping away. “One for six miles over the posted speed limit. The other for blaspheming the religious beliefs of people who oppose contraception.”

Rex’s mouth sagged open. “You can’t do that!”

“Sure can. Public blasphemy is illegal, and bodycam has you admitting to ‘all counts’—your words.”

Rex felt his phone buzz as it received the tickets. The cop grinned smugly at him. “You have a nice evening.”

He turned to go back to his car, and Rex just couldn’t resist pushing his luck.

“I’m going home to have sex with my wife,” he taunted. “Because it’s my right, even though people don’t agree with it. And I’m going to use lots of condoms.”

The cop froze and slowly turned to face him. His face was a mask of fury.

“You’d best not let me catch you within five hundred feet of a church that opposes those things,” he snarled.

He stalked back to his cruiser, snapped off the lights, and squealed his tires taking off. Rex sighed and got back into his car. He just knew that cop would be waiting for any excuse to pull him over…

“Computer,” he told the car, “I have a condom in the car. Plot me a trip home that keeps me at least five hundred feet away from any church that opposes condom use.”

“The shortest route will take seventeen point six miles,” the computer responded.

“But I only live eight blocks away!”

“There are twenty-six churches in the vicinity. You will have to backtrack on this road, divert to the highway north of the city, take Exit 235, and take Route 117 to the eastern suburbs…”

Rex seethed through gritted teeth. But he resolved to have the best condom-safe sex ever—all night long—on principle.

*   *   *

MORAL: It’s never a good idea for someone’s religion to govern someone else’s sex life.

“Acid Test”
Sci-fi
By David M. Fitzpatrick

“Human females have very acidic fluids in their vaginas,” Jake told Mulinsti, “so the male’s semen has fluids that protect the sperm from the vagina.”

“But I’m not a human,” Mulinsti said. She was a bipedal humanoid, but she had a long tail, gills, and green, scaly skin. “My vagina is significantly more acidic. I don’t want you to end up with chemical burns on your penis.”

“Me either!”

“Okay, then… I took the vaginal antacid an hour ago. It lasts for six hours.”

“And the chemical neutralizer?”

“I have a tube of it. We’ll apply it before we copulate.”

“Cervical paralytic?”

“Injected five minutes ago. That will keep my lower uterus from excreting the secondary acid.”

“I think we’re good to go.”

“But wait…!”

“Relax,” Jake said, smiling. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a strip of condoms.

EXTRA-DURABLE, the package read. FORMULATED WITH ACIDICIDE FOR PROTECTION AGAINST… and listed seventeen humanoid species whose vaginas were otherwise disastrous to human phalli.

“All other things we’re doing aside,” Jake said, “it never hurts to wear a love glove.”

*   *   *

MORAL: You can just never be sure, so when in doubt, use a condom.

“Road Trip”
Sci-fi
By David M. Fitzpatrick

The colonists were grumpy—all of them. The captain called a meeting in the Community Room—the big auditorium at the center of the gigantic spherical vessel that was hurtling through space at twice the speed of light, thanks to the dimensional field that the ship used to expand and contract space around it. Everyone was there; the captain had even authorized full-automatic so that no one needed to be on the bridge. Only a young ensign was not present; he was doing a manual count in the cargo hold.

The captain, with his first officer beside him, stood at the podium to address the three thousand adults there. There were so many grumpy faces looking at him…

“I know this is hard,” he began, but caught the accidental humor. “Difficult. I know this is difficult. I know it’s a solid two years to our new world—and, if it doesn’t work out, another two years to get back to Earth.”

“They promised us,” a voice hollered. Male, of course, but the fierce chorus of agreements that followed was equally male and female.

“It was some kind of mix-up,” the first officer—the captain’s wife—said. “That’s all we can tell you. We have ten percent of what we need for a four-year trip, so the reality is that we’re all going to have to ration our supplies.”

“We’re supposed to build a new civilization when we get there,” one woman called out. “Why can’t we just start now?”

“Yes—WHEN we get there!” the captain said. “We need to conserve all supplies until then. So I’m afraid we’ll all have to make do with what we have.”

Angry voices bubbled up, and soon shouting overwhelmed shouting. The captain let it go for a bit—let them get it out of their systems—and finally held up his hands for quiet.

“I know this isn’t ideal. But with four years of food for three thousand people, we can’t risk adding more people. Now, we were supposed to have enough condoms to allow us to have normal sex lives, because sterilizing everyone would have meant no civilization-building. So we’re going to have to overcome our urges. Save the few condoms you have for special occasions, and learn new ways to pleasure each other without intercourse.”

“How did they make this mistake?” asked one colonist.

“Good question. It appears that they were supposed to give each person a certain number of boxes of condoms, but they instead allotted that number of individual condoms per person instead. We’re doing a manual count now.”

Groans went up through the vast auditorium, even as the young ensign who had been doing the count hurried up to the podium and frantically whispered in the first officer’s ear. Her face sagged and her eyes widened as the ensign spoke, and the crowd quieted as they watched her. When the ensign was finished, the first officer leaned in and whispered to the captain. As his face mirrored her surprise and dread, the crowd grew deathly silent. He cleared his throat and spoke again.

“We… thought they had accidentally cut us to ten percent of the condoms per person,” he said. “But apparently they… allotted ten percent… per couple. We have one-twentieth of the condoms we’re supposed to have, folks.”

The auditorium exploded in an angry uproar that wasn’t likely to be quelled anytime soon. The captain stepped away from the podium and whispered to his wife, “Better plan to ration the food just a little. I suspect we’re going to have a lot more than three thousand people on board when we get there.”

“Yet somehow,” she said to her husband, “I have an uncontrollable desire to take you back to our quarters right now.”

“Therein lies the problem: a biological imperative that’s too strong to ignore.”

She sighed as the crowd continued to roar. “A condom is such a simple thing. Never thought I’d miss them so much.”

*   *   *

MORAL: It’s biology. We’re supposed to have sex. Get over it.

“Sometimes It’s Good to Ditch the Condom”
Fantasy
By David M. Fitzpatrick

“Five,” Drakkor said. “I can only find five.”

“We’ll have to do only five couplings, then,” Elfinar replied.

They were naked in the bedroom at the top of the stone tower. The circular room had only two things: a huge round bed in the center, and a stairway to one side leading down. Elfinar was reclined on the bed, and Drakkor—despite his frustration—was struck by her beauty and sexuality. She looked like any Blue Jurzunian: her skin as bright blue as a noontime sky, four slender arms, and the line of nine genital sheaths running from her throat to her crotch. All nine glistened in the candlelight; she was as excited as he was.

Drakkor also had four arms, but his skin was a bright crimson. And unlike his female companion, he had male genitalia—nine of them, from throat to crotch, each firm and eager to find those matching sheaths.

“Five couplings!” he cried out, throwing the five condoms on the floor and raising all four hands high in frustration. “That’s for young people too horny to know what true physical intimacy is. I want to make love with you, Elfinar—real love, with all nine couplings.”

“But we’ve only five condoms,” she argued. “If I should get pregnant… the repercussions…!”

He sank to the bed beside her, sighing in defeat. “It’s bad enough that, if we got caught, we’d be drummed out of our families. A Blue Jurzunian and a Red Jurzunian? It’s not allowed.”

“And a hybrid child would be worse. We’d be banished from our people forever—neither Redskins nor Blueskins would have us.”

He turned to her, looked into her eyes as he reached out with all four hands to grasp her four shoulders. “And where will our love take us? A lifetime of love and physical intimacy, but never to be married, and never to have children of our own?”

She lowered her eyes in sadness. “I imagine the boys and girls we could have—perhaps red, perhaps blue, probably shades in between. We’re the same people, Drakkor! Why should the color of our skin matter to anyone? It doesn’t to us!”

His eyes lit up. “Elfinar, my love… I don’t care what our families think. I don’t care what our people think. I want to spend the rest of my life with you—and I want those children. Damn the condoms. It’s time for people like us—who believe in mixed-race unions—to show that we cannot be bullied!”

Her blue face glowed as a smile spread across it. They went into each other’s arms and left the influences of primitive, barbaric ways behind—and left the condoms on the end of the bed where they belonged.

*   *   *

MORAL: Sex might be a biological imperative, but it can also be intimate and loving; it’s no one’s business who bumps uglies with whom, and if you’re concerned whose skin is what color, you have bigger problems than whether they’re having sex.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.