Post-Modern Drunk: When the Rubber Hits the Road
Ever since Giff found a $100 bill on the sidewalk one morning in my old neighborhood, I've paid more attention to the ground as I walk around. I missed a bundle of $10s in San Francisco back in May (some kids right behind me saw it and scooped it up--I learned when I turned around and saw them rejoicing) and I haven't forgiven myself yet for it.

Giff found the $100 in Greenpoint. I don't live there anymore, so instead of $100 bills, what I've been discovering on the streets of Bed-Stuy is used condoms*.

Not a fair trade, if you ask me.

But every couple of weeks, I spy another one, flaccid in the middle of the sidewalk. Once I found one in the middle of the street, artfully covered with a light dusting of snow.

I like to think that there's a weird subculture of safe street and/or sidewalk sex running rampant and wild in our neighborhood, people fucking wildly and joyfully, paying no mind to the cold and the rain and the fact that they are outside in Brooklyn, but yet conscientious enough to use protection.

This is what I choose to believe, rather than Giff's suggestion that the used rubbers fell from people's trash and no one dares pick up a stray used condoms. My explanation is much more romantic**.

* "Opened" condoms is actually as far as I can concretely say. Wrapperless unfurled condoms. But I'm comfortable saying "used condoms" even if I can't be 100% sure they were used in the way nature intended.

** For certain values of "romantic."

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