4 - Friday, February 13, 1987 - North Shore News

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal @

I JUST read a news item that crystallized a lot of things for me about the changing roles of men and women in

relation to each other in modern society.

It concerns condoms.

It turns Out women are being urged to carry condoms in their purses in case they get into an

f unexpected sexual liaison be- tween home and the super- market, or the office and the room with a view.

What with herpes, AIDS, etc., there is a growing sense of wariness afoot—if that's the right word. It's not!

In the good old days, there was only the risk of death from | syphilis or gonorrhea. And even then you had to sleep around, as the expression went, quite a bit to f vet the odds up.

Now-—today—the general feel- ing seems to be if you look at somebody sideways, you might get... well, almost anything!

I knew the tide was turning back in the early ’80s, when I happened to be attending a quasi-academic function of some kind in Boulder, Colorado.

1 was standing around talking with three other guys when an incredibly nubile young female person bounced, jiggling, wear- ing hardly anything at all, into the centre of the circle and gave each of us direct, eager eye con- tact.

I should add that as far as ! could tell, judging from the con- versation so far, each of us guys was a reasonably rabid heterosexual.

Yet instead of immediately turning over control of our neo- cortexes to our gonads, all four of us males froze on the spot in terror.

Herpes, XXIV, look out! That was the basic thought.

We found one excuse after another to retreat. The poor, gorgeous young wench stared at our backs with a look of hurt and confusion and disdain.

- | forgave her on the grounds that she probably didn’t read the newspapers and had never taken } asex education course. { Yet, as I mused, deep in the lonely hours that night, hating f myself, | began to worry.: Surely we are in the open pit of f a major geosociopolitical event warp when the day cosnes that four healthy maies flee in op- i posite directions at the mere ap- | pearance of a femme with flirty, i flirty eyes .. The End, 1 believe, after all, is nigh. By ‘‘the end,” naturally, 1 only mean the end of a certain kind | of ancient male. Like me. "By the time I was 15, you see, | it was imperative that I carry a | condom in my wallet. I might not have any money,

but that didn’t) matter. What

mattered was that I as one of the guys, ready for action, and this was signalled by that round crater of bent leather in’ my wallet, which proclaimed the presence of a condom!

Back then, 1] think we called it

a ‘‘doab."* You'll have to trust §

my spelling in this matter, since I never actually saw the word in print. At this point in time, I'm not sure whether it’s finally legal or not, but I claim an- thropological objectivity, chief!

To continue, you never let your date sce this amazing ring- shape in your wallet, as I need hardly tell you older males.

Hey, never! The other guys, probably, no matter how many protestations to the contrary. But not your date!

Even if, by some unbelievable |

stretch of miraculous luck, you really did get lucky, the business about the thingamajig called for the ultimate in delicate manoeuvering, forget all the previous bravado. . Everything depended on you

not revealing how incompetent §

and truly, abysmally ignorant you were.

Of course I’m speaking for J

myself as a young man, but go

ahead and tell me this isn’t uni- J

versal stuff. Go ahead. Try. We jump ahead at this point to

1987, where the awesome, awful |

discovery that awaits us is that it is the ladies nowadays who are being counselled to carry the condom!

The men, I have to assume | from this, no fonger think it nec- ] essary to be the ring-bearer, as it |

were, of birth control tech. A generation of males raised on The Pill probably doesn’t

know what condoms are, come to §

think of it.

Many and strange shall be the ways in which the next genera- tion of males and females decide to relate to each other—the Me Tarzan/You Jane school already

having become one of those |

quaint golden oldies. 1 liked it, though. It’s doomed,

as you can see. In the time of my f

uncles, the big question was:

“Who wears the pants in the }

family?” Who, please would have predicted that it would be my

daughters, not my sons, that I §

would have to pass on the secret about condoms to?

Ah, my uncles lived in such |

uncomplicated times! I’m sup- posed to pity them you know, In

fact, I envy them. It’s my sons I §

pity.

My daughters I urge to show }

compassion unto men.

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