the helpers Randy hired.
Of course, Kelly was anxious to catch up on things with her cousin, so she invited Jessica to brunch with us. Ezzy’s goal was to be sure Jessica hadn’t learned that we were witches, or that paranormal creatures existed on my plantation.
As sometimes happens when you have a group of single friends in their twenties having brunch, the topic of conversation turned to love and intimacy.
“Kelly, I hope you don’t mind me asking this. It’s too awkward to talk to my mom about.”
“Nothing too awkward ‘round here,” Randy muttered.
“Randy’s right. Feel free to talk about whatever is on your mind.”
“Birth control,” Jessica said as straightforwardly as possible. “I’ve got a little problem.”
“Yikes. Well, how big? Like one that will join us for brunch in about eight months?” Kelly asked.
“Don’t ask Gertie for advice. Last year she accidentally took Valium instead of birth control.” Randy snickered.
“It just so happens that I’m allergic to all forms of the birth control pill, injection, anything. Lucky me! Right?”
“So condoms were pretty much your last option?” Lindsey asked, keeping the conversation on topic.
“Yup.” Jessica nodded. “And it scared the hell out of me. I can’t tell you how many times I’d been warned about condoms breaking. After hearing those horror stories, I was beginning to imagine the things were so fragile they were made out of tissue paper. So, I figured it’d be best to take matters into my own hands and buy some good quality ones, rather than have him trying to save a few bucks.”
Kelly raised her hand like she readied to testify on the stand. “I hear you there. One time, I was with a guy who bought some goofy looking thing from a vending machine in a gas station men’s room. He called it a French tickler. It had a little rubbery thing on the tip that looked like a Martian hedgehog. I was like, seriously? Who are you planning to fuck with that thing? E.T.?”
“Exactly the kind of thing I wanted to avoid. I needed to trust the condom. The last thing I wanted was for him to empty his sack of warm seed in me on accident.”
Ezzy choked on her beignet. “Brughub-guurble! Lords of darkness! Did you call it his seed? Who were you screwing? The gardener?”
“I don’t know. That’s what they call it in some of the books I read.”
“What the hell are you reading, the Farmer’s Almanac?” Ezzy amplified her sarcasm with the usual dramatic flair, her arms flung above her head.
“No! Romance novels, silly. So anyway, I went to the pharmacy and I got the extra strength ones.”
“Uh…extra strength condoms?” Randy’s eyebrows twisted up like two pipe cleaners on a preschooler’s art project.
“Uh huh. I guess I was inspired by Mom. You know, when she buys trash bags she insists on those super-strong force flex ones. The first ones I came across said ‘ultra-thin’ and those just sounded way too flimsy to hold back a stampeding herd of sperm. So I got the ones labeled Ultra-Double-Magnum. They just sounded tough, just like those extra strong trash bags. Seemed like a better choice than the ultra-thin.”
“Wait. Jessica. Ultra-Magnum describes the size, not the strength. They’re extra-large, to fit guys with zucchini-sized cocks.”
“Yeah, so I found out. Poor Dan, I think he felt intimidated. Really, he couldn’t even roll it on like the instructions said. He had to unroll it first, then pull it on like a sock that was too big. He said it felt like dropping a wiener in a Walmart bag. Christ. I had to wrap my hair scrunchie around the base to keep it from falling off. He felt so bad, he went as limp as a noodle.”
“Still, it’s got to be more reliable than the shoot and scoot method,” I noted.
“Shoot and scoot? I think you’ve got the whole ‘pulling-out method’ concept reversed, Gertie,” Lindsey said while poking a finger into her cupped hand.
That’s where I’ll end my
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