walked around waldbaum’s putting kale, five oranges, bananas, cherries, two avocados, a cucumber, watermelon, lemon, lime, 12 cat food cans, 12-pack 8.4oz sugar-free red bulls, flour tortillas, sabra ‘classic’ hummus, and toilet paper into a plastic cage-like carton with handles. i wanted to go to waldbaum’s so that 1) i could finally get a waldbaum’s savings card, 2) i could use the self-checkout to buy condoms, and 3) if the self-checkouts weren’t working, whoever rang me up might not notice condoms among the variety of things i was buying. i’ve only bought condoms once, i think, with my boyfriend at the time. the person overseeing the self-checkout saw us and said ‘have a good night.’ we laughed and joked about the ‘good night’ we were about to have as we exited the store.

walked to the first aid aisle to look for condoms. two women were in the aisle. thought ‘they’re onto me.’ couldn’t get a good look, but it didn’t seem like there would be condoms. thought ‘shit, that’s right, condoms are an ‘asking people’ thing. they make the worst things ‘asking people’ things. [pictured myself asking pickles & pies employee for condoms]. all the employees know me, they can’t know i want to buy condoms, then they’d know i have sex, i don’t want to add that to our dynamic. they’d be less friendly and flirt more aggressively. maybe i’ll just ask jordan to pull out. no, scary, you can still get pregnant, scary, out of birth control, scary.’

remembered duane reade. thought ‘there won’t be enough time to go to duane reade before danny landlord’s 6-7PM window to pick up rent. he hasn’t texted back either. nobody’s texting me back. it’s okay. karma. make jordan buy condoms maybe. maybe he has condoms. condoms suck. what if jordan shows up in a few hours without ever texting me back, did something happen, did he get in trouble, maybe his phone died, the comfortor will be in the dryer when he shows up, what if it still smells like cat pee, shit. no, it’s okay.’