Family Pack

Worrying about offloading Myrtle the Turtle via Craiglist isn't the only thing on my brother's mind these days. He's also thinking about sex. He's thinking about sex a lot.

That's probably not that shocking. After all, he's a 22 year old boy, and 22 year old boys love sex. They love thinking about it, watching it, engaging it, or trying to engage in it.

But what is shocking about this is how he goes about preparing for sex. He and his girlfriend--a tough Buffalo girl who has a freckled Irish face that at times bears resemblance to the pink-nosed dwarf rabbits the two of them were plotting to buy before they got Myrtle--well, my brother and his girlfriend aren't very sneaky about keeping their sexual habits under wraps.

My brother's girlfriend routinely comes over to my mother's house and slaps her things on the counter. She doesn't always carry a purse, and if she doesn't, the important stuff just gets toted around in her hands and then eventually deposited onto my mother's kitchen counter. Keys, lip gloss, and birth control. That's what's usually waiting to greet my mother when she comes through the door.

"It makes me want to vomit," she says.

But she doesn't have the worst of it. The worst of it belongs to my father, who once made the mistake of giving his BJ's card to my brother when Adam asked for it. Then my father made an even graver mistake when he asked Adam, who was then returning the card, what he'd needed so desperately to buy in large quantities from BJ's.

"Condoms," my brother said. He waggled his eyebrows. "I need a few family packs."

That's bad enough, but it's not the end of the story. It's not the real problem. The real problem is that he keeps coming back for that card over and over and over. And by "over and over and over" I mean "often." I mean "too often." I mean "disgustingly often." I mean "gross."

"How many packs of condoms does he need?" my father asked me. "Really! How many?"

I wasn't exactly sure how to answer that, but I was sure about one thing: I was sure that if we kept track, we'd all be more nauseous than we'd been in years.