Peter Krupa

Let’s talk about birth control. Being a married, marginally-employed man living in close quarters with my student wife, having a baby is obviously not on our list of things to do at the moment, so birth control is a topic near and dear to my heart - like real estate for New Yorkers, or, in my family, firearms.

To the point: I love condoms.

I know, I know: condoms are for stopping disease. They’re for teenagers, or frat boys, or homosexuals giving each other the business in a state park. When you get married, you’re expected to be a responsible adult and start taking those pill thingies so you can go back to having sex the way God intended. Plus, pills are supposed to be more effective, clocking in at 99.something-something percent no-baby.

But there’s something about the concreteness of condoms that you have to admire. See, if she’s on the pill, you still can’t be sure - you could be in that point-something-something percent of “whoopses” because those little sperm definitely made it inside, and they’re swimming around, and who knows what they might find?

With a condom, on the other hand, you can hold up that little latex sack with confidence and say, “Sorry boys, not today!” Of course this always makes me think of Woody Allen in a sperm suit, which is not the most romantic of post-coital mental images, but at least it makes me chuckle.

This is the great thing about condoms. There’s no voodoo about them. It’s common-sense mechanics, and if you screw it up either you’re an idiot, or your condom stash was too far away from the kitchen table during the moment in question.

But there’s another angle to the condom issue. Guys reading this who are, ahem, knowledgeable, know that one reason we like the pill is that condoms tend to - how to put this - dampen sensation. We don’t want our wives on the pill because it gives them more control over their lives as women, but because we’re sick of wearing these freaking rubber things on our dicks all the time (plus we don’t want babies). Like the “Girls Gone Wild” video series, the pill is another element of female empowerment that men applaud for their own reasons.

So why am I against it? Hey, more sensation, what’s not to like?

The thing is - and I don’t know how many other people have noticed this - the pill can make women, well, crazy. Not crazy like put-her-in-a-straight-jacket, but crazy like who-is-this-woman-I-married? Every woman reacts differently to it, sure, and different pills work better for different people, but a casual survey of my various acquaintances over the years tells me I’m not alone in my observations. The pill can cause stomach problems, weight gain, libido drops, mood swings, disgruntledness, etc. etc.

I’m not being scientific about this, I know, but I don’t trust science to gauge the normalcy of my wife’s personality, or that of any other woman, for that matter. The bottom line is that the pill changes who people are - possibly not negatively, and probably not in everyone, but it’s an effect that I see talked about very little.

So it’s condoms for me, and campfire horror stories about tiny holes be damned. It’s nothing the morning-after pill won’t be able to fix. Although I have to admit, I am sort of looking forward to the man pill. As long as it doesn’t, you know, grow me breasts, or give me hot flashes.

Maybe I’ll give them a few years to work out the kinks.