“Hi, Paul,” said one of the night-time maintenance people arriving as Paul left.

Paul raised his hand in a salute-like wave.

The street was empty so Paul walked across the road. The Horse and Ploughman pub was still open. Paul could hear the music and voices. It was busy this evening.

The door opened and a couple of merry people came out laughing. They didn’t even see Paul but he caught the door behind them and slipped into the smoky haze.

It was an old-fashioned pub with dirty horseshoes and rusty old animal traps decorating the walls. The little enclave-like booths were lit by candelabra, though the flames were static, fake.

Paul headed along the bar.

“Sorry, you missed last orders,” said the bloke behind it.

Paul looked at him, his heart racing, and all he could manage was, “Toilet.” He pointed.

The barman nodded. “Okay,” he mouthed.

The sign on the door to the toilets said it was for patrons only. Paul pushed it open.

There was a man leering over the urinal as Paul went in. Paul went into on of the cubicles and closed the door. He turned the lock ever so slightly then pressed his ear against the door. He heard a tap running, then a few footsteps, then the hand drier. When that finally stopped, Paul realised it had drowned out the sound of the man leaving. The toilets were silent except for the muffled sounds of the bar.

Paul quickly unlocked the door and opened it.

The condom machine was between the hand drier and the door. It was the usual bulky upright rectangle, with three different handles you could pull out, a hatch to collect them, and a slot for one pound coins. Paul went up to it. There was a sticker over the option for fruit-flavoured condoms, like the sticker you put on an envelope. In someone’s handwriting it said ‘out of stock’. There weren’t any stickers over the options for ribbed condoms and gossamer condoms. Paul didn’t think he wanted an apple-flavoured one anyway.

He took out a fistful of change. It said you got two condoms for three pounds. Paul put a coin in.

Suddenly he heard footsteps approach the door. He made it to the urinal just in time. A man came in, a little bit older than Paul, and went straight to the condom machine. Paul pretended he was peeing. The man started putting coins in, and swiftly realised somebody had already been doing that.

“Were you using this before I came in?” the man asked.

Paul shook his head vehemently.

The man laughed. “Result!”

Then he pulled the handle for the gossamer condoms and the little packet fell into the hatch. The man left.

Annoyed, Paul returned to the machine. He started feeding coins in. When he’d put three in, he pulled the little round handle for the gossamer condoms.

Nothing happened.

Paul pulled the handle a little harder, as hard as he dared, which was as far as it would come.

Still nothing happened.

Paul scratched a nervous itch. He stood and stared at the machine. From the bar came the voice of the barman, “Drink up, please. Let’s be having you.”

Panicky, Paul decided to try putting in more money. He put in another three pounds, trying the handle after each one. Still nothing happened.

Paul walked away from the machine then walked back again. Tentatively, he pulled on the handle for the ribbed condoms. He didn’t want them, he just wanted to make sure the machine was working. Nothing happened.

Paul knocked on the machine. It sounded hollow, but he didn’t know if that meant it was empty or not.

He tried all the handles once more, including the one for fruit-flavoured condoms. None of them worked.

Paul headed out the door. Music flooded in from the bar. It was half as empty as it had been when he went in, but there were still a dozen to fifteen people finishing off their drinks.

Paul sidled up to the bloke behind the bar.

“We’re closing,” the bloke said.

“The machine’s broken,” Paul said quietly.

The barman didn’t hear. He touched his ear and frowned.

“The machine in the toilets isn’t working,” Paul said.

“What are you talking about?”

“The condom machine.” Paul felt his face flush.

“What about it?”

“It’s broken.”

The barman frowned. “What’s wrong with it?”

Simultaneously, a middle-aged woman switched off the jukebox, and Paul said, “I can’t get any condoms from it.” Consequently, he shouted it in the sudden relative silence of the bar, and everybody heard.

Everybody laughed.

Paul couldn’t breathe. He didn’t move.

The barman chuckled. “We’re all out of the flavoured ones and we ran out of the ribbed ones earlier tonight.”

“I wanted the other type,” Paul managed.

“Ah, we must have run out of those too, then.”

Paul just stared at him for a moment. The bloke smiled apologetically and bounced his eyebrows, then he found something else to do. Paul stood there, not daring to turn round yet. Some people were still laughing, and he knew they were laughing at him, the short, lanky kid with buckteeth and prematurely thinning hair wearing an ill-fitting bus driver’s uniform, buying contraception. He felt about four years old.

Eventually Paul hurried from the bar, not even looking at those people getting ready to leave. The door was blocked: that guy from the toilets was leaving with a girl. Paul held his breath, desperate to escape. The guy smirked.

“Bung us a couple of quid and I’ll give you one of these,” he said, holding up the last packet.

Paul stared at it, then stared at him.

“Okay,” he managed to say without breathing.

He took out two one-pound coins with trembling fingers.

The guy smiled and opened the cardboard packet. He separated the condoms and held one out to Paul.

Paul took it quickly, hid it inside a tight fist, then gave the guy his money like he was buying sweets.

NOTES:
Even though I wrote this one for laughs, I actually found the character of Paul to be slightly off-kilter. Is he really just a simple, innocent lad? It wouldn't surprise me if he went off the deep end and kidnapped a bus load of people one night. What's he buying condoms for? Not to use them as they're meant to be used, that's for sure. He really is quite dense, though. The guy who took advantage of that pound Paul had already put in the condom machine, at the end charges two pounds for one of them, thereby recouping his loss in full.