Safe Sex Stories is Condom Monologues’ fiction series about intimacy, communication, and safer sex as part of real desire, not an interruption of it.
The listening booth at Marlow Records was meant for one person, but it had always been optimistic about bodies.
It held two narrow benches, a small turntable, and a window that looked onto the shop floor through old glass warped enough to make everyone outside seem like they were underwater. At closing time, with the front gate pulled down and the last customer gone into the wet June evening, the booth became the quietest room in the neighborhood.
Nina found the note inside a used copy of Blue Valentine, folded between the paper sleeve and the record.
Side B skips, but only after the good part.
Under that, in Mateo’s square handwriting: Ask me how I know.
She leaned out of the booth. “You are vandalizing inventory with flirtation.”
Mateo was counting the register with one finger and the expression of a man who had lost a private argument with arithmetic. “It is not vandalism if it improves the product.”
“The product skips.”
“Exactly. It has character.”
Nina should have left at seven. She had stayed to alphabetize soul records because the rain was heavy and because Mateo had made coffee in the back room without asking if she wanted any. After six months of Saturday shifts together, he knew she wanted coffee when the weather pressed its forehead to the windows.
He also knew not to crowd her. That was one of the reasons she kept finding excuses to stay.
Mateo locked the cash drawer and came to the booth doorway. He did not step inside. The shop lights behind him made a rim of gold along his shoulders.
“Do you want the actual story?” he asked.
“About the skip?”
“About the good part.”
Nina set the record on the turntable. “I want you to sit down and tell it without pretending you are mysterious.”
“Cruel condition.”
“Firm condition.”
He smiled, then waited for her to move her bag before taking the opposite bench. Even in the cramped booth, he left room between their knees. The needle settled, and a worn piano line filled the little space between them.
“I bought this record the week I moved here,” he said. “I was lonely and trying to become the kind of person who knew what to play in the rain.”
“Did it work?”
“No. But I learned that if you sit very still during the second song, you can hear a truck backing up in the background of the recording.”
Nina listened. The song moved slowly, voice and piano, then something faint and ordinary passed beneath it: a reverse beep, distant enough to feel like memory.
She laughed softly. “That is the good part?”
“It was to me.”
The answer was so unguarded that she looked at him instead of the turntable. Mateo was watching her face, not her mouth, which made the booth feel smaller in a way she liked.
“I want to kiss you,” Nina said. She surprised herself by saying it first, then discovered she was not embarrassed. “If you want that too.”
Mateo’s hand stilled on his knee. “I do.”
“Good.”
“Very good.”
They both laughed, nervous enough to make it sweet. He leaned forward slowly, giving her time to meet him halfway. The kiss was careful at first, more question than answer, until Nina put her hand against his jaw and felt him exhale like he had been carrying the moment all evening.
The record popped. Rain tapped the high window over the jazz section. Outside the booth, the shop waited in tidy rows.
When Mateo’s fingers brushed her waist, he stopped. “Is this still okay?”
“Yes.” Nina kissed the corner of his mouth. “And I want to say the health things while I still have full use of language.”
He nodded, serious immediately.
“I am not seeing anyone else,” she said. “Last STI test was in May, all negative. Condoms are required for me. Lube is a yes. And if this stays at kissing tonight, that is also a yes.”
“Same on not seeing anyone else,” Mateo said. “I tested in April, negative. Condoms are a yes, and I have some in my backpack. I know the fit that works for me, but if anything feels wrong, I will stop and say so.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for making the practical part feel easy.”
Nina smiled. “That was the goal.”
They locked the shop door twice, checked the alley entrance, and brought the small lamp from the counter into the back room where the walls were lined with overstock boxes and tour posters that had faded at the corners. It was not a fantasy room. It was private, warm, and close enough to the sink that they both noticed and appreciated it.
Mateo took a condom from his bag and handed it to her still in the wrapper. She checked the date and felt for the air bubble, then passed it back. He opened it carefully. They moved without rushing, pausing for shirts, for laughter, for Nina to ask for more lube, for Mateo to ask if the angle was comfortable, for both of them to answer honestly.
The condom did not interrupt anything. It belonged to the evening the way the locked door did, the way the water glasses did afterward, the way his hand stayed open on the floor between them until she chose to lace her fingers through his.
After, Mateo tied off and disposed of the condom, then washed his hands. Nina turned the lamp lower and listened to rain soften against the back window.
“The record is still playing,” she said.
“Then we missed the skip.”
“Tragic.”
“We can try again.”
She looked at him, at the hopeful steadiness in his face, and squeezed his hand.
“Side B,” she said. “From the beginning.”
They put the record back on before they left, standing together in the listening booth with their coats over their arms. This time, when the hidden truck backed through the song, Nina heard it clearly.
By then the rain had thinned to a silver mist. Mateo wrote a new note for the sleeve before locking up.
Side B skips, but only after the good part. The good part may vary.
Nina folded it carefully and tucked it back where the next listener would find it.
This Safe Sex Stories piece is a work of fiction. All characters are adults. Any resemblance to real people, places, or events is coincidental.