Where to Toss Your Rubber After Boning

Let’s assume you’ve done everything right during sex — 38 seconds of diddling, somewhere between five and seven minutes of hump time, and 3.7 milliliters of jizz before the dismount — and now you’re just left with how to clean up the mess. Let’s also assume you used a condom, so you’re not in the market for a freely sprayed semen cleanup scenario; you just need to know what to do with that rubber. Throwing it away seems intuitive, but you’d be surprised how many men will toss the condom to the floor as if there’s a condom clean-up system down there (you, your dog).

A scene in the movie Blue Crush is instructive. Female surfers slogging through day jobs as hotel maids clean up a vomit-soaked party room full of football players on vacation. Arguably worse than the barf scattered carelessly about is a used condom that sticks stubbornly to the bottom of one woman’s shoe. Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) peels it off and marches to the beach to school the guests on proper condom disposal.

“Step one,” she announces to her subject, motioning to remove the condom. This advice is correct and should be done immediately, while you’re still erect, Columbia University’s sex advice column “Ask Alice” advises, so as to better keep the semen inside the condom and nowhere near the other person.

“Step two,” Ann Marie announces, and demonstrates putting the condom in tissue.

Theoretically, you don’t need the tissue, as it’s not radioactive waste, but hey, are you avoiding bodily fluids or are you avoiding bodily fluids? Something between radioactive-waste mode and general politeness and hygiene is a good rule of thumb here. You can also tie the condom off before tossing it to work on your career as a balloon animal artist. “Step three,” Ann Marie declares, is dumping the condom in the trash.

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This step is critical. Something must be done with your jizz-filled sack other than flinging it across the room or leaving it on a bedside table, the floor, hurled upward toward a fan, or shoved between couch cushions. Hey, add it to your used condom collection or refashion it to make affordable wine, but whatever you do, don’t flush it down the toilet.

Somehow, people don’t know this. On a forum asking what to do with the rubber after the action, a user named “Wanderer” explained his method:

When I’m on home turf, I get up go to the bathroom. Throw the condom in the trash can, high five myself in the mirror. Wash my dick off and go back to bed. If I know its the last bang, I tie off the trash bag. After the last bang I also chuck the garbage outside. Jizz stinks. In a hotel, I flush the condom down the toilet so the chamber maid don’t have to deal with it.

Okay, step four: High-five yourself in the mirror. Look, it’s no titanic fatberg, but this is what happens to sewer systems when you flush condoms down the toilet:

Of course, these are all standard-issue approaches. There’s a much more celebratory, spirited way to celebrate getting laid safely, if you’re both game:

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Tracy Moore

Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.