Three-Pack of Condoms

The Three-Pack of Condoms is the recurring object that turns T. S. Garp’s planned affair with Cindy Bones from an intention he can conceal into a physical fact he must confront. Bought weeks in advance, it passes through a drugstore encounter, repeated attempts at concealment, and finally the affair itself; afterward, Garp discards the two unused condoms as though they might serve as evidence against him. Its changing place in his pocket, hiding places, and car gives material form to the gap between his awareness of his choices and his wish to escape their moral weight.

Purchase and Exposure

Months after an earlier encounter with a man from the city park, Garp buys a package of three condoms. When the gentleman enters the drugstore, Garp drops the package. The object’s accidental exposure brings his private intention into the open: the man accuses him of seeking innocence to violate and defile. Garp’s later reflection acknowledges that the accusation strikes close to the truth of what he has planned, even as he distinguishes the seduction from rape.

The purchase is not a spur-of-the-moment response to Cindy’s desire. Garp has bought the condoms weeks ahead, anticipating that he will be ready if Cindy, who is babysitting for the family, gives in to her passion for him. He hides the package twice, but remembers where he has put it. The concealment therefore does not erase the plan; it lets him preserve it while temporarily keeping its physical reminder out of sight.

The Plan and Its Delay

On the day of Cindy’s last evening babysitting, Garp makes love to Helen in the late afternoon, before the family’s dinner plans. Later, while driving home with Helen from a party, he remembers exactly where the condoms are: under his typewriter, undisturbed during the dull months following the publication of Procrastination. The object connects this interval of apparent inactivity to a desire that has remained prepared and available.

The package also sharpens the contrast between Garp’s deliberation and the way he might prefer to understand his behavior. He has arranged obstacles to his own desire by hiding the condoms, yet has retained the knowledge needed to recover them. His preparation makes the affair neither an accidental lapse nor an entirely sudden surrender; the condoms register the practical forethought that his later guilt cannot undo.

Use and Disposal

The three-pack remains in Garp’s pocket when he goes to Cindy’s musty apartment. Much of the furniture has been moved out, so the two push her lumpy suitcases together to make an uncomfortable bed. Garp uses one condom. He is careful not to stay longer than he considers necessary, wary that an extended visit might make Helen think he has spent too long on what he treats as a literary goodbye.

Two condoms remain. As Garp drives past the women’s college grounds, he throws them furtively from the car window into a swollen stream. He imagines a campus police officer might see him and retrieve them from the current as evidence connected to the act for which they were used. The disposal is an attempt to remove proof, but his own imagined chain of discovery makes the discarded objects seem to retain their accusatory meaning.

Guilt and the Object’s Narrative Role

After leaving Cindy, Garp recalls the girl in the park, the image of Ellen James, his mother’s difficult decisions, the women he encountered in Vienna, and Cushie Percy, who would die giving birth. He is glad to be with Helen, a person with ambitions whom he cannot manipulate, yet the memory of Cindy remains with him. The condoms belong to this wider reckoning: they do not explain Garp’s guilt by themselves, but their purchase, use, and disposal provide a concrete record of the choices that produced it.

As an ordinary, functional object, the package initially serves the purpose for which Garp bought it. But it repeatedly becomes conspicuous: dropped before the city-park gentleman, remembered under the typewriter, carried to the apartment, and imagined as evidence in the stream. Each change in its status exposes another stage of Garp’s effort to manage a desire he has already planned. The Three-Pack of Condoms thus gives the affair a material sequence—preparation, concealment, use, and attempted erasure—while showing that concealment cannot make the consequences disappear.