Trying to Imagine, Like, Any Scenario Where You Would Use This Royal Wedding-Themed Condom

Sex is an act two or three adults do, sometimes four (when it gets to five it sort of stops being sex and becomes more of a frightening endurance sport, five people fucking is essentially a Tough Mudder with more crying and cum), where they intertwine their bodies and make them explode and tighten in orgasmic bliss. You have probably had it before in your life. You know it, right? The sex thing. When you came. That time you came and someone was there. That was sex.

The Royal Family are a British family, nominally, and they are sort of in charge of everything but also not. They have no true power but they are rich. They live in palaces and high castles but don’t, like, actually rule. Your nan really likes them and collects teacups with their faces on, and sometimes they go on TV and say in flat emotionless tones that they support charity and think it’s good, and sometimes they fly helicopters and pretend to do war, and sometimes they plot complex and intricate murders, but mostly they just wear suits and shift dresses and hats and wave at the poor as they adore them. That is the Royal Family.

Have you ever thought, though: damn, it would be good to combine my dual interests, royalty and being horny? Because, buddy:

Here are those souvenir condoms you asked for. You asked for these, right? The condoms that come in a box with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's face on it. And the box plays a God Save the Queen/Star-Spangled Banner mash-up when you open it. That thing you asked for. Four commemorative condoms in a tasteful, royal-themed box. The thing you asked for and have now received. Here it is. It is from "Heritage Prophylactics, Ltd", which apparently also released a condom for the William/Kate marriage, and say they are real – but I very much do not believe they are real – but they say they are real and allege these condoms, RRP £11.50 for four, are real.

Here’s their definitely real spokesperson "Hugh Pomfret" talking to Metro about it: "Our prophylactics are designed as an heirloom product, we would encourage people to keep hold of them as a memento of a special national occasion." Here’s the answer from the FAQ page that asks, "Are these real?": "We are delighted to confirm that our fine prophylactic sheaths do indeed exist." OK.

Listen, irrelevant. I have been trying desperately to think of any single scenario where horniness might exceed logic and that you, frantic and gagging, would use a royal wedding-themed condom. Here they are:

In this scenario you have started the process of having sex, commonly referred to as "foreplay", and you’ve both done, like, an extensive amount of hand stuff, and maybe some mouth stuff, I don’t know – I don’t know how you live – but everyone is writhing and covered in saliva and the window is all steamed up. It is Sex Time, is what I am saying, and then one of you does that incredibly inelegantly lean off the bed to where the condoms are stored in a drawer, that big reach where one of you goes "augh" with the strain of it, and there are no condoms left in the drawer, only empty foil wrappers and the Royal Sheath. And you say: "I mean, I could go out, to the shop." You go: "I could go pay £6 for a three-pack of Durex Extra Safe, the only condoms corner shops seem to have, ever. It is like corner shops very actively don't want me to feel pleasure, for some reason. But I could go there."

Only, you started all this foreplay stuff like three hours ago and darkness has fallen and the shops are all closed. You, in a tracksuit, up against the cage-like shutters of three separate corner stores. You, in an Uber, desperately riding to the nearby 24-hr Tesco Extra. You, in the bright blinding lights of the condom aisle, looking at all those empty shelves. You, back home to get horny, tail between your legs, sadly telling your partner: "Hey. I'm sorry. There’s no other way around it. We have to think about Prince Harry while we fuck."

We have all punched, have we not (punching, v: to somehow convince someone several rungs up the accepted 10-scale attractiveness ladder that personality trumps aesthetics and yes, they should have sex w/ you)??? Have we not??? So imagine you are punching, and the date is going well – you, a lowly 6, making this absolute 10 laugh and holler and play footsie – and they purr, in that sexy way, "An Uber to mine, then?" and you are making out in the Uber – not your Uber rating being affected here, it's theirs, so you really don’t mind how frankly disgusting you’re making this Prius – and then you get back to theirs and fumble through the living room and down the hallway and in the direction of their bedroom and: oh, oh god. Everything is royal. Tea towels, Queen masks, Union Flags, glossy American magazines. A photo of them posing ecstatically at a Scottish primary school with Kate.

"Do you like royals?" they say, neatly undressing to unveil the most ten-on-ten body you’ve ever seen in your life. Start doing a bit of mouthy on you, which is also magnificent. "I like royals. It’s sort of my thing. My one major flaw, a lot of people say. That I am slightly too horny for the Queen."

There is something about that particular direct form of British randiness – Britons have two forms of being horny, the "shy and quite embarrassed about it" lot (90 percent of us) and those who approach being horny in the same way a robust mum approaches unplugging a toilet, with a sort of "well let’s get in done then, shall we, and try to make the best of it" hardiness (10 percent), and anyway this royal-lover is the latter – and they hold the cursed condom aloft and say: "There, either put that on or put that on me" (in this scenario it is very difficult to write catch-all horny dialogue). And you do it, you dog, don’t you? You absolutely do it.

It’s actually quite tricky, this imagination exercise, isn’t it? Okay, so: you’re on an ocean liner. Turns out civilisation died halfway through your ocean crossing and so there are now no open ports to dock into (all of humanity on land is now plagued, or zombified, or something). Nightmare. And yet, a strange glimmer there, in the midst of your horror and grief: are you… slightly… horny? Yes: a strapping young deckhand, perfectly mute, has caught your eye. One night, down in the hold, by candlelight, the two of you start to fuck in holy silence. And literally the only condom on board is the Regal Prophylactic. Come on, man. You’re probably gonna die tomorrow. Use the Princely Rubber.

You’re in space. And the scientists sending you up there were like, "Please don’t fuck in space. Please." They are like: "The juices gum up the delicate machinery. The cameras and devices we have monitoring you at all times will see. Plus, any babies you have up there will be monstrous, alien, anti-gravity, their bones all thin and weak, like a boiled chicken." And you tell the scientists: I will not fuck, boys. But then they send you up there with a single Royal Wedding condom and, like, Idris Elba. Idris Elba is the fellow astronaut with you. He keeps saying, "Norty, norty!", and come on. You’re only human. Come on. You use the condom.

Scenario: condoms don’t normally break, but they sometimes do, and that’s why they have a widely cited 2 to 3 percent fail rate. And normally that breakage is mid-intercourse – everyone has to stop and say "wow" and "so… uhhhh?" and kind of size up the person opposite them, kneeling on a wet duvet in the blue-black dark, trying to assess from their posture whether they have any STIs or have just suddenly and instantly gotten pregnant, a whole calamity for the two of you to now navigate, together, that so often ends in a bright-lights-and-early-morning visit to a pharmacy – but yes, anyway, sometimes they just snap right there on the dick before anything’s even kicked off yet. This happened to me twice in a row once, and my explaining how statistically anomalous this was actually really killed the mood, and we had to stop and just watch a movie instead.

Anyway, in this scenario the snapping has happened billions and billions of times, in a row, and the last remaining condom on Earth is the Royal Wedding condom. Like, one of you has been hard for years now. Decades. The penis that the condoms keep snapping on is raw and exhausted. The sex, when it happens, is going to be agonising and incredibly disappointing for both of you. But you do it anyway. "Let’s," you say, holding the Royal sheath aloft. "Let us get horny in the name of the King."

Practise safe sex whenever possible! Please! Even if Prince Harry’s face has to stare at you, blank-eyed, before you fuck!

@joelgolby