I am speaking from the perspective of a woman, as I have no idea what it's like for a man, but when you are a woman having sex in a hot tub, the following things are going on: (1) you're having sex in hot water, and water must never be mistaken for lubricant, so it's sort of like dry humping, except (2) you're not dry humping, you're having sex in hot water, so there's definitely a sensation of being entered by a penis, but the sensation is foreign and like rubber and not pleasurable in the least, (3) because of the water, there are necessarily sloshing and sucking noises, and everyone knows that sloshing and sucking noises during sex are the least sexy noises of all, and (4) you have to pretend that while all of this is happening, you are having the sexiest, most amazingly hot experience of your entire fucking life, because, as everybody knows (especially people who have never had sex in a hot tub), having sex in a hot tub, is so fucking hot.
By way of illustration, I will now relate to you one of my hot tub experiences. This isn't for the squeamish. I'm telling you up-font, it's bad. If the paragraph above made you squirm even slightly, I suggest that you stop reading right here, or put a bucket next to your chair, because this is powerful stuff, and I assure you that you are going to wish you never read this story because you are going to think of it every time you see a hot tub for the rest of your life.
My boyfriend and I were at a bed and breakfast in the mountains (I have some strong opinions about beds and breakfast-es as well, but that's something for another day). We were sitting outside on a private porch, looking up at the stars through a telescope, downing a case of Miller Lite, and talking about our past and our present and the future we would have together. We'd had the most amazing day climbing mountains and we were in this beautiful place with the black night sky and the moon and the stars and each other. And we were drunk.
We were
oh so very drunk.
And, let's face it, no one is sober when they get the idea to have sex in a hot tub.
As luck would have it, our room had a hot tub in it, and after we were done with all the talking (and all the Miller Lite), we went into the room and started making out. We took off our clothes. He said, in an incredibly sexy way, "Let's get in the hot tub." I already knew about how things can go in a hot tub, but I really loved him and so I thought our sex in the hot tub would surely be wildly sexy. He turned on the water. And we sat there. And we waited. Do you know how long it takes to fill up a hot tub? It takes a real long time. By the time the hot tub was almost full, we were both sitting on the steps of the hot tub, both naked, both holding our drunk heads up with our hands, which were connected to our arms, which were connected to our elbows, which were resting on our knees. Two drunk horny naked people sitting with their elbows on their knees, propping their heads up, not talking to each other, staring at the floor, waiting for the water level to rise.
That was the beginning part of our hot tub experience. The next part was, the hot tub was just about full, so we got in. But the water was SO HOT. We hadn't modulated the temperature by turning on the cold water a little. We'd just cranked up the hot nozzle, so the water was irrefutably too hot. Immediately upon trying to get into the hot tub, we both immediately jumped out. He said, "Should we even bother with this?" I wanted our evening to be perfect, so I said, "Yes, let's," and I tried once again to get in. It was torturous and horrible. My feet were burning. He tried to get in too. He said, "Just ease in. We'll get used to it." We tried really hard to sit in that hot tub. I was feeling incredibly uncomfortable and sick, like my head was going to explode. I even felt a little angry, because, I can't help it, but I get freaked out and angry when I'm overheated.
The next two things, while I have no choice but to tell you about them separately, happened concurrently.
On his end: He said, "We need to turn on the jets." So he reached out of the hot tub and turned on the jets.
On my end, and at the same exact moment that he was turning on the jets: I said, "I don't feel good." I've already told you that my reactions to heat are extreme, and the water in the hot tub was TOO HOT. I threw up in the hot tub.
We were so drunk and impatient to start getting it on in the hot tub, that we hadn't filled the water in the hot tub high enough so that the jets were UNDER the water level. In this instance, the top of the water was level with the jets. So the jets blew air across the top of the water, spraying the water and my vomit in every direction, at the walls and squarely into our chests and our faces with the force of 12 fire hoses. He, getting powerfully hit in the face with a stream of puke-influxed, burning hot water, promptly also threw up in the hot tub. Can you imagine retching, while someone is pointing a power washer at your face? It was like this.
We jumped out of the hot tub, but the jets were on a timer. We couldn't figure out how to turn them off. The hot water and our throw up were spraying all over the room and all over us. I kept yelling "TURN IT OFF!! TURN IT OFF!!" He kept yelling, "I'M TRYING!! I'M TRYING!!" And then "WHY DID YOU THROW UP?? WHY DID YOU THROW UP??" And this whole time, we're scrambling around the room, naked, soaking wet, sweating and dizzy, covered in our own vomit, getting pummeled by streams of water. It was mayhem. MAYHEM, I tell you. Finally, he got the jets turned off, after which followed silence. Then he said, "I guess we have to clean this up." I said, “Isn't that what maids are for?'' He said, "Jules. We can't leave the room like this." So we spent a good deal of the rest of the evening cleaning up the mess. Then we took cold showers and since we'd used all the towels to clean up the puke and the water, we had to dry ourselves off with our clothes. We got into the bed and didn't touch each other because we were so embarrassed about this shameful, disgusting thing that had just happened to us, when all we were trying to do was have sexy sex in a hot tub.
In our room, there was a big, beautiful book. The purpose of the book was for the people who stayed in the room to write their names, and where they were from, and say something about how they liked their stay at the bed and breakfast. I think the bed and breakfast was called Blueberry Hill. The next morning, I sat at the dressing table and read aloud from the book in our room at Blueberry Hill, and we made fun of all the entries. "What kind of losers would spend their honeymoon here?" and "After this they're going to DOLLYWOOD?? Oh, that's so sad. Promise me we’ll never go to Dollywood. Unless we do it ironically." I decided to add our names to the book, and here is what I wrote:
"Julie and [boyfriend's name], visiting from [state where we lived], had a really terrible time of it in that hot tub over there. Hot tubs don't belong in carpeted bedrooms right next to the bed. They belong in bathrooms or pool facilities or someplace with lots of tiles. So if you use the hot tub, use caution. And don't throw up. Since the hot tub didn't work out for us, we tied each other to the bed posts using the decorative quilt, and we did dirty dirty things to one another here at Blueberry Hill. So, all in all, we give this bed and breakfast a hearty thumbs up!"
Then we left Blueberry Hill, and although we dated for two more years, we never got in a hot tub together or spoke of it again.
[I really hope that my ex-boyfriend isn’t reading this, because he has a truly lovely wife who I respect and who probably has no trouble at all with hot tubs, and he would be well within his rights to be upset at me for writing about our tragic hot tub snafu, but I don’t think he reads this. If you are reading this, I apologize, but I hope you'll agree that the embarrassment you may feel about what happened to us in that hot tub is greatly outweighed by the importance of me getting the word out about hot tubs. And besides, Paul, I didn’t use your name, so I don’t think anyone will know that I was talking about you.]
This brings me to another point I would like to make. The allure of having sex in a hot tub is the same as the allure of having sex anywhere other than a bed. Or a car. You can usually work things out well enough in a car. And I'll even give you the floor. 99% of the time, having sex on the floor works out just as well as having sex on a bed, but there is always the potential for rug burn, which you don't learn about until the next day, when your knees or your ass start stinging in the shower. But anywhere else, say, the kitchen counter, or a public restroom, or against a tree, ANYWHERE ELSE, just turns disappointing, and it turns disappointing remarkably fast. With the kitchen counter, someone always ends up with a faucet up her ass. With the public restroom, you're thinking, "This is fucking disgusting. TRY NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING! TRY NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING! Keep your mouth closed." With a tree, well, one of you is rubbing up against bark, and that's exponentially worse than what happens to you on a floor.
Any time you try to have sex in an "exciting" way in "a different place", it's like a game of chicken. Which one of you will be the first to tap out and say what both of you are thinking: "Ah, fuck it. Let's just go to the bedroom."
Then, defeated, one of you leads the other by the hand into the bedroom, mopily, and you have sex, like avergage-sex-having human people, in a bed, and you probably have just the most boringest of sex, in just the same old way that you always do, with all the same moves that led you to think you should spice things up by trying to have sex on the kitchen counter in the first place. And after it’s over, you're lying there. With your eyes open. And your arms flat at your sides. And neither of you is saying anything. But you both know what just happened. What just happened is: You failed at being sexy and you will be hard-pressed to try being adventurous again. You will think to yourself: "I thought more highly of myself and my partner, but as it turns out, I am sexually tame. I have no business trying to have sexy sex again." And it is the most disappointing realization that you will ever have in your entire life. Yes, there will be other disappointments, some of them shocking, some of them brutal, and most of them related in one way or another to your mother, but this is the one that goes to the core of things. Finding out that you prefer to have sex in a bed.
But, I'm here to tell you what not everyone knows. This happens to everyone. EVERYONE. Everyone has had the experience of having sex in a place where they shouldn't have bothered to try to have sex and then having it turn into something other than what you thought it would be. So when I said this to my friends at dinner, and we all agreed that it was true that we had all had this experience, one of my friends said, “That’s why! That’s the reason people don't go around having sex in ostensibly exotic and sexy places. Because it doesn't work. It just does not work.”
Then my other friend said, “That’s your next blog.”
If you refute my theories, if you think that hot tubs are a sexy place to have sex, or if you can honestly tell me that every time you've had sex anywhere other than a bed it always turned out really cool and just as you'd imagined (better even!), I'd like you to tell me about it.
But I won't believe you, and neither will anyone else.
P.S. If you are my little brother, or a friend of my little brother's who I see from time to time at my little brother's parties or at real estate closings in which you are paying me to look out for your legal interests, or if you are my colleague and shouldn't know these things about me, or if you are my sister-in-law or my cousin or my aunt, or if, God forbid, you are my mother, or LITTLE BABY JESUS PLEASE NO, my father, then all you need to know is that I came by the information in this post not from personal experience, but from second-hand information and research and things I have seen in movies. I am a virgin and all these stories I'm telling in the first person as if they actually happened to me, did not actually happen to me. I'm just telling a pack of lies because I'm embarrassed that I am still a virgin and I want my friends to think I am having a lot of sex, when in fact, I have never and will never have sex, and I have never seen and will never see a penis, in fact, I don't even know what a penis is. Penis? What's a penis? Don't ask me. I have no idea and no curiosity whatsoever in the matter. And if I ever have a baby, it will be delivered by a stork, which is how I came to be someone's daughter, because, praise Yahweh, my parents never had sex either.
P.P.S. If you are my mother, stop reading my fucking blog, you terrible terrible person. If I wanted you to read my blog, I would invite you to read my blog. Now go make a casserole and stop poking around on the internet. The internet isn’t for you. It’s a dangerous and filthy place, and Jesus doesn’t approve. And also, it really upsets me that you have a jacuzzi.
[Hot tubs are dirty cess pools of bacteria that cause
puking, folliculitis, and regrettable sexual encounters]
