7 Cheap Places To Have Sex (And One Sort of Expensive One)

1. On the road:

John Sinclair of the White Panthers famously avowed, “Dope, Guns, and Fucking in the Streets,” but it’s a song that’s credited as the number one inspiration for asphalt ass. “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” from the Beatles’ 1968 White Album was written by Paul McCartney after he came across two monkeys doing it in the dirt. It led Sir Paul to ponder why humans have to complicate sex so: “A male [monkey] just hopped on the back of this female and gave her one, as they say in the vernacular. Within two or three seconds he hopped off again and looked around as if to say, ‘It wasn’t me,’ and she looked around as if there’d been some mild disturbance. And I thought that’s how simple the act of procreation is. We have horrendous problems with it, and yet animals don’t.” (I think the cute Beatle might’ve just made a rape apology.) The ditty led to a wave of inspired sex acts (in the same way Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” would when it came out in 1989) along with the very real risk of serious physical injury, should one get too caught up in the moment. Street sex also comes with its own STD: Road rash!

2. A cemetery:

When I was a young girl, I went for a walk in a cemetery with my father, and came upon a cherub someone had put a bra and panties on. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. Don’t do this. Cemetery sex doesn’t have to be disrespectful to the deceased, or their families. (I just asked myself if I would be upset if someone had sex on my grave, but the question is far too existential. Also, I want to be cremated.) Most cemeteries have large swaths of land where the dead have yet to be interred or never will be — “show land” to make the grounds appear more pastoral. Check the outer perimeters, but remember, in older cemeteries, that’s where the suicides were buried (a clue would be their backwards facing gravestones). Don’t make a mess, and be discreet! (Obviously, it would not be appropriate to go at it when people are actively mourning.) I mean, how loaded with circle-of-life symbolism and literary resonance is the idea of cemetery sex? If war makes us horny, shouldn’t confronting our own mortality make us insatiable? “Graveyard porn” is also a genre of skin-flick. The synopsis for Buffy’s Horny Halloween reads, “Buffy puts on her most sexy outfit and goes out to the graveyard where a dangerous vampire called Prince lives. She never planned to kill him, because Prince is the one who knows how to make her scream in pleasure all night long.” (I don’t know if the movie is any good. It’s a cartoon, and I didn’t watch it. I was concerned my computer might end up with a virus.)

3. Historical monuments/Divine’s grave:

This might be considered a subset of cemetery sex, but with historical leanings. Remember that anti- military bumper sticker slogan that was popular awhile back? “Join the Army, travel the world, meet interesting people, and kill them?” A bumper sticker promoting historical monument sex might read, “Travel the world, see interesting things, and have sex on them.” When showing your friends and family all the pictures of the neat places you’ve “visited,” you and your partner can wink at each other, knowingly. In my early 20’s, I was a huge John Waters fan, and traveled to Baltimore to seek out the origins of the Dreamlanders, the troupe of actors and actresses Waters cast in his films. It was a no-budget trip, and after going to the site of Edith Massey’s old thrift store, my boyfriend and I hoofed it to Divine’s grave. It took us a long time to get there, so we decided to spend the night. (Oh what crazy kids!) A bumper sticker summarizing what happened next might read, “Travel the world, commune with your dead influences, and have sex on their final resting places.” It could also be the name of a hip, new kind of drink. “Bartender, I’d like a Sex On Brian Jones’ Grave.” (Some kind of whiskey/ brandy/vodka concoction.) Or, “A Sex On Janis Joplin’s Grave, please — and make it dirty!”

4. A pool:

This is an especially serendipitous place to get it on if the type of sex partner you gravitate towards tends to be stinky. (I have gravitated toward stinky boys my whole life. First punk boys, then hippie boys, then the penultimate stink-prince of them all: the crusty.) The chlorine in the pool water has astringent qualities that will help to freshen up your partner during intimate encounters. Interesting aside: Chlorine was first used for the purpose of deodorization in France in 1820. Animal guts were used to make the strings of musical instruments, but the strings would rot, and they smelled horrible. Enter Antoine Germain Labarraque. The French scientist discovered that chlorine could be used to retard the decomposition process and acted as a disinfectant. So strong was the astringent and deodorizing quality of Labarraque’s chlorine composition, it was credited with sanitizing and perfuming the Latin capital of Paris after the cholera outbreak of 1832. Chlorine in a pool will kill sperm, as long as the sperm is released into the pool, not into another person, so the urban legend about women getting pregnant via pools that have had sperm released into them can finally be put to rest.

5. A car:

Cosmopolitan.com did a detailed list of 14 benefits of car sex called “Better Than Road Head” (it’s a pretty horrible list — they suggest using seat belts as bondage implements. I had a hard time just getting past the title. “Road Head?” Really, Cosmo?) but I like car sex for one VIP reason: I think it’s very Americana, and I am an armchair patriot. (Anything involving World War II veterans makes me cry.) To me, car sex is as American as Norman Rockwell, McDonald’s apple pies, and waterlogged copies of Reader’s Digest in old folks’ bathrooms. Car sex makes me think of drive-ins, with harried, put-upon waitresses on roller skates, and thick milkshakes. (You can mix and match numbers on this list: #2 and #3 might also happen inside a car.) I hope last week’s July 4th fireworks inspired a lot of back seat fireworks. God Bless America! Wasn’t Elvis conceived in the back of a car? I know some very iconic dead rockstar was. Maybe a whole bunch of them were.

6. A church:

Okay, this may be a bad idea. If you believe in Christian constructs, you might go to the hell for even considering this. On August 15, 2002, a couple hoping to win a trip to Boston in an Opie & Anthony radio contest were arrested for having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. August 15 is a Holy Day of Obligation, and there was a Mass going on at the time. The radio hosts lost their jobs, before ultimately moving to XM radio, but the man involved in the stunt may have paid the ultimate price: he died exactly a month, a year, and ten days later.

7. The bathroom at Burger King:

This sex prompt comes courtesy of the hip hop group Digital Underground, and their 1990 hit, “The Humpty Dance,” which was actually nominated for a Grammy. I prefer Burger King to McDonald’s because they have veggie burgers and a better soda machine (what other restaurant offers Diet Grape and Diet Peach Fanta as an option? The answer is, no other restaurant. You can’t even buy those soda flavors in the store.) Fast food is a subset of dining where the food tends to be cheap to buy, quick to make, and not very nutritious, and I would imagine that Burger King bathroom sex would have similar qualities, mutatis mutandis. I would only even consider risking Burger King bathroom sex in a lockable, one person stall. Thanks to clever marketing, large fast food chains tend to be very popular with the kids, and if a child ever walked in on you, you’d be fucked for life. You’d probably even end up on Nancy Grace. Also, people tend to get mad very quickly when they have to wait longer than a minute to use the bathroom in a fast food restaurant (I know this because I am a seasoned selfie-taker). Ergo, I would only recommend this for the most serious Digital Underground fans, or BK Employees, after hours. (I once got busy in a Papa Gino’s bathroom, though, without unpleasant repercussions.)

8. A sex club:

Maybe this will make me sound like a naive country bumpkin, but I always thought that sex clubs evaporated into the disco ether of the 70’s and early 80’s, with Cisco-fisting and Quaaludes. When my friend took me to one a few years ago in New York City, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I had walked into a time warp, and stepped out in 1979, but without the cool clothes. Actually, without any clothes. That was one of the rules of the club, you had to disrobe in the locker room area (shy couples could get around this rule by donning slips and underwear, though most folks walked around naked or in a towel.) People would communicate to whoever caught their fancy with a system of taps and touches, and if the interest was reciprocated, sexual activity quickly commenced. The club also had a buffet, a dance floor, and a sauna. I was just so knocked over that a place like this still existed! And was listed in the phone book! The club was expensive. You had to buy a half year membership for $200, and every time you came to the club, it was $90 per couple. You had to come as a couple, you could not come alone. The club was pretty much an open secret (to everyone but me?) and prostitutes covertly lingered on neighboring blocks, willing to partner up with men who had come alone. The club’s still there, though I haven’t been in a while. They even have a web page!