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"Poverty, Whimsy and Vacation Sex"
by B. Marshall
My husband and I, after taking a good long look at our swelling credit card bills, dwindling savings account, and recent rent hike, decided that we absolutely cannot afford to stay in Manhattan and therefore must go to England for two weeks to pretend that we don't have these problems. It is very easy to do this when you're on vacation. A true vacation - anything where you need to bring all of your underwear - gives you the opportunity to completely black out your previous, non-vacation life. It is a wonderful feeling to walk out onto your hotel balcony that first day, with a giant expanse of Somewhere Else stretched out before you. Your ordinary life slinks in the closet, muttering about exchange rates while your new vacation life comes bouncing out and hands you maracas.
The best thing about vacation (aside from the opportunity to unabashedly be a tourist, which I never get to do because I live in a city that thinks tourists are a type of rodent) is vacation sex. Vacation sex is an activity unto itself, which, like vacation life, bares little resemblance to the normal state of affairs. Vacation sex is higher in calcium, vitamin C, and minerals than at-home sex, and is often the sole reason some couples go on vacation at all. Vacation sex is a vitamin shot for sexual stagnation. So get yourself online and book yourself some beach.
You're never really wholly yourself on vacation. You're sort of this alternate version of yourself. At home you're pale and dressed in black and reading The New York Times. But vacation you lolls on the beach sucking up coladas and UV rays and reading Cosmo. Vacation you eats clam rolls. Vacation you needs to have sex on the balcony of your hotel. (It'll give you a chance to apply all those stupid Cosmo sex tips.) Vacation you needs to reach a state where you cannot even smell coconut oil without getting a secretly elated feeling of burning shame. Vacation you needs to go skinny-dipping in the pool in the courtyard. Who cares if people see? They don't know you, and if they see you, they'll just think you're someone else. Someone who has sex on the balcony of their hotel room. Someone they envy. That couldn't possibly be you, could it?
And let us not forget the general turn-on of the hotel. An entire building with hundreds of tiny little rooms and you never know what's going on behind each door. Inside, they're all the same: the glasses with the little paper hats, that weird yellow foam blanket. All that sterility is like a shy, awkward man in a button-down shirt who is secretly begging to be tied down to the bed and covered with olive oil. Hotels aren't places to sleep, they're places to get it on. Illicit trysts, passionate affairs, secret afternoon rendezvous - that's what hotels are for. Hotels know this. What do you think those bars in the shower are for? They're position grips. That's why hotels give you two beds when it's just two of you. So you can order up some room service dessert, play paint-by-numbers with the chocolate mousse, get the bed all messy - and then if and when you finally go to sleep, you have clean bed to sleep in.
I do realize that not everyone can afford this. We can't afford to stay in a hotel when we go to England, so we're staying with friends. This can put a kink in your plans, no pun intended. However, having sex in somebody's spare bedroom when they're down the hall is just so profoundly impolite that there is no way you can pass it up. It's too much fun. You're in some room with ugly wallpaper and books you'd never read on the shelves, or on a pull-out sofabed with that iron bar across your back. Trying not to make the bed squeak too much. Trying to keep the headboard from hitting the wall. Biting the pillow. You have to be quiet and you always wind up laughing. Something always gets kicked over or falls and then you hold your breath and hope to god that your host doesn't come tiptoeing down the hall to discreetly ask "Is everything all right in there?" And in the morning you have to act like you didn't get laid last night, and hope that no one heard you. You'll never know if anyone did, but if they seem resentful, the answer is probably yes.
By all means, do not do what we are doing, and go to England in November. ("Cold, dark and rainy," predicts my husband cheerfully.) But I don't really care about the wind and the rain, to be honest. Vacation me is going to drink a little beer, watch a little football, and have a whole lot of fun. So take advantage of the price war and get the hell out of Dodge. And don't forget the olive oil.
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