This story is part of our Dog Days Survival Guide, a collection of essays, recommendations and how-tos to help you get through the hottest days of the year.
I’ve never seen my own sex tape, which was the primary condition under which I agreed to make it in the first place: he could film us as long as I never had to see it. If you do watch it, however, I’m pretty sure there’s a point at which I can probably be heard asking, “Is there any way for there to be more AC?”
It was an early August scorcher and I’d arrived at his apartment late that afternoon already dripping sweat, having stopped twice to reapply deodorant on the short walk from the subway. The foreplay that began almost immediately after he opened the door, looking enviably chill in a monogrammed bathrobe, hadn’t exactly helped me cool down any. Unfortunately, the answer to my question was no, there was simply no more AC to be had. It was already on full blast.
I sweat through the rest of my first and last pornographic performance. It was sweet, it was silly, it was sweaty, and while I can’t imagine there’s an AVN Award in my future, it was, quite literally, very hot sex.
In honor of the dog days of summer, I asked some of my favorite sex writers to share their own tales of hot sex in the most literal sense. Below are their odes to sex at its steamiest, featuring lots of sweat, a sexy sauna encounter, and an almost kitchen fire. Some are sweet, some are silly, some are sexy. All are very hot.
Squlorch
By Mark Hay
In my mid-20s, I moved into a great apartment. It had high ceilings. It was roach free. And, for a former hospital, it was relatively unhaunted. The only problem was that the massive window in my room lined up perfectly with the sun on the hottest days of the summer. As a newly-minted full-time freelance writer, I worked from home and couldn’t afford an AC unit. So, I spent those days baking in the heat, with only a fan and a hot New York garbage breeze to cool me down.
Those hotbox summers were especially uncomfortable because I am an especially sweaty guy. A walk around the block in 90-degree weather leaves me with massive pit stains, a moist back and rivulets running down my forehead. So of course, the first time a partner dropped by my new place in the middle of a particularly muggy day for a quick romp, things got ridiculous real fast.
Sweaty sex can be plenty sexy. Glistening bodies are often visually delicious. Pulling into a steamy embrace or feeling a line of perspiration while running a hand down your partner’s body can amplify and escalate the visceral experience of mounting lust and passion. I’m personally very into so-much-for-my-sheets sex — the feel of spit, sweat, semen and lubrication both natural and bottled. Getting completely wet and sticky in every which way just feels like the perfect antidote to the all-too-neat-and-clean sex I saw on screens growing up.
But this sex was not that.
Within minutes of making out under the heat of my window, I’d already moved past flushed and dewy and towards uncomfortably damp. By the time we stripped down, I looked like I’d just stepped out of the shower. As we pressed together, my body just started sliding around like a Looney Tunes character on a slippery floor. Rather than a satisfying slap or thump as we collided, my flesh made a sound that I can only recall and render in text as a squlorch. Any time I found myself on top of our tangle of limbs and tried to lift up my head to look at my partner, I’d realize that a hail of stinging sweat bullets were raining down towards their eyes. So I’d immediately bury my head in a pillow or try to gracefully roll into a new position, with another squloooorch.
It was just plain silly sex, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun. We laughed. We rolled our eyes. We still got into it, and (hopefully) both came apart feeling good and satisfied. Because sex isn’t always stereotypically serious and sexy; it can be absurd or complicated or relaxed. It can be as wonderfully diverse and strange as the people having it. And if it’s enthusiastically consensual and considerate, there’s still a good chance that it will be … well, good.
That said, right after that encounter, I went on Craigslist and bought and fixed up a cheap AC unit. Because I, personally, am just not that jazzed about the sound or sensation of squlorch.
Mark Hay is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer who covers stories related to sex and sexuality, among other beats.
What Happens in the Locker Room Sauna …
By Zachary Zane
I really wanted to get a blowjob. My friend made it seem like it wasn’t just a possibility, but an inevitability. “If you sit in the locker room sauna long enough, a guy will come in and suck you off. It’s that easy.”
Even though he recounted countless stories of locker-room hookups — all of which had the plotlines of amateur pornos — I still didn’t believe him. Or rather, I believed his stories to be true, but I didn’t think it was this universal thing that all queer (or closeted) men experience. I thought he was somehow seducing these men by being a little temptress with a perky booty. If I were to walk into a sauna and sit, not a single guy would make eye contact with me, let alone get on their knees. It would be a bunch of 70-year-old men eerily reminiscent of my father, all wanting a shvitz, nothing more.
I knew a little bit about cruising culture, but not much. Most of my knowledge came from dancing to “YMCA” by the Village People at 100 or so Bar Mitzvahs. So I didn’t believe my friend when he said, “It’s not a ‘me’ thing or Boston Sports Club thing. If you walk into any gym sauna or steam room across the country, guys are blowing each other.”
I asked him how you know if a guy wants to blow you. “Oh, you’ll know,” he said, rather cryptically.
Armed with what little knowledge I had, I picked a random Tuesday, and like that ever-optimistic starfish from Finding Nemo, declared, “Today’s the day!” After years of working out and sitting in the sauna, oblivious to the orgasms surrounding me, I would finally be a part of the fun.
I worked on my chest, abs and triceps. My arms and torso are by far my best features, and I wanted them to have a nice pump.
Already sweating like a pig from my workout, I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around my waist, and plopped my ass down on the highest bench. The sauna was empty when I arrived, and after a minute, I could feel my body crave water, but I wasn’t going to let mild dehydration get in my way. After all, today was the day. After about two minutes, a beefy man tatted from head to toe sat down a socially acceptable distance from me. He looked like a young — and far more handsome — Danny Trejo.
I wasn’t sure exactly how to proceed but needed to get the ball rolling because I knew my body could only handle being in the sauna for a few more minutes before passing out. I looked up at him, and we locked eyes for a solid four Mississippis.
What now? I thought to myself. This guy was seemingly interested, but what’s the step between prolonged eye contact and BJ? It’s too big of a leap. Then I saw him readjusting himself over his towel, and I replied in fashion.
Fuck it. I scootched next to him, and he immediately ripped off my towel and went to work. It was hot — in a literal sense. So hot that I knew it would take me longer than usual, on account of being overheated. But by god, I was determined.
After what couldn’t have been longer than three minutes but felt like an eternity, I felt that anticipatory, tingly sensation course through my body.
“That was hot,” I said as he retreated with a big, fat grin on his face.
“Really hot,” he replied.
“Too hot,” I responded. I didn’t want to be rude and bail the moment I finished, but I was parched. Besides, I’m pretty sure standard protocol after a sauna hookup is to book it quickly. You can’t linger, dick out, in your post-coital glow and risk getting caught.
I left the sauna and bee-lined it straight to the water fountain before hopping into a cold shower. Before I left the gym, I saw him changing, and we gave each other a knowing nod.
When I saw my friend at work that next day, he asked, “How did it go?”
“It truly was that easy,” I said.
Zachary Zane is a Brooklyn-based columnist, sex expert and activist whose work focuses on sexuality, lifestyle, culture and the LGBTQ community. He currently has a sex advice column at Men’s Health titled “Sexplain It” and a relationship column at Queer Majority titled “Zach and the City.” You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
Object on the Mirror
By Jessica Toscano
I met who I’ll refer to as Tom* on a dating app the summer after my first year in grad school. We had been dating casually for about two weeks when we decided a “fancy” date night was in order. Full disclosure: what this actually meant was him in a button-down and slacks, me in a short, tight dress, and us not hitting up dive bar after dive bar like we had been since we met. To keep it “classy,” we instead decided to hop from one upper-class bar in the Tristate area to the next.
On the night of our date, I answered the door in a black mini dress with a corset tie across my cleavage and purple suede platforms that were far too warm to wear in 80-something-degree weather. We walked from my house to his truck, one of his hands on the small of my back, the other proffering a a lighter and two cigarettes. He placed one between my lips just before cupping my ass. “You’re stunning,” he whispered as he leaned in to gently kiss, then lick, my neck. I immediately questioned if our first-date decision to “not rush into sex” was still a good idea.
Lost in thoughts of my dress draped across his backseat, we couldn’t have reached our first destination fast enough. The air conditioning in the half Italian restaurant/half disco bar was blasting, but still I felt heated from our brief encounter outside his truck. We located two chairs at the already-crowded bar, and his fingers grazed my thigh as he asked what I wanted to drink.
“Coors Light,” I answered.
Two drinks and one hour later, we felt it was time to make our way to the next venue: a snug sports pub that functioned more like a club than a game-watching hotspot. Again we sat at the bar, where this time, we took shot after shot of Kamikazes, Redheaded Sluts, Lemon Drops — anything that left a sweet taste in our mouths. On our third cigarette break to escape the crowd and relish in the dry heat of summer, we decided once more, “On to the next one!”
Nearing 1:30, we didn’t have too many options before bars in the area closed, so we made our way to the only pub we knew that served until 3 a.m. Less than two blocks away, between a buzz from the alcohol and the warm breeze drying the sweat dripping down my chest, my lips made their way to Tom’s neck, and eventually, his lap.
Right hand between my legs, left hand on the wheel, he quickly pulled into the dark lot at the end of the bar’s dead-end street and ripped off his seatbelt. His hands now free to roam up my dress, he yanked off my panties in one swift motion, opened his truck door and playfully pulled me into the driver’s seat, other bargoers parking next to us all the while.
Afterward, we collected ourselves long enough to head inside and have a final drink. I hung my panties around his rearview mirror like a trophy, making my way into the bar without them.
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individual
Jessica Toscano is the founder of IntrigueMag, covering health and fitness, sex and relationships, and more. She’s a contributor to Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, SELF, SheKnows.com and other outlets. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Boston Heat Wave
By Ella Dawson
The unfortunate reality of being a single woman in New York City for too long is that you can forget what it’s like when someone tries. You forget what it’s like to wander through a dog park on a Saturday and be asked if you want ice cream as sweat slides down your ribs. You forget how to sit on a bench with a cup of chocolate malt chip and tell him about the memoir you’re writing in between spoonfuls. You forget the taste of a kiss laced with gratitude. You forget.
It’s June 2017 and I’ve come to Boston for a weekend away from my life in Brooklyn. A summer storm erupts as I step onto the train platform, drenching through my intentionally seductive outfit. My host is an old friend from college who I slept with for the first time as a 20-year-old. Now I’m 25 and he has broken up with his on-again-off-again girlfriend. I am still infatuated with his sincerity all these years later, swooning as he bundles me into a Lyft back to his apartment. He is the kind of man who was born to be someone’s husband.
For three days we play house in his apartment in a brownstone with crown moldings and wide picture windows. Once the storm dies out, the weather for the rest of the weekend is scorching. It’s a sudden reprieve from the long winter that marked the beginning of the Trump Presidency. I sit in his lap in my underpants and help him write his graduate school applications. I am very aware that I am borrowing someone else’s life, like a book from the public library.
We pick up supplies to make a pizza from scratch. I know nothing about pre-made dough or globs of mozzarella and instead I follow him around the local grocery with a basket bouncing against my knees. The heavy air conditioning pumping from the vents in the ceiling feels divine against my sticky shoulders. In his kitchen, he rolls out the pie and pours the sauce. Something goes wrong between the prep stage and baking — smoke pours out of his state-of-the-art oven and the fire alarm blares. He apologizes profusely. I laugh, undaunted, and we relocate to the front stoop with beer to wait for Dominos. There is something beautiful about the slight panic in his eyes as he worries over me.
I have to go back to the real world tomorrow and I fortify myself with details of care: his earnest compliments, his blush when he jostles my elbow by accident, how he asks if I want any ice in my glass. Later he asks if I’d be interested in another round and it’s like he’s talking about a refill and not fucking me out of the button-down shirt I borrowed from his closet. Even with the windows open, the apartment still smells like smoke. He licks the sweat from the nape of my neck. He worships me. He is a miracle of kindness.
Use me, he says. Tell me what to do. I want to please you. I want to make you feel good.
But what stays with me for years is the way he says thank you, like I am the true gift. Like I’m the one defrosting him from the cold.
Ella Dawson (@brosandprose) is a sex and culture critic whose writing has been published by ELLE, MTV, Vox, Women’s Health and elladawson.com. She is currently working on her first book, a romance novel about millennial angst, missing college and letting yourself fall in love.
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