How to Have Sex in Your Childhood Bedroom and Get Away With It

Ah, the holidays—they’re so nice! Spending time with people you like, eating loads of cookies, taking a few days off work…. What’s not to love??? It’s all so pure. You’d think that, in this completely sanitized, Santa Claus–filled environment, your sex drive would take a few days off, as well…… But this simply isn’t the case. Going home for the holidays makes many people insatiably horny. As soon as you’re back in your childhood bed, the desire to make out to Radiohead with your socks on returns, and just like when you were a teen, the same issues (the lack of privacy, the twin bed, your parent[s] sleeping just down the hall) stand in your way.

But you’re an adult now; you have agency and can make your own choices. You can’t be grounded for breaking curfew, or sneaking boys into your room at night. If you wanna hump someone in your squeaky childhood bed (damn antique frame…), then by god, you can do that! Still, as an adult, you probably have some sense of decorum, and also, the last thing you want to hear from your robe-bedecked mom in the morning is, “What was all that racket coming from your room last night???”

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Well, worry not, dear reader, because where there’s a will (to bone); there’s a way (to make boning possible). There have been many entries in the “how to have sex in your childhood bedroom” canon over the years, and much of it is completely unhinged. (Do not duct tape your partner’s mouth as a quieting mechanism, unless you want to wake your parents up with an ambulance siren at 3 a.m. Also, don’t J.O. into a lube-baggie, JESUS CHRIST!!!) The only advice you actually need re: porking in your childhood bed is: Just be freakin’ cool about it. But if duct tape and semen baggies are too elementary for you and you’d like more advanced guidance, you’ve come to exactly the right place.

Barricade your door. If your parents were cool, your childhood bedroom might actually lock; but most likely, your door can be opened by anyone at anytime. This was OK when your parents wanted to know if you were smoking pot or doing your homework, but it’s absolutely a problem now that you’re a grownup who simply wants to get down with the washed-up varsity basketball captain in peace. Get creative here: A chair pushed up against the doorknob will keep out intruders, as will pushing your entire bookcase against the door or Gorilla Glue-ing the hinges. No precaution is too large here.
Sound-proof your bed frame. Before the sex happens, give your bed a good ol’ bounce test. Yes, ha ha, I am giving you express permission to jump on the bed!!!! You’re an adult, for Pete’s sake!!! Jump!!!! Locate the points at which your bed is the squeakiest, mark them with electrician’s tape, then just go ahead and spray every joint and screw with WD-40 (just to be on the safe side). Will the bed crumble??? Perhaps. Do you care??? No!!!! You always hated that old bed, anyway.
Prepare your window for entry/exit. Going in and out through the garage is too risky; the only reasonable way to sneak someone in and back out of your room is the same way teens in movies sneak: the window. If your bedroom is on the first floor, you’re in luck. If you live on the second story, you’ll just need to prepare a bit more. Use your adult paycheck to buy some rope and a climbing harness, learn how to tie the double figure-eight knot, and watch a few instructional climbing videos on YouTube. Then you can simply belay your date up and down the side of your house, right past the blissfully ignorant, sleeping eyes of your family members.
Don’t forget to obscure all the in-home surveillance your parents won’t stop gifting each other. At first it was almost kinda cute how you kept confusing your mom barking at Siri with her trying to have a conversation with you. But now your childhood home has security akin to the room where they keep the Mona Lisa—Rings monitor the perimeter and Alexas glow from every corner. It would be less than ideal for your romp to be forever caught on glitchy film, or for your late-night chatter to rouse all the Alexas into speaking. A piece of gum on the lens works to obscure a Ring camera (be sure to do this under the cover of night, and disguise yourself as your sibling when you do it), and Alexas can always be unplugged. Don’t skip this crucial step.
Hide your condoms. Your parents probably don’t root around your room, now that you’re grown up. But if they do, a few good condom hiding spots are: Nestled between the dried petals of the prom corsage rotting on your bookshelf; inside a secret hole you will cut into your childhood teddy bear’s stuffing; or tucked inside the college textbooks you refuse to let your mom throw out (you really might need to reference them someday!!!!).
Get creative with sex toys. A buzzing vibrator is too conspicuous, and bringing a dildo into your parents’ home is begging for an awkward “Fido and/or Grandma thinks it’s a dog toy” moment straight out of a bad teen comedy. On the other hand, those lacrosse trophies your parents held onto for all these years have nothing better to do right now.