Flamingoes and Jockstraps

The other day, while my boyfriend and I got frisky while watching Netflix, I started to think about all of the weird things I’ve listened to while having sex.

It makes sense that you’d listen to music, and I do, often. My go-to used to be “The XX,” low and slow and sensual, even enough that it’s not jarring when the next track starts. Recently (mostly because of my boyfriend and not me) I’ll put on Troye Sivan. If my boyfriend gets home from work and I put on “Bloom,” he knows.

A lot of times we don’t put on any music at all, left to fuck to the sounds of the house: screams of victory from our Call of Duty-playing roommate, construction workers cat-calling each other just below our window or the upstairs neighbor playing scales (and only scales) on their piano for hours. It’s the piano playing that drives me the most insane, hearing scales ascend and descend again and again and again while I’m trying to give a blowjob.

Once, when I was 19 or 20, I had sex with my then-fiancé in his parents’ house. Their room was just across the hallway, so we had to be completely quiet (not to mention he forgot the lube, so we had to get creative). Sex in silence, when you also have to be silent, isn’t exactly my idea of a great time.

If I’m totally, 100% honest, most of the time I have sex to the sounds of my TV. I’ve fucked to “Bob’s Burgers” enough times that I get a tingle at the mere thought of a ma and pa burger joint (just kidding) (mostly), and “American Dad” should probably be paying me royalties at this point.

It’s easy to have sex to TV shows like that; they’re just simple background noise, not to be given any attention. But the night in question, when my boyfriend got frisky, we were watching “Our Planet” on Netflix.

We’d just turned it on; James wanted to see it since it came out, and after seeing how beautiful the fish looked in the trailer, I was intrigued. I guess I thought it would be like a Discovery Channel special, filled with pretty images of pretty animals doing pretty things, giraffes grazing and penguins falling down and the like.

James was giving me a massage, and had just gotten my pants down (revealing a jockstrap underneath) when the narrator started talking about flamingos. I looked up to see a baby flamingo, all alone, struggling to walk with salt deposits solidified around its feet and legs. Because of the deposits, it couldn’t keep up with the rest of the flock.

I sat up, erection gone completely. “Let’s watch this later,” I said, switching back to “Bob’s Burgers.” I was erect again in five minutes, only faltering for a moment when I looked over at our Kate Spade flamingo pillows. I turned the pillows around and took off my jockstrap.