UrbanUpdate

Festival season is a great catalyst to hedonism. Not only do you get to binge live shows from Queen Bey and others, but jetting off to adult summer camp means you also have ample opportunities to try out bananas outfits and possibly even have sex with new hot people. But! Between unfortunate tent settings and inevitable drug use, festival banging is different than non-festival banging—so treat it as such.

Keep it consensual

Pretty lame that I gotta include this one, but especially because festivals can be psychedelic playgrounds, it’s so important to remember this rule: Even just excess drinking can make it extra tricky to judge someone’s consent, let alone drugs. If your fest friend keeps repeating herself, slurs, or has any trouble walking or standing upright, cut it out. Luckily, your tent is probably a half-hour away—an hour if you’re stumbling—so you’ll have plenty of time to evaluate a person’s decision-making abilities. If you realize she’s smashed, you can always swap numbers and text her the next day to see if she wants to meet, but you absolutely should not try to have sex with this person at this time. If she really wants to smash organs with you, she will—when she sobers up.

Keep it legal

Unless you’re at a festival that explicitly allows public sex acts, don’t expect fellatio while leaning on a Honey Bucket in plain view. Find a tent (preferably yours or your pound pal’s), a van, a heavily-wooded area outside of frequent foot traffic, etc. Getting arrested for public indecency is fun for no one. Or, you know, you can wait till a headliner takes stage and take advantage of a relatively empty campsite area. Just remember to...

Keep it down

Tent walls are far from soundproof. Chances are, yours isn’t set up someplace super secluded, so be courteous of your neighbors and stick to indoor voices for dirty talk. Consider a portable Bluetooth speaker to play tunes and somewhat obscure sex sounds. Also, if you have a tent roommate, have an open and clear conversation pre-fest about each others’ plans for hooking up. It’s easy to think of festivals as a horny patchouli version of Vegas, but bringing home drama because you woke up your tent roommate sucking someone’s toes is a bummer.

Keep it clean

I don’t really know any women who loves when dudes use their fingers like a pretend-penis jackhammering a vagina, but I definitely know they don’t want dirty fingers or long fingernails doing that kind of falange cardio. You should always keep your nails clean and short, but in a festival setting you should take your UTI prevention a step further and pack anti-bacterial, disposable wipes to use regularly throughout your dirt-rolling music party. Let your partner use them, too, so neither of you hates yourselves or each other for additional sweat.

And, please please please, while we’re on the subject of hygiene, wear deodorant. Hygiene gets a little freeform at festivals. I get that. But sticking a person’s head in an armpit area without deodorant is vile.

Keep it cushy

Maybe you don’t mind when nothing but a second-hand yoga mat separates your body from the actual ground—great, congrats. But if you plan on bringing company back to your tent at all, you need to step it up. Look for an inflatable camping mattress that also works in a variety of temperatures; sometimes it gets cold at night, and you should avoid a freezing tundra sex surface. (Thermarest has a lot of good options.) If you’re reluctant to make that kind of financial investment, just bring your down comforter from home, and a couple pillows—and keep them all extremely dirt-free.

Keep it wrapped

Condoms. Every. Time.

Keep it small

Festivals may emanate a free love kinda vibe, but remember that threesomes are usually bad, and anything more than that is worse.

Keep it simple

Hello, it’s me—the prude—again. Maybe The Weeknd empowered you to unleash some wild positions, but a tent isn’t conducive to that. “Boring” sex positions expertly pulled off are always going to be better than precarious ones that get awkward quick. Stick with the classics like missionary (which, IMO, is so underrated), reverse cowgirl, and spooning.

Keep it... kissing

Yes, hi! Sorry—casual sex can be seriously the dopest but that changes when there’s dust, mud, or Mumford & Sons performances involved. Good festival sex is of course possible, but you know what involves a whole lot less room for error? Festival makeouts. Perhaps save your copulations for scenarios involving a bed (with a bed frame) and real walls.

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