The Dos and Dont’s of Festival Sex

Nothing compares with the festival season’s dopamine-filled debauchery and sloppy puppy love. Something about the combo of sunscreen’s overripe coconut smell, questionable amounts of booze, and a bumpy Nina Kraviz set makes us want to add a festival sex section to our bucket list. 

It’s too loud for small talk and you’re too hammered to care, so you adopt a “Why the hell not?” mantra and regress to primal instincts.

But steamy sessions at a fest go beyond mentally preparing yourself for the possibility of having sex in a tent. In this beats-fuelled warzone, holiday romances are easy to get a grip on, but execution can get knotty.

Festival hookups are pseudo-relationships where you have to meditate on whether the tent is more soundproof than the port-a-potties and remove glitter from body parts you never thought it could get to.

As a catalyst for spontaneous hanky-panks, the festival season can become a murky territory where lack of guidance is your worst enemy and biggest turn-off. 

Just picture this – you clumsily take your festival beau to your tent. Because you’re a good tent-mate, you decide to keep the lights off and relieve your prude sex days. Your beau starts sucking your tent-mate’s toes by mistake. He wakes up and screams out, “NOOOO.” Everyone in your tent neighborhood starts screaming. This is not how you hookup a festival. 

So this is why we jump into the festival sex dos and dont’s – life is too short for the security guy to bust you getting head in a portable toilet. 

Don’t be a walking ick

Festivals are all about unleashing your party animal and taking a break from your routine as capitalism’s slave. But your feral version doesn’t have to translate into a desperate individual whose only purpose is to shag at least three people by Tame Impala’s closing. 

Music festivals are much more than that. Just like in real life, festival hookups are fulfilling when they are spontaneous and raw.

Searching for a sex partner the way festival rookies search for ecstasy pills will only get you confused faces, disgusted reactions, and sheer refusals. Not everyone enjoys having sex in uncomfortable places with unshowered people tripping their balls off on LSD.

If it’s meant to be, it will happen when you expect less – you don’t have to act like a walking ick and propose a steamy session five minutes into the small talk. 

Keep it clean and wrapped 

In this third-day festival sweat-drenched cardio, hygiene gets a little freeform. UTIs are knocking at your door every 30 minutes and doing oral is a no-go when you don’t have a peculiar fetish for pungent aromas.

Just like your mum used to tell you when you were a kid: put it down, you don’t know where it’s been. 

If you don’t want your sensitive parts to become a hotbed for toxic bacteria – which might sound exotic but will make you feel like you’re pissing razor blades – keep yourself fresh.

We know that festival showers’ temperature is far from perfect and dirt-rolling is imminent. But nothing prevents you from bagging anti-bacterial gel, wet wipes, and the mighty deodorant along with the vodka pouches you want to smuggle.

Maybe add some lube to the list, especially if you are a fan of mood-enhancing substances – you might need a little hydration down there. 

This might sound like common sense, but always wear a condom – no glove, no love. The only souvenirs you want from your fest experience are overpriced merch and blurry memories. 

For God’s sake, no festival hookups on the dancefloor 

Chances you land at a music festival that explicitly allows public sex are one in a million. Getting a fellatio while leaning on a food truck might sound like a festival goal, but getting arrested for public indecency isn’t. 

If a festival-goer has fair rights to walk around your shagging area, it is not the best place to bang. 

This cuts cars, portaloos, and public spaces (no matter how heavily wooded they are) from the list. At a music festival, your lusted-after privacy sits within the fabric walls of the holy tent. Besides serving as a go-to place to catch some Zs and baby wiping your tooshie in peace, tents give you personal space to bed your beau. 

Being walked in on is toe-curling, no matter how many ecstasy pills you’ve ingested.

Be mindful of movements and sounds 

Just because you bagged a private love nest doesn’t mean people won’t wander around it. Maybe those ket lines empowered you to unleash some wacky positions, but tents are a bit too fragile for that. In the best-case scenario, your sex session will look like a bear is trapped inside the tent. Plus, the additional sounds won’t do you any favor. 

Erotic anarchism has its boundaries, so stick with the classics and consider bringing a speaker to conceal festival sex sounds.

It might be an unpopular opinion, but use a music streaming app that guarantees an ad-free experience. 

Tell me a bigger turn-off than blasting The Weeknd and getting interrupted by a 3-in-1 laundry pods commercial. That’s what I thought too.

Steamy home run vs. headliner performance 

When Martin Garrix kicks off his three-hour set by shouting “GET YOUR HANDS UP!” you know every festival-goer will flock to the main stage’s grounds like double vodka cranberries are given out for free. In this case, you have two options – joining the ranks of the sweaty crowds or doing the deed hitch-free.

Missing out on a music hero to orgasm in a tent is the type of commitment that not everybody is willing to take. Chances of you seeing an electronic legend again are low, but definitely not lower than having a whole festival campsite for yourself – you do the Math.