Condoms and Hot Tubs Don’t Mix: An Anthology of Awkward Sexcapades

Jennie Jarvis (Editor) Leslie Salas (Editor) Beating Windward Press (JUNE) Softcover $16.99 (242pp) 978-1-940761-38-1

Romance isn’t dead, it’s just mortified. The hilarious new anthology Condoms and Hot Tubs Don’t Mix is a collection of laugh-out-loud, weird, and scandalous personal stories of sex gone wrong.

Movies, television, and pornography make sex look so straightforward. So synchronized. Consent is often implied: “her lips said no, but her body said yes.” And everyone goes home happy. Real sex, as the writers in Condoms explain, rarely goes the way we fantasize it will. Sexual experiences and relationships are fraught with foul-ups, both funny and freaky. To combat the media’s portrayal of sex, Condoms focuses on awkward, painful, and unexpected experiences.

The stories, poems, and comics in the anthology have titles like “The Penis Fly Trap” and “Watching Porn with My Mother.” This collection is certainly not for the faint of heart. Sexual mishaps are described in detail, along with each encounter’s uncomfortable consequences. Condoms is sex positive and intent on offering realism, genital warts and all.

The anthology includes thirty tales of woe by a diverse selection of authors. The trauma, thankfully, never causes permanent damage. Although each couple begins in good faith, they often up bruised, banged up, exposed, or horribly chafed. Sex facts included between stories straighten out common misconceptions or myths about sex, such as the actual number of porn searches online and the effect of caffeine on semen.

Edited by Jennie Jarvis and Leslie Salas, Condoms and Hot Tubs Don’t Mix is a positive, pro-sex anthology. Easy to read? Not without wincing, but the overall tone is light, even when it’s a little rueful.

Together, Condoms is a collection of stories about sex information learned the hard way, shared with a generous sprinkling of humor.