Having sex in a motel room is not precisely a new idea, I’m given to understand, but one can always learn a few new tricks. Sure, you could do it the way your parents did – checking in with that vaguely guilty look (even if they were married at the time), washing up separately, laying a towel down to keep the sheets clean and avoid embarrassing the maid, having furtive and quiet sex so the equally-shameful people next door wouldn’t hear, washing up separately again, and then either watching a movie so it wouldn’t be so obvious they were there just to have sex, or going to sleep so they could wake up 300 times in the middle of the night before finally getting up at 6:30 in the a.m., sore and miserable. Good times.

But why limit yourself to that, fun though it may be? You’ve just paid someone a wad of cash to borrow their room for a while. Enjoy it! Here’s some tips:

•  Arrive separately, even if you have to drop your lover off and circle the block a few times.
•  Look around furtively a lot. Stay at different ends of the front desk and don’t make eye contact with each other. One of you will need to actually sign in of course, but the other can pretend they were only here for the coupon books for the local attractions (“PlegmWorld! $2 off the plume ride every other Thursday!”).
•  Trenchcoats can help here, especially if there are no visible pants legs underneath. Flagrant high heeled pumps make a nice statement, but only if you’re male. It also helps if you both look really nervous and one of you has a suspicious bulge in your shirt that awkwardly-crossed arms just won’t hide.
•  In a frantic-sounding voice, ask the desk clerk several times if the room has a working toilet. After he/she reassures you enough times, ask what its capacity is, and if you’re allowed to change rooms if it breaks.
•  Pay in crumpled, greasy singles, or a single hundred dollar bill half-covered with blue ink.
•  If the motel uses those little electronic card keys, take it, stare straight ahead while you run your finger across the magnetic tape like braille, then nod to yourself and put it in your pocket.
•  Ask for a room that faces Sirius and mock him if he doesn’t understand what you mean.
•  Walk into the lobby while embracing and kissing each other passionately and ask the clerk (through grasping, hungry lips) for the nearest goddamn room.
•  Bring along about 14 friends and ask for a single. Tell the clerk that they won’t all be staying.
•  Or just walk in normally, ask for a room and go through the process friendly and calm, and then, just as you leave, slip him $5 and, tapping the side of your nose, tell him “We were never here, eh my lad?”
Use everything the room has to offer. You paid for it, use it!
•  The soap is hardly capable of cleaning anything, but it’s handy for writing obscene sonnets across the bathroom mirror.
•  Get the Gideon Bible and read each other the dirty parts.
•  Ever fold gum wrappers so that they chain together? Ever wonder how long a chain you could make if you used an entire phone book?
•  Send crank letters to the President on motel stationary.
•  Turn on the tv, turn off the sound, and add your own filthy dialogue to the sit-coms, the soaps (not that they need it), the music videos, even the news. You always knew Gilligan was boned silly over Mary Anne, now’s your chance to hear it happen!
•  Tie all the towels, sheets, blankets, and washcloths together in a long rope and leave it tied to the bedpost closest to the window when you leave.
•  See how many pillows you can fit into the room safe.
A boring motel room is no excuse for boring sex.
•  Pile up all the blankets, sheets and towels into a huge nest to fuck in.
•  The bed is usually just the wrong height for one of you to stand or kneel during sex, but you can crank up the a/c, pull the mattress half-off so that it’s leaning on the bed, lay on it and pretend you’re stranded on the side of an Alp and you need friction to stay warm.
•  The little tables are usually pretty sturdy.
•  If you have a double room, each of you can get on a separate bed and see how worked up you can get each other. You can look, you can listen, you can stretch and touch each other, but both of you have to be somehow touching your home base at all times.
•  Or you can use the little bucket and the ice machine down the hall to turn one bed into an ice floe and pretend you’re penguins. Dump the bedspread into the tub afterwards to melt.
•  Come to think of it, the extra bedspread makes the tub much more comfy. Use it to make a cushioned hidey-hole, or fill the tub anyway and play Swamp Thing.
•  If the shower rod looks up to it, doing chin-ups while coupled is both healthy and an incredible sexual rush.
•  The ice machine is your friend. Nothing like a bucket of ice in one hand and a coffee pot full of hot water in the other to help you provide just about any sensation necessary.
•  Be imaginative when you cry out. “Oh God!” is trite and dull, and unfair to your potential next-door audience. Try exclamations such as “Great Krypton!”, “Oh, mommy, yes! Yes!”, “Now, give me one more foot of it!”, and “Fuck me ragged, Your Emminence!”
•  It is usually possible to have neighbors on up to four sides of you, especially during a busy season. See how many of them you can get to pound on your walls, ceiling and floor because of your shrieked cries of love.
•  One of you lies spread-eagled on the bed. The other stands perched on top of the television. Can you get hooked up in a single leap? Lube is essential here. If you master that, have your lover lie spread-eagled on one bed while you run and spring off the other one to get more altitude.
•  Motels are an ideal place to play spy. You may want to avoid using live ammunition, though.
•  Isn’t the pool just begging for a 3 a.m. skinnydip? Chevy Chase did it, and he got to see Christie Brinkley naked.
•  Don’t waste the money on the vibrating bed. Head to the laundry room and sit her on the corner of the washer. Cheaper, lasts a lot longer, and it’s way more powerful. Plus you can do a load of laundry at the same time. Can the vibrating bed do that? I think not.
•  Go fuck in your car anyway. That’ll show ‘em!
•  Balance the complimentary chocolate directly over her clitoris. Let it melt. Only lick the drippings off, leave the main candy alone. See how long she can take the gentle teasing.
•  On one memorable stay years ago, we picked up a two-quart jug of baby oil and ended up using the entire thing. We could barely stay connected, it was a giggly, exhausting struggle just to have sex at all.
•  Call other rooms at random and see if you can exchange spouses.
•  While you’re having sex,  play a wildlife tape of monkeys fighting, just to see if anyone dares investigate.
Amuse the help.
•  If room service is available, you owe it to the poor bored people downstairs to order something they can talk about for weeks after you leave. I recommend asking for a bunch of those little canoe-looking cakes you use for strawberry shortcake, a hacksaw, a single stalk of celery, a small pool pump, a copy of “Hiney Heros” magazine (last month’s issue), and 50′ of garden hose. Ask them to please hurry and to just leave it outside the door.
•  Explain that you’re technically not peeing in the pool, you’re peeing off your balcony and it’s hardly your fault which way the wind was blowing.
•  Bring along your own maid’s outfit and wander into other rooms.
•  Be sure to make faces at the mirror, just in case.
•  Get up early in the morning and replace all the complimentary newspapers with copies of Barely Legal.
•  Maids have a pretty boring job, so it’s a nice gesture to liven up their mornings by presenting them with something a little different in the realm of wet spots. Move around a lot, make some art. You’ve got a queen-sized canvas there, use it! Squirt food coloring into some body lotion and coat yourselves with it before you start. A masterpiece!
•  Call down to the front desk and ask for a teeny, tiny little favor. Tell them you can’t explain why, but you’d really, really appreciate it if they could send someone around to your room in exactly 17 minutes to bang on the door and yell “Honey, the chicken is done!” If someone actually does it, moan loudly.
•  Don’t use the Do Not Disturb sign. Instead, throw back the coverlet, sit up, hold a bottle of champagne ready, and when the maid enters the room, look up and say “Darling, I’ve been waiting.” Alternately, the same scenario, but wearing a leather harness.
•  Sit in the motel bar getting good and plastered before taking her hand and saying loudly “C’mon honey, we don’t have much time before my visitation time is over.”
•  If the manager comes to complain, refuse to come out until John Walsh shows up.
•  Tip very, very well.