Caught in the Act

You know what makes doing bad stuff fun? The off chance that someone might walk in on you doing whatever sex act/drugs/ritualistic animal torture you've picked for that day. You what's not so fun? Actually being caught. Which throws up all kinds of questions about the hypocritical definition we have of fun. But that's boring and I don't have the patience to write a rambling think piece about how we get our thrills. Instead, here are some stories about people being caught doing stuff they shouldn't have been doing.

Illustrations by Sam Taylor. Follow him on Twitter @sptsam or visit his website at samtaylorillustrator.com.

MEET THE GRANDPARENTS

I was at an 18th birthday party, making the most of the vodka ice fountain carved into the shape of Adonis (the guy was hella rich), when I saw a girl that I'd had a crush on for weeks stroll through the double doors with some of her friends. Bolstered by the fact I was drinking extortionately expensive vodka and felt like an oligarch whose every whim could be answered at the click of a finger, I confidently bowled over to speak to her.

I suppose I must have been exuding some kind of completely irresistible aura because, within a few minutes, we were kissing and dancing to the 60s cover band playing in the corner. More vodka led to us sneaking off to find a spare room, where, kind of unnecessarily, we both instantly got completely naked, before working our way into a 69. Legs flailing around and heads bobbing up and down, we heard the door swing open and looked up to see both sets of my friend's grandparents staring, horrified, at us from the doorway. One set were Gibraltarian, so started shouting something incomprehensible – but angry-sounding – in Spanish.

I later learnt that they were supposed to have been sleeping in the bed we were using that night, so I'm assuming the Spanish translated to something I didn't particularly want to hear anyway.

STAY NEAT WITH VEET

I was getting ready for my first date in months and wanted to make sure everything was tidy, so went out and bought a tube of Veet. My aunt and uncle were supposed to be coming round to drop off some furniture, so I was in a bit of a rush and ended up slapping the cream on kind of haphazardly, like when your gross, sweaty friend asks you to rub sun cream in on their pimply back. Realising that I'd missed a few crucial spots, I twisted my legs up – almost above my head – in a way I've never been able to replicate since.

What I realised next is that I need to listen out for the doorbell more, because I suddenly heard footsteps ominously creaking up the stairs. My aunt and uncle aren't knock-and-waiters, either, they're knock-and-immediately-openers, so before I had a chance to swing my legs around and try to partially cover my unimaginably exposed vagina, they strolled right in to see me naked from the waist down, contorted into a shape that no one should ever have to witness their niece in.

To make things – oh – around 3000-times worse, they had their dog with them, who was very intrigued by the weird smell of Veet cream and obviously wanted to see what it tasted like. At least I'm unavoidably a lot closer to my aunt and uncle nowadays.

LOVE LIQUIDS

The first time I ever got to touch real boobs was when I was 14. It was a monumental moment in my life and went something like this: the 16-year-old girl who lived in the house behind mine came round to swim in our pool, we got out of the pool to dry off and I went to find some towels. When I got back, she was completely naked, lying on my dad's bed and asked me if I wanted to touch her boobs. I said yes, of course, then she told me the only way she'd let me do that was if I squirted some whipped cream on them and licked it off.

I sprinted into the kitchen and swung open the fridge, to find that the only two pourable things we had were ranch dressing a strawberry syrup. Running back to the bedroom, I eagerly presented her with the choice and she picked syrup, because – in retrospect – why the fuck would anyone want to have salad dressing poured on their nipples?

After doing the Billy Madison suntan lotion smiley face on her naked body with the strawberry syrup, I started basically inhaling every last bit of it that I could, until I couldn't take it anymore and started retching and spitting all over her stomach. Cue my dad walking through the door to find his son naked, ruining his bed with syrup and almost throwing up over a girl's boobs.

It's been a decade since that happened now and I still never use strawberry syrup on my pancakes for fear of my dad ripping the piss out of me.

BOXERS IN THE BUSH

This isn't so much a caught in the act story as a 'would have much rather been caught in the act' story. It starts with my dad almost catching me having sex in our living room when I was 16. Both of us were paranoid and untypically alert, which was good, because as soon as we heard the key turn in the lock, we both darted off, throwing our clothes behind a sofa.

I shoved the guy into the study by the living room and ran up to my room, sauntering down 10 minutes later like I was the perfect daughter. I glanced out of the window and saw the guy – who had clearly jumped out of the study window – hiding in a bush in his boxers. His car keys were in his jeans' pocket and I had no way of grabbing them from behind the sofa without raising suspicion. About half an hour into my dad making dinner for me, it started to piss it down outside. I glanced through the window again and saw the guy was still there, shivering and looking incredibly distressed.

Eventually, after about three hours of my dad lingering in the kitchen, I managed to snatch up the guy's clothes, run outside and throw them at him, before sneaking back into the house. I saw the guy at school the next day and, instead of laughing off his harrowing experience like any normal person would, he completely ignored me and tried his hardest not to speak to me for the rest of the school year.

SCHOOL LOO FOOLS

My friend and I were in the throws of adolescent indulgence (drinking on the weekends, occasionally smoking weed, very occasionally taking pills at house parties) when we decided it would be a great idea to take as many drugs as we could buy into school on the last day of term and do them throughout the day.

It was first break, which presented us with our first proper opportunity to crack into the first bit of stuff we'd managed to muster. Sneaking into the toilets of one of the boarding houses – unexplored territory for us day boys – we hastily put together a homemade bong, aware that we only 20 minutes to get caned enough that people would be able to tell and, we thought, be impressed with us. While we were doing that, we dug our noses into the preserve of every British 15-year-old boy who hasn't sorted himself out a good enough fake ID to buy alcohol: poppers.

Finally we assembled the bong, loaded it up with a huge stack of skunk and lit up. Almost immediately, we heard a calm knock on the door and watched as the smoke wafted out underneath it and presumably right up into the nostrils of whoever was waiting the other side.

We sheepishly opened the door to see the boarding house's matron, who neither of us had ever met before. Bizarrely and amazingly, she winked at us and let us walk off with a warning. I wish my parents had the money to allow me to board, where I could have smoked all the weed and inhaled all the amyl nitrates I could ever dream of.

WOMB RAIDER

This is the first time I've ever told anyone this story, so you should feel both honoured and laud me with sympathy and kind messages in the comments.

So, basically, when I was younger, I used to be massively into Tomb Raider. Before puberty, I was convinced that it was the gameplay and as yet unmatched graphics that kept me so enthralled. Post-puberty, I realised it was all about my undying love for Lara Croft's boobs that kept me glued to the screen. My dad clearly had the same thoughts, because while I was rooting around the drawers in his office once (as you do when you're 14), I stumbled across a page ripped out of Loaded, sporting some drop-dead babe dressed up like Lara Croft, only with her boobs out and her finger in her mouth.

At an age like that, the smallest visual cue can provoke an animalistic level of arousal, so I quickly got to work on myself over this photo. Seconds from climax – of course – my mum barged in and looked me dead in my squinted eyes. Out of either stupidity or an unconscious loyalty to my dad, I claimed the ripped-out page was mine and ran to my room, almost on the verge of tears. Thank fuck I didn't cry. Being caught wanking by your mum is the second worst thing that can ever happen to a teenage boy. Crying about it is the first.

Illustrations by Sam Taylor. Follow him on Twitter @sptsam or visit his website at samtaylorillustrator.com.