The Do's and Dont's of Golden Showers

Former president Jair Bolsonaro is seen by many as Brazil's answer to Donald Trump. Vocally opposed to same-sex marriage, the Brazilian ex-prez removed LGBTQ rights from the purview of the country's new human rights minister, referred to immigrants as "scum of the earth" and is anti-choice and pro-gun.

However, we do owe Bolsonaro one thing, and that’s for tweeting, "What is a golden shower?" in March of 2019. As a standalone tweet, it occupies a wonderful intersection between Ed Balls using social media and your mum overhearing a conversation at the Tesco checkout and surreptitiously WhatsApping you for more information.

Alas, as with everything the far-right touches, it turned out to be much darker than that. That tweet followed another (also now-deleted) tweet: a video of a man having a five-knuckle shuffle before being pissed on at Rio de Janeiro's Carnival. The video was captioned: "I don't feel comfortable showing it, but we have to expose the truth so the population can be aware and always set their priorities. This is what many street carnival groups have become in Brazil."

Not much is known about the circumstances of the video, but two things are clear: that Bolsonaro was looking to use sex – particularly "deviant" sexual acts – to bolster his own brand of hate; and that piss play has now become a weapon of resistance. It is important, however, that we know how to wield it. With this in mind, I give you this beginner's guide to golden showers.

First things first: What exactly constitutes piss play? Simply put, it’s the act of urinating on your sexual partner. That can be anywhere over their body –on their chest, over their face, in their mouth or orificies (although: see below for a note on this one). Otherwise known as urophilia, it is definitely on the kinkier side of sex, though it isn’t quite as rare as you might think.

For those of you who are regularly anally penetrated, the need to plan will not come as a surprise. For the tops among us, planning – I found out far too late into my sexual career – is very important. "Always do water sports somewhere with a) a drain, or b) using training pads," says full service sex worker, Tara Lacey. "It'll ruin your hardwood floors if you don't – a towel is not sufficient."

"Yeah, don't do it in your bed," adds golden shower enthusiast Barbara. "No one wants to sleep in a toilet. Unless that's your thing. In which case, stream away, pals."

"It's fine to piss on / in someone after drinking 12 or so fruity cocktails," offers Lacey, "but having drank 12 or so fruity cocktails, you may be enticed to engaged in water sports in a not so ideal place, such as the stairwell of an apartment complex in Sicily. Thank goodness it was warm enough that everything dried quickly."

Our bodies are finely balanced biological organisms. It is important to remember this fact during the showering experience.

"Don't piss in vaginas," says Lacey. "The pH is very sensitive and you will either get BV or a yeast infection. Urine is only sterile in your bladder. As soon as it comes out of your urethra, it can no longer claim this virtue."

For those of you more into butts, you're not out of the woods. "It's fine to piss in someone’s arse, and can be quite pleasurable," adds Lacey. "Just bear in mind, with any type of enema, what goes in must come out."

Before I started writing this, I put a shout-out on social media for advice and stories on the subject of golden showers, because I wasn't sure my one very drunken, failed attempt when I was 20 was enough to class me as an expert. In response, I was inundated with people telling me that you simply must drink water.

"Hydration is key," sex worker Polly Tickle tells me. "DO NOT let your partner piss on you if all they've had to drink is three cups of coffee." "It fucking reeks," someone else adds. Another replies to my tweet with the phrase "drink water" six times.

It's good practice to drink water, so kill two birds with one stone and hydrate yourselves before you start pissing all over each other.

This one surprised me. "Don't do it if you've had artichoke or antibiotics in the last half an hour – it will burn," piss-partaker Marilyn tells me.

"It's a bad idea after you've drunk coffee, eaten asparagus or a lot of kale, and definitely after beetroot," says Lacey. "You'll be trying to have a wet and sexy time, and without fail you will end up freaking out about why you may be pissing blood, and by the time you remember the mood is ruined and your partner is consoling you and has lost their erection."

I'm an "only when surprised" kind of guy, but I am aware that swallowing is a thing people do for fun. That said, maybe best to reconsider that position for piss-play.

"If someone wants to drink the piss you stream into their mouth, it's probably fine – but often better left to fantasy," says Lacey. "It'll usually be hot for 30 seconds and result in the person running to the bathroom to puke."

So there you have it.

This kind of goes without saying, but you can't just whip your junk out and piss on someone without asking. Once you've got that all important enthusiastic consent to turn someone else into your toilet, it perhaps behooves you to have a further conversation setting out rules of engagement.

"Communicate before you piss," Barbara tells me. "Some people will be all up for it being in their hair, for others it's a red line. Same with the mouth. Chat about it before: you don't want to try to talk halfway through and accidentally end up with a mouth full of piss."

@bencsmoke

This article was updated for clarity. It was originally published in March 2019.