Sex and Dating Acts That Should Have a 24 Hour Waiting Period
The Washington, D.C., Department of Health just posted proposed tattoo and body piercing regulations, and one of the recommendations is that a 24-hour waiting period be imposed for tattoos. In other words, if you stumble into a tattoo parlor one Saturday night and drunkenly demand a tattoo of Miley Cyrus twerking or a Chinese symbol tramp stamp, you’ll be told to sleep it off and come back the next day if you’re really sure.
Call us square, but we don’t think it’s the worst idea in the world. Here are ten other things we think would benefit from a 24-hour waiting period:
- Threeways.
- Ex sex.
- Matching couples’ tattoos.
- Sleeping with a co-worker.
- Anal play (so you can avoid refried beans, stock up on lube, shower, etc).
- Spouse-swapping.
- Infidelity. (Seriously, we once read a study showing that something like 99.9% of people who jump off a bridge — and live to tell about it — say they regret it right after they leap, and we have a feeling something similar might be said of infidelity: Give people 24 hours to think it over and who knows what good decisions may result?)
- Gossiping to all your friends about exactly what your partner did with the nipple clamps and/ or dog leash and bowl the previous night in bed.
- Oedipal- and/or Electra-style role-playing.
- Did we mention threeways?
The widely-repeated trope about 99.9% of bridge-jump survivors regretting their suicide attempt stems from a 2003 New Yorker article about the Golden Gate Bridge. Of the 26 survivors at the time (there are now 34, according to Wikipedia), six reported regretting it. Three survivors have gone back to jump again.
More than 40% of the successful suicides each year are on the second or third attempt.
Blindly repeating such silly canards about suicide just reinforces the stigma associated with it. Stop shaming anyone with the courage to take the ultimate control of their own body.
I’m pretty sure in most states artists already won’t or are not supposed to tattoo drunk people. Besides, it’s a mess for the artist. Alcohol thins the blood and makes you bleed more.
There are indeed many things you would not do if you thought about them hard. But on your death bed, which will you regret more–the things you did or the things you didn’t do? Carpe diem.