Sean and I are in Mexico for the holidays. After a day out in the sun, I drank many, many Mango Tangos while watching the resort’s entertainment. First, The Perfect Couple game show, in which 5 couples (NOT us, never us, though we were asked) compete for actual crowns. First, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, the man was blindfolded and held a stick between his legs as if it was a two foot long penis. Across the plaza, the woman held a hollow tube between her legs and had to guide her partner into passing his stick into her hole. If you think it sounds crude, be thankful you didn’t have the visuals. I wondered what this game might look or feel like to people with same-sex partners, and in fact, a female team was announced but didn’t show. Queasily, the daughter of another couple took their place, and played with a staff member she’d only just met. It was her parents who were eliminated that first round. Next, the women had to place poker chips between their partners’ thighs, who then had to run, clenched, to the other side of the plaza and ‘deposit’ the tokens into a glass jar. Finally, the 3 remaining couples had to use sex positions in order to burst 4 balloons. The first balloon was burst just between a hug between the two bodies, but for the next one the man was seated and the woman encouraged to straddle him. And for the third, the balloon was crushed between the woman’s crotch and the man’s butt. And finally, the man had to lie down, and the woman lie down on top of him to hump the balloon until it burst. It was a rough day to be the balloon. After the Perfect Couple was crowned, they got preferential seating for the next show, the Fire Show!, which you’ve likely seen at every resort you’ve visited in the last 5 years. There were 5 or 6 drummers, and a bunch of people twirling flaming torches. Oooh, aaaah. Back in our room (the honeymoon suite), we cuddled up drunkenly in our big round bed and watched The Christmas Contract.

In it, a woman writes a contract between her brother Jack (Robert Buckley) and her best friend, Jolie (Hilarie Burton). Jolie is going home for Christmas, where she will be she will see her ex and his new girlfriend, and it’s left her feeling a little emotionally vulnerable. Jack has been contracted to tag along as her new boyfriend since she doesn’t have one. Jack is an aspiring writer who has just accepted to ghost-write a harlequin romance that just happens to be set in Louisiana, which is where Jolie is from, and where her family and her ex’s family have been intertwined for many years.