Hot Sauce is Not Lube
But it Made Its Way Into Drake's Condom
On the picture/1,000 word equation – I almost always choose the words. But today the picture is way more fun. This popped up in my FB memories from 2020:
It seems to make the social media rounds every six months or so, but I haven’t been able to figure out whether it’s a joke or a legitimate attempt at a message by some anti-abortion group in need of a smarter graphic designer. The womb with a view thing isn’t new, it was a writing prompt in at least one of the abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula I reviewed for SIECUS back in the 1990s. This picture is clearly a case of that’s not how it f**king works but it takes a minute for some people to figure out the problem. Enjoy.
Fewer People Got Contraceptive Care During the Pandemic
As we are painfully aware by now, the pandemic has interrupted all aspects of our lives from going to the movies to going to the gyno. A new study found that fewer people saw their health care provider for contraception in 2020 than in the year before likely as a result of lockdowns and the need for in person visits for some forms of contraception like IUDs, implants, and sterilization.
Researchers from Ohio State School of Medicine examined health insurance claims to determine how many people had received contraceptive care during the first 10 months of the Covid-19 pandemic. To determine the immediate effects of the pandemic on contraceptive care, the team compared April 2020 (when most states were under some form of mandated lockdown) to May 2019 (for reasons not explained, the data from April of 2019 was incomplete). They found that visits dropped across the board: tubal ligation visits declined by 65%; LARC visits (IUDs and implants) declined by 46%; contraceptive pill, patch, and ring visits declined by 45%; and injectable visits declined by 16% (kudos to those who found ways to keep getting their Depo shots every 3 months even during a pandemic).
The researchers then looked at whether this drop was sustained by comparing contraceptive visits from December 2020 to December 2019 and found that visits had started again but were still below the prior year’s rate. Specifically, tubal ligation visits were down 18%; injectable contraception visits down by 11%; LARC visits down by 6%; and pill, patch, and ring visits down by 5%.
These declines are not explained by an increase in over-the-counter contraception. In fact, a Malaysian condom manufacturer recently said worldwide sales are down 40%. The company blamed hotel closures and loss of funding for government programs. Under other circumstances, I might have been concerned that a pandemic baby boom is coming. But given how little sex we’ve all been having—even before we knew what the early 2020s had in store for us—this lack of contraception might not be a problem. (The lack of sex, however, has me worried about the state of our collective mental health but we’ll talk about that some other Wednesday.)
Here’s some good news, though: while contraceptive visits declined among adults, adolescent contraceptive visits increased with more teens seeking LARCs and hormonal birth control methods. And, telehealth became an accepted strategy for providing the pill, patch, and ring which could make access easier moving forward.
Drake Adds Hot Sauce to His Condom
Whether you prefer Frank’s Red Hot, El Yucataro, or straight up Sriracha, it’s pretty clear that hot sauce does not belong on your condom. While the latex could probably stand up to the vinegar and the heat, the body parts usually involved in condom-covered sex might not. I’d imagine the burning would be worse than any STI or UTI ever contracted. This is why I was prepared to be angry with music icon Drake when I saw the headline “Model Says Drake Puts Hot Sauce in his Condoms.” Sounds like a mean thing to do to a vagina and the person attached. But the real story is actually very different (though it does involve a hoo-hah on fire).
According to the model, who took to Instagram to announce her intention to sue the DeGrassi: The Next Generation star, the two of them had consensual vaginal sex for about 20 minutes before he came into a condom. He immediately went into the bathroom to dispose of the condom. She then went to the bathroom, untied the condom, and attempted to impregnate herself by putting the semen from the discarded condom into her vagina. She was shocked when it felt like “pouring hot lava into her ‘p—ssy.” She screamed. Drake came into the room and admitted that he had poured a packet of hot sauce into the used condom to prevent her from stealing his sperm (he ain’t saying she’s a gold digger…). Oh, to have that interaction on video. It’s romcom perfection: a glitzy marble bathroom, two semi-naked shrieking people both yelling “how could you.”
So many questions, in no particular order:
What was her plan for getting the semen far enough into her vagina to even have a chance at getting pregnant? Does she travel with a portable turkey baster? If she just used her hands, did she notice any tingling before it got close to the labia?
Why hot sauce? Any number of things would kill sperm. Heat (like hot water from the sink) and time (hide it for 15 minutes which is about how long sperm can survive outside the body) come to mind way faster than Tabasco.
Did she not notice the semen had a reddish/orange hue? Semen isn’t technicolored—it’s normally just white or clear. When she untied the condom, did she the stuff inside look a little unusual? I doubt she’d suspect hot sauce but my first thought upon seeing anything vaguely red in a used condom would probably be “Phew, I dodged an STI bullet there.”
Has anyone tried to steal Drake’s sperm before or is this pre-emptive saucing the result of warnings he got from other superstars who fear being on the hook for child support? Is there a long sperm jacking text thread between him, The Weeknd, DJ Khaled, and Common? Do they all use hot sauce? Has anyone considered bleach or a vasectomy?
Why does Drake keep packets of hot sauce in his bathroom? Is it just a sperm-killer or is he a messy wings-in-the-tub kind of guy?
On what grounds does she think she can sue him? Pain and suffering, sure, but she would have been fine had she not tried to steal his sperm. Maybe destruction of property if she brought the condom? That seems like a stretch too given that it’s a one-time use item and the stuff inside was definitely his.
How have I made it through this entire piece without making a taco joke?
Unfortunately, I don’t expect a long trial to come out of this peppery interaction or threatened lawsuit which means no depositions and no answers. But the memes are great.