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Fireworks in My Pants: I Wore Sound-Activated Vibrating Underwear on July 4

Could pyrotechnic-induced orgasms turn me into a patriot?

The Fourth of July doesn't move me. While I do care for sausages and Doritos and other people leaving town, fireworks don't excite me, nor do belligerent performances of patriotism. But when I learned that 73.5 percent of Americans say they've had sex on the Fourth of July (according to a 2015 Lovehoney.com study), my interest was piqued. Had I been misinterpreting the holiday my whole life? Was the reason for the season, in fact, sex? The only logical conclusion to this line of questioning was me deciding to wear sound-activated vibrating underwear to a Coney Island fireworks show.

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The Friday afternoon before the Fourth of July, when most people were finishing up at work and writing the zany out-of-office messages they'd spent weeks crafting, I packed a small device called "Club Vibe 3.Oh"—a vibrator designed to fit in your underwear—into my backpack. While I've worn the vibrator in my underwear before, while running errands, I'd never properly tested one of its main functionalities: sound activation. The idea is that when users wear the discreet vibrator to the club, it buzzes along to the beat of the music, allowing you to dance and orgasm the night away. Not one to hit the clubs, I decided to test the device at the spectacular trash wonderland that is Coney Island, which has fireworks every Friday night during the summer. Presumably, the sounds of the fireworks would set off my underwear. Would the loud booming overwhelm my vagina, or feel amazing? Would eating five Nathan's hot dogs in five minutes kill my sex drive, or enhance it?

Read more: I Wore Vibrating Underwear While Doing My Daily Errands

When I arrived at Coney Island with a person I'll refer to as my friend, we stopped at Nathan's first, obviously, and already I found myself on the cusp of orgasm: How could I not feel ecstasy biting into such a perfectly texturally balanced hot dog smothered in ketchup and sauerkraut? My friend and I shared a spectacular corn dog, too, as a side dish. Somehow, I felt even hungrier, but I decided to save myself: I didn't want to feel bloated or sodium-nitrated-out during the show. (A few minutes before the fireworks started, we split fried clams, but that's seafood, so it counts as salad.)

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Moments before the show, I slipped into the Wahlburgers bathroom (sorry Mark!) and inserted the vibrating device into my underwear. I did a quick sound check to make sure it was working—"TESTING, TESTING," I said, to which my vibrator responded, "DZZ-DZZ, DZZ-DZZ." It was a go.

We made our way to the crowd gathered on the boardwalk by the sand, passing a carousel where the only neon letters you could see spelled AROUSE. The loud murmur of lovers, families, dogs, and fidget-spinner salespeople set off my Club Vibe sporadically, every time it picked up on a particularly loud and punctuated sound. The fireworks were seconds from starting when I entertained a disturbing thought: Shit, what if it's so loud that my vagina explodes? Before I had time to locate the nearest paramedic… BOOM. The show had begun, and my vibrator coordinated perfectly to the rhythm of the explosions. It felt really, really nice.

Somebody was blasting the Pirates of the Caribbean theme at first, which was exhilarating, but then when Katy Perry's "Firework" started playing, the shoddy lyricism and heavy-handedness dampened my mood. While I felt somewhat aroused, I was too overstimulated to focus intently on what was happening in my jorts. The thick cloud of firework smoke that wafted over spectators, causing many of them to run away crying, detracted from the atmosphere, too. Throughout, though, the vibrating sensation felt nice.

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The louder and more intense the firework, the stronger the buzz. Everything synched up perfectly, as if the person setting off the explosions was also conducting my vibrator. My friend, standing close to me, could feel the vibrations radiating from my body. He was into it. After the grand finale—which, wow—we hustled back through the park in search of an Uber.

I don't think I've changed my mind on the Fourth of July. No matter how orgasmic the fireworks, I'd rather be sitting at home, listening to Lorde and reading the instructions on all my cosmetics. Would I wear vibrating underwear to fireworks again? Probably not; it's pretty overwhelming. Do I regret giving it a try? No way. Do I regret not buying hot dogs for the road? Yes—and I will for the rest of my life.