Apparently Washington D.C. Is Having A Sex-In-Restaurant-Bathrooms Moment

One of the best sex-in-a-restaurant movie scenes ever takes place between Olivier Martinez and Diane Lane in the middling 2002 Richard Gere revenge vehicle, Unfaithful. In the short, climatic scene, Martinez stops by the New York City café where Lane is lunching with her girlfriend (it was filmed at the old Cafe Noir location in Soho). The friend, unsuspecting that the hot piece of French jambon who just walked in the café is Lane's paramour, says something to the extent of "wouldn't it be nice to have that with a little Grey Poupon" (sorry, this is from memory). Lane then excuses herself to the ladies' room. Doors are slammed up against, hair is tousled and Martinez darts off on a Vespa (or maybe he just walked away), leaving Lane apologizing to her friend for taking so long in the loo.

This is, of course, all Hollywood. Sex scene music is played while there's a split-screen of the friend checking her watch to imply impatience. But as crack Washington City Paper reporter Jessica Sidman reveals in her story, "Stall Tactics" (headline winner), sex is being had in restaurant restrooms basically all the time! She interviews several local bar and restaurant owners, who admit that sex in restrooms (both single-occupancy and handicap stalls) is what comes with the territory. All are clear that getting caught warrants ejection from the establishment. Some, in more graphic terms than others:

There's the uncomfortable business of interrupting mid-act. For restaurateur and barman Todd Thrasher, the story that sticks with him most happened when he was a 26-year-old bartender working at the now-closed Café Atlántico in Penn Quarter. The restaurant used to have crazy Saturday night dance parties. One night, as he was knee-deep in making mojitos and caipirinhas, a woman told him two girls had locked themselves in the multi-stall restroom. Thrasher knocked first but didn't hear anything, so he pushed the door open to find the women almost completely naked on the floor. "One girl was on her back. The other girl was doing what she had to do to the girl with her feet against the door," he says. "I'm like, 'Ladies, you really can't be doing this here. There's a stall right there!'" Thrasher says they ultimately put on their clothes on and left — "with their boyfriends."

Stall Tactics: Getting It On in Restaurant Restrooms Is More Common Than You Think [Washington City Paper]