Much like karaoke or anal sex, limos are never as fun as they seem.  And now with rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft, limos are getting a run for their money in the cool department. Ten years ago, no one would have thought that paying strangers to use their own cars to pick you up would be the new hip mode of transportation. You can bet that limo companies didn’t see that one coming. But even without these new methods of avoiding actual driving at all costs, limos seem to have lost their certain cache and with good reason.

It starts out as seemingly cool. You see the limo parked outside your door, the limo driver is standing there ready to open the door for you and you’re thinking, “Holy balls. This is gonna f-ing rock.” Then you climb into the limo and the first thing you smell is the overpowering air freshener used to mask the smell of the approximately 1,756 cigarettes that have been smoked in there since the limo actually became a limo. This is quickly followed by you noticing the empty liquor bottles that are covered in a fine layer of dust. Those liquor bottles could have had sweet, sweet liquor in them, but then you would have had to pay extra and who the hell wants to do that? Yes, you can totally BYOB in a limo, but it’s just not the same feeling as stepping into a limo and seeing a full bottle of booze waiting for you (which more than likely is the bottom-of-the-barrel stuff anyway).

And then there is the stain on the seat. What stain, you ask? Any stain. Trust me, there is always a stain on any one of the seats. I’m not saying there are multiple stains but there is always one. You may not see it, but it is there. You may not know what that stain is and you probably don’t want to know but that stain is a symbol of the disappointment that renting a limo brings.

Maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up with how cool a limo ride experience is going to be. But it’s not totally our fault for believing the hype. As much as we need to take personal responsibility for ourselves, we are not all to blame.

So I will blame the movies.

Yes, movies by nature are fake and in no way, shape, or form a true representation of real life. Still, they make limos look so cool.  They make them look so special. They make them look like something really memorable will happen in them. And that is rarely the case. Memorable things seldom occur in a limo. (Unless of course you count vomiting or crying. Then yes – definitely memorable.)

Which of course brings me to…

SEX IN A LIMO.

I am not going to sit here and spout off about how sex in a limo is just plain bad. It’s sex. Sex is never “just plain bad.” That being said, limo sex is never as fantastic or as satisfying as you think it’s going to be. In your head you think it’s going to be like Kevin Costner and Sean Young in the ’80s classic No Way Out. It’s nowhere near close to being that hot. A limo is typically saved for a big night, which means you’re usually dressed up, which means no one wants to mess up his or her fine threads (Not to mention the hair. Don’t. Touch. The. Hair.)  But you feel you have to have sex ’cause, hey, you’re in a limo. The end result is this really awkward and uncomfortable rush to finish up so the limo drive doesn’t spot you and kick you out (or worse, charger you extra for “damages.”)

And that is assuming you have the limo all to yourselves. How often does that happen? Who is going to shell out the ducats for that? More often than not you are splitting the limo with eleven of your friends. And twelve people crammed into a limo is the exact opposite of cool.

I guess what I am saying is that you should find another mode of transportation if you need to get somewhere. Limos will always leave you disappointed. Because when you think about it, at its core a limo ride is really just sitting in traffic in a car that isn’t even yours.