“Kiss Me Under the Water.”

I can pinpoint the exact moment I witnessed a woman use sex as a tool of manipulation. I was a small child, probably no older than ten years. This moment was a scene from the TV show Baywatch. The episode was titled, “If Looks Could Kill.”

On the screen I witnessed a couple having a romantic evening in a private swimming pool. While embracing one another, the woman seductively whispers, “Kiss me under the water.” The man eagerly obliges and proceeds to make-out with his love below the surface.

What occurred next has scarred me for life, in fact, it was the exact moment I knew sex was potentially dangerous and both men and women can and will use sex as an act of manipulation to get what they want.

While kissing, the woman covertly unsheathes a pair of handcuffs and proceeds to trap the man under water by latching his wrist to the bottom rung of the pool ladder. The woman then exits the pool and coldly watches the man panic and struggle for his life before ultimately succumbing to his inevitable death.

Watching this as a kid terrified me. This is one of the first instances where I see “love-making” displayed on television and it ends in a horrific death. To this day, this scene haunts me. I don’t know the specifics of their relationship – perhaps, you know, he was a bad man and he deserved what he got or maybe he was just an unlucky bastard after all.

Either way, fuck this woman in particular for being so manipulative and fuck her for scaring me half to death and disturbing me at such a tender age in my life.