Keeping Count; Does The List Really Matter?

I kept a list. It was written on a piece of paper folded into a long narrow strip and hid behind the metal spine of the denim three-ring binder where I kept my hand-written teen-angst poetry.

I started the list when I was sixteen. I started it because I was wracking my brain to remember the names of some of the sexual partners I’d had since I was 13. Soon adding to the list became the goal, not merely the record. I wanted to collect them, like birders adding to their life-lists. I graduated early from high school, ever the precocious one. I’d heard rumors that college boys were wild and horny, but I found many of them were not as enthusiastic as I was about diving into sex with someone they just met, especially given my frequent insistence that I take them on two or three at a time to expand my list all that more quickly.

I took off for school in California. The List had far exceeded the magic ceiling of 100, and now I descended the dark stairs of that second 100, sucking and fucking twenty nameless guys a night at college party hospitality suites in exchange for drugs and money. After three months of this, still only 17, I woke up one morning stark naked being sprayed by automatic lawn sprinklers, lying in someone’s yard with no clue where I was – or where my clothes were. I rummaged through yards, found some of my clothes, and stole some others off a clothesline. Not knowing where I was, hung over as all hell, I started walking and somehow made it back to campus.

I quit cocaine that day and returned East to a state university. I threw away The List. My sexual habits became more even-tempered and sane – but only by a matter of degrees. If I’d had 200 or more sexual partners between ages 13 and 18, I had perhaps another 20 between 18 and 21. Another 10 between 21 and 24, when I got married, which put an irritating dent in my sexual life. Another 4 sexual partners between the time of my first marriage and my divorce five years later. Two more after that.

Looking back, I wonder, what was it that so propelled me through an endless corridor of back seats and bedrooms and vacant lots and dorm rooms and back alleys. Was this normal? Do I care?

Statistics show that on average, people are considerably more moderate in their sexual consumption habits than you might assume from watching soap operas. According to a 2004 ABC News Survey, American men have a median of 8 sexual partners in their lives, and women a median of 3 sexual partners in their lives. Only two women in the extensive survey reported having 100 sexual partners, and none reported more than that. Figures posted by "National Statistics" indicate that men in the United Kingdom have a median of 6 sexual partners, women a median of 4, with 1 in 100 men surveyed reporting more than 100 sexual partners, and 1 in 100 women surveyed reporting more than 40 sexual partners.

According to condom manufacturer Durex’s global sex survey (www.durex.com/cm), the average number of sexual partners for men and women globally is 10.5, with 27% of all people having only 1 sexual partner, and 21% having more than 10. And cast aside your assumptions about the romantic french, sexy Italians, and lacivious Americans: the highest number of average sexual partners by country are Chinese, with 19.3, followed in rapid succession by Brazilians, Japanese, and Danish. The lowest numbers will also likely surprise you: Vietnam, with an average of 2.3, followed by Hong Kong and India.

In hindsight, I know I was blessed by the good fortune that protects Irish fools. My neck was not wrung by some man I didn’t know in a darkened doorway. With the exception of some yeast and bladder infections, one case of chlamydia, and one incident of having to go to the hospital after a guy whose cock was absolutely you-had-to-see-this-to-believe-it enormous managed to bruise my kidneys with two weekend days of slamming into me for hours, I made it through three decades of primarily unsafe sex with total strangers unscathed. (I do NOT recommend that you try this – the unsafe part, that is.)

Some of my sexual liaisons involved ongoing relationships: dates, boyfriends, fiances, husband. But the majority were purely casual, one night (or ten-minute) stands or short flings lasting a week or two. Some were fun, pleasant affairs: my two band partners on the beach with a bottle of wine; the French rugby player; the frantically nervous Gaelic teacher; the harbormaster in his boathouse on coils of ropes. The vast majority were nothing.

Absolutely, positively nothing.

For all that sex, until the present, I only really had two lovers. Of all the sexual conquests I made and added to The List, only two men before my present partner truly desired to join with me, please me, look at me and taste me, play and laugh with me, slap and tickle me, try crazy positions with me. I can not believe that it is coincidence that these are also the two men in my entire life with whom I could say I was in love. But did I love them because of how they made love to me? Or was the sex between us so richly wonderful because we were in love? I don’t have the answer. I do know that they are the only two who I can close my eyes and picture, every inch of them, top to toe, each freckle and vein and scar.

Once I felt the near-sacred union with my present lover, once my body fell into such a state of trust and abandonment with his that I starting coming so intensely that the muscles of my entire body seize up in a state of erotic paralysis which leaves me with aching limbs for days, I realized that all that had gone before was a quest. I was searching for him, all these years. My body knew that he was out there somewhere, my thighs and breasts knew that they would know his touch when they felt it, my eyes knew they would look into his as he filled me and recognize him.

A thousand sexual partners can pass through your life – and your body – like so many cups of morning coffee. There, gone, and who’s counting. That doesn’t mean a nice cup of coffee won’t make you sit up and say, hey, that’s a great cup o’ joe. But then you move on to the next thing.

And one lover, if it’s the right lover, can fill every cell of your body with infinite joy, over and over, caressing and satisfying every fiber of your being, fast and slow, wild and tender, rough and sweet. One partner can be a thousand different lovers on a thousand different nights.

Somewhere between one and a thousand is the number of sexual partners just right to fulfil your own personal sexual quest. And you don’t need to keep The List to know when you’ve gotten there. And while you should not trust to fool’s fate to keep your body and soul safe and healthy, you should not be afraid to keep searching until your quest is done – without counting.