A List

I once had a boyfriend who couldn't remember how many girls he'd slept with. Granted, his number was at least twice as high as mine, but the not knowing is inconceivable to me.

I'm a little fixated on my number. I'm neither ashamed nor proud of it, but I've always had a sense that it’s a number of deep significance—that every time it changes, I change. Within the first few moments I'm with someone new, the thought unfailingly crosses my mind, if only for a moment: you are Number X.

Maybe I'm giving these guys too much credit; it's not as if each new penis constitutes a life-changing experience. Ha. Sorry guys.

When I was a kid, I collected things. At one point I was into key chains—I put every new key chain on a string and wore it around my neck at all times, even though it was long and heavy and I was 3’9”. I just liked having it with me. It was fun to look at when I was bored.

That’s a little bit how my list feels: each new experience is something I get to string onto the chain and keep, even after the relationship—or just the relation, as the case may be—is over. One sits comfortably against the next, and when I look at them together I can find patterns in the sequence.

As time goes on, the emotional power of each muddled, fraught experience fades, and it becomes something I can digest—something I can work into a story and draw meaning from.


ONE was a sweet and innocent relationship with a bitter young pothead. He patiently chipped away at my resolve for six months of what must have been utter agony for him, poor thing.

TWO was quirky and lovable and not that interested in sex. His complacency was a difficult notion to digest, since ONE had spent the past two years trying to topple my naiveté complex. As soon as I knew that all guys would do anything and say anything just to get in bed with me, I met the boy with the headache who was tired. Accustomed to the five-a-day habits of bunnies as I was (I'm not talking about vegetables), I found him immensely frustrating.

With THREE I finally got around to losing my innocence, as I define it. He wasn't my boyfriend, just a good pal. As we neared the inevitable, I felt an old familiar protest—no real reason, but the same hesitance that had kept ONE waiting for those six long months. Only this time, it occurred to me that I didn't have to listen to that feeling—I could go through with it anyway. And so the relic of a childhood protection mechanism began to crumble.

FOUR—oh god. I was so attracted to him. We spent three nights a week together, we cooked dinner and went running and rode his motorcycle to the top of Mount Tam. We weren't seeing other people. But heaven forbid we call it a "relationship." It didn't make much sense to me, either.

FIVE—One of the most passionless encounters I've ever had; tampon insertion is more sensual. At the time I thought it so gracious of him to alert me to the fact (while I sat on his lap, gin fizz in one hand, condom in the other) that he wasn't interested in a relationship and just wanted to have fun. Fine, you weren't much fun anyway. But hey—when did everyone get so closed off to life?

SIX—I'm not sure we ever kissed. He'd invite me over, we'd share a bottle of Maker's Mark while we watched violent and disturbing Japanese films. At some point, he'd wordlessly get up off the couch and collapse on his bed. This, I later learned, was his way of wooing me.

SEVEN—Not hot. But really nice—or so I thought. This was my first and (I hope) my last experience with a "safe" guy: friends with everyone, good with kids, a little dopey. "Is this just sex?" I asked him one night. "Is that bad?" he answered, meek, sheepish, ever the nice guy.

EIGHT—Not much to report here. My one and only one night stand. It was fun. And then it was over, and so was the summer.

NINE & TEN I'll need a bit more distance from before I can distill them down to paragraphs.

* * *

When I try to digest this meal and draw some nourishment—some meaning—from it, it gives me indigestion. What are all these disparate elements doing together on a single list? Supposedly they’re all united by one thing I’ve done. But was what I did with ONE the same thing I did with SIX? It seems a different undertaking entirely.

You could argue, as one of my friends recently did, that it's silly to pretend that sex—intercourse—is a way bigger deal than everything else we do in bed. That there's nothing that distinguishes the guys that made it on this list from the guys that almost did.

Except that I'm pretty sure the ones on the list are going to be etched in my memory forever, for better or for worse. And I'll keep trying to ascribe meaning to them, because that's what humans do, isn't it?