June 22, 2009
I can’t exactly remember when I started keeping a list of all the people I’ve had sex with. I know in high school I kept a list of all the guys I’d kissed in the marble composition book I used as a journal. But I don’t think it was until college that the concept of my “number” occurred to me and I started keeping track. Honestly, I didn’t really have much of a number until my junior year, so there really wasn’t much to keep track of.
Now, almost exactly ten years since my very first sexual experience, those names fill up an entire page of another marble composition book. It’s a particularly roughed-up, dog-eared page with three columns of names, plus a few scribbled in the margins. It’s marked with a battered purple post-it, for easy access whenever a new name needs to be added to the roster. Many of the names are out of sequence, since I don’t exactly update The List as often as I acquire new sexual partners, jotting down the last couple months’ worth of conquests in no particular order whenever it occurs to me. But The List is accurate, and of the roughly 74 names—I say “roughly” because there are instances that I’ve included that some might not consider sex in the strictest terms, and others that I’ve omitted for the same reason—there is not one that I cannot account for.
I’ve often thought about upgrading the list to a less destructible medium—like I said, that page is pathetically weathered. Maybe a spreadsheet. Put the whole thing in some semblance of chronological order. And it’s from that impulse to reorganize, and in a sense reevaluate, that this blog was born.
Each week I’ll be posting the harrowing tale behind one of the names on the list. I’m going to try, to the best of my ability, to tell these stories chronologically, but I’m not making any promises. Many of the names—those that I remember anyway—will be changed insofar as the parties concerned are identifiable. I’m certainly not looking to get sued, but I’m also not out to get back at any of these boys. I’m just telling my stories. And if any of you do find your way to this blog I guarantee anything I’ve written about you pales in comparison to the wealth of potentially embarrassing personal revelations I’m making about myself. Having said that, something tells me I won’t be hearing from “Random Internet Guy” or “Sugarland Hobbit’s” lawyers.
And, of course, The List is always getting longer.
