Sex by the Numbers

Dieter wanted to have sex the first night we met. Since I was the oldest virgin in college, and possibly the world, I agreed. Those were the days when a fall birthday got you in and out of high school early, so I graduated at seventeen. I didn’t know anything about sex, at least not anything worth repeating.

When I was in third grade, my girlfriend Pattie announced that babies came out of belly buttons in response to another girl stating unequivocally that babies were delivered by storks. So I looked up storks in our World Book Encyclopedia. Every other neighbor had the Encyclopedia Britannica but my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Pol Pot, were never ones to conform. In addition, Mom liked that they were white and forest green, as opposed to the solemn burgundy of Britannica. I was mortified we didn’t have the same ones as all the other neighbors. After all, it was the suburbs; we are all supposed to do the same thing. While I had never quite believed storks carried babies, the Stork Believer had assured us all that babies only weighed a pound, like the pound of ground-round my mother brought home from the butcher on weekends, and I was sure a bird as big as a stork could easily carry that. I was surprised the World Book stated a stork could carry up to four pounds in its beak although there was no mention of it carrying babies. I was dying to tell the Stork Believer she was wrong but Pattie and her belly button story made that impossible. I doubted her story as well since I had a hard time accepting babies came out of belly buttons. How did a baby get out of that little hole? By the ninth grade, I learned a baby did come out of a little hole and shuddered at the thought. I could barely imagine getting a tampon in, so a baby, coming out of there? Thank God, you didn’t have to put one in.

Dieter became The One because he talked me into it more easily. He was glib where others muttered. I had dated boys before but stayed safely at second base; unable to chase a home run and unwilling to risk being tagged out, as a male friend of mine noted. It is fitting that a woman’s anatomical topography reduces to a sports metaphor. It’s indicative of where sexual conquest lies on the male continuum. It’s a game.

“You’re allowed to have sex in your parents’ house?” Mr. and Mrs. Pol Pot would die if they knew where I was.

It took me forever to undress because I insisted all the lights be off. Even in the other rooms. And street lamps if he could swing it. Why is there never a power failure when you need it? The first thing Dieter did was palm my head and push it down to his crotch. Did he forget to unbuckle his pants and needed help?

Sidebar: At this point he mentioned I was pronouncing his name wrong, referring to him as Dyahter, as opposed to Deeter. Hey, he was awfully thin and could have been one of those weird guys who watch their weight. And it was spelled DIETER.

I bounced back up to lip level; maybe he’d had a seizure and lost control of his arms. He pushed me down again. I loved chocolate but unless he’d hidden a Toblerone somewhere among the sheets, I was baffled as to why he wanted me down there. I bounced up again.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“What am I doing, what are you doing?”

“Well I’m trying to get 69 started.” And he pushed me down again. A Jack-in-the Box didn’t get this much action.

“What’s 69?” Thinking back, I guess I should be grateful he didn’t laugh in my face. But then physically, how could he have?

“If we’re doing it right, we’ll eventually look like the number 69.”

I peered up at him; he didn’t look like the top of a 9 or the bottom of a 6. Was I the 6 or was I the 9? When we’d been lying head to head, him on top, me on the bottom, was that an 11? Was a side-by-side head-to-head also an 11? When I was in the eighth grade and Mrs. Stern, my math teacher, said we had to learn math because we’d be using it our entire lives, she wasn’t kidding.

If everything in sex had a number, I was really going to be out of luck. What if one day some guy called out a random number, like 53? How would I remember what that represented when I couldn’t even figure out how many hours it was going to take that stupid train leaving New York to reach Chicago while another train in Chicago was on its way to Philadelphia? On the other hand, what if a guy yelled out a combo platter like 18 plus 9? When Leonardo da Vinci drew his Vitruvian Man, would it have killed him to mark off the sexual quadrants and add the appropriate numbers?

What if I didn’t do 69 correctly? How would I know if he was doing it correctly? Maybe I should have spent that extra year in high school.