I Had Sex With 16 Men In One Year. And Don’t You Dare Judge Me.
It took me a long time to not feel ashamed of my “number.”
“I heard some guy fisted her from behind while she was leaning over the kitchen counter,” said Andrew.
“Yeah, okay but —
“And she’s had sex with like every guy who works at the hostel. It’s gross.”
We were sitting in a courtyard filled with food trucks by the ruin bars of Budapest. I was in the middle of a year-long solo trip across the world. Andrew, from Australia, was also traveling through Europe for a few months on his own.
As I listened to him speak about this other woman, I thought about all the men I’d slept with on my trip so far. It had been three months and I could count seven including him…
In Malta, there was the sweet blond Argentinian in the hostel showers. In Pisa, the romantic Italian construction worker who loved the opera. There was the muscly German I met on the beach in San Sebastian. We couldn’t communicate but we knew we needed to touch each other’s bodies.
Then in Barcelona, there was the older Belgian guy — we had sex upstairs at a rave in a castle. Then there was my long-time Swiss friend, in the other room of his friend’s apartment in Berlin.
And just the day before I’d met Andrew in Budapest, there was the sexy Portuguese business school student. We did it in his hostel bed while his friend was sleeping above us. (He told me he wouldn’t mind.)
But I didn’t tell Andrew any of this that day in the courtyard. Instead, I hmmed and munched away at my veggie burger.
She could have easily been me
I told myself, I wouldn’t have done what that girl in the hostel had done. And it was true, I wouldn’t have done exactly what she did: get fisted in the middle of a kitchen. I mean, I’d never been fisted in general, so why would I do it in a kitchen?
But looking back on that conversation now, I know disassociating myself from that woman was arbitrary. She could have just as easily been me.
I should have had her back. I should have defended her.
