Regrets, I've Had a--Not So Many, Actually

This blog post is dedicated to Joan Nestle, co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and author of, among other things, the essay My Mother Liked to Fuck.

Sometimes, I realize that I have been wrong about myself. The recent example I keep going on about is that, until I started growing my hair last year after keeping it buzzed close to my scalp for several years, I had no idea I had curly hair. I knew I had curls at the nape of my neck, and I knew that if my hair got to a certain length it would swoop out into unattractive "wings" over my ears, but somehow I had no idea that my hair was curly all over. This is because my curls are fragile. Comb or brush them, and they stretch right out.

I don't know what inspired me, when my hair started growing in, to try a Curly Girl/no shampoo care regimen on it, but I did, and the result is curls. This isn't always a good thing--I get pretty Medusa-headed when I need a haircut, as I do right now--but overall I like it, and I am always pointing at my head and saying in wonder, "I have curly hair! Who knew?"

I was 46 years old when I figured out that I had curly hair. That shows a shocking lack of self-awareness.

But I was 47 when I figured out that I had been lying to myself and everyone else for 20 years.

You see, I had a lot of sex when I was young. Exactly how much sex depends on how you define it. I was an active and enthusiastic "everything but" girl starting at the age of 13 or 14. In the 9 months after I had PIV sex for the first time, I slept with five men, and there were at least two more I had sexual relationships with and probably would have had PIV sex with if anybody'd had a condom in their pocket.

Then I fell in love with another woman, and came out as a lesbian. We were together for over two years, and were monogamous during that time. In the year after we broke up, I had four lovers. The last one left me feeling a little rattled, so I decided to take a break from sex with other people, and it was at least a year before I dated anyone again.

[Side note: my experiences during that year taught me that some women can be just as unwilling as some men to believe you when you say you're not going to have sex with them. But that is maybe for another post.]

You don't need to hear every detail, so let me sum up. In the five years between when my first lover and I broke up, and when I got together with Raider, I was sexually active for three, maybe three-and-a-half, years, and had ten lovers.

It didn't really seem like all that many people at the time, so I was surprised when I saw the results of a study that showed that I'd had more sexual partners than something like 90% of American women. I don't know where that specific study is, but you can find some stats at the Kinsey Institute website, if you're interested.

Reading that study reminded me of a scene in the TV show Roseanne, in which Jackie stops to think for a minute and realizes that, if she's had about three lovers a year since she was 18, that means she's slept with 60 men.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I was able to find the episode! I wasn't able to manage the time stamp on my iPad, but if you scrub to 7 minutes, 26 seconds, you can see the very scene, which is even funnier than I remembered. Jackie's face when she does the math is much like mine when I saw that study. If you'd asked me, "Would you say you've slept with more people than the average American woman, fewer people, or about the same?" I'd have guessed I was about average. Maybe on the high side of average.

Instead, I was apparently a slut.

For the last twenty years, I have said things like this about all that sex and all those people:

"There are people I regret sleeping with."

"I slept with too many people. I wouldn't want my kids to sleep with as many people as I did."

"I learned about sex and relationships through trial-and-error, and it was hard and bad."

Here is what I've realized, though: None of these things is true.

There is not actually one person I regret sleeping with. I had some bad sex, sure (Ron, I'm looking at you! I hope for the sake of your other partners that you eventually figured out that the duration of the sex act is not the only measure of quality). I also had some very good sex with some very bad people--including one woman who I halfway expect to someday get to Step 9 in AA and give me a call. I had some terrific sex with people it wasn't worth being in a relationship with, like this bartender named Ian, whom I met when I showed up in Ann Arbor for my orientation at UMich and spent the rest of the day and night with. Skipping my entire college orientation in favor of playing with Ian's kitten, eating sweet things in his bed while listening to music, and having a lot of sex is probably one of the most rebellious things I've ever done, and it was great.

On further inspection, he turned out to be kind of a jerk, and although I saw him once or twice, we never went on a date or slept together again. But we had a truly lovely relationship that lasted a little under 24 hours. I have often used my one-night stand with Ian as an example of why you should get to know people before you sleep with them, but in fact I am glad that I slept with him before I got to know him. Because that 24 hours was wonderful, and it was apparently the best he had to offer.

Here's the thing: I think that I have been unable to shake free of a certain story about sex: that it's something other people want from you, and you should only give it to them if they've proven themselves worthy. And that it's only OK if it happens in the context of a relationship, or at least leads to one. Hence my attempt to convince myself and others that sleeping with Ian was a mistake. We hear a lot that, while sex is a good thing, it's only good in moderation and with the right people, and I have often acted as if I believe that, too. But I don't. I believe that sex can also be good in excess, and even, occasionally, with the wrong people.

It's a fascinating glimpse into my own mind that I have held to, and expressed, ideas I don't believe to be true. It reminds me of the years when I identified as a lesbian, and the mental gymnastics I did to explain away my attractions to men. It has to do, I think, with being acceptable to the people I want to be accepted by. I didn't want my lesbian community to turn me out, so I pretended, even to myself, that I wasn't regularly having crushes on men. Similarly, I copped to all that sex with all those people but only in the context of disavowing (at least some of) it, because I didn't want people whose opinion I respected and whose friendships mattered to me to reject me. Or because I didn't realize how much I'd bought into that narrative. How much I still believed that such a thing as a slut existed, and that it was bad to be one.

I have been wrestling with this post for much longer than it usually takes me to crank one out. I'm not sure I'm saying what I want to say. And I can imagine people wondering why I feel the need to say it at all. Maybe I'll finish with an FAQ:

So, I did the math, and it sounds like you slept with maybe 20 people or so altogether. That doesn't sound like so many.

Yeah, it didn't seem like all that many to me, either, until I read that study.

I get that you like to talk about sex, but did you really have to include numbers?

Yes, I did. Because if we're going to talk about it at all, I think it makes sense to be clear about what exactly I mean.

Why are we talking about it?

My oldest kid is within a stone's throw of the age I was the first time I kissed someone. The first time someone put his hand between my legs. The first time I touched a penis. It gets me thinking about what I want my kids to know about sex, and how I want them to find it out. It gets me thinking about what I knew and didn't know, and how I found it out, what messages I was given, the way we are still, shockingly in our sex-obsessed culture, so quiet about how much sex we have and with who and how and why.

Also, it's just my way. I think about things, and when I think about them, I write about them. It's what I have always done.

It seems like you glossed over the risks that can come with sex.

Yes. I was lucky in that I never had a birth-control failure and ended up pregnant, and never caught an STI even during the brief period when I was using the Pill as my only form of birth control. I'm also lucky in that every guy I ever went home with the same night I met him turned out to be basically decent (I actually had more trouble with women in this regard--again, perhaps something I'll write about another time). I have never experienced sexual violence. But I think we focus too much on the risks of sex. I wanted to talk about the rewards.

You say you "had" a lot of sex. So, this is in your past?

No. I still have a lot of sex.

Oh, for heaven's sake, why did you have to tell us that?

Because I am 47 years old, have three kids, and weigh almost 300 pounds. The idea of someone like me being sexual is treated as a joke in our culture. I am here to tell you in all seriousness: fat middle-aged moms like to fuck, too.

You'll just say anything, won't you? Have you no shame?

No, I have no shame. That's my whole point.

I have no shame.

 

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