It kept getting harder, though. And I began to question what counted as sex and what didn’t. There was that time with Gene, for instance. I was pissed off at my boyfriend David for cheating on me; it was a major crisis, and Gene and I were friends, and he’d been trying to get at me for weeks and I hadn’t exactly been discouraging him. I went to see him that night to gripe about David; he was very sympathetic, of course, and he gave me a backrub, and we talked and touched and confided and hugged…and then we started kissing…and then we snuggled up a little closer…and then we started fondling each other, you know…and then all heck broke loose, and we rolled around on the bed groping and rubbing and grabbing and smooching and pushing and pressing and squeezing. He never did actually get it in. He wanted to, and I wanted to too, but I had this thing about being faithful to my boyfriend, so I kept saying, “No you can’t do that,” “Yes that feels so good,” “No wait that’s too much,” “Yes yes don’t stop,” “No, stop, that’s enough.” We never even got our clothes off. Jesus Christ, though, it was some night. One of the best, really. But for a long time I didn’t count it as one of the times I’d had sex. He never got inside, so it didn’t count.

Later, months and years later, when I lay awake at night putting my list together, I’d start to wonder: Why doesn’t Gene count? Does he not count because he never got inside? Or does he not count because I had to preserve my moral edge over David, my status as the patient, ever-faithful, cheated-on, martyred girlfriend, and if what I did with Gene counts, then I don’t get to feel wounded and superior?

Years later, I did end up fucking Gene—and I felt a profound relief. At last he definitely had a number, and I knew for sure that he did, in fact, count.

But then I started having sex with women, and boy howdy, did that ever shoot holes in the system. I’d always made my list of sex partners by defining sex as penile-vaginal intercourse. You know, fucking. It’s a pretty simple distinction, a straightforward binary system. Did it go in or didn’t it? Yes or no? One or zero? On or off? Granted, it’s a pretty arbitrary definition; but it’s the customary one, with an ancient and respected tradition behind it. And when I was just screwing men, there was no really compelling reason to question it.