54-46 Was My Number

I spend a considerable amount of time in adult online environments.  I’m a member of two fora associated with different porn sites, as well as spending time on whichever site I’m currently favouring to arrange whatever style of liaison tickles my fancy at a given moment.  Some of those sites have bulletin boards, some have chat rooms, all have messaging facilities.  Some of them are more welcoming than others, some are like spending time back in the school playground where X won’t play with you because you’ve been seen talking to Y.  On the whole the porn fora are far friendlier than the sites designed to facilitate encounters (it’s living proof of East and Watts assertion on Jealousy and Envy: that higher sex drives tend to be a significant predictor of higher levels of sexual jealousy).

Some questions are, if not unique to a particular site, certainly unusual away from that site.  One porn forum is an American site and seems to attract guys obsessed with incest, which doesn’t tend to crop up as frequently on the other sites.  One of them seems to have a heavy slant towards interracial as a taboo, where that isn’t seen as quite so taboo elsewhere.

Other questions seem to persist, no matter what site I’m on.  My bra size is typical of these questions.  I post plenty of pictures of them (one such above for reference) so it’s obvious my breasts are as big as, if not bigger than, the rest of me.  I’ve never understood the peculiarly masculine need to quantify their size by fixing a label to it.  For the record it depends on the bra.  I have bras that fit me perfectly but range in size from a 38 to a 44, C, D, DD and E.  What size am I? Who the hell would know?  What the hell difference does it make?

A question I’ve been directly asked on a couple of sites but has come up as a general question in every adult site I’ve visited: what’s your number?  How many lovers have you had?  It’s always a man who asks and if he asks me the question directly he’s always perplexed when I need the question to be clarified.  How many lovers I’ve had depends on the definition of a lover.  How many men I’ve had sex with will vary depending on what you consider to be sex (it also discounts any same sex experiences but since they are currently limited to one I guess it doesn’t make a huge difference in the scheme of things).

Given enough time (and ideally a pen and paper) I can recall every one of my partners, even those I fucked during my short-lived slutty phase at uni.  I can attach a name to each cock, though admittedly I can’t guarantee it’s their real name.  I also remember whether I enjoyed the experience, so I know whether to encourage or repel any further overtures by the person concerned.

Even so, the number itself is of no concern to me.  I’m not interested in my partners’ numbers either, frankly it’s none of my damn business as long as they have sufficient experience to know what they enjoy and for us both to have a good time.

I’m not coy about my sexual history.  There are things I choose not to discuss but it’s not from embarrassment or fear of judgement, it’s because those incidents are tedious and unbearably clichéd. I’ve far more amusing and original stories to focus on.  Nevertheless, my heart always sinks a little when a lover brings up the subject of numbers, and in a long term arrangement sooner or later they all do.

C held out longer than most.  We’d been meeting weekly for over six months and were at a very comfortable point when he raised the subject.  I was relaxing in the afterglow of several very satisfactory orgasms when he brought the question up in a rather oblique fashion.  I’m never thinking particularly clearly after a hard pounding, and if memory serves that had been an even more enjoyable interlude than normal, so it took me a second or two to figure out what he was talking about.

I began to prevaricate in my usual fashion, that it rather depended on what was meant by a lover.  Unusually C already had an answer prepared, and he told me in all seriousness that the only partners to count for him are ones where he’d had an orgasm through vaginal sex.

I’m not sure he understood why I was so amused by the thought of him having such set in stone rules, but I found it ludicrous that a grown man should adopt a rule that wouldn’t have been out of place on an episode of the in-betweeners.  I have a great love of the ridiculous, so I started to ask questions to see how steadfast his rules were.  What if he’d had anal sex with a woman?  Didn’t count unless he actually came during vaginal sex.  Blowjobs? Nope, not counted.  Very satisfying sex that ended in a facial?  Not a chance.  How easy it would be to keep one’s virginity in C’s world (and yes, I do know that virginity is nothing more than a social construct, no need to message me).

By now I was at the point of hysterical laughter, and every time I thought I’d calmed down the absurdity of the thing would strike me anew and I’d convulse once again.  C took it all in relatively good humour, until he told me about the most disappointing one night stand he’d had.  The woman in question was happily riding him when just at the critical moment she hopped off and took him into her mouth to finish.  In his words “I was gutted, I tried to hold her off so I could get back up her but I was too close so she doesn’t count”.

By now my next door neighbour must’ve wondered what on earth was going on, because I absolutely roared with laughter and really couldn’t calm myself down.  Poor C, missing out on one because he couldn’t finish in the only place that mattered.  I laughed until tears poured and my stomach hurt.

Understandably I couldn’t focus for long enough to calculate what my number would be under C’s criteria, so I just said a likely sounding number (bearing in mind we met on a hookup site so he would be prepared for it to be significantly higher than the average of my peers). Thankfully his number turned out to be one higher than mine (even without counting that one night stand), so all was good in C’s world.  Had my number been one higher I have no doubt that he’d have started casting around for an obliging vagina so he could’ve evened things up.

I do understand C’s fixation on the number to a point.  If you grow into your looks as an adult and aren’t particularly popular in your teens and 20s it does tend to alter your self-perception and I understand why he would find comfort that X number of women found him attractive enough to sleep with.  The fixed nature of the rules are just one example of C’s need for absolute clarity, no sneaky differences in interpretation that may disadvantage him or skew the playing field.

Just the same, I’d have counted that woman.