Freshman Orientation Week is a different experience for every person. For me, it was a lot of pissing around with random people. Cornell was ripe for the taking. Everyone was willing to make a friend or at least an acquaintance, and we were all easily impressionable strangers to each other.
I drink, I smoke — sometimes at the same time — and when I do, I love to ask people questions. I’m really good at it. I know just what music to play and how to set up the lighting and the seating to get the deepest juiciest information out of someone. Naturally, I crafted my single dorm room as one such place. When you set up a cozy environment like that, people tend to ask questions back, whether this is directly or through games like “Never Have I Ever” or “Truth or… (dare/drink/strip/fill in the blank)?”. For the most part, I am an open book. I’ll answer anything and I won’t hold back when I do. There’s really only one question that I’ll always choose the “or” for: What’s your body count?
I hold some resentment for the very existence of such a question. Sex, the way I like to have it, can not easily be reduced into just a tally mark to check off. Even the consideration of reducing any one person into a number seems rude and borderline degrading. I wouldn’t take too kindly to becoming a digit. I assume the same of my partners.
Of course, I assume that it is not that serious to the asker. I work very hard not to take any offense. But to answer, I have to make many more assumptions. What is considered “a body” for the group? Sex has a much looser social definition than you’d expect. The nearly clinical dictionary definition for the word — “contact between individuals involving sexual stimulation” — doesn’t help in the slightest. With no established guidelines to refer back to, who knows what a body can be?
Any one person can have vastly different body counts according to different people. Does that heated kiss you had in the bathroom of that party where he touched you through your panties count? Does that time you let her tie you up and call you nasty names count? Is it an additional body every time you go back to that one night stand that somehow became a two, three, four night stand?
Even if you go with a prescriptive model of penetrative, P in V sex being the only “real” sex, what does that mean for experiences where there is no P? Or no V?
At this point in the night, I’m crossed and a little bit stupid. I don’t have the time to ask my inquirer all of these questions. She definitely does not care as much as I do. I have to make a decision fast!
However, I don’t want to be too rash with my answer. How will my response change the way you view me? This is freshman orientation, the very beginning of my college career and I don’t want to burn any bridges on something as stupid as this. What is an appropriate number to give? In high school, there were a number of rhymes and sayings to remind us whom we should be touching or not. These school-yard mantras can not save me. In middle school, the older students gave us formulas for figuring out the oldest and youngest we could date. But dividing by seven and adding two (or was it the other way around?) doesn’t really solve for X here. What now? Has anyone derived some mathematical formula to determine the perfect number to give these strangers so that they’ll be friends with me forever? I am not naive enough to be blind to how loaded this question can be. Too high and I’m a slut, too low and I’m a prude. There seem to be no good answers at hand.
At this moment I would like to remind myself and you, dear reader, that the most appropriate answer can only be the truth. And I hope in telling you my truth, maybe you’ll be endeared towards me and have faith in my commitment in only telling truths to you thus forward. I’m a virgin. The number is zero. To some, I have had more than enough experiments to put me in at least the decimal points, but in all honesty, I consider my number to be zero.
Yet, the number seems to misrepresent who I am as a person. I have a lot of friends from a lot of backgrounds who assign themselves a wide range of numbers. But even those with counts much higher than mine never want to talk about it. That’s not who I am. I will talk about it. And I listen too. I am by no means a prude. The short question and answer exchange assigns me a hard-to-shake label, which is the last thing you want to do during Freshmen Orientation Week.
But you see, all of this is far too much for me to articulate while high and drunk and stupid at 2 a.m. in my dimly lit single. So when people ask, I just don’t answer.
Cherry Poppins is a virgin who thinks that everything is about sex. Except for sex. Which is about power. Thoughts? Questions? Concerns? Contact style@cornellsun.com with any comments.
