For six years, I wrote down every single sexual encounter I ever had in a spreadsheet. It documented data like number of orgasms had by me and my partner(s), number of times I’d previously slept with each partner (to track whether my enjoyment increased after multiple encounters, which it usually does), which sex acts we did and which sex toys we used. As of this year, I’ve stopped keeping track, and it feels good.
I think my initial efforts to chronicle my sex life in this way were borne from desperation and insecurity. After a year-and-a-half-long dry spell in the wake of a long-term relationship ending, I finally started having sex again – sporadically and nervously – and it felt so momentous that I wanted to write it down, so I could look back on each entry and feel proud of myself. At first it was just a list I kept in a notebook, but then I decided to go whole-hog and make it into a digital file I could access from any of my devices. As my eyes swept over each row, my confidence grew, as I could see empirically that I was desired. (It's not that simple, but it felt like it was.)
Of course, because it’s my job to write about my sex life, I quickly came to realize that my spreadsheet was useful to me on a professional level as well. I could glance back at the data to see how often I’d used various sex toys, to revisit certain sexual memories in order to write about them, and to summarize overall trends in my sexual satisfaction (like that fucking in an alley never resulted in orgasm for me but fucking in my own bed, with my own toys, almost always did). I even started packaging each year’s data in a neat little “sextistics” blog post come December, which always filled me with glee to put together because of how nerdy it all was.
Many people in my life expressed confusion about my spreadsheet habit, including some of the people I had sex with. I used to whip out my phone post-bang to make some notes in my file, sometimes explaining to my date in a jokey tone what I was doing. Mostly it was greeted with slightly bewildered amusement, but sometimes people seemed so mystified that I had a hard time imagining why they were even attracted to me at all if they were put off by sexual nerdiness.