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.
It became something of a litmus test for me when getting to know new people in a romantic and/or sexual context: were they weirded out by my spreadsheet, or were they fascinated? Eventually I learned to stop making notes on my phone immediately after sex, because it was not only rude to the other person but also took me out of the moment; I no longer wanted the afterglow to be more about clinging onto fast-forgotten details than about appreciating the present with a beautiful person.
This awareness – of how disengaged my spreadsheet sometimes made me, of how it cut me off from pleasure and calm – was ultimately what caused me to drop the habit after six years. For the first few months of 2022, I was keeping a “sex note” in my phone containing rudimentary details of each encounter, with the intention that I would convert it to my usual spreadsheet format whenever I got around to it. But then I realized it was June and I still hadn’t gotten around to it. And I was getting to a point where I’d frequently forget to write sex down, so that by the time I remembered to chronicle it, I’d already forgotten exactly what had happened and had to rely on my partner to remind me. At this point, I started to wonder: Why am I even doing this? What purpose does it serve for me now?
A lot of my sex education work has focused on teaching people how to feel less anxious about sex, since this is one of the key lessons I’ve had to learn over and over in my own sex life. I have a chronic problem with dissociating – not always in the scary, triggered way (although sometimes that too), but more often in the way of simply worrying constantly about whether I’m doing the right things, reacting appropriately, whether I look okay and smell okay and taste okay. I think in some ways the spreadsheet was an effort to box my sex life into something knowable and manageable, something I could reflect on and analyze, rather than ever feeling comfortable just being in the moment.
Sex, in reality, is so much bigger and less tangible than a data point that can be logged and graphed. It’s a journey outwards and inwards, both literally and figuratively. It’s an invitation to learn more about other people, and about yourself. It’s an exercise in playfulness without agenda, in a world that demands adults always stick to an agenda and give up any trace of playfulness as soon as they can. It’s a moment of zen in a loud, messy world. And it’s not something I want to control anymore by keeping it trapped inside a cell.
P.S.: Sending love to anyone who’s felt upset, triggered, confused, enraged and/or despairing due to the Supreme Court news this week. I don’t know what to say, other than let’s donate to abortion funds if we can. I love you and I hope you’re safe, or as safe as you can be. 💙