How Sex Revived My Humanity

I unraveled the lessons of womanhood and rewrote my own

When my libido re-awakened after years of dormancy, orgasms became my drug. I couldn’t get enough, and as I rebuilt my mind and my world, I found pieces of my humanity in beds and on couches and in the back seat of a car downtown. I was sculpting the woman I was meant to become.

One week I had sex 7 times, with 7 different men, and if that makes me a slut, I’m a proud slut. As my experiences and number grew, I found novelty in my own wide-eyed fascination at my own power. After years of feeling like I was worth less than nothing, I was reprogramming my neurons and rewriting my expectations about how I saw myself. Sex wasn’t just sex, it was a balm for my damaged psyche, glue for my shattered heart.

I’ve always been an overachiever, still, some would be surprised to learn that this average 38 year old mom is in the 97th percentile when it comes to the number of people I’ve banged. According to some very scientific Googling, my “number” is about 7 times higher than the average reported. Most surprisingly, I achieved it all in the six months following the end of my marriage.

In the year after I finally split from my husband, I had sex 126 times. How do I know that, you wonder? Look, I’m not admitting anything, but there may have been a spreadsheet involved. Don’t judge me, we all have our non-sexual turn-ons, and I like charts.

I also like men. A lot.

I am unashamed about my number. I discovered what it means to be sex-positive through actions and reactions, delighted by what sex can be between consenting adults. The chains of arbitrary puritanical rules and expectations were broken. Eight times, I had sex with two men in the same day. Once, together. Each experience was shiny and new, bursting with possibilities.

It wasn’t just about sex, though. It was about discovering other human beings, ones I’d never considered. Before the sex, as we warmed up to each other with drinks in hand, or afterwards lounging naked in bed, I absorbed their stories and filed away the smallest slivers of their lives to keep. So many of them were looking for the same thing I was — a shared moment, hour, or evening of connection with another human being.

I called the soldier from the parking lot of his hotel, and he assured me that he wasn’t an axe murderer. His voice was smooth and kind, in town for one night only on a drive from Florida to Alaska, he had tattoos and smooth chiseled abs. We shared special edition Jack Daniels he’d gotten straight from the distillery and talked, laughed, and fucked all night. When I kinda-sorta forgot his name in between rounds, he pouted cartoonishly and laughed with me.

The marshmallow, ten years my junior, who taught me that a cheap-ass trouser hanger makes a serviceable nipple clamp. My joy was unbound the afternoon I was lounging in the sunshine with him when I got the call offering me the job I really wanted. We went out for waffles smothered in peaches, and his soft curly hair and sweet eyes became some of my forever-favorites.

I discounted John at first, the age difference between us making me skittish. Our chemistry, instant, sudden, lovely and comfortable, led me to reconsider, leaving the coffee shop behind for a second meeting in his quiet home on a weekday afternoon. Together, we burned slowly from the living room to the bedroom. There, I discovered what his longish grey hair looked like against white sheets, and that his penis was pierced through the head, and then I discovered why.

Through the magic of the internet and the freedom of answering only to myself for the first time, I slept my way up and down the I-5 corridor. I compiled biographies, snapshots, and wordless poems into an anthology of discovery and an ever-broadening world view. I will never grow tired of discovering people’s stories, of physically reading their life experiences on their bodies.

In Tukwila over hotel eggs, Van told me about how he used to work for the state lottery and how he’d left because it started to depress him. Bruce led me out of the shadow of an enormous potted flower sculpture in Seattle, and we rode the elevator together to his 16th floor office, where we had sex on the couch as light filtered through the etched glass from the hallway.

Andy invited me to his over-night job, and I shrugged off the fact that I was helping him shirk his cleaning duties. He said hello with his tongue in my mouth and offered me tea. Rich was a machinist and who drank beer from a bottle before we drove to his house where we smoked weed and had sex on a mattress he pulled from the too-squeaky twin bed.

Preston let me taste his dirty martini, and laughed at my screwed up face as the salty olivey liquid slid over my tongue. He bashfully told me that he’d reserved us a room for the night, but only if I was interested, and that he hoped it was okay. It was better than okay, and we came together as two people in the midst of divorce and brokenness, desperate for a little bit of understanding and gentle touch on our skin.

Throughout it all, I unraveled the lessons of womanhood and re-wrote my own. I shrugged off the heavy burden of always putting others before myself and learned how to say no, and how to say yes. The shadow-self I’d become was incinerated in the flames of whiskey and orgasms. New growth sprung from the ashes, blossoming with feminism and sexuality and self-acceptance and worth.

The opening of my legs happened in tandem with the opening of my mind, my empathic, connective nature fully uncaged grew wild, ivy tendrils blanketing my rational mind. Human moments gave my weary mind a break from the trauma, fear, and uncertainty of what I was going through and catalyzed healing.

My drive for physical intimacy and the heady rush of power brought on through pleasure led me to interactions with people I never would have met by other means. Their smiles, bodies, lips, and whispers were soul food, pages in a book I didn’t know I desperately needed to write. Men filed in and out of my life. I fell in and out of love and in lust over and over, but the love I began to feel for myself during that time was lasting and profound.

Don’t miss a thing! Sign up for my weekly newsletter here.

You might also enjoy…