Writing The List
Admit it. You've had these conversations too. The ones where you're sitting around with a girlfriend and drinking a glass or three of wine, talking about the men in your lives, and then one of you says, "I bet I've slept with more than you have." And so, born of a dare, The List is written, parsed and added to as you remember others you forgot in the tipsy haze of the moment.
The guy who thought your belly button was your clitoris. The so-called Toaster, who repeatedly raised his glass to everything about you. The sports columnist who thought nothing of licking butter off his knife in the middle of a restaurant. The former aide to the mayor of a big American city and the man who lived in a convenience store. For weeks, even months afterwards, you and your girlfriend call each other, leaving cryptic messages such as, "Here's another" or "Add this one." They come fast and furious, some lots more fun than others.
There is a subsection to the list too: guys you run into who seem familiar but you can't quite remember why. Like the one who once walked out of a gas station on a weekend morning, greeting you with enough warmth to leave you wondering whether you did it or not. "List-possible," you shamefacedly conclude.
Adding up the lovers
Tabulate 10, then 20, then 30 and more. Many more. In the end, you (okay, I) stare dumbfounded at all the names (Did I really count that number? Do it again!). Then another thought, this one more sobering: What if my stepchildren, nieces, nephews or any other young person I have ever known did the same thing? Of course I'd blow my stack and at the very least, attempt to shake into them some sense and fear of that kind of reputation. (My name is Lisa and I am a hypocrite.)
And this is the dilemma—namely, how we, as women who came of age in the freewheeling years before AIDS changed the sexual landscape, can justify our pasts when telling our children not to do the same kinds of things. How do we reconcile our hot-pant-clad youth before computers, Internet porn and predators with that of a younger generation that has had to grow up before its time? Do we tow to a version of that old line, counselling our offspring to do as we say and not as we once did because we know better and the world is a different place? Or is it better not to come clean at all, thereby presenting role models that may not be authentic but are certainly more suited to these modern, more perilous times?
