This past weekend, I went to visit my brother in NYC. Okay, I realize that’s a reeeeally weird way to start a post titled “Sex on the Brain,” but let me, you know, get where I’m going with this.

Anyway, Saturday morning we were putzing around his apartment, and he found this article about a recent sex survey done by a condom company. The hook is: Americans have less sex than just about ANYONE in the fucking free world. No big surprise there, right?

What really grabbed my attention were the stats on people’s average number of sex partners. (As you may remember, I can, at times, be a little free with sharing my own number, which has brought me mild notoriety in certain circles and developed in me a keen interest in the topic.)

I think most people kind of assume that their numbers are normal, however low or high they may be. We all tend to think we’re the norm, right? Then surveys like this come out and shatter our illusions.

The average for American men: 13.
The average for American women: 9.

This just doesn’t seem to possibly be right.

Now, I get that my attitudes towards sex are a little … free-spirited, shall we say. Still, let’s pretend that you’re a more … um, traditional gal (or guy). You’re in your late twenties/early thirties, and you’ve never been married. That’s, oh, I don’t know, about 10 to 15 single, sexually active years. Let’s say during that time you had 3 serious relationships that took you off the market for a total of 7 years and gave you a number of 3. That leaves 3 to 8 years of singledom, during which time you averaged 2 peeps a year. On the low end, that gives us 9 … the average for women. On the high end, we’ve got 19 … higher than both averages. Remember, this is the “traditional” scenario … for someone relatively young! Those numbers start to add up if you spend any amount of time single, which nowadays most people do.

I mean, I know you’ve got people who wait until they get married and ones who only fuck a couple of people before they tie the knot. That brings the average down, sure. But you also have the people at the other end of the bell curve who get with any old whoever and those folks who keep racking up points even after they’re betrothed. Surely, they must cancel each other out.

To put my puzzled mind at rest, lil bro and I gathered some anecdotal data that night when we went out. Either I and the people of Manhattan are atypically experienced and my theory is wrong, or I am the healthy, sex-positive norm and my world-view lives to see another day. (I think we both know where I’m going with this.)