filed in Sex and Dating
Everyone in the Pool
In a fashionable restaurant where I used to work as a waitress, I had an ongoing pool with two of my colleagues. We were a gabby bunch, chatting our way through six-hour shifts. But conversations had to be punchy, twenty seconds here and there, squeezed in between customers, which is why we started the sex pool.
There was a time when it was more acceptable for sex to be like a sport. From that vantage point, it wasn’t a big leap to create a contest to establish who was getting the most. That I was even considered a competitor gave me bragging rights, since my rivals were both gay men, and this was pre-HIV, San Francisco, 1980.
The pool centered around which of the three of us would have sex first, a game renewable whenever anyone scored. What did it mean to score? We needed a workable definition. “Having an orgasm,” my male cohorts chimed in. “Easy for you to say,” I countered. We compromised. Only one of the two partners had to reach a climax. (Foreplay, love, follow-up date, all extraneous.) Rule Two: In order to “score,” the sex had to be with a new partner. You couldn’t win by trading on old affairs.
The stakes weren’t high. Five dollars. That wasn’t the point. But in an ingenious twist, and a coup for all of us who have sulked on too many lonely nights, the losers became the winners. If you DIDN’T have sex, you collected. One afternoon, I reached inside my mailbox, and found a five dollar book of stamps. Another time, I lifted up my timecard, and noticed the money attached with a paper clip. Though I was mostly a distant third, I once delivered my payout in quarters. The undisputed champion returned from a vacation in Italy, and handed the remaining two of us twenties.
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