Legion

"It's a prime number though. Maybe that means something," Wayne said.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "Maybe that you're 'prime' or something," Wayne chucked when he said it.

"It's not though," Mike said.

"What?"

"It's not a prime number. You can divide 111 by 3 and get 37."

Mike was using the calculator function on his phone so there was no reason to argue.

"Oh."

That did not stop Wayne's imagination. Yet.

"Is it a square root?"

"What? I guess it's a square root of something," Mike said, as he worked his calculator. "Yes. 12,321 is the square of 111."

"No. Weird how it does that 1-2-3-2-1 thing, but I mean the other way."

Mike was back on the calculator.

"No. The square root of 111 is 10.5-something. I think you're thinking of 121. 11 times 11 is 121."

"Oh."

Then after a minute, Wayne rallied, "Still, with 111, it's just like the 101 Dalmatians. But here, it's dudes, and then she added another ten."

Never thought of it like that. My friends were doing the math while trying to get me drunk because I just learned the previous night that I was the 111th man that my wife had fucked during her nearly three-decade life. Granted, the preceding 110 men were all before we started dating, and I had no reason to think that she had cheated during the year that we had dated or in the year that we had been married, but I was still reeling from learning what a slut she had been before. Adding to the aggravation was that I was not getting drunk at all. My friends and I--and my wife--were all in our late twenties or early thirties, and our bodies did not tolerate that kind of abuse like they did when we were younger. Hell, these days, I was even going to bed at a reasonable hour.

It was alcohol that spilled the secret, however, maybe because of the lower tolerances among our age group.

My wife is Randi, a name that is now double-edged, given what I know about her previously hidden sexual history. A few days before, she and I had flown across the country for the wedding of one of her college friends. I had not previously met any of them. Randi and I had met during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. We used to go running on the same route and, starved for any human contact in those otherwise locked-down days, got to chatting while running side-by-side at the mandated six-foot distance. Eventually, after getting all the vaccines and after testing negative for the virus, we decided we needed to fuck each other more than the government was fucking with our lives and wound up moving in together when her apartment lease expired. After a year of living together, as soon as the courts opened to in-person business, we did a quick civil wedding ceremony without any guests. We were, after all, both getting close to 30, and Randi wanted kids soon.

Fast forwarding to now, the venue for the wedding of Randi's college friend was in a vineyard in the hills overlooking Palo Alto. At one of the pre-wedding get-togethers, after a lot of fine wine, the friends started reminiscing. Those reminiscences included a discussion of how surprised everyone was that Randi had settled down, especially after she had fucked 100 guys in college alone. Turns out that, when she realized in her freshman year that she had already fucked ten guys, she wanted to see if she could get to fifty and be a "half-ho." After that, she and her friends decided it would be outstanding if she made it to 100 by the time that she graduated so she could be a full "ho." She did. I was not surprised when I heard that. She is very goal-oriented. After hitting 100, she fucked the next ten guys over the six years between when she graduated and when she met me.

Randi and her friends were having the best time reliving her glory days, laughing and hooting. Eventually, however, Randi noticed that I was not laughing or even smiling. At all. Suddenly, they all realized it.

"You didn't know?" one of them asked in surprise.

I just got up and left.

Randi chased me and tried to grab my arm as I left the restaurant. The maître d' was standing right next to us as I pulled her fingers off.

"This slut does not have my permission to touch me," I said to him as I pointed at her.

He gently restrained her as I left. I think she might have been crying, but I did not care.

I was packed and in the rental car on my way to the airport in less than fifteen minutes. I probably should not have been driving after what I had drunk, but I desperately needed to leave. Why? Why was I leaving? Why did her body count matter? The simple, most basic answer was that I never would have married her if I had known that she had been such a slut.

"But that's unfair!" I hear you saying.

"It's her body, and it was all before you got together," you probably also would say.

"It shouldn't matter. That's her past; you're her future." Right?

"It's not even your business!" you might add.

"Isn't this all about your silly male insecurities? Your fragile male ego?" you probably also ask.

Maybe. All I know is that I felt visceral disgust. "Visceral" meaning that it is a feeling deep in the viscera, the guts. It's pretty close to the feeling I get when I am using a port-o-potty that has not been emptied in about a year and have actually looked at and smelled what is down in the tank. I don't know about you, but that usually makes me want to vomit. That's the same place I was emotionally after hearing Randi's big reveal. And to think that I had eaten her out, too. How she--and, by extension, I--had not gotten herpes, I have no clue.

Back in the bar, Wayne had still not given up his contrarian analysis.

"Can't you think of it this way? When you buy a new car, it depreciates like a million percent or something as soon as you drive it off the lot. That's why a lot of financial advisors tell you that you should only buy a pre-owned car. It's got the depreciation built in. Randi's just like a depreciated, used car. It makes her a better long-term value."

I did not buy that analogy.

"What kind of car?"

"Huh?"

"What kind of car do you think Randi is?"

He paused while Mike watched him.

"I dunno. She's built, like, kapow! Pretty face, too. Beautiful eyes."

He was thinking. Or fantasizing.

"I'm thinking a used Lexus," Wayne finally said.

"Not gently used," Mike said. "Run-into-the-ground-by-frat-boys-on-Spring-Break 'used' is what we are saying here."

Then I added, "I might have left the car dealer's lot thinking I had a gently used Lexus, but the reality was that I was getting something more like an abused Yugo with blown gaskets and a shot transmission that's leaking oil."

With that, I left the bar because I did not feel like waking up with a hangover, and I wanted to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

That night, I did some thinking. I am not prone to a lot of analysis on big decisions. Several bad experiences in my younger years had convinced me that every decision I had ever made when ignoring my instincts was wrong.

In this case, I guess we should have discussed body count before we got together. I knew she was not a virgin. But never in a million years would I have expected her number to be so high. I just could not wrap my head around the idea that 110 other guys had banged her. On average, she was getting banged once every two weeks, assuming even distribution throughout her college years without any slacking off during summer breaks. That's also assuming one incident per guy. She could have done it multiple times with each partner over the years, making the number of fucks that much higher. I did not care if she was getting it done two or three at a time, or whether dudes were lined up in the hallway. Or whether they were simply all on different nights in sequence. With that kind of volume, however she was doing it, she would need something like some sort of Department-of-Motor-Vehicles-style queue-management system with an online reservation function to control the crowd.

I again thought of how much she liked oral sex, and how I had been happy to accommodate her. I felt like retching again. I had not been Captain Kirk, exploring a space where no man had gone before. No. It was more like I had been licking the floor in the men's room of the New York Port Authority bus station, where countless dicks had dribbled over the years.

The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Was I being unreasonable? Who cared? This was what I felt. It was emotional. Anyone disagreeing had my blessing to marry the slut or at least to fuck her. Not like she said "no" that much, after all. And if she had been so casual about sex before, what was stopping her from trying to hit 200 while we were married? It's not like it meant all that much to her.

"You're just slut-shaming her," you would probably say, if you are a woman.

Could be, but I do not think she was ashamed at all. She certainly was not ashamed when she was laughing in the winery, not until I got up from the table.

I had gotten lucky when I left her friend's wedding and had arranged a red-eye flight out that same night and was back home at the crack of dawn the next day. There were texts and voicemails on the phone, but I deleted them all.

We were done. There was no way I could think of touching her anymore without having my stomach turn. Sure, I guess therapy was an option, but to what end? I was still not going to want to touch her, not without wanting to puke. And having babies with her? What was she going to tell them about how to behave, if they were girls?

What would have been an acceptable number of prior partners? Who the heck knows? Definitely something in the low two-digits, not something where you'd have to start thinking about maybe needing to put a comma in the number in the near future. Something maybe half of my age would probably be at the top end of what I would have been willing to live with.

With my next relationship, I am going to have to make sure this question is at the top of the list, along with "what kind of food do you like?"

With some fast footwork, I had movers in the day after the math discussion in the bar to box her stuff up and take it to a storage facility. We were still in my apartment but had started house shopping. My lease was now month-to-month. I told the management office that I would not be renewing. There was a lot of demand for apartments, so they were willing to waive the notice period, which left me two weeks to get my own stuff together and find a new place to live. They were kind enough to change the locks. I guess Randi could go to court and demand access to the marital home, but I did not think that she would bother when she found out that the lease was ending, and all her personal effects had been moved out. We could fight about furniture later. Whenever she showed up. I assumed that she was staying with all her friends for the wedding. They understood her, after all. It was only then that it occurred to me to wonder how many of the guys that were with us last night had been her bed partners, too.

I also wondered at the moment whether her counting had included women? Had she had lesbian sex before? I had never thought to ask. If so, did she number them differently?

Fortunately, I found a place to bunk for a while. A friend in the military was out of town for a six-month assignment and needed a house-sitter. It was a nice little townhouse.

Randi had tried to contact me, but I successfully dodged her and was able to work remotely, so she could not ambush me at the office. She was staying with her parents. I had her served with divorce papers there.

Call me insensitive. Call me insecure. Mostly call me gone. Our state had recently gone almost entirely no-fault, so I did not even need a reason more than "I don't want to be married anymore."

She and her parents wanted to talk. I said I would do it, but only in a public park where I could leave whenever I wanted to, and I would be filming everything. They agreed.

Randi looked gaunt. She had rings around her eyes like she had not been sleeping, alone or with anyone else.

Randi's father, whom I always had gotten along with, said that he had been embarrassed to learn what a slut his daughter had been at school and had been happy she seemed to have turned things around as she got older. He had not said anything to me because he thought I knew and because it was not his business.

He then asked what my body count was, including Randi.

"Five," I said.

"Oh," he said.

"They were all exclusive relationships lasting at least three months each," I added.

They all sort of shuffled quietly.

"You?" I asked her father.

Randi's father blushed but said, "Eight."

"You?" I asked Randi's mother.

She blushed more than her husband did and looked like she was about to say something rude, but her husband glared at her.

"Twenty."

"Guess that's the dominant gene," I said.

It was Randi's mother's turn to glare. At me but not her husband. That was interesting.

"So, for me and Randi, our fuck ratios are approximately 22 to 1," I said.

"And that bothers you because...?" Randi's father asked.

"I'm kind of wondering how soon she's going to get bored and want to go up to 112. Or maybe try for 150. Or 200."

Randi started to cry.

"Can't you see that she's changed?" her mother asked.

"No. A girl that likes that much variety is not signaling to me that she is easily satisfied. Maybe she's just had fewer opportunities over the last few years, especially with COVID. And maybe she just wanted to lock down a sucker to raise the bastards that her future lovers are going to make in her."

Randi's weeping got worse.

"That's not helpful," her mother said.

After a moment, I asked, "How's this? I am bothered by Randi's body count because sex to me means something. It's the ultimate expression of love and connection, besides being fun. For her, it has obviously not meant anything, not anything other than some pleasurable spasms anyway. Which means that, when she's bored later, or just in search of variety, because that's what she seems to like, then there is nothing really stopping her from looking for it elsewhere because sex means nothing. Just like I said."

"Well, that's unfair. Randi, what do you have to say?"

"Look," I interrupted. "I don't care what she says."

That surprised them all.

"The reality is that, even if I got pressured into not divorcing her, there is no way in Hell that I would ever touch her again. I'd rather masturbate."

Randi cried harder. Randi's father looked like he was about to say something, but I put up my hand.

"Let me put it like this. You've seen 'Band of Brothers,' right, Steve?"

He nodded.

"There's that scene in the first episode when Lieutenant Winters is leading Easy Company on a night march when they're training, right? They're bitching about Captain Sobel because he always cancels weekend passes and makes them march on Friday nights, right?"

He gave a small smile.

"Yes?"

"I've watched it a dozen times. Now, a World War II Army company was about 200 or 250 men, right?"

"Yes."

"And Hollywood cheats visually so, when they filmed that scene, it did not have 200 or 250 men. They just made it look that way. I bet, if I freeze-framed that shot, that I could count about 100 men. OK?"

"OK," Steve said, trying to guess where I was going.

"In other words, that scene shows approximately as many men all at once as this slut has fucked at college. Marching together. They way I see it, it's as if she fucked Joe Toye. She fucked Guarnere. She fucked Webster. She fucked Randleman. She fucked Popeye. She fucked Luz. She fucked Malarkey. She fucked Perconte. She might have tried to fuck Lieutenant Winters, but he was probably a virgin, so I bet he turned her down. And I respect him for that. Nixon would have fucked her though. Martin would have had a go, even though he had the wife back home, I bet. Randi wouldn't have minded. She would also have fucked Skip Muck. Shifty, Floyd Talbert, and Skinny."

"I get the point," he said.

His wife looked gravely wounded. Randi's crying had become silent weeping.

"Frankly, I forget the rest of the names, but I bet so does Randi. But those marching men are all in my mind. And I'm just one of the crowd. When I'm covered with dirt and sweat and wearing the uniform, nobody can tell the difference between me and everyone else."

Randi ran back to their car at that point. Randi's father nodded, took his wife's arm in a solid grip, and followed Randi.

We did not have any more attempts at reconciliation after that. Randi's lawyer sent my lawyer Randi's wedding and engagement rings along with a note saying that she had wanted to leave the wild days behind and settle down with a man who actually loved her and was sorry that I was not strong enough and self-confident enough to be that man. She stopped fighting, and the court granted the divorce. I heard from friends that she started going out again and, in no time, she was up to 121 dudes, so she made it to eleven-squared after all.

As for me, my next-door neighbors to my borrowed townhouse were an Indian immigrant family. Their voluptuous, twenty-two-year-old daughter turned out to be a virgin who was sexually curious, looking down the barrel of an arranged marriage, and in a rebellious mood. Her parents had blown off her college graduation--pre-med with honors--to visit her older brother, whose wife was having the family's first grandchild, a boy. That neglected daughter turned out to be an absolute delight. I did not even have to work for it much. When we were making out, and she was starting to put up some resistance, I just said that I understood that she wanted to be a good girl, exactly like her mother wanted. She was all over me after that. She loved it when I went down on her, and I loved doing it. She might eventually wind up getting to Randi's lifetime record after she and I were done, but at least I would be like Captain Kirk piloting through her Final Frontier for the first time, which was good enough for me.