The Statistician

The Statistician walks away from his campus office and toward the student ghetto. There is an uncharacteristic swagger in his measured pace. He runs through the numbers in his head:

The number of times my wife and I have had sex in the past year: 7

Expressed as a fraction of the total number of days in the year: 7/365

He does a quick calculation.

A success rate of one point nine per cent.

Abysmal.

But, okay, The Statistician thinks , I’m biasing the numbers somewhat. Let’s be realistic about it. Subtracting the number of days we can’t have sex because of her menstrual cycle, or because one or the other of us is sick or otherwise incapacitated, let’s say one week out of every four. . .

He frowns.

7/280. Two point five per cent.

Still abysmal.

The Statistician is not even using the narrow Bill Clinton definition of sex; in addition to penetrative intercourse, his figure includes manual and/or oral stimulation of the genitals by a sexual partner.

He sighs, and estimates the average sixteen-year-old boy has had more sex in the past month than he has in the past year. But there is something else, a set of numbers that he finds particularly difficult to reconcile.

The number of times I’ve stimulated my wife orally during our sexual encounters of the past year (expressed as a fraction): 7/7

The number of times she’s stimulated me orally during the same sexual encounters (expressed as a fraction): 0/7

The number of times I’ve brought her to orgasm through oral stimulation during our nine-year marriage: 150 (estimated)

The number of times she’s given me oral sex during our entire nine-year marriage: 2 (exact number)

The first time was on their wedding night. She had tried to swallow his ejaculate, but she ran squealing into the hotel-room bathroom to spit it in the sink. Before they could continue consummating their marriage, she had to down two full glasses of champagne “to get rid of the taste”.

The Statistician found this episode puzzling, since at least three of his former girlfriends had described his cum as tasting “sweet” when he asked; one even habitually “helped herself to some protein” as he drove them over to Sunday brunch with her parents. This particular girlfriend would then kiss her mother and father right on the lips as soon as she stepped into their pancake-and-bacon-scented home.

The Statistician’s wife tried again a couple of nights later, but she gagged violently a few seconds into the process, mascara-blackened tears streaming down her face. He didn’t mind the interruption so much, though, since she immediately shrugged her lacey teddy onto the marble floor of the honeymoon suite, slipped into her tallest high-heels, then clip-clopped across the room and slowly bent over in front of the brass-studded ottoman, resting her elbows on the cool black leather.

The perfection of my wife’s ass, in comparison to all the other pairs of buttocks in the world, during our honeymoon, expressed as a percent: 90%

How sexually excited I was by the vision of her in that position, with that upside-down-heart shaped ass up in the air and her long hair flowing over the ottoman and onto the floor, expressed as a percentage (with 100% representing orgasm-level excitement): 96%

The Statistician gripped her small waist in his hands, and was able to complete eleven thrusts before exploding inside of her. He couldn’t quite make it to an even dozen, let alone the triple digits to which he normally aspired. She just looked too good.

It just felt too good.

The number of days after our honeymoon ended that she had her hair cut into its current shoulder-length bob: 3

The relative perfection of my wife’s ass, present day, in comparison to all the other pairs of buttocks in the world, expressed as a percent: still 90%

Number of times my wife has assumed that enticing standing-bottoms-up position since our honeymoon: 0

Every month for a year after their wedding, when his wife had her period and wouldn’t let him come inside her, The Statistician would suggest that perhaps she could please maybe please just consider trying to give him another blow job. She would consistently respond that it wasn’t nice to ask for such things, that it was more gentlemanly to wait until they were offered.

Then she would roll over in bed, turning her back to him, a maneuver meant to convey her disappointment and disinterest. However, this meant also that her 90^th-percentile ass was aimed in his direction all night, and The Statistician’s resulting erection would usually keep him awake until sunrise.

Now every night she sleeps with her back turned to him. It’s not a punishment anymore; it’s just a habit.

Number of times in the past year I’ve had to get out of bed and sneak across the cold tile floor into the en suite, to stand on my tiptoes in front of the clamshell-shaped sink, imagining that my wife is bent over in front me, that my lotion-filled fist is her upturned vagina and that the edges of the scalloped sink are the folds under her sweet round buttocks, just to relieve the tension enough that I can get a couple hours of sleep: 40 (estimated)

Number of times in the past year that I’ve performed a similar operation in front of the sink, but imagined that my lotion-filled fist is her mouth instead: 60 (estimated)

The Statistician eventually stopped asking his wife for oral sex, but of course he didn’t stop wanting it. On a car trip to a friend’s cottage, he asked her if maybe she found him less attractive than she used to. She just kissed his neck and smiled.

His brain knew he should leave this tender moment alone, that he should just smile, grip the steering wheel, and guide the car further along the road, but his penis still wanted answers.

“If you’re still attracted to me, then how come you never …”

She knew where this was going before he even finished the sentence. She sighed, “Look, sweetie, one of these days I’ll try again. When I’m ready, okay? My mouth is pretty small, and, well, your thing is pretty big.”

She could never call it a cock, a dick, a rod or a prick. She could barely even refer to it as a penis, and then only when she was speaking in clinical terms (“What are those abrasions on your penis?” or “Change your pants; I can see the head of your penis through the ones you’re wearing”); otherwise, she always called it his thing.

“Getting my hand around it is difficult enough, never mind my mouth,” she said, shrugging her small shoulders. “It’s enormous, really.”

Well! That made The Statistician feel pretty good. He’d measured it with a tape measure once, and, depending on whose calculation of average one compared it to, he knew that he was, statistically speaking, a bit longer and thicker than average. But, enormous?

Later, at the friend’s cottage, he watched his wife eat a whole cucumber, and then a banana. The Statistician was pretty sure that he wasn’t bigger than either of those things.

The Statistician turns onto a side street in the undergrad ghetto. He steadies the heavy textbook he’s carrying under his right arm, Advanced Applied Statistics.

Number of book club meetings my wife has attended in the past year compared to the number of times she’s had sex with me, expressed as a ratio: 24:7

Number of sex acts she’s read about in the “literary romance novels” selected by her book club in the past year (calculation based on an assumed average 4 sex acts per book), compared to the number of times she’s had actual sex with me in the past year, expressed as a ratio: 96:7

He double-checks the note cupped in his sweaty left palm. In neat script, the pink paper reads: Your Protégé! 135 Cheapside Ave, Apartment C.

He hesitates for a moment on the broken concrete steps of this former upper-middle-class brownstone, which has been converted into bachelor apartments for students who can’t afford to live in the university residences

Number of times in the past year my wife has opened her legs for Pedro (the probably-gay esthetician who trims and waxes her pubic hair) compared to the number of times she’s opened her legs for me, expressed as a ratio: 12:7

For some reason, this figure in particular frustrates him. She goes to such lengths, at no small expense, to have the entrance manicured so invitingly, and yet, as soon as he catches a glimpse at her neatly trimmed pubis and it has its desired effect on him, she closes the gates.

The Statistician presses the buzzer button for Apartment C.

The Protégé peeks out through the mail slot, and then the door swings open.

“Hey there, Professor,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”

She’s wearing a tight white tank top with no bra underneath. Her breasts retain 98% of their youthful firmness, forming nearly mathematically-perfect half-spheres, her nipples just a few degrees north of perfect centre. Judging from the coy language she used in his office this afternoon, and from the way she dipped her eyelashes and flicked her upper lip with the tip of her tongue after each sentence, The Statistician conservatively estimates the probability of seeing her naked breasts today is about 66.7%, and her entire unclothed body, approximately 50%.

It’s okay for me to do this.

He follows her up the creaky, round-edged stairs, watching her muscular buttocks flex beneath her spandex cycling shorts. She’s got an altogether different type of ass than his wife, a smaller waist-to-hip ratio to be sure, a bit less cushion perhaps, rounder, firmer. Equally nice, though; another 90 ^th-percentile ass.

The Statistician’s heart rate increases from 80 to 130 beats per minute, and it isn’t just from climbing to the top of the stairs.

It’s okay for me to do this. It’s justified.

She pushes open the door to her cluttered, claustrophobic bachelor apartment, which was likely nothing more than a walk-in closet during the building’s previous life as a single-family home. Once inside, they sit down together on the lone piece of furniture, a rumpled futon bed.

It’s justified.

“So,” The Protégé says, opening a notebook filled with complex scribblings, “like I mentioned in your office, I’ve really been having some difficulty making sense of these numbers.”

Her fingers brush his forearm as she flips the next page of her calculations open before him. Her thigh presses against his. She looks at him with generous eyes, her head titled slightly to one side, her lashes gently dropping at regular intervals. It’s the same way his wife used to look at him around the time they got engaged, before the numbers tapered off to seven times a year.

“The numbers never lie,” says The Statistician.