This article is presented as was originally not published in MathNEWS many years ago. It was rejected because the editors were simply too wimpy (opinion, not libel) of its content, and I always felt mathnews, as part of mathSOC, was pretty cliquey. Also, considering the quality of the other articles accepted, I didn’t really have that much hope. The only thing I’m really embarassed about in this is the Seinfeld reference.
A Virgin’s Guide to Sex
This article is directed and intended for those of us who are both mathies, and virgins (in pretty much every sense). You know who you are, the shy, those who go to a party and lean against the wall, probably trying to avoid being spotted as you didn’t have any friends to invite you.
This is presented as a series of points, to help speed reading of the article, and so they can be referenced quickly later (but please, not when attempting what is described below, nothing wisens a person to the inexperience of their partner than when they are caught referencing a manual). This article has been modified from it’s original version, it has been changed to fit your page. I suggest you get the wide-page version.
(This article assumes a certain amount of knowledge. If you don’t get the ‘mulva’ joke from Seinfeld, now would be a perfect time for you to stop reading.)Some general points:
-Guys, if you must, you can gauge your successes in your head, but do not volunteer this information to your friends, or it might get back to the girl, and does increase the chances of saying “boobies, score!” at an inopportune moment.
-Do not complement the fiddly bits on your girlfriend. If you say “You’ve got amazing [insert part(s) here]!” then she might believe that you would rather exclusively date those parts, take them out dancing and out for coffee afterwards. While this in and of itself is not much of a problem, the girl to which they are attached might feel left out. This also applies to girls staring at guy-ass, but this is much less of a problem as guy-ass is nasty anyway.
-It is probably a good idea to know your lovers name before engaging in sexual relations, as you might resort to moaning out the names of ex’s, family pets, and deities who would probably not like to be called on at that moment.
-Remember guys, No means No. I’m sure no girl would be interested in your lengthy mathematical proof that No, in fact, does equal Yes, no matter how many lemmas you use.
-Please, for the love of Bob, do not use math-related pickup lines like “Let’s integrate baby”, or even worse, if you’re a CS major, ones like “I’m gunna mount your drive” or “Programmers ‘do it’ bit by bit”.
-Never ask your friends for advice on sex and relationships. If you are reading this article for advice on sex and relationships, then you probably don’t have any friends anyway, or you would have asked them first. The risk about asking friends is that they might not have had ever been with anyone either, so any advice they give is likely to be absolutely wrong or very dangerous, or both. Try not to look at the title of the article at this point.
-Math can never be used to make a sexual joke, no matter how funny you think the integral of e to the power of x is.
-Don’t bother remarking how many times integration has been mentioned thus far, I have my own problems.
-In fact, it’s best not to mention you were ever a mathie, say you were in Arts
Of course, all this doesn’t guarantee that you will find someone. In a search, I once started with a rough approximation of 6,000,000,000 people, halved it for a female population, take the percent that live in this province, another for those of whom I would fit their attraction threshold, and again of whom would fit my attraction threshold, again for religion, language, hobbies, general dispositions, and worked it out to one girl, she didn’t return my call.
Good luck to you
-00010011
Well, perhaps in addition, some elements go against my later feminist attitudes… they were always present, but I think I even might have been a little harsh on some of this, but I think of it more of a parody of people’s behaviour. The part I most relish, to this day, is the last section, where I can say that she did finally return my call, but she was permenantly washing her hair. The hair wants what it wants, alas.
