A Sexy Correlation

Author’s note: I ran this originally in December 2009, while I was teaching classes at the Eastside Cannery.

After this was published, Andy and Sharon became good friends with Shirley and me, and later Bonnie and me. Recently Sharon, real name Phillis, died after dealing with a brain tumor for years. Reprinting this article is one way to say, “Rest in Peace, Phillis.”

“Sharon and I don’t usually have sex in the morning,” Andy told me. It was prior to one of my classes at Eastside Cannery. Andy was telling me something that struck me as “TMI,” meaning “too much information.” Andy and (occasionally) Sharon had been attending my classes for about a year, and there was definitely a friendly relationship.  However, I hadn’t wondered at all how often they did or didn’t make love, which were their favorite positions, or what time of day was customary for them.

I stared at him blankly. I didn’t want to encourage him to tell me more about this. But Andy wasn’t finished with his story.

“About two hours later, I hit a royal flush. I’m trying to figure out a way to convince Sharon that if we had sex more often in the morning that I would hit more royal flushes.”

I seem to remember this being called a “spurious correlation” in statistics class. Just because Event A comes before Event B is no reason to presume that Event A causes Event B. I assume Andy and Sharon enjoyed both their morning romp and the royal flush. I also assume that Andy knew there was no causality present here and was just looking for a way to have more sex with his wife.

Which wasn’t a terrible thing. Andy and Sharon are both eligible for the “senior discount” at casinos and have been married “forever.” Using this as a good-natured ruse to generate more sexual activity between them strikes me as “fair game.” A sense of humor is important in successful marriages.

“I guess I should congratulate you twice, then,” I replied. It was a pretty lame response, but it was the best I could come up with at the time.

The next week in class, Andy informed me that he’d finally convinced Sharon to try it again, and sure enough, he scored another royal flush! The third week he told me that it worked again, with a slight variation. “This time Sharon hit the royal, but we’re still three-for-three.”

“What stakes are you playing?” I asked him.

“Two of the royals have been on nickels, but the one Sharon hit was on quarters.”

“If you really believed in your sexy system, you’d be playing for $5 or higher,” I told him. “Why settle for a $200 royal when a $20,000 royal seems almost guaranteed?”

“I guess I don’t really believe there’s a connection,” he told me sheepishly. “But I’m getting laid more and both of us are happy with how it’s going.”

“I don’t blame you,” I told him. “Keep up the good work.”

Same story on the fourth week. On the fifth week, Sharon came to class as well. She probably makes it to about two classes a semester while Andy comes every week. I went up to her before class and told her that I’d been hearing a lot about her sex life recently.

She laughed and told me that they were both amazed by how it’d been going. “Plus, I now have a way to know if Andy is being faithful. Next time he hits a royal flush on a day we haven’t just done it, it’ll be proof positive that he has a girlfriend on the side.”

I smiled. She was joking, I’m sure. Clearly the sense of humor goes both ways in that family.

The streak had to end, of course, and eventually it did. When Andy reported this, he didn’t look too chagrined. After all he’d gone through long dry spells before on both the royal flush front as well as in the bedroom. Breaking through on both fronts at the same time was clearly a happy time in his life.

“I assume now that it doesn’t work anymore, you guys are going to give up on sex forever,” I joshed.

“On the contrary,” he responded. “We’ve decided it’ll be fun to see if we can get another streak started soon. And we can’t know that unless we have some more sex in the morning, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

I wished him continued good fortune. It sounds to me like he and Sharon are winners in life, which is more to be envied that merely being a winner at video poker.