Nymphos

I think my parents were nymphomaniacs.  (Okay, so technically my dad 
can’t be a nympho because nymphomania describes an excessive and 
uncontrollable sexual desire in women.  But I don’t know what the 
equivalent word is for men and I’m not about to Google it.  I suppose I 
could just call him a sex maniac, but that sounds criminal and I am 
talking about my father here.)  
	When I tell people that I’m one of nine, I often get the 
following reaction: a raised eyebrow “Oh!  Wow!” accompanied by a smirk 
and a slow head nod that sorta says without saying it, “Your parents must 
have had a lot of sex.”  Sometimes people are bold enough to give me a 
nudge and a wink, “Didn’t believe in birth control, eh?”  	
	“Hispanic Roman Catholics fresh off the boat,” I tell them, “I 
don’t think so.”  
	My mom says my dad always wanted a big family.  He was the 
youngest of eleven (or something like that) but grew up as if he was an 
only child because most of his siblings were old enough to be his 
parents.  And so as only child syndrome sometimes goes, my father, my 
mother says, wanted to make sure his children had plenty of playmates. I 
think sex for my parents was a form of marriage control.  Get in a 
fight.  Have make-up with sex instead of a divorce.  Mom misses a 
period.  And Ernie, Luis, Eli, Ricky, Carlos, Eddie, Silvi, and Susi have 
a new sibling.  It’s no secret Adri, who usurped Susi’s five year seat on 
the baby of the family throne, was a “happy accident.”  I remember my 
mother sharing the news with seven year old me, “Papi no freakin want I 
get my tubes tied.  I toll him si I no tie it up, another one going to 
come.  But he no listen to me.”  I had no idea what these tubes she spoke 
of were or what they had to do with babies, but somehow I knew they must 
have been located in the pregnant belly area.  I imagined my mother, post 
pregnancy, grinning widely, a rubber tube bow, beneath the new bundle of 
baby in her arms, hanging off her tummy.     
	  For nymphos, my parents weren’t terribly affectionate.  My 
father kissed my mother, rather tersely, briefcase in hand, coat buttoned 
up, before work each morning and again when he came home.  I never saw 
them hold hands or cuddle or touch each other very much in public at 
all.  Maybe that was a by-product of my father’s propriety.  The man 
never ate with his hands (he even fork and knifed cheeseburgers and candy 
bars), never burped or farted (in the company of another pair of ears, at 
least), and took at least two showers a day (often after using the 
bathroom).     
	My friend K’s sixty year old parents (whom she would also call 
nymphos) unabashedly make-out in public, pinch each other’s butts, and 
have always had really loud and frequent sex.  “I didn’t know what it was 
I heard when I was five,” K told me one day when her parents were 
visiting, “but I know what those sounds are now and they’re making them 
in my house!”  
	“Gross,” I admitted, as we shuddered together, and I said a 
silent thank you for never having heard my parents knocking boots in my 
house or theirs.  But then I hoped that someday I’d be in passionate love 
at sixty, like her parents, and not widowed and buried, like mine.