Wilt Chamberlain, who died recently, will be best remembered not for his 100
points in a game, but for the claim in his autobiography that he made love to
20,000 women in his life.
Just think about that.
It's strange that none of the newsmen reporting this figure asked to examine
his logbook and call up some of the women. It would make a good story. And it's
certainly an accomplishment.
Suppose he made love to one woman a day. Let' see, twenty thousand divided by
365…. That's nearly 55 years. No vacations. No weekends. No sick time. He could
have started at age 15 and gone on to retirement at 70.
What if it were two per day? That's a bit over 27 years. Three a day is eighteen
and a quarter years. And somehow he found the time to play basketball, practice,
travel, and everything.
Suppose it were his full-time job, working an eight-hour shift. How many women
could he make love to in an hour? Given the refractory period, probably two,
but it's not clear that is a sustainable rate. Anyway, call it two. That's ten
thousand hours. How many hours in a year? A forty-hour week, two weeks vacation,
that's 2000 hours a year. Divide 10,000 by 2000…. That's a five-year, full time
job.
And all these calculations assume none of the women ever cared to repeat the
experience. If a significant number did, it would take a lot more time, and
that might make the figure sound suspicious.