The following version of this story was used to create this guide: Dybeck, Stuart. "We Didn't." I Sailed with Magellan. Farrar, Strous and Giroux, 2003. 233-246. Print.

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the page number from which the quotation is taken.

"We Didn't" opens with a three-line epigraph, a poem by Yehuda Amichai entitled "We Did It." The story proper begins with the narrator announcing and describing all the circumstances in which he and his lover did not have sex. These circumstances are as vague as "darkness" or as specific as "your room on the canopy bed you slept in, the bed you'd slept in as a child" (233). The list of places is long, and the narrator reflects on how inexperienced they both were at the time. He thinks specifically about one night "becalmed by heat" when the two young lovers were kissing on the sand of Oak Street Beach (234).

The narrator remembers the smells and sounds of the beach and of his girlfriend, who is also the addressee of the story. Still in the flashback, the narrator removes the girl's bikini top and thinks of all the people around the world who are having sex for numerous different reasons. The two lovers continue to undress each other and the narrator retrieves a condom from his wallet. As he is opening it, though, it falls into the sand. He manages to put it on anyway and they fumble around each other excitedly. But before they are able to align themselves the right way, they are interrupted by lights moving around on the beach. They realize they are headlights from police cars and immediately scramble to put their clothes back on.

Continuing the memory, the narrator and his girlfriend hear the cops shouting and see them run into the water. They pull out the body of a young naked woman. The narrator notes that she looks pale, slimy, and shriveled. Her belly is swollen and one of the EMTs on the scene announces that she was pregnant. The narrator and his girlfriend leave the scene quietly and return home. He recalls that it took them a long time to discuss what they had seen, but eventually his girlfriend expressed her horror at the fact that there was a drowned pregnant woman so close to the spot where they had almost had sex.

From that point on, the narrator remembers, the two lovers were not the same. His girlfriend remained haunted by the image of the drowned woman and even dreamed about her. The narrator explains that they began arguing about everything after that one night, and says that it was as if the drowned woman was with them. Eventually, they broke up, but the narrator admits he does not truly remember a specific moment that the relationship ended.

The narrator thinks that it is possible the relationship ended the very night they saw the drowned woman. Returning to the flashback, he describes their trip home after their encounter with police. They had taken the train back to the girl's house where he dropped her off. On his own commute home, he thought about how love sick he was and how disappointed he was that he did not lose his virginity. Returning to the present, he continues to recall his list of places where they did not have sex.