“I’ve been with about sixty-seven women.”
“What do you mean ‘about sixty-seven?’ You say ‘about sixty’ or ‘about seventy.’ But not ‘about sixty-seven.’ You’re obviously keeping track.” Tina looked amused at another opportunity to toy with Evan.
“All right. You got me,” Evan conceded. “I’ve been with precisely sixty-seven women.”
“Unless, of course, you said ‘about’ because the total depends on how you define ‘being with a woman.’ For example, if you just got a blowjob and nothing else then maybe you don’t count that.”
“OK. To be more precise, I’ve had sexual intercourse with sixty-seven women.”
“All right, so then you’ve probably been with many more women than sixty-seven?”
“Yeah. But I don’t keep track of those.” Evan suddenly wondered why he didn’t bother to keep track of anything but consummation.
“I see…So when did you get started on these sixty-seven women?”
“You mean, how old was I when I lost my virginity?”
“Yes.”
“Twenty.”
“So you’ve slept with sixty-seven women in just nine years.”
“Well, actually I’ve had six serious relationships that together took up about two years.”
“Serious? Let’s see…Six serious relationships in two years…So each one lasted an average of four months. You call that serious?”
“Well, it was an intense four months. And I wasn’t seeing anyone else. You know, that’s kind of a big deal in New York,” he added ironically. “Dating someone exclusively for four months in New York is like four years in Anchorage.”
Tina chuckled at Evan’s joke. “All right, so not counting the serious relationships, you’ve slept with…” She crunched some numbers in her head. “You’ve slept with sixty-one women in just seven years…That’s an average of almost nine per year…A new woman every forty days.” Tina seemed impressed, which suddenly made Evan feel rather promiscuous.
“Do you think that’s a lot?”
“You probably have a few STDs by now, right?”
“None that I know of, thank God.”
“So you’ve been tested? I have to get tested before each of my films.”
“Yeah, I actually just got my AIDS test last month. And I’m clean.”
“But were you tested for herpes, gonorrhea, and hepatitis?”
“No.”
“And you might have chancroid, crabs, HPV or molluscum contagiosum.”
“I hope not.”
“What about scabies, chlamydia, syphilis, or Trichomoniasis?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But you were only tested for HIV.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have genital warts?
“Nasty! No, I don’t have warts.”
“They’re actually not all that bad. An actor who used to work on my films got them and couldn’t work anymore until he got them removed. But they’re really just a cosmetic nuisance.”
Evan was feeling overwhelmed by this sex education class.
“You sound really knowledgeable about this stuff…Do you have any STDs? I mean, with your line of work, you’ve probably slept with a lot more people than I have.” After Tina’s grilling, Evan felt emboldened – and relieved – to turn the microscope onto her.
“I told you that in my line of work, which is soft porn, I don’t need to have actual intercourse with any of the actors.”
“But you said that you have to get tested before each film.”
“We do. The producers don’t want to take any liability risks, in case there’s some kind of accident…And certain scenes do require quite a bit of skin-to-skin contact, even though there’s no actual intercourse or head involved. So if anyone has anything that could spread by accident, it could slow down production – particularly with STDs that don’t look good on camera…So our producer is extra careful about these things.”
“Oh.”
“There’s something else I should ask you.”
“What?”
“Are you comfortable with homosexuality?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I do a lot of scenes with other women, and I’ve had some sexual relationships with women, and I just need to know that you’re comfortable with that sort of thing.”
This question gave Evan some hope. Tina had just asked for explicit reassurance on a personal and sexual topic – something that she wouldn’t have done if she had absolutely no interest in him.