Seven
I don’t read celebrity gossip. I don’t watch entertainment news, I don’t buy tabloids, and I scroll past headlines about pop stars walking into glass doors without breaking stride. But Rob Kardashian’s Twitter meltdown last week got through anyway—not because I went looking but because the internet delivers these things whether you want them or not.
The short version: Rob Kardashian, best known as Kim’s brother, had been dating Rita Ora—a British singer I’d genuinely never heard of before this, which says something about both of us. He went on Twitter and announced that she’d slept with twenty other men while they were together. He found this disgusting. He said she’d done it for her career. His sister Khloé told him to keep smiling. The internet picked sides and moved on within twelve hours.
I don’t care about any of those people. But twenty stuck.
I pulled out a piece of paper and started counting. There was Emma—January, a party at someone’s apartment I’d never been to before and never went back to. Leah in February, briefly, warmly, nothing beyond that. Sofia in April, two weeks of actual something before it dissolved without drama. Anna in May, an internet thing—she drove four hours to meet me and I’m still slightly floored she did that. Clara in July: we’d known each other for years and finally acted on it, which felt momentous for about three days. Nina in September. And then Lena, last month.
Seven. In one year.
Nowhere near twenty, but looking at the names on paper felt strange in a way that doing it in memory doesn’t. Written down they become a list, and a list implies accounting, and accounting implies someone somewhere is judging the ledger.
Who’s judging, though. A priest calls it too many. Half my friends would call it too few and somehow make that sound insulting. Someone online would write a thread about it either way. There’s no number that passes every test, no count that lands in the zone where everyone agrees you’ve got it right. Seven feels like it sits somewhere between reckless and restrained—I just can’t tell which direction I’m facing.
Rob Kardashian thought twenty was obscene. I think Rob Kardashian should stay off Twitter for a while. As for what the right number actually is—I have no idea. Seven doesn’t feel like an answer. It’s just what came out when I counted.