The Tally
I don’t care about celebrity gossip. Never have. The stories blur together—who’s sleeping with whom, who got caught, whose career survives the scandal. It all just passes by. But one detail stuck with me inexplicably: someone found out his girlfriend had been with twenty different people in a single year.
It was some tabloid thing. The guy went public about it, called it disgusting, said it was all for her career or whatever rationalization celebrities use. People chose sides. Someone posted a cutting remark. The usual digital theater. I didn’t care about any of them—the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the drama. But the number wouldn’t leave me alone. Twenty. In a year.
So I got a piece of paper and actually counted.
Jonas in January at my sister’s birthday party. Kenan in March, met him on a boat. Then Yasin and Steffen in April—Steffen I already knew. Denis in July, that started as a casual dinner date. Frank in August, someone I met online and didn’t particularly click with beyond that one night. Robert last month. Seven. Seven different people across twelve months.
When I wrote it down, it looked like more than it had felt like while it was happening. In the moment, each one seemed separate, disconnected from the others. Exciting or disappointing or just something that happened. There was no plan, no goal to hit a number. It just accumulated.
Here’s the thing though: nobody’s going to judge me for seven. If I told people I slept with seven different women in a year, the reaction would range from indifference to a knowing nod to maybe a dumb smirk. There’s no shame attached to it, no questions asked about my character. A woman with that same list gets a very different treatment—whispers, assumptions, moral inventory. It’s unfair and obvious.
But that doesn’t actually settle the question of what’s right or normal. Not for me. The lack of judgment doesn’t make the number feel any more or less meaningful. Seven still sits there on that piece of paper, and I still don’t know if it’s reasonable or excessive or exactly what someone does when they’re living their life without a particular plan.
Twenty felt like it belonged to someone famous, someone with a different kind of life entirely. Seven just felt like me. But I don’t know what’s supposed to feel like anything at all.