I think it must’ve been me, not Roiphe, who put the 20,000 to Magic–as soon as you brought up Wilt Chamberlain I realized that’s where I got that # from. I don’t think specific numbers played into the Magic story, except for the “6 at once” story he gave to Larry King or Dan Rather or somebody like that.

I bet the number is much higher than 200, though. At one point in the Magic chapter Roiphe brings up that for a “normal” man, 100 partners is considered a lot, so imagine a world where triple digits is the norm. Magic described how women would just show up at the hotel, waiting to be chosen for sex. So very, very sad.

The only reason I question the 20,000 figure is that Wikipedia (not always accurate, I know! So I wanted to double-check with you) lists the number as 200, and the only other references I can find to it online are to Wilt Chamberlain’s claim to have had sex with 20,000 women in his (at the time, longer) life. Apparently Arthur Ashe was quite scathing about both men’s pride in their own promiscuity.

Thanks for writing so well about such an important issue, Superfast Reader! I always enjoy reading your blog.

Her criticism was not with Magic per se, but with the media portrayal of his story. Here was a man who was engaging in flagrantly risky behavior, yet he had to be cast as a “hero” and a “gentleman” so that he could be a suitable public face to AIDS. He had had an on-again, off-again relationship with a woman since high school, so she got cast as his “high school sweetheart,” even though he had a child with another woman while they were supposedly together, and obviously cheated on her a number of times. And it was unthinkable to suggest that Magic might have engaged in any kind of bisexual activity, because for AIDS to be palatable to “America” it needed to be liberated from being associated with homosexuality.

A similar recasting occurred with Alison Gertz, a straight woman from a wealthy Upper East Side family who contracted AIDS after having a one-night-stand with a bisexual nightclub bartender when she was only 16. The media portrayed it as a night of passion and romance in order to deflect attention from Gertz’s promiscuity.

The reason I called it a double standard was because Roiphe reports that Pres Bush Sr and VP Dan Quayle publicly called Magic Johnson a “gentleman,”** a statement I find shameful when contrasted with Quayle’s same-era denunciation of the fictional character Murphy Brown, a woman who chose single motherhood after becoming pregnant.

**I said “hero” above, but that was a mistake.