Love, lies, and fear in the plague years...

Despite what the media hipsters say, casual sex is alive and well among the twentysomething set. Love, lies and fear--the perpetual threesome in twentysomethings' bedrooms.

By Simon Sebag Montefiore, published on September 01, 1992 - last reviewed on October 01, 2009

"Every girl knows the number, but we can't tell the truth. Even if we're not exactly sleazes, by the time we're my age, we've probably slept with, say, fifteen guys. No, probably more, but we can't admit to more than seven. So the female rule is, Think of the real number and then halve it! But make darned sure it's below ten!"

Bisexuality & the Sex Casino

Male bisexuality is the wild card in the pack. But it is not the joker. Bisexuality is like the 007 code for James Bond: a sexual license to kill by spreading AIDS from the gay to the straight community. The disturbing part is that its existence is often denied, even though I know several girls who have dated guys who have dated guys. Who are these men who seem like strange sinister creatures living secret lives out of a Proust novel?

Eric, 27, lives in L.A. and is an entertainment lawyer. He is as attracted (and attractive) to women as he is to men. Kristin, his beautiful, redheaded model girlfriend, never suspected his bisexuality until they had been going out for five years. Then she broke up with him.

The fascinating thing is the sexual havoc Eric has wreaked at his firm. He has had four affairs at the office, two women and two men. Three were happily married at the time.

Eric: "It's kinda like packing a pistol. I guess the capital thing is the power to throw down anyone, man or woman. It's really a turn-on to have that power. Yet it's also dangerous in this Day and Age. I'm careful. The secret kick is that I feel like a beautiful outlaw riding shotgun across the desert. No one knows about it, thank god, because I'm doing well at the firm. I'm ambitious. The partners say I'm a good attorney."

If orgasm, as the French call it, is the petit mort," AIDS is the Big Death. Death and Sex are indelibly stamped together like a tattoo on the skin of my generation. While the two have been linked throughout history (Winston Churchill's father, the writer Guy de Maupassant, and Al Capone all died of syphillis), the scare has added in some ways a further mystery to the attraction of casual sex. Love in the '90s for twentysomethings has become a game of sexual espionage, with all the drama of cloak and dagger.

Chip is a 26-year-old investment banker, Mr. Straight from an Irish-American family in New Jersey. His fiancee is an accountant in Newark. A month ago he was in L.A. on business. After a tiresome dinner, he met a woman drinking alone at the hotel bar.

Chip: "She was gorgeous, but I knew she was lying to me. She kept saying she was a nurse, that was why she had the portable telephone. I made her show me her I.D. card, but I still knew she was lying. 'What do you think I am?' she asked. 'A call girl or a drug dealer?' It scared the shit out of me. it was two in the morning but she kept going off to call her answering machine. She said over and over 'So you think I'm a call girl?' and then she'd laugh this great, sexy, uninhibited laugh.

"Upstairs in my room she opened her purse and poured out a hundred condoms and a garter belt. It was irresistible. As we made love, she kept saying 'Lies, lies, lies!' again and again. No, she never even mentioned money. She was incredibly passionate. I must say, it was one of the most erotic days I've had since school. Since AIDS. Lies. Lies.'

So whoever keeps telling us that the twentysomethings have given up sex are wrong. We're still having sex, but we're afraid of it, too. We are talking about it differently-confessing our pasts but lying about our presents. No more one-night stands, we say. Condoms are the only way to go, we say. Less casual sex, sure, but we have by no means stopped. Instead, the underground of sexual adventure has become a dangerous sex casino where love, lies, and fear are a perpetual threesome in the bedrooms of America.

Illustration: (TIM GABOR)

Photo: "THIS AIN'T NO PARTY. THIS AIN'T NO DISCO. THIS AIN'T NO FOOLIN' AROUND." THE '90s MATING GAME EQUATES FEAR AND SEX. (PAUL SOLOMON/WOODFIN CAMP)