The most sexual partners in history

Book of Odds

What's your number?

It's not uncommon for people to have 15 or more sexual partners in their lifetime: 1 in 10.87 women and 1 in 4.42 men 15-44 have had as many. But some people go through way more than that-hundreds or thousands, possibly tens of thousands of sexual partners in a lifetime.

Who are they? Who are the contenders for, and who holds, the all-time record for most sexual partners? What's the greatest number of partners possible?

Having sex with thousands of people is, let's face it, a little ridiculous. Only 1 in 25 women and 1 in 33.33 men are even comfortable with their partner hitting the century mark-having had 100 previous partners. But thousands? Alfred Kinsey met many men who claimed to have slept with 1,000+ men or women. Prostitutes-and, if we can believe 'em, Gene Simmons and Charlie Sheen-may reach 5,000 or so.

But 10,000+ sex partners? Whittling that many notches into a bedpost would require some seriously unique conditions. And a lot of time. And a gigantic post. You'd have to be:

  • equipped with an insatiable sex drive;

  • constantly exposed to strangers, who you're

  • able to pick up without fail;

  • unmarried, probably; and

  • obsessively dedicated to doing it.

That would make the history's best candidates for the 10,000 Club monarchs, tyrants, shahs, emperors, harem-holders of all kinds, rakes, courtiers, prostitutes, bartenders, rock stars, porn stars, movie stars, and professional athletes.

But those are just candidates. No one is sure if anyone has ever broken 10,000, or even could, realistically. Making it to five digits has got to be vanishingly rare-for example, I can't find any women anywhere who are supposed to have made it. Not even female prostitutes, which is another article in and of itself, and I've looked at more historical accounts and statistical data on hookers than could possibly be good for a person.

Here, anyway, are the few men who claim, or are claimed, to have made it:

John Curtis Estes. Also known as John Holmes, the well-endowed icon of 70s porn, he claimed to have slept with 14,000 people. However, since he first made the claim at age 37, its accuracy was questionable from the beginning, even for him. It later proved to have been self-promotion, made when Holmes was desperate for money, addicted to cocaine (which affected his ability to get it up), prostituting himself, and stealing. His true number is probably significantly lower. Luke Ford, author of the (admittedly terribly written) The History of X, puts the true number at around 3,000. Holmes's 11-inch star was only on the rise for a little over a decade, so why not.

Warren Beatty. In the 2010 book, Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America, biographer Peter Biskind estimates that the actor/director slept with 12,775 women between the ages of 20 (when he lost his virginity) and 55 (when he married Annette Bening). Mitigating factor #1: Biskind was an unauthorized biographer, and had little or no contact with Beatty while writing the book. Mitigating factor #2: Biskind isn't exactly a mathematician. His rationale is that Beatty, a notorious playboy for decades, slept with one stranger every day without exception for 35 years. 365 x 35 = 12,775. (The 9 leap days that he forgets to account for would make it 12,784.) One thing is for certain. Beatty's list of former girlfriends is an overstuffed Rolodex of New Hollywood actresses and 70s and 80s musicians: Diane Keaton, Natalie Wood, Joan Collins, Madonna, Carly Simon, Mary Tyler Moore, Julie Christie, and Cher, among many others.

Wilt Chamberlain. You know what I'm talking about. In his 1991 autobiography, A View From Above, NBA hall of famer Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with 20,000 different women, none of them married and none ever impregnated, from the time he was 15 until he wrote the book at age 70. According to the Big Dipper, "at my age, that equals out to having sex with 1.2 women a day, every day since I was fifteen years old." Of all the people considered in this article, Chamberlain was, to be fair, probably the most capable of actually breaking the 10,000-mark. Or, hell, the 20,000-mark. It is a question of time, and lifestyle.

Fifty-five years is two decades longer than Beatty's timeframe and three and a half longer than Holmes's; much of that time he spent traveling between big cities, each one a pool of potential notches. He was a lifelong bachelor, an insomniac, and an inveterate partier. (He played his 100-point game hung over.) A millionaire and one of the most famous athletes of his day, he could pick up women like it was a bodily function. And he had a remarkable sexual appetite-in his prime, Chamberlain often had more than one partner per day, according to teammates.

While 20,000 may be a stretch, it's probably safe to say Wilt the Stilt broke 10,000, if anyone did.

Just before he died, though, he clarified: "With all of you men out there who think that having a thousand different ladies is pretty cool, I have learned in my life I've found out that having one woman a thousand different times is much more satisfying."

And as for the most people a person could possibly sleep with in a lifetime:

Realistically? If an extremely dedicated person (say, a professional) slept with 10 strangers per day for 60 years, they'd have a lifetime total of 219,150 sexual partners, the equivalent of packing the new Cowboys Stadium completely full, to standing room capacity. Twice.

And unrealistically…

In 1999, in an unofficial (and unappetizing) shot at a world record, porn star Houston (now retired) had sex with 620 men in a 24 hour period. If someone were to replicate that feat with strangers every single day for 55 years, they could sleep with 12,454,560 people in a lifetime.

That's greater than the populations of New York and Los Angeles combined.

That's a lot of…never mind.

Gross.