New York has a rule that you have to go in person to get HIV test results. Then, they ask questions.
Question one: Have you been sexually active in the past month? Answer: Um, yeah (in my head: A lot).
Question Two: How many partners have you had? Answer: (in head: Um, crap) How do you define partner?
(Which is a whole other blog post.)
She said “any contact that could pass fluids, like intercourse.”
Well, my semi official count for the few weeks before I left was 7. But, two were gloved hand to genital contact, one was oral with a condom, some were oral without condoms, some were kissing with no fluid transfer other than that, and some were intercourse with a condom. In the party before that, I had oral sex without protection (giving and receiving), and possibly had genital to hand to other genital contact. (It gets confusing in group situations.)
Group sex almost always confuses things 
When you are counting partners for STI testing purposes, which activities do you count?
Entries (RSS)
Oh, and where’d you get the ad in your left sidebar? I see that it *isn’t* adsense and *is* an “adult” ad. I’ve been looking for a program for those, since adsense is stupid about “adult” blogs.
I don’t think whether I say 5 or 6 or 7 really matters to my doctor, so I would give my standard answer, not one tailored to testing. I count partners this way: If it involves genitals for the purposes of pleasure OR it involves anyone having an orgasm, it’s sex, and I count you as a sexual partner. A gynecological exam involves genitals, but not for pleasure, so isn’t sex. If we’re kissing, and I orgasm, it’s sex. In this manner, I have had sex with someone who never came within 4 feet of me. But, I really don’t care to engage my doctor in sexual philosophy discussion, unless their question is sexually/politically ambiguous and want to scold them with my “shocking” answer (like when a doctor asked me if I was hetero/bi/homo). So, with a tester, I’d just say, I have 8 partners (or whatever), even if I’m only swapping fluids with 2 of them.