Have I Mentioned I Am Sexually Active Today?

It was the best thirty seconds of my life!

"My name is Olaf Peterson. I am very good in bed."

— Red Dwarf

A character who talks big about his (or, more rarely, her) love life and success with the ladies (or gents), but in fact has little or nothing going on. Can be part of Of Course I'm Not a Virgin.

If everybody else is talking about the protagonist's (nonexistent) conquests, it's an Urban Legend Love Life.

Compare Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, which is frequently used in a parallel way. Subtrope of Suspiciously Specific Denial. Also see Do You Want to Copulate? and Unexpected Virgin.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Rare Female Example: Sae in Hidamari Sketch constantly insists she has had tons of boyfriends and has all kinds of experience which she supposedly uses as inspiration for her writing.
• Downplayed in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War when Shirogane, Mikado and Tsubasa have a boys' talk about women's assets. Both Shirogane and Mikado (who are both virgins) give way Too Much Information about their "type" in order to sound sexually experienced after Tsubasa (who is not a virgin) remarks about how much of a Chick Magnet the other two must be. Then Shirogane and Mikado eventually confess about their lack of experience.
• The plot of Love Lab centers on this trope, as main character Riko lies about how she's basically an expert on love matters and is made to 'teach' others on how to be experts as well. Eventually, the trope is subverted when she admits to having zero experience in love, but that doesn't happen until the very end of the anime.
• GTO: The Early Years: Eikichi and Ryuji claim to have had sex with 100 women each, and when asked when his first time was, Eikichi panics and says it was in 5th grade with a 4th grader, to one-up the guy asking, who claimed his was in 8th grade.

Film

• American Beauty: The 16-year-old Angela isn't the slut she makes herself out to be — in fact, she's a virgin.

• The Breakfast Club:
  • Brian tries to insist that "[He's] laid loads of times", even playing the Girlfriend in Canada card. He later admits that he's a virgin.
  • Similarly, Allison lies that she is a nymphomaniac who even slept with her therapist before admitting that she is actually a virgin after Claire does.
• In the car trip to the mountain in Cold Prey, Morten mentions (very unconvincingly) that he has a girlfriend and that they have sex several times a day.
• In The Departed, The Mole's new marriage is suffering from The Loins Sleep Tonight. When his boss says that women are attracted to married men because "it tells them you've got some money and your dick works," he responds, "Oh, it's working! Ha-ha! Overtime!"
• Richie from It (2017) is constantly boasting about his non-existent sex life, in between an endless stream of dirty jokes. Also counts as Troubling Unchildlike Behavior, since he's 13. It: Chapter Two builds on it, suggesting it's always been in response to his insecurity about his own sexuality.
• You Know from Keep Off My Grass! brags about his incredibly active sex life at every opportunity so women won't think he's desperate and he can get laid for real. It doesn't work.
• Rascal in Memphis Belle constantly teases "Virgil the Virgin" while bragging about his own conquests. The novelization reveals that Rascal himself is in fact a virgin (ironically Virgil is not, having slept with a woman the day before the mission).
• Kevin is introduced in the second part of Moonlight (2016) bragging to Chiron about being caught by a teacher having sex with a girl in school. It's never clarified if this event actually happened or if he's lying. This also doubles as Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?, as Kevin spends the rest of the film having Unresolved Sexual Tension with Chiron.
• In The Strawberry Blonde, set at the beginning of the 20th century, Amy strongly implies that she likes to have sex with men, much to Biff's horror. Later, she recoils in fear when Biff takes her seriously and starts kissing her in the park, revealing that she made it all up.
  Biff: Well, wouldn't you like a nice, young man to marry you someday?
  Amy: No, not particularly.
  Biff: So you don't believe in the institution of marriage!
  Amy: An outmoded, silly convention started by the cavemen and encouraged by the florists and jewelers. After all, what's marriage?
  Biff: Wouldn't you like to have a home and kids?
  Amy: Certainly I would, but that doesn't mean you have to go through all the...
  Biff: You mean —?
  Amy: Exactly. [she winks]

Literature

• Lampshaded in The Black Magician Trilogy: adolescent Street Urchin and incipient gang leader Cery is amused to hear teenage nobles bragging about their alleged sexual conquests because most slum boys their age have actually done the things they're claiming to have done and don't see it as some sort of prize to shout from the rooftops.
• Carlos Ramirez from The Dresden Files. He talks a big game but when they show up at the Raith estate in the run-up to the climax in White Night Lara Raith is touched that Harry thought to bring a virgin as a gift.
• In the Theodore Sturgeon short story "The World Well Lost", the spaceship captain Rootes is a "colorful little rooster" who spends most of his time in port in various dens of iniquity and the hours afterward raving about his conquests, though most of them are paid by the hour. His crewman Grunty suspects him of being an Armored Closet Gay who's overcompensating like nobody's business.

Live-Action TV

• 30 Rock: Liz says of Jack's career troubles that he's having a tough year: "First William F. Buckley dies, now this? Next stop impotence, right?" In response, he just laughs way too loudly and leaves the room.
• Arrested Development:
  • Gob telling Michael he had sex with Starla:
    Gob: Guess who was just "over her." Don't-I'll tell you, me. I *bleep*ed the business model.
    Voiceover: Actually, they just made out.
    Gob: Yeah...she had all sorts of orgasms.
  • This is a Running Gag with Gob; he also wants his Accidental Marriage annulled but can't bring himself to admit that he didn't consummate it. He and his wife then consummate the marriage before he goes before a judge and says that they didn't.
  • In season 2, Tobias and Lindsay try an open marriage. Both of them fail to sleep with anyone—Lindsay fails to pick up men, and Tobias is busy jealously stalking Lindsay—but they both claim later on that they did.
  • George Michael refers to himself as overtly sexual in his senior year of college after stumbling into anger sex from his study abroad host. In reality, his senior year is not a particularly sexually fulfilling one.
• Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory do this to convince Amy's mother that they are a couple, as she is uninterested in romance or sex (at first).
  • In a later season, Sheldon is forced to work with a colleague he doesn't like. When he discovers that the other guy's work is more advanced than his, he is humiliated. The other guy says it's understandable since Sheldon has a girlfriend to distract him. Sheldon goes along with the assumption, but unfortunately now the colleague wants to hear details...which Sheldon is far too clueless to provide. Hilarity ensues.
  • In Season 8, Amy and Sheldon finally have sex — so in Season 9, Amy is very, very willing to bring up the fact that she's now sexually active, even when it has very little to do with the conversation at hand.
• Xander's classmate in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Teacher's Pet". We know this because he becomes the prey of a Monster of the Week that only eats male virgins. He threatens to sue everyone when they figure this out.
  • In a later subversion Xander gets an ex-demon girlfriend who always wants to talk about the sex they just had. With everyone with earshot. A subversion because she gives more details than anyone wants to know.
• Both protagonists of The End of the F***ing World do this, to different degrees.
  • James claims to be sexually experienced when Alyssa asks, but after he finds out she's a virgin, he confesses that he's one, too. Alyssa admits that she'd already figured it out — it was pretty obvious.
  • Alyssa herself never outright claims to be sexually active, but her boldness when it comes to the matter makes it seem like she already knows what she's doing. When she says she's a virgin, James seems genuinely surprised.
• Daniel Radcliffe guests starred in an episode Extras as himself — a pathetic version of himself who is desperate to shag anything that moves and to shake off his Harry Potter persona by doing such "adult" things as smoking.
  Radcliffe: I've done it with a girl, intercourse-wise.
• Parodied with Dave in Flight of the Conchords, who acts like an expert in all things, especially being a ladies' man. Judging by his tendency toward malapropisms and the way he (deniedly) lives with his parents...
• Fresh Meat: Kingsley dubs himself "The Pussy Man" on the gang's first night out, although at least he only meant it as a throwaway comment to one person, and is suitably embarrassed when Howard shares it with the group later. It turns out he's a virgin.
• In the unaired pilot for the TV adaptation of Global Frequency, the main female lead is listing her very long list of academic qualifications, all of which she has achieved at a very young age (she's no older than thirty). The male lead makes an offhand joke along the lines of "how'd you find time to have a life?" The female lead, suddenly very touchy, begins insisting that she had a life, ending with a completely out of the blue and not very convincingly delivered declaration that she "had boyfriends," the implication being that she's lying and is probably still a virgin.
• In one episode of How I Met Your Mother, we get a flashback to Barney's school days. One of his classmates (probably around twelve years old) brags to Barney that he's slept with a hundred girls. Barney takes this at face value and retorts that someday, he'll sleep with two hundred girls. In a rare subversion of this trope, he actually does. When he calls up the old classmate to gloat, the classmate is quite disturbed and says that Barney needs help.
• In The IT Crowd, Moss does this when he has to pretend to be married, several times going out of his way to mention all the frequent and amazing sex that goes on in his marriage.
• Parodied in the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode "The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention" with Dee and Denis's cousin nicknamed "Gail The Snail"
  Gail: Guess what mom, I'm sexually active!
  Her mother: You're 33, you're supposed to be sexually active.
  • She also bragged about losing her virginity to the gang. Though who would be willing to sleep with her is anyone's guess.
• The "Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Eric Idle spends most of the duration peppering Terry Jones with knowing sexual innuendo, leading to this final exchange.
  Idle: I mean, you've done it. You've...slept...with a lady.
  Jones: Yes?
  Idle: What's it like?
• In an episode of Quantum Leap the son of the person Sam leapt into was a virgin and his "friends" mocked him for it, but according to Word Of Ziggy one of them was a virgin too.
• Red Dwarf: The Cat is constantly bragging about his good looks and sexual prowess but series XI episode "Can of Worms" confirms that he's never actually had sex due to the lack of female felis sapiens. He finally has sex in that episode with what turns out to be a Vampire GELF disguised as a felis sapiens. On learning of the deception he insists that it "still counts" as sex.
• Parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch where Paul Reiser As Himself is interviewed on a talk show and is asked how many sexual partners he's had in his life. He answers three dozen, which the host then mishears as three, and proceeds to deconstruct ruthlessly, explaining that all men automatically exaggerate their numbers, so "three might really mean just two, one, or even zero." A group of proud virgins in the audience stand up to congratulate him and immediately make him their role model to his utter dismay and virulent protest.
• David Rose from Schitt's Creek tends to offer up stories of his promiscuous adventures but is usually pretty defensive about it since most of those relationships ended with him getting dumped. His sister Alexis is far more casual about her adventures because she was usually doing the dumping and has nothing to prove.
• The Todd from Scrubs is known across Sacred Heart and beyond for his high fives and constant sexual innuendo. When finally asked by the Janitor how many times he had sex recently the answer was a shame-filled "Bagel."
• Supernatural has a walking manifestation of this trope and Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today? in the form of Dean Winchester.
• On Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, attention-hungry Spoiled Brat Xanthippe tries to impress her friends by claiming to have slept with an impossibly cool Surfer Dude. She turns out to have based her description of the guy on a character from The Baby-Sitters Club.
• In the The X-Files episode "Mulder And Scully Meet The Were-Monster", Guy Mann tells Mulder how he used to be a normal lizardman until a human bit him, causing him to occasionally transform into one. Mulder hears him out but refuses to believe Guy's anecdote about Scully seducing him and taking him into the back room for a quickie. Guy admits to making up that part and chalks it up to a newfound human tendency to tell lies about sex.

Music

• The Lonely Island would like to tell you that they just had sex! It was the best thirty seconds of their life!
  I just had sex! And I'll never go back (never go back!) to the not-having-sex ways of the past!

Theater

• Rod from Avenue Q incorporates this into his song, "My Girlfriend Who Lives In Canada." Granted, he was hiding something else, albeit unsuccessfully, but there was a dose of this, too.

Video Games

• Astarion from Baldur's Gate III talks at length about the amount of people he's slept with, tries to seduce the player character and other camp companions as soon as he gets the chance, and claims that he plans to celebrate his return to Baldur's Gate with "a night of hedonistic debauchery". Played With in that this boasting is not to conceal a lack of sex life, but rather a lack of consensual sex life — Astarion spent the previous 200 years under the control of his vampiric master Cazador who, on top of a myriad of other abuse, used him as a sex slave to "entertain" party guests, and forced him to Honey Trap victims by sleeping with them before bringing them home for Cazador to feed on. Entering a relationship with Astarion leads him to confess that he initially only seduced you to manipulate you into keeping him around, and that he hasn't truly enjoyed sex in a long time due to the associated trauma.

Visual Novels

• Miu Iruma from Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, and to a very ludicrous degree. She tries to portray herself as someone with a lot of sexual experience by being open about her kinks, like waxplay and being slut-shamed. However, it is strongly implied that Miu is actually a virgin herself; she gets defensive when she gets virgin-shamed (even though she does the same on a regular basis), accidentally discloses that she has an unlucky love life (much supported by her Friendless Background), and gets really nervous when a serious opportunity for sex comes up, like in her Love Suite Event. It is also suggested that despite acting like a slut, Miu wants actual love and not just sex. She would insist on being offered a romantic gesture before going any further, and her fantasy is a Childhood Friend Romance, much to the surprise of Shuichi.

Web Animation

• In a Red vs. Blue Valentine's day PSA:
  Grif: Valentine's day? The day we celebrate love? And Romance? You know... girls?
  Simmons: Ohhh yeah, I celebrate that all the time with all kinds of ladies.
  Griff: Riiight. Then why didn't you know what I meant?
  Simmons: I thought you said Valentine's... Doy?

Webcomics

• T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics seems to discuss non-existent/"hypothetical" relationships often.
  • Though, early strips establish that he and Utahraptor were a couple in college.
  • Also, did he mention that he and Dromiceiomimus had tea... and dinosaur sex?
• Joe in Dumbing of Age is constantly talking about his amazing sex life, despite the fact we never see a female character react to him with anything other than contempt. He eventually admits to Danny "I have never actually had a threesome. I just talk a good game."
• Milford in Scary Go Round. "Listen right, when I was on holiday, I met this girl, and got off with her like a hundred times."

Web Original

• Strong Bad is a non-sexual example of this trope.
• Danny Sexbang of Ninja Sex Party. If his name didn't give it away, about half of their songs use this trope to some degree or another.
• Variation with The Nostalgia Critic. He Really Gets Around, but he tries to convince us that he's just a normal player when really his love and sex life are both freak shows.
• Parodied by The Onion: "Teen Boys Losing Virginity Earlier and Earlier, Report Teen Boys."

Western Animation

• Master Shake from Aqua Teen Hunger Force likes to portray himself as a ladies'... shake, although it is repeatedly lampshaded by someone (usually Frylock) pointing out that he doesn't even have genitalia or any knowledge of how sex even works. Indeed, Frylock and Meatwad have both had (whether implied or explicit) more successful sexual encounters than him.
• Zapp Brannigan from Futurama.
  "Kif, I have made it with a woman. Inform the men."
  • Although ironically, that quote comes from right after he really did have sex with a woman. And they are certain it's a woman this time. Still, a later episode suggests this trope applies to him more often than not:
    Zapp: You're the only woman who's ever loved me!
    Leela: I never loved you!
    Zapp: I mean physically!
• Enforced in The Owl House. Eda has a long list of ex-boyfriends that both she and King repeatedly mention, but we never actually see her in a relationship outside of Raine (who broke up with her over 20 years before the story began) because Disney was squeamish about having a Dirty Old Woman in a show meant for kids.
• In one episode of South Park, Cartman claims he's been laid "like, five thousand times."
• While Mariner from Star Trek: Lower Decks has claimed to have been with everything from outright villains, to gender nonbinary babes, to borderline Eldritch Abominations, she's never actually been seen dating anyone. The only confirmed person Mariner has dated was Captain Amina Ramsey, and that was back in their academy days, along with one awful date with a Conspiracy Theorist on the Cerritos a year before the series started. It's only in Season 3 that we finally see her in a relationship in the present day when she starts dating her former Sitcom Arch-Nemesis Jennifer.

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