It's a story as old as love: You meet a gorgeous guy online who regales you with stories about his pal Bill Clinton over drinks at the Surrey Hotel. Heady with glee, you accompany this former CEO to the live jazz scene at the Carlyle. Roses, a driver, the whole she-bang. Date number two caps a lovely dinner with the Grammys back at your pad, and yeah, maybe you go back to his amazing apartment and agree to a little barebacking. A couple weeks later, instead of taking Paris together, you're alone with all of the penicillin.
That's what one woman says happened to her last month in a lawsuit against Arnold Simon, the onetime Calvin Klein and Aris Industries executive who allegedly gave the woman herpes:
The woman, who filed the suit as a Jane Doe, told The Post, "He wrote an e-mail that he was very handsome and tall and a well-built man. He refers to himself as looking like Humphrey Bogart."
But was Bogey genitally infected and congenitally dishonest? The suit alleges thus:
Back at Simon's apartment, the two became intimate. But before bedding the fashion mogul, the unnamed woman asked Simon whether or not he had any STDs. Simon insisted he was clean, and claimed he had undergone regular tests, according to the lawsuit.
"We had sex unprotected," the woman admitted, claiming that she was disease-free at the time of the encounter.
About two weeks later, she found out she had herpes, she said.
She's seeking undisclosed damages.
Naughty tabloidy details aside, the case reads like a torts professor's brain-twisting puzzle for green law students: Should she have insisted on prophylaxis? (Jane Doe says she regrets not doing so now.) Is Simon liable for saying he wasn't infected if he didn't know he was infected? (But wouldn't that be belied by his insistence that he got tested regularly?) Whatever the facts of the case, the allegations point to a higher truth: Don't sleep with handsome rich men, because they all have disfiguring social diseases. [New York Post]
[Photo via Yuganov Konstantin/Shutterstock]