Sex Lives chronicles the evolution of one person's sexual history. This week: Solomon, 31, from Houston.
I was in sixth grade, living in South Africa, and I was on a bus coming back from a soccer game. There were just three of us left on the bus. I had never jerked off at that point—or even really heard of masturbation—but the others started telling me about it, that it was supposed to feel so good. They dared me to do it, and I was the new kid at school and they were both popular kids and I guess I just wanted to fit in? So I started doing it. I pulled out my dick and it was just me and these other two boys—I did it for maybe 10 seconds and nothing happened, it just kind of felt weird. We all had a laugh and got dropped off.
Later that night I went home and I was still so curious about it that I actually tried it, and I was able to come that time. It was my first time coming and it felt like an out of body experience. It was good but it just felt so weird.
I didn't lose my virginity until junior year of college, but I had done a lot of other stuff before that point. All my really close friends had all had sex before college, and so that was kind of a goal of mine to try to finally lose my virginity when I got to college. It took me a while. Maybe because I was kind of pushing too hard for it. Or a combination of that and I was just not so suave—kind of uncomfortable with relationships and sex at the time. Very wet behind the ears. I was definitely a late bloomer.
When I finally did lose my virginity, it felt like such an accomplishment, something I was so glad to do. I remember I was so fixated on the girl that I finally lost my virginity to and she was definitely just looking for a casual thing. We worked together at the university gym and we were friendly and we met one night at a party and then it happened and afterward I wanted to hang out with her and go on dates and stuff and she was just like “Bro, I don’t want to do all that.” I had just been so excited and wanted to do it again because it felt so great.
I am now in a state where I want to be more casual in terms of the kinds of people I’m seeing. I came out of a four year relationship during the pandemic and after that I moved to a couple different cities before I came to Houston. I was kind of just living my life on the road—trying to, I guess, put pieces of my life back together. There was some crazy shit going on with my family so when I got to Houston I had time to go to therapy and really try to work on understanding myself better, doing some self-reflection and healing. I thought I was finally ready to get back into dating and I wanted to take the approach of casually starting something serious. I haven't seriously dated anybody yet since my last relationship; I've been close a couple of times. The more I see different women, the more I realize I don’t fully know what I want yet. I want more time to just kind of be by myself and understand myself better, understand what it means to love, because that’s ultimately what I want for myself.
The only app I’m on right now is Feeld. It’s an interesting one, it’s a sex-positive app where on your profile you can put what your sexual interests are, like threesomes or group sex or BDSM or pegging or whatever. It’s more sex-forward. And you still do the left or right swiping on people based on what you’re looking for. I thought it was something that would allow me to just kind of look for what I was seeking sexually and experience more without the expectation of a relationship or anything.
Two sex experiences really stick out for me as the best sex. One was with my ex; I feel like it has less to do with like the type of sex that we were having and more just everything around it. I was living in D.C. at the time and we’d just come back from the farmers market on a Sunday afternoon. The light from outside was just hitting the room perfectly and she had on this blue and white striped dress. I remember her sitting on the bed and I approached her and we started making out and then because she was wearing a dress I was able to put my hands up the dress and start touching her. Everything about that moment just felt so good. I just remember looking at her and being so intoxicated by the way she looked and what she had on and everything. And afterward we just laid on the bed with the sun coming in the windows and it felt phenomenal.
The second time it was more about the physical sensation. We met on an app and we’d hung out for a while and then kind of lost contact and then started talking again, and the talking became more sexual the second time around. The first time that I hooked up with her she gave me the best head of my life. It was the perfect combination of sloppy, but then she knew what she was doing with her hands, and she was able to deep throat a bit and it just felt incredible. We had sex after that and it was just amazing. She knew what she was doing and she was just free and non-judgemental, so we were able to just try new things, different positions. I didn’t use condoms in my four year relationship because my partner had an IUD, so coming out of that and starting to casually date people and go back to using condoms was not as good for me. But I remember that with this person the sex just felt so good, even with the condom. It was mind blowing.
The worst sex I’ve had happened earlier this year. I was talking to a girl I met of Hinge and we’d gone on one date and it was amazing. It was right before Christmas, and we really liked each other. We kissed goodnight and sparks flew, all that. She flew back to Seattle to be with her family for Christmas and we were texting the whole time. I was telling my friends that she might be the one to start a relationship with after all this casual dating. I got back to Houston and we finally got to see each other again. We’re on a date and she starts telling me a story about how when she was back home one of her family friends was out with her at a restaurant, and the family friend insinuated that the waiter they had was cute. The girl I was dating was like “Oh, I could never date a waiter,” or something like that. It was like she was repulsed by it. And when she told me that story, I was just so turned off by it. All of a sudden all this idolizing and glamorizing of her that I did in my head just went away. I’d thought she was so interesting and I liked her so much.
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I tried to get the spark again and keep seeing her. And so the next time she invited me to her place and she cooked dinner and it was really nice. We started making out on her couch and then we ending up in her bed and started having sex. And I was just so turned off by her. It was the worst sex I’ve ever had. When I was having sex with her it was like nothing felt hot or sexual or arousing. I was able to get hard but it didn’t feel good. It felt like a chore, almost. This is the first time I’ve ever done this in my life but I faked an orgasm. It sounds crazy, but I switched her around so I could be on top and then I just did a couple more strokes and let out a big grunt or something and then stopped and we just lay in her bed talking. A couple days later I called her and ended it—it was the most awkward conversation.
In my past relationship we got a lot of toys, like vibrators for her that we'd use when I was inside of her. I also got a cock ring that we tried a couple times, and that felt really good. Lots of lube and toys and all kinds of stuff. I was really into that, and it’s hard to do right now with casual partners; it’s hard to introduce stuff without having a few conversations beforehand. But I have a bunch of stuff in storage ready to go. I have straps under my bed in the event that one of my partners would be willing to try something like that. Vibrators, blindfolds, everything.
I think I’d like to foray into BDSM a little bit, I want to give it a try. I’m also into threesomes, and group sex is something I really really want to try. I don't see myself as a jealous lover at all; I think I would be turned on by seeing my partner with somebody else. One of my early sexual experiences was when I was living in Ghana around twelve years old. There was a boy that I played with in my neighborhood. One day we were play-wrestling at my house on the porch and then we just started making out. It went on for a minute or two and then we finally heard someone coming and we stopped. It never happened again, and I haven’t kissed or made out with anyone of the same gender as me again. I don’t really fantasize or get turned on by the idea of another penis, so I think that's what would stop me from going all the way but yeah, I find certain dudes attractive. I’d be willing to kiss them or make out with them. And I’d definitely be interested in having a threesome with another man.
One time in high school I was hanging out with this girl and another dude and we were drinking wine coolers or something and we all went to a bedroom and they started making out and I was just kind of there sitting on the bed and then she started making out with me while he was fingering her. That was probably the closest I've ever come to a threesome, and I liked it. I definitely feel like I’d be open for that kind of situation again.
Most PopularOne thing that I've been kind of considering about my sex life is the relationship between myself and my penis, and how I’m treated being a Black man who has dated a lot of nonblack women. It’s something that is almost to the point of being fetishized or seen as an exotic experience. It happens a lot during dirty talk. I hooked up with a woman on Thursday night who was making comments when she saw my penis—she just kept saying how she was nervous and intimidated by it all that. Obviously, I was like, “let’s take it slow, I want you to be comfortable.” But just having that initial conversation with her making comments about my dick, it just feels like a weird dynamic that doesn’t happen for everyone. I don’t know if I love it. I’ve had conversations with partners about them either only being attracted to Black men or just wanting to try something that looks new or different. It’s not always explicit, but I can make out what they’re saying. If I had to think about it, I’d say probably half of my sexual partners have wanted to be with me on some level because of my race. It makes me reluctant at certain times because it gets to the point where I’m thinking about it during sex. Like is there an expectation? Are they looking for some specific kind of fantasy? And then I just go into a pit in my head. The thoughts just throw me off and I’m not into it anymore. There are other times when I’ve been able to compartmentalize it, just because I find the person really physically attractive and I’m horny at the time and I want to have sex so I just seal it away in the back of my mind. But yeah, I feel like in the grand scheme of things, it probably does like fuck with my head.
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