Sex Lives chronicles the evolution of one person’s sexual history. This week: Sawyer, 30, New York City
The first time I had sex I was a junior in high school. This girl was house-sitting the house next to her parents’ house, so we snuck out and I walked the long way around the block to sneak into the house next door. I was raised super religious: Baptist church every Sunday, youth group every Wednesday, so I couldn’t really believe I was doing all of this. I remember driving home—I had gotten a bunch of condoms and I threw them all out the window. I was like, “I’m never having sex again. What did I do?” I had sex before I even got a blow job. She’d given me a couple of hand jobs. But I don’t remember even seeing her vagina—it was all under the covers.
The first nudes I ever got were from a pregnant girl. It was a girl in high school who had transferred schools and got pregnant and she wasn’t with the guy anymore and she sent them to me. I’ve kind of always had a weird thing for pregnant women and one day I kind of put it all together that the first time I ever saw a naked woman— well someone I knew— it was a pregnant woman. I’ve never had sex with someone pregnant, though.
I figured out I was bi in the last year and a half. Right before the pandemic, I got out of a relationship. I cheated on the girl. I was just… I wasn’t satisfied. She was great but it was long distance, and so I was like let me just do this for sex and then it didn’t solve anything and I realized I still wasn’t happy. It came up one night. She asked and I was like, “Yeah I cheated on you.” And that was that. I was talking to my friend about it and he was like, “Dude, that’s not like you at all.”
I was watching porn one night and I was living alone in the pandemic and freshly single and then boom: Somehow I ended up on bi porn and I was like, “Actually I don’t hate this.” But like I didn’t really know what that meant. Before I came out, I was able to be like yeah, he’s an attractive guy. Like there was no internalized homophobia or that sort of thing. I just don’t think I ever like truly gave myself the space to think about it.
My best friend Talia came out at 30 and realized she liked girls, or that she always had but hadn’t pieced it together. I remember calling her being like, “Talia, I watched bi born and I’m kind of into it.” And then there was just a lot of watching, starting with two guys threesome porn, then bi porn. But then I just met a girl and kind of put it away. It was never something I personally wanted to do, it was more like conceptually cool. And if I was in a scenario where that happened? I wouldn’t necessarily say no, but I wasn’t actively searching it out. Anyway, in the middle of a relationship, I came out to my partner and she was like, “I kind of knew.” After that, we’d watch bi porn together and she was very supportive of me figuring it out. At that point I hadn’t done anything yet. And then we went on a break. Then, like a year ago, I started hooking up with guys. I had an orgy. I did all these things and then I kind of hit a weird point where I just needed to get away and I went to Paris for three months and I was abstinent. It was the longest I’d gone without having sex with someone for a while.
