Sample Stories
Here’s a variety of sample stories about sexual exploration, abuse, pregnancy, first times, with the sort of relaxed story-telling style we’re looking for.
First Times
In freshman year of high school, I had a boyfriend, Mark, who lived out of town. On the weekends, I would take the train to see him. We did everything but have sex. I once gave him a blow job in the forest behind his house. But we never had sex—I guess because we were both too scared. Once he came over and we were making out in my bedroom on the floor and he fingered me and something hurt really bad. And then blood came out. I told him and he said “Well, you know what that means. No blood on the sheets.” Meaning he had popped my cherry and now I wouldn’t bleed. We broke up later that year, it just got too hard to keep seeing each other, and I had crushes on other guys and vice versa. We stayed friends and I dated another guy and hooked up with bunch of others. But I still never had sex. All my friends were starting to do it and I felt left out. I asked Mark if I could come visit. I wanted to have sex with him for my first time because I trusted him. I wasn’t nervous or anything. I felt ready. I was so curious. We started making out and I told him I wanted to have sex. He said ok and he put on a condom and just stuck it in. I remember thinking, “this is it?” It felt weird, like I was being stuffed by something. We changed positions and he went in doggie style from behind. It didn’t hurt at all. But it also didn’t feel particularly good. It just felt weird. And the noises my vagina made were gross. It was over very fast. Then I went home and I never heard from him again. I tried to call but he never answered me, which hurt my feelings. But I guess it was ultimately fine. I went to college feeling experienced.
Masturbating
When I was fifteen or sixteen my mom caught me masturbating. I was in my room on the internet jerking off and she was in the backyard, mowing the lawn. I didn’t realize she was out there. Maybe she just happened to see, or maybe she looked in the window deliberately, but she saw me. She knocked on the window and shook her head like “What the fuck are you doing?” and then she walked off. I was humiliated.
Orgasms
In dance class we had to do ab workouts. We’d all get on the floor and do sit-ups in a variety of ways. I guess I was squeezing my vagina muscle over and over when we did this because eventually I would start orgasming right there in class on the floor. I didn’t really understand what was happening, but it just started to feel really good, and I would have to stretch my legs and pretend I was just having muscle cramps. I was so young, maybe eleven or twelve. I didn’t realize what it had been until much later.
Sex Toys
I could never figure out how to orgasm and it was always something I was ashamed of. I would have sex and just lie to my partner that I had. In my third year of college I had a gay best friend and I told him about it. He took me to get me my first vibrator. It was a tiny pink bear with little arms that were supposed to hug your clit. It was the only one that didn’t look scary in the store. I took it back to my room and just sat there with it on and eventually it happened. And then it happened again and again. I stayed in bed for hours just orgasming over and over that day. It was great.
Sexual Exploration
I knew I wanted to try having sex with a woman and I fantasized about it so much. This girl and I were friends who flirted. We were both not gay, just kind of curious. I had made out with other women before, but never anything below the belt. We went for a drink at a bar and made out in the bathroom and she invited me over to her apartment. We quickly got naked on her bed. I really liked her body and was very turned on. She went down on me and made me squirt. It was really nice. But then it was my turn. And I just couldn’t do it. Her pussy was so tiny and neat and looked nothing like mine. I was suddenly feeling insecure about my own vagina and then got turned off by hers. The thought of putting my mouth there disgusted me. I apologized and things got a bit weird. I went home after that. I know she was pretty disappointed that I couldn’t return the favor. We are still friends and joke about that night. I’m still attracted to women and I want to try again, but that experience scared me. I don’t want it to happen like that again.
Sex Work
I’m broke. I don’t come from money like a lot of the kids from school do. So I went on Seeking Arrangements looking for a sugar daddy or momma. It’s a lot like a dating app. There are profiles. You can say what you want, for example, “I’m a sugar daddy looking for a baby.” I have friends who have daddies and they can do whatever they want and this man pays for it. It was hard for me to even find anyone to meet me, though. I think it’s because I’m not the typical American beauty. I’m not tall or thin or blonde. I think they expect Barbie dolls. I did connect with a few guys on the app though with varying results. Once I met this man near Central Park, he was much older, forty-six, more than double my age. I thought he was so handsome. I am usually attracted to older men like him. This guy had all his hair, slicked back. He was in a suit. I was like “damn.” But he sees me and he says “I can’t do this. Here’s fifty dollars. Leave me alone.” He paid me to leave and we hadn’t even talked for five minutes. I have a picture on the app so I’m not sure what happened. He said it was because I looked so young. I still think maybe I look fatter or uglier in real life. My second attempt, I met a guy for tea and he had bird shit on his shoulder and smelled bad. So I left. I didn’t even ask him for money. I told him it wouldn’t work out. Third time’s a charm. There was a guy who wanted his balls busted: meaning he wanted to get kicked in the balls. He had never done it before, and I pretended I was experienced. I kicked him in the balls a few time and he gave me $200 cash. I didn’t even have to take off my clothes. Then he said, “I want to do that every Wednesday.” and I said “sure” because it was great money. But I never heard from him again. Other friends have met their glucose guardians other ways- like someone reached out to them on Instagram or found them on Tinder. They get DMs that say “I just want to pay for you to live.” It’s incredible.
Kink
I had an affair with a girl when I was married. We always felt we had this secret, passionate, Angelina/Billy Bob thing going on. We were so sneaky and in love. But it was always just kink, and we were always fucked up at the time. I’m a Pisces, very spontaneous. One night she said, let’s cut ourselves, drink each other’s blood and have sex. And then we did it. She cut her leg and then my hand. It was kind of hot. It was literally warm and then kind of hot, sexy. It tasted salty and metallic. It got scary really fast though, when I realized she was really cut. We had to go get stitches.
Coming Out
First gay sex experience at 67 years old.
This is a true story. I grew up with a very repressed sexuality. I did not date in high school, and barely dated in college. I had only kissed one girl. I always wondered if I was gay, but I didn’t have conscious attraction or desire for men. I realize from the vantage point of 70 years that the Catholic seminary was the perfect place to run away from my sexuality and fears about intimacy. But, as has been the case for countless others, things caught up with me, and I left after my first year of graduate school.
In school I met a woman who was 11 years older than me. We fell in love, and we still love each other dearly to this day. But after the first fifteen years or so of marriage, our sex life began to die. I always blamed myself. And I learned after I came out that she always blamed herself. But neither of us knew how to talk about it.
I met a guy in church. I was instantly attracted to him, which freaked me out completely. He liked me, and we developed a friendship that went on for five years. I constantly suppressed the attraction over those years, but he invaded my fantasy life in a big way, and the few times I masturbated it was to those mental images of him.
We were slated to go to a church convention, and I found myself scheming ways to spend some time with him. I ended up inviting him to share a double-double hotel room, and the way he said yes told me he was onto my schemes.
We arrived at the hotel the day of the convention, dropped our bags, and headed over to the conference center. At the end of first day’s business, we took off and had dinner at the Red Lobster. We were both flirting – you could cut the sexual tension with a knife. After dinner we drove back to the hotel, and we both stripped down to our skivvies without saying anything. Finally, he asked, “Now what?” I opened my arms, we embraced, and kissed. It was like lightening bolts for me. I distinctly remember underwear flying through the air, tongues, hands, hearts pounding, groping, and more kissing. We ended up giving each other blow jobs. He was incredibly gentle. I was like a sixteen year old!
After god knows how long, we drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms. At some point I woke up laughing, and he asked, “Are you OK?” Through my giggling I managed to say, “So that is what I am!” He replied, “I always knew it.” We talked for a long time, shared stories, asked and answered questions, kissing, before drifting off to sleep again.
The next morning I had an amazing revelation. That night with him was the first time in my living memory when sex was free of anxiety. I felt this incredible freedom, this feeling of rightness.
It is no exaggeration to say that my life changed completely in that period of time, culminating in that hotel room. I cherish that memory, and I cling to my newfound identity as a gay man who struggled to emerge from a self-imposed cocoon of repression and suppression for decades. I lost my friend to COPD in February of 2018, but he certainly lives on in my heart.
Getting Pregnant
I was eighteen. It was the summer after my first year in college. I had a super big crush on a boy named Jake. He was a dude we all met our first year of college. We hadn’t known him prior. I kept thinking that he liked me from the signals I was getting. One night at a party we had sex and there was a malfunction with the condom. We were a little bit drunk. I did see the condom go on but I guess it broke or burst or came off. Three weeks later I was bending down to clean something and my boobs were very very sore. I freaked out and checked the calendar and realized I should have gotten my period. I got a pregnancy test with a friend and we went to a Dairy Queen bathroom to take it because I didn’t want to do it at home and have my mom find it. So we sat in that dirty bathroom and watched the two lines appear. We just kept saying holy shit to each other over and over. I already had an abortion the year before. And it was terrible and I promised myself I would never do it again. I decided to keep the baby. So I called Jake and said: you need to come to my house, I have something to tell you. He said, I can’t come today, I’m going out with my friends, and I was like, you need to come today. I don’t care what you’re doing. So he comes over and I tell him and he says “Oh. Well, you can’t tell anybody that it’s mine. My parents can’t find out.” So I protected him for a while and didn’t tell anyone. Eventually though, it came out. But he’s never been a part of my daughter’s life.
Having An Abortion
I had dated the same boy, Daniel, all through high school but it wasn’t fun and came to an end. There was another boy I really liked, Joe. And we skipped school one day and got super high and listened to music and we wound up sleeping together. I wasn’t smart. We didn’t use anything. Few weeks later I find out I’m pregnant. I graduated and got my high school diploma while pregnant, but nobody knew. I didn’t tell my mom or anyone. I was completely petrified. My friend Chelsea’s mom had already helped another one of our friends get an abortion so I knew I could tell her. So she helped me—made the appointment and set it up. I told my closest friends and they all helped me raise money. When you’re there they do an ultrasound, so you see the baby, hear the heartbeat, and I got super emotional. But I couldn’t keep the baby. They put me to sleep and I woke up in pain and cramps. I went back to my friend’s house and cried. I bled for days. I never told Joe. Two nights later I got really drunk and cried to my friend, but then met some boy and made out with him for hours. But I didn’t have sex for a long time after that.
Being In An Abusive Relationship
He was really sweet for about a year. I was twenty-two. Eventually, he became verbally abusive and controlling. He didn’t like that I had guy friends. He didn’t want me hanging out with them. He would try to keep me from them. If I went to see them we would have a fight. He called me names like bitch and told me he couldn’t trust me. He would accuse me of cheating. It started to get physical. The first time, we were in a car. I was driving and we were fighting. He got very angry and hit me on the leg. I grew up as the baby of five kids so I knew how to fight. I punched him back on his leg. But he punched me again harder in the same spot. So I punched him again as hard as I could. Then he punched me again and it was much much harder. And so I gave up. It really hurt. Another time he didn’t like what I was wearing, so he grabbed my shirt and ripped it off of me. Another time we had a fight and he pushed me down on the ground. Luckily I was in college, taking sociology classes, which taught me I was in an abusive relationship. I broke up with him, but for whatever reason against my better judgement we got back together a month later. We moved in together. Everything was going well for a little while. Then one night he had to work. I was babysitting kids. When he left he said “When I come home, these two kids better be asleep.” It was a Friday night. There was no way these kids would be asleep. We were going to watch a movie and hang out and play games. So he comes home and freaks out, completely loses his mind screaming. I played it cool and calmed him down. But the next day when he went to work, I packed all my stuff and went back home.
Depression
My husband, James, and I lost our son in a tragic car accident a little over a year ago. Everything became difficult: getting out of bed, eating, breathing, hanging out with friends, going out in public, going to work. Family members felt for us, but didn’t know how to deal with our pain and were sometimes insensitive. Friendships suffered, because who the hell knows how to deal with this kind of thing. In the beginning, we would forget to eat, all day long. By the time we realized, we would go to bed rather than expend the energy to cook. It felt like we would go crazy from grief. We were all about getting through the day, longing for bedtime so we could end the nightmare of the waking hours. Life was joyless. The light was gone, there was a fog we were walking through, a haze over everything. We wanted to retreat from the world, from ourselves, and from each other. About two months after he died we tried having sex. I didn’t really want to, but I was trying for my husband, he wanted to and needed to feel loved by me. I cried pretty much the entire time. We tried again a few weeks later, same thing. We tried a third time and it was a little better, still, I cried. I didn’t feel right doing it, I felt guilt for doing something so focused on my own pleasure. Without discussing it, we just put sex away. We had always had a healthy sex life, so it was strange not to. I had to learn to put aside the guilt I had for not having sex with him so that I could take care of myself, grieve in the way I needed to. We continue to cuddle and hold hands and touch, see each other naked after a shower, take naps snuggled in on the couch, just there’s nothing sexual to it. It’s been about a year with no sex, and we are ok. I am still not ready for it, but I have a feeling something may happen soon. The other day I was telling James about a friend of mine who was leaving her partner—they had been having some difficulties for a while, and had stopped having sex. He looked up at me and said: “We aren’t having sex”, with a look of torment on his face. “Yeah,” I said, “but it’s not over, we will have sex again.” I went to him and we hugged and I cried.