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Sex Life is an anonymous 91���� weekly series that explores the pleasures, frustrations and excitement of sex in the lives of Nigerians.

The subject of today’s Sex Life is a 28-year-old pansexual woman who talks to us about discovering she was polyamorous, learning to have sex for herself, and dating a woman while in a relationship with a man.

TW: Sexual abuse

What was your first sexual experience?

I was about 8. I was a very timid child and my mother encouraged me to make friends with my neighbour’s daughter who was about my age at the time. We would always hang out at either of our houses and one time, she asked me to touch her between her legs and she did the same to me. I liked it and we kept doing things like this until we moved to a different city when I was 12. 

After we’d do these things together, I’d go home and read some of my nanny’s HINTS magazines. When I was 10, I read one of them about women touching themselves as we did was described as lesbianism. I ran to her house to inform her, in case she didn’t know, that we were lesbians.

My first penetrative sex experience though, happened when I turned 18. I’d made a mental note to myself that I was going to wait till that age to have sex and when the time came I met this guy off Twitter and asked him if he’d ever been anyone’s first. He told me he had and so we had sex.

Before we go into how the sex was, why this guy?

Well, he wasn’t someone I particularly liked as a person. That was the main reason for choosing him. I was only physically attracted to him.

Wait, you didn’t like him?

Nope. When I was 12 and hanging out with my teenage male cousins, I heard them say that when a girl had sex for the first time with a guy, he would be all she’d ever want and she would remain madly in love with him.

Ah yes, a version of that insane thing people call Okafor’s law.

It didn’t make any sense to me even at that time. Why would someone sleep with me once and I’d be stuck with them forever? What’s that about? So I decided two things that day: I would have sex for the first time at 18 because I’d be an adult then and the person would be someone I had no emotional connection to at all.

And you made good on your promise. So how was the sex?

It was a very weird experience. I didn’t enjoy it. Every time he tried to penetrate me was painful as hell and it took a long time before he was finally able to. We tried with condoms and wasted about 3 condoms before he suggested we do it without them. When he finally got in, it was still so painful and felt so horrible that I screamed. I also bled. He got tissues to wipe the blood and then told me that we weren’t done yet because he still hadn’t broken my hymen. I was new to sex so I believed that this was how it worked so I allowed him to continue. There was so much pain and eventually, I passed out. When I came to, he was still thrusting and he ejaculated inside me. He bought me antibiotics the next day. I wonder how I didn’t get pregnant because those were definitely not contraceptives. 

That’s horrifying. I’m so sorry. When would you say sex got good?

I continued to have sex with this first guy and it didn’t get any better. While we were doing this I reached out to a guy I really liked but couldn’t have my first time with. Now I had had sex and could meet with him. So we did and I had my first orgasm from penetration. I didn’t even know that I was orgasming, I just thought “This feels weird, but good.” It was the first time sex was good and I was confused because I had just come to believe that sex was a painful thing.

After a while, I started dating another guy that I liked. At this time I was getting regular orgasms from penetration but my school was in another city so we could only have sex when I was out of school. 

I was having sex in school though. With a woman I liked.

*Gasps* Cheating???

I didn’t consider it cheating. I just felt like I was living my life and it was nice. I didn’t feel like I was doing anything bad so I talked about it with my boyfriend. And he never pushed back or complained about anything. Since he was fine with it, in my head it wasn’t cheating.

But to be fair, I was seeing her before I started seeing him and she also had a boyfriend who was not in the same city as well. We just didn’t see it as a big deal. But it was. I felt more for her than I did for my boyfriend but no thanks to conditioning, I’d always just seen any relationships with women as temporary and that I would eventually end up with a man so it was all just fun.

Did you ever feel bad about it though?

I never felt I was doing anything wrong. I think I’ve always just been polyamorous. I confirmed this after reading more about polyamory years later. In my mind and heart I knew I could feel things for many people, so why was that a bad thing?

Preach sister! So how have things changed for you with sex?

This year has been interesting. I have finally started having sex for myself. I used to have sex for many different reasons: a man liked me, paid me attention, asked for it or because I was in a relationship. It wasn’t because I actually liked penetrative sex and wanted to enjoy it for myself.

Now, I choose my partners and if I don’t want to, I say no. For example, there’s a friend of mine who has been wanting to have sex with me. I’ve told him no a few times. He’s also asked to eat my ass a couple of times and I let him but with sex, I drew the line. And I didn’t even like the ass eating. I realised I was only letting him do it because I somehow thought this was a way to save our friendship. But he kept pressing and now it’s to hell with him and his friendship.

So what has ‘having sex for yourself’ looked like this year?

For starters, throughout the lockdown I learned to masturbate and enjoy it. I now make myself cum often. Before this, I would feel so much guilt and shame about masturbating. With the lockdown, a lot of things became less taboo for me.

What are some of these things?

Apart from masturbation, sleeping with people in relationships or married people. Having sex in multiples. I’ve already had three threesomes this year alone. With six different people!

The first one was with a guy I liked and wanted to have sex with but he mentioned that he preferred to have sex in multiples. I told him I’d never had a threesome and so he set it up. We started with watching Netflix but soon that became background noise for our shenanigans. It was such an erotic experience. And it was intimate. I always thought intimacy had to be between two people but I was wrong. The entanglement of bodies just felt so pure. At some point after he penetrated her, I sucked her juices off his dick. Do you even know how magnificent that is?

I can’t say that I do. How did the second threesome happen?

I went home with a babe from the club. I thought it was going to be just me and her but her man was there. We made out and then she ate me out for what seemed like hours. When she was done, her man ate me out as well, I squirted, and then he and I had sex. It was really good.

A random thing I’ve also experienced this year is that getting my toes sucked intensifies my orgasm.

You, my friend, are living the life. So how would you rate your sex life over 10?

I’d say 5/10.

I beg your pardon?

Okay, so I give it a 0/10 because I’m not having sex as frequently as I’d like. But 10/10 for when I get to have sex because it’s always so amazing. Put those together and you get 5/10.