My First Sexual Experience as a Queer Black Boy in Rural New Jersey
We Were Eleven, Eager, And Woefully Misguided
It happened in his home.
We lived a short fifteen-minute walk from each other and were the best of friends. It was the rural New Jersey countryside and our little town was sparsely peppered into a towering forest that lined every street and the yards of every home. When I knew he was coming over, I used to climb onto the roof and try to see if I could spot him traipsing up the road.
We were close, sometimes a little awkward, and always eager for each other’s company.
Odd, sexually charged little things had been happening between us for months: holding onto each other’s hands for a little longer than boys normally would, shy glancing looks while walking around the woods trying to get lost, and sleeping in the same bed during sleepovers (head-to-foot) even though we had two beds in both our bedrooms (my brother spent a lot of time with friends in Florida by then and was usually not around to claim his half of the room). Things inevitably reached a head one night while I was sleeping at his home.
I don’t remember how we started the conversation about masturbation but it segued into sex, virginity, and girls. We were both sitting up in the dark on the top bunk, whispering and giggling, making up provocative and cool-sounding shit like “Yeah, I did that before — it shot out like a water gun!” and “That girl in class wanted to suck my dick.” All bluster. Eleven was the age at which I had discovered masturbation and was definitely not any kind of expert, but I pretended to be so that I could seem cool.
Somehow, we started talking about how girls kiss and experiment with each other but both agreed that boys who did that were disgusting. We repeatedly affirmed our straightness but decided to masturbate together to see who was bigger and could produce more sperm. It quickly escalated to touching and kissing each other (on the lips). Neither of us ejaculated that night. It was too weird — at least for me. We affirmed our straightness again and shamefully went to sleep. I pretended to be extra uncomfortable during the night and migrated to the bottom bunk.
We did not speak about this with each other or any of our mutual friends.
The awkward energy between us lasted for a day before we were back to meeting up in the street, play fighting, exploring the woods, and poking dead deer on the side of the road with sticks.
The next sleepover was at my home. During the night, we thought it would be a good idea to do more than “just masturbate“.
We snuck into the bathroom where we took turns poking around inside of each other. It was definitely exciting but there were way too many nerves and confusing feelings for either of us to reach climax. We agreed that it was weird and too painful to keep trying and went back to bed — separately. The next morning, he woke me up to nonchalantly tell me that he was going to walk home and that he would see me at school on Monday. He went out through the back patio door. It was the last time that he was in our home until he was helping me pack to move back to New York.
Again, we did not speak about what we did but, this time, we stopped hanging out for weeks. I would sometimes see him with another of our neighborhood friends who lived equidistant between us and whose house we crossed all the time while I was walking from the bus, but I didn’t say anything. He called the house a few days before Halloween to discuss the areas that we were going to target for trick-or-treating. He pretended like everything was normal between us and I did too. We met up, walked around the backyard, dirt roads, and through the woods for a while. When it was late, we went our separate ways.
I moved from that town shortly after turning twelve.
This was my first consensual sexual experience but I hardly ever think about it anymore. The one that I had a couple of years later with my high school sweetheart is the one that I think about all the time, and the one that I often mistakenly refer to as my first. She was a dream. I can’t invalidate this childhood experience though because I think that it greatly influenced my complicated sexuality.
Follow me on Instagram and Twitter. 🖤I Want More Friends!
Share a post! It really helps!
You can also check out my personal blog Metallically Black where I talk about life, anime, social anxiety, depression, dissociation, LGBTQ issues 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈, sex, death, and all the rest.
Check out an excerpt from my LGBTQIA+ literary fiction novel ⤵
