Features

Or, like, on the d-floor at Monkey Bar, on a bike, or in the celebrity squares of Central Library. Critic goes Cosmo and talks to six students about the world’s favourite pastime.

Emily

I wanted it. But I was also real scared. What happens if I get cum in my eye, or if it smells down there? I was the last one out of pretty much all my friends, even though a lot of them were Christians. You come close with other things - bit of touchin’, kissin’, grindin’ - but never the penetrative aspect of the deal.

When we started going out, I said, I’ll give myself four months before we have any sort of sex. Then I realised he was far more attractive than I first anticipated. So we cut that down to two months. One morning we woke up and went for it.

It was different to what I expected – better in a way, I think my hymen had already broken one time when he was fingering me. I was like, ‘you’ve got long nails’, haha. When it came to the sex, there was no blood, no tears. Just kinda weird – a thing inside you, you’re like ‘aw, what’s that’? But when you get a bit of momentum it’s quite nice in places.

Well, then there was a gobby in the celebrity squares in the library, when we were studying for exams. I swallowed that time. Apparently if you eat lots of pineapple, it tastes like pineapple. Then we broke the bed one time. After we started it was like once a day, sometimes several times a day.

Since I’ve started taking antidepressants, I haven’t wanted sex as much.

Sex has made me more comfortable with my body. Being so close to my boyfriend has made me less insecure about it. And it just gives you something to do, really. It opens up a whole new avenue of activities. Like one time, we tried to have sex in a cemetery.
 
Aiden

It’s not something I like to keep secret. Except from my parents. People ask me and I say ‘I’m this’. ‘I also like guys as well as girls’ – that’s the phrase I like. One of my friends said ‘I knew there was something weird about you’. If people ask, I’ll tell them.

With guys, I’m very shallow – I see them and think ‘I want to ravage them’. With girls, I tend to become friends first with them, I want to spend more time with them, and I want to make them feel good. With guys it’s about making me feel good.
 
I met him at the gym. I saw him, and thought ‘he’s pretty delicious looking’. I would go running on a treadmill, and every time I finished he would be there. We got talking, asked each other questions. Then one day we got together in the bathrooms. I was 14 or 15. There wasn’t any penetration, but there was a lot of hands-on activity.

If I had to choose a life partner, I think I would choose a girl, because I’d like to have children. I imagine if I marry a girl, she’d know about me being bisexual. But when I like someone it’s stronger than ‘lust’. I think love is stronger. If I marry a girl, I’m not going to cheat on her with a guy at the gym.
 
Lily

I’m a bike rider. Riding boys is different because you’re doing all the work on a bike. But in sex I just get to lie there. I really like boys that shave their legs - guys who ride bikes always shave their legs.

This one time, I was with a cyclist boy, and we were doing some night-time activities. Everything was going well and then I got foot cramp halfway through! It was such a mood killer. So I left. But my car battery was flat. I was too embarrassed to go back, so I went to the pub to call a taxi. I met Ricky Herbert there and ended up yarning about football until the driver came.

Am I turned on by lycra? At a race you can judge their packages by their lycra. You can see their arse and their diddle. I’ve gotten distracted in races when people pass me and I see their arses and I think, ooh, I’d better chase that arse.
 
Best part about sex? You’re always learning. Like the bike. On the bike you have your base fitness and you get your tempo going. Being a bike rider you’ve got good stamina. I can show you my programme. And I get real excited when I have a road bike ride. It’s kind of like sex. It increases your endurance. Then you also do lots of short intervals.

Um, I think it would be good having sex in my lycra, because it works away the sweat. And yeah, I would consider having sex on my bike.
 
Max

I don’t know when I realised I was gay. I guess I’ve always known, it's always been there – I knew there was something different. I got outed at school. It felt like my world had come crashing down. But it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.

My parents were pretty okay with it. Dad took it better than Mum.

I had already had sex when I came out. Before I had sex I was like, oh yeah, I w

ant to try it. I would have been 16 when I lost my virginity. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would. But I was happy for the rest of the day. Then I didn’t hear from him again and didn’t have sex for another two years. I found out he had been doing it with someone else.

It’s made me a lot more romantic about the idea of sex. I want a relationship and then sex, that sort of thing. Not just meaningless. My ideal kind of sex would be hot and steamy with lots of kissing and touching, while still meaning something to the both of us.

People think I'm a bit of a slut because I'm flirty and like the tease, but when it comes to the crunch, I shy away from it. I guess I’m still innocent about sex and relationships.

In the Dunedin gay community, word spreads quickly. It’s a small, cliquey community. Like, once you’ve slept with one person you’ve slept with them all.
 
Astrid

The physical problems with my ex were just a small part of it, because he was such a psycho. It was like hiding emotional bruises. He had very strict ideas about how he wanted his own life to be, and how mine would fit into it. He wasn’t so much a boyfriend as another parent. We weren’t doing anything fun that teenagers should be doing – we basically just kissed. Amazingly, I got bored of that.

Then I met my new boyfriend, and it was a total flip. Physicality straight off the bat. We have a level of intimacy I had thought I was never going to find.

We were hooking up on his bed near the start of our relationship and suddenly I heard a really alarming noise. I'd accidentally rolled on my phone and called my ex – he was still on speed dial, since we'd only broken up a couple of weeks before. I quickly hung up the phone, turned it off, pulled out the battery and threw it across the room. I still don’t know if he answered or not.

I think sex is a massively important component of a relationship, but the act itself is not always necessary. It’s more about being fully open with each other. That was the difficulty with my ex - we were on different planets emotionally and couldn't discuss anything sexual without bringing other issues into it.
 
Sean

Looks are only as important as how horny I am. There’s no real requirement – I’ll take anything I can get. All the models I’ve been with have been ugly. Mean bodies, but hideous face wise. How many models have I been with? Well, uh, two.

I don’t need a wingman. It’s easier to do it by yourself. You dance close to them, give them the ‘eye’. Bit of a grin. You come up behind them and chirp to them for a wee bit. You know, chirp. Like a bird. Chat them up. Then you turn them around and go in for the kiss.

One time I just did it with some girl in the middle of town, like in front of some random’s apartment. Then the guy who lived there came home and was like, ‘it’s okay, you can finish up’. Then there was this time near the dental school, and a big crowd of people were watching and cheering me on, like ‘yeah, yeah’, haha.
 
Some others are a bit blurry. One is up for debate. Neither of us know what we did, but we both woke up naked, and yeah. But I usually get good feedback, even if it’s not my best work.

I have this scale I use, which is:
1. I’d do it with her but wouldn’t tell anyone. Have to be trashed.
2. I’d do it with her and only tell a few friends. This is your typical, any day of the week kind.
3. I’d do it with her, tell everyone and brag about it. I should be so lucky.

Names have been changed to protect the subjects’ privacy.