Six Women Share Their First Sexual Experience with Another Woman

We all remember our first time with a woman. Maybe you had only been with men before. Perhaps it was your first sexual experience ever. Did you meet her at a bar and never see her again? Or was she a lifelong friend you’d always pined for? Regardless, your heart was likely pounding. Your palms were probably sweaty as hell. And you almost certainly felt dizzy with excitement. These six women lay it all bare for GO Magazine—the nerves, the heat, the tenderness, the awkwardness, and the messy, beautiful reality of their first queer experiences.

Susana Correa was at the New York City Dyke March in June when she noticed “the most beautiful person [she’d] ever seen,” she told GO. The two chatted and exchanged information. They went on their first date a couple of months later, and after several dates, they finally hooked up.

Susana said there had always “been this thing that ached for something else” inside of her, and this experience alleviated that deep yearning. “Afterward, I just felt more myself, and that’s what made it different than any other experience that I’ve had,” she shared.

Having grown up in a religious household, Susana had always had some guilt around sex, often leaving sexual experiences with men feeling “disgusting and disgusted.”

But with a woman, that guilt melted away. “With a woman-loving-woman relationship, I never felt guilty. I felt like this is God. This is what God would want.”

That feeling of “rightness” came up repeatedly in these interviews. Madison Cuesta, a psychology student living in Salsbury, MD, said her first queer experience also “validated something in [her]” and “solidified a part of [her] identity.”

She met Grace when they were 15 in “the gayest way possible,” she told GO. The two attended an all-girls boarding school in Maryland and were both in the theatre program. The teens quickly fell in love and spent all their time together. It was a sapphic cliché of the highest degree.

One day, when the girls were cuddling in Grace’s dorm room, Madison decided to make the first move and kiss her. Madison had always known she liked girls, but this moment solidified her attraction. “I don’t think I’ve ever experienced, even since then, anything like it. It was explosive,” the 25-year-old said.

They only dated for nine months, but Madison remembers their time together fondly and still keeps in touch with Grace today. When the couple eventually took one another’s virginity, they both lied and said it wasn’t their first time. Years later, they both revealed they’d been lying.

Feigning sexual prowess seems to be a common theme in the sapphic community. Anna-Leigh Patrice, a 24-year-old cam girl living in Austin, TX, also wanted to come off as more experienced during her first sexual encounter with a woman. She had just gotten out of a four-year-long relationship with a man and wanted to explore her queerness.

Soon after the breakup, a male firefighter she had met set up a three-way with himself, Anna-Leigh, and a French exchange student from UT Austin—let’s call her Frenchie. Anna-Leigh arrived early at the girl’s apartment, and the two got to chatting. Frenchie suggested they “do stuff” before he arrived. She told Anna-Leigh that it was her first time with a woman. Confident in her knowledge from watching lesbian porn, Anna-Leigh responded, “That’s fine. I’ll take care of you.”

“I just went for it and figured it out as I went. And I guess I played it off well enough because afterward, she was like, ‘Wow. That was so good,’” Anna-Leigh said.

After her encounter with Frenchie, Anna-Leigh said she felt relief because it confirmed that breaking up with her previous partner was the right move.

“I had ended the most important relationship in my life because I knew I needed this thing so bad, and I was scared that I wasn’t going like it, and I would have fucked my life up for no reason. But as soon as I did it, I was like, ‘Wow, that was awesome. This is totally how it was supposed to happen. I’m gay.’”

Los Angelino Hannah Kelley echoed a similar sentiment when speaking about her first sexual queer experience. She, too, had broken up with her college boyfriend because she was “99.9% sure [she] was a lesbian” and was “ready to enter [her] lesbian slut era,” she told GO.

Hannah met Gemma through Tinder a few days after the breakup, and the pair decided to have a movie night with a bottle of wine at Hannah’s place. They started Forrest Gump, but “within probably 15 minutes of the movie, she goes down on me, and when I reciprocate, it changes my life,” Hannah said.

“I’m like instantly hooked and wonder if this is what sex is supposed to feel like because it was way better than anything I’d imagined. We had sex until probably at least 3 in the morning,” she continued.

Even though she had just met Gemma, Hannah felt liberated in a way she had never experienced before. The sex just confirmed what she had known all along— she was a lesbian.

“It was special to me because it was the first time sex was truly both pleasurable and felt safe for me. Even though I didn’t know her well, she made me feel comfortable throughout the whole experience, and I’m very grateful to her for that.”

Bunsri Trivedi, a 25-year-old nurse living in Dallas, also felt extremely safe during her first queer sexual experience. She met A in her freshman-year geometry class when they were both 15. They maintained a loose friendship throughout high school when Bunsri realized in her senior year she might have had feelings for A. In the most high school way possible, Bunsri professed her emotions by tapping a note to A’s car in their school’s parking lot. A texted her later that day, wondering if it was some kind of prank since Bunsri was “known to be a bit of a trickster.” However, this was no joke. 

After a few months of dating, the two snuck to Bunsri’s parents’ house during the school day and talked about what they were comfortable with sexually, as the two had already hooked up once before. 

Once Bunsri confirmed she was ready to have sex, A took her virginity. Afterward, Bunsri felt “ravenous” and like she “needed more,” as many teens do in the throws of their first sexual dalliances. However, for her, the experience was more profound than just adolescent hormones. 

As a person of color who went to a school that primarily “favored white people,” Bunsri had always felt ostracized by her peers. But this experience made her feel seen and valued in a way she had never felt before.

“I always was very much made fun of for being brown, hairy, not super sexual, so having somebody see me and be like, ‘No, I think you’re valuable.’ That was kind of amazing,” she said. 

She also remarked on how at ease she felt during the encounter, even though it was only her second experience.

“I didn’t feel any pressure through it. It never made me feel weird or uncomfortable. I just felt really safe and happy,” she told GO.

The word “safe” came up again and again in these women’s stories. Jimena Gamboa Bonilla, a 29-year-old life coach in Austin, had sex with a woman for the first time with her best friend, O, and felt she was in a “very safe space of being with another woman,” she said.

The two were at a friend reunion in Austin, where they had gone to college. The whole group was dancing at a club when the sexual tension that had built up over the years finally reached a fever pitch.

“We say we finally ripened. We’re all on the dance floor making out with each other, dancing,” Jimena told GO.

Jimena and O shared a room at the Airbnb that night and climbed into bed together. They began holding one another and kissing, and Jimena said it “felt like a very natural, beautiful progression of the friendship.”

“She’s someone who has seen my soul at very hard times and in very beautiful times, and I think I got really lucky having such a beautiful first experience with a woman and feeling so safe in our bodies,” Jimena said.

In sharing these stories, the six women illuminate something we all know to be true: gay sexuality is valid and beautiful. Each woman’s experience is unique, but each one shares the common theme of validation. So how could anyone say queer sex is wrong? Maybe they just haven’t tried it yet…