Sex Diaries

My friend Brandon posted a link to New York Magazine’s “The Sex Dairies” on Twitter earlier this week. I opened the link and my head pretty much exploded all over the ceiling. Imagine. A two-year project where New Yorkers were asked to track their sexual activity and behavior for a one-week period. The sample size is quite large and covers all races, ages and lifestyles.


Here’s a note from the editor:

Two and a half years ago, we began a project in the magazine that
quickly migrated to our website, asking one New Yorker a week to record

his or her sex life anonymously—the conquests, the agonies, the
onanism. Our interest was not purely prurient. We wondered what might
be revealed about the city’s sex life as a whole. After 141 Sex
Diaries, a picture has started to come into focus (and so have some of
the Diarists themselves, bravely agreeing to show their faces). So what
have we gleaned from these Diaries—not to mention from the ravenous
commenters who pore over each weekly installment? An analysis of the
text begins below. —Sex Diaries Editor: Arianne Cohen

Understandably, I was drawn to the diaries of gay males between 25-35 first. Mind blowing, people. They tracked everything: from threesomes to masterbation to sexual thoughts on the subway. Here are a few of my faves:

The Newly Single Ghostwriter

The Media Start-up Guy

The Gay Commodities Trader

The Horny Editor Visiting the ‘Rents

Keep Reading

Illustration featuring a boardgame grid with a ladder, game pieces, a dice and a card with a question mark. Larger blocks feature scenes from the story including a plate of chocolate chip cookies, a burning car, an open door and in the centre, three friends holding each other and facing a rainbow.

After decades of rejection, I found the acceptance I’d been looking for—in friendship

My friends helped me realize I was worthy of the love I’d desperately sought
Two pink figures swimming

I’m fat. My partner is trans. I’ve never felt so understood

Our unruly bodies continue to surprise me in their overlapping struggles
A person with dark hair sits at a laptop with a bowl of sliced fruit and a smartphone around the computer

My queer friends taught me to say ‘I love you.’ Now I say it as often as I can

My family showed love through action, but my friends helped me learn to say it out loud
Illustration of a person with their head in their hands, sitting on a bed. A trail of smoke rises from their head and transforms into a deer, jumping towards another person who is kneeling with their arms outstretched, in front of tall blades of grass and flowers.

Loving my partner is easy. Finding the courage to stay feels harder

Our decade together has helped me see myself as capable of change, rather than as always looking for a way out
Advertisement