Sex Lives chronicles the evolution of one person's sexual history. This week: Amir, 34, in Los Angeles.

I definitely feel like I always knew I was gay. I grew up in the Middle East and my family was Muslim; that’s how I was raised. But self-reflecting, I think I always knew that I was different and that I was attracted to guys. I don’t think I allowed myself to dwell on it because of the culture I was surrounded by and how I was raised. I knew it was “wrong” and wouldn’t be welcomed, so I really suppressed it until I moved away when I was 21. I left and kind of moved out on my own and that's when I really allowed myself to come to terms with and accept myself. And then I came out to all the friends who mattered to me and I came out to my brother and my sister. I haven’t come out to my parents because I’m not at that point where I want to do that, and I don’t know if I will.

I was still living in the Middle East and I was on vacation with my friends and my then-girlfriend. We’d never done anything sexually. But just before we went on this trip, I got a Facebook message from this really really cute blond guy who lives in Lebanon. He messages me and starts flirting with me. I immediately think it’s suspicious and that I’m being catfished or something so I don’t pay it any mind. But he’s pretty persistent so we end up video chatting—this was before FaceTime. And my trip was to Lebanon so I was like “Oh, I’m gonna be there next week. Maybe we can meet up.” And so I extended my trip longer than my friends. So my friends left and my girlfriend left and I stayed for a couple extra days. I met up with him and I think I got swept away with the riskiness of it and the newness of it, which was exciting because that was my first sexual experience with anyone.

I had a great couple days with him and then I came back home and reality hit and I felt this overwhelming sense of shame. I didn’t really act on anything until a couple years later. I forget how I met him, but he used to go to my high school and he was in my brother’s grade. He remembered me, but I didn’t remember him. Anyway, he was smoking hot. And similarly, I was on a road trip with friends and we were going to a music festival and he was there. I was also there with my then-girlfriend—my second girlfriend—and I snuck away from our room and went to his room and we hooked up and after we were done I went to the pool and hung out with everybody and it was really, really weird. That was the first time I remember feeling like there’s two parts of me wrestling internally. Like the gay part that wants to come out and the part of me that will be accepted.

A year after that is when I moved away to London and I just felt like eventually it was going to come out either way. The first month or two it was less about exploring my sexuality and more just adjusting to a new city, new people, new everything. Once I settled into that, I started going out and getting on Grindr and hooking up with guys and just really experimenting and exploring my likes and dislikes. It was definitely an informative time.

In London, I had a string of off and on boyfriends, but I really just spent my time exploring the city and working. I was really career-oriented. Not that I'm not now but, I was a much harder worker and I was killing myself. So I didn’t really allow myself to invest fully in romantic relationships with guys. I think it’s also a result of the fact that I didn’t grow up around that, so I didn’t know how to. But towards the end of my time there, I met up with another guy through a mutual friend and we hit it off immediately, but it was very platonic. He was very wealthy and we never partied with the “pedestrians,” if you get what I mean. It was always some exclusive party somewhere, and he’d bring me along to some of them. And once he brought me to this really exclusive sex party where you had to have a code to get in. I just sort of relinquished control; I was like I’m along for the ride and if I get uncomfortable I know how to leave. I went and it was something out of like Eyes Wide Shut. There were a lot of people, but all gay men and I think it was the first time I was like, Oh, I’m 100% gay. This is a point of no return. Because everything was exciting and great and very formative for my sexual experiences later.

In the beginning of the party, I was very apprehensive. Some of the guys would be overly aggressive immediately, which would make me kind of retreat into my shell and then there were some guys who were a lot more comforting, who I think could sense my anxiety. They were really great at creating a calming space for me to fully let go and have fun. And once it happened it was a great time. It was really, really cool. Such a fantastic experience. I didn’t drink anything because I couldn’t see them being poured and my paranoia was like, no. But the coke I was fine doing and that was great. I left alone. I couldn't find my friend and we had agreed that we didn’t need to wait for each other. We agreed we’d separate and have our fun and we could regroup the next day. So I remember feeling really tired and wanting to leave and at that time I lived next to a McDonalds so I just ordered a shit ton of food and went home and didn’t even shower first, I just inhaled the food.

Immediately once I moved to LA, I noticed and recognized the racial aspects to gay life here. In London, people would ask “Oh where are you from? What’s your background?” just to know, not so that they could form an opinion or judgment or criticism. Whereas here when I was being asked that, at least in my experience, they were doing it to form an opinion on you based on your background. Definitely in London, I rarely hooked up with white guys. I definitely did, but the majority of people there were not. In LA, especially in West Hollywood, it’s very white dominant. So I’ve ended up being with a lot more white guys than I did in London.

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When I got here, I definitely wanted to slow my roll a bit because I partied a lot in London. So I decided to kind of focus on my job and grad school. I met this guy who lived across the street from me and we hit it off right away. We became fast friends. We did everything together. And when my lease was up we just moved in together to a two bedroom and then shortly after that we started dating and we stayed together for three and a half years. There was no dramatic end to it, we’re still on good terms. Now he’s like my best friend. We still share custody of our dog. But when I look back on it, the sex—it was fine and very loving—but I wouldn’t classify it as the best sex of my life. I feel bad saying that. But also I think I fell out of love with him six months before we broke up. He just wasn’t very focused and he was a Debbie Downer. He complained all the time and after a while I just got exhausted. I wasn't mature enough to recognize my problems with the relationship, but I think they started manifesting unconsciously and he picked up on that because he was the one that brought up breaking up. And while he was talking like I had a eureka moment and I was like oh my god, we should definitely break up this is definitely not working.

We broke up right after we’d just resigned our lease. We were fine. It was nothing dramatic but it was hard because we had to come up with rules about like can the other person bring someone home or not? And then he started dating somebody two or three weeks after our break up. I was a bit annoyed at first, because our dog really liked him. But then I got to know him and the guy and I had so many similarities. We hit it off really well. Maybe too well, because my ex would get annoyed from time to time because the guy and I would frequently talk and hang out. They live together now. Actually they broke up. But they still live together.

As soon as we broke up, I felt like I tapped back into how I was in London. I went on a string of hooking up with SoulCycle instructors. I would go to their class and be hot as fuck and I would flirt with them, connect on Instagram, keep going to their class and just work on it until we hooked up. One guy I was consistently with, his classes were in Newport Beach, and he was not hot but I would drive every weekend and take his class and then we’d go out to brunch and then we’d spend the weekend together. Go to the beach, the pool, have a lot of sex, drive back home Sunday night. I think that lasted a couple months. And then I met somebody else and we mutually agreed to part easy. And in the meantime there was another SoulCycle instructor at a different location. And we’d fuck in the locker rooms. We’d do the class, be done with the class and then we’d go to the locker rooms and I would linger around for a bit and he’d come in and then we’d go in the showers and hook up there.

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There’s this one guy who owns a gym out east, and he’s very gorgeous, very great body and we connected in my rebound phase. And we had great sex together. There was so much attraction, but he lived too far away and I wasn’t going to commit to anything. And then he started Go Go dancing and I kept bumping into him at the bars, so it became a thing where I’d see him dancing and then on his break he’d come find me and tap me on the shoulder and we’d go hook up in the back break room. It was so hot because it was never planned. It was entirely spontaneous.

I was friends with benefits with someone for a while. The sex was like really really fucking great. I don’t know how to describe it without sounding crass, but it was very animalistic. We would go for hours sometimes. We would go for multiple rounds. Sometimes it was a quick 20 minute thing, too. And we talked about and explored each other's kinks. And then I started to realize there was a red flag because he’d tell me, “I'm doing these things that I can't do with anyone else.” In the back of my mind, I was like that’s not good. But in the forefront of my mind I was like, "Oh I love that." But it was some of the hottest sex I’ve had. I could probably write a little blog post about which restaurants and bars in Hollywood are good for bathroom hookups.

Honestly, sex in public was never something I was into when I was younger. I wouldn’t say i was a prude, but just because of growing up in a conservative culture, it’s not something that I thought I’d ever be doing. I think the older I’ve gotten and the more comfortable I’ve gotten with myself and my sexuality, the more liberated I feel to just do this kind of stuff and have fun and not worry about other people’s perceptions of me.

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