Three Strangers Walk Into A Party & I've Slept With All of Them

on reclaiming our pleasure as Black women

Hey y’all,

In Audre Lord’s treasured essay, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic As Power, she lauds, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic.”

I’m thinking about us, the 92%, and how capitalism, aka the proverbial ‘pornography’ in this sense, has wrung us and worn us all the way out, that as nations crumble we have no choice but to retreat within ourselves and our communities to ground ourselves in erotic pleasures. Where capitalism wants us to remain constrained, liberated erotic energy requires a release, not necessarily through sex, but through pleasures like creativity, reading books, music, and moving our bodies, both freely and intentionally.

This week’s writer Juliet Nnaji, explores how to unlearn the type of shame that keeps us from fully embodying the erotic that we all know: sex & desire. As women, desire and shame tend to go hand in hand let the patriarchal powers that be tell it. There is an internal healing required to stand full in what Lorde continues to describe as “the personification of love in all its aspects…and personifying creative power and harmony,” even when you’re at a bar and two of your recent hookups walk in. And for Juliet and the women she interviews, reclaiming that pleasure is realizing there is really nothing to be ashamed of.

Take care,

Anayo Awuzie
EIC of Carefree Mag

P.S. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is my motto all 2025! If you missed out on our first ever financial wellness workshop with financial therapist and author, Aja Evans, don’t fret—here is a mini recap. I’ll be sharing the replay for a limited time later this week. More of these to come!

Sex, Shame, and the Stories We Carry

by Juliet Nnaji

Some time ago, I was at a party where three people I had slept with—at different times—were also present. I could feel the shame creeping up my spine. It wasn’t regret, not even discomfort, but a quiet, insidious voice whispering, What if they see you? Not just physically, but truly see you? What if they pieced together the timelines, the moments, and the fact that I had wanted them, chosen them, and taken pleasure in them?

The shame wasn’t about them; it was about me—about what it meant to be a woman who wanted, who took, who indulged. And not just once, but over and over. I knew that if the roles were reversed, if I were a man, no one would think twice about it. But I wasn’t. I was a Black woman who had been taught, explicitly and implicitly, that sex wasn’t something to own. It was something to give up, to be careful with, to hide, to portion out like rationed resources.

Even though I had long unlearned the idea that sex made me less of a person, the shame still sat in my bones that Friday night, so I ignored them entirely. Their table was bubbling—music loud, laughter spilling over—a space I would have ordinarily gravitated toward seeing that one of them invited me out that night. But instead, I found a separate table, sat there, and let the night pass me by. I threw glances at their table, at the way the room swayed and pulsed with joy, at the version of me that, in another reality, would have danced without a second thought. I wanted to join them. I wanted to say, Fuck it. But I didn’t. I let shame keep me in the shadows.

The Weight of Cultural Silence

For so many of us, shame and sex are introduced in the same breath. From the moment we understand our bodies, we are taught that our sexuality is something to be managed, something dangerous. I remember hearing whispers as a child about the girl who got pregnant and had to leave school, about the woman down the street who had “too many” men visiting her house. Even before I fully understood sex, I understood what it meant to be the kind of woman who had it in a way deemed unacceptable.

In many Black communities, sex is not openly discussed, but its consequences are. Sex is a shadow that looms over our coming-of-age stories, shaping how we navigate our desires before we even experience them. Many of us grew up hearing things like, “men will only respect you if you respect yourself,” or “No one wants a girl who has been passed around,” or “Don’t let a man take what he should be fighting for.”

Sex was never framed as something we could enjoy. It was something we had to guard. A woman’s worth was measured by what she hadn’t done, by the spaces she refused to enter, by the lines she didn’t cross. And when we did cross them, whether by choice or circumstance, shame was there waiting for us.

To explore this further, I spoke with three women who have navigated similar experiences with shame and sexuality. Their stories reflect the weight of cultural expectations but also the ways they have reclaimed their pleasure.

For Esiri, one of my closest friends, her first real experience of shame came when she was 19. "My mom caught me masturbating," she recalls. "She made me pray and fast to God so he could cleanse the demon of masturbation away from me." Growing up in a deeply religious family, she had been conditioned to believe that her body having sexual needs was unnatural, even demonic.

Jewel, a woman I met in a women's empowerment group, had always seen herself as a sex-positive woman—until an ex-boyfriend shattered that confidence. "I had sex with this particular ex for the first time, and it was obvious that I was more experienced than he was in bed. He called me out with these words: Ah, you're a very bad gal, ooo, see how you were doing during sex. His words made me question my sex-positive lifestyle, and it was the beginning of the end of the relationship."

And then there’s Love (not her real name), another close friend, who still struggles with letting go of the shame. "I feel shame after sex most times, honestly," she admits. "I grew up hearing that sex outside of marriage is a sin, that when you sleep with someone, they transfer things to you spiritually. Some people have demons in them, and you get those demons after sex. Even now, I find it difficult to unlearn. What I’ll say is—I miss being a virgin. I was more at peace then."

The contradiction is impossible to escape. We are expected to be desirable but not express desire. We should look sexy, but not too sexy. We should be good in bed, but only for the right person and only if we got there the “right” way. If you have too much sex, you’re reckless. If you enjoy it too much, you’re indecent. If you want it too often, you’re “for the streets.”

Even masturbation, something that should be private, is laced with shame. The first time I masturbated, I felt like I had done something wrong, even though no one was there to judge me. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had violated some unspoken rule—that pleasure wasn’t meant to be self-giving. Many Black women I’ve spoken to have felt the same—a lingering discomfort, even in solitude.

Even now, I don’t know if I have fully unlearned that shame. But I am trying. I read books that challenge the narratives I grew up with. I listen to podcasts like Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, where other women speak about sex and autonomy with a confidence I am still learning to embody. And I write—because putting my thoughts on paper forces me to confront them, to pick them apart, to see shame for what it is: something inherited, something I do not have to keep.

I haven’t been in a situation quite like that night again, but I know that if I were, I would choose differently. My life is more open now—to wanting, to choosing, to saying fuck it. To not let imagined judgment dictate my choices. Because what if no one was judging me? What if the shame was never about them, but about me?

Reclaiming Our Bodies, Our Pleasure

So how do we let go of this shame? How do we take back the parts of ourselves that the world told us to keep hidden?

It starts with recognizing that our desires are not the enemy. Wanting is not weakness, and sex is not something we need permission to enjoy.

For Esiri, freedom came when she left home and began to surround herself with people on a similar journey. "I'm naturally curious, so there was no stopping me from finding ways to feel good about myself. I'd say what made me reclaim my sexuality was the freedom I had as a young adult—staying alone, meeting new people who shared similar backgrounds and were on a journey to owning their sexuality regardless of what society taught them."

Jewel, on the other hand, found liberation through books and movies. "Although sex was a taboo conversation in my family, my parents unwittingly exposed me to sex through books—novels, magazines, and newspapers. My mom practically bought Mills and Boon romance novels for my siblings and me to read. Those books gave me a different POV about sex. I saw it as something humans biologically crave—a pleasurable act."

We have to unlearn the stories we’ve been told—the ones that reduce us to how much or how little we have given, the ones that tell us that our pleasure is something to be ashamed of. We have to rewrite those narratives, for ourselves and for each other.

That means having open conversations, sharing our experiences, and refusing to let shame dictate our choices. It means giving ourselves permission to explore, to say yes without guilt and no without fear. It means reclaiming our sexuality as something that is ours. Not to men, not to society, not to a measuring stick of worthiness.

The shame isn’t entirely gone—how could it be? I am a Black woman. An African woman. The weight of cultural expectations is something I was born into. But I am learning, slowly, to strip that weight away. To stand in a room, no matter who is there, and to know that I am whole.

When I think back to that night, I know one thing to be true: the woman I am now would have danced. And laughed loudly. And enjoyed the night. Because I have nothing to be ashamed of. Because I am allowed to want, and so are you.

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Juliet Nnaji believes in the magic of words. A Nigerian writer, spoken word poet, and storyteller, her work often explores the delicate balance between vulnerability and strength, particularly through the lens of womanhood and social justice.

From performing at festivals like LIPFEST and LABAF to sharing stages with luminaries like Wole Soyinka, interlocuting alongside Tade Ipadeola in a celebration of poetry, Juliet's voice carries the kind of clarity that echoes long after the final line. Her poetry is a bridge between cultures, conversations, and people-whether through her WO2WA Renshi poetry exchange between West Oakland, California, and Lagos, Nigeria, or her deeply evocative articles. You can follow her on Instagram or Twitter.