ESSENCE: What’s the first thing you notice about a Black woman?
KHALID: I might notice her body initially, but what I really like is the way she carries herself−if she’s exuding sexy confidence.
STEVE: I agree. Inner beauty really shines through.
GARY: For me, it’s not just one characteristic. It’s how she puts herself together to make her very own personal style.
ESSENCE: What do you love about Black women?
DONALD: What I love most about Black women is, number one, just being Black.
COREY: It’s not a racial thing; it’s a culture thing. Mary Sue didn’t grow up on my block.
STEVE: It’s the spiritual connection. Black men and women connect; they have an understanding.
MARKUANN: The way she smells.
ESSENCE: What do you guys consider a healthy sexual appetite for a woman?
STEVE: Ladies should just stop playing games with sex. If they kept it real, they’d find themselves on the same page as their man.
DONALD: That can be true, but I once dated a woman who wanted it way more than I did. It wasn’t sexy−it was exhausting.
MARKUANN: Society says men are supposed to like sex, and women shouldn’t be sexually expressive. I don’t think like that.
ESSENCE: Tell me what you think Black women want in bed.
MARKUANN: A man who’s going to take his time and not rush.
DON’ANGELO: I disagree. A woman wants a man to know when to have patience, but also when she’s in that mood, to get her clothes off!
KHALID: But the thing is, women won’t tell you. They want you to already know it. And we can’t read minds. When we think we need to be going slow, we really should be going fast. Sometimes women just want us to pound it.
DONALD: And a guy needs to be able to figure that out pronto. Because there’s going to be a point when a woman doesn’t know that she likes that.
IVAN: A woman has to be willing to tell me what she wants but allow me to show her some things she may not have experienced before. It starts with being able to communicate.
ESSENCE: Do you think women are too afraid to express themselves sexually because of what their friends might think?
COREY: black women seem to be very social. They have girlfriends, and they all talk. But they don’t want to be the one to say, “Me and my man do this; we do that.” If she tells them that she’s into anal or that she had someone else in the bedroom with her and her man, she’s afraid they’ll say, “You freak, what’s wrong with you?”
STEVE: I don’t think their girlfriends trip like that. I’ve been a fly on the wall before, and man, women talk worse than we do!