S3E1 - Josh, 43. Houston, TX

Growing up in a house full of beautiful, angry women. Showering with a neighborhood bully and hooking up with an Army guy in Manilla who is even hotter than his profile pics. These are just a few of the topics Josh discusses in this Season 3 premiere episode of FRUITBOWL!

For those of you who have listened to seasons 1 and 2, you’ll notice a new, stripped down format. Why? Put simply, all the extra host content took time to write, record, edit and mix and all of that stuff was likely content that listeners skipped over to get to the featured interview. So I decided to axe all that extra stuff and focus my attention to what I am most passionate about: sharing the coming of age stories and sexual evolution of queer people.

My name's Josh. I'm 43 and I graduated high school in 1994.

I was born in Houston, Texas, and I lived there until I was 14, 15, and then I moved to South Texas to McAllen, Texas, which is in the Rio Grande Valley, like right on the border of Mexico and Texas. And I spent my teenage years there in the valley.

My family was really involved in the church and especially my dad's side. My grandfather was like a big Pentecostal minister in San Antonio. We grew up Southern Baptist, so it was like very, very stern religious household.

My parents divorced when I was 12. I went to go with my mom and then she got together with a guy who became my stepdad. They're still together now. He's officially my stepdad. They got married. But he's very, very conservative. Like grew up in the military his whole life and was in the military his whole life until maybe 10 years ago or something. And so I would say on the whole, it was very conservative.

I have two older sisters. I'm the youngest. There's quite a bit of an age gap between us. I think I was kind of like the accident. There's like six years between me and my sisters, and they're two years apart.

I idolized my sisters. They were always into cool stuff and music and living life ahead of me, so I always sort of deferred to them. But when my parents got divorced, they were out of the picture. I mean, they were like off in their twenties doing whatever they were gonna do and my stepdad had two kids and they were in high school. They were like 16, 17. I had a stepbrother and a stepsister. I was 12. So I moved in with them and they were completely different. I mean, they were just like completely the opposite personality wise, like culturally. So it was like this very weird transition for me. I always felt like a bit of an outcast. I mean, I was the youngest of all of those families. I was kind of left to my own devices, which is probably why I became an artist or like a, you know creator. I retreated kind of into my own world, you know, like movies, music, books that was kind of my life when I was a kid.

There’s a quote from Before Nightfall, “I grew up in a home full of beautiful, angry women.” That was kind of my life. Like, you know, I had these two older sisters and my mom and my dad, who was this itinerant alcoholic who was never really around. And when he was, he was kind of not really there. So, you know, it was really just me and my sisters.

My sisters in particular were quite wild in their own way, and they were teenagers at the time. I never felt like the female figure and the female body was mysterious to me. I knew about their boyfriends. I was really curious. I'd always like to try to spy on them, you know, whatever they were doing with guys that they would bring over. I would have little crushes on the guys that they would date and stuff, and I don't remember not knowing the mechanics of what happened with heterosexual sex anyway.

I also was totally unsupervised as a kid. No one ever monitored what I watched or what I consumed. So I would watch movies that had sex in them. I would read books that had sex in them, so it was never really a mystery to me, like the technicalities of it, I understood.

But the experience of it was very mysterious to me until much later. Sex was never talked about in our house. I mean, it was super forbidden. Both my mom and my dad were very religious in their own way. And my dad in particular, he came from like a really big family. He had like 11 or 12 brothers and sisters and they all grew up in the Pentecostal church. You know, evangelical Latino, very strict. And from what I know, my dad's family, he was quite abused I think mentally, physically, and emotionally. Which is probably why he turned out the way he did. But I think in Latino cultures in general, like, at least in my generation, I mean, I think it tended to be quite machismo.

I was the only boy in the family. So it was kind of like you were sort of expected to have this kind of free reign ,you know? And since I was gay, you know, it was even doubly weird for me because not only did I not have anybody to explain sex to me in a way that was nurturing and kind; all those things that you should probably do when you're a parent, to think that you were gay … it was like the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person, you know? And I knew from when I can remember having sexual feelings, they were always about boys or men. So it was always something that I kept very hidden.

I remember the day at school, you know, where they kind of show you like the puberty film of like, what's gonna happen to you when you have body hair and grow up, you know? And I remember asking my father about it and he just kind of ignored me. I remember asking him what puberty was, you know, like what was gonna happen and he just sort of pretended I didn't say it and kind of went on his way. That was kind of the house I grew up in. It was quite secretive about things that you didn't talk about.

A lot of kids learn about sex, you know, through movies, through television, through media, I guess, and now I can't even imagine like kids nowadays having access to the internet and like a whole, you know, just endless misinformation about it. You know, I had friends, you know, like really close friends, we would talk about it and sometimes they would explain stuff to me. I kind of knew the mechanics because of my sister's like vaginas and penises and stuff. I kind of knew how the whole thing worked, you know?

But gay sex in particular was like, I couldn't even fathom what, like what happened or how it happened, you know? Like to me, two men fucking was like beyond belief. I didn't even think that it really happened, that people really did that. You know, in a way it was kind of like I could sort of intellectualize sex as a young kid. Like I understood it and understood what happened, but the actual conception of it, there was like a disconnect in my mind.

I think I was prudish in a way because I'd had such a stern view of sex. The people that I knew that had sex were always very troubled. I knew a lot of people that had like girls in my life that had children out of wedlock or children when they were teenagers and family members that I knew and they always had such a hard time with it. And plus I was gay, which I knew was wrong, and I knew that I could never tell anybody about that, you know, that it was something I probably had to like, take to my grave or something. That was another reason why I felt like this really weird intellectual distance from it. I knew that maybe it wasn't something that I was ever gonna be a part of, you know? Because I wanted to be with men and, you know, and I knew that was sort of forbidden.

My mother worked for a management company that managed these apartment complexes around Houston. And so we would live in these apartment complexes. And you sort of formed these like really close relationships with the families and people that lived there. And I remember there was this really mean boy that I had like a super crush on. I think maybe that was the first time I'd ever really found a boy that I felt this magnetic attraction, and I just kind of wanted to be around him all the time, even though he was like horribly mean to me.

But he was a bully. He would kind of demean me and put me down and I think maybe we had a fight one time, like a physical fight, but in then in private we would sometimes be alone together and he would be normal. It's so strange to even think about this because I feel like this is another example of me going from like zero to a million. And I was really young too, like seven, eight, something like that. My mom would be off at work and my grandmother sometimes would stay with us and this was during the summer, so I was off from school and she would take care of me. In Houston in the summer it's super hot outside so we would go to the swimming pool in the apartment complex and you know, and I would spend like all day out there, you know, cuz I didn't have anything else to do. I'd watch TV and play video games and then go to the pool. And I think one day I went out there and it was just him. It was him and me and we were hanging out and I was like, “Why don't you come over to my apartment and have…” I feel like this is so weird. It's like something I'd probably do later on in my life, like trying to seduce somebody. I think I said to him like, “My grandmother's making lunch. Do you wanna have lunch at my house?”

And he came over and we were watching TV and somehow I had this idea that I was gonna take a shower with him. I don't know why, how I imagined this or why I felt like I had the gumption to do that, but I did. And he was like, “Okay.”

So we went up to my sister's shared room at the time, and went into their shower and took a shower together, like got naked and took a shower together. And we didn't do anything. It wasn’t like we were touching each other or got erections or anything like that. We weren't in there for very long, But my grandmother came in and caught us and she freaked the fuck out. She chased him out of the room and then she told my mom about it. And my mom was really furious at me too. And I always think she knew I was gay and that it was gonna be an issue for me. But I think she always just sort of thought like, maybe it's not true. And then in college I had a serious girlfriend for a little bit.

That was the first guy I was ever really attracted to. But there were many after that were in college and I had many crushes from afar, like closet gay boy, like having crushes on straight guys. I had this roommate for a while in college who I had this mega-crush on for a long time, and he was looking for a roommate, and I thought, “Oh, you know, I'll see if he wants to live with me.” And he did. So we lived together for like a year and it was so torturous for me. Not only was I struggling with my sexuality and totally in love with this guy, but then one of my best friends, a woman met him and they started hooking up. In the same apartment. So it was horribly torturous. That was kind of my, my romantic life at the time: just being like this tortured queer boy that was in love with straight guys.

This is probably a heavy issue in my life in general ‘cause my father was was incredibly violent and an addict, but he was also quite distant. He had a very violent, intense relationship with my mom and my sisters because they were a bit older than I was. His abuse to me was that he just ignored me. He never really talked to me very much and was never around, you know? So I think I had this sort of running thing in my life where I would sort of chase after these mysterious, ethereal, kind of like abusive people. I kind of know that about myself now, so it's not really a kind of a thing that happens to me much anymore. I think more out of reach people that were kind of unavailable to me. I think in a way, we kind of all do that, you know, we have these early relationships and we kind of gravitate towards something that we longed for in those relationships.

As a queer person, I was very much punished for it. My mother really did not react to it very well. Like I didn't have a positive outcome from it. So I think it fed into it: my own sense of self doubt and self-loathing for being gay or queer. Which I think is probably what a lot of people from conservative religious families experience. I never could understand why people found me attractive or anything like that. It was a very long time before I was able to own that part of myself and understand that part of myself. That people would ever want to be intimate with me because I had this notion from such a young age that what I was, was damaged and, and not acceptable. And I tried very hard, I think, as a lot of queer people do when they're not accepted to be what they're not. So it's been sort of a process throughout my whole life, I think, to like love myself in that way, I guess.

I had that experience with that kid in the shower, but we didn't really do anything. But it was not long after that I discovered masturbation. I remember one particular summer, which I suppose was the summer that I kind of hit puberty, but it was also the summer, I think, after my parents got divorced. So I went to live with my mom and I was home from school, but I was alone all day, like didn't know anybody. I moved to a new neighborhood, so I didn't really know anybody. I would just watch TV and play video games and read and listen to music and stuff. What I always did as a kid. That was the summer that I remember discovering masturbation.

So I would just sit at home all day long. Look at the fucking International Male catalog that would come to our house and like the Sears catalog and just jerk off. That was the way I discovered it. I would get hard in the morning and I would sort of like rub the head of my dick on the palm of my hand. It wasn't even like I was jerking off, like the stroking part of it. I would just rub the head of my penis on the ball in my hand and then I would come. And nobody was sort of explaining this to me, so I thought I had some kind of disorder or something, like I thought that it was something that was like only happening to me or something, you know?

I've seen people jerking off in movies, not porn movies, but like movies or like men jerking off. And I always thought the motion of the hand was like stroking, the kind of beating off thing with the hand. So for me it was weird. I was like, “Why am I doing this with my palm?” You know, not realizing that people discover this in lots of different ways and having no one to ask about it.

I had a girlfriend in college who I'm still quite close with. We had a very intense relationship. I feel like we still do. There's a lot of love there.We're sort of soulmates in a way. We still are, although we don't really talk that much anymore, but we're still very close. She was the first person that I had sex with. We were together kind of off and on for a few years and I think we only had sex a few times and it was always very scary to me. I had the experience of not being able to like, get hard, you know, like with a woman, like it being a difficult experience where it was supposed to not be that difficult, you know? So, you know, it was always quite awkward with me because I never wanted to hurt her feelings, you know? I never wanted to disappoint her or anything like that. But yeah, that was the first time I had sex.

I was definitely kind of a late bloomer. I came out when I was 23. I went to college in Austin and I guess I knew a few gay people at that point. I was really proud to have gay friends, you know, and was trying desperately to sort of discover some part of myself that could be with women, ‘cause I really wanted that. I was a skateboard kid, you know skated and played in punk rock bands and stuff. In Texas at that time, at least for the people that I knew and hung out with, it was a very macho culture, you know?

I lived in this skateboard house in Austin. Now when I think back on it, I think like, “God, I don't know how I did that.” But you know, I would kind of confess like jokingly to my girlfriend, “That guy's kind of cute,” or something, you know, and they would sort of laugh and we would giggle about it, you know?

But anyway, I finally moved to New York to come to grad school, you know, I went to film school, so I make films and I direct and screen write and stuff, but really, I came here to get the hell out of Texas. I needed to get away from my family so that I felt comfortable enough to explore that part of myself. It wasn't even really like I watched gay porn at that point. This is pre-internet. This was back in the day where you had to like find a gay mag, like go and like buy a magazine, you know, or dial up internet porn, which it took a jpeg to load for like 20 minutes, you know?

So it was all still very mysterious to me. I started to have crushes on guys and I started to be able to act on them. I think I had just this very freeing experience that a lot of people have when they come to New York, you know where you could just kind of be whatever you want to be. I was so just mystified and hypnotized by the city and the energy and the interesting, weird characters that I was meeting.

And I would go out downtown, like the East Village, lower East Side, kind of gay world. Kind of secretly go to those bars and it just was all an amazing carnival to me. But I started to have crushes on guys and eventually I kind of found one that was attracted to me and we kind of made out and I was like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to feel. But it was a lot of like fumbling around, you know.

I think really the first time it was ever super clearly explained to me was like the first serious boyfriend I had who was much older than me. And you know, that was really the first relationship that I had that was kind of like a long term exploration of gay sex. And because he was a lot older than me and had gone through many eras of being in New York and also had gone through the AIDS crisis and having like a lot of his friends die. I was given this very heavy education about gay sex. The great things about it and the kind of things that people struggle with. And that was the way that I learned about it, I guess. I think I've always the type of person that will dive into the swimming pool not really knowing how freezing cold it's gonna be. I'm gonna go from like zero to 60,000. Move from Texas to New York City and just be fine. You know, like not really realizing what the hell I was in store for.

I had like zero gaydar. Looking back on my college experience, there were guys throughout the entire thing that were trying to flirt with me, and I had zero idea that that was happening at all. No conception of like how to deal with it at all. And so this was kind of the first time that I think it occurred to me like, “Oh, he's flirting with me.”

I met him in New York when I first moved here, like the year I moved here.He worked at this coffee shop in the East Village that I used to go to. I would take my laptop down there and just drink coffee and write. But I knew him from Austin! Like he worked in the coffee shop that I would go to all the time in Austin.

And I I had a crush on him in Austin, you know, before I had come out. And I always thought, “Oh, he's so handsome. Like, so cute. You know, like he would never, he would never even talk to me or think about me. And he's probably not gay either, you know?” I recognized him instantly, but he was and is incredibly handsome, like the kind of all-American hunk sort of looking guy. I always thought he looked a little bit like James Dean just this perfect guy. It never occurred to me that somebody that looked like him could be gay. And it also really even didn't occur to me that he would ever like somebody like me. It was sort of like the captain of the football team who you always had a crush on you and want to date.

You know, like I think it was a big boost to my ego. And I definitely kind of needed it; like a boost to my confidence, you know. He came over to me and gave me like a free cup of coffee.

And there were a couple other people that I knew from Austin that had moved there. One of them I was going to school with who I also had a really big crush on. But I was telling them about it and they were like, “Oh, he's gay. You know, like he's probably totally flirting with you.” So we exchanged numbers. He called me. He's a bit older than I was, like 10 years older. You know, eventually we kind of like we would sort of make out for a really long time. Like we'd go out on these dates, like have drinks and go get something to eat or something. And then we would sort of start making out and I was super excited. I would get like an instant boner and we would make out for so long it would be kind of like a blue balls situation for me. He never wanted to really have sex, but eventually we kind of did. And it was terrible. It was like it was the first time I'd ever sort of been in bed with a guy. I think I sucked him off. That was the other thing that was weird about it too, I would suck his dick and then he never would sort of reciprocate.

So that was essentially technically the first time I had gay sex was that, I suppose. But it turned out that he had like, a lot of issues with impotency, basically. He had a lot of other issues that were around that too, that he talked to me about eventually. But he identified as gay, but he kind of couldn't have sex or it was a big problem for him anyway. And I felt very sympathetic to him. I liked him so much that I was like, “I can deal with that.” I just liked him as a person. I think I was kind of in love with him in a weird way. But that was kind of the first time, which is a terrible first introduction to gay sex. Because I knew that I was not really satisfied with that experience. So it was sort of the impetus to like, keep going, keep trying, keep looking, you know? I wish it would've turned out better.

I would say the first time I fell in love for real, for real, was with my ex-boyfriend who I was in a relationship with for like seven years. He was the first serious boyfriend I ever had. He was the first person that I ever dated who was really invested in, in being with me.

I mean, I'd felt feelings of obsession with people and it was always sort of temporary, you know, like I'd be sort of infatuated with somebody for a while, you know, and then it would kind of dissipate very quickly. But this was the first person that I ever felt like this very deep compatibility and love, you know, felt like I was really in love with him. And he's still a person that's very close to me in my life. He's probably my best friend I would say. He was the teacher of another friend of mine that I was in film school with. She introduced me to him. She's also somebody that's still very close to me. Yeah, he was definitely the person that I figured out queer sex with.

He also had a lot more experience with it. When we started dating, I was 25 and he was 50. It was kind of like a masterclass in queer sex, but it was also like a masterclass in queer history in general. He'd lived in New York City for like 30 years at that point and so it was like learning about that incredibly rich, complicated, intense history. Simultaneously learning how to be a queer person, learning how to have queer sex, learning what it meant, learning what it entailed, feeling more comfortable with it, feeling more comfortable exploring it, exploring my body, exploring his body. Having more friends that had gay sex and sort of could explain it to me or share their experiences with me.

It was really the first time in my life that I felt like I understood my sexuality in a much more deep and open and honest way. I mean, he was the first person I ever bottomed with. I think even up to that point where we had sex, where he fucked me … even then it was sort of like this that was sort of like mythical to me. I didn't understand like how anybody endured that, you know? He was very patient and very loving and very, you know, like, caring about it and, you know, it wasn't a traumatic experience at all. I mean, it kind of hurt, I guess, a little, but for me it was like, “Oh, that's, that's what this is?”

And you know, and in a way, it was super liberating to me. I kind of wanted to do it all the time after that, you know? And I was also 25, so I was like, had this insane libido. I He was 50 at that time and I'm like, God, how did he deal with me at all? You know, like sexually or otherwise.

It was an incredibly positive introduction to gay sex. We talked about it very openly. I remember like rimming for the first time. And that was something that was like incredibly … I don't understand how people do that. All these doors were unlocked to me and I was so thankful, honestly, like that I was having that experience. I think I was very aware of the fact that I was incredibly lucky to have found somebody that I was compatible with and who was like this very loving, caring figure in my life teach me all that stuff.

You know, I don't think I even really understood that other people had bad experiences of having older boyfriends and stuff. I have other friends that have had older boyfriends that have had good and bad experiences with them. But I think it's a testament.

He really is like my best friend in my life. He's super close with my partner now. You know, he's just a wonderful person. I mean, I was really lucky just to meet him in general, like just as a person in my life, you know? But I really was incredibly grateful to have found him, for sure.

A lot of my embarrassing sex stories involve alcohol. I'm thinking about this a lot because I quit drinking this year, which is something I hope that continues in my life. Not because I really felt like I had a problem with it. I suffer from depression, so alcohol tends to not be great for that. So as I've gotten older, I feel like I have to take care of that part of my life concertedly. So I have a lot of bad hookup stories about alcohol.

I was in the Philippines once for a work situation and I it was the first time I'd ever been to the Philippines and I was only there for like three days. So it was this very whirlwind trip, you know, it was part of the world I'd never been to. It was in Manila and I, I was staying at this kind of fancy hotel, like the Four Seasons, which is like a guarded fortress.

And it's also in this area of town where all the nice expensive shops are, and they keep you in this very weird, guarded situation. Like the hotel is surrounded by armed guards and when you leave there's like this guy with a machine gun that's like, “Are you sure you want to go out there?” I was like, “Why is it so guarded and, and crazy?”

Anyway, I was like very isolated in my hotel, you know, and I'm drinking and just sitting around in my hotel looking at Scruff and so I'm like a little tipsy, you know, like back then I like to drink whiskey, so was getting a little hammered in my hotel room. And so I started chatting with this guy online and he was in the hotel across the highway from me.

He was like in the military. He sent me a bunch of pics and I was like, “Wow, this guy's really.” Hot. He reminded me of a Texas kind of macho, tough guy.

He was like, “I'm from Texas. I'm in the military. I'm stationed here and I'm staying at this hotel, why don't you come here?” And I was like, “Well, I don't know how to get there.” And he was like, “Oh, you just have to walk under this tunnel, under the freeway.” The whole thing just seemed sort of ludicrous to me, but I was drunk enough and horny enough to do it.

So I get there and go up to his room and he's better looking than the pictures. He's like this total military macho muscle guy. And I'm this tattooed hipster Mexican boy from Brooklyn. He was definitely somebody that I fantasized about fucking. And this during a period in my life where I was pretty much exclusively a top. I'm kind of more vers now but I tended to top more at that point. It was also really hot for me because he was like, not only this GI Joe type of guy, but he was also like, “I want to get fucked. I want you to fuck me.” He turned out to be this kind of insatiable power bottom. But it was kind of embarrassing because I was so into it and so turned on by the whole situation. And he was into it too. He had this whole selection of lubes, like bottom lubes that he was into and had all this stuff wanted me to fuck him with a dildo, which I did. And then so I was gonna fuck him and I totally could not get a hard on ‘cause I was so drunk. And I was so embarrassed because I was super into the situation and it's just always sort of awkward when that happens, you know? It was one of those situations where he sort of realized that it wasn't gonna happen and then he was like, “Okay, you gotta go.” And then I had to go all the way back to my hotel, like under the freeway, you know, in like this sketchy sidewalk of Manila. It was just a bad situation altogether.

I really like spanking guys, especially when I'm topping. I've never found anybody that I've done that to, to ever say that they didn't like it. It just intensifies the situation and I like it too, you know, when I bottom. But yeah, I've always found that kind of to be a turn on for me and probably for them. I hope so.

With my first serious relationship, with somebody a bit older and also was mostly a top. So I think I always just saw myself in this role of being a bottom, you know, and whatever that meant. I think maybe it was a sort of role that I kind of just took on because he was older and I fantasized about it being kind of like his role and my role. I spent almost my whole twenties in New York City with this man. I mean, we had an open relationship so I had sex with other guys, but for the most part I was with one person.

So when we broke up, I was in my early thirties and I was like an animal unleashed. I was at that age where it was sort of like young enough to still kind of appear young, but old enough to kind of be attractive to guys in their twenties. So I just started to date these younger guys and the first guy that I hooked up with or I was sort of dating really liked to bottom. So I found myself being a top for the first time in my life. A power top. And I was like, you know, kind of into it. I was channeling this part of myself that I had always wanted to like, take control and be like, Grrr. I was just feeling in control.

And it's a very limited view of control and submission or whatever, you know? I think that was the first time I'd ever done that was with that guy that I was dating after I broke up with my long-term boyfriend. And because he liked it. I sort of instinctually did it and because he liked it, I thought like, “Oh, this is a, a thing I can do!”

I think for me, I kind of had more of a kinkier, sluttier side that I was longing to kind of express, you know? And that was the first time in my life that I ever really got to do that on my own terms.

I was definitely one of those people that like, youth is wasted on the young. I don't think I even knew what to ask for. Like forget actually being satisfied. I was just so enthralled by the fact that I was having gay sex in general. Forget about it actually being, you know, what I wanted or being satisfied by it.

I didn't really start to have great sex until I was in my late twenties, early thirties. Maybe it was because I felt kind of more liberated or something to kind of explore ways of having sex that I'd always kind of fantasized about. Giving myself kind of permission to explore sex more thoroughly and different fantasies that I'd had.

Nowadays, it's so much better and hotter and more interesting, my sex life now. And probably much broader and less inhibited. I mean, I didn't really have all that great of sex when I was in my twenties. Which is a shame, you know? I wish I would've had better sex. Not that I had terrible sex, but I was still kind of learning and getting my bearings. You know, feeling more comfortable with myself and like allowing myself to be a little bit more off the leash. I guess, you know, as you get older you sort of feel a little bit more comfortable in your own skin and comfortable kind of like asking for what you want.

My partner, I have threesomes fairly regularly, I guess. And that was something that was kind of like new for me, you know? It's something I'd always kind of wanted to do. But we also have an open relationship, so it's like we have sex with other people. It's this very like free understanding of each other's sexual needs with each other and with other people, which is something I think I've always kind of wanted in my sex life, you know, or needed maybe, you know. Maybe I, I think I was a bit kind of timid about wanting that because I didn't ever realize like, oh, there's somebody else that would want the same thing as me, you know?

So now I feel like it's a much freer, looser, fun experience for me.

It's okay to loosen up a little, you know, and let go. The world and life … a lot of it out of your hands, you know, out of your control, so you might as well enjoy yourself. It's okay to accept that part of yourself and love that part of yourself. I had a lot of issues with that not only just in terms of myself as a queer person, but it was like myself self. I really took it out on myself, you know, like, lashed out at myself, and this is something that I feel like I still deal with to this day. The kind of like taskmaster part of myself that's always trying to be perfect and you know, never disappoint anybody and all of those things.

I'm of the age that was sort of like sandwiched between millennial kind of gay freedom and the AIDS generation. So I think there was still a lot of confusion and guilt maybe about sex, queer sex at that time that I grew up with. Like going to church and the minister saying that people are dying of AIDS because it's God's punishment, which is something I heard in church.

I think that went into that way of processing it for me, ‘cause I felt like if I allow myself to be free, to express myself sexually and to have relationships with men I would be punished for it. I’m sure that’s a thing that a lot of people did and still do deal with, and I think I would just tell myself to not be ashamed of yourself and let yourself have fun and, and let yourself off the hook a bit.

There's a part of sex that I didn't understand about: the way that smell operates during sex. It was super mysterious to me. I knew the way that my, my sisters and my mom smelled, but like with men in particular, like I'd never really had close physical contact with men in like different ways - that their bodies smell and my body smell.

And, and I think as I got older and got more into sex and had more sex, that part of it has always sort of fascinated me. I've always been super curious about it and turned on by people's different smells and, and different body parts, smells and good and bad or, you know, savory and unsavory, you know? I think that was definitely a part of curiosity about sex when I was in the closet, you know, and I would tell myself to just like, go with that instinct, you know? Like, let yourself explore it and be okay with it.

When you'd approach me to do this, I thought, “Oh God. Is this something you want to talk about, you know?” But I decided to do it because I felt it'd be good for me to express it or verbalize it. I was a lifeline counselor for the Trevor Project, which is a suicide LGBTQ suicide hotline. And I would talk to kids all the time. And it’s sort of amazing to me sometimes, like how some of them are so aware of themselves, like at such a young age, you know? And some of them are still really struggling. Even worse than I was struggling, you know? Sometimes I felt like, “Who the hell am I to be like listening to all of these stories?” But it was like one of the most profound experiences of my whole life, for sure. But doing that thing at Trevor was really cathartic and healing for me in a lot of ways. Hearing other people's stories, other kids' stories about what they were going through and bearing witness to that kind of way that we sort of tell each other's stories can be very cathartic and very healing.

So it's a very interesting and dramatic time in queer life with so much possibility, but also so much pain too. I can relate to that for sure.

I had that experience with my film, I still get letters from people all over the world that have seen it and tell me that they saw something in it that reminded them of themselves and they felt like less alone or they felt kind of more understood or they felt like it was speaking to them. And that's, that's super powerful. So it's cool to participate in something like this that maybe somebody will hear something that somebody says on this thing and be able to relate to it and make the same mistakes or not, you know, or know a little bit more about what they're doing or what the different things that they're experiencing.

I think that's a really cool thing.