Jefferson

In January 2005, I discovered a great blog:  Jefferson’s “One Life, Take Two.”  My life was in a bit of unexpected turmoil at the time – a good friend was going through an extraordinarily difficult time – a difficult time that was affecting me unexpectedly much.  And my own journey down the rabbit hole was at a bit of a point of inflection – I had just started regularly paying for blowjobs. And here was this precious find – a joyously written, unapologetically open sexual life of a hedonist, a guy doing in the open what I was doing in private, only ten times as much.  He was having fun, open, honest relationships with women and men.  He was talking with them about what he was doing, feeling, wanting.  He was writing to me, his audience about it. He provided me with my first glimpse into the world of owningone’s desires, of living them, of embodying them, rather than being ashamed by them.  Everything I did with the lights off, he did with the lights on.  And then wrote about it.

Like me, he seemed to be somewhat insatiable.  Like me, he had a family (though his had burst at the seams).  And like me (I was just learning), he seemed to take special pleasure in dominating women – gently, lovingly – but dominating them nonetheless.  I remember his phrase – “collecting” orgasms.  That was what he did with women’s orgasms:  he collected them.

His writing was lucid, clear, hot.  His experiences (or stories, or both) utterly compelling.  If you’re looking for some great reading, go back and read the early years of his blog.

Later, the blog became more sporadic, more uneven, first becoming consumed with the battle he waged with his now-ex-wife, and then later, becoming more and more of a vehicle for the promotion, it seemed, of porn (which, I assume, was more about money than anything else).  Today, the blog exists only as an archive, a reminder of what it once was (and, I suppose, a continued source of some small – “teensy,” he says – revenue for Jefferson).  He hosts some story-telling events – Spill, “True Stories of Queer Sex, Desire and Romance,” and Bare, “True Stories of Sex, Desire and Romance.”  I’ve never been to either.  The web sites for the two events are sparse, and the one for Bare, at least – the one more appealing to a mostly straight guy such as myself – needs to be updated.  I’m curious to attend the next Bare, but can’t tell when it is from the web site.  [Update:  Jefferson tells me the next “Bare” is June 25, at Union Hall, in Park Slope, and in general, is on the last Monday of the month.  Here’s hoping he updates the web site so you can tell that without e-mailing him. But in any event, e-mail him to get added to the list at [email protected]]

In any event – a few years later, I discovered Dan Savage’s “Savage Lovecast,” and Dan provided the next giant aid to my extricating myself from the closet of shame and compulsion I inhabited for so long.

I owe both men a debt of great gratitude.  They helped show me the way to a joyful experience of my own sexuality.

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