Navigating my early sexual awakening and understanding my pansexual orientation was complex, yet it led me to a profound comprehension of the fluidity of sexuality. Trauma from a college rape profoundly impacted me, but through meditation, massage, and reiki, I began to heal.
My vocation as a masseur, specializing in various techniques, combined with my empathic abilities, allowed me to help others while also addressing my own healing. My journey through different relationships, including a long-term toxic one and eventually finding my patient and supportive husband, has led me to embrace polyamory and an open, inclusive relationship. Now, I bring together my diverse skill set to offer a unique and fulfilling experience for my clients, enriched by my background in massage, companionship, intimacy coaching, and even culinary arts—all skills that help me provide unforgettable sessions with my clients.
I was born—dead—two months premature, in a seaside town in Maine. Don’t worry, like Harry Potter, I was also the Boy Who Lived. Since the doctors were able to resuscitate me, my mom always called me her little angel and said that she thought a part of the other world attached to me before I crossed back over, that I was an extremely sensitive and intelligent baby, with a depth of knowledge and understanding beyond my years.
My mom and father divorced when I was very young, and when I was 5 years old, she married the man that I called dad throughout my adolescence. When I was 8, my family moved from the Southern part of the state to Central Maine, to a small farm in a rural town of only 44 people in the town—including the 4 people in my family. We raised pigs and cows and had two horses and a huge garden that I absolutely hated weeding.
I was a very shy kid when I lived in Southern Maine, but the move to Central Maine thankfully pulled me out of my shell, which helped me make friends quickly and easily. Although I couldn’t do it now, the small-town upbringing actually made me the extremely extroverted person I am today.
For some perspective, I have a very young family on my mother’s side—my mother is only 18 years older than me, and my grandmother is only 34 years older than me. So you could say that it was common for my family members to blossom early.
My sexual awakening was no different. I remember walking in on my youngest uncle (only a few years older than me) masturbating and asking him if I could touch his cock. He freaked out and was hesitant at first, but I was persistent even at the age of 7. Puberty hit me only a short time later at around 8½ years old.
When I was closer to 9, one of the new friends that I’d quickly made decided to spend the night one weekend. When we changed into our pajamas later that night and both stripped naked, his jaw dropped a bit when he saw that my testicles had descended quite a bit and I was already starting to sprout pubic hair. He echoed the same words I had spoken to my uncle: “Can I touch it?”
He and I played regularly—mutual masturbation and oral mostly, but we also attempted anal—from that first moment until age 16, when he told me we had to stop because he was feeling guilty (he’d started getting serious with a girl he was seeing).
I’d had several girlfriends throughout my adolescence, but about a year after he and I stopped playing, I also started getting serious with a girl. She knew that I was bisexual (which is what I labeled myself as at the time), and it didn’t bother her the least bit. In fact, she enjoyed throwing it in the faces of her Mormon parents, who (no surprise) didn’t care for me much. When I was 17 (almost 18), I ended up asking her to marry me, to which she said yes. She and I stayed engaged into my freshman year of college; however, we ended things amicably (because of the distance and strain), and we remain close friends even today.
Needless to say, I was confused about my sexuality—even up until the age of 21—but I wasn’t confused in the sense that I thought I was waffling between my attraction to women and men, or that I was really gay and refusing to admit it to myself (after all, I was out, even to my fiancée!), but because I was genuinely attracted to both and thought I was alone, that I was unique to that attraction. That changed when I met someone who was a lot like me, and they told me that they thought I was pansexual—not gay—and that I seemed to attach myself to others based on my connection and bond to them and not their genitalia.
I’ve taken the understanding of my own sexuality a bit further and am a firm believer in the stark difference between SEXUAL ORIENTATION and SEXUAL PREFERENCE—my sexual orientation is pansexual, but my sexual preference is men. I think, overall, sexuality is extremely fluid for most, but they’re very guided (and misguided) by society and most force labels on themselves because of societal norms without ever experimenting and testing the limits of their own sexuality.
Plainly stated, I am very much a NERD. I did very well and school, and my grades only suffered when I didn’t apply myself for one reason or another, some out of my control. I have never been ashamed of being a nerd—in fact, I kind of double-downed with my absolute love of reading and writing, something I have done avidly since the age of 7.
In high school, I had my mind and heart set on fleeing the state of Maine and landing in the big city that beckoned me. Because I was originally going to take some time off after school before changing my mind, I applied too late to some of my top college choices and got waitlisted until the second semester or the following year; heading off to the Big City didn’t quite go as planned, and I somehow ended up in a Presbyterian College in rural Michigan.
As much as I would have loved to attend Emerson College in Boston or NYU in the middle of the Big Apple, I ended up where I was supposed to be. Alma College became a second home and my friends there became a second family, especially my fellow Choir Members and fellow Resident Assistants.
I pursued a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Unfortunately, due to financial aid reasons, I was forced to drop out at the end of my junior year, but that didn’t prevent me from writing. In 2015, I turned my writing and book review blog into a publishing company and put out a submission call for an anthology of short story Fairytale & Folklore retellings, which got amazing reception and within weeks reached #76 in its genre on Amazon’s list of best sellers.
I am currently working on the first book of a seven book series and hope to, although a bit ambitious, have the first draft completed by mid-December. We’ll see.
Trauma is never an easy subject to talk about; however I feel that if we do not share our traumas, we are forgetting the fundamental fact that we are not alone on this planet because the the experience of humanity and what it is to be human is supposed to be a shared one.
When I was 19 (almost 20) years old, I made the poor decision to invite someone to come visit me at my dorm room at Alma. He’d presented himself as a student at another university about an hour away, and we’d been talking online for several months. When he arrived that afternoon and I opened the door, the man on the other side of the threshold was the man I’d been chatting with, but he was 7-10 years older than the pictures he’d sent.
I should have sent him away in that moment, but knowing he’d just driven an hour, I—being hungry anyway—suggested going to dinner, at which time I expressed my annoyance at him for lying to me about his age and (more or less) catfishing me into thinking he was someone he wasn’t.
When we returned from dinner, he said he wanted his food to settle a little and the chance to use the bathroom before driving back to Lansing, so I agreed to let him come back up and we put on a movie, in the midst of which he kept trying to make sexual advances.
About 30 minutes into the movie, I’d had enough, stood up, and told him he had to leave. As he made his way to the door with me, he pushed me onto my bed and sat on my legs while he wrestled with the robe hanging off one of the bedposts—until finally removing it from the robe and using it to tie one of my legs to the opposite bedpost—all while still sitting on and pinning the other in a way that I could not free myself. And then he proceeded to lower the shorts I had on, lowered his own, and without even the slightest bit of lubrication or spit or even a condom, he rammed his rather large dick in my ass.
I think I must have blacked out, or at least I did in between the pain. I remember I couldn’t really scream, and even if I tried, the sounds would be lost inside the pillow that my face was forced into as he continually thrust his dry dick into my hole until finally finishing what seemed hours later—but more accurately, knowing the caliber of man, was probably only minutes.
He left in a rush, leaving me tied to my bed and in a pool of blood on my bed. I just laid there, embarrassed, blaming myself for everything that had just happened because I invited what turned out to be a complete stranger into my room. I cried myself to sleep and woke up about 30 minutes or so later in agonizing pain; it had hurt during the rape, but the shock of it all had blocked some of the pain while it was happening—and that shock had since worn off.
If you’ve seen the series, Baby Reindeer, it felt much like that. It took me another 20 minutes or so to muster the courage to call my best friend, Lyndsey, who ran to my room as fast as she could from her dorm room across campus. Initially, I refused when she wanted to take me to the hospital, but she convinced me that the darker red color of the blood pointed to possible internal bleeding and that I should probably get a rape kit done.
You may be wondering why I shared my trauma, but I think it’s important for others to understand my trauma to understand why I must set and state the boundaries of what I am and am not comfortable with; it most likely has nothing to do with you, but instead with the bit of trauma that still lingers.
Long before the rape occurred, my friend, David, had introduced me to meditation, massage, and reiki. It was with his continued help and encouragement that I began to heal. My fear of touch and intimacy was crippling, and it took me a long time before I let someone touch or kiss me, let alone engage in sexual acts—but without David’s help, it probably would have been much longer.
We had regular reiki sessions, which let me get accustomed to touch in a non-sexual setting on my own terms, slowly pushing those boundaries until I was able to allow him to touch me in a sexual manner. I remember it clearly—he had me on my stomach while he was opening my chakras, and when he had me turn over, I started to get aroused until I had a full-on erection that he couldn’t continue to ignore.
I remember his words were so sweet and considerate, from a place of love—not necessarily romantic love, but the love shared between friends: “Should we stop, or is it okay if I continue to massage around it?”
“Don’t stop,” I replied, secretly yearning for him to not only massage around it, but to massage it as well. He accidentally grazed my still-erect penis about 2 minutes later, and I grabbed his hand from pulling away, and gently pulled him onto the bed, on top of me.
Now we had made out briefly before, once at a frat party during my freshman year, but there was never true sparks of anything beyond friendship and respect. There still wasn’t, but he awakened a sexual urge that I had buried deep within myself, and I took advantage of the fact that I wasn’t fleeing from his touch.
We made out for quite some time, me lying there naked while he was in shorts and a t-shirt; I asked if I could take his shirt off, and he nodded yes. Without me asking, he slid off his shorts, revealing that I’d also aroused him. He slid his hand along my torso, his fingers quickly reaching my bush of pubes, looked straight into my eyes, and said: “Can I touch it?”
I am not sure if it was the longing in his eyes, eyes that told me he wouldn’t harm me, or if it was the simple submissive plea for my consent that allowed me to finally let go of the trauma I’d been holding onto, but I released it—at least the pain it was causing. It was in this moment that I finally realized that you are able to deeply connect with someone—and that sex can be intimate—outside of romantic involvement.
I penetrated him that day, but it would be months before I was able to let go of control and allowed—even asked—him to penetrate me, something that still to this day, due to the rape, takes a great deal of trust for me to relinquish.
Amazed at how much my sessions with David helped my healing process and ability to be touched by another human after spending nearly 6 months pulling away from the touch of others, I decided that I wanted the knowledge to help others as well.
David agreed to teach me the basic techniques of Reiki (he actually said I had a natural reiki touch, meaning my hands radiated energy without much effort), Lomi Lomi, Effleurage, and Tantric massage. He taught me how to apply certain pressure with residual sensuality that relaxed the person receiving the touch much faster than other touch techniques.
Although I have massaged several woman, I realized pretty early on that men—even those who identified as straight—responded to my touch much more easily. Perhaps, because I was also a man, it was an inherent knowledge of the male anatomy and pressure points that invoked certain responses, both sensual and non-sensual. But my skillset increased with practice much quicker when I focused solely upon male-on-male massage.
After learning the techniques from David, I used the skills to impress paramours (dating again brought its own fears, but I worked through them) or to provide comfort and release to friends whose boundaries with me weren’t so rigid that it would create awkwardness if those boundaries were crossed, but I pretty much stopped practicing the techniques with my next serious relationship (more on that below).
Until recently.
While I never used the knowledge to generate income in the past, 2023 presented me with quite a few blows financially that made me think outside the box for streams of income. A few of my friends were in the industry, so I started asking questions about how to get started, and eventually I placed an ad.
I thought about getting licensed, but with a license comes so many regulations that would prohibit me from some of the techniques I utilize, so I scratched that pursuit as soon as I uncovered its limitations.
I also didn’t want clients that were strictly Body Work type massages due to the fact that the instruction I received was more focused on Sensual, Reiki, and Tantric touch, all techniques that allowed me to heal much faster from the trauma I’d experienced, techniques that I wanted to utilize to continue to help others.
I was originally going to have this section much higher on the page because I’ve had empath abilities for as long as I could remember—though when I was a kid, I didn’t know what it was called or that others didn’t have the same abilities, and I didn’t quite understand or deal with the abilities that well.
I remember that I could feel others’ emotions pretty readily, but it was when I learned I could siphon those emotions away from others to give them respite from toxic emotions that I realized that I might be unique that ability. The one thing I didn’t learn when I was younger is that siphoning that energy, without finding a way to release or recycle it, was polluting my own energy, and as a pubescent (remember, that came early) creature, that pollution mixed with raging hormones I also couldn’t control often led to catastrophic mood swings and extreme highs and lows.
It wasn’t until college—after meeting David—that I learned how to harness and control my ability through meditation and exercise. He showed me how to view the connections with others like invisible strings, and if the connection became too overwhelming, he taught me how to sever those strings to stop the flow of energy. He also taught me how to release the energy through meditation and breathing—but also through showers, to push the bad energy outward and mentally visualize it being washed down the drain during the shower.
I still use these techniques today, and I have learned a few others along the way, including the ability to “push”—sounds a bit more violating than it actually is, but it’s the ability to influence others emotions and wellbeing by pushing positive energy into them to counter the negative. This is especially easy during massage because of the touch aspect and being able to target specific chakras.
When I was 21, after I had left Alma, I met someone who would drastically change my life—both positively and negatively. Unfortunately, that man was a narcissist; if you’re unfamiliar with the term, don’t worry, just know that the combination of an empath and narcissist is never a good thing for an empath. We went through cycles of ups & downs, but most of them were ups, which outweighed the downs.
I am not claiming that I made no mistakes of my own, because I did, which is what sent us on a dark path. Early on in our dating phase, he was adamant that he didn’t want a relationship… so I started seeing other people.
Was it stupid and immature? He thought so, and for the entire 14 years of our relationship (funny that he never wanted one until he realized he was going to have competition), he never let me forget that lack of judgement, or any other petty mistake I made thereafter, and punished be constantly for it in passive-aggressive remarks and by controlling me.
Three years into our relationship, he said that I wasn’t allowed to have a phone because he didn’t trust me, and if I wanted to earn his trust, I’d have to forego having one. We shared a computer as well up until the later years in our relationship (when he bought me one for Christmas so that I could start writing again) so that he could monitor my internet searches and activity.
I had so many restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do, that I began to lose myself and became a horrible shell of the man I once was. I remember looking in the mirror one day and not recognizing the man staring back at me. I had become the person he wanted me to be and the person I was had vacated my body. I had become who he wanted me to be, and yet he still withheld affection and love.
When I turned 35, I’d had enough; something deep inside me screamed out, rattling me until I also screamed out. I told him I had had enough, that if I hadn’t proved my love and loyalty to him in the past 14 years I never would, that I didn’t want to spend eternity trying to earn his love.
And I packed up and walked away from 14 years of trauma and toxicity. And the man I had become while in my relationship slowly faded away from existence, revealing the man I was before it, his reflection finally visible in the mirrors I gazed into.
About 4 months after I ended my 14-year relationship, I bumped into a man I had actually known for my entire time spent in Atlanta and who would eventually become my husband. I made it known that I had just left a longterm relationship and wasn’t ready to jump into another, that I needed time to find myself again, needed time to figure out what I wanted now that my every move wasn’t being dictated and controlled.
Fortunately for me, my to-be husband was a very patient man, and much like David had helped me heal from the rape trauma, my to-be husband helped me heal from the abuse I suffered from my ex. He started to recognize what triggered the abuse trauma and helped me work through them so they no longer affected me so deeply. Of all of the men I dated, he’d expressed the most compassion and patience, as well as including me in his life the most (constant invites to hang out, dinners with friends, game nights, etc—which was a stark contrast from the other men in my life at the time).
About 4 months after we had re-connected, on New Year’s Eve, I agreed to officially enter a relationship with him, a sentiment sealed with a midnight kiss and an announcement to all of his friends that were celebrating the holiday with us. Seven months after that, in the middle of Piedmont Park (and with the help of his friends), I got down on my knee and asked him to marry me.
We got married 2.5 years later, on Leap Day, on a cliff in Puerto Rico. It was the happiest moment of my life.
Some people are surprised to find out that I have no issue revealing that I am married, but I personally think it’s incredibly important to put it out there so that there are no questions about the integrity and loyalty I maintain to my marriage.
As if my sexuality wasn’t already confusing enough, my husband and I discovered together, upon opening our relationship, that the way we viewed connections and relationships with the people who had entered our lives aligned heavily with the polyamory mindset that love is infinite and creating a bond with another person doesn’t cancel or diminish the bond you share with anyone else.
We are a specific type of open/poly called inclusive poly, where the bonds we form with others are shared experiences and relationships, that we only play together and form bonds with others together. And aside from this recent endeavor, those have been the rules of our relationship.
With this, he’s given me a bit of forbearance with the rules, but we make sure that we are still connecting through date nights and activities together. I make sure I set aside time each day to devote to him, even if it’s just cooking us a meal, though we typically spend our days at our desks watching TV and working, interacting with each other during that time.
Because I am poly, I am able to form genuine connections with my clients without harming my marriage, even if they are a bit compartmentalized in the timeframe of the appointments.
Aside from this endeavor, I do have other endeavors that keep me just as busy. I am a serial entrepreneur, which means I have several businesses that also affect my schedule.
After spending over 2 decades as a bartender and another 6 in corporate America, I decided that I wanted to work for myself. In 2018 (while still working another job), my husband and I decided to start an event production company. Our connections all over the world within the industry lent itself nicely to event production, and we put on several successful music events with well-known DJs in the community.
At the end of 2020, I launched two other endeavors back to back—first a graphic design firm, and then a talent management company (which kind of paired well with both the event production and graphic design).
In 2023, after an almost 8-year hiatus, I relaunched my writing and reading blog and publishing company and started writing again in the process.
And most recently, I decided to take one of my passions of cooking and launch a food and drink recipe site.
Aside from cooking, reading, and writing, I also enjoy TV and film, theme parks (although not keen on a lot of coasters), games nights, and electronic music events. Although I haven’t done a lot of it since the pandemic, I love to travel and experience other cultures, and I am obsessed with languages—I am currently learning my mother tongue (French), my husband’s mother tongue (Spanish), Portuguese, and Italian.
