“I think part of me always knew that I’d one day end up standing in front of a crowd and telling them about my first orgasm.”
In working on Refresh: Stories of Love, Sex and The Internet, I’ve found that what would cause most people to turn beet-red creates an intense feeling of liberation in me. Sharing the most intimate details of my sex life to a group of strangers is oddly therapeutic.
I’m on my 7th draft and each time I change the script I find that just putting these stories on paper helps me really to come to terms with what some really hard to look at parts of my own psyche. This creates a real sense of catharsis in me, which I then feed back into the script. I’ve invented a perpetual motion machine!
I’m not suggesting that everyone go out and telling complete strangers awkward sex stories, but it has been an incredible experience for me. At the time when most of my stories were happening, I felt like I was completely alone. I didn’t really have anyone that I could trust to talk to about all of these things. Growing up if you brought up anything serious with my friends, you’d be immediately labeled as gay and laughed at.
Ironic, considering some of the things my friends used to do. For years I’d just bottle up all the confusion I was feeling about the world around me and what was happening to my body. Now, years and years later if feels incredible to get it all out. I can look back and not only reflect on how these events shaped my life, but laugh at how ridiculous they were and invite others to laugh with me.
My biggest hope for this show is that someone in the audience empathizes and went through something similar. I want someone to see this show, laugh, and have a good time… then go home and start flirting with girls online and become conscious of how it might affect them. I want them to say, “Wait a minute, that was me!”
Even if it doesn’t change anything, because old habits die hard and sometimes leave scars that never go away. But I’ve learned that just being aware of what sorts of habits we have can be a really powerful thing. Writing Refresh has really taught me the value of connecting your feelings and behaviors. I don’t think that working on this show has turned me into a normal person completely devoid of neurosis — frankly, that’ll never happen — but I do think that it has made me more self-aware.
And I gotta say, that feels pretty gosh dang good.
CPT Broadcast 