In our first interview with a male guest, we're pulling out all of the stops. Sebastien is an ex New York City rent boy and long term friend of mine. We’ll go in depth about his ‘job,’ the world of chemsex, his spiral into addiction and his recovery. Tune in to listen to his story now.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

4:02 How we met

6:25 How did a foreigner find himself at UCLA

7:12 Dry wit disclaimer

9:48 What kind of household did you grow up in?

10:39 Did you have a sense of your sexuality or asexuality when you were a boy?

14:36 What was your relationship like with your parents?

24:52 Childhood trauma and being denied humanity

26:36 The transition from being private to being a sex worker

32:46 Sexual hierarchies

34:36 Must you be a dom or sub in the gay community?

37:30 What is the true nature of someone who flips?

51:35 what is your favorite kind of man to interact with?

1:05:45 Is it difficult for someone who is overweight or unattractive in the gay community

1:07:37 Key sexual differences between men and women

1:10:12 Does sexual consent exist in the gay community

1:20:55 Will you struggle with addiction for the rest of your life or can your be temperate?

1:26:48 Was being a sex worker a full time job?

1:29:46 More key differences between men and women. Novelty and variety.

1:34:52 Are viagra, Trimix, or Cialis addictive?

1:35:51 Once a ho always a ho?

1:36:40 How do you give back to the community?

 Welcome to the closeness podcast, your new sexual education. My name is Tari. I'm your host. And after nearly 60 episodes of closeness today's interview features our first male guest. If you haven't done so already, please take a moment to subscribe to our podcast@youtube.com/closeness or anywhere else. Podcasts can be found. Now, are you ready to come closer? Let's get started. Today's interview is with a friend of mine who I've known for nearly 25 years. And what I think you'll find fascinating about his story aside from the juicy details of this title and the cover art is this man's sexual or even non-sexual journey over the years. But before we jump into this story today, I want to use this opportunity to spend a few minutes talking about my background, how I grew up in my story as well. And interestingly, whether we're talking about mostly spiritually, financially, or sexually, we both took such different paths to become the men who we are today. Speaker 0 00:00:55 I think you're going to find both of our stories, fascinating, interesting, and fun to listen to. So let me tie it all together. My friend, Sebastian and I met while completing our undergrad at UCLA, but I want to share a little bit about how I wound up there prior to living in Los Angeles. It was my senior year at UC Santa Barbara, and I had already spent one year living abroad in Venice on top of spending about two years, studying Italian before living abroad. I wasn't ready to graduate because I was having so much fun. So I petitioned the UC system to allow me to extend my college education for one more quarter, while I transferred down to UCLA there, I would take Japanese Italian conversation, modern dance and jazz, and to my luck and surprise, I wound up with Italian roommates as well. This allowed me to keep practicing the language, to be social with Italians and to keep the Italian language at the forefront of my mind. Now I had studied philosophy, ethics, public policy, art history, and Italian in Italian and in Italy, and also had to give my final exams orally in Italian. For those of you who don't know is a very different system there, you don't get an, a, B, C, or D. You get a zero to 30 or three. <inaudible> like 30 and high marks. You get this grade by sitting in front of your teacher's desk and conversing with her, impressing her with your knowledge. And if everything works out the way it should, then you get your high marks. If not, you get lashings with the back of