S2E1 - Jerusha's Burrito Date
In this first episode of our second season, we unveil a new format that features an informal conversation with Dave and an in-studio guest that comes AFTER the featured interview. Join us, won’t you?
Originally from the small conservative town of Puyallup, Washington, Jerusha took her time exploring her sexuality during her adolescence. In her first year of high school, she dated a guy who she later found out was gay. There were also a few hesitant explorations into queer sex (bathroom sex, stolen kisses with a cheerleader) but she didn’t come out fully until college.
Jerusha has some advice for anyone - gay, straight or anyone in between - who is looking to improve their dating game. One story includes getting hot and heavy with a potential mate and then realizing they weren’t compatible in bed - something we can all identify with!
Finally, Jerusha has some solid tips for anyone dating and looking for love: be true to yourself and feel secure about your abilities and your boundaries.
My name is Jerusha, and I am 31. I graduated high school in 2006.
I typically define myself as a lesbian and sometimes just throw down the gay card. I tend to be too twinkie to be butch.
So I grew up in a tiny little town called Puyallup with a little fair. Yeah, and I was a pretty conservative little town.At the time, I would probably say 20,000 people max. So not, not super tiny, but also not super large. I've heard from my parents that are still there that it's getting more liberal, but definitely conservative at the time.
My family was pretty straightforward. My mom basically worked during the day and my dad worked at night. So it was mostly my mom and I. And then my grandma was around all the time. Those three people in my family are very liberal. Mostly the rest of my family is mostly conservative.
As far as my queer identity goes. My parents were mostly accepting. My mom was scared because of how conservative everything was. She was just scared for my safety. But she was fine with the actual being gay thing. My grandma. Her response to me coming out to her was “And?” And then my dad. It's just we don't talk about it. We don't talk about a lot. So it's just one more thing we don't talk about. I mean, he knows, but he's just not. We're just not very close.
When I first learned about sex was Titanic came out in fourth grade, and the Leo DiCaprio Kate Winslet thing was a huge deal in my fourth grade class. So, yeah, the scene with the handprint is the first time I really considered sex the thing. It’s the only thing I remember from the movie. I remember thinking, because my mom kind of got a little bit uncomfortable, and kind of looked over at me nervously, like, do I have to explain this kind of thing? And I was like, Oh, they're not just having fun, but I didn't have a word for it specifically at that time. No, my mom just kind of let me come to my own conclusions. It's the same reason she didn't get upset when I was 12 and sang along to Shaggy's wasn't me. She was just like, “You keep doing that. We'll talk about that later.”
A lot of my education around queer identity, it was mostly through movies and my first celebrity crush was Natalie Portman, specifically in Attack of the Clone Wars, and specifically in that scene where they're in the battleground coliseum kind of area. At that point, I was like, “Oh, oh, oh, this is a thing.” I think I first learned about queer sex when watching Cruel Intentions in Junior High, but then I actually understood it a little bit later when MySpace became a thing and there were like other queer people that I could talk to and stuff, and they kind of gave me a little bit more context as to what that was. I wasn't just friends with Tom.
We had one computer. It was the family computer. It was downstairs. We had one phone line, so there was never a guarantee that the download would actually succeed. At least in the hour that I had between parents being home. So no, not really. You know, I think deviant art was about as close as I got. It was surprising what you could find because you just had to get creative. Yeah, and it was always easy to pick out when you had to clear the history. I mean, deviant art, it doesn't look like any other. It even had a favicon before anything else really had a favicon so you’re like delete, delete, delete.
My mom had the talk with me. At this point my mom and I laugh about it, but she just basically said, “So sex is fun and it can be very fun. Just keep an eye out and watch out for yourself because sometimes, some things can, you know, be a lifelong consequence.” And she was just like otherwise, you know, have fun with it. We definitely talked about HIV.
One of my grandma's friends had AIDS, and he got AIDS back in the eighties. He was on those old retro antiretrovirals where his face just sunk in. And so I asked my grandma one time when I was young, like, “Why does he look like a skeleton?” And so then that was when they started telling me, explaining what that was. And just, you know, I was very young when I asked, but just progressively as I got older, they would explain a little bit more and give a little more context. I think it was easier for my grandma to explain it just because she worked as essentially a visiting nurse back in the eighties. So it was like the original hospice kind of idea. And so she had a lot of HIV and AIDS patients. So for her it was just like explanation number 642.
It was the early 2000s where like in a smaller town, like there wasn't really a vibrant queer scene that I could really tap into. And I don't know, it was just kind of how I learned because most of my friends, we didn't talk about that as an option and we didn't really, you know, it was definitely a time of less being woke, more of just making gay jokes, so it wasn't really treated with the respect it should have had.
My first boyfriend was actually queer. We dated in seventh grade. There wasn’t really a conversation around the possibility of being gay at that point. We both played sports and we were in that popular group, jock group. Gay wasn’t an option. Even asking about it wasn’t really an option. And then by senior year of high school, we had broken up long before then. But he went to a different high school and then we connected again later and he was like, “I got to tell you, I'm gay.” And I was like, “Hey, that's great.”
So my first crush in real life was a really good friend of mine named Sarah. I think we had known each other since sixth or seventh grade. Yeah, I think so. It was when I started playing soccer. And so I didn't meet her on the soccer team, but I met her through friends and parties and stuff. I had a total crush on her. She gave me lots of questions and challenged a lot of my internalized homophobia.
Sarah and I were very good friends. I just assumed that's how you feel about friends because we were friends since junior high. And I realized in high school one of my friends was talking about how she had a crush on this guy and she was describing the feeling. And I was like, “Oh, that's not just a friendship.” But yeah, she was definitely my first crush and definitely challenged that a little bit.
I would say the first time I kind of acted on a curiosity was at a house party. I got the guts up to flirt with one of the cheerleaders, and I actually kind of flirted with her and just kind of saw like if that was a thing that I can get myself to do and if it felt good. Yeah, I think we kissed, but totally not in a gay way, right? Maybe not for her, but definitely for me. Definitely a gay way for me, I guess kind of led to a couple more makeout sessions that had a lot of hands moving. But both of us were too scared to go into the whole sex thing. And we both had boyfriends at the time, so. I was in 10th grade. That was my first time fooling around with a girl.
After I had that little flirtation, I kind of DL started dating a girl because I got my confidence up. And so I was like, “Oh, I'm going to try this other cute girl.” And we started dating. And for some reason we kind of got the urge to just go for it and try to have sex. And it was at school, in the bathroom, in the handicapped stall. I was not a very classy girl, and that was definitely the first way I had sex. We kind of had started making out and then I was kind of like, I don't want to stop it. And she was like, “neither do I.” And she was just like, “Come on.” And I just went with it.
Oh, what was attempted? Definitely a little bit of fingering. I kind of wanted to go down on her, but I didn't really quite know what to do with that. I was like, It's not giving you a blowjob, so I don't really know how that's going to work. So I went down and failed miserably. I couldn't find anything. I didn't know what I was looking for. I was just going for it. And I think at some point she was like, “Okay, that's not working.” And I was like, “Okay, let's try something else.” But I think at that point I think I had gotten more worked up than her. And so I was just like, All right, if we're doing it, I'm doing it. And she was a little bit more I think she got a little bit gun shy. I was definitely driving. She was like the person holding onto the wheel on this. I don't think she had a lesbian experience before. Like I say, we were kind of on the DL, so we didn't really get super far into that kind of stuff.
Definitely far enough that it was more than innocent kissing. But we also kind of, it was interesting because I think neither of us were ready to come out to family or do anything like that. So she and I would kind of go on dates and stuff, but like primarily it was stolen moment kind of stuff and like we didn't really talk a lot about deeper stuff, I think, because we both had that very internalized kind of problem. Yeah. And you're just like, I don't know how to actually date, so. So I think it evolved into a little bit more because one of her friends got us so we're kind of like we're a little bit more open with some of her friends. She was definitely more in the art nerd side of the school. So I think they were a little bit more open to the idea that that could be a thing. So we were a little bit more friendly with them.
I do have one awkward sex story. It was when I was still really kind of filling out my queer self. And I had a coworker who was like, “Oh, I kind of want to have a threesome with her and her boyfriend.” So we decided to go for it because I was like, I got to understand, what am I totally into. Because I only had sex with like one woman and, you know, a 15 year old guy. So my option, I didn't have a breadth of great experiences on either side. So I was just like, let me see how this is going to work. So I joined in and apparently he did not really want to have a threesome and it really just turned into her and I having sex. And he, like, wanted to be part of it, but not he, like, couldn't get his way in. So that was very embarrassing because then at some point he was like, “All right, so I'm just going to go now.” And I was just like, Oh, my God. I just totally, I was just like, Oh, my God, I'm a homewrecker. I'm just going to ruin everything. And it was, yeah, I think that was the last threeway. It was just like, I can't, I can't do that. Yeah, inevitably someone's going to pair off. At least that's what I've heard from a lot of friends. And I'm not that generous in a threeway.
The first person I truly fell in love with was the woman who is in the process of becoming my ex-wife. We met in college. I was her housing freshman orientation leader and we kind of flirted for a few years. And then finally in my senior year, she asked me out and we started dating and we vibed hard on the first date. And, you know, we went through a lot together like we were together for almost eight years.
The confirmation that it was definitely more than just a date was the first time I kissed her. And just everything just flowed. It just went and it's supposed to be just like a kiss goodbye kind of thing. And it turned into making out. It turned into me having to, like, furiously text the guy who was on the shift before me being like, “Hey, can you wait for a few?” And it was, it was definitely that moment where you're like, this isn't just going to be a one night thing. I used to laugh that she was the first person to ever make me lose my game. All of a sudden, I could barely stammer out, “How's the weather outside?” Like it was bad. Yeah. Best kind of bad.
I would say, my best move is to be able to seal it on the first date. I have a really solid game to get a girl to go back to my place. That strategy is to come off hellishly interested in what she's got to say. Meanwhile, my hand is like on her leg and then kind of just see how she's doing and get closer and kind of read it to see what's going on and then the lean in and then I usually go for the kiss on the cheek at first because that's an easy like, “yo, that's not what I'm thinking” - that's an easy out where no one feels super violated, and then go for the kiss. It takes a while. I don't go super fast and I try to keep it so that at any point you kind of know what I'm going for, but also at the same time you can easily just be like, “No”, but we can keep the conversation going kind of thing because then, you don't come off as like creeper. And then also like the way I see it is like, if I'm going to be like putting the effort in on a date means I kind of like the person just as a person anyways, or at least I'm interested in them. So I don't want to ruin the conversation by trying to make an overt move until I'm like, yes, time for the overt move.
Yeah. Kind of like focusing on them, getting them to talk and really just kind of see what the banter is like. If you can have a really good conversation with someone and keep that physical spark going, then chances are you're going to probably have pretty solid sex. Because at least then you're like, interested in each other and you're kind of feeling each other out and you can kind of gauge how well you can play off of each other in multiple arenas, like the physical, like touch. And then also just in conversation, you can kind of tell if you can vibe in multiple ways. I usually start with a pretty benign joke. I don't usually, especially with girls, like I don't say anything about “Oh, you have good hair” or “Oh, that's a cute shirt” or something that bland, but usually like some kind of joke.
I tend to go to more or less queer bars if I'm going on a first date kind of thing, or like from Tinder or something like that, because then there's inevitably one straight guy who's going to be making a fool of himself, and then you can just kind of make a couple little cracks about him. And then you can keep, you know, you can kind of open up that little place where it's like, oh, we can kind of judge, but not really. And one of my favorite places is to go to the Double Standard on Telegraph in Oakland because right across the street is the Burrito Express. So my goal was always, you know, like on Tinder and stuff. It would be like, “Hey, let's meet at the Double Standard” because they make really good cocktails that are like craft cocktails, has a really nice bar environment kind of thing. And then, if everything is going good, it can be like, “Hey, you want to go grab a burrito?” And if you're down for one a burrito at like 10:00 at night and also down for the spontaneity of that, then I'm like, “I’ll right, I'll see you again.”
If you're like, “No”, then I'm like, “Cool, that's great. I'm going to close out the tab and then I'm going to go get a burrito and go home.” Yeah. And then if you're just like, I don't even want to keep this conversation going, you just walk away and just go get a burrito. I mean, one way or another, you get a delicious burrito and you might get some arm candy as well. If there is a way to have a bad tinder date and is definitely with a burrito, like I am…yeah, it's a good consolation prize.
A lot of my straight friends had figured out at least the general gist of sex. Like in high school and did it. And I was like, I figured out what I thought I knew about sex in high school. And then that just got flipped upside down when I went to college and was in a much more liberal area and was able to actually explore my identity. That was a surreal change. Definitely back in college, I totally misread this girl. Her and I had spent a semester flirting back and forth and everything and it was the midnight of my 21st birthday. We went to QFC (grocery store) and got a six pack of Smirnoff Ice Orange. We had a couple of Smirnoff Ice and you know, the flirting got to a lot more and hands were going everywhere and stuff and it was like, okay, this is going to go some place. She pulled me over to her bed. I was like, sweet, this is going to happen. And it did. And like halfway through, I was kind of making a list in my head of what I needed to pick up. It was just like “...and scene.” I'm going to get through this so that we're not awkward at school tomorrow.
But what didn't work was just I guess we just didn't really vibe on a physical level, you know, like at some point it went from being like fun, flirty, but once it turned away from fun, flirty and turned into like, all right, we're having sex. Like, I guess the vibe just wasn't the same. I was still pretty young and I was still kind of exploring, so I didn't really necessarily assume she was going to be the top, but I kind of thought she might be because she did, like she was the one that, like, pulled me over to the bed and was going for it. And so I was like, oh, so you're going to do this?
But I hadn't really at the same time, I hadn't really, like, figured out how that dynamic was really supposed to work. I mean, I was like, I think I was a sophomore, and so I was like just 21 and just starting to really get on my own two feet as far as being queer and being in the queer community.
I've only been thrown off once by this, but I tend to kind of see how to be take charge at the beginning of everything. So when you're making out and stuff like that, if there's kind of a battle for who's going to be in charge, you're like, okay, I'm pretty sure I know who is going to be definitely down to top for the first at least the first round. There's a certain sense that they're taking control of the situation, you know, like they're definitely more of a dominant personality. Especially for women, I feel like if you are going to be a pillow queen, you got to also be able to top sometimes. As someone who is a total pillow queen, you got to be able to flip that.
When I say pillow queen, I mean definitely more submissive and just like letting someone take charge. When I am a bottom, I like a dominant top. I like someone who will take charge and basically, just like, fuck me hard is essentially what it is, and basically make the call as to how. Yeah, I'm just like a screaming bottom is really like what it’s down to.
I feel like a lot of women don't really like to be like one way or the other, so you got to be able to flip, even if you prefer one. And when you, you know, and it's a totally different mindset. So you got to be able to bounce between those. Like you can always tell with someone like how their body is feeling or how they sound or what they're saying or anything like that. Just read a body and that's the way you can get through a first time of having sex with someone and do pretty well.
And I mean, it's how my current girlfriend totally managed to pull it off, even though apparently I was the first girl she's had sex with. So that was funny. I was like, “Nah, you're lying.” She's like, “No, really.” When I have to step up to the plate and be a top, I use myself as a reference. I'm like, “Okay, what do I want?” Like, how do I usually like to start off and stuff like that? I mean, until you get to know them, you don't really have any markers.
No one's going to give you the cliff notes of like, okay, so how I like to warm up. Well, definitely making out is always a way to do it in a way that's a pretty safe way to start because it's no there's like, no real pressure to it. I would say, like the way to start with someone that you don't know is make out, maybe kind of take a little bit more control and don't necessarily go straight into a dominant place, but just kind of take a little more control and slowly take a little more control and just kind of be like, This is where I wanted to go, but also at the same time, allow them to have the space to be like, “Oh, I don't really want to go further” or something like that. I feel like that also makes people be more willing to go further because of the fact that they can tell, like you're not going to be, you know, it's not going to go into some nightmare experience.
I guess hooking up now, I'm definitely a lot more confident in who I am. I think when I first started hooking up, I would always have in the back of my head like, “Am I doing it right? Am I, am I okay? Do I look cool? Do I look like I'm worthy?” And instead now I'm just kind of like, “I'm going to hook up and if it's with you, that's great. Or if it's not, well, too bad for you.” Like, sorry. Yeah, I know who I am and I'm not trying to sell the reason why you should hook up with me like I did when I was younger and like being like, “No, no, no, really. I'm awesome. I'm great. You're totally going to have fun, I swear.” Now it's like, No, I don't have time for that. It's the only thing that's truly binary right now.
If I could go back in time, I would definitely tell myself when it came to sex that I'm worth it, that I am valuable, and that my feelings around it are important and that just because it started doesn't mean I have to finish it. I can walk away. And then as far as around relationships, it's one thing to want to be awesome and easy going and willing to do anything. And yeah, I'll come over at midnight kind of thing. But in reality, you need to set boundaries. You need to set like, this is what I'm going to do. And this is a hard line of how I'm comfortable, you know?
Yeah. So relationships are a two way street and like pay attention to how far they're going if they're not willing to go and meet you halfway, then either reconsider where your boundaries are or let them go. Don't try to make them anything more than they are. Don't put them on a pedestal. They're human, just like you. They're going to fuck up somehow, you know?
You can't. You can't just expect that they're going to be this perfect, ideal partner because they're not. And that's not necessarily bad. It's just the truth. And sometimes the truth stings a little bit when you finally realize that they're not perfect.
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