Juliette.
The writer and proprietor of the Touch Me There Substack talks about sexological bodywork, consent, and having her cervix massaged.
I don’t remember how I first came across Touch Me There, a fascinating and generous new Substack from writer Juliette LaMontagne. But I remember that this post, about desire at mid-life, definitely got my attention. Touch Me There is a sort of journal-slash-primer, inviting readers to follow Juliette’s journey of sexual and spiritual self-expression through the practice of bodywork and occasional use of psychedelics. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our conversation.
NAOMI: You grew up in Massachusetts, in a heavily Catholic neighborhood.
JULIETTE: That's right. My dad was Jewish. My mom was Catholic. I was raised Catholic. I haven't been practicing Catholic for many, many, many years. But my community was very Catholic.
NAOMI: How do you think that shaped your view of sexuality, whether in general or your own growing up, and does anyone from the old neighborhood know that you're doing this? What have the reactions been?
JULIETTE: Well, I don't know how it is for you, but the high school voices are still the loudest in the back of my mind. Even though they're supportive, they are subscribed. You still feel that middle school sense of judgment. And when I hit publish on that first post, I just that night was lying in bed, thinking about them sitting around at the pub being like, did you see what Jules published? Did you see what she is doing now? Which they're not. That's just me. So yeah, I went through a whole shame cycle, regret cycle, feeling naked in the public square for the first time. It took a while. I'll just say this. It has to be bigger than me that I'm even willing to do this because I really, this, it's so weird. I really, for my whole life have been someone who would rather hide and go along and not make waves, and worked with a real healthy dose of shame that I've been carrying around for a variety of reasons. And this is just some embarrassing shit, and I'm just putting it all out there, and it is liberating.
NAOMI: What do you find most embarrassing so far?
JULIETTE: Graphic depictions of my vagina. Telling people that I am having my clitoris stroked by a sexological body worker, which many people have never even heard of. Just wacky out there things for most people, and I suspect I have, obviously, I've a strong hypothesis that at the same time, people are not just voyeuristically looking in, but there's part of them that's like, there's something there. It's weird. It makes me squeamish, but there's something there. I mean, there's so much sexual trauma in our culture. Having a mechanism, a person, a function, a service that can approach that in new and novel ways feels really important to me. So I feel that there is a recognition, even if people aren't willing to admit it. I haven't really come up against anybody being like, that's some weird ass shit. But my sense is that, yeah, it strikes them as very strange and probably right on.