Naked Men Talking: Adam Fitzgerald
In the conversation we talk sober sex, orgasms, and unpacking shame.
For our podcast, Naked Men Talking, I caught up with Adam Fitzgerald, a relationship, sex, and intimacy coach.
In the conversation we talk sober sex, orgasms, and unpacking shame.
Listen to an audio version of the podcast on Spotify or watch the video version below.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
You began your career in the theatre - what led you to shift your focus into intimacy coaching?
The story is very long and over many years, but the the short answer is COVID.
We were all stuck at home, you know, going, Who am I?
I think for for Americans in particular, we're so career obsessed. I had this realisation that my because I had no work - theatre was all shut down during COVID - my entire identity was wrapped up in my career. When I didn't have work, I didn't know who I was. I was just lost.
At the same time, I'd lost my passion for theatre - it had just become a job.
I was writing a book at the time and I was thinking about maybe becoming a therapist. A friend of mine in Paris trained to become a sexologist. I saw that and I was like, that's what I want to do.
What was your relationship like with your body and your sexuality when you were growing up?
I was terrified of my body.
From a very young age, I was masturbating and thinking about men. There was so much shame around that. I was horrified by the fact that I was doing that.
I grew up Catholic. New England rural society at that time was very clear that being gay was disgusting and wrong and you were going to hell.
I'm of a very specific generation that when the AIDS crisis happened, it didn't happen to us, it happened in front of us before we came out of the closet. I knew I was gay. I was obviously in denial and not admitting this to anyone, but I was watching not only just gay men die in insane numbers, but the world calling it gay cancer and saying that God sent this to punish the gays - if you're gay, this is how you're going to die and you deserve it.
How did you eventually unpack that?
One of the the major shifts for me was there was a point where I was not having a healthy relationship with alcohol. The book that I wrote is about this period when I got sober.
This was in my early 30s. Most of the sex that I was having was drunk - it was the only way I could let myself go and do the things I wanted to do.
When I was sober, I started exploring some of those things I had done drunk - going to cruising bars, a little bit of fetish. I started getting into leather.
What did that feel like?
It was amazing. Obviously, the sex was better - you remember all of it but also you're more capable, you're more present in your body.
But the big the big shift for me was that I didn't have anything to blame. When you wake up hungover and go, fuck, I was so drunk last night. I did this, this, and this because I was drunk.
When I was in a cruising bar and got gangbanged or the first time I tried piss-play, I was 100% sober. I made these choices and I liked it. Before, I was blaming it on alcohol and blaming it on being drunk but that desire was 100% real - I was just using the alcohol to have permission to do what I really wanted.
That was where it really shifted - I could no longer blame anything. I had to either face or run away from these desires and this body and how much I love being naked and how much I love everything surrounding sex.
This was all with the help of a fantastic therapist - I was paying someone heavily to help guide me through this period.
What took you to Spain?
I was tired of the US and looking to find a way to get out.
I got a great opportunity to start doing theatre in Paris - I was spending between three and six months a year in Paris.
During one of those trips, I posted on Facebook: I want to go to the sea, where should I go? A friend of mine from from Madrid said, Torremolinos. I booked a flight and flew here and absolutely fell in love with this place.
The sun, the weather, the being 10-minute walk from the the beach - all of that is is part of it - but one of the one of the beautiful things that I saw here that I've never seen in Paris and New York is I would see groups of gay men not divided by type. You'd see a table of of men at a cafe or getting drinks, and there would be two muscle queens, two guys in their 80s, two twinks, three women. I was so used to the queer community being divided into body types - here, I found less of that, I found openness and warmth and a very accepting attitude. I love living here.
You've got an event coming up in Torremolinos, The Energy Orgasm. What's the format of that event?
A lot of people work in this energy of a body's orgasm. I came across it when I was getting my certification as a coach, I took a course with Barbara Carrellas, who is amazing. She taught this guided meditation - you visualise the energy passing through all of the chakras of your body and then you do this sort of tense and release and just this wave of energy and emotion and sexuality happens.
I started using it with clients that were looking for different ways of of self-pleasure and self-touch and masturbation. This is the first time I'm doing it as a group session - I'm very excited to see how that energy changes.
With this exercise, everyone is connecting with their own body? It's communal in the sense that everyone's sharing the space, but it's not a mutual pleasuring session?
You are allowed to touch yourself in any way you want, but touching others is not part of this process.
Who are the men that might be interested in an event such as this?
I'm actually very interested to find that out - this is the first time I've done it in a group setting.
Based on the messages I've received so far, men are excited to have an opportunity to have a sexually freeing experience that isn't in a gay bar, that is outdoors in the sunshine, that is sober.
What else is on your vision-board for the months ahead?
I love working with individuals but I've also recently begun working with couples - I really enjoy that work because it's a whole other level in these ideas that we have about sexuality and masculinity and who we should be and the parameters around gender and sex and maleness.
Given the journey you've been on with your body and your relationship with intimacy and now the work that you're doing with other men, are there any insights or lessons that you wish that you'd learned early or anything that you wish that you could tell your younger-self?
I do believe we learn things in life when we're ready to learn them.
But if I could talk to my younger-self, I would say that you're not your job and you're going to waste so much time and deprioritise so many important relationships because of your career.
The other thing would just be that there's so many decisions I made as a young person that weren't my voice. The easy example is that I had a very strict parameter of what type of man I was attracted to until I realised, that wasn't me. I was worried about somebody seeing me be with that particular body type or that particular person. I would say to my younger-self, when those voices come up, ask if it's your own or if it's shame-based - a coming from somewhere else voice.
Gareth Johnson