Mason_Jewell

From Pittsburgh to Montbrison: A Sexologist’s Second Act Hey. Mason Jewell. I know — the name sounds like a whiskey brand or a forgotten baseball player. I’m neither. Born in Pittsburgh, ’84, but I’ve spent the last twelve years in a place most Americans can’t pronounce: Montbrison, France. I write about the messy, beautiful, infuriating puzzle of human connection for the Mind-Dating project on mind-u.cat. Sexuality researcher, former counselor, once-upon-a-time I thought I had love figured out. Yeah. That was funny. Growing up in Pittsburgh wasn’t the steel-and-grit cliché you’re picturing. But close. My dad worked the mills until the collapse in the 80s — then he became a mailman, oddly zen about the whole thing. By the time I hit my teens, I was already the kid who asked too many questions. Why do people stay in dead relationships? Why does desire evaporate? My first kiss was behind a Dumpster at a Three Rivers Stadium parking lot — romantic, I know. Then came the 2000s, my twenties, and I moved to France for grad school. Landed in Lyon first, but Montbrison… Montbrison found me. I was broke, hitchhiking through the Forez mountains, and this old woman offered me a ride in her battered Renault. She ran a bookstore on rue Tupinerie. I stayed for a weekend. That was 2008. I never left. Look, I’m not the guy with perfect answers. I’ve been married twice. Divorced once. Widowed once. That second one — cancer, pancreatic, three months from diagnosis to goodbye. You don’t counsel couples through intimacy issues after that without some serious self-doubt. But maybe that’s the point. The best sexologists aren’t the ones who’ve never failed. They’re the ones who’ve sat in the wreckage, cried on the bathroom floor, and still believe connection is possible. I’ve done fieldwork in Amsterdam’s red light district, interviewed polyamorous communes in Berlin, and once spent a year studying the erotic dreams of nuns. (Yes, nuns. The data was… unexpected.) So when I say I understand shame, or performance anxiety, or the quiet terror of a dead bedroom — I’m not quoting a textbook. I’ve lived versions of it. Maybe not your version. But close enough to listen. April 22, 1984. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The hospital was Magee-Womens — my mom still jokes that I came out squinting, like I was already skeptical of the world. It was a gray Tuesday, drizzling, the kind of spring that tricks you into wearing shorts then punishes you with hail. My dad smoked a cigar in the parking lot, named me Mason after his uncle who died in Korea. I was 7 pounds, 3 ounces — uneven, real. My first home was a brick row house on Sarah Street in the South Side, where the air smelled of kielbasa and coal dust. I didn’t know then that I’d spend my life asking why people touch, or don’t touch. But maybe it was written in the weather that day: overcast, uncertain, with a thin line of sun trying to break through. For fifteen years, I worked as a relationship counselor at the Centre de Planning Familial du Forez — a tiny storefront on rue du Palais de Justice, across from the Collégiale Notre-Dame d’Espérance. Couples fighting about money, about orgasms, about who left the dishes in the sink. I’ve heard it all. Now? I write. For Mind-Dating, I publish deep-dive articles every two weeks — last month I did a piece on how the architecture of Montbrison’s medieval alleyways mirrors the unconscious geometry of desire. (Narrow, winding, sometimes dead-ending into a charming courtyard.) I also run small workshops at La Maison des Associations on avenue de la Libération. Topics like “Desire after 40” and “Why your brain sabotages your Tinder dates.” No hype. No pickup artist nonsense. Just data, stories, and a lot of honest confusion. You want to know Montbrison? It’s not Paris. It’s not Lyon. It’s a town of 16,000 people at the foot of the Forez mountains, where the Vizézy river runs slow and green. I live on rue des Remparts, in a 17th-century apartment with creaky floors and a view of the Tour de la Prison. Every Thursday morning, I buy bread at Boulangerie des Minimes, then walk to Place de l’Hôtel de Ville to argue about politics with the old guys at Café de la Paix. The Lycée du Forez — where I once taught a guest lecture on adolescent sexuality — is two blocks away. My therapist’s office is on rue de la Préfecture. My ex-husband (the divorce) still lives in Moingt, the old Roman quarter. We have coffee sometimes. It’s fine. This city has held my grief, my stupid mistakes, my second chances. When I walk past the Médiathèque, I remember the night I cried in the poetry section after my wife died. The librarian pretended not to see. That’s Montbrison: discreet, ancient, quietly forgiving. I know every crack in the sidewalk. Every crooked shutter. And somehow, after all the chaos, it’s where I finally stopped running.