Latest / The Andrew Mychal Podcast / E2 | "There's Only One Jeff" with Jeff Goodwin

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E2 | "There's Only One Jeff" with Jeff Goodwin · The Andrew Mychal Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A quick note before we begin.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Andrew Michael Podcast is a space for people to share their personal stories and lived experiences.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, therapist, licensed health professional, or coach, and nothing shared here should be considered medical, mental health, or professional advice.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some content may not be appropriate for children.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I've always carried around with me.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I cannot, I I can't let you know everything about me because you won't like that.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: After the retreat, do you still believe that?
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because during the integration circle the next day, I felt very safe in saying whatever I needed to say.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jacob very simply said, you know, Jeff, there's only one Jeff.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Jeff that we are looking at right now.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: We all have stories that shape who we became.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some we understand, some we still carry, and some we don't even recognize until another person helps us see them differently.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael, and this is the Andrew Michael Podcast.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Honest conversations about the experiences that shape us, the patterns we carry, and what becomes possible when we finally understand what's been driving us.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes hearing someone else's story is exactly what we need to better understand our own.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone who changed my life made it into the book, and Jeff is proof of that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: He came into my world after Who's Driving the Bus was already finished, when we were paired together as singing buddies in the Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: What started as a chorus assignment turned into one of the realest friendships I have.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Today, you'll see how a quiet guy who read my book without telling me became someone who helped me see myself differently.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: In September of 2025, I had just worked up the courage to audition for the Gay Men's Chorus of South Florida.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: On my very first day, they assigned me a singing buddy.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Jeff.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what was about to happen, but it would change my life for the better.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I'm so glad that you're here with me today.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is a full circle moment for me.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Never did I think that once I wrote my book and entered the chorus, that I would make such a strong friendship with somebody like you.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You and I have talked about it at length, both of our evolutions over that time period.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember when I first came into your orbit at the chorus?
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: For one, it was the first time I've been in the chorus for three years at that point.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in my fourth year.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't have buddies when I joined.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking, what a great idea.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would have loved this when I first joined.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought it was uh a great, a great thing to begin with.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then over the course of several rehearsals, I got to know this very quiet, intelligent young man who uh was so intent on being a part of this greater organization.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I learned a little bit about him here and there, and ultimately I learned he wrote a book.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, wow, this this is a deep river I'm sitting next to.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I just I had to know more about it.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I bought the book and I read it without telling him.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember how long after we met you actually ordered that book?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it might have been like within the first month.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: I heard you speaking about it to other people, and then I said, uh, so you you wrote this book and you told me, and uh, I just kind of let it sit there.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I went home and ordered it, yeah.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to me, had you ever heard of the concept of the inner child?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not in the way that you presented it, but I do I understand the concept.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've been on my own path of self-discovery for for years.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, in the moment that I met you, and what I came to realize, and I firmly believe this my whole life, that when you're ready to be a student, the teachers appear.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there you were.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which is kind of ironic because I needed a teacher too.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, prior to you, I had never sung in a group or an organization, or actually in front of anybody.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have a very, very distinct voice, which we kind of I joke with you a lot of times that you're really loud.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you share any of your background of how you became such a great singer?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you for thinking I'm a great singer.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: I've I I do what I do.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I've been in music study since I was seven and uh started with the piano, and uh and when I got frustrated with uh instruments, um, especially in high school, I switched over to to voice and I kind of sat there since then, since uh senior year in high school.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was in bands, I was in a pop choir in college, and I was in a rock band and in my in my twenties, and uh then I've started uh studying classical music and uh I learned how to sing classically as a tenor, and I sang with an opera company in New York City for a while, and uh and then I started my business.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so music and singing had to kind of take a backseat for many years, but I've always managed to maintain it and uh and continue to grow in private study.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just been years of of practice and good teachers, good technique, you know?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason that I wrote the book was because there's so many things that happen in our childhood that we don't really talk about.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And writing the book was cathartic for me.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It allowed me to get that out.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: After you read the book, were there any moments where you reflected on your own childhood of things that maybe you hadn't thought about, how it affected you or that you hadn't talked about before?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think a hundred percent.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it did make me reflect.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was it was remarkable to read your story and to recount the journey that you were on as a businessman, uh, especially, because that's I think that's what really piqued my interest is that um I was in business for like nearly 30 years, and uh you you're very successful in your business.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that part of a person always intrigues me.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there was just something about, especially after we got together, I um, you know, I think you you made me a turkey burger one day, and I remember just having this word vomit because here's uh I felt like here's a receptacle for me, and you you became that a receptacle and allowed me to like just get a lot of stuff out that I hadn't spoken to anybody about.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: During that moment, was there anything in particular that you recall that you really were happy to finally talk about?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, I mean, I'm 20 years older than you are, but I still have my insecurities and being able to speak so comfortably to somebody about those really deep-seated insecurities that I've carried around forever that I've so want to get rid of.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I've come to learn that you really can't get rid of them.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You they sort of have to live alongside you and understand where you are with it and the perspective that you have on it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because you can't you cannot scramble the egg, right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's there.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you just understand it and it lives alongside you and you just move forward.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So in the book, I break it down that there are three parts of self.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: There are your inner child, your adaptive child, and your wise adult.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: As you think of your life now, which part of you feels like has been driving the bus for most of your life?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like you've been living your life as your true inner child, as your adaptive child, or as a wise adult?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: As my adaptive child, 100%.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And can you speak to any of those adaptations?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I know for me, I didn't think that I was allowed to be nice and happy and friendly.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: My adaptations were to be mean and to try to be strong, which ultimately caused me great suffering because it's really not the essence of who I am.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I wondered if any of that feels true for you.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, but in a different way.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: See, I I grew up a physically smaller child and uh having flaming red hair at one time and uh very white skin and freckles.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's you you kind of walk around with a bullseye on your back in Southeast Texas.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to do things in my childhood to make me likable and to make me, if I could phrase it in a way, I guess, uh to make people love me.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh a new old the the old ladies always loved me, and by uh getting the other guys around me, like especially my my rough and tumble cousins and the and these and then the the occasional bully in school, like I I have to fly under the radar around those people, and I I did whatever I could to just keep my nose to the grindstone and do do what I had to do to get through the day and uh and make myself as likable as possible.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that made me a an off-the-chart people pleaser.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Being that you were a people pleaser, how was that challenging for you in your own personal life?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, I was I got very good at it and I observed people on how they behaved and how they got people to sort of be in the in the palm of their hand.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And a couple of my cousins are really good at it, and I watched them and I adapted some of their ways.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, and there were times I would slip and uh and and retreat to my you know my dark inner self.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know for me I have adapted a lot.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people have called me a chameleon and they say that I'm really hard to read because the environment that I grew up in, I didn't know what to say or what to do.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I would just kind of sit quiet and then you just try to say or do or become whatever you need to.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that really talks to a lot of gay men that we go through life as a chameleon, never really feeling safe that we can be our authentic self.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the beauty that I love about the chorus is that it seems like a bunch of little boys and girls just running around, singing, hugging each other, being very, very playful.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: For you growing up, how was did you have any gay friends?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk at all about the coming out process?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: How that was for you?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have any gay friends that we all knew of.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: This was Southeast Texas in the 60s and 70s.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't even sure there were other gay people out there.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of figured there were, but nothing could really confirm 100% to me.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I just knew how I felt.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I've known I was gay since I was like four or five years old.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always known who who I was attracted to.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my big secret, you know.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Always deflecting the questions.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a girlfriend yet, Jeff?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have lots of girlfriends, grandma.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: How old were you when you kissed your first boy?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Probably 20.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's a long time.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever date women or did you ever think that you would get married to a woman?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, or are we are we gonna be completely uh gut the fish here?
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes, I I had a girlfriend.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had a girlfriend and I had an affair with a married woman.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, peel the onion back.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I had never heard the story before.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you know, I was engaged to a woman.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We dated for nine years.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sad for her, and I'm sad for me that I couldn't be honest with her, but I didn't think I had any other choice.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for me, a lot of my life had that mindset.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't really until I started therapy and I started writing the book that I had a coach say, You realize you can choose, right?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I can.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she was like, Yeah, Andrew, there are no rules in this life.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But our childhood forms that you think that there are certain things, I call them fantasies.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember talking to my parents and saying, I tried to be what you wanted me to be.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to be your fantasy, but I I choose me.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be myself.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's been a strained relationship for me.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: As you came out over the years, could you speak to how it was with your own parents?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I moved away.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was looking for the ticket out all during my my late what when I graduated high school, I went to a local college and I always saw that there's I have to get out of here.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't have the kind of career, and we we didn't have a lot of money.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I um I was working in a in a store, a jewelry store specifically, and the um the manager of the office introduced me to her brother, and they had a rock pinned.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: They said, They just lost their lead singer.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to do you wanna audition for them?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yes, because it was about that time in my life that I and I I don't remember if I saw this or read it somewhere, but I I was at a point where school wasn't working for me.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: My ADHD brain was like all over the place.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't concentrate on stuff.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if I could do things, I was at home.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: If I could physically make something, if I could work at work at anything, is with my hands.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Show me something once or twice, and I can do it a thousand times exactly the same way.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: But hand me an instruction manual on how to do it, I'll I'll look at it all day and uh and doom scroll while I'm while I'm trying to learn how to do it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So as soon as I got that heads up, I went, I'm done.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've said, universe, if a door opens, I'm walking through it.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm tired of like struggling where I am right now.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it was about that time that I got introduced to the band leader, and uh we played around Houston for a couple of years, then we all moved to New York by 1984.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that was my ticket out of Texas.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So getting back to your original question, I really didn't come out to my parents officially till I was 28.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: But once I moved out of the house and was living in Houston, which is about 100 miles from where I grew up, um, I was living a gay man's life in Houston.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened at 28 that gave you the courage to tell them?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd been with Andy for four years at that point.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh line.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you had been with your partner for four years and your parents didn't know.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: They he was part of my circle of friends, and they had traveled to New York, and I had like a like a big gumbo potluck one day, and my parents were in town.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: His parents were there, all of our circle of friends were there, probably about 30 people.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And my parents met his parents and they were like four peas in a pod and got along great, even like went off and did stuff together while they were in town.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it wasn't until later I said, Well, you know who Andy is by now, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Yeah, uh I think so.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I had said, Okay, the next time my mom asks me if I'm gay or not, I'm going to say yes.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: So she she baited me.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: She said, You know, I was cleaning out your dresser and I found a book of matches and it had that that club in downtown Beaumont on it.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking, I didn't leave anything like that in my in my dresser, but I'll I'll go along with it.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, Oh, really?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: What club was that?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, Well, I think it was called the Copa Cabana.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, um, yeah, I says, So did you like going there?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I went, Yeah, I did.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: She says, Did you go there because you liked it or because you've wanted to be there?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, both.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So she was she had a fabulous way of like weaving in or out of question.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we were in the front seat of the car driving from Dallas down to Southeast Texas.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was like a four or five-hour drive.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Should we uh wake dad up and tell him?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, Oh no, it'll kill him.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I said, it won't kill him, but you know, you you you do you.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think she told him after I left and went back to New York at that point.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: For me, I didn't come out until I was 27.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I always knew how they were gonna respond.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I wrote them a seven-page letter, and my mom was laying up in the bed.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I asked my dad to come upstairs and I'd barricaded the door, and I said, Whatever you do, you're not allowed to get up.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I read this seven-page letter, said, Hey, uh, you know, I've met this guy, and I'm going up to West Hollywood.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't figured it out by now, the last sentence of the thing was, I'm gay.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I say it, I look up, and they don't say anything.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then when they did say something, my mom said the first thing she said was, You're gonna get HIV and die.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the next thing my dad said was, I could handle you dating another race more than this.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had waited 27 years for that moment to kind of burst their fantasy.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I would be lying if I said it didn't hurt, but I had 20 years to prepare.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, I knew from a very early age that I was gay.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand what it was, but I had grown up in an environment where they had used the word faggot and gay and homo and all the slurs that you could think of, and you don't even know what it means.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: You just know that it's gross or yucky, and you do everything that you can because you don't want to be that, but you can't help it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm happy for you that you had a very different experience.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Can I interject something?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because at least for me, my my childhood was I was an adopted baby, as were my other two brothers.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: My parents couldn't conceive, so they adopted three children, three boys throughout the 50s, and we grew up like stair-step kids, and we didn't look like an adoptive family by our outward signs.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: We were just the three Goodwin boys.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I grew up knowing and being reassured that you know you were chosen as a baby.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted you.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I knew that me being gay would be a disappointment, but I knew it wouldn't be a a deal breaker with my parents.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you said you felt like it would be a disappointment, but once you actually told them were they disappointed?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know what?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: They had already had a glimpse of my life at that point, and they saw my circle of friends, and then especially when um I we opened the business just five years after meeting in 1989.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And once they saw that going, they they knew they didn't have to worry about me anymore.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because up at that point, I was just I was auditioning for you know roles and operas and and uh stage plays and just taking singing lessons and being a cater waiter and a bartender, and like I didn't have any I didn't have a real career until I was 30.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things to ask people is every person has a unique talent inside them.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think your unique talent is?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it would be my voice.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because that goes with me wherever I go, but I say artistic because I can't just say that I'm a singer because I'm a super visual person and I I like creating visually beautiful things, you know.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was into art when I was a kid and uh I stopped drawing.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I stopped doing a lot of things for whatever reason, but I never stopped singing.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that must be the one thing that um I can't live without.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So as we think back to our childhood, and you said you stopped doing those things that you enjoyed, were there specific reasons why you did it?
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like for me, I never sang or danced because I thought that was too gay.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was already a small, effeminate kid when I was small, you know, and uh I was just a target, and I had to manufacture something for the world to accept in my mind.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had to butch up my the way I walk and sat and talked, and you know, but maybe and then there are people say, Oh, I can tell you were gay from 20 paces, and like, well, you know, some people it was a total surprise.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: But I never once I got into business and got established who I was, like for the world to see, I didn't feel a need any longer to have to come out to anybody ever again.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: If they figure it out, fine.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if they don't figure it out, that's fine too.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if they leave because of it, that's fine.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I was in my mind.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: After you read the book and you sit here as a wise adult, what would you tell that inner child and that adaptive child inside you?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You that they never heard growing up.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: That you are more powerful than you think.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you have the ability to make choices and and you own those choices, good or bad.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: You learn from them and you move on.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't hear that kind of talk when I was a kid.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I messed up, it was uh it was imperfection, and I had to project perfection to deflect away from what I was trying to hide all the time.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find that that perfection still drives you?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not as much as it used to.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: I strive for it, but I know that it's just never gonna be the the pinnacle of what I think is going on in my mind.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, working toward perfection is what you do when you want to be good at something.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But if you think you're going to achieve perfection, that's where you can beat yourself up unnecessarily.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that most of my suffering came from trying to be like everybody else instead of just being my true self.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I still feel like I'm very much growing into that.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I'm wondering for you, is do you feel like you are living your authentic life?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like you're living as your inner child, or are you still very much in adaptation mode?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, at this age, I guess, or at this point in my life, I feel like I'm living as close to what I'm gonna be, or what I am, or what I've strived to be.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's still more out there, you know, as long as I'm breathing, I have something else to offer.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And my mind's always open to uh to whatever the universe has to offer, you know, whatever door opens.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I still have that open door policy.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Although I didn't think about it for a long time.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: In the last three, four years, I've said, okay, universe, I'll I'm gonna walk through through the doors.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And whatever you open for me, I'm walking through them.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So was there anything specific as a child that you wanted to do that you haven't done yet?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I kind of regret that I didn't finish college.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't have a degree of any kind.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I just I I I was not an academic.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't I couldn't stay focused.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it uh it was very difficult.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, my my real estate course was the first time I I cracked a book in 40 something years.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was it was hard.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think if you would have studied music as a child, you would have enjoyed school more?
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's interesting.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was put into music study at seven years old because I had an aptitude for it.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because my two older brothers took piano lessons, they were forced to, and I would go in after them and like try to mimic them on the piano.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And my my mom said, Well, if you want to take lessons, I'll put you in lessons, you know, and that was one really one wonderful thing about my childhood.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've I was always in some sort of private music study.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: My my parents funded anything like that I wanted to do.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: I had a trumpet to play in in high school, I had a piano to play all during the time that I lived at home.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they they even helped with vocal study after I moved away from uh from Texas.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I found my teacher in in New Jersey and she um they helped fund with that.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So as much as they put me into music, and as much as I had an aptitude for it, there was always, well, you know, you really don't want to be a professional musician.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to go down that road because they don't make any money.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I I took accounting classes like that, because everybody in the 70s was going to be an accountant, you know, just like in in the 80s, everyone was gonna be a lawyer.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: They're like the field was flooded with uh accountants in from the 70s.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I've I lasted maybe two semesters at that.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm done.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, although it did serve me well when we opened our business, you know, I've always learned a little something, no matter what I did.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: I learned this from another teacher that we teach children at backwards.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: A gentleman that taught me this said to his children, each person has a unique gift inside them.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Find your gift, and when you share that gift with the world, it will bring you an abundance of prosperity and joy.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: But we tell children go to college, you have to get this job to make money.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then people get a degree, never use it, or spend the next 20 years of their life hating their job.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you could go back to your childhood and pick a career that wasn't driven by money, is there anything that you would choose?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: As a kid, like I said, I was very visual, uh uh visually driven, and uh, I liked beautiful things.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: Interior decorating had a huge presence in my in my mind.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Since I was a little kid, I was always pouring through architectural digest, and I would I would redo rooms I was sitting in all the time.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't do that there.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: I would put that, I wouldn't do those drinks.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: I put that chair over there, that that upholstery sucks.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: That those kinds of that and that paint color is horrible.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: They should use wallpaper, like all those things are constantly rolling in my mind to this day.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't walk walk into any place without redoing the room.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So what stopped you from doing that?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's a uh a gay profession.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I I was still wearing a mask.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like I figured I had to do something that wasn't so overtly gay, although there's plenty of straight people that are decorators, you know?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Plenty.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: I love the architecture.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I but I I didn't think I was smart enough to be an architect.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you still have plenty of time.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: So and you've made me acutely aware of that.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're very responsible for the way I see things now in the short amount of time that I've known you.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do you feel like your life is different now since you've met me?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you've introduced me to uh things that I never would have been exposed to before, like the the retreat in Costa Rica.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that was probably one of the most profound adult moments that I've had.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: It brought so much clarity to a very muddy image of my life up to this point.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've been wondering, like, okay, I was in business for 30 years, it's all gone now.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: I sold it all.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I moved to Florida with no tangible identity that I could grasp in my in my own mind.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And like, who am I?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what the hell am I doing here?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I had like, what's my per like, what's my purpose?
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I sound like Charlie Brown.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like I I had a reason to get up every day because you know, 40 employees were relying on me for everything.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Vendors were relying on me to get paid and payroll and deposits, uh, and just running the business.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I needed to be somewhere every single day for nearly 30 years.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And when that no longer existed, it was very freeing, but uh for the first year.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: But after that, I'm like, I I I need a I need a reason to get up in the morning.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: While you were at the retreat at Costa Rica, was there any moment that stands out in your mind?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's a couple.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my drug of choice has always been doers.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've never had uh any drug experience, you know, other than I think a pot brownie when I was in my 20s.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I could never smoke anything because of my uh hypersensitive airways, but um you were very much a proponent for doing something like this as uh self-exploration.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I went down there and uh so they had two uh psilocybin ceremonies.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: The first one was a small dose, and uh, you know, and your intention was to um just say what you wanted out of like what do you want to discover?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: And very simply I said, I want to meet me, like I want to come face to face with me.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh in that first ceremony, I felt like I kind of did that.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't, you know, appalled at what I saw, but it uh it made me like it kicked open a lot of doors, is the best I can describe it.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: The first um night of that ceremony.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then two nights later, they doubled the dosage.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um Jacob asked me, Are you comfortable with it?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was one and a half grams, I think, or milligrams.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it grams or milligrams?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: The first night was one and a half.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Are you comfortable if I double it for the Thursday night ceremony?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: He said, if you think, you know, uh I can handle it and it's not anything you know off the chart, yeah, go right ahead.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he did, and that's when the catharsis was, and it uh it opened a floodgate of I hate to call it grief, but you know, maybe it was uh a bit of grief for all the things that I didn't do that I wanted to do.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a uh a reckoning with what I thought was the two Jeffs, you know, the one that I let people see and the one that I kept secret.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because the one I let you see, you'll like well enough.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: But the one I keep secret, you're not gonna like that one.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I've always carried around with me.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I cannot, I I can't let you know everything about me because you won't like that.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I put upon myself.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do you still believe that after the retreat?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Do you still believe that?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because during the integration circle the next day, like it's that there's so much carryover and and through breath work and just uh in the stillness of being surrounded by the energy of other people experiencing their own experience under the like altogether, the energy is there and it's connected, you know.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt very safe in saying whatever I needed to say.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Jacob very simply said, you know, Jeff, there's only one Jeff.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Jeff that we are looking at right now, and that's all anyone has ever seen, and that's the one that we all know and love.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to see see the same person because you are just one person.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you may think you're wearing a mask, but you're not.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate you being here with me.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: It means a lot to me.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: For all the little gay boys out there, you're not alone.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: My hope is for all of us that we can get back to that one version of ourselves because it's very painful carrying those other versions around.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as long as there's people like you out there, I think we can make that happen.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the kind words.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: If something in today's conversation made you recognize the piece of your own story, stay curious about it.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes awareness is where change begins.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone came to your mind while you were listening, share this episode with them.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for being here, and thank you for listening.