A Conversation between Sean Meriwether and Jack Slomovits

How long have you been together?

Jack Slomovits: Almost 12 years.

Sean Meriwether: It would have been longer, but we didn’t start dating until three years after we met. Things happen when they are supposed to.

How did you meet?

Slomovits: Through a mutual friend. He had a one year of sobriety party after starting AA and invited everyone he knew. We knew about each other, but had never met.

Meriwether: Jack introduced himself. I thought he was involved with someone else, so I wasn’t interested.

Slomovits: I pursued him for three years after that party. Our friend wouldn’t give me Sean’s phone number or hook us up again. I didn’t know how to get in touch with him. Then he moved out of state.

Meriwether: We met again at the same friends’ party when I moved back to New York. We scoped each other out over the summer. Then it just clicked and everything fell into place.

First Impressions?

Slomovits: He was hot. I wanted to fuck him.

Meriwether: He was charismatic and very tan, he had just come back from LA. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to pick me up. I’ve got amazing gaydar, but I almost never know if a guy’s interested in me or not. I need to be told in explicit terms, “I want to fuck you,” before I catch on.

What was your first date like?

Slomovits: We went out for drinks with the friend that introduced us. It was late and I invited Sean home. Our friend tagged along.

Meriwether:Then our friend picked out a movie to watch, thinking it was so long and boring that we’d both fall asleep and not get a chance to do anything. But he picked out The Poseidon Adventure, which is my favorite disaster movie.

Slomovits: Now we watch it on our anniversary every year.

Meriwether: After the movie, Jack invited me to stay over. After that night I almost never went back to my own apartment. I moved in with him six months later, after his roommate moved out.

When did you realize you had stumbled upon the real thing?

Slomovits: On our first Valentine’s Day, Sean picked a fight for no reason and was really bitchy. When he left to go back to his apartment, I never wanted to speak to him again. The next day something sparked, I knew he was it.

Meriwether: This might sound corny, but during that summer I had a recurring dream about this guy who lived in the Village who had a great smile and laugh. In the dream I met him while I was walking around, so one summer night I drifted aimlessly through the Village looking for him. After about two hours, I realized it wasn’t going to happen and stopped and looked straight up. Right in front of me was Jack’s building, which I’d been in a month before when our friend and I had met him for Gay Pride. I would have buzzed him, but I didn’t know his last name, actually I didn’t know it for the first three months that we dated because it never came up. He was just Jack. But I connected him with the guy from my dream at that moment, and it was one of the reasons I started going out with him a few weeks later.

Then one night about four months after we started dating, Jack woke up in incredible pain. I rushed him to the emergency room and they weren’t sure what was wrong. It turned out to be kidney stones and he was there all day. It was an awful night, but the fear of something awful happening bonded us together. That morning when I called in to work, I said my boyfriend was in the hospital. I knew he was the one.

Will you collaborate on a project?

Slomovits: We’ve worked on a collaborative project together, For Hire, which had my photography and his text. It went up at A Different Light Bookstore in New York.

Meriwether: It was sort of a jumping off point for both of us. It was one of his first gallery exhibits, and the stories from the show were published in Best Gay Erotica 2001, my first publication.

We work very differently, though. I work by trial and error, trying to get it exactly the way it sounds in my head onto paper. I work slower, and can go off on tangents before getting any work done. I’m also a born procrastinator and often work on sixteen things at the same time. Jack is much more focused.

Slomovits: I already have an idea of what I want to shoot in my head, and I try to capture that moment when it happens.

Meriwether: We come together on a few points though, we’re both about realism. I try to write in a style that makes the moment feel real, which really wraps the reader up in the story. Jack has a photojournalistic style that captures organic moments. He doesn’t stage anything and uses natural light.

What are your current projects?

Slomovits: I’m very focused on expanding my wedding photography business. I’m shooting in New York, California and the UK, or wherever my brides want to fly me. I’m also excited about my first collection coming out, representing ten years of work. Sex in the West Village, NYC, distributed by Bruno Gmunder, came out this July.

Meriwether: I’m marketing my first collection of short fiction, The Silent Hustler, and working on a novel, Kingdom Falls, which is a pandemic flu love story. I have my first co-edited anthology, Men of Mystery, which came out in July, and head up VelvetMafia.com, which has been breaking rules and hearts for six years.

How do you think your work has impacted the community?

Slomovits: I’ve shown that you can shoot erotic work without being graphic. You don’t have to show cock to be erotic. My work gives you a real moment that you can connect with.

Meriwether: With VelvetMafia.com I’ve helped shape a genre of queer lit. I publish work that is unapologetic, intense, and erotic, but well written above all else. We’ve broken down a lot of walls, and I’ve mentored a number of queer writers over the years. With my own work, I’ve brought a lyrical but hard edge to erotica, and taken on some interesting subjects like the sex of violence, which is inherently masculine.

How do you support each other in your careers?

Meriwether: I’ve always supported Jack’s career. We framed and installed his gallery exhibits when he first started out. I’ve been his assistant on wedding gigs and was once his guinea pig model. Mainly, I’m a good sounding board for his business ideas and practices, trying to advise him where I can. He’s a very savvy entrepreneur and always one step ahead of his competition.

Slomovits: I’m always trying to make and find opportunities for him to grow, to gain new experiences. I encourage him to write as much as possible and don’t allow him to make excuses about why he can’t. I push him to succeed and not give up.

What’s the coolest thing that happened to you recently?

Meriwether: This January I drove from New York to Florida, stopping along the way to see friends and family. It was fun doing it on my own, and I had a great time with people I hadn’t seen in years. There was something freeing about driving from state to state with no real itinerary, and then catching up with people I care about. Some of the best moments were just me on the road, ingesting the country.

Slomovits: When I was traveling in Amsterdam, the guys who ran the apartment building where I stayed knew all about me and that my book was coming out. That was pretty cool. They treated me like royalty.

What’s the biggest perk of your careers?

Slomovits: Being able to do whatever I want when I want, and often where I want. My schedule is very flexible, and I love being able to just take off and go somewhere, even if it’s just for a couple of days. It’s amazing having that kind of freedom.

Meriwether: Being able to touch people with my work. I published a story on Lodestar Quarterly about losing my father to alcoholism. I received several emails from other gay men who said the story helped them understand their relationships with their dads. What was more touching is when my father went through rehab, every time he found himself drawn to his old habits, he reread the story and it helped him to not to drink. My father and I have been estranged most of my adult life, but that story helped us reconnect. I had originally written it as a goodbye letter.

What is your secret for keeping a relationship solid and passionate?

Slomovits: After twelve years, you have to let some things go. No one is perfect all the time, and no one is going to be perfect for you at certain times of your life. Sometimes I have to have time alone to deal with something else, the last two years have been a rollercoaster, and then I always come home to Sean, because he’s home.

Meriwether: We’ve both described ourselves as loners, and one of the reasons we work well together is that we allow each other space. We have our own interests and lives outside of our relationship. When we’re together, especially when we’re on vacation and removed from everything, we can relax and just enjoy being together. When we’re apart, we talk every day, even if it’s just to say hi.

Are you romantic?

Meriwether: I can be, but it’s in the little things. When Jack is coming home from a trip, I make sure his favorite foods are in the kitchen. I might spend all day trying to find something he’s looking for, like a hard to find bottle of wine or go to eight stores looking for an ingredient he needs for a recipe. I’m always there for him, but I don’t go for the flowers and chocolates brand of romance. Neither does he.

Slomovits: I think romance is the wrong word, especially when you’ve been together as long as we have. When you first get together it’s all passion and romance, and then later you get down to reality. You have to. And then you have your life together and that is what’s important.

You both travel extensively. What do you look for in a destination?

Slomovits: Something new to experience, some place I’ve never been before. Right now my favorite city is Amsterdam, it’s a beautiful city, but much smaller than I expected. I was able to walk the whole city in one day.

Meriwether: I like remote and exotic. One of my favorite trips is when Jack brought me back to Ireland for my birthday. I’d been there as a kid visiting family, and it left such an impression on me that I always wanted to return. We rented a small house in the middle of Galway County, where our only neighbors for a mile were sheep. All we did for a few days was drive around the country, it was winter and it felt like we were the only ones on the road. I wrote a short story about our trip for Jack, which gave a perfect snapshot of our relationship. I should be appearing in print shortly.

What is your domestic life like?

Slomovits: I cook, he cleans.

Meriwether: Jack has an open schedule, I have a 9 to 5. He ends up doing the lion’s share of the chores, and I take care of everything while he’s traveling. He’s a great cook, I do the washing up.

Using five words, describe each other.

Slomovits: Nurturing, deer-caught-in-the-headlights, artistic, stubborn, and more talented than he admits to.

Meriwether: Imaginative, driven to succeed, charismatic, protective, and an incredibly gifted photographer.

 

Read more about Sean Meriwether at: penboy7.com
Read more about Jack Slomovits at: jackny.com