Tess the Dinosaur: Sex Educator, Fire-Keeper, Friend

In this post I talk about the death of my friend to cancer - in a surprisingly jovial way at times but also understandably heavy at others. Said friend was someone I knew through sex and kink events, so there are passing references to some R18 stuff I've gotten up to. No stress if you'd like to skip this one <3

Last month, I attended my third funeral. Kind of wildly lucky, to have lived 24 years and only gone to three funerals. The first was for my Grandad Col when I was in primary school. The second was for the Dad of one of my beloved friends a few years ago. And the third was on a Thursday a few weeks ago, for Tess.

Tess had done many things and been many people in their 42^[1] years of life, from dinosaur to bartender to flame-twirling circus performer, but I met them in 2022 in the midst of the career they were ultimately most well-known for: adult sex education. Tess worked as a sexuality-focused occupational therapist, created internationally renowned resources and journal articles around navigating sex and intimacy with cancer - including founding a global online community of patients and their partners around the same topic - and ran consent workshops as well as kink & sexuality events^[2]. It was at one of these workshops that I first met them.

In the process of making my own way through the sex/kink community that Tess taught at, facilitated and was a part of themself, I befriended folk who were friends (and/or friends, teehee) with Tess outside of their work, leading us to have the joy of getting to know each other properly on a few occasions.

When I tell people about Tess, I struggle to summarise our relationship in a simple term - "acquaintance" is too impersonal, "someone I knew" too insignificant, "teacher" technically true but doesn't really tell the whole story when we're both adults and a lot of the teaching was done in our underwear.

"A community member I loved" comes closer, but is a bit of a mouthful and still not enough.

So I go with "friend".

I don’t want to claim to have been super close to Tess or to have known them better than I did. The vast majority of our relationship was one of event attendee and facilitator, of sex educator and adult student — but not in a normal way. Instead in a strange, ephemeral, transient way that often happens in sex and kink communities — communities where the not-normal is made normal and so perhaps our relationship was not so not-normal after all.

We knew each other in the way where im naked in a room of 100 people and

you’re a facilitator there doing event management and making sure people are doing good consent whilst oh hey also

im being flogged for an hour straight in front of you and

there is a bond there between me and you who i trust to create a safe enough space for me to do that in and then

we’re at a private gathering hanging out and having drinks and getting to know each other in a new context and

oh hang on are we kind of metamours?? awesome! and

now at all the events we’re both at we talk and laugh like we know each other because we do now - kind of - enough, at least - and

wait we’re going camping together?!! how fun for all involved and

oh dear i forgot my mouthwash so you’re driving to the pharmacy to buy some for me so we'd better exchange phone numbers to contact each other about that and then

i get covid and become too sick to go to events and then

jesus christ your cancer is terminal and you’ve asked for privacy in this time you so you can just focus on those closer to you in the time you have left and so your number sits there in my phone unused and i don’t see you or talk to you or text you and

now you’re actually dead and functionally it’s the same as not seeing you or talking to you or texting you over the past year and a half but

its not.

its really not.

^[3]

The funeral was awesome - a strange thing to say about a funeral, but it's true. Because Tess knew they were going to die, they planned and organised the whole event themself - in collaboration with the team at The Last Hurrah Funerals, a fantastic company (from what I've seen) that specialises in creating unique, authentic funeral ceremonies and rituals that celebrate and farewell the dead however they/their loved ones want.

For Tess, they lowkey turned their funeral into a big party. It was held in the big back greenhouse of a pub, and Tess insisted we all be offered tequila shots on arrival. The dress code they had chosen was "wear the outfit you love the most, but wear the least", resulting in a spectacular array of queer outfits in the most literal sense of the word.

They made a game of bingo to play after the ceremony, to encourage us all to chat and meet new people in the process of ticking off bingo squares like "find someone who went to one of Tess's workshops", "find someone who drank Tequila with Tess" and "find someone who's been in love with Tess". They had folk in inflatable dinosaur costumes offering hugs, honoring their childhood-and-beyond legacy as "Tess the Dinosaur".

The grieving rituals and connective moments, as devastating as they were, were nonetheless so full of love and silliness just like Tess. We created a shrine for them (pictured at the top of this blog post) that contained so much greenery and plants - as well as penis dinosaurs and vulva sculptures. Their high school friend group told us all the story of Tess's life and their relationships with them - in the style of a Dr Seuss picture book via a sock puppetry performance.

We met friends and exes we hadn't seen in years with tears and hugs, saying "oh my god i feel so bad saying 'it's so good to see you!!' at a funeral!" and assuring each other "no, don't worry, this is exactly what Tess wanted this day to be."

I'd love my funeral to be like this some day, too.

Tess told me once back in 2022 that I’d make an excellent sex educator. Later that night, after a glass of wine, they went on to advise me to absolutely never become one professionally like they had. Such is the way of such professions in our messy, messy societies of messy, messy people.

Well Tess, I can make no promises on that latter point, but in the spirit of the former I thought I’d take this time to write a piece I’ve been wanting to write for most of the time I’ve known you: The Kink Things Everyone (yes, everyone) Should Know.

In my time in kink and sex communities, it's struck me that many of our teachings - including Tess's - on consent, negotiation, communication and even the way our bodies work physiologically are wildly useful not just to those having sex or practicing kink, but to everyone.

That piece is going to be my next blog post. Hopefully. I've written about 70% of it, and was planning on publishing it with this post, but alas the chronic illness has kicked my ass so I'm giving myself time to rest before finishing it.

But for now, I'll share with you one of Tess's articles: "How a simple 2 minutes saved my sex during cancer treatments."

This is a short piece explaining a super simple way you can queer and gameify your sex - or, really, any physical or connective activity with another person(s) - to break through ableist, patriarchal, cissexist norms and create an experience that truly caters to what you and your partner(s) want.

I've been using this game for almost as long as I've been having sex, and its awesome. Tess explains the concept with their usual enthusiasm and sense of fun, so go have a read!

Thank you, Tess, Lord of the Flames.

I hope that we who knew you can keep building the queer, disabled sexual revolution you so passionately stoked the fire of.

I know I certainly intend to.

With love,

Freya of the Highlands.

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