Author name: Luke_Jenson
Luke Jenson: Sex, Money, and a River Town I’m Luke. I’m 49. Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, but I’ve called Hamilton home for over twenty years now. I’m a writer and a researcher. Used to be a sexologist, worked as a therapist and ran a few studies on human attraction. Now, I mostly write about the intersection of money, dating apps, and desire — and I write about this city, Hamilton, for the CamoWallet project on camowallet.app. I’ve lived a few lives, made a lot of mistakes, and learned a thing or two about why we swipe right, fall in love, and sometimes, fall apart. Hamilton isn’t what people expect. It’s not a glamour city. That’s why I like it. It’s a working town, a river city. The Waikato River, wide and brown and powerful, splits it right down the middle. You cross the Victoria Bridge on a foggy morning and the whole world feels muted, soft. I live in a little flat off Grey Street, near the markets. I can walk to the center in ten minutes. I’ve watched this place change — the uni expand, the cafes on Victoria Street multiply, the cycling trails along the river get busier. It’s home. Honestly, it’s the first place that ever felt like it. Here’s the thing about being a sexologist: people assume you’ve got it all figured out. That your relationships are perfect, your desires neatly catalogued. God, no. If anything, studying intimacy just makes you more aware of your own mess. I’ve had my heart stomped on. I’ve done the stomping. I’ve been married, briefly, to a woman I met in Auckland. It was a disaster — a beautiful, passionate disaster that taught me more about communication than any academic paper ever could. You can’t sit with a couple, watching them navigate betrayal or boredom, without seeing your own reflection in their pain. It’s humbling. It’s supposed to be. My competency isn't in having a perfect life. It's in seeing the patterns, in understanding that the fight over the dishes is almost never about the dishes. It’s about feeling unseen. And I get that. I really do. October 27th, 1976. Jackson, Mississippi. I was born in St. Dominic’s Hospital, during a humid autumn that felt more like summer. My dad was a junior partner at a law firm on Capitol Street. My mom taught piano from our home, a three-bedroom brick house with a magnolia tree in the front yard that dropped leaves the size of dinner plates. I remember the heat. The drone of window-unit air conditioners. The smell of cut grass and the particular, cloying sweetness of sweet tea. It was a world of front porches and church on Sundays and a kind of quiet politeness that, I’d learn later, often masks a lot of secrets. My childhood was fine. Normal. Too normal, maybe. It was the kind of place that made you want to either fit in perfectly or escape completely. I chose escape. My job now is pretty specific. For the CamoWallet project, I write articles about Hamilton. Not travel-guide stuff. I write about the city through a different lens. Like, where do people go on a first date when they’re not sure it’s a date? (Usually, I suggest a walk along the river from the Hamilton Gardens to the town belt — it’s public, it’s beautiful, and you can bail out if it’s awkward). Or how the lighting in a bar on Hood Street affects how people perceive each other. It’s still about relationships, about attraction, about the tiny economics of romance. It’s just applied to a place I know intimately. And because of my background, I can’t help but see it all through that filter. The nervous laughter at a table at Hayes Common. The silent, loaded check-splitting at a restaurant on Alexandra Street. It’s a living laboratory, this city. Growing up, I was a weird kid. Read too much. Watched people too closely. My escape came when I was 17, when I got a scholarship to study abroad for a year. Ended up in New Zealand, of all places. Hamilton. The University of Waikato. I lived in a hall of residence on Knighton Road. It was a shock — the green, the volcanic black sand on the west coast beaches, the casual Kiwi attitude. I remember my first night, walking across the university bridge, looking at the lights reflected in the river, and feeling like I’d landed on another planet. That year changed everything. I met my first real love there, a Māori woman studying psychology. We’d sit on the banks of the river for hours, talking about everything and nothing. She introduced me to a way of thinking about connection that wasn't so clinical, so American. It was more about whakapapa, about lineage and belonging. It was the first time I connected the dots between a place and a feeling. When I went back to the US for college, I couldn't shake it. After I finished my Master's in human sexuality at San Francisco State, I moved back. For good. Got a job at Family Planning on Clarence Street, did some research through the university, and eventually set up a private practice on Collingwood Street. Saw a lot of people. Heard a lot of stories. And a lot of them started with we met on an app. That’s when I started writing, trying to make sense of this new world of digital desire. And now, here I am. Still in Hamilton. Still watching. Still trying to figure it out. The river keeps flowing, same as it ever was. And so do we.
