Leander Luchia Poe is a 42-year-old author, born and raised on the West Side of Cincinnati, Ohio. As an Army brat and the son of a General, he grew up in a disciplined yet turbulent household. At the age of 13, following his father’s direct orders to his remarried mother, he was forced to leave home, marking the beginning of an independent and unconventional path.
Despite the early upheaval, Leander attended a small charter school with a strong focus on the arts, where he excelled and graduated at 15. He continued his education by taking post-secondary courses during his teenage years. For decades, he worked tirelessly in various jobs, often struggling to make ends meet, until a pivotal encounter with one woman opened unexpected doors for him.
Years later, he returned to the very neighborhood he had been kicked out of as a teenager and bought the house he was once forced to leave, reclaiming his roots in a profound act of full-circle triumph. Rather than pursuing a traditional career, Leander discovered his unique calling in the sex industry. Working at his godfather’s store, he carved out a niche as a sexual therapist, guiding and supporting customers through intimate and often unspoken experiences.
Drawing from these real-life encounters, he began crafting his debut memoir, Find Me Where the Sidewalk Ends—a raw, unflinching exploration of the hidden, darker aspects of women’s desires, and a testament to his own resilience.
House of Velvet Tongue: Find Me Where the Sidewalk Ends is not simply a memoir of desire; it is the story of a house that was never meant to exist, yet did, for nearly three decades. It is the account of a place where extraordinary women took the raw material of a boy who had nothing left to lose and shaped him into something precise, devoted, and dangerously skilled.
I am not an academic, nor a journalist, nor a sex worker in the conventional sense. I am the boy who became the tongue of the house—a sanctuary of silk, shadow, and ritual. In these pages, I invite you to step through the narrow brick door into a world few ever see, and even fewer truly understand—a world where the deepest strength can live inside the most vulnerable acts.
