Today, it falls on us to pass a tragic piece of news along to the friends of Juicy Secrets: Cheryl Taggert, one of the founders of this site and author of some of our most beloved stories, passed away on March 18th, 2021, at the age of thirty-eight.
To celebrate Cheryl’s life and work, we present these humble words from her fellow site founders, Naughty Mommy and JetBoy. Consider this a memorial service for someone we never met in person, but came to love very much.
Irreplaceable
by Naughty Mommy
Life can be, and often is, so cruel.
Take the case of a beautiful, talented, intelligent young woman, with a heart (and libido) overflowing with passion. Let’s call her Cheryl, though that is not her real name.
In her vocation, Cheryl is a dedicated, skilled English/Language Arts teacher, guiding her students toward eloquence, erudition, and a fulfilling life. As an avocation, she is an author of exquisite lesbian erotica, and in fact is one of the founders of a popular online site called Juicy Secrets.
To top it off, Cheryl is in a blissful romantic relationship with her long-time lover, whom we will call Lisa, and recently has branched out from writing porn (albeit very high quality porn) to become a successful published author of mainstream novels.
This girl has everything going for her, right? Living the kind of life that so many of us might envy.
Alas, there is a catch. For a number of years, Cheryl has been engaged in a deadly war with cancer, sometimes winning her battles, gaining a year or two of respite, but then having to enter that brutal fight once again.
Until, at last, she lost for good. And we lost her. The world lost her. A beautiful, talented, intelligent woman, taken away far too soon. Such a terrible tragedy.
* * *
I first encountered Cheryl Taggert around fifteen years ago through her stories posted at Nifty. They were perfect for turning me on, so much better written than nearly anything else I found there — or anywhere else on the Web — and her kinks were virtually a carbon copy of mine. We seemed to share an almost identical erotic imagination.
I can’t tell you how many orgasms I enjoyed from reading her sexy stories, but it was a lot. And all this was several years before I would get to know her as a person. I simply held her in awe, wishing I could write the way she did.
Eventually, in my perpetual search for masturbatory arousal, I discovered Lesbian Lolita. Wow, what a find! And there, through the comments section, I managed to have a few polite exchanges with my idol. This slowly grew into a budding friendship, especially after I found the courage to begin publishing my own naughty fiction.
When I decided, back in early 2015, that it was time to establish my own site housing the stories I’d written, I reached out — quite hesitantly — to my two favorite dirty authors, JetBoy and Cheryl, secretly hoping (though honestly doubting) that one or both of them might want to join me in that effort. The rest, of course, is history.
I don’t know what else to say except that I loved Cheryl. I loved her heart, her passion, her commitment, her ambition. I greatly admired and often learned from her writing, from her creative style, her gusto, and her willingness to take chances. She can never be replaced.
A Beautiful Soul
by JetBoy
I’d read and loved more than a few of Cheryl Taggart’s stories before Naughty Mommy, in her infinite wisdom, approached her (along with yours truly) with a crazy but enticing proposal back in 2015: would we be interested in starting up a new website, designed to house our respective bodies of kinky lesbian fiction? Needless to say, Cheryl and I jumped at the chance, and Juicy Secrets was born.
The three of us bonded instantly, and within a week were new best friends, racking up what felt like hundreds of emails a week, growing more and more excited as our dream grew and flourished. Those were heady days, building our online home up from nothing but a big pile of words. We finally opened Juicy Secrets after a month or so of preparation, eventually resulting in the colossal repository of Sapphic delights that you see today. What a fantastic time we had during those first few years, and what a marvelous rapport we achieved!
Cheryl Taggart was a superlative author of lesbian erotica. More than that, she was a wonderful, warmhearted person, a peerless site partner… and a true friend. I used to joke that in the hierarchy of Juicy Secrets, Naughty Mommy was the brain, I made up the arms and legs, but Cheryl… she was our beating heart, embodying that rare quality I call largeness of spirit. Even in the midst of her battle with cancer, she never fully lost her warmth and good cheer. And more than most, Cheryl understood the power of love, how it shapes and moves our lives. You can see that love right here at this site, woven into every one of her stories.
Cheryl leaves behind a wife, Lisa, whom she adored with a passion that shone like burnished gold. Naughty Mommy and I were privileged to share the flowering of their love in her many emails, celebrating through our endless correspondence with the happy couple when they tied the knot. Later, Cheryl would incorporate the story of their relationship into the third part of her magnum opus, “I Was the Daughter of a Porn Star.” We hope that you will join us in extending your profoundest sympathy to Lisa in her time of loss.
I missed Cheryl terribly when she left Juicy Secrets on a quest to become a legitimate author, but was thrilled to see her achieve that big, crazy dream, completing and publishing two novels before the end. A fine accomplishment, but I take even greater pride in the body of work she created for this site. For obvious reasons, these stories will never make a big splash in the outer world, but they have given a huge amount of pleasure and stimulation to her readers. And for those who struggle with desires that many see as twisted or perverse, her writing has a message: You are not alone.
Cheryl, yours was a beautiful soul. Thank you for the priceless gift of your incredible self. We will always love you.
* * *
One last note: Cheryl composed a final story for Juicy Secrets, not long before she became sick for the last time. Except for the correction of a few minor typos, the story appears exactly as she wrote it. It is entitled Monica’s Discovery.