Season 3 mostly consists of threesomes, and in this episode I lie down with the founder — as well as the New York City host — of Skirt Club, a private women’s club for the curious kind.

 Skirt Club is also the name of their sex party, an event designed exclusively for women to explore their bicuriosity. Many of these women are primarily in romantic and sexual relationships with men. Just as I was, when I attended the Rocker Chic-themed edition of Skirt Club a couple of months ago in a mansion-like loft in New York’s Financial District. 

If your bunny ears perked immediately, darling, you can apply to be a member at skirtclub.co.uk 

Genevieve LeJeune created the Skirt Club enterprise (they currently have parties all over Europe and the U.S.) to give women a space to explore their sexuality, without men present. She felt her bisexuality was being exploited for her boyfriend’s amusement, and wanted a space away from the male gaze, curated specifically for female empowerment, freedom, and sensual exploration. She couldn’t find it anywhere. So she built it. She is a fiercely independent businesswoman and adventurer, a world-traveler, a stigma-challenging, femme-presenting, entrepreneur of the unconventional. And she is also very, very beautiful.

Shelby Nicole is Genevieve’s friend (Genevieve said that she doesn’t work with anyone she wouldn’t want to be friends with, so she is living the maxim “do what you love with people you like”). Shelby is also Skirt Club’s New York City Event Manager and hostess. She greeted me with lingerie and a smile when I arrived in my sequins and leather. Shelby is a creative of many kinds, an actor, a filmmaker, a writer, a model. She can be found in her sex kitten form, resplendent in lingerie on her Instagram @reclusemuse — but you’ll have to request to follow her, because she is Private.

Shelby is a challenging person, as in, she challenges every idea. You may find this conversation to be less vulnerable than my usual episodes, perhaps because I had just come from a funeral, but maybe also because I felt, in a way, a bit on guard. This was interesting. I usually curate conditions for myself to record under which I don’t feel defensive in any way. I don’t usually get horizontal with people I feel the need to verbally parry with — it makes it harder for me to share with you my special self, my soft underbelly. I did my best here, and I was honest about feeling challenged, which is ultimately the the powerful thing I ask of myself. 

So in this episode you’ll see what happens when I feel the need to justify and defend my words — I get louder, I talk over them, and I do not cry. I try to live by Brene Brown’s mantra: “Don’t shrink, don’t puff up, just stand your sacred ground.” But. I think I puffed up here.

Still, in this episode we talk about Max’s death and the funeral, magical thinking, how Genevieve was taught nothing about sex growing up, and Shelby learned through books left on her bed. We talked about Shelby’s matter-of-fact-ness and my reaction to it. We talk about British humor, awkwardness, and media, the internet as a safe haven, Shelby’s first period, how none of us want children (and how refreshing that is for me!), the story of how Genevieve married a man when she never wanted to marry anyone, having very little sex, personally, in a life that’s full of it, marital bed death & resensitization, the 4pm masturbation break, a brief history of Shelby’s search for orgasm, my deep envious crushes on girls, the kind of women we’re attracted to, distinguishing bisexual & pansexual, recognizing if we are bisexual and biromantic, and how Genevieve’s ex was repulsed by her interest in women.

This episode was mixed and mastered by Irving Gadhoury. You can find him for all your audio needs at IGrecording.com. As ever, my lovely intro music was composed by Alan Markley, who is on Instagram as @plasticcannons, and my saucy likeness of a logo was illustrated by Shana Shay, whom you can hire through 99 designs.

In next week’s episode, which is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts, we discuss first sexual experiences with women, my desire to voyeur at their Skirt Club party, and, to complete the trifecta of taboo topics, we also talk about: money. To listen to that episode, and for access to The Full Horizontal, which includes all the part twos of every conversation, go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila and become a $7+/month patron.

Until next time: May you have someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to. In 3 days, I fly down to Orlando to attend my first podcast conference, so that is what I’m looking forward to!

Thank you, my dear. Thank you for getting horizontal.

And now, come lie down with us in the Financial District of New York, New York.

In this episode, I lie down with Geoffrey Miller, PhD: evolutionary psychology professor, author of books, out polyamorist, lifelong investigator of human nature.

I met Geoffrey at a dinner party hosted by a Blue Man and curated by an adventuresome scholar of the brain— expressly for the purpose of discussing the future of intimacy. The sex scientist Dr. Zhana was there, our mutual friend and my horizontal guest of episodes 4 & 5. She and the brain scholar invited Geoffrey. In fact, the dinner party was scheduled around his visit to New York.

And then, I knew why.

He would listen and listen, and then say something so incisive, so crystalline-clear, backed by conscientious research and immersion in the topic of human sexuality. He spoke quietly and with a gravitas reserved for someone who has studied their studies and lectured their lectures and doesn’t need to prove any of it to you.

He was also a bit rakish in the way that my first-ever lover was. They have the same je ne sais quoi  about the eyes— a mischeivousness, an insouciant uplooking through a fringe of lashes, a Domly-ness that’s only partly concealed by their glasses... but loudly visible, if you know how to look for that sort of thing.

We recorded on a king bed in a mancave in Bushwick, Brooklyn, an airbnb that Geoffrey had rented for his New York stay. There was a fish tank. An enormous leather couch, and a flat screen TV. Because we recorded in my neighborhood: this episode has plenty of local color. If it’s not the overhead train squealing to a stop, it’s the incessant galumphing of the toddler upstairs (uaghhh), or the ice cream truck playing it’s deathly tune in the background. If you add in some planes, cringe-worthy music played at an unholy decibel, and a whole lotta sirens: This is what it’s like to live in Brooklyn. Or at least, in my part of Brooklyn.

In this, the first part of our voluminous, far-ranging conversation, we talked about his family dynasty (11 aunts & uncles, 28 cousins), growing up with intellectual, activist parents, his Dad’s weekly pre-college briefings about Things That Will Happen in New York (lecture one: prostitutes), an act of sexual altruism, a tale of CPR dummies and lady ghosts of the asylum, the difference between anthropology and evolutionary psychology, 80s cotillions, dating before cell phones, the similarities between Geoffrey and his brother the preacher, heteroflexibility, bisexual stigma, future sex-positive societies, talking to college students about polyamory, how Geoffrey met his first wife and became an Instant Stepdad, struggling with monogamy, stepfathering in prehistory, how marital therapy fails men, psychotherapy solutions vs. manosphere solutions, why most clinical psychologists aren’t well-versed in different relationship styles, and Geoffrey’s coming-out-poly story. Phew. And then I begin the tale of how I met Patrick, which begins with 14 Rooms and culminates at the Love Immersive, with Steve Dean (a recent horizontal guest!) as the catalyst.

In the second part of my conversation with Geoffrey, which will be released next week as episode 88, I dive deep into the massive revelation I had around my own jealousy, and he gives me a broader understanding of my emotions from an evolutionary psych perspective. To listen to that episode, become a patron of the horizontal arts at $7 or more per month (Yes yes! There’s now a $7 tier, by popular demand.)

Patreon is the love child of crowd-funding and a subscription service, and $7 a month gives you access to The Full Horizontal (all the part two episodes, and any bonus episodes which, P.S. One such bonus shall be released sooooon — plus an invite to the secret patrons group and our patron get-togethers!) Go to patreon.com/horizontalwithlila.

Now, come lie down with us in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

***

This episode was mixed and mastered by Irving Gadhoury. You can find him for all your audio needs (including recording live music!) at IGrecording.com. As ever, my lovely intro music was composed by Alan Markley, on the Instagram as @plasticcannons, and my saucy likeness of a logo was illustrated by Shana Shay, whom you can hire through 99 designs.

Also, what do you think about this: horizontal listeners as a group, are hozzies… Thoughts Comments? Concerns?

Season 3 mostly consists of threesomes. Whereas in Season 1 and 2, I was lying down with a single guest at time, many of my Season 3 episodes will have me lying down with two people at a time — in this case, between two wizards. 

These humans are in some kind of relationship with one another. Thus far, I’ve had a manager and his/her trauma specialist client, co-hosts of a sexuality conversation series called the Discerning Dick, primary poly kinky romantic partners, and now, Wizard friends and esoteric collaborators.

In this episode, I lie down with Devin & Kevin. I’ve known about Devin for years. My former housemate Tiger, who you heard from in Season One, used to say, “My Wizard friend,” quite regularly in casual conversation. But it wasn’t until Lola Jean’s Kinky Carnival when we became properly acquainted and made a podcast pact. He fulfilled his part of the pact months ago.

My episode of his series This Podcast is a Ritual is called “How To Take Life Lying Down,” and in it, we talked at a moderate incline, about the origin of my horizontal curiosity, couples therapy, reflective listening, and my working definition of intimacy. Then I made a call for closing rituals, to end romantic relationships.

I also cast you a Spell.

I am truly delighted by my blossoming friendship with Devin. He is impossibly quick-witted and fantastically charismatic, adventurous in spirit, and eternally playful. I get the sense that he could communicate with anybody, anywhere, for any amount of time. His long white-blond beard never fails to make me smile, and I am excited for our friendship to grow, because he’s one of the humans that I wish to bring my conundrums to, just to see what his brain will do with them.

He’s something like your most compassionate therapist, if your therapist were a young handsome Dumbledore proficient in computers who studied improv at Second City for 7 years. If you listen to his podcast, or participate in any of his events, like the Wizarding Hour (a collaboration with Kevin) or the Wizard Walkabout, in which 50 of us took ceremonial gummy bears and went gallivanting about Central Park on 4/20, guided by the Wizard in Person, as well as the Wizard in our Ears — you’ll know that Devin has a thing for numbers.

Not for nothin’, I also took part in a Sex Magick ritual for his podcast, on 6/9, from 6 to 9pm, with between 6 and 9 people.

His fiancee, L.A. Marks, had me on her poetry podcast, A Daily Dose of Poetry, and last week, told a tale of bisexual discovery at my horizontal storytelling: the summer pride edition. 

On their mailbox is written: The Poet and The Wizard… (Can you imagine the Glory of Such a Wedding?!)

Kevin is a musician, a Senior UX Designer, and one of Devin’s dear friends. Their friendship has mostly taken place in the ether, in the form of Wizard emails, the record of which form a virtual diary, a correspondence that marks the living of our lives - in much the way, perhaps, that our grandparents wrote to their cousins.

Kevin was formerly the proprietor of Tarot Society, which was a center for the curious to gather in Bushwick and muse about things hidden and obscure. Devin & Kevin used to host a summer series there called New Age & Chill.

I never dropped by when Tarot Society was in existence, so I will have to entice Kevin to give me a reading at a pop-up or a party... His mischievous eyes and delight in getting away with things make me quite curious about the Wizardry of his Tarot.

The day of this recording was the first time I met Kevin, and, since he is a private person by nature, I am grateful that he chose to share, in the service of friendship and intimacy in this way, in this medium, with all of us. Thank you, Kevin.

In this episode, the first half of our conversation, we talk about the origin of the White Collar Wizard emails, middle-school boys and cock-shaming, Devin’s first acid trip, in 8th grade, the grand Bohemia of Olympia, Washington, learning that you aren’t "supposed to" cum too fast if you have a penis, sleep-sexing, learning about sex by asking a sexual partner, “What is your other sex like?”, Devin’s Wizard Tinder profile, 80s Penthouse, imprinting on your first porn, Kevin’s therapist, Ethical Porn for Dicks, shame-y, judgemental sex, and how some fantasies should just remain fantasies.

In the next episode, 86, the second half of our conversation, Devin and Kevin actually read us some of their private Wizard emails, we discuss what it means to be a present-day Tarot Dealer and a modern Wizard, and Devin tells us the truly incredible — as in, if you saw it in a movie you’d say, “That never happens in real life!” — and the incredibly true tale of how his hair turned Wizard White.

To listen to that episode, and for access to The Full Horizontal, which includes all the part twos plus a monthly video containing a pearl of Intimacy Wisdom, become a patron of the horizontal arts. Patreon is the love child of crowd-funding and a subscription service. Find me there!

In next week’s episode, we will be treated to the story of how Devin became a Wizard, and get to hear Devin & Kevin read some of the most pivotal Wizard Emails of their friendship.

This episode was mixed and mastered by Christopher Liang, of Audio Dojo. I’m truly grateful to have him on my team, and have already learned a great deal from him in one week of collaborating! He does Sound Mixing, Editing, and Design as well as original music for TV & Film, and composes under the name Ninjaboy.

My intro music was composed by Alan Markley, who is @plasticcannons on Instagram, and my cover art was designed by Shana Shay, whom you can hire on 99 Designs.

And now, come lie down... between two Wizards.

Usually, our conversation is long, sensual, and languorous, lasting between two and three hours, and when I release it as horizontal with lila, I divide it into two parts— the first half is available in all the podcast places, and the second is available exclusively to my patrons of the horizontal arts.

You can become a patron for access to the Full Horizontal, plus a monthly video of Intimacy Tips, and an invitation to the secret patrons group:

Become a Patron!

My part two episodes always conclude like this: At the end of each conversation, I ask my guest to tell me a story. It can be any story under the broad umbrella of intimacy — in other words, a tale that is related to sex, love, or relationships of any kind. I ask that my guest choose a story they feel deeply compelled to tell me, and trust that it will be the right one: a narrative that others need to hear. 

I’ve had stories of myriad types and tones — stories about the first time ejaculating (episode 2. stuff came out), about friendship and suicide (episode 15. friend death), about having a relationship with a couple (episode 10. his fingers are always hard), about a big freaky wedding (episode 49. bawdy storytelling), etc. As I said. All kinds.

My live event horizontal storytelling, is just these stories, told back-to-back by six different pajama-clad, reclining storytellers. And on this coming Sunday, June 30th, two days from the release of this episode, I’m hosting another one. This time it will the horizontal storytelling pajama party: summer pride edition, and all tales told will be from the lips of LGBTQPIAD storytellers. 

LGBTQPIAD stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Pansexual, Intersex, Asexual, and Demisexual. If you’re unfamiliar with any of those terms, check the glossary on horizontalwithlila.com, and while you’re there, sign up for the mailing list, so that you’ll know about all the events.

This weekend’s horizontal storytelling will include tales from folx across the gender and sexuality rainbow, and tickets are sliding scale for anybody in the community — just message me for a personalized discount code. If you are an ally, use the code LILALOVE in all caps, for $5 off.

So... I am broadcasting this quickie episode in honor of Sunday’s upcoming event.

This is one of the never-before-released tales from the last horizontal storytelling, held in February 2018!

In this quickie, I lie down with Bill Demeritt.

Bill is a thespian, which means that he spends a large portion of his life pretending to be someone else. Most of the people who do that exceptionally, are gifted with a formidable sense of compassion, and I believe that Bill is no different in that regard.

He performs on stage and screen (you can see him in the Emmy-winning The Normal Heart and Season Two of the acclaimed Vimeo series The Outs). He narrates audiobooks and longform journalism. He studied acting at Marymount Manhattan and the Yale School of Drama. He’s currently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival working on Paula Vogel’s play “Indecent.”

Bill is charming and game and playful and handsome and nebbishy and a leetle bit nervous, all at the same time.

You can find all things Bill on WilliamDemeritt.com

I first met Bill while doing a live recording of Carol A. Jantsen’s Help: a podcast for those who need it, in which an agoraphobe character with self-help aspirations begins to get out in the world.

In Season 2 Episode 1: Lila Donnolo and the Double Date, Carol & I, Bill & Celeste go on a fictional double date in a very real Chinese food restaurant. Bill was cast as my “date,” and on the day we recorded, Bill brought me a dozen roses, that’s how committed he was to the scene. (I somehow ended up with 11 and they were sort of a consolation prize, but it’s fine.)

He’s getting married in November, after pulling off one of the most theatrical stage proposals I have ever seen captured on video. Congratulations, Bill. And thank you for showing me how it’s done.

In our quickie, Bill tells me a story about pierogis in New York, a callipygous behind, going to Poland for sex (and love), kohana, the word for sweetheart, a romantic trip to Nice, and the Grand Gesture.

And now, join us on Sunday for the next horizontal storytelling…

And come lie down with us at Hacienda Studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

* This episode was mixed and mastered by Christopher Liang at audio dojo.

Welcome to horizontal, the podcast about intimacy of all kinds, recorded while lying down, wearing robes. I know I said that Season 3 would be threesomes all season long, but we will still have the occasional dyad, because, sometimes it just works out best that way.

In this episode, I lie down with Steve Dean. Steve Dean is a dating expert, a MmmmEGAConnector, an adventurer, a perpetual nomad, and an event SuperHost. He’s the founder of the dating industry consulting firm dateworking (which you can find on dateworking.com). He stewards workshops, dinners, coworking sessions, and massive meetups like the food-court-centered Hygge [HOO-GAH] (which means cozy in Danish).

Steve Dean intentionally dates people from all different parts of the social spectrum, including those he would never introduce to his friends, in order to understand their perspective on the world. I think he’s actually an anthropologist at heart, and dating is the Tribe he studies. He’s a quintessential participant-observer. His experiences are research. His research is experiential. His brain incessantly crunches data, and relentlessly seeks for the most optimal of the optimal outcomes. I’ve never met a human machine quite like him.

One week this February, I had the mean blues, and I reached out to my friend Jillian, patron of the podcast, and creator of The Joy List, a weekly compilation of events that one can go to alone, and leave with a new friend. I asked her what she was excited about that week and she rattled off three or so happenings. Then she asked, “How about you?” And I realized that I wasn’t excited about anything that week. I had, in essence, nothing to look forward to. So Jillian decided to fix that. She encouraged me to go to Open Brain, a roving salon for art and ideas that takes place in living rooms and public parks and spaces in-between. This was a living room edition. I almost didn’t go, I was just feeling so blah. But I eventually dusted off a tango song I used to sing, and showed up.

At Open Brain, two things happened in quick succession: I met a man from San Francisco, Michael, who became my lover, and he invited me along to an after-event hang in a hotel lobby in the Financial District. There I would meet Steve Dean, who was orchestrating the event. Everyone kept saying his name. Nobody said his first name on its own. He was Steve Dean to everyone. Jilian said, “You don’t know Steve Dean? Oh. You should know Steve Dean.” That clinched it. And so I went along to talk Burning Man with Michael, and meet Steve Dean. When Steve Dean and I met, I told him, “Jillian said that we should know each other.” Steve said, “What’s your name?” “Lila,” I said. “What’s your last name?” A bit bemused, I said, “Donnolo.” “Yep,” said Steve Dean. “We should know each other.” And then we talked intimacy, dating, and why teenagers are having less sex these days, until the wee hours.

Because I had recently curated my intimate immersive Valentine’s experience at Hacienda Villa, 14 Rooms, Steve consulted me about his love-language-themed townhouse full of intimate encounters, The Love Immersive, set for March 30th, and invited me to be a part of it. Knowing that the environment would be overwhelming — potentially magnificent, but certainly overwhelming, I set up a breather-space. A closet with a cozy mat, blanket, and pillow set-up, like a child’s secret hiding spot, with three headsets programmed with an 11-minute audio experience I pre-recorded, about the upper limits problem, catching it in time, and the radical recalibration of rest.

The day of the Love Immersive, Michael was back in town from SF. I hadn’t seen him in three weeks, and we had ferocious, pounding sex that soaked all the way through my mattress cover. That night, at the Love Immersive, juiced up and well-fucked and sex-haired and satisfied. I met my current partner, Patrick.

Because Steve Dean is a Superconnector, I’m in the most communicative, loving romantic relationship of my life so far.

In this, the first half of our conversation, we talk about VR World, where Steve met Patrick, my tendency to codependency, Steve’s dating habits, whether connection or commitment requires compatibility, optimization the skill of connection, dating across 200 different dating apps, the Sex on Demand app, whether comets are partners, or if they might be growth charts, polyamory as part orientation and part skill-set, how relationships are like start-ups, and the libido-killing cycle that Patrick and I found ourselves in at the outset of our relationship.

In other words, come lie down with us in Chelsea, on the island of Manhattan, New York.

P.S. Cats were drugged in the making of this episode. And by cats I mean: one singular cat. And by drugged I mean: with catnip. Still. I thought it was important to tell you.

Welcome back to part 2 of 4 episodes with my dear friends, primary poly partners, kinky lovers, and entrepreneurs, leaders in the poly / kink People of Color community, Tiana & Orion.

In episode 78. surprise surprise he liked black chicks, we dove into Tiana’s sexual development. We talked about natural musk, her parent’s divorce, commuting between the two households, what Tiana & Orion’s parents have in common, face-sitting on teddy bears, her first inklings of exhibitionism, being a good girl, then fucking til you die!, how Tiana met her husband in middle school by dropping books on him, the story of their marriage, a very good tip for good anal play, the taint, camming on Chaturbate, looking for threesomes on Feeld, Tiana’s first polycule and first triad, and how her ex demolished their relationship by wiping out their accounts on payroll day. And that was just the first quarter of our conversation, and you should listen to it first.

In this episode, we discuss Orion’s family legacy: the violence of his father, his mother’s pattern of dating abusive men, coding love based on what we experienced as children, and how even abuse can be coded as love if it was all you could get from your caregivers, witnessing more than one way to father, poverty & private school, Orion’s interplay with the archetype of the strong black woman, us-against-the-world, compartmentalization, bullying, Orion, The Soldier, and The Beast, going to the Renaissance Faire as a black couple, microaggressions at a white boat party, how Orion is the first black male primary partner that Tiana has had, and Orion’s biggest difficulty being in relationship with Tiana. (I don’t think you’ll guess what it is!)

And this is just part two!

You definitely want to hear part three & four of this conversation.

Tiana and Orion allow us to witness the inner workings of their relationship, talking through the biggest strain that they have have experienced so far, live, involving broken agreements, a communication breakdown, and sex with secondary partner. It’s fresh, and alive. New information is revealed in the conversation: there is hurt, and introspection, and questioning, and loving challenge, and we get to hear — in real time — how they work through the Deep Feels.

They are beyond generous to allow us this true window into their poly life. It is an edge. I am deeply honored that they would navigate that edge and allow us to listen in. This has my aim for the podcast all along— to allow you to eavesdrop on a private conversation, so that we can learn some of the forms that intimate dialogue can take. I feel certain there’s something there for you, poly or not.

In order to listen to part three and four, become a patron of the horizontal arts! Go to Patreon.com / horizontal with lila ... At the base tier of $10/month, you get access to The Full Horizontal, including all the part twos going back to the beginning (or in this case, threes and fours) plus access to the secret patrons Facebook group, and a monthly video of intimacy tips and a love poem.

In keeping with my commitment to myself to rewire my nervous system for joy by celebrating triumphs of any size, I have something to share:

On May 21st, 2019, I will celebrate 2 years of horizontal. A Horizontal-Aversary!

I have never loved a project for so long before. I have never felt so powerfully committed to a mission before. And I have never before had the soul-satisfaction of knowing that my work resonates. I am going to mark this occasion in two ways: first, with another Confetti Project Open Studios photo shoot, and then, on May 21st, with a Horizontal-Aversary party at which the invitees are all previous horizontal guests & current patrons. (Become one in the next 10 days for an invite!)

I plan to attempt the recording of an episode unprecented in the horizontal-verse!

I’d be honored if you’d celebrate this milestone with me in any one of these ways: becoming a patron, sending me a personal message about how a particular horizontal concept or episode has made a difference for you, or by sharing this art I’ve made you with the people you love most in the world.

Thank you for listening.

Come lie down with us again in the The Bronx, New York.

My name is Lila, and I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, storytelling, sex, and stargazing, among other things. I’ve metaphorically rolled them up in audio form and called it a podcast. Horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s consensual eavesdropping. It’s us lying down right next to each other, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.

During Seasons 1 and 2, I got horizontal with one guest at a time, but Season 3 will be mostly comprised of threesomes: myself plus two guests who are in some kind of relationship with one another. Typically, each conversation is between two and three hours long, and divided into two parts — the part ones are available in all the podcast places, and the part twos are available exclusively for my patrons. But this episode is something truly remarkable. We recorded for over five hours, and we went both broad and deep. I’ll be dividing this conversation into four parts: the first two, episodes 78 & 79, will be available in all the podcast places, and the last two 80 & 81, will be exclusive to patrons of the horizontal arts.

To become a patron, go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila — at the base tier of $10/month, you get access to The Full Horizontal, including all the part twos (or in this case, threes and fours) plus access to the secret patrons Facebook group, and a monthly video of intimacy tips and a love poem.

In this and the following 3 episodes, I lie down with two of the people I love most in the world, Tiana and Orion. I’ve known Orion for 13 years, and Tiana for 1. They are: my people. I cherish them. With great regard. I believe in them. I believe in them like a good parent believes in their kids. I see them.

Orion is a massage therapist, a father, a personal trainer, a polysaturated lover, and a newly-minted kink educator. Orion and I met at the very beginning of my yoga teaching career. We worked at the same gym. I knew him when he had dreads. I knew him when he was married. I knew him when he became a father. For many years, we saw each other every single week — I’d teach him a private yoga class, and he would give me a massage, and we would tell each other all about our lives. He is one of the most overscheduled people I have ever known, but he always always made time for me. It was therapeutic in so many ways. He healed my body when I was training acrobatics. He made space for my moods and did not judge my depression. He knew of every heartbreak, every abandoned project, every new desire, all the plans and all the schemes. He was a primary confidant. He is firmly in my corner.

Tiana is the glittersaurus: the sparkliest, most fabulous human I have ever personally known and loved. She is an entrepreneur with a pet-care business, a professional dominatrix, a model and a stylist for fun, a craft-er, and not for nothin’, one of the most gorgeous women that exists. She is so beautiful, and yet focuses so little on the physical beauty of her lovers, that I joke that she’s like Fleur from Harry Potter, “I am beautiful enough for ze both of us!” She has singlehandedly inspired me to live into the Burning Man principle of radical self-expression with the way I present myself every single day. I think some people might be surprised that before a year ago, I wasn’t fully self-expressed with my clothing. But I wasn’t. I was always concerned about being “too.”  “Too too.” But Tiana, because of her willingness to be gloriously bold, to tolerate the attention that that brings (and it brings all kinds), and to go larger, bigger, shinier when she feels challenged, not LESS, she unlocked that for me, and I am so grateful.

Tiana and Orion are polyamorous, which means they have many loves, and they are primary partners, which means that they prioritize their connection, even though they are linked romantically and/or sexually to multiple other partners and lovers and romantic friends.

In this episode, Tiana, Orion, and I talk about natural musk, her parent’s divorce, commuting between the two households, what Tiana & Orion’s parents have in common, face-sitting on teddy bears, first inklings of exhibitionism, being a good girl, then fucking til you die, Tiana meeting her husband in middle school, the story of her marriage, a tip for good anal play, the taint, camming on Chaturbate, looking for threesomes on Feeld, Tiana’s first polycule and first triad, and how her ex ended their marriage by wiping out their accounts. And this is just the first quarter of our conversation. (!)

This podcast was edited by Chad Michael Snavely- he's Chad Michael.com on the interwebz. My intro music was created by Alan Markley, @plasticcannons on Instagram, and my sensual cover art was illustrated by Shana Shay, whom you can find on 99 Designs. 

Come lie down with us, in the Bronx.

Welcome to the second threesome of Season 3! 

Horizontal is still Slow Radio. It’s still consensual eavesdropping. It’s still us reclining, sharing secrets, in your ears. But while the first two seasons had me lying down as though post-coital and stargazing with only one person at a time, in Season 3 I’ll often get horizontal with two people at a time: people who are in some kind of relationship with one another. In this case, they are co-hosts, business partners, and friends.

In this episode, 76, and the following, episode 77, I lie down with Dominick Q and Bryan Stacy of The Discerning Dick, a monthly series focused on generating worthy inquiry and meaningful introspection into the forces that shape a man's sexuality, behavior and intimate relationships. 

I attended the first three Discerning Dick events at The Assemblage in Manhattan, and it gave me an echo of the feeling of the day I got to be a fly on the wall during a men’s group meeting in Ashland, Oregon in 2008. Undoubtedly, what I saw and heard was changed somewhat by the fact of my witnessing. But what I heard was still a powerful window into minds and bodies that I wanted desperately to understand.

Dominick Q is a men’s group leader, an executive mentor, a speaker, and a writer. Bryan is a sexual health advocate, a testicular cancer survivor, and the co-founder of the app biem, which is designed to allow people to easily get tested for STI’s and share their test results with partners. 

Bryan and I have been planning to produce an event together — look out for TESTFEST 2019!

Dom & Bryan also co-host the “Man Amongst Men” podcast, which they call a “High Achieving Man's Journey to Personal Development.”

They are both men who have spent the majority of their lives focused on standard notions of external success. And now they are focused on what that energy might look like, and what it might eventually do out in the world, if they first focus on their inner world. 

They are cisgendered straight white males trying to heighten their self-awareness in order to do better, to be constantly in the process of becoming better men without claiming to have arrived at it, and sincerely making the effort to bring other cis straight white men along with them. 

I can think of many men that I would like them to talk to.

Men also suffer from the indoctrination of a culture that shames us for our natural human sexuality yet objectifies women to sell things to nearly everyone. These men aim to be a bridge between a man who doesn’t know that he’s swimming in water… and the sex educators and personal development leaders of the world. They aim to speak directly to men who feel stuck in a lackluster sex life or mired in sexual habits that are destructive or secretive, or both.

Just as it is a white person’s responsibility to educate themselves and other white people about intersectionality, injustice, and the perniciousness of racism, so too is it a man’s responsibility to educate himself and other men about intersectionality, injustice, and the perniciousness of sexism.

I deeply, Heartbreakingly believe that a lack of self-inquiry combined with sexual repression is a direct cause of the lion's share of violence on this planet. They are aiming for the root. And I want to do everything in my power to stand for that. 

Dominick and Bryan don't claim to be experts; they just aim to be willing: willing to be educated, to be called-in, to adjust their worldview, and to tell other men what they've discovered, publicly.

Find Dom’s work on dominickq.com and dominickq on Instagram, the Biem app in the app store and Bryan on Instagram as @talkingnut, and you can find their projects together, including the Man Amongst Men podcast, on DoInnerWork.com 

*

On April 27th, The Joy List and I are hosting The Sleepover, which is not a sex party, but an overnight opportunity to indulge in copious playfulness, connection, and joy! There shall be: 

Pajamas

SNAX

personal development quizzes

Intimacy games

A sound bath meditation

Sensation Play with car buffers and pinwheels

a giant teddy bear named Tiny

And

Surprises 

You can get 20% off of your ticket if you use the secret code: HORIZONTALITY, in all caps.

*

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about erections, the three forces that shaped their early view of sexuality: Faith, Family, & Friends, scrambled porn, an addiction to masturbation, what the Bible actually says about premarital sex, Unitarian Universalism, bargaining with God over sexuality, and how Bryan’s sexual shame kept him from getting tested, and led to a dual diagnosis of testicular cancer and chlamydia.

Come lie down with us in New York, New York.

This conversation is not like the others. It's still Slow Radio. It's still a conversation about intimacies of all kinds. But this time, to close out Season Two, this time we recorded while sitting relatively upright, because my guest, is my Dad.

We recorded about a year ago, sitting on a somewhat noisy leather couch sectional, in a house that’s perpetually under construction, because my father loves the process of things.

My father’s name is Anthony, but he’s Anthony only to the family, and Tony to his friends. He’s always been “Dad” to me. He was born in Boro Park — at the time a half-Italian, half-Orthodox neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. It’s also where I was born. He almost became a priest, but become a child psychologist instead. I suppose he would have ministered to souls either way. As far back as I can remember, my father’s greatest love has been carpentry. The house I grew up had a garage that functioned exclusively as my dad’s woodshop. I didn’t share my father’s fascination with building things, but to this day, I love the smell of sawdust, and have a great warm respect for those who craft with their hands.

My Dad’s a Catholic. I am not. The story goes: my parents gave me the choice between Hebrew School and Sunday School, and I chose neither. They didn’t force me to go. As a teenager, I became a Unitarian Universalist. My Dad has always respected my choices and approved of me.

After the age of 12, when my parents got divorced, I didn’t live with my father. My mother moved us down to Florida, and my father stayed in New York. In this conversation, I ask him questions I had never questioned before.

When I was 17, and I moved back to New York to go to college at NYU, my father moved me in and out of the dorms. He came to every play and avant-garde piece I did in college (like the Antigone I did in the fountain at Washington Square Park), and for many years thereafter. He has been free with his affirmation, and has always supported any choice that I enthusiastically made for my life. While my mother questioned the prudence of studying theatre in college, and threatened to pull her support if I persisted, my Dad said that he would support me to the best of his ability. He approved when I wanted to become a yoga teacher. He approved when I wanted to become an AcroYoga teacher. He approved when I wanted to dance Argentine tango in Buenos Aires. He said yes when I asked him to loan me his car for two months in the summer of 2008 to make my first cross-country road trip, teaching AcroYoga all along the way. He didn't mind that I put 10,000 miles on it. He approved when I decided to move to Portland. He approved when I had a Saturn Return crisis and all I wanted to do was travel for a year. He received me when I burned out 9 months into that year and spent a couple of months at my mom’s place, and then flew up to stay a cold winter in his fixer-upper house with him, stacking firewood and nursing myself back to adulthood. He approved when I told him that I lived in a sex-positive intentional community whose mission is to eradicate shame and encourage freedom of expression. He approved when I started a podcast, even though I’m broadcasting my secrets out into the universe, and he is a very private person. And, though a private person, he agreed the moment I asked him to make an episode with me, even though he has no interest in being recorded anywhere else. You see, he still has the capacity to surprise me. But maybe it's exactly true to character. Because this*is my* project. And my father has always, always supported what I mean to do in the world.

So you see, my father has been easy to love.

In this episode, the first part of our conversation, we talk about his father, a grandfather I never met, also named Tony: who battled with the prejudice against Italians, beat his kids with a machine strap, gave a eulogy in Harlem, never told my Dad that he loved him, and raped at least one of his daughters. My father broke the cycle of abuse. It only takes one generation to break a cycle, and that generation can be yours.

We also talk about why my father decided to go to seminary, the ad hoc sex ed that he got by asking priests, and why he decided not to be ordained (it's probably not what you think. At least, it's not what I thought.)

Dad regularly goes on tangents, so we meander a lot here, even more than usual, and there’s a lot of reminiscing. He also uses the word “whatnot” more than anyone I’ve ever heard. Actually, I can't recall hearing anyone else use the word “whatnot.”

***

In just a few weeks, I’ll be transitioning to a very different Patreon model and streamlining my tiers. The lowest tier will be $20 / month, and will give access to x unreleased, raw episodes (with never-before-heard guests) plus other choice, what do the kids call it these days? Premium content.

If you want to be grandfathered in with access to The Full Horizontal, all the part twos at $5, $10 (which includes the monthly love poems), or $15 per month (which includes a ticket to a live event), now is the time to become a patron of the horizontal arts! Go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila, if you want to be a part of my mission to cultivate intimacy across the globe.

This is the best conversation I’ve ever had with my Dad in my life. And I had it, because I was making something for you.

So: come sit down with us.

***

Chad Michael Snavely is my editor. He’s a podcast maven. Find his full roster on chadmichael.com. Alan Markley composed my intro music. Seek him on Instagram as plasticcannons. Shana Shay created my cover art. Hire her for graphic design and character illustration on 99 Designs.

This episode comes with a call to action: If they are alive, accessible to you, and you are willing and curious — interview your parents. You don’t how many chances you’ll get. And if you never recorded them, you might wish you did.

In next week's episode, the second half of my conversation with my Dad, we discuss how he met and married my mother in Brazil, the day of my birth, forgiveness, feminist vs. mainstream pornography, how my mother left my father, why my Dad didn’t move to Florida to be close to me, how he feels about the fact that I don’t want kids, and the kind of partner that he seeks now. He also tells me a story about my Grammy and a radio agent. For access to that episode and all the part twos, become a patron of the horizontal arts now, before the tiers go up in a few weeks! Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

Until next week, may you have someone to love, something to do, and many many many things to look forward to!

Thank you for being, in this case, relatively upright, with us.

My name is Lila, and I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, storytelling, sex, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them up in audio form and called it a podcast. Horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s consensual eavesdropping. It’s us lying down right next to each other, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.

Each horizontal session with a guest is between 2 and 3ish hours long, and divided into two episodes. Part ones, like this one, are available anywhere you get your podcasts, and part twos are available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts.

As you might imagine, the part twos go deep, since we’ve been marinating in conversation for over an hour. And at the very very end, my guest tells me a story of some intimacy. For access to The Full Horizontal,go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila, and become a patron of $5 or more per month, because...

Fair warning, horizontal lovers!

When I launch Season 3, (and it is happening Soon) I’ll be shifting some things, revealing a couple of surprises, and revamping my Patreon tiers: If you’ve already become a patron, you’ll be grandfathered in with access to all the episodes and my gratitude for being an early listener.

In this episode, recorded in a slender little apartment in Brooklyn, New York, I lie down with Lee. Lee is a Pleasure Guide: a Tantrika, a Bodyworker, an Intimacy Coach. She’s a Sensuality specialist.

I first met Lee when she was working with a friend of mine at The Women of Venus (which you’ll hear about in part two, episode 71). I’ve been trying to get her to move in with us at Hacienda Villa for about a year now.

When I’m around Lee, I feel warm and grounded. She is exceptionally supportive and clear-eyed, at the same time. Her belief in the version of me that I love the most, my favorite self, and my potential to embody that self and act beautifully on the world is like … an amulet that she has made by hand. She has her finger on the pulse of the Great Mystery, without being a prig about it. She’s a girl’s girl, a woman’s woman, with a generous dash of humility, and a fierce commitment to stand for her own growth, and for yours.

For all of the information about Lee’s Intimacy and Pleasure Coaching practice, find her on LeeNoto.com 

This episode was recorded in Lee’s bed, in another part of Brooklyn, and though you are spared the trains screeching around the bend like they do when I record in my room, there’s a few sonic visitors: an old heating unit, a creaky ceiling that is someone else’s floor, some pretty raucous neighbors, and… a plane or two. City living. Local color.

In this part of our conversation, we talk about slow-going sex and celibacy, plant medicine journeys and masturbation, objectifying yourself and faking orgasms, promiscuity as rebellious self-expression, pushing buttons just to know what they’re for, the glorious practice of bragging, a Tiger Mom, and driving herself to perfection so hard that her face paralyzed itself to get her attention.

To see pictures from this recording session, and get behind-the-scenes access to horizontality and my sex-positive life, follow @horizontalwithlila on Instagram, and sign up for my missives on horizontalwithlila.com

And now, come lie down with not one, but two recovering perfectionists, in Brooklyn, New York.

***

Let me give some credit where credit is due: Chad Michael Snavely is my editor. He’s a podcast maven, and you can find his full roster on chadmichael.com. Alan Markley composed my intro music, and his exploits can be witnessed on Instagram as plasticcannons. Shana Shay created my cover art, and you can hire her for graphic design and character illustration on 99 Designs.

In next week’s episode of horizontal, the second part of my conversation with Lee, episode 71, we discuss intentional masturbation, receiving oral sex, fantasies of auto-cunnilingus, giving yourself what you wish for a partner to give you, the indefinable mystery of tantra, red tantra, white tantra, urban tantra, a tantric temple called The Women of Venus, Mama Gena’s practices of Trinities, Swamping, and Spring Cleaning...

And Lee & I do something unprecedented on the podcast, something I’ve never heard recorded anywhere else: we each do a Spring Clean on a topic we’re struggling with in real time, stream of consciousness style, and entirely unedited. I feel a little bit nervous to share it, actually, but that’s when I know I have something really worthwhile to reveal.

Next week’s installment is available exclusively to my beloved patrons of the horizontal arts. Become one and get access to The Full Horizontal catalog on Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

On Saturday, March 16th, Lee is curating an event called Eating Out: an Erotic Feast inspired by oral sex. She calls it an Edible Education. For all the details, visit her at LeeNoto.com and sign up for her mailing list.

On Thursday, March 28th, I’m leading The Art of Trust: an Intimacy Games Workshop. If you’ve seen any of the shots from my Intimacy Warriors photoshoots, you might have an inkling of what this workshop will be like. We’ll play games like Sphinx, Hot Seat, Human Conveyor Belt, and the Touch Gauntlet. Details coming soon.

Until next week, may you have someone to love, something to do, and many things to look forward to!

Thank you for getting horizontal.

This episode is a little different than the others. It’s a quickie.

If you’ve been listening to horizontal, you know that: at the end of every conversation with a guest, I ask them to tell me a story. Each full conversation is between two and three hours long. It gets divided into two parts and released as two episodes. Part ones are available to everyone in all the podcast places. Part twos are available exclusively to my patrons through Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila. Sign up there for access to The Full Horizontal.

Naturally, our conversations get deeper and deeper as my guest and I drop in together. So when, at the very end of those part twos my guest tells me a tale, (except in the case of Annie Lalla, because we ran out of time!) it is a tale of intimacy of some kind. Any kind. It can be about friendships, lovers, family. It has been about being carried down a mountain on the back of a hunky guide, a literal and figurative friend death, the first time ejaculating where stuff came out, a big fat freaky wedding, and a miscarriage, among many, many other things. I always tell my guest that it can be any story that falls under the umbrella of intimacy, with any kind of tone or outcome, as long as it’s a story that they truly desire to tell it to me.

This quickie episode (which consists of three little stories, rather than one big one) was recorded live at my last Horizontal Storytelling Pajama Party, which was held at Hacienda Studio in Brooklyn. At Horizontal Storytelling, we all donned pajamas, had milk and cookies, got exceedingly cozy,  and curled up together, all 50 of us, to listen to just the stories, back to back, by six storytellers, one after the other. I got horizontal with my guest just like we do when we record a full episode, wearing robes, sharing a pillow, microphone positioned above us, gazing upward as though stargazing, or post-coital, or the wee-morning hours of a really good sleepover. I’m planning to host another one (or something like it) in the Spring of 2019, so make sure you’re on the mailing list through horizontalwithlila.com and all the details shall come!

In this quickie I get horizontal with Kenneth Play, my friend, my housemate, and world-renowned Sex Hacker, Sex Coach, Sex Educator, and co-founder of Hacienda Villa, the intentional community in which I live and love, and where I am a founding member. We’ve been living in the same house for four and half years. I introduce him quite fully in the episode, so I’ll just say here that I have been privileged to live in the same house as a Master of Sex. Kenneth taught me how to verbalize specifically the kind of oral sex that I desire. He taught me how to insert and operate my nJoy pure wand dildo. He also taught me the most nourishing technique I've ever come across for grounding with my lover after sex.

And now he's gathered all these tips, tricks, and techniques from his teachers — some of the greatest sex educators and coaches and tantra masters alive — as well as from hours upon hours of, let's call it "laboratory practice," and distilled them into a Sex Ed video series that is accessible to everyone. It focuses on giving pleasure to women and those with vulvas and consists of The Oral Course, The Squirting Course, The Penetration Course, & the Sex Hacker Bundle

This quickie was edited by Mr. Chad Michael Snavely, bearded man, podcast impresario. His roster is available on chadmichael.com. My sensual cover art was illustrated by Shana Shay based on my photograph. Hire this woman through 99 designs. And my intro music was composed by Alan Markley, rock star, and plasticcannons on Instagram.

Speaking of Instagram. Feel free to reach out to me there if you have any questions, ideas for dream guests, or musings spurred by any of the episodes. It’s lovely to know that you’re listening, and pondering.

And if you want access to The Full Horizontal, right now you can still get that when you become a patron of $5 a month and up. Very soon, I’ll be launching Season 3, and with it, I’ll be streamlining my tiers and raising the bar for patronage. But if you lock it in now, baby, you’ll be grandfathered in, with my gratitude for being an early patron of the horizontal arts. I have big dreams, and every single patron helps me happen them. Patreon.com/ horizontalwithlila

In other words, come lie down with us, in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, sex, storytelling, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them all up in audio form and called it a podcast. horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s us lying down, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.

Each session with a guest is between 2 and 3 hours long, and divided into two episodes. Part ones are available anywhere you get your podcasts, and part twos are available only to patrons of the horizontal arts. Become a patron of $5+ per month soon, because...

When I launch Season 3, I’ll be shifting some things, revealing a couple surprises, and revamping my Patreon tiers: If you’re already in as a patron, you’ll be grandfathered in with access to all the episodes at the 5 - 15 dollar level. Fair warning, lovers!

***

This Thursday night in Brooklyn, come Valentine’s with us!

Valentine's Day is in less than a week, and I would usually be fretting about what to do.

This was especially true if I was single, but it was also very much true when I was part of a couple. What could I do that wouldn't have me feeling lonely? How could I turn this day of forced romance and commerce and couples privilege... into a day that would actually be nourishing for Me?

I tried dating myself on Valentine's. I tried friend-time. I tried tango festivals. I tried Galentine’s Day.

But what I actually desired was an intimate, pleasure-focused experience for myself. I desired sensation play, delicious treats (that were safe for me to eat), titillating performance, immersive theatre, and one-on-one connection. I really wanted to make Valentine's day about delighting all of my senses, not about the arbitrary fact of whether I was romantically linked to another person on that day.

So I’m curating it.

It's called 14 Rooms, and it will be on Valentine’s night. It’s an event for everyone, whether you’re not in a relationship, in a relationship, in a polycule, in a situationship — no matter what our quote unquote status is, we can gather and explore intimate moments of different kinds.

Together. As a community celebrating pleasure, our senses, and our aliveness. Celebrating Big Love.

Come Valentine's with us. It will be delicious.

It's the Valentine's I've always wanted.

P.S. 

If you’re short on funds but full of enthusiasm, send me a message through horizontalwithlila.com or Instagram to see about a possible volunteer shift.

***

Apropos of everything - in this episode, I lie down with Annie Lalla, Goddess of Love and world-class relationship coach. Annie stands for true love. She is a gladiator of empathy.

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about the correlation between self-esteem and soul mates, how couples cross-train each other, footnoting our parents for the superpowers born on the back of their crazy, optimizing for aliveness, empathy algorithms, integration and differentiation (the inhales and exhales of relationship), the phrase “I’m angry, but I love you more than I’m angry,” and using your creativity to adjust your emotional response to your reality.

I first met Annie when she gave a talk about true love in the Speaker Series I co-lead at Burning Man 2018. The theme was The Year of the Robot, and we had... technical difficulties. The mic was down, so somebody found Annie a little toy bullhorn, and we all gathered round her like children at storytime, to press our burning questions into her hands like love letters. She is one of the most poignant extemporaneous speakers that I’ve ever witnessed on stage.

I took copious notes, because I’d literally never heard anybody speak about love the way that Annie does. These are some of the words I captured:

“cartographer of love”

“kilojewels of energy”

“There’s an I that has to be sacrificed on the altar of us. If you’re not feeling terror, you’re not actually playing the game.”

“the sacred mirror”

And

“Nothing compares to the gymnasium, to the dojo of a true love relationship.”

I imagine by now, you know how I feel about words. I savored Annie’s words, wrote them down in red ink, and fervently hoped that she would get horizontal with me someday. The time wasn’t right at Burning Man.

But when I booked my ticket to Miami, taking a loving risk to go meet a man I’d been communicating with for four months, but had never met in person (a risk I imagined that Annie would approve of mightily) and I found out that Annie was in Miami!

Well!

Come lie down with us on a big white bed with a view of the ocean, in Miami, Florida.

***

For horizontal photos and behind-the-scenes videos (like the one I took of Annie’s glorious red carpet ocean-view apartment), follow @horizontalwithlila on Instagram. I’ve been getting reallly into Instagram lately, and I have a cache of colorful photos to share.

If you are in need of the services of a Love Coach (and really, who isn’t?) you can commune with all things Annie through annielalla.com

This episode was edited by Mr. Chad Michael Snavely, bearded man, father, and podcast impresario. Have a peek through his roster on chadmichael.com. The character illustration and graphic design for my cover art was drawn by Shana Shay. Look her up on 99Designs. And my sweet intro music was composed by Alan Markley, rock star father and @plasticcannons on Instagram.

Next week’s episode, 68, part two of my conversation with Annie, will be available to patrons of $5 a month and up. The Patreon tiers will change in the next month or so, so lock in access to The Full Horizontal at the grandfathered rate by becoming a patron now! Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

Welcome to my newest patrons, Bob & Lee! And so much gratitude to Julene for raising her Patreon pledge.

After my trip to Miami, I’m feeling turned on by life. I wish you that! And as always, I wish us someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

Thank you for becoming horizontal.

People say “do what you love.” And I love sleepovers, spooning, sharing, sex, storytelling, and stargazing, among other things. So I metaphorically rolled them all up in audio form and called it a podcast. Welcome to horizontal! It’s Slow Radio. It’s intimacies of all kinds. It’s us in your ears, sharing secrets.

If you’ve been listening, you know that each recording is between 2 and 3 hours long, and divided into two episodes. The part ones are available anywhere you get your podcasts, and the part two are available only to patrons of the horizontal arts. Right now, when you become my patron of $5 per month or more, you get access to all the part twos going forward, and going back to the beginning. Go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila and join in now, because...

In a month or two, some big changes are coming to the podcast and the Patreon. When I launch Season 3, those who already have access to all the episodes will be grandfathered in at the same patronage level, with my deep gratitude for being an early listener. In other words, if you want access to all the episodes for $5+ per month, become a patron Now and lock that down! Fair warning, lovers!

I have an announcement. I’m over-the-moon delighted to share the details of my Valentine’s Day event, a spectacular Spectacular. It’s called 14 Rooms, and it will be an intimate, immersive, sensual Valentine’s experience. I usually don’t like Valentine’s Day very much, for obvious reasons. So I’m throwing a Valentine’s that I would want to attend.

A townhouse full of delights for all the senses, including:

4-handed massages

live erotica readings

the best hot cocoa you've ever tasted

sensual performances

sweet smells from the oven

a hot tub

and a giant teddy bear named Tiny.

And that's not even what's in the 14 rooms... 

Each room unlocks a secret: an intimate, sensual, immersive experience.

Your ticket comes with 5 tokens, which you can exchange for delights and experiences. Choose how to spend them — on treats, on libations, on a rendezvous or two. If you wish to collect more experiences (there are 14 rooms of delight, after all!) you may purchase more tokens for $5 each, cash, from someone very prettily dressed. 1 token for a treat, 2 tokens for a rendezvous.

This event is for people not in relationships + people in relationships + people in situationships + people who frankly don't give a damn + everyone, Everyone. Let's celebrate sensuality and loveliness all together! I usually dislike Valentine’s Day, so I’m curating an event that *I* would love to go to!

Buy your tickets here, and come Valentine’s with us!

Okay, here we go.

In this episode, I lie down with Wednesday Martin, PhD, #1 New York Times bestselling author, social researcher, anthropology scholar, and one of the most knowledgeable people about female sexuality on the planet. She would demur, and say that she merely interviewed 31 female sexuality experts across a range of disciplines, but I’ll say that she has integrated, synthesized, and made their work widely accessible. She’s managed to harmonize a vast array of historical, anthropological, scientific, and anecdotal wisdom on the subject.

She is the author of many books, all in some way about quote unquote bad women. Marlene Dietrich, stepmothers, the rich mommies of the Upper East Side, and now, adulteresses. In her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, she debunks fallacy after fallacy, and highlights the conditions that invite female sexual autonomy to flourish. In other words, a woman after my own heart.

I admire Wednesday’s career immensely. I hope to have that kind of reach and grandiosity, some soon day. She said it’s gonna happen. I’ll just take her word for it, since her words have gotten her where she is.

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about social media’s crackdown on sex educators, the dark legacy of abstinence-only education, male attempts to control female sexuality and reproduction, and female counter-strategies, the single worst thing to ever happen to women, how the transition from tribal living to nuclear family homes cost women an important power base, a surefire formula for the uniquely human female dependence on men, and how, for me, living in a sex-positive community provides a counter-formula.

It’s such a rich episode, anthropologically, historically, contextually. Come lie down with us in New York, New York.

In this and next week’s episode, I lie down with my college friend, the actor-romantic, Triple Threat, improviser, mimic, voice-over artist, chameleon, ham, and all-around delightful, well-adjusted human, Burl Moseley.  

He’s such a phenom that he recently got his own song on the musical TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. If I were you, just before listening to this episode, I’d go straight to YouTube and type in “Don’t be a Lawyer.” He sings, acts, and dances the bejeesus out of it, in a full-on bright-pink 90s suit with a chunky tie. I have watched it an embarrassing number of times, I have insisted that my housemates watch it, and when I arrived at Burl’s apartment to record this episode in early December, I danced around his place singing it back to him. I’m reaally into it. And if you’ve ever known a lawyer (and I’ve dated two!) I’m pretty sure you'll be into it as well.

Burl and I both went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for Drama. He was a luminary in my favorite improv troupe, and I always made it a point to show up to their shows and cheer them on. Improv was never my thing, but Burl is a natural improviser … I think that’s part of the reason he’s so good at life-ing.

In this first half of our conversation, we talk about the origins of being such a live wire,  the two types of military kids, making as many friends as possible, casual misogyny and male friends, Burl’s “showing out” at school, and my attitude problem, our childhood crushes, how Burl felt about his parent’s PDA, the first kiss ritual, the mom & dad sofa, and trying to undo the damage that Disney has done.

If you enjoy cozying up with us, and want to listen to next week’s episode with Burl (episode 64), become a patron of the horizontal arts. Patreon is the love child of crowdfunding and a subscription service, and you can access all the part twos of every episode by becoming a patron of $5 a month or more.

Welcome to my newest patrons: Michael and Daniel, and an extra joyous thank you to Tiana, Rex, and Donald, for raising their pledges this month!

I’m deeply committed to Intimacy Maven as a career choice, and continuing to create work that diminishes loneliness, dispels shame, and alchemizes human connection, in multiple mediums. You can help me happen it.

Next week’s episode will be released next Friday and available to patrons of $5 and up. In it, we discuss the three C’s of relationshipping, reflective listening, Burl’s first kisses, willyoubemygirlfriendyoucananswermetomorrow, how movie sex and porn sex are like pro wrestling, my theory about why young people are having less sex, relationship takeaways, how Burl feels about marriage now, and a story about emotional release.

I’ve got just a few more episodes in Season Two, and the grand finale is something really special. I can’t wait to share it with you.

And then, I have some exciting twists coming for Season Three, which will start in the next couple of months, and I’ll also be revamping my Patreon tiers then, so if you want to be grandfathered in at the $5 level (meaning that the tier will go up, but you’ll still get access to all the episodes) go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila and become part of my mission to make the world a more intimate place!

For more horizontality in your inbox once a week-ish (okay, full disclosure, lately it’s been once a month-ish), sign up on horizontalwithlila.com for my raw personal writing, photos of me horizontal in unexpected places, images of my guests and links to the show notes, and the occasional bit of additional fabulosity, like a plug for my sex educator housemate’s online course on how to be a great lover.

Here are the humans who helped make horizontal happen: Chad Michael Snavely edits horizontal. Peruse his podcast roster on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew horizontal. Hire her through 99designs. Alan Markley scored horizontal. Find him on Instagram as plasticcannons.

And now, come lie down with us, in a place called Hollywood, in Los Angeles, California.

I often say that this show is about intimate relationships of all kinds.

Not just romantic and sexual relationships, which tend to be the only ones that our society considers to be under the umbrella of “intimacy,” but also family relationships and friendships and mentorships, platonic love affairs and business partnerships, and all the rest of the meaningful relationships a human can have.

We also deepdive into the one relationship that is intrinsic to all of these, and yet not always named as such: our relationship to ourselves.

The lion’s share of this episode is about self-intimacy. How we think to ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves, care for ourselves, how we mother ourselves, and how we pick ourselves up…

In this episode, recorded on my trip to Los Angeles in early December, I lie down with Bevin, aka queerfatfemme, fearless torchbearer of body-positivity and positivity in general, warrior for self-love, creator of Fat Kid Dance Party aerobics, former lawyer, empress of tea, and purveyor of radically colorful fabulosity. She’s also a reiki practitioner and a Life Purpose Coach. Go swimming in all things kind and sparkly and jubilant on queerfatfemme.com

She describes her gender as Dolly Parton and Miss Piggy. I pretty much wanted to talk to her forever. I settled for 3 hours. This is the first half of that conversation. It's a helluvan episode.

In it, we talk about a gender-expansive lifestyle, seasonal affective disorder, self-love, self-compassion, self-care for Future Us, fatphobia, multiple coming-outs, soulmates, and systems of oppression that, in Bevin’s incisive words, “intersect on the body and bloom.”

Next week's episode, 62. we can be benefits, but not friends... contains the second part of our conversation, in which I tell the entire 17-year story of the romance that led to my abortion in October, is available on Patreon to patrons of $5 and up per month.

Patreon is the love child of crowd-funding and a subscription service. When you sign up, you’ll get a special RSS feed (that’s the stream of episodes that are available to my patrons - which includes love poems of the month, for my $10 and up patrons). You add that to your podcast player, and it gives exclusive access to all the episodes, every part two, going back to the beginning. Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila 

Welcome to my darling new patrons this month: Pan, Nick, Louis, Ava, David, Emilee, Donald, Jacob, Charles, Olivia, Sheila, Trep, Renata, Greg, and Taekia, Nicole, Ariana, and an extra happy dance for Christian, who upped his patronage in December!

I’m deeply committed to Intimacy Maven as a career choice, and continuing to create work that diminishes loneliness, dispels shame, and alchemizes human connection, in multiple mediums. You can help me happen it.

Patronage begins at $2 a month, and I absolutely cherish every single patron. All patrons are invited to my secret Facebook group, where I share fascinating sex-positive articles, and behind-the-scenes things, and my Feels and goals and musings. I know some friends of mine have been hesitant to be a patron if they could only do $2 a month, but let me assure you: If everybody who was positively impacted by my writing or this podcast became a $2 a month patron, it would change my life. That’s the beauty of this new era of creation.

And here’s an extra special perk from now until the end of the year: When you become a patron by January 1st, I’ll send you a handwritten thank you love note & a saucy horizontal sticker. My handwriting has been described as "perfect!" "ridiculous!" “like a font!” I’m just saying.

For more horizontality in your life, you can receive my words in your inbox once a week(ish). I call them missives, and they are full of my personal writing, bits of the show notes for each episode with links to the whole thing, invitations to my live events, and horizontal photos, often in unexpected places. The last missive was titled “how does it feel to want?” and was all about longing.

Sign up for all that goodness on horizontalwithlila.com and add lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book, because email servers are frustrating and strange and sometimes treat my email like Spam, which it is Not. If you used to get my emails and don’t anymore, that might be why! Rescue them, please!

Here are the humans who helped make horizontal happen: Chad Michael Snavely edits horizontal. Check him out on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew horizontal. Hire her through 99designs. Alan Markley scored horizontal. Find him on Instagram as plasticcannons.

Now, dear one, come lie down with us and a Persian squashy-faced cat named Biscuit Reynolds, in Los Angeles, California.

Horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. Think of it as consensual eavesdropping.

Together, we’re making private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize human connection.

Brene Brown, the world-renowned researcher/storyteller and expert on vulnerability, shame, and courage, states that shame (in a petri dish) needs 3 things to survive: secrecy, silence, and judgement. If you put the same amount of shame in a petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.

I envision this podcast as a douse of empathy.

In this episode, I lie down with Samia Mounts in my bed at Hacienda Villa, the sex-positive intentional community in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Samia is a singer, actress, voice-over artist, creator of music, and a polyamorous podcaster of political proportions, with a voice built for stadiums and arenas. Currently based in Korea, I was fortunate enough to get horizontal with her when she was in town to sing at the Kennedy Center. She is a bisexual babe, a military kid, a half-Jordanian woman who grew up largely in South Korea, an advocate for nontraditional relationship structures, and a great believer in horizontality.

You may remember that I enthusiastically recommended Samia’s political podcast: Make America Relate Again. In it, Samia did something I'd never heard before in my life — she had respectful conversations about politics with women who voted for Donald Trump. Pretty much all the political conversations I hear between liberals and conservatives are acrimonious and combative. Make America Relate Again is based on the premise that if we can communicate respectfully with people whose viewpoints frustrate, enrage, or sadden us, we can cultivate more compassion in this sorely-divided country of ours. And if we stoke the fire of that compassion, we can work together to create positive change. Samia managed to put the humanity back into politics for me. I am impressed and astonished that she had the reserves of compassion and empathy to engage wholeheartedly in this way for two entire seasons. I find her to be brave in a way that I am lacking, and this had me tuning in.

Now in 2019, lucky for us, she'll be applying those skills to a new podcast called Future Love, one about polyamory and unconventional relationships and and sex and love, in which she aims to help people have more authentic, passionate, longer-lasting romances by forgoing the conventional rules, and instead, writing their own. To be apprised when her new podcast launches, and for all things Samia, including her articles about polyamory for Huff Post and Refinery 29, point yourself to samiamounts.com, and sign up for her mailing list!

Since our episode was recorded in my room, you’ll get a little local color from the Symphony Orchestra of Bushwick, but when you hear the crackling sounds of a Yule Log, that’s Samia, vaping.

In this first part of our episode, we discuss growing up as a horny little beast on a military base, playing lumberjack, dry-humping girls at 8, coming out as bi at 14, the year of the purge, a play I was in called An American Family Takes a Lover, Sex at Dawn, my new fashion friend, ordering food while fucking, Samia’s night with her new 48 year-old lover — we call him “Wild Man,” being multi-orgasmic, and cultivating lifelong sexy relationships. We cover a lot of ground!

To listen to the second part of my conversation with Samia, which will be released next Friday as episode 60, in which she tells me the most epic love story of her life, and the most epic friend-love story of her life, become a patron of the horizontal arts!

Patreon is the love child of crowd-funding and a subscription service. As a $5 month patron, you’ll get a special RSS feed that you can add to your podcast player, and it gives you exclusive access to all the episodes, every part two, going back to the beginning. I’ve made a little video tutorial for it, in case the RSS is confusing. It’s available on my Patreon page. (See what I did there?) Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

And now, come lie down with us in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

***

For more horizontality, you can receive my words in your inbox once a week(ish). I call them missives, and they are full of my personal writing, bits of the show notes for each episode with links to the whole shebang, invitations to my live events, and horizontal photos, often in unexpected places. Sign up for all that goodness on horizontalwithlila.com and add lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book, because email servers are frustrating and strange and sometimes treat my email like a message Mr. Jim Carlos who misspells your name as well as several third grade words while asking you to wire money — which I’m pretty sure is not something that people do anymore. Please rescue my thoughtful, well-crafted emails from the depths of folders like “Spam” and “Promotions” and “Updates.” Thank you.

Here’s the credits: Chad Michael Snavely edits horizontal. Check him out on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew horizontal. Hire her through 99designs. Alan Markley scored horizontal. Find him on Instagram as plasticcannons.

Horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down.

I’m really glad you’re here.

You can think of it as consensual eavesdropping.Together, we’re making private conversations public, so that we can dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize human connection.

If you’ve been horizontal for a while, you know that each conversation is about 2-3 hours long, and gets divided into two episodes, released a week apart (by popular demand). For instance, this is episode #57. Next week’s episode, #58. the love drive, will feature part two of my conversation with Shaun.

As I said in the last couple of episodes, I’m making a big shift in the way horizontal is released, and it just went into effect on Wednesday. All the part twos have now disappeared from your apps (unless you downloaded them, as I suggested! Thanks for being an early adopter!).

They are now gated, and available to patrons at $5 a month and up.

This is my first serious step toward making this work a sustainable career path. I intend to untether myself from my bread-and-butter job and continue expanding the horizontality … into videos, books, a TV show. I have big big dreams to SPREAD INTIMACY ACROSS THE GLOBE. And you can help me happen it.

Patreon is the love child of crowd-funding and a subscription service. As a $5 month patron, you’ll get a special RSS feed that you can add to your podcast player, and it gives you exclusive access to all the episodes, every part two, going back to the beginning. I’ve made a little video tutorial for it, in case the RSS is confusing. It’s available on my Patreon page. (See what I did there?)

In this episode, I lie down in my bed in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with Shaun Galanos. I live in Hacienda Villa, a sex-positive intentional community, and, just like most places on the vanguard, our neighborhood is (still) fairly gritty. So be advised: Bushwick— is a very noisy place. Trains and sirens and construction and unidentifiable buzzings and whirrings… let’s just say, you’re definitely gonna hear some local color in this episode. We’ll call it...verite.

Shaun Galanos is a 30something silver fox, a Canadian, an American, a 12-time burner, a dog dad, and the host of the podcast The Love Drive, which aims to make sex and love less awkward. He’s also a street performer who gives Free Love Advice. He sets up a sign and his recording kit all over the place, in public parks, at Burning Man, while waiting for transportation, and, before he got chased away for soliciting the customers, at the airport. Point yourself towards thelovedrive.com for everything Shaun (including that free advice he talks about).

Shaun and I met on the interwebz and started flirting and brainstorming and podcast-conspiring on Instagram. He’s handsome and charming and skilled in cheeky banter. He makes cute videos in which he talks directly to camera, Ferris Bueller-style. He cares about intimacy! He’s single! So when he came to New York, naturally, we hopped into bed. But only to record. (More on that in the episodes.)

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about cruising chat rooms and cybering, wizard sleeves and uncircumcised cocks, the pics of naked men that turn Shaun on, the pics of naked women that turn me on, self-voyeurism, check-ins, and our level of sexual attraction.

If you want to hear the second part of our conversation, released next Friday, in which we discuss our pheremones, the hierarchy of relationships, touch-starvation, Old Spice, my breasts, and Shaun tells me a story about risky wedding sex, become a patron of the horizontal arts!

And now, come lie down with us in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (whispers) We’re naked.

Let’s do the credits!

Chad Michael Snavely is my editor and a podcast maven. He has a slew of podcasts you can check out on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay is my illustrator and graphic designer. She specializes in good-looking character illustrations from photographs, like the one you see in my podcast cover art. Hire her through 99designs. Alan Markley is a rock star touring musician, and he created my intro music (with a little bit of sex vox from me - those are the breathy sounds). Find him on Instagram as plasticcannons.

Shaun and I also got vertical together. We recorded episode 28 of The Love Drive: how to get invited to a play party in Shaun’s borrowed apartment in Williamsburg. (Despite the title, I make no promises.) But if you’re curious about what a Hacienda sex party is like, well, darlin’, we made you an episode.

At the end of that recording, Shaun asked me if I had a parting thought. I said all I could think of was the E.M. Forster quote, “Only connect.” I don’t think that we will regret any of the time we’ve spent trying to connect with other humans. What I mean is: the time we spent cultivating intimacy in our lives is time worth spending. It is among the worthiest of pursuits.

So thank you, thank you for getting horizontal with us.

To listen to the rest of our conversation, as we unpack our own challenges getting intimate with each other: Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

Until next week, I wish you someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

This week and next week’s episodes are the last ones recorded on my horizontal does america tour, which took place in October & November of 2017. Lucid Studios NYC provided a car, and I went on a solo road trip adventure, circumnavigating the U.S., covering 10,700 miles and recording with people in their homes, in their cities.

We recorded this episode in Austin, Texas, in a color-saturated cottage sanctuary filled with art and altars, called the Blue Star Temple.

In this episode, I lie down with Epiphany Jordan. Epiphany is a nurturer by trade, a professional cuddler, aka the Chief Oxytocin Provider of Karuna Sessions, described as the “rolls royce” of cuddling experiences,” a 2-on-1 deepdive immersion in mothering energy and loving touch. Her forthcoming book, Somebody Hold Me: The Single Person's Guide to Nurturing Human Touch. Keep your eye out over the next few months for its release, by going to the website somebodyhold.me

You can also find her on karunasessions.com and bluestartemple.com

She is a reader of the tarot, proprietress of the Blue Star Temple guest house and sanctuary space. We recorded this episode there, and I can attest to the coziness, color therapy, and great good juju of the place.

At Blue Star Temple, Epiphany offers services like Cross-Dress for Success, Design a Ritual, and the iconically-titled Sanctuary. I love that she offers Sanctuary as a service. We could all use some Sanctuary, don’t you agree?

In this part of our conversation, we discuss Epiphany’s Muslim / Jewish / Catholic upbringing, being a sexual rebel in Reno, Nevada in the 70s, the cyclical nature of sexual mores, society’s touch deficit, and my complicated relationship with my mother, and my mother’s touch.

If you enjoy lying down with us, and believe in my mission to spread intimacy across the globe, that’s how you can make sure that this podcast remains ad-free, and remains a podcast. Become a patron of the horizontal arts. Patreon is the love child of a subscription service and crowd-funding. You offer a monthly contribution, and you get a level of special access to me and my work. Beginning in the next couple of weeks, the second part of my conversation with each guest will be gated, meaning roughly every other episode will be free, and every other episode will be paid — but all episodes will always be available to patrons at $5 a month and up. So, download all the episodes while you can, and become a $5 a month patron for full access going forward.

Thanks to my newest patrons: Evyn, Melani, Mark, Christopher, Antonio, and Rex, I’m now halfway towards breaking even on the current podcast expenses! After breaking even, the next goal is to hire a transcriptionist. I’ve been painstakingly transcribing my show notes by hand in order to create gorgeous, informative, accessible to differently-abled folx blog posts. (And pssst, you can get my writing and photos and links to the blog posts in your inbox weekly, by signing up on horizontalwithlila.com and adding lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book.)

Since I am both unskilled and extraordinarily meticulous, each set of show notes takes me about 10 - 12 hours to put together. When I hire someone, 90 percent of those hours will be freed up to conduct more interviews, offer more live events, and create more horizontal goodness for you!

Just before we dive into the episode, I want to make this super clear: a lot of friends have told me that they've been hesitant to become my patrons because they feel embarrassed to only be able to give $2/month. Oh My goodness, if everybody who loves the podcast or my writing became a patron at $2 a month, it would CHANGE MY LIFE. Every patron is so incredibly valuable to me, and the beauty of crowd funding is precisely this - when many people give a little bit, it adds up appreciably, and with each new patron, I can feel how many people out there believe in me and my mission to spread intimacy across the globe.

Plus, I do a happy dance every time.

Go to: Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

You can also follow the link in my Instagram bio that reads “patron of the horizontal arts.”

Dear Ones, did you know that I send what I call “missives” to my email list once a week? They include my personal writing, resources from the episodes, links, videos, saucy photos, and other miscellaneous bits of ephemera, like articles about my sex-positive intentional community … To receive all that goodness directly in your inbox, sign up on horizontalwithlila.com and add lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book, for good measure. I’ve heard that my missives have gotten buried in some “Updates” in Gmail, or even that they’ve gone to (gasp!) Spam. They are not Spam. Please rescue them.

Season Two has been edited by Chad Michael Snavely. Check out his slew of podcasts on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew my sensual cover art, and you can hire her through 99designs. And the rock star / father Alan Markley created my intro music. He’s plasticcannons on Instagram.

In next week’s episode, the second part of my conversation with Epiphany, we talk about her forthcoming book, Somebody Hold Me, about getting your touch needs met, what exactly is involved in a Karuna Session, and getting together to cuddle your friends.

Now darlin’, come lie down with us in Austin, Texas.

Horizontal is a podcast about intimacy. It's recorded while lying down, wearing robes, sharing a single pillow. I take you into my bed (or in the case of these episodes, recorded while I was on the road across America, someone else's bed), and let your ears watch as I unzip intimate conversations. The goal is to make private conversations public, in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize connection.

In this installment, I lie down with Wry of Wry Polytalks, a nonmonogamy consultant,  a clear-talking, thoughtful advocate for alternative relationships and kinky stuff, an entertainer, a Dominant, a consent activist, public speaker, social justice warrior, and the host of many, many a panel.

Wry Polytalks are panel discussions with relationship experts that he moderates on a web of topics related to nonmonogamy. I got to see his showmanship in action when he hosted the Ethical Slut social at Hacienda Studio (twice!), and lead two such panels in our event space. His ringmasterishness sure can command a room!

He's also passionately involved in the movement to destigmatize the conversation around mental health. As the daughter of a woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who has been fighting for her health nearly all of my life, and as a person who experiences depression myself, along with, or possibly caused by, undiagnosed Seasonal Affective Disorder, this advocacy is very dear to me.

Wry's voice sounds like whiskey and a rec room with burgundy leather armchairs. I like it.

In this part of our conversation, we talk about playing 90210, internalized slut-shaming, choosing heartbreak, relationship anarchy, PREP, and how herpes is really not that big of a deal.

I want to let you know about a change that's coming up. I have big big dreams,  like making a pilot for a horizontal TV show, and I realize that I need more freedom to be able to achieve them. And that means finances. I'm deeply committed to making this my career, and I'm still holding to my intention to bring you independent, uncensored, and ad-free radio.

The podcast doesn't yet break even. Patreon covers less than half of the monthly production expenses. And it's time for my project to grow up. I need to experiment with different models of income. Going forward, the second part of my conversation with each guest will be gated, meaning roughly every other episode will be free, and every other episode will be paid. All episodes will always be available to patrons at a certain level and up, and they'll be available for purchase individually as well.

If you enjoy lying down with us, and believe in my mission to spread intimacy across the globe, This is how you can make sure I continue to create independent, uncensored, ad-free radio: Become a patron of the horizontal arts. It’s a cross between a subscription service and crowd-funding for artistic patronage. You offer a monthly contribution, from $2 a month on up, and you get a level of special access to me and my work.

Since in the next few weeks, every other episode will be free, and every other episode will cost a small amount, Patronage will be the way to unlock all the gated episodes. And I just want to make one thing super clear: many friends have told me that they've been hesitant to become my patrons because they feel embarrassed to only be able to give $2/month. Oh My goodness, if everybody who loves the podcast or my writing became a patron at $2 a month, it would CHANGE MY LIFE. Every patron is so incredibly valuable to me, and the beauty of crowd funding is exactly this - that when many people give a little bit, it can add up to something really meaningful, to something that supports me to fulfill my purpose. Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

You can also follow the link in my Instagram bio that reads “patron of the horizontal arts.”

And now, come lie down with us in L.A.

***

I send what I call “missives” to my email list once a week. It’s like lobbing a thousands messages in a bottle out to sea. I share my writing (the most recent missive was about my abortion and the right to choose), I share resources from the episodes, I share saucy photos, and other miscellaneous bits of interest, like that time I was in Playboy … talking about dating outside of your political party in the era of Trump. To receive all this goodness directly in your inbox, sign up on horizontalwithlila.com and add lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book, for good measure. We don’t want it getting lost in some “updates” tab or something, do we? Indeed no. No we do not.

Season Two has been edited by Chad Michael Snavely. Check out his slew of podcasts on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew my sensual cover art, and you can hire her through 99designs. And Alan Markley created my intro music. He’s plasticcannons on Instagram.

Next week, Wry and I get deep into kink, BDSM, and a wild FetLife story.

Until then, may you have someone to love, something to do, and lots of things to look forward to.

It’s been a pleasure getting horizontal for you.

This episode was recorded on my horizontal does america tour in November of 2017. I took to the road in a little blue car and drove solo around the country with two intentions: to feel as free as I could possibly feel, and to lie down and record as many episodes with fascinating humans as I could manage.

In this quickie episode, recorded right before she headed in to therapize people in the morning, I lie down with the sex therapist Dr. Cat Meyer. Dr. Cat is a spritely, sensual whirligig, with big green eyes and big brown hair and a slender, bendable body. She’s a yoga teacher, a creatrix, a playful creature, a dancer of her prayers, a licensed relationship therapist, and a reiki practitioner. If you live in Beverly Hills, where Dr. Cat sees people in her private practice, she could be your sex therapist.

Cat’s own podcast, eatplaysex, which just sounds like whipped cream in podcast form, doesn’t it? explores subjects in the very same wheelhouse as this one. On her Instagram, sexloveyoga, which I follow voraciously, and I suggest you do as well, she shares the writing she spins from thoughtfulness, self-inquiry, gentle nudging, and a vision she holds for us all to open the most profoundly to our deepest longing, pleasure, and confidence… her posts are little gifts for us, and each serves as a reminder of her mantra, “I choose myself powerfully.”

Find her on the interwebz at sexloveyoga.com and catmeyer.com.

We first met at a birthday party in Ojai, a 40th birthday extravaganza that was more like a miniature festival than any birthday party I’d ever seen, complete with food trucks, a musical amphitheatre carved of rocks like a miniature Sedona, an elaborate sensual ritual invoking the energies of masculine and feminine to infuse the man we were celebrating, and a giant bathtub truck with a Dr. Bronner’s “foam experience,” like the one at Foam Against the Machine at Burning Man.

The amount of glorious attention and effervescent love paid to this man made me burn with a heady potion of envy, admiration, and inspiration. “I want people to come together over me in this way,” I thought. “I want to facilitate this experience for someone else, too.”

Inside the house by the pool, in a room made for cuddling and love, festooned with pillows and soft things, people were practicing AcroYoga. Having taught for so many years, and drifted away from the practice for many more, I sometimes move away from people who are in the throes of it, the ones who fly people at every opportunity, every park visit and ecstatic dance and house party. But this time I was drawn in. I offered a therapeutic flight to a friend of my friend. His first. That looped me in as one of them and built a bridge for them to talk with me. One of them was an AcroYoga teacher as well. When I told him about the podcast, he said, “Oh my God, There’s someone here you HAVE to know.” And he called Cat over.

Six months later, we were lying on a shaggy rug in her living room, her pet bunny hiding out in the corner, California morning light insistent through the blinds, shaking off sleep and recording this story.

We talk about threesomes and the right to change your mind, delayed emotional responses, how the point of sexual no-return is an illusion, being satisfied before orgasm, asking ourselves if it still feels good, looking for yeses and nos in the body as expansions and contractions, and how meditation and affirmations don’t have to look like what we were taught they look like.

If you enjoy lying down with us, this is how you can make sure I continue to create independent, uncensored, ad-free radio. Become a patron of the horizontal arts. It’s like a subscription service, crowd-funding for artistic patronage. You offer a monthly contribution, from $2 a month on up, and you get a level of special access to me and my work. You know that you are a direct catalyst for making the world a more intimate place. And I do a happy happy dance, and then get horizontal again. Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila 

I have big plans, big big dreams for what’s next in the world of horizontal, and you can help me happen it.

Also, I send what I call “missives” to my email list once a week. It’s like lobbing a thousand messages in a bottle out to sea. I share my writing (the most recent missive was about my abortion and the right to choose), I share resources from the episodes, I share saucy photos, and other miscellaneous bits of interest, like that time I was in Playboy … talking about dating outside of your political party in the era of Trump. To receive all this goodness directly in your inbox, sign up on horizontalwithlila.com and add lila@horizontalwithlila.com to your address book, for good measure. We don’t want it getting lost in some “updates” tab or something, do we? Indeed no. No we do not.

And now darling, come lie down with us, and a little white bunny.

***

Season Two has been edited by Chad Michael Snavely. Check out his slew of podcasts on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew my sensual cover art, and you can hire her through 99designs. And Alan Markley created my intro music. He’s plasticcannons on Instagram.

On next week’s horizontal, I lie down with Wry of Wry Polytalks, a super-entertainer, a clear-talking, thoughtful advocate for alternative relationships, kinky stuff, destigmatizing conversation around mental health, and the host of many, many a panel.

His voice is like whiskey and a rec room with burgundy leather armchairs. You’ll see.

Until next time, I wish you someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

It’s been a pleasure getting horizontal for you.

Welcome back to horizontal! I missed you. This is the podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down, wearing robes. It aims to make private conversations public in order to dispel shame, diminish loneliness, and alchemize connection.

After a hiatus, during which I went to Burning Man, also known as: surviving a giant art project in the middle of the desert, and then came home and felt very sad to no longer be out adventuring slash surviving said art project in the middle of the desert, and then questioned nearly everything about my life, as is, apparently, rather typical, I’m back on schedule!

This episode marks a couple of horizontal milestones. And because I’m rewiring my nervous system for joy, I’m committed to celebrating successes of every size and volume. So… This is episode number 50! And in a bit of neat numbership, horizontal just surpassed 50,000 downloads. Thank you so much for listening, and for sharing this work with your people. Don’t stop. Keep sharing it. Let’s have a revolution!

For all things horizontal, including photographs of me horizontal-in-unexpected-places, intimacy resources, and my writing (some recent titles have been “the Wednesday night meltdown,” “the right to choose,” and “brave on the rocks, or, choosing to open when you want to shut but you know it would really be better if you opened”), sign up on horizontalwithlila.com

In this episode, I lie down with Pamela Samuelson. Pamela is a bodycare witch, a sex ed teacher, a renegade, an instigator, a libertine. Or perhaps she’s really more of a wizard than a witch. A sexy female Dumbledore minus 50 years. Gravitas and twinkly eyes.

As a bodywork specialist, she is trained in sexological bodywork, holistic pelvic care, and the Arvigo techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy. This means that she works on the pelvis and the pussy, inside and out. She's a warrior of bodily empowerment, Rosie the Riveter with a speculum.

We first met the day before we were supposed to record, in the gender neutral bathroom at an event called Cycles & Sex, which is about pussies, not bicycles. Pamela was leading roomfuls of women in a campaign called “Take Back the Speculum,” which is part anatomy lesson, part show and tell, and part hands-on practice. Pamela shows the sexual anatomy of her own body, by inserting a speculum, and allowing the participants to see her cervix with a flashlight. Then, the participants are given a speculum, and get to try it on their own. I didn’t do it that day. You’ll find out why in the episode.

In this part of our conversation, we talk about ambiverts, cervical self-exams, femme-drag and bespoke suits, wonder women, moving people’s wombs into a more optimal position, arousal vs. wetness, the husband stitch, and Pamela’s viral rant.

My dear listener. Come lie down with us.

Patronage is what makes it possible for me to continue making independent, uncensored, ad free homemade radio. When my crowd-funding grows, I’ll be able to dedicate myself to intimacy work. I believe that when we make private conversations public, intimacy becomes contagious, and the more intimate relationships we nourish, the happier our lives.

For $10 a month, you’ll get access to the love poem of the month, a private recording of one of my favorites. For $15 a month, you’ll get a ticket to a live show, or access to a secret episode, and so on. Be part of making the world a more intimate place. Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila.

Season Two has been edited by Chad Michael Snavely. Check out his slew of podcasts on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay drew my sensual cover art, and you can hire her through 99designs. And Alan Markley created my intro music. He’s plasticcannons on Instagram.

Until next week, may you have someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down.

In this episode, I lie down with sexual folklorist Dixie de la Tour. Dixie is the founder, curator, and host of Bawdy Storytelling, the longest-running sex storytelling series in the United States. Samia Mounts, of the “Make America Relate Again” podcast, was the first to mention Bawdy to me in the late summer of last year, and she insisted that I SIMPLY MUST attend the RISK & Bawdy collaboration show at the Bell House last September. I did. I saw. I played Bang-o.

I started courting Dixie immediately.

She is a mesmerizing storyteller. Her Southern lilt, her flagrant nonchalance and nonchalant brazenness, her heart-o-gold, her heaving bosom. She’s not just a Connector, in the Malcolm Gladwell sense of the word, she’s a Super-connector, a Mmmega-connector. Her shows get people laid (it’s happened so often that there’s even a song for that!); her shows spark romance, start relationships, and, I believe may have even been tangentially responsible for a bawdy baby or two.

I was tickled and honored and seam-burst-ing with joy when I finally had the chance to get horizontal with Dixie in her chosen hometown of San Francisco, California. We recorded in the guest room of a 24-ish member intentional community in SOMA. One of my classmates from NYU lives there. It’s like the Parthenon of intentional communities. For tales from the road, like the one about how I got totally infatuated with a guy there and wound up acting like a 13 year-old, for pretty pictures of my adventures and horizontality in unexpected places, for invites to live shows, and my writings about intimacy of all kinds, sign up on horizontalwithlila.com

While I was driving cross-country solo on my horizontal does america road trip, I didn’t listen to music. I just didn’t have the impulse to. I listened to books, I listened to podcasts, I talked to friends on the phone, I talked to myself, I sang to myself, or I drove along in meditative quiet. I listened to episode after episode of Dixie’s Bawdy Storytelling podcast. After a while, Dixie started to feel like a road spirit, an auditory escort, my most frequent aural (a-u-r-a-l) companion. Behind the wheel of my borrowed Honda Civic, while listening to Bawdy, I repeatedly squealed, laughed, teared up, and said OH. MY! all the way across America.

We are so fortunate that Dixie has centered her life around living stories, telling them, and getting other people to tell them. What do they say about living legends? She’s a national treasure. Explore her body of work, pun intended, on Bawdystorytelling.com.

If you enjoy our horizontal storytelling, become a patron of the horizontal arts, darling! You can become a patron for $2 on up, and the rewards get more delectable as you increase. For instance, for $10 a month, you’ll get access to the love poem of the month, a private recording of one of my favorites. For $15 a month, you’ll get a ticket to a live show, or access to a secret episode, and so on. Patronage is what makes it possible for me to continue making independent, uncensored, ad free homemade radio. I believe that when we make private conversations public, intimacy becomes contagious, and the more intimacy we cultivate, the happier our lives. Be part of it through Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila.

Your patronage helps make the world more intimate.

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about Bawdy, Bang-O, craigslist personal ads, the unknown hookup, and being a porn magnet. And Dixie tells me a tale about a porno booth (with glory holes everywhere).

Stick around at the end of the episode for a little treat: a bawdy song by Jefferson Bergey!

And now, come lie down with us in San Francisco, California.

The credits!

Here are the people who made this episode possible. Chad Michael Snavely has edited every episode in Season Two. Check out his roster of podcasts on chadmichael.com. Shana Shay created my cover art, and you can hire her through 99designs. And Alan Markley created my intro music. He’s plasticcannons on the Instagram.

horizontal is the podcast of intimacies that’s recorded while lying down.

In this episode, I get the opposite of vertical with Marcia B., co-founder of Cuddle Party, creator of The Good Girl Recovery Program, and co-leader of weekend intensives like “Make Hot Play Happen” and “The Wanted Man,” that teach humans to have more fun, deeper connections, and hotter sex. Her co-teacher for these weekends is Midori, the renowned sex educator and doyenne of Japanese bondage.

Marcia is an educator, a writer, a wild-permission giver, a generator of joy. She's funny and warm and lovely and clear. Marcia is a boundary expert, and the set of rules that she co-created for Cuddle Party have inspired a legion of hosts, including pretty much everyone who hosts an event at Hacienda Studio — the event space housed in Hacienda Villa, the community I live in.

The Cuddle Party rules are so good, so simple and yet so profound, that I am compelled to share them here:

1. Pajamas stay on the whole time.
2. You don’t have to cuddle anyone at a Cuddle Party, ever.
3. You must ask permission and receive a verbal YES before you touch anyone. (Be as specific in your request as you can.)
4. If you’re a yes, say YES. If you’re a no, say NO.
5. If you’re a maybe, say NO.
6. You are encouraged to change your mind.
7. Respect your relationship agreements and communicate with your partner.
8. Get your Cuddle Party Facilitator or the Cuddle Assistant if you have a question or concern or need assistance with anything during the Cuddle Party.
9. Tears and laughter are both welcome.
10. Respect people’s privacy when sharing about Cuddle Parties.
11. Keep the Cuddle space tidy

We got horizontal in Kensington, California (Marcia says that I should say Berkeley, because even people from the Bay Area don’t seem to know that there is a Kensington).

My San Francisco stop was right in the middle of my horizontal does america cross-country road trip tour. For synchronicitous stories and pretty pictures, sign up for the missives on horizontalwithlila.com

We are in Marcia’s “Room of Requirement,” a designation borrowed from the world of Harry Potter (which I loooove. I used to re-read all the books every year, for comfort). It’s a space that converts into whatever the seeker needs it for most at that very pressing moment, if they know where to find it. Marcia’s Room of Requirement is a sometime office, sometime guest room, often living room, occasional Cuddle Party space… you get the picture. It’s exactly the opposite of an austere apartment where you feel like you probably shouldn’t touch anything or sit down. In Marcia’s house, you should plop down straightaway. Purrrfect for getting horizontal.

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about Marcia’s coming of age during the AIDS crisis, the some/many/most model of sex information, boundaries boundaries boundaries, the abnormality of “average,” saying no gracefully and… asking for what you want.

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If you enjoy lying down with Marcia and I, become a patron of the horizontal arts. You could receive monthly love poems, tickets to a live horizontal storytelling show, or horizontal pillows so that you too can get horizontal with lila. Every bit of patronage goes into continuing to make independent, uncensored, ad free homemade radio. I believe that making private conversations public makes intimacy contagious, and the more intimacy we have in all different forms, the happier we are. Be part of my mission to spread intimacy across the globe through Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila.

Show me you believe in what I'm doing. Patronage begins at $2 a month, and as it increases, the rewards get more sumptuous.

***

Now, dear ones, come lie down with us in Berkeley, California.

Credits!

Chad Michael Snavely is horizontal’s editor-at-large. He and the rest of his coterie of podcasts can be found at Chad Michael.com. Alan Markley created my intro jams. He’s plasticcannons on Instagram. And Shana Shay drew the sensual me that comprises my cover art. You can hire her through 99designs.

On next week’s episode, Marcia and I discuss the dog/cat/bird model of play party personalities, touch deprivation, what is “queer enough,” bi-erasure, constellations, poly pods, and the post-nuclear family. Also, Marcia reiterates that “if you can’t say no, your yes is worthless.”

Until next Friday: may you have someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.

In this episode, I lie down with one of my favorite humans, Lurleen. Lurleen lives in Portland, Oregon. Well, I still think of her that way even though she recently moved to the outskirts. Let's say she's Portland adjacent.

When I first met Lurleen, I thought, "This is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in real life." And just as my envy started to kick in, she made a joke or a funny face and it was as if to say, "You don't have to do that. We can just love each other."

I had just moved to Portland in November of 2008 (an ill-advised bit of scheduling on my part) and it was grey and rainy and I didn't own a car and I was biking around without proper rain gear and I was cold and my butt got soggy and damp and that made me very, very cranky. I tried to remind myself that the universe did not owe me a car....

The tango scene was pretty much my only social life in PDX. So I bought the Comme il Faut 3 and a half inch heels, and dove in. My initial joy gave way to the shame and frustration (recognized by partner dancers of uneven skill levels everywhere) of not being as good a dancer as my new boyfriend. I tried to come to grips with the way he chased after dances like a dog with opposable thumbs. I came to abhor the way he would shark around the perimeter of the dance floor, snapping his fingers, smiling vacantly and hunting for a partner good enough for him. Hunting for a partner who was better than him, is what it was. And, more often than not, he'd forget to check in with me in the process. And then whine on the car ride home (after we fit my folding bike in his trunk) about the fabulous visiting dancer who wouldn't accept him yet, and how he was going to be good enough for Mila one day.

One such time, when he was off chasing dances, I sat down with Lurleen and her boyfriend. And I started to rant. They had eyes, after all. They were in the same scene with him. They could see what he was doing. But it was the first time I'd shared openly with them. Lurleen almost smiled at me in my rage.

"I like you so much," she said.

And we've been saying that ever since. Even now, we still say, "I like you so much." It means, of course, I see you. I love you. You matter to me.

Lurleen is a giraffe in a gazelle's body. She's a Vogue-colored candy shell with a creamy Saturday Night Live center. Lurleen is a fashion model who had thyroid cancer in her late teens/early 20s, was successfully operated on, and became an aesthetician. She still has the necklace-like scar, a smile across her skin. It serves as a daily reminder of how precious existence is, how crucial it is that we enjoy it, and how fortunate we are to still be able to laugh.

I feel utterly at ease in her company. In a way, the fact that she's far more beautiful than I am gives me permission to be as beautiful as I want to be, and as talented as I am. What a gift that is. I never try to diminish my light around her, because she's bright enough that she has nothing to fear. She's never trying to dim anybody else.

Lurleen learned at a young age that she could disarm people with her humor. In the acting world, she's what would be called a "rubberface." She learned how to contort her face for other's amusement, make herself momentarily less attractive so that others would feel more comfortable around her.

Her steadfast friendship saw me through two narcissists and a kind, coffee-making guy I met on a summer trip back and decided I wanted to marry.

I am unmarried.

A few days before I left Portland to travel for a year, in October of 2010, I sat down with Lurleen on a bench outside a cafe and said, "There's going to be a time that we lose touch. I won't be living here and I know how you are with the phone. And I want you to know that, even when that happens, I will continue to love you as I do now." And it has. And I do.

Whenever I announce that I'm coming to Portland she says, "How long are you staying, and how many days are you staying with MEH?"

I love this woman so damn much that I hope you will too.

This episode was recorded in Portland, Oregon at Lurleen's old, creaky, cozy apartment. It was recorded in October of 2017, on my cross-country horizontal does america tour, before she moved in with her boyfriend.

In the first part of our conversation, we talk about oversharing, proper boundaries, opening up a marriage to save it, simultaneously experiencing thyroid cancer and her parent’s divorce, and shoulder-checking your sister.

Now, come lie down with us.

***

If you enjoy lying down with us, become a patron of the horizontal arts! You could receive monthly love poems, tickets to a live horizontal storytelling show, or horizontal pillows so that you too can get horizontal with lila. Every bit of patronage goes into continuing to make independent, uncensored, ad free homemade radio. I believe that making private conversations public makes intimacy contagious, and the more intimacy we have in all different forms, the happier we are. Be part of my mission to spread intimacy across the globe through Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila. Show me you believe in what I'm doing. Patronage begins at $2 a month, and as it increases, the rewards get more sumptuous.

***

Credit Where Credit Is Due:

Chad Michael Snavely edited this podcast. He's at Chad Michael.com. Alan Markley created my intro jam. He is plasticcannons on Instagram. And Shana Shay drew my cover art. She's at shanashay.com.

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Tune in next week for the second part of my conversation with Lurleen, in which we discuss the art of masturbation, shapeshifting for boyfriends, the Nazi cuddle, my future man, and Lurleen’s one and only time at a sex club...