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.