Welcome to Season 3 of horizontal! This is the podcast of intimacies recorded while reclining.   It’s still Slow Radio. It’s still consensual eavesdropping. It’s still us lying down, sharing secrets, in your ears. But while the first two seasons had me lying down with only one person at a time, season three will often add another guest to my pillow.   I’ll be lying down with people who are in some kind of relationship with one another. And I intend to encompass as many types of human relationships as I can. They might be friends, family members, teammates, mentors and acolytes, business partners, lovers, exes, metamours, co-parents… You know what this means, right? That’s right: This season is going to be a Lila sandwich.   My first two guests of Season 3, Dan and Jimanekia are a manager and her client, as well as friends.   Jimanekia is a Sex Educator, Queer media consultant, Sexual Assault expert, and Trauma Specialist. She is widely-studied and deeply-informed. Her work comes from the well of her own transformations, her personal navigation through profound pain and culture shock after culture shock, and the fierce desire to protect others from suffering at the intersection of sexual assault, race, class, privilege, and trauma.   She is the host of the podcast Trauma Queen, a mini-series about healing for assault survivors and their allies. She speaks with survivors, therapists, partners, educators, and experts. Her podcast a gift to the world, a resource for survivors and those who love them, and, everyone with a beating heart, really, with each episode providing actionable, practical steps. She teaches without teaching, educates without educating. You’ll see. Find Jimanekia on her website Traumaqueen.love and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Jimanekia.   Dan — also known as Dannielle — Owens is a queer Femmeboy activist, and Jimanekia’s manager. Dannielle also manages two other previous horizontal guests, Stevie Boebi, the go-to lesbian sexpert on YouTube, episodes 42 & 43, and Meghan Tonjes, singer-songwriter and accidental leader of the booty revolution, episodes 24 & 25. Dan uses the pronouns he/him as well as she/her, interchangeably. Let me model how that might go for you:   He is the CEO of genderfluid clothing label & inclusive marketplace Radimo, which plays with gender the way I love to see gender played with, and focuses on directly supporting clothing made by queer, trans, black, POC, plus-size humans, women, and disabled small business owners. Radimo’s pieces are modeled by folx with different body types, skin tones, and gender identities. You can find the whole line on the website Radimo.LA … She engages in all sorts of glorious gender fuckery, on Instagram with the handle @boygodking , on YouTube as Dannielle Owens-Reid, and her forthcoming book, “From One Cult To The Next,” is a memoir about ending toxic relationships and the healing thereafter.   Many of you know that all the part twos of each episode are available exclusively to patrons of $5 a month and up. I’ve revamped my Patreon tiers with shiny new perks, and the upgrades will all go into effect next Friday, April 12th, alongside the release of part two of my conversation with Dan & Jimanekia. If you become a patron of $5 a month in the next seven days, you will be grandfathered in with access to The Full Horizontal, and my gratitude for being an early patron of the horizontal arts!   After April 12th, the first tier of patronage will be $10 a month, and it will include: access to all the part twos & the secret patrons Facebook group with behind-the-scenes access, along with a monthly video with curated intimacy tips! If you adore the love poem of the month, fret not, O patron my patron, it will be part of the video! The perks for $25, $50, and $100 a month are even more delectable, and include my favorite new perk, in which I will plan a monthly date for you! With yourself or with a friend or a family member or a lover. Check Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila for all the saucy details.   I’m also running a sweet little special offer. If you become a $10/month patron by the end of April, I’ll send you a handwritten thank you love note and a bit of horizontal swag (maybe a magnet, maybe a bumper sticker, maybe something else) in the actual MAIL. Sigh! I still Love getting mail as much as I did when I used to send bedazzled letters back and forth with my friend from summer camp in 1995. Also, I’ve been told that my handwriting is “ridiculous,” “astonishing,” and “like a font!” These are actual reviews, with no exaggeration.   In this first part of this episode with Dan and Jim, we tell our origin stories, which include loneliness, divorce, cancer, sex-positivity, intimacy, braces, bio dads and adoptive dads, relocating 10 times by the age of 9, latchkey kids, alcoholism, bipolar disorder / intervention, manipulation, therapy PTSD / advice columns, gaslighting, inclusivity, gender neutrality / queerness, microaggressions, racism, sluthood, LGBTQIA in the black community, rape, eating disorders, being an empath, burnout, sex ed   ….and how we came to possess our superpowers.   We cover a lot of ground in this one. We’d better get into it.   Come lie down with us in Los Angeles, California.   ***   Chad Michael Snavely has edited every horizontal episode since the beginning of Season 2. He’s a podcast impresario, and you can find his whole body of work on chadmichael.com. Alan Markley composed the intro music, and he’s busy being a rock star on Instagram as plasticcannons. Shana Shay created my saucy cover art, and you can hire her on 99 Designs.   Next week’s episode, part two of my episode with Dan and Jimanekia, in which we dig into their relationship with each other, is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts. Remember that if you’d like access to The Full Horizontal for $5/month, you’ll need to become a patron before April 12th, next Friday. And if you become a $10/month patron before the end of April, I’ll send you a handwritten thank you love note in my glorious handwriting, plus a bit of horizontal swag!   Until next week: may you have someone (or someones) to love, something to do, and so many things to look forward to.