104. good kids gone wild: horizontal with expat parents (1 of 4)

Hello horizontal lovers.

horizontal with lila is Slow Radio. Consensual eavesdropping. Intimacies of all kinds. It’s us lying down right next to each other, wearing robes, sharing secrets, in your ears.

Welcome in, and welcome back! It’s been a few months since my last episode — This winter, I got mired in a boggy swamp of depression, stared at the ceiling for a while, binge-watched a lot of dystopian TV, and then journeyed to Bali, Indonesia, to get my juju back.

It’s back!

And... I suppose I live in Bali (for) now!

I’ve missed you. I’ve missed this.

It’s a whole new world out there. And yet. I am more than ever convinced that we need to make private conversations public. I am more than ever convinced that interdependence is the word of the century. I am more than ever convinced that intimacy is the way.

Connection is my wheelhouse. And so, I renew my vows: to dispel shame, combat loneliness, and alchemize human connection.

Most of us are treading water. We might be back with families we haven’t lived with since we were 17, or spending 24/7 with children we’ve never cared for full full-time, or quarantined with our romantic partner, absent any of our usual letting-off-steam rituals, like work or the gym or matcha with friends or anything literally anything besides constant togetherness.

Humans probably haven’t related this month since agriculture was invented. But probably not even then. They had different tasks on the farm then. Homo sapiens probably haven’t related this much since cave-dwelling times. But perhaps not even then. Somebody had to hunt or forage. Somebody left the dwelling-place for hours at a time.

Compressed in our domiciles by the undeniable force and magnitude of this virus, we might very well be relating more, as a species, than at any time in human history. And if we are quarantining alone, we might be lonelier than ever before in our lives.

Much of our relating has become virtual. We have less kinesthetic & energetic cues, as a large part of our intimacy is mediating by electronic boxes.

We need stronger communication skills than ever before. We need a bigger toolbox. At last, I have something to offer the world that the world at large might finally recognize it needs.

During Seasons 1 and 2, I got horizontal with one guest at a time.

In Season 3, I’ve had mostly threesomes: myself plus two guests who are in some kind of relationship with one another. Typically, each recording is between two and three hours long, and divided into two parts — the part ones are available in all the podcast places for all the podcast people, and the part twos are available exclusively for my patrons. 

This conversation was recorded over the course of five-ish hours. I’ll divide this conversation into four parts: the first two, episodes 104 & 105, will be available in all the podcast places, and the last two: episodes 106 & 107, will be exclusive to patrons of the horizontal arts.

Become a Patron!

This is my livelihood for the foreseeable future, so, to all of my current and future patrons:

Thank you for my subsistence,

and thank you for making the world a more intimate place.

In this and the following three episodes, I lie down with Eri Kardos and Jaymin Patel: world travelers, long-time digital nomads, co-parents of two young children, and American expats in Bali.

Friends of Mirelle, my housemate and guest of episode 1. feed your delight, Eri & Jay offered me one of their guest rooms in Ubud. I stayed in their home my first two weeks in Bali. Jaymin told me that in their years of travel, they’d been hosted by legions of people. So they were paying it forward. It was a soft place to land. I'm grateful for the lily pad.

Eri is a Relationship Coach (for busy professionals in both traditional and alternative relationships). She is a Public Speaker, and the author of the book Relationship Agreements: A Simple and Effective Guide for Strengthening Communication, Reducing Conflict, and Increasing Intimacy to Design Your Ideal Relationship.

Her new program, Beyond Mom-Mode, intends to nourish the nurturer.

Jaymin is a serial entrepreneur, serial author, Public Speaker, and creator of The Integrated Father. His new venture endeavors to guide men as they design a version of fatherhood that nourishes them, their relationships, their kids, their work, and their creativity.

Many of the parenting skills that Eri & Jay mention in our conversation are not just parenting skills, but parenting-ourselves skills. Human-ing skills. Relating skills. 

In this, part one of our conversation, we told our comic-book-style origin stories.

Jaymin’s story (let’s call it “The Young Prince,” or, “Jaymin & the Quest for Authenticity”) involves a strict Indian family, sisters and aunties aplenty, bi-cultural identity, being a model Hindu and a very very very good boy, doing right by his parents, musical theatre, people-pleaser recovery, embracing his weird, Adlerian psych, and positive discipline.

Eri’s story (let’s call it “Ode to a Puerto Rican massage,” or, “Sunshine Likes Sex”) involves Polish Roman Catholic & Swedish Lutheran parents, 3 siblings, constant uprootings, dance, 5 or 6 baptisms, a vacation bible school, being a very very very good girl, backpacking across the world, youth hostel life, sex addiction worries, Christian counseling, one excellent Sugar Daddy, Seattle, sex-positivity, her longtime open relating partner Adam, and creating agile relationship agreements.

Come lie down with us in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.