120. climaxes & denouements: quickie with lila

Hello horizontal lover. horizontal is the podcast about sex, love, & relationships of all kinds, entirely recorded while lying down.

Usually, I have a guest or sometimes two (and on one notable occasion, nine!) reclining next to me, or, This Season in the Era of Covid, my guest is sometimes lying down across the world from me ... and we have an intimate, vulnerable, long-form and far-ranging conversation that unfolds over the course of  3 - 5 hours, and gets divided into 2 - 4 episodes.

horizontal is Slow Radio. A kind of stargazing, or post-coital, or loooong road trip sort of conversation. And that’s what horizontality is to me. A relinquishing of pretense. A deepening of voice. A languor that inspires revelation. An invitation to unzip to our tenderest. It’s like consensual eavesdropping. We invite you in to lie down next to us, as we share our secrets in your ears.

Typically, the first half of our conversation is available in all the podcast places for all of you horizontalists, and the latter half is available exclusively to patrons of the horizontal arts. Occasionally I’ll do a quickie episode, which consists of a single intimate story, usually recorded live at one of my horizontal storytelling pajama party events.

This is Season 4, however, my Season of Experiments. In it, I intend to be playful with form and format, interspersing surprises and dancing with theme and time.

The experiment of this episode, 120 is … poetry. I hadn’t written poetry in several years, and then three months ago I went to this Open Mic here in Canggu. The upswelling of personal expression, and the prospect of being on stage again, which is a rush my body craves, so inspired me that I started writing the first of these poems during intermission! You may recognize the subject (and the love affair) of the piece titled “climaxes and denouements” from my part two with Bevin, episode 62. we can be benefits, but not friends. The second poem, “exquisite cupboards,” was inspired by a disappointing young lover here in Bali. Does he know he’s the muse? Yes he does. I read it to him...horizontally, in bed.

They are both love poems, or, shall I say, lost-love poems.

For access to The Full Horizontal, plus monthly intimacy tips like the Fears / Boundaries / Intentions / Desires exercise, become a patron of the horizontal arts! Navigate to www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila to join. You must go to that link directly, because creators considered “adult” will not show up on Patreon’s search engine! (Which lets us know just how far we have to go in creating a sex-positive world, eh?) Sigh.

If you are a non-poetry person, I hope you’ll still allow this episode to wash over you with the same receptivity as you do other horizontal installments. In fact, I’ve heard from multiple not-poetry-people (including my dear friend and guest of episodes 59 & 60, Samia) that they don’t like poetry, but they like my poetry ... which is basically how I feel about dogs, and Kristi Ann’s dog Stella. Please don’t hold this against me.

And now darlings, come lie down with me, in Canggu, Bali, Indonesia.