Horizontal With Lila

Welcome in to season two. Horizontal is the podcast about intimacy - sex, love, and relationships of all kinds - that’s entirely recorded while lying down. We were on hiatus while I made a 15,000 mile solo road trip, circumnavigating the US on a tour I called “horizontal does america.” I got to lie down with my guests in their homes in their cities. You'll hear those episodes, like one with Dr. Lindsey Doe, of YouTube’s Sexplanations, and another with Marcia B, co-founder of Cuddle Party, later on in the season. In this episode, I lie down with my dear friend Meghan Tonjes, YouTube sensation, singer-songwriter, accidental leader of the booty revolution, Instagram darling, podcaster, and body positive role model. I first met Meghan when she visited the Villa to interview us as the host of Sex-ish, a documentary TV series produced by Morgan Spurlock’s company, that will hopefully grace your screen … one fine day. Meghan is a warrior of deep intimacy and vulnerability, sharing so candidly about her internal emot

This intro was recorded in Baltimore, MD because, throughout the month of October, horizontal does america. It’s just me, a Honda Civic, and a backpackful of recording equipment circling the United States together … and you can be a part of happening it. Patreon.com is a platform for crowdsourcing patronage. Whereas in the olden days, an artist survived on the support of one single patron, now, you can support the horizontal arts with a monthly contribution of any amount whatsoever, from $1 on up. Rewards include handwritten postcards, tickets to the horizontal storytelling live show, behind-the-scenes videos and sensual photos, and having an episode curated to your chosen theme, amongst other perks! Go to Patreon.com/horizontalwithlila. I’m just a few dollars away from filming a video of the elaborate happy dance I do every time I get word of a new patron! This month, I’ll use your support for gasoline, the recording equipment I just bought, and horizontal storytelling, where the quickies are recorded. You c

The intro for this episode was recorded in Burlington, Vermont, because, for the entire month of October, horizontal does america. Lila is circling the country on a big podcasty solo road trip which began in New York and heads up to Maine, down to Baltimore, across the northern states, down through California, back across the South, up the East Coast … and you can be a part of happening it. Patreon.com is a platform for crowdsourcing patronage. Whereas in the olden days, an artist survived on the support of one patron, our global web allows everyone who believes in an artist’s work to have a hand in sustaining it. You can support horizontal endeavors with a monthly donation of any amount from $1 on up. There are rewards at every level, and the rewards just get more sumptuous. I cherish every Patreon supporter - each dollar means that you champion my mission of cultivating intimacy around the world. This month, I’ll use your support for gasoline to get across the country, recording equipment, and horizontal st

In this episode of horizontal, I lie down with Jackie, aka Anya or, Anyalita. Jackie is a Shibari aficionado - a rope artist. You can follow her adventures in surrender on theropediary.tumblr.com and on Instagram as Anyalita. On The Rope Diary, she introduces herself as “a rope and bondage enthusiast, a sadomasochist, a sensualist, and a switch.” Jackie is also a sex tools educator who works at Babeland, a queer-owned, lady-friendly sex toy shop. I have great love in my heart for Babeland, as it was the first sex shop I ever felt comfortable in. When we recorded, Jackie had a cold, so she sounds rather snuffly. But I don’t think you’ll mind. In the first half of this episode, we talk about happy parents, unhappy parents, depression, self-soothing, and a first kiss with a kitchen boy. Come lie down with us. *** Hey! Exciting news! In October, horizontal does America. Lila will be driving cross-country, recording episodes, and getting horizontal in unexpected places across the United States. If you know someone

In this episode, I lie down with Grant Stoddard, my first repeat guest! (It's the accent.) Grant is an experiential journalist who specializes in reporting from outside of his comfort zone (sometimes way, waaay outside). The wild situations he has experienced bodily have appeared in Thrillist, Vice, T, New York Magazine, Penthouse, and Maxim, among many others.  He’s the author of one of my favorite memoirs of all-time, Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert. When I was reading it on the bus, I laughed so hard that I completely missed my stop and had to double back about ten blocks. It follows Grant’s journey from lovelorn small town virgin to sex writer at Nerve.com. This quickie elaborates on a story from the book and involves a trivia contest, a sex column, and sex on the subway. This quickie episode was recorded live at my podcast launch pajama party on May 21st, 2017, at Hacienda Studio, a sex-positive event space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. My guests enjoyed reiki, massage, empathy session

In this episode, I lie down with my housemate Tiger. Tiger goes by many names, but we'll only use two of them here. Tiger is a Professional Cuddler, or, Cuddlist. Her cuddling name is Ellen. You can find her on Cuddlist.com. She's also a reiki practitioner, a trained yoga instructor, a comedian (check out "The Comedy Witch"), and a cats fanatic. That's the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical theatre version of cats, to be clear. In lieu of performing in the actual musical, Tiger cosplays regularly as feline, and soon plans to host Cat Cuddling events at Hacienda Studio, in which the cats are actually humans in full cat costume because "you could cuddle real cats, but they're unreliable." She writes and performs funny songs, and last year I saw her in an hour-long one-ish-woman show entitled "Kiss Me, I'm Jew-witch." She sang about celebrity sex dreams and her period. Her parents were there. It was pretty amazing. Tiger is the closest thing I have at this point to a sister. We have deep talks in the kitchen, during wh

In this quickie episode, recorded live at my podcast launch pajama party on May 21st, 2017, I lie down with my friend Becca and tell her a story. That series of recordings from the party comprise the first installment of my ongoing series Horizontal Storytelling. We recorded at Hacienda Studio, our sex-positive event space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. My guests enjoyed reiki, massage, empathy sessions, and cookies upon arrival. After a brief cuddling tutorial from one of my housemates, a professional Cuddlist, fifty people in kimonos, flannels, onesies, and short-shorts got horizontal and snuggly on an enormous Megabed the size of three kings put together. On a bed-island across the room, my guest and I arranged ourselves as we would for any horizontal recording session - lying on our backs, almost ear-to-ear, sharing a pillow, microphones hanging down above us, with a starry blanket as our backdrop… In this quickie, I speak about a best friend, a road trip, several fiances, a suicide, and a breakup. I titled my st

In this episode, I lie down with Dr. HazelGrace Yates. In a twin bed. At a summer camp. In the wilds of New Jersey. HazelGrace is a clinical sexologist, a scholar, and the founder of The Cock Project and The Pussy Project. She holds a PhD in Human Sexuality, and a Masters in Education. The Cock Project offers those who identify with having a cock the opportunity to speak about their experiences living with it, and their feelings about it, directly to a group of others who self-identify the same way, while being silently and compassionately witnessed by a group that does not identify with having a cock, or would prefer to act as a compassionate witness. The Pussy Project is the inverse. Right after we recorded this episode, I had the opportunity to experience both workshops. HazelGrace and I were both taking part in Connection Camp, a summer camp for adults that’s centered around activities designed to encourage authentic relating. It is produced by The Connection Movement, which is based in New York and led b

In this episode, I lie down with my housemate Rene. Rene is the most genuinely enthusiastic person I have ever known. When I first met him, I didn’t trust him. I thought, “Is this guy for real? Is he really this happy?” He is! It’s incredible. In response to his tendency to fold other people’s laundry, I coined the in-house hashtag PRIMOVILLAN, and started regularly asking myself, What would Rene do? The question was like a lovingkindness tune-up. Rene is quite a hunky fellow, and often genderfluid in the way he dresses, rocking skirts and shiny little short-shorts in the same way he rocks a bow tie and a sport coat. He’s the housemate who looks better in your clothes than you do! Rene and his 8-pack can be seen pole-dancing at the House of Yes, often on Pole Play Wednesdays — he actually defies gravity while Horizontal! You can follow his pole journey on Instagram @The_Renesance, which is a nickname that I made up for him. I’m pretty proud of that. In the *first half of our episode, we talk about our parent’

In this episode, I lie down with my housemate Elaine. Elaine is a consummate world traveler - it’s quite the feat to catch her at home but on one of her brief stays at the Villa I got lucky. In between jaunts to her home country of Taiwan and remote islands, outdoor sailing adventures and the climbing of mountains, running races in Europe and engaging in other extreme sports and endurance activities, as she puts it, “like sex,” we had the chance to don some robes and get horizontal. Elaine lives in the room across the way from me, a space so tiny that it has only a skylight, and no window. She calls it a closet - but she means it as a good thing. She likes how cozy it is. Elaine holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and has done 10 years of stem cell research and patent prosecution for Biotech Startups. She cooks Taiwanese food that would make you wish she were your wife, and she has a deep and abiding love for turtles - so much so, that she doesn’t travel the world alone, even when she’s by herself - she alw

In this episode, I lie down with Philip Stehlik, of the sex-positive venture Cambyo. Cambyo is designed to help people develop their intimate lives. Through their online publication, research, community building, and in-person events, such as a sort of salon / meeting in which people are invited to share their experiences around intimacy, sexuality, and relationships in semi-public, Cambyo aims to cultivate a safer space for people to discuss. On Medium, they publish real stories about people’s intimate lives. If you want to contribute a story of your own to the ongoing, destigmatizing dialogue, please reach out to them! I first met Philip at a small cocktail party in the West Village - Philip and Cambyo co-founder Matt Hunter were in town for just a few days, and by the strength of their charisma alone, and also a little nudge from Bryony Cole, host of the fabulous sex tech podcast “The Future of Sex,” they gathered a mix of sex tech entrepreneurs, educators, activists, and therapists together for a night of

This quickie episode was recorded live at my podcast launch pajama party on May 21st, 2017, at Hacienda Studio, a sex-positive event space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. My guests enjoyed reiki, massage, empathy sessions, and cookies upon arrival. After a brief cuddling tutorial from one of my housemates, a professional Cuddler, Fifty people in kimonos, flannels, onesies, and short-shorts got horizontal and snuggly on an enormous Megabed the size of three kings put together, while, on a bed-island across the room, my guest and I arranged ourselves as we would for any horizontal recording session - lying on our backs, almost ear-to-ear, sharing a pillow, microphones hanging down above us, with a starry blanket as our backdrop… In this, the first of many quickies to come, I lie down with Ralph de la Rosa.  Ralph is a highly regarded meditation teacher in New York City. His Rebel Heart Meditation, a weekly class combining meditation, psychology, and neuroscience, was the first - and is still the only - meditation class

In this episode, I lie down with Dr. Zhana Vrangalova. Dr. Zhana is a sex scientist, researcher, and professor of Human Sexuality at NYU. She has a PhD from Cornell in Developmental Psychology with a focus on casual sex. She co-founded The Casual Sex Project (thecasualsexproject.com), a website that allows people to share stories of real-life hookups - in a science-y, data driven sort of way. (If you listened to episode 3 with Mistress Leigh, this is the website that a dominatrix codes!) In our event space at the Villa, Hacienda Studio, Dr. Zhana hosts Sex Science Socials, in which she wades through peer-reviewed studies on topics like Infidelity, Squirting, and Bi-Curiosity, and breaks the data down in a way we can all understand. She believes that popular sex myths ruin lives, and spends her time both debunking those myths on DrZhana.com, and also replacing those messages - by working to make sex ed as accessible as porn. You can read her breakdown of scientific data on Facebook and Instagram. The Dr. Zhana

In the third episode of horizontal, I lie down with Mistress Leigh, a professional Dominatrix, fetish consultant, educator, and performer. Mistress Leigh went on a BDSM tour in May 2017 (did you know that there was such a thing?! You should probably find out about this on her website.). Keep up with her kinky antics on LeighEntertainment.com As well as being a pro dom, she’s a performer, a martial artist, and a general badass. She’s full of characters and stories and charisma. This episode of Horizontal was recorded at Mistress Leigh’s apartment, in her little loft nook, in another neighborhood in the land of Brooklyn. We talk about fetish work, session-ing with disabled clients, dominant women / submissive men, the difference between power play and position, and feefees.  So hey...come lie down with us.  More horizontality, please: To become a patron of the horizontal arts, support me on Patreon, a website for crowdsourcing patronage! Patronage allows artists like me to buy equipment, schedule recording tour

In this episode, I lie down with Grant Stoddard. Grant is an experiential journalist who specializes in reporting from outside of his comfort zone (sometimes way, waaay outside). The wild situations he has experienced bodily have appeared in Thrillist, Vice, T, New York Magazine, Penthouse, and Maxim, among many others.  He’s the author of one of my favorite memoirs of all-time, Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert. When I was reading it on the bus, I laughed so hard that I completely missed my stop and had to double back about ten blocks. It follows Grant’s journey from lovelorn small town virgin to sex writer at Nerve.com. In 2002, Nerve was the very first place where I posted an on-line dating profile, after my friend Marley insisted that it wasn’t a weird and scary thing to do. As a budding sex-positive advocate, I began devouring Nerve’s sexy offerings, including erotica, photography, and Grant’s column, “I Did It For Science!” Last year, he began collaborating with Kenneth Play, our

Come lie down with us! Welcome to the very first episode of horizontal with lila. Horizontal is the podcast of intimate conversations about sex, love, and relationships that's entirely recorded while lying down. I invite you to eavesdrop on stories that might seem almost too personal for you to hear, which is, of course, exactly why I want you to hear them. Many episodes are recorded in bed at my home, Hacienda Villa, a sex-positive intentional community in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Sex-positive = dispelling the shame surrounding sex through sexual education, open dialogue, and the celebration of all genders and sexual orientations, and all relationship structures and sexual acts between consenting adults. Intentional community = living together on purpose in accordance with common ideals, in order to offer everyone roots and wings. I've been inspired, humbled, unburdened, seen, and thoroughly schooled by the everyday conversations we have in this house, and I thought it was a shame that we were the only people who