Intimate Interactions

We’ve all probably heard the phrase “new normal” multiple times with respect to COVID-19. It can be daunting, upsetting, and even panic inducing. Adapting to a new normal is something that many chronically ill or disabled folks already understand though. The knowledge is out there in how to care for yourself and how to support yourself and build connected networks of folks who can support one another. Sapphire is exactly such a chronically ill person and we talk about grief and loss. Grieving is a tremendously important skill and hearing from someone who has had cancer before and who has cancer now and has lived as chronically ill seems appropriate. Life sucks right now. All we can do is self care and remind each other how much we love each other. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Jazz Goldman is currently living in Mexico during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. They are saving rent money, getting more sun to help with mental health, and staying further away from folks than they could do in New York. So it’s having physical, mental, and financial health benefits. Of course, depression is still hard to kick for most of us during this pandemic; and it’s always hard to be a refugee even if you’re living more like an expat. Content warning: we talk a fair amount about pandemic benefits --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Kathy from the podcast Friends in Your Ears talks about why she got into podcasting. We had a fun diversion about small, fuzzy animals. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Accessing healthcare can be a challenge if you don’t have a condition that fits neatly into a box. You can be accused of being drug seeking, especially common if you’re a BIPOC person. Doctors often don’t know what to do with you and bounce you around to other professionals hoping they’ll figure it out instead. It’s helpful to have an advocate and super important to stay organized and be the coordinator between doctors and medical professionals. Sapphire shares their experience with the healthcare system as a person fighting cancer. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Welcome to the two and a half year celebration of Intimate Interactions. We’ve been around almost three years now! Wow! I couldn’t have imagined this. Thank you for all your support on Patreon! We often think about friends and family during the cold and dark winter months, focusing on what we can control over what we can’t. We organize celebrations that hold rituals of significance for us. However this year instead of a history lesson on Winter Solstice, Yuletide, Christmas, Kwanza, or Chanukah, I decided to simply ask: how do dolphins mark important occasions? What does an orca celebration look like? Now, my laptop started bluescreen looping and needed to be recycled so I bought a refurbished laptop which is currently stuck in a boot loop so I’m recording without my usual microphone. Thanks for your patience! Also, deepest apologies for being late on this one. I had intended to release it Christmas morning but got a severe and debilitating migraine that lasted a day and a half, so instead, I’m releasing it n

When I say dominatrix, what’s the first thing you think of? In my experiences, dominatrices are just people. Most of the ones I know are moms, for example. Many have partners. Many have partners. Sure, sometimes those partners are sexually submissive but not always. Most of the ones I know are fun people to hang out with.  Some are married to cis men and some are queer. We chat about how dominating men for money interacts with family life, partnerships, sex, and doing sex work. We talk about risks and costs a little. Mostly we’re just two people talking about jobs we’ve had. Sex work is just work - no matter how dangerous or safe the specific version takes, sex work is real work and is rarely ever just for fun - though most providers have had moments that haven’t felt like work, and that’s true of most people who have gone to work in any job. Most of us have had those rare days where we can’t believe we’re getting paid to do what we do for work. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-

Sapphire is a non binary friend who has cancer. They have four children and a husband, and are kind enough to give us their time to chat about their experience in the medical system as well as their experiences beating thyroid cancer and what treatment for that was like as well as their effective treatment so far with triple negative breast cancer. I learned stuff and hope you will as well. Content warning: if you’re American and free healthcare bothers you, we will talk about free healthcare and more to the point: we will be a couple of sick Canadians complaining about our free healthcare. This may enrage you. You have been warned. Enjoy the session y’all. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Today, my guest Intimacy con Amore, discusses what it was like spending years building her professional speaking business only to have it damaged by COVID-19. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

What’s it like as a polyamorous parent during COVID? Have you ever had another set of parents with kids about your age and shared parenting responsibilities like having them look after your kids while you were out for a bit? Imagine living with another parent and their kid. Robin doesn’t need to imagine any of that as she literally lives that life. Join us for a conversation on polyamory, parenting, and a funny metamour story. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Billie is back to chat about friendships, having fun, pushing your body, and other concerns with chronic pain and chronic illness when it comes to friendship activities. It’s a good session and not as heavy as some of the others. Speaking of friendships, Billie is kind enough to offer me some criticism and praise near the end around how I used to be fatphobic. Billie is kind enough to offer me the out of mentioning it last so I can easily edit it out, but my personal feeling is the more we censor our mistakes from others, the more we pressure each other to try to be perfect at everything. I think setting the expectation with others that we fuck up and can do better is a positive thing. No matter how bad it is or how far you’ve gone, there’s always a way home. Here are the Feelings and Needs Inventories I bring up. https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory Here are searches for the Assertiveness Workbook not tied to a store account. https:/

Vivica, a sex worker who strips and pole dances to earn money chats with us about Imposter Syndrome. We talk about intensity, anxiety, self-compassion, and covid. These times have been hard on all of us, but sex workers have been hit really hard by covid. Vivica brings a casual and informative presence to the show, and I look forward to recording more with her in future. Enjoy! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/intimate-interactions/message

Tillie is back to talk queer bodies, reproduction, fertility, endometriosis, having kids, adoption, fears of reproducing disability or mental illness, cannabis use, STIs, and more. As usual, we have a great time in this content packed session.

Usually the acquiring and losing of skills and abilities is compressed towards learning when you’re younger and losing when you’re older. In some ways, chronic illness and loss of ability is like aging in super speed with your body fighting back to retain what it can. While we often think of people as how they lived, not how they died; so too do I see among the loss and death of things in chronic illness the vivacity and life that carries us through it. It may seem confusing to have life and fun so intermingled with death and loss; it can be hard with chronically ill folks as some might describe, “watch them die slowly” but in truth you’re also watching them live. In some ways the triumph of life and joy and fun over great adversity is a hallmark of the human condition and an essential part of our nature that has led from the first cell that existed on the planet through its descendants, each reaching sexual maturity, reproducing, and protecting their offspring long enough for them to reach sexual maturity. T

Dating can be a fun, connective adventure. Or you could be doing it during a pandemic. Robin Beatch is back today to talk about dating as a polyamorous person and how COVID has impacted her and her polycule. We share strategies on risk profiling and figuring out what you want, who in your life is most vulnerable, and what is a boundary for you. Robin also talks about her longest sexual dry spell. And just in case you don’t know, a polycule is a group of people who sleep with some of the same people. So if person A sleeps with B and C with person B sleeping with A and D and person C sleeping with A and E, the five of them would be in a polycule. This is just one configuration out of many. Some folks call this a line or a V configuration - the name doesn’t matter. The group of people who are connected in that they are all sleeping with the same people are a complex sort of polyamorous extended family. Metamours are the lovers of your lovers. Often they are not your lovers.

Tillie and I talk about job loss, home-schooling, latchkey kids, pets, and intensity as coping for chronic pain. Mostly we talk about COVID: our fears, our hopes, and our coping strategies. At least COVID hasn’t slowed down my content generation. Stay safe out there, everyone.

Billie, a lifetime EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) veteran with ten years of actively seeking help in the healthcare system, guides us through some basics of surviving severe sickness and loss of ability be it temporary or permanently. Content warning: this content might be hard for some folks, so please give yourself permission to turn it off or take some space from it for a while. We talk about losing the embarrassment around disability and using grieving as an opportunity to move through loss and grief towards exploration of new and interesting parts of the human condition. My personal feeling is that in some ways we’re explorers getting to navigate uncommonly traversed parts of the human condition. That’s easy for me to say right now when I’m not on the floor of my bedroom crawling towards the toilet with 9 out of 10 pain. It certainly has adjusted who I am and how I relate to my body. It has certainly changed how I process messages from my body. It’s like - when your body texts in all caps, you just get use

This session, Robin and I reminisce fondly about an intimate moment from the past. After waiting years for a certain queer experience, Robin finally got the birthday present she wanted. Afterward we talk about fluid exchange hierarchies and polyamory risk profiles. Remember, Robin’s second book Polyglamorous: a Queer mom’s misadventures and lessons in non monogamy is available if you want more content. Check her out at https://robinsnestcoaching.com or find her book at: https://alternativesexuality.ca/shop https://alternativesexuality.ca/shop.html

We form opinions of people piece by piece. First, Robin was a stripper. She took off her clothes as a house girl, but it was offering lap dances to men in the clubs where she earned most of her money. She needed that money to get through nursing school where she went on to become a psychiatric nurse. She also made money pro domming men. Is any one of those professions more a sale of her body than the others? Is any one asking her to do more emotional labour than the others? Why do we attach judgement to some professions and not others? But I’m getting ahead of myself as usual - let’s let Robin tell the story. And if you like it, feel free to buy her book on https://robinsnestcoaching.com or at https://alternativesexuality.ca/shop.html. But for now, let’s get some intimate stories for free from Robin herself on Intimate Interactions.

Billie is back with more hard hitting content. Her dark humour and our ability to laugh with each other about our situations and at ourselves is especially impressive in her case since she’s a lifetime EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) veteran, braving hospitals actively for ten years. With accessory conditions like POTS (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), Billie talks about her chronic illnesses and the challenges she’s had having her pain or condition taken seriously. We talk about psilocybin and cannabis this session as well as other medications and premenstrual dysphoric disorder; content warning for graphic descriptions. We joke about the early medical establishment, hysteria, masturbation, and other topics.

Yana Skorstengaard, a graduate student with ADHD, chats about the pros and cons of having ADHD and the strategies folks can use to offset the negatives and maximize the positives.