Intimate Interactions

Gloria’s back to finish talking about anti-blackness and racism like the way the police raise guns towards children more often when they’re Black in the US. Gloria and I talk about hard shit today. As a content warning - though let’s be honest, my introductions have turned into giant content warnings - near the end, we talk about Gloria’s breast cancer diagnosis - don’t worry, she’s in remission - and how it led to a renewed lease on life, too short to be ashamed of being who she is. Autism, non-monogamy, Blackness, femmeness, and aging - these are things to be celebrated and embraced. But I’ll let you hear about it from Gloria, here on Intimate Interactions.

This session, we talk about Orcas in the Pacific Northwest. Billie tells us anecdotes about the largest dolphin and we talk about different kinds. It’s a much needed and appreciated break for me from all the super heavy content I’ve been recording with Billie that’ll be coming out over the coming few months. Expect more sessions about chronic illness, disability, chronic pain, and ableism. Throughout all of it, Billie maintains her kind, positive, and intensely empathetic spirit. You’ll get a dose of that today just listening to her talk passionately about orcas. We briefly get into pen and paper role playing games and video games towards the end of the session. I did say this one was less heavy than my other sessions with Billie, right? We very briefly talk about Enjoy!

How is ADHD a positive? Provided you have strategies and can compensate for thinking differently than others expect, ADHD can actually be quite a positive. Today I talk with Yana Skorstengaard, a graduate student with ADHD, about how she and I have worked with our brains to become academically accomplished. For me, that was achieving two full time science semesters on the Dean’s List (more than an A average); while Yana is taking a graduate degree in a subject she passionately cares about. While academic success isn’t really a measure of life success, achieving one’s goals when one is constantly told they get distracted and won’t achieve or can’t amount to anything, it’s refreshing to have another perspective to remind folks that ADHD can be an advantage and can give you the ability to deep dive and hyperfocus and achieve where more normative thinkers who don’t have ADHD would not be able to maintain the attention as long as an ADHD thinker could. But I’ll let Yana tell you more about that here on Intimate In

From Gloria’s history in Portland in the 70s to Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver, we talk about anti-Blackness and how it has shaped the world we live in. Gloria once joined a cult, and she opens up about this experience today. Despite everything different about the cult, spoilers: it was also racist and prohibited miscegenation or interracial relationships. I really appreciate my friendship with Gloria and the way we can laugh about things that are just horrific. It helps me get through it and hopefully she feels the same. Somehow despite the ickiness and gravity of the things she brings up, her light and funny personality always seems to find a way to shine through it all. This session was pulled out of a longer recording so it may end abruptly. Don’t worry, Gloria will be back in a couple of weeks to finish out the conversation.

Billie, an EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) veteran of ten years with other conditions like POTS (Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) talks about her chronic illnesses and the challenges she’s had having her pain or condition taken seriously. Content warning: this might get graphic. Billie brings a refreshing and positive perspective around not diminishing your experience or comparing yourself to people harder hit by life or circumstance. I’m excited to share that perspective with you here on Intimate Interactions. What are some examples of chronic illness making it hard to access healthcare? What strategies have you used to work with doctors or be more successful? What are some hidden services you didn’t know Canada offered free?

Today I talk with someone else who has a formal diagnosis for ADHD. Mine was as a child and hers was as an adult. We chat about the experience of having ADHD and how it impacts us. While today we focus on the experience of it, there’s an upcoming session where we talk about strategies and coping.

Shame Expert Gloria Jackson-Nefertiti calls in to talk about her life as a black femme with undiagnosed autistism growing up. Gloria somehow continues to be her usual charming self sharing very personal anecdotes about anti-blackness as it affected her in school and as a younger person.

Today, two POC folks discuss monogamy, polyamory, autonomy, and agency. Jet Noir shares a story of his parents’ and how they dealt with extramarital adventures. I discuss relationship anarchy and how it relates to Jet’s identity within non monogamy. Enjoy! https://linktr.ee/JetNoir What flavour of polyamory do you identify with? How did you get into polyamory? (Story about my parents and their DADT brand of non-monogamy.) What sorts of monogamy hangups did you unlearn? Could you fill in folks on what the relationship escalator is? What realizations or values did you arrive at that helped process through that? How has polyamory changed your relationship to yourself? How has polyamory affected communication in your relationships?

Jet Noir is back to talk about racial fetishization. We talk about dating, conventions, and other stuff in how it relates to race. As a former fitness coach, Jet has some experience as, what he calls, a body image coach. We talk a bit about tea to ease into the conversation as well as how we met before diving into the topic. I mention “Love is Not Colorblind,” a book written by Kevin Patterson about non-monogamy as experienced by a person of colour. That book is useful in my opinion for any folks wanting to see more representation by people of colour in their currently mostly white space. Let’s hear from Jet himself on Intimate Interactions. https://linktr.ee/JetNoir https://www.kcnerdfest.com/

Happy two days after Canada day or the day before the 4th of July. Former British North America week? Ugh colonialism is gross. While everyone is talking about the concept of being free from restrictions, I’m interviewing veteran podcasters about their flagship projects that produce free short fiction for me and for you. From the horror stories of Pseudopod to the science fiction of Escape Pod to fantasy stories of Podcastle - there’s an Escape Artists’ podcast for that. Check them out at https://escapeartists.net/ Today, the inimitable SB Divya, Mur Lafferty, and Alasdair Stuart chat about what they’re passionate about in podcasting, how they got into podcasting, and how they’ve built community. SB Divya Former engineer specializing in machine learning with an education in computational neuroscience and signal processing Writer https://www.eff-words.com/ New Book: Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse and Other Possible Situations (2019) Mur Lafferty Many accolades including winning

There’s a fascinating distinction between the way we see ourselves and the way others see us. Those might be the same. Those might be radically different. For public facing folks like Jet Noir or even myself, it might be intentional that we show part of who we are to make art, construct a performance, or for a host of other reasons or pressures. I love events like burlesque and related but quite different events like drag. They often have something valuable to say about sex, sexuality, and identity. What that is differs by performer, act, and the audience experiencing it. I encourage you to experience both burlesque and drag for different reasons, but what they both have in common is you will possibly learn a lot about other people if you don’t also learn something about yourself. Jet Noir is a Black, cis-gender, non-monogamous, pansexual burlesque performer and sex educator from the Bay Area. This was recorded on April 12th, on day 27 of self isolation for him during the Covid-19 crisis. https://linktr.ee/Je

Today we talk about scripts around what words like community mean. We talk about housing and how we’ve been taught to “live together” either in couples or with roommates. How does that look for folks off script like triads? We’ll talk about relationship orientation, the traditional white-picket fence Canadian dream, gender and its impact on scripts, queerness and its impact on scripts, and we’ll even chat a bit about environmental sustainability. Really, we aren’t having happy, loving relationships with more than two people for the sake of the planet, but hey - it’s a legit benefit! Now let’s chat about triads here on Intimate Interactions. Do you identify as non monogamous? Can you explain what a triad is? Did you practice polyfidelity, a sort of closed triad or did you practice non exclusivity and more of an open triad? How did your triad decide to practice that and what sorts of conversations were had around that? Did anyone ever object to that style of triad? What are the pros of being in a tr

Long distance relationships like any kind of relationship are diverse, varied, and complicated. Jazz Goldman discusses the benefits, challenges, and milestones of long distance relationships while reflecting on our comet partnership, one flavour of long distance relationship. We have had some struggles that felt intense to me and some successes that felt like big wins. Your mileage may vary, but we can only speak from our experiences. Here’s Jazz and myself talking about our comet partnership on Intimate Interactions. 1. What are comet partners? 2. How do you distinguish between comet partners and other non monogamous long distance relationships? 3. What regular maintenance do you think is helpful for you in long distance relationships? 4. Are holidays significant for you in long  distance relationships? 5. What feeds you about long distance relationships? 6. What are some milestones of long distance relationships?

There are places in the world right now where you can’t even say the words coronavirus. This episode I catch up with my friend Morgan while we’re both doing self isolation as directed by government policy. While we don’t live in a place that enforces lockdown, we’re both responsible enough to know if the government says it’s dangerous for us to be out and about, we’ll do our very best to self isolate for the full 14 days. We’re also fortunate that we both have roommates who are understanding. Mine helped me out with some shopping! Part of being low FODMAP for me is the tremendous difficulty of finding food that won’t make me sick though usually plain meat is okay. I had just recently bought a chest freezer from Craigslist and after a particularly good sale on eye-of-round beef at a local grocery store, I had more than 28 days of protein making meals significantly easier for me though they were plain and similar. Most recommendations: pasta, tomato sauce - had to be very specific forms. Rice pasta makes me sic

Getting a throat infection or cold sores are often seen as something that most people experience at some point in their lives. However when those infections are lower down, say on someone’s genitals, there’s a tremendous amount of added stigma that seems to come out of nowhere. Whether you get cold sores on the lips on your face or on your genitals, they’re still just cold sores. A bacterial infection in your throat that is easily treatable with antibiotics isn’t really different from a bacterial infection on your arm or genitals that is also treatable with antibiotics, so why all the stigma? Today we’re talking with Charisma, a former addict and genital cold sore person about the concept of catching stigma. The real fear for me in contracting any STI is really catching stigma rather than the infection itself. I know which ones are easily treatable like most Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Syphillis infections. In fact, those infections only really do damage if they go undetected and untreated so get checked! They

Tillie is back to chat with us about kink, edge play, when we discovered we were first interested in those things, queerness, gender dysphoria, and self-acceptance. How has power exchange changes for us as we’ve gotten older? Let’s get to the session and hear Tillie’s perspective. Do you do edge play? What is it? What edge do you play on? When did you first discover you were interested? How has your relationship to queerness changed as you’ve gotten older? When did you first know you were kinky? How has your relationship to power exchange changed as you’ve gotten older? What thrills you about it if anything? What are three primary kinks for you and what needs does each meet?

Chronic conditions are rarely easy. It’s a seemingly permanent change to your quality of life and the habits and behaviours you can have for the rest of your experience on this planet. Sometimes, the conditions are long term and treatable, but other times there’s nothing you can do. Today, we’re talking with Charisma, a former addict and HSV positive person about her anxiety and depression. We talk about social acceptance but will dig into stigma in another episode. However depression and anxiety can be chronic conditions. I’m excited to chat more about mental health with an old friend with whom I haven’t caught up in years.

Okay this session with Tillie is much more content rich than the last one I recorded while experiencing intestinal distress. We chat about power exchange and how it informs self-domming or executive function as it’s more academically described. How do you plan or organize for having reduced function? We note that managing self care can be exhausting but list strategies for dealing with chronic conditions and talk about how we reduce the emotional labour behind self care. We share strategies like touch and somatic movement as a way to manage and distract from pain. Tillie offers a model of expensive versus cheap feelings. We briefly touch on ring theory, and I talk about my fear of trying to hold down a job. We also talk about processing the loss of connection or loss of experiences that can come up when chronic conditions or our bodies demand we miss out on something or someone. About half way through we take a break to check in with friends and then come back to finish our conversation about boot blacking -

We talk briefly about consent and art. In and among these conversations, we somehow get on the topic of consent in bestiality - consider this your content warning that that’s in here. We also talk very briefly about a warehouse fire in California where some people died. So content warning for that. And with those in mind, let’s go to the session with Sophia here on Intimate Interactions. We talk briefly about consent and art. In and among these conversations, we somehow get on the topic of consent in bestiality - consider this your content warning that that’s in here. We also talk very briefly about a warehouse fire in California where some people died. So content warning for that. And with those in mind, let’s go to the session with Sophia here on Intimate Interactions. How much do you think about challenging social norms in your selection process at SEAF and at the PEF gallery for the art you choose? Do you find the selection process for SEAF challenges your opinions more or that your opinions challenge

At WCB this year, I had some pretty severe chronic pain. I get periodic intestinal issues leading to severe headaches and sometimes nausea. I’ve had the same gastro enterologist for almost two years now and nothing we’ve tried has helped except hydrating more and eating low FODMAP which have helped a little. When I’m in distress, a little goes a long way. The difference between an 8 out of 10 and an 8.5 out of 10 is significant in my emotional exhaustion. This session, I chat with Tillie about self-care and our chronic conditions. I’m pretty sick for most of the episode so if you find it’s not content rich enough for you, I understand. What this episode does in my opinion is open an intimate window into what my experience of the world is like. If you don’t have chronic pain or illness, this might give you a look into what one specific kind might look like - very different from other kinds. About 20 minutes in, I get interrupted to go do my volunteering duties. I take some medication and then get right back to