48. libertine: horizontal with the doyenne of dirty stories

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48. libertine: horizontal with the doyenne of dirty stories

horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. In this episode, I lie down with sexual folklorist Dixie de la Tour. Dixie is the founder, curator, and host of Bawdy Storytelling, the longest-running sex storytelling series in the United States.

Lila:  I looove that you’re this, this, I don’t know, you’re like a MegaConnector. You’re not just a Connector, you’re like a SuperConnector. (Dixie giggles) Like one, like, the old computers that used to take up a room, like you’re that kind of Connector! (both giggle)

Dixie:  Well, I mean, that’s what I did when I was a host of sex parties. I don’t understand why you would leave your house, and go to an event, if you’re— I mean, we’re all dealing with social anxiety these days—

Lila:  Oh my God, yes!

Dixie:  So you better, know you’re gonna get something out of it, and who wants to go to a place where everybody just walks up to you and goes, “Would you like to fuck?” (Lila laughs) ‘Cause—

Lila:  Nooo!

Dixie:  That’s off-putting.

Lila:  (a quiet mewl) No!

Dixie:  So, you know, if you came in and you had decent manners, my favorite thing to do was, I was always, the, front door person—

Lila:  Yeah!

Dixie:  ‘Cause I was very good at shooing you away if you weren’t supposed to be at that party— (Lila mmhm’s) ‘cause I’m kinda ballsy, and if you came up to me — this happened almost every party — somebody would come up and say, “This is my first sex party ever, and I’m here visiting from Connecticut!” And I’d go, “That’s awesome, welcome,” and then I’d go find you, when my shift was over. And I would say, “Okay, Connecticut, whatcha here for?” And they’d go “Whaat?” And I’m like, “It ain’t about me; it’s about you. What are you here for?” And they’d go, (furtively) “I’ve always wanted to kiss a girl.” And I’d go, “Which girl?”

Lila:  (delighted) Yeeesss!

Dixie:  And they’d go, (whispering) “That girl’s pretty,” and I’m like, “I know that girl; let’s go talk to that girl! (Lila wails delightedly) ‘Cause you know, sex parties— they are safer now—

Lila:  BLESS You! We need somebody like that at our party, at the Hacienda parties.

Dixie:  Yeah, yeah. It’s good to have.

Lila:  Maybe it has to be me…

Dixie:  You know what? All those orgasms come back to you.

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horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down.

In this episode, I lie down with sexual folklorist Dixie De La Tour.

Dixie is the founder, curator, and host of Bawdy Storytelling, the longest-running sex storytelling series in the United States. Samia Mounts, of the “Make America Relate Again” podcast, was the first to mention Bawdy to me in the late summer of last year, and she insisted that I SIMPLY MUST attend the RISK & Bawdy collaboration show at the Bell House last September.

I did. I saw. I played Bang-o.

I started courting Dixie immediately.

She is a mesmerizing storyteller. Her Southern lilt, her flagrant nonchalance and nonchalant brazenness, her heart-o-gold, her heaving bosom. She’s not just a Connector, in the Malcolm Gladwell sense of the word, she’s a Super-connector, a Mmmega-connector. Her shows get people laid (it’s happened so often that there’s even a song for that!); her shows spark romance, start relationships, and, I believe may have even been tangentially responsible for a bawdy baby or two.

I was tickled and honored and seam-burst-ing with joy when I finally had the chance to get horizontal with Dixie in her chosen hometown of San Francisco, California. We recorded in the guest room of a 24-ish member intentional community in SOMA. One of my classmates from NYU lives there. It’s like the Parthenon of intentional communities.

For tales from the road, like the one about how I got totally infatuated with a guy at the “Parthenon” and wound up acting like a 13 year-old, and also for pretty pictures of my adventures and horizontality in unexpected places, for invites to live shows, and my writings about intimacy of all kinds, sign up for the weekly missives on horizontalwithlila.com

While I was driving cross-country solo on my horizontal does america road trip, I didn’t listen to music. I just didn’t have the impulse to. I listened to books, I listened to podcasts, I talked to friends on the phone, I talked to myself, I sang to myself, or I drove along in meditative quiet. I listened to episode after episode of Dixie’s Bawdy Storytelling podcast. After a while, Dixie started to feel like a road spirit, an auditory escort, my most frequent aural (a-u-r-a-l) companion. Behind the wheel of my borrowed Honda Civic, while listening to Bawdy, I repeatedly squealed, laughed, teared up, and said OH. MY! all the way across America.

We are so fortunate that Dixie has centered her life around living stories, telling them, and getting other people to tell them. What do they say about living legends? She’s a national treasure. Explore her body of work, pun intended, on Bawdystorytelling.com

If you enjoy our horizontal storytelling, become a patron of the horizontal arts, darlin’! You can become a patron for $2 on up, and the rewards get more delectable as you increase. For instance, for $10 a month, you’ll get access to the love poem of the month, a private recording of one of my favorites. For $15 a month, you’ll get a ticket to a live show, or access to a secret episode, and so on. Patronage is what makes it possible for me to continue making independent, uncensored, ad free homemade radio. I believe that when we make private conversations public, intimacy becomes contagious, and the more intimacy we cultivate, the happier our lives. Be part of it.

Become a Patron!

Your patronage helps make the world more intimate.

In this first part of our conversation, we talk about Bawdy, Bang-O, craigslist personal ads, the unknown hookup, and being a porn magnet. And Dixie tells me a tale about a porno booth (with glory holes everywhere).

Stick around at the end of the episode for a little treat: a bawdy song by Jefferson Bergey!

And now, come lie down with us in San Francisco, California.

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Links to Things:

Patron of the horizontal arts!

Dixie on the interwebz: Bawdystorytelling.com + Instagram + Twitter

The Bawdy podcast (which I listened to all across America)

RISK / Bawdy collaboration show at the Bell House. I was there! That’s when I first fell in looove with Dixie!

Bawdy got me Laid, a little ditty by Rachel Lark

Bang-O, a game played at Bawdy

horizontal does america, my cross-country road trip / recording tour on which we created this episode

Jefferson Bergey, one of Bawdy’s long-time songwriters, who wrote the song “Libertine,” for which this episode is named!

Episode 15: friend death: quickie with lila, in which I tell the story of the last time I drove across the country.

brave on the rocks, or, choosing to open when you want to shut but you know it would really be better if you opened, a blog post that includes the backstory on Lila’s lover from Portland

horizontal does montana and oregon, a blog post that includes a little story of Lila’s reconnection with that lover

The blog post horizontal does california, in which Lila writes of her adventures in California, surrounding the recording of this episode, including the story of her bizarre infatuation with a lost boy.

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Show Notes (feel free to share quotes/resources on social media, and please link to this website or my Patreon!):

website link: https://horizontalwithlila.com/

Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila

[6:25]  Lila gushes over Dixie’s superior storytelling skills.

[7:10]

Lila:  The fact that you are just brassy and explicit is so delightful to me!

Dixie:  (laughs) Brassy and explicit—

Lila:  Yyyesss!

Dixie:  I’m gonna put that on my podcast.

Lila & Dixie:  Brassy and explicit.

Dixie:  I have been called brassy, a few hundred times in my life, but I like those two words together even more.

[7:49]  Why does Dixie have a hard time finding stories suited to the Bawdy Storytelling stage?  

[7:57]  Lila & Dixie riff on the words: sex-positivity, slut, libertine, and bawdy.

Dixie:  For example, I went to L.A. a while back and I posted in a group and said: Looking for stories of sex-positivity, sex, kink, and gender, and somebody responded and said, “I wanna tell a story about the ugliest hooker I ever fucked—“

Lila:  Oh!

Dixie:  “ — and how she shit all over my bed.” (Lila gasps) And I went, “That story is not sex-positive.” They went, “What are you talkin’ about, it’s totally se—“ I’m like, “No, you’re positive ya had sex.” (Lila chortles) “But that story was not sex-positive.” (Lila keeps chortling) They’re like, “Huh! I don’t git it!” A lot of people don’t know what sex-positive means.

Lila:  I know, well an— and also it’s just not a nice term, right, it sounds like HIV positive, like it doesn’t, it doesn’t—  

Dixie:  I KNOW! Lila:  sound good.

Dixie:  And people who are not us, muggles always think it means HIV positive.

 

muggles (noun) = a term borrowed from the world of Harry Potter (in which it means non-magic people, or those who are not witches or wizards). Used by members of sex-positive / kink communities to refer to those outside the community, more likely use to refer to those with a sex-negative or vanilla attitude.

 

Lila:  I know; we really need a better term.

Dixie:  We do! And I used to work for, um, a lot of adult dating and kink and gender-related websites, and we looked for the right word — professionally—

Lila:  Yeah.

Dixie:  — for years, and nobody’s ever come up with the right word yet.

Lila:  So, send us your ideas if you have any.

Dixie:  Yeah!

Lila:  But you inspired me because I had been searching, and through many early episodes, I talked with several people about the word slut, which I still don’t like, I just don’t like the word itself. The, the way that it’s, the sss— lll— t— cghgh. It just doesn’t sound, good to me.

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  And, so all across the way, I don’t listen to music, and as I’ve been driving, I’ve been listening to books on tape and podcasts, and I listened to a ton of Bawdy, and you had an episode that was themed “Libertine” and I was like, “That is it! That is the word I want to use instead of slut!”

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  Because to me it sounds like the freedom and the sensuality, whereas slut just still sounds like a slur to me, and I just don’t wanna, I just don’t want it.

Dixie:  Lib— you know the word “bawdy” is a very old-fashioned word and (Lila mmhm’s) a lot of people who are under 35 don’t know the word. Libertine is even more so!

[10:15]  A bit of Jefferson Bergey’s song “Libertine,” performed live at Bawdy Storytelling. (I hear he’s coming out with a studio recording of it soon!)

[10:34]  Lila tells Dixie about the first month of being on the road for horizontal does america.

[10:59]  The last time Lila went cross-country, she traveled across with her former best friend, and back on her own. (This cracks Dixie up.) Listen to the story on episode 15. friend death: quickie with lila. [Note: Don’t fret. She did not die on the way.]

[14:17]  How did Lila figure out where she was going to stay when she traveled cross-country?

[15:26]  Lila on being with an old lover while in Portland. Here is some backstory on that lover, and some notes on their reconnection.

Lila:  And I was just in Portland and I reconnected with an old lover, which was really beautiful, because I actually hadn’t had— a penis inside me since I parted from my ex.

Dixie:  How long ago was that?

Lila:  Five months ago, and we were monogamous for close to a year. So I hadn’t been with—

Dixie:  Anybody else in a year and a half.

Lila:  Yah! I’d b— nobody else had been—

Dixie:  I’m good at math—

Lila:  — inside me —

Dixie:  (both laugh) —  when it comes to dick, I’m pretty good at math!

[16:32]  Lila & Dixie on Tinder

Lila:  And then I fired up Tinder too, to see what I could (giggle) make happen, but nothing has happened in that, in that regard yet. (both laugh) You know what happens, Dixie?

Dixie:  What?

Lila:  I— the few ones that I am into and that I match with, we start up a conversation. Usually they drop the ball!

Dixie:  Of course they do. That’s what Tinder’s for!

Lila:  Ugh! (then a disgusted yelp) Uh!

Dixie: For them to drop the ball.

Lila:  (childlike) Why?

Dixie:  Because we can turn people into commodities. (Lila mmhm’s) Because it’s kind of like, “Do I really want chow mein right now?” (both laugh) If you have an emotional bond with somebody, if you’re connected, then you’re like, “Lila. I like Lila.”

Lila:  (overlapping) Yes.

Dixie:  But if it’s just like—

Lila:  “Pretty redhead.”

Dixie:  Yeah. Redhead. Redhead. Which flavor of redhead do I want? (Lila giggles) It’s kinda like—  it’s kind of like, you know— a menu.

[17:40]  Lila on the guy living at the intentional community (where she and Dixie are recording) that she had a thing for.

[Note: for the rest of the story, and how Lila dropped the ball on innumerable things because of her infatuation, read the blog post horizontal does california.]

[18:57]  Dixie on being a Connector (really she’s a Super-Connector, a Mmmega-Connector!).

Dixie:  So you know, my thing is, I really love to connect people, so I got really into the— I thought you hadn’t been able to connect with him and I was like, “Oh, Oh,”

Lila:  Ohhh.

Dixie:  “You know this is what I do, right?”

Lila:  You’re like, “I can do this!”

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  Oh my God.

Dixie:  That’s my superpower, I can connect … anything you want, pretty much.

Lila:  I was telling people about playing Bang-O, at the RISK / Bawdy Storytelling show at The Bell House in Brooklyn, and how, you know, there’s the “Are you / do you have an account on FetLife,” and “Have you had sex outdoors?” And then, “Do you wanna hook up tonight?” (giggles)

Dixie:  Yeah!

Lila:  And, I notice you didn’t put the “with me” in there.

Dixie:  No! No! No pressure! (Lila giggles) That’s a lot of pressure! I mean, we’re gonna open the door, but we’re not gonna like, shut you out in the cold and go, “There you go, you better agree to fuck them!”

[20:15]  How Dixie orchestrates the Bang-O cards with “write in your own question” to help you break the ice with someone you’ve been eyeing.

[20:50]  Lila gushes over Dixie (again). This time about being a MmmegaConnector.

[21:08]  Dixie on how to host she hosted play parties.

[22:44]  A Bawdy Storytelling anthem by Rachel Lark, “Bawdy Got me Laid.”

Bawdy Storytelling presents Rachel Lark: “Bawdy Got Me Laid”

Rachel Lark performing “Bawdy Got Me Laid” at Bawdy Storytelling’s Seattle premiere event. Recorded live at The Re-bar in Seattle on June 12th, 2014.

[22:51]

Dixie:  I love it when people contact me after a show and go, “Okay, so here’s what happened,” and I’m like, “Awesome! I did that!”

Lila:  (whispery) Yesss.

Dixie:  That makes me feel so good, when I know that: people got the thing they wanted, and that I helped. Storytelling does that, better than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s so easy to connect with people after you’ve heard a story.

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[23:16]  Lila on her role as the Ambassatrix of the Villa and her desire to learn from Dixie’s Connector-ways.

[25:41]  Has Dixie been a flirt and a Connector since she was very young?

Dixie:  Well I’ve always been a storyteller. I grew up in the South, and spent summers in West Virginia and when they do like a pig roast, and they put the pig in the ground and then say, okay, now in like, three days, it’ll be ready to eat. We would just kind of sit around and people would play musical instruments, and, they’d tell stories, and I’d always kind of ignore the kids and sat and listened to the grown-up stories. Um, and believe me, they weren’t as interesting as the stories you here at Bawdy, but, you know, they did like to go back to, how so and so rolled it down, the mountain because they were drunk, they rolled their car, and shit like that. (Lila laughs) I was like, that’s a good story. How long have I been— yeah, I’ve always kind of been a Connector. I was always — when I moved to Virginia in like the fourth grade, the first thing I would do is, I was always the kid who would come up to you during school and go, “Hey, you’re new!” You know. “Let me show you around; let me introduce you to people.” And, that’s something that feels good to me. So I do that at parties; I do that at sex parties. “You’re new; I’ll show you around. You might wanna fuck ‘em.”

Lila:  Ohgh. It’s a beautiful service that you do. It’s gorgeous.

[26:50]  What did little Dixie learn about sex?

Dixie:  I was the one that informed everybody that babies did not come out your belly button.

Lila:  (laughs) But who told you?

Dixie:  I’m trying to remember that, I’m not sure how I found out. I was the kind of kid that porn seemed to be a magnet for, like, if it was left in the woods, I  would be the one to stumble across it. (Lila guffaws) So I was always finding porn.

Lila:  Porn was a magnet for you. [Note: That is not what Dixie said. Lila mixed it up.]

Dixie:  Yeah, I would just like, “Oh. Look. Gay porn. Cool.” And uh, so, I can remember, probably 4th or 5th grade, the girls saying that babies come out your belly button and I said, “No they don’t, they come out your hoo-ha. And they’d go—

 

hoo-ha (noun) = a euphemism for vagina, usually used in the southern United States of America.

 

Lila:  (laughing, under her breath) Your hoo-ha.

Dixie:  Right, I’m like, “How do you think, a human being could come out your belly button?” They’re like, “How do you think a human being could come out your hoo-ha?” (Lila cracks up)

[27:52]  When did Dixie’s mom tell her about the facts of life and how’d that go?

[28:14]

Dixie:  She was so freaked out, talkin’ about sex, that I had to stop her in the middle, go down the hall, and throw up. Because she stressed me out so bad.

Lila:  Whoa!

Dixie:  ‘Cause she was freaked out, like oh my God I gotta teach my daughter about sex! And, I pretty much was like, what the fuck was that? I couldn’t really understand why she was so freaked out and then after a little while I went, “You know what? I’m pretty sure that there must been something great there if she’s so sure she didn’t want me—” you know, it’s kinda like, they try and hide all the good stuff from ya—

Lila:  Oh yeah.

Dixie:  So I’m like, “She must have been hiding the good stuff from me.” So um, about the time I was 15, I would go to work in the summer with her, ‘cause we lived off in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I would say, “I’m gonna go up to the movie house and just, sit in the movies in the air conditioner all day.” And then I would sneak around the corner and get on a bus, go across town, to the porno theatres. And I would go in — and I just wanted to learn about sex — and my mother had refused to sign the sex ed permission slip.

Lila:  (groans) Ohhhh!

Dixie:  Everybody thought that was funny ‘cause I was the sex ed program at my school. (Lila laughs) The cheerleaders would go, “How do you give a blow job,” and I’d go, “It’s surpising — you don’t actually blow, you suck.” You know, they’d go, “How do you know that?” I’m like, “I have this gift to find porn, I guess!” (Lila giggles) People badmouth porn, I’m like, “I learned everything I know — back when I wasn’t allowed to have sex ed — from porn; a lot of people do!”

[29:46]  Dixie tells Lila a story about a porno booth.

Dixie:  So I would sneak across town, to what they call the quarter loops, and the quarter loops are — and if you watch the show The Duece that’s on HBO right now — they’re kind of inventing the quarter loops on that show right now, which is: if you wanna watch porn, you put a quarter in, it shows you two minutes of the porno, and then the screen goes down, and then you put another quarter in, you can watch the next two minutes of the porno. And I would go in, and I’d have my roll of quarters, which was my allowance, and I would go in and — none of the doors would actually lock. It was a pretty scary place—

 

quarter loops (noun) = popular in the 70s in the United States, these were porno booths with an occupancy of one (sometimes containing glory holes), that allowed the viewer to watch a porno a couple of minutes at a time, for a quarter per. In order to continue, you had to keep feeding quarters to the machine.

 

glory holes (noun) = common in bathrooms frequented by gay men, particularly during eras in which homosexualiaty was heavily sanctioned against, these are circular holes cut through, for instance the wall of a bathroom stall, in which a penis-owner could insert their penis, and potentially receive an anonymous blow job.

 

Lila:  (quietly) Oh my God yeah.

Dixie:  And uh, the doors wouldn’t lock and there were glory holes everywhere, and I would go in and I’d, learn how to give a blow job. You know?

Lila:  Okay, I’ve always wondered about the glory hole situation, I mean wouldn’t a cock get, you know, splinters?

Dixie:  (guffaws) That is a great question! I thought the same thing, the first time I saw one, I’m like, “Oh, you better be careful with that!”

[30:50]  Dixie tells Lila a glory hole story. [It’s a good one. You’ve gotta hear her tell it!]

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[34:10]  Dixie on what she learned from her parent’s relationship.

Dixie:  My Dad ran off with another woman, right about the time I turned two. So I didn’t have a lot of exposure to it. My mom followed him to D.C., to try and get him back, where he had— he was now livin’ with the other woman. So a lot of my childhood was spent, you know, her tryin’ to get the father of her children back, there were two of us. Um, the second one was born right about the time he left. And so … I’m not really sure what that says about me. But um, I think we finally gave up about the time I was 10 and we moved to Virginia. I don’t know, I don’t have that role model of parents who were together happily ever after, that kinda stuff. I’m very happy in my relationship right now, but I was pretty sure when I was — I’ve been pretty sure my whole life — that I was never gonna have love… So. I figured if I wasn’t gonna get love, I was gonna get a good story.

[35:31]  Dixie on her Craigslist personal ads.

Dixie:  So I love to craft personal ads and just make up ridiculous scenarios so that I could get, you know. I figured it’s an adventure. Sex is an adventure. So why not create an adventure with somebody? It’s a little meta to create it like that, but, it was always funny to see where it went.

[35:55]  

Lila:  Well what made you decide that you weren’t gonna have love?

Dixie:  ‘Cause I got to see that, there is no happily ever after. You know? I just got to see pining; I didn’t get to see true love expressed. So. I figured, that I wasn’t gon’ get it either. An’ if I wasn’t gon’ get it, then what did I really care about? At first, it probably started with the thought that: I’m gonna have the sort of life, when I’m — I don’t know, imaginary number would be — 75, or something, my memoir’s gonna be amazing.

Lila:  Yeah.

Dixie:  You know, so you start thinkin’ about: What am I gonna do to make it amazing? Pretty much the ground rule is, every time you have an extraordinary opportunity, you don’t go home! You go do it. And you have to follow it through ‘til the end. (Lila hm’s) So I’m sure I did a lot of stupid things, and people would go, “You did what by yourself? Why would you go there by yourself?” I’m like, “Why not?” ‘Cause you don’t sit and wait for other people to go with you. It’s just not gonna happen. Pretty much better go make your adventure happen and—

Lila:  Right. And you’re saying: You don’t wait for the story. You make the story.

[37:10]  The personal ad Dixie wrote called “the unknown hookup.” She still hasn’t made this one happen, it seems… [You’ve gotta hear her tell this one, too!]

[39:55]  Dixie on her bi-yearly “Nerd Show” at Bawdy.

[40:28]  Lila on the sense of unworthiness wrapped up in choosing unavailable men who wouldn’t choose her.

[41:58]  Lila on acting “as if” she loved herself.

Lila:  And I’ve been kind of working with this, sense of unworthiness and trying to cultivate self-loving acts even when I didn’t feel that way—

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  So that I, I sort of re— reverse engineered some self-love. I think it started to, to happen because I acted as if, almost like an acting exercise, like what would—

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  — what would a person who loves themself do, right now?

Dixie:  Yeah!

Lila:  And, I was telling them this morning as I was making breakfast in the communal kitchen, and, one of the guys, who was from Germany said, “Do you like to cook?” And I said, “I like to eat, and if it means cooking for me to eat well, then I will, I will cook, and I will enjoy it because it means I get to eat, well.” And he said, “I will only cook nicely for other people.” And I said, “I used to be that way, and then I pushed myself to make breakfast as though I were making it for my lover, even though I was only making it for myself.”

Dixie:  Oh, that’s great.

Lila:  So, the breakfast I made this morning, I wound up sharing with other people, but I went into the kitchen to make it for myself and I would have made it just the same way. […] So I had to do the performative acts … and then it started to seep inward.

[43:45]  Dixie on what she does the day after a show.

Dixie:  Yeah. I reward myself the day after a show. I give myself what I call a “stupid day.” Not allowed to think. Not allowed to send any emails. Probably best if I don’t send any emails, or, sometimes I’ll chat on the phone but usually I don’t have much voice the day after a show, ‘cause I talk a lot during the show… Because I’m not very good at being good to myself, I’m always — if I’m home I’m really good to my dog. And my partner. Like, I’ll make him dinner, or I’ll take the dog and let him just go crazy, you know. And when you’re not good at being good to yourself, it’s really nice to have somebody that is kinda right there. Sometimes other people are busy, and you’re like, “But I really wanna do something for somebody,” ‘cause we’re always there when we need. You know? When we wanna reward ourself, that person is always available. The rest of the world isn’t always available. The nice thing is to have a partner that you can go, “I’m gonna make you dinner, and make it really pretty, and warm,” take your dog to the dog wash and make him smell really good, and, that way you get to spend a lil’ — so it’s kinda like bein’ nice to yourself.

[46:06]  Lila tells Dixie what fascinates her about intimacy.

[47:00]  Lila and Dixie make a distinction between being a performer and being an exhibitionist.

[47:14]

Dixie:  For me it’s— it’s not being on stage, that’s not— I’m not even sure it’s something I really enjoy, after 11 years of doing it, but I love putting people on stage. (Lila mm’s) I love having people not believe in themselves and then you go, “No, your story’s actually really interesting. Let me pull out the interesting parts with you.” You know. “You get to decide what you say, but, I can tell you, I represent the audience, and that thing you said. I wanna know more about that, which mean, they’re probably gonna wanna know more about that.” ‘Cause most people don’t believe in themselves.

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Lila:  Absolutely! As I was recording my pitch to you, I thought, “You know, this really might not be Bawdy enough, like this isn’t— the the, people aren’t going to think this is sexual napalm, this isn’t like hot enough, I mean it was hot to me, but—”

Dixie:  Yeah.

Lila:  You know, and I was having that same kind of, of insecurity that you mentioned, on the show, where it was like, my story’s not enough enough.

Dixie:  Yeah. Do you see what my necklace is?

Lila:  (pause, a little jingle) Enough.

Dixie:  Mmhm.

Dixie:  Somebody just gave it to me and I feel like it’s something we can all really relate to. We never — we either feel like we’re too much, socially, or we’re not enough, on a personal level, intimately. Why would anybody be with us, when there are so many options. Why would my story be worth it, when there are so many people to choose from? We always wanna tell ourselves we’re not good enough. You know. But for every story out there, there’s somebody who relates to it.

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[49:58]

Dixie:  A lot of people pitch me these craaazy over-the-top stories. They’re so wild. And they go, “There you go, that’s perfect for your show,” and I’m like, “What’s relatable about that?” The whole reason we love storytelling is that we can put ourselves in place of you and walk through your life. You know, and, maybe if you like listening to people who are ballsy and you’re shy — that’s one way that storytelling can serve a purpose, but it’s not gonna—

Lila:  Aspirational.

Dixie:  It’s aspirational, but it’s not going to be the kind of thing that resonates with you. Relatability is found through the vulnerability of admitting, “I never thought I was good enough. I never thought I was, you know.” It’s the same thing with— I have to convince people all the time. Right before I came over here, I followed up with a storyteller who was like: “My stories aren’t really wild,” and I was like, “What makes you think they gotta be wild?” […] Yeah, wild stories definitely have a place on the stage. But the one that sticks with you. The one you’re thinkin’ about a month later, is the one, where that person opened up and showed their flaws. That’s where we all live. We know what it’s like to be imperfect. Every single day, we beat ourselves up about it. That’s the story that you want.

[51:34]  Lila on sharing her vulnerabilities by telling her stories in weekly missives. They’re happening again these days. Sign up to receive them on horizontalwithlila.com

48. libertine: horizontal with the doyenne of dirty stories

horizontal is a podcast of intimacies recorded while lying down. In this episode, I lie down with sexual folklorist Dixie de la Tour. Dixie is the founder, curator, and host of Bawdy Storytelling, the longest-running sex storytelling series in the United States.