This is Alana Heiss.
21. unicorning: quickie with a woman who has sex with couples
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 …
“So usually, um, when I tell stories about sex to my friends, it’s always like about the spectacle, the whole, like um, ‘What’d you do last weekend?’ and I’m like, ‘I don’t know, a male stripper and an entrepreneur at the same time with a DP,’ like literally, right over there actually once! So like, ‘cause a lot of the sex that I’ve had has like actually nothing to do with pleasure, and it’s just like — and definitely nothing to do with love — it’s just like, um, this kind of horrible fake gonzo journalist in me, where I do it all for the story.”
– Alana
DP (noun) = an abbreviation for the term double penetration, often referring to simultaneous penetration (with a cock or a sex toy) of the vagina and anus of the same human, but can also refer to a combination of oral penetration, vaginal/anal, or penetration by fingers/fist.
gonzo journalism (noun) = a type of immersive, first-person reporting characterized by the writer’s participation in the subject of their work, popularized by Hunter S. Thompson.
“I watch them fuck each other, like P and I go down on B together, or when he’s fucking me and fingering her at the same time, it’s like the best porn I could ever imagine! Um, like, in a lot of ways, they’re seriously like my sexual fantasies come to life. But I would never orgasm, although they both would and sometimes like multiple times in a night. So I was trying to figure out like, why the fuck, I wasn’t ever coming, and it was just like this mental block that I had— I think like this idea that they had each other, and I just had like myself, and my pet rock, and my plants at my house. And like, that, um, you know, I could like really easily be kind of cut out of their life, um, and their lives wouldn’t really change at all. I mean, they’re married, they’re, you know, a, a couple. So I guess I just had this fundamental kind of insecurity that I felt with them, and a distance that I wanted to keep between us, to like, stave off this kind of potential end. There’s always this difficulty with the unnameable arrangement.”
– Alana
In this quickie episode, recorded live at my podcast launch pajama party, I lie down with Alana Heiss.
Alana is a Google product marketing manager … and a sex writer. She is probably the famous-est real-live unicorn – a term used for the (not as mythical and rare as one might think) person who has sex with couples.
She wrote an excellent, titillating article about it for GQ entitled “Confessions of a Real-Life Unicorn.” She tells this quickie story at my request, because I wanted more about Unicorn Life.
Alana calls herself a “fake gonzo journalist” at the beginning of her story, but I completely disagree. I think she’s a real gonzo journalist.
You can find her work on alanaheiss.com.
So you know what you have to do, right?
Come lie down with us.
Links to Things:
alanaheiss.com, Alana’s website
GQ “Confessions of a Real-Life Unicorn.” article
Alana’s new podcast “A Little Death,” (named after her horizontal story!)
Unicornland, a fictional webseries by Lucy Gillespie about the unicorn life … one of the party scenes is set at Hacienda and features Andrew Sparksfire, the co-founder of my intentional community, welcoming guests to the party!
“Vim & Vigor” Carsie Blanson video (shot at Hacienda Maison!) that sounds like Alana’s future fantasy
Show Notes (feel free to share quotes/resources on social media, and please link to iTunes, this website, or my Patreon!):
iTunes link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/horizontal-with-lila/id1238031115&ls=1
website link: https://horizontalwithlila.com/
Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/horizontalwithlila
Alana, moments before telling this story live at my podcast launch pajama party on May 21st, 2017. Photo by Valerie Zimmer photography.
[5:03] The gonzo journalist inside Alana.
[5:34] The title of Alana’s story: la petite mort.
la petite mort (noun) = a phrase used to refer to an orgasm, literally translated directly from the French as “the little death”
[5:57] “I think there are parts of us that grow up faster or slower than others. Like I think, for me, I adopt some bad behaviors that are kind of hard to shrug off, that might have been useful at one point. Like case in point: I used to think I could protect myself from like any kind of physical or emotional hurt by holding back something of myself during sex. And I think that manifested itself in not ever having real orgasms during sex, which I mean, like, that’s kind of the definition of bonkers.” – Alana
[6:32] Published the piece in GQ about becoming a unicorn in her 30s, after her mostly monogamous 20s
[6:56] What Alana did at her first-ever sex party, a Hacienda party themed “Velvet Virgins,” in which the goal was to do something you’d never done before.
[7:17] “I realized it’s actually very easy to fuck a woman, because I know my way around the female anatomy.” – Alana
[7:23] The high Alana got from unicorning.
[7:29] “So I dove into being a unicorn, using a few different apps that were available, but then eventually I met this amazing couple that I’ll call B and P for the time being, um, it was actually two years ago that um, I matched with them on Tinder and we went on our first date, they’re like, this, they’re gorgeous, they’re big-hearted, they’re so open, and we had such good chemistry on our first date, like we actually, after like a few rounds of Negronis we were like, ‘This is it,’ when we went home together. Um, and we’ve been seeing each other regularly since then, um, and in the last year, our relationship has really grown into something like, kind of special, um, even if I have a hard time defining what it is. Um, like we’re not poly, but, eh— I don’t know, they actually just got married this year … I don’t know. I don’t know how to define it. But basically for the first thirteen months that we were together, I never once had an orgasm during our sex.” – Alana
[8:24] B & P’s place: the apartment that oozes sex.
[8:37] Why wasn’t Alana coming, when this was the best porn she could ever imagine?
[9:38] What does Alana think of orgasm?
[10:01] “Intimacy is terrifying. Like, historically, I fuck, I don’t make love because one is safe, and I can be in control, and I’m safe from being hurt or abandoned, and the other is like, actually dependent on another person.” – Alana
[10:25] “And like, fear of intimacy, how would I describe it, it’s like therapy revelation 101 when you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I think I’m scared. To get close to somebody! And then everyone is like, ‘Yeah, duh!’ and you’re like, ‘Well it literally it took me 30 years to figure that out in my life.’” – Alana
[10:52] The night it happened.
[13:42]
Lila: Do you think there’s any way to avoid that insecurity, or vulnerability as a unicorn? Because it seems like people get really burned out on that. Not being the … the partnered one.
Alana: Definitely. I think what is so interesting about, like, being the unicorn and watching these couples is, like, what I learned so much about B and P is they’re so good at communicating together, they’re super in touch with their own wants and needs — which is not an easy thing — like if you really consider, like what do I actually need in bed, what do I actually want, versus: what do I wish that I want, like those are really, hard things so they’re just like super self-aware, and super communicative together and I think that kind of forces the unicorn to get on their level, and like also be kind of like open and honest, so if you can do that, cool.
[15:22]
Lila: Is it the antidote to the repressive monogamy of your 20s?
Alana: I think for sure. Also, I like was raised, you know, super Christian, and the idea of a woman being a sexual being is like, it’s the worst thing you could possibly do, so I thought that like, let me go do like a real bad thing, like I’m gonna have group sex, I’m gonna like fuck this married couple, but then the thing is it’s like—
Lila: And write about it!
Alana: And write about it! And, and use my real name, and some people were like, “Uhhh, Alana?” and I’m like, “Cool, I’ll never get a job in finance, but like, that’s totally fine.”
[16:31] What does Alana imagine about her relationship style in her 40s?
[17:03]
Alana: I think like we’ll probably shift our relationship to this like deep and beautiful friendship and I’ll, I don’t know, hopefully keep like fucking strippers and like, doing that, at the same time, that was really fun! So I wanna, I wanna see, like maybe that my next, my next phase in life — from like beautiful couples to like just like totally objectifying hot men. I don’t really mean that. But I kinda do—
Lila: The Chippendales years.
Alana: YES! Actually, I do, I do have this vision of myself, like, hopefully soon, like just retiring in Southern California, like I’ll have a house in Palm Springs, and like a bunch of like sexy-as-fuck pool boys, who will just be like, “Miss Heiss, I’m here to clean your pool,” and I’ll be like, “Yes you are, sir.” And they are not even gonna know what hit ‘em. […] So hopefully that’s my next phase, is being like just a fucking weird old woman in like beautiful silk kimonos, hitting on pool boys, until I die.
[17:47] “Vim & Vigor” Carsie Blanson video (shot at Hacienda Maison!) that sounds like Alana’s future fantasy
VIM & VIGOR by Carsie Blanton – OFFICIAL VIDEO
SEE A SHOW: http://www.carsieblanton.com/shows LYRICS/DOWNLOAD: https://carsieblanton.bandcamp.com/track/vim-vigor-3 BECOME A PATRON: http://www.patreon.com/carsieblanton FIND OUT MORE: http://www.carsieblanton.com ‘Vim & Vigor’ appears on Carsie’s newest album ‘So Ferocious’ (out on 8/2/16). This is the second of a trilogy of music videos (see the first at https://youtu.be/hMXcE2Naemo). Directed and edited by Andrew Rozario (https://www.facebook.com/DirectorAndrewRozario/).
21. unicorning: quickie with a woman who has sex with couples
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 …
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