podcast launch pajama party

This morning at 5am, I had a headache and a sore throat and felt woozy, yet I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and wrote thank-you cards. I’m already perpetually sleep-deprived, and today I stumbled around the city half-delirious, sleep-drunk, buying 24 spring clamps at Home Depot here, lugging around ten boxes of cookie mix there, teaching a 90 minute yoga class that I’m not sure how I got through because I had to kneel the whole time and had trouble remembering right and left.

And I decided I was going to treat myself and get a blowout so that my hair would look gorgeous for the party and I wouldn’t need to think much about grooming.

I arrived at the place that does nothing but blow drys and one of the stylists was sleeping in the salon chair. I silently hoped that this would not be my stylist. It was. She was sloppy with her work and had an aura of resentment. I asked her to shift some things (as in: could you not use your nails on my scalp, please?) and she did, but with a perceptible attitude. While styling me, she turned my chair so I couldn’t see what she was doing. When I caught a glimpse, I asked her to make an adjustment to the curling. She said she would. She didn’t. I didn’t like it. I felt I’d wasted $50 thinking I was gifting myself a delightful luxury to celebrate my project.

The receptionist asked me how I liked it while the stylist was two feet away. I didn’t say anything. The receptionist offered me another stylist to re-do it. I wanted to say yes, but I was so sleep-deprived, so disappointed, so not wanting to hurt the girl’s feelings, thinking that if I complained I might get her fired, also imagining that she probably works more than one job and is fucking exhausted and doesn’t get paid well, and also if I said something I’d spend another half an hour trapped in an enclosed environment with her bad juju, and I just managed to blurt out to the receptionist, “I’m not feeling well.”

Then I burst into tears like a toddler.

At the launch party, I put my hair up in a bun.

The party went well.

Mic set-up and starry sound treatment (it’s a blanket!). Valerie Zimmer Photography.

In honor of horizontality and the legacy of bedtime stories, I ask my guest to tell me a story at the end of every episode. It can be any story that they are excited or compelled to tell, that somehow relates to sex, love, or any kind of human relationship. At the party, six stories were told:

“The Noodle” with Tiger

“Fumbled Beginnings” with Grant Stoddard

“A Brief History of Sexual Repression” with Ralph de la Rosa

“Another Word for Break-Up” with me

“Unicorning” with Alana Heiss

“Early” with Gloria

These stories will be released as quickie episodes! While many episodes are long-form and have their story at the end, like the first episode “feed your delight: horizontal with mirelle,” the stories recorded at the party will be released as stand-alone quickies, like “spring awakening: quickie with ralph.” Other quickies, recorded at other times, will also appear.

This was my pilot project for an entire series of Horizontal Storytelling events. So, dear ones … there’s much more to come!