You may have noticed a shift in the music. Since I've moved editing platforms, I didn't want to take the music from the creators on my old platform, so I found this nice song: Innovation by Jon Sib. I know it's just for the background, but I hope you like it.

I've been fortunate to have a few guests back who were on my Intersections YouTube project a few years ago, including Leandra Vane and Mark. Before I share their interviews, I'm sharing those original interviews, so you can get to know them.

First up is Leandra Vane, also known at that time as The Unlaced Librarian. Leandra is a bisexual femme who is in an open marriage. In this interview, we talked about her life and relationships, her exploration of BDSM, how her physical disability has influenced her sexuality, and many other things.

Next up is Mark. Mark is a gay man who is romantically monogamous with his husband of, at the time of this interview, two years while enjoying a sexually open marriage. In this interview, he shared his identity, life, and journey with us.

Enjoy the conversation!

Episode Transcript

Leandra

Mike: [00:01:05]Well, welcome again to our next Intersections interview. I'm very excited to have Leandra Vane with us. Uh, Leandra is actually runs her own YouTube page and blog, uh, where she's the unlaced librarian doing book reviews and things like that for various, uh, um, erotic materials and things like that. So I'm very excited to have you welcome Leandra.

[00:01:28] Thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. 

[00:01:30] Leandra: [00:01:30] No problem. Thanks so much for having me. 

[00:01:32] Mike: [00:01:32] Absolutely. Uh, so I'll just jump right in. Um, You said you identify as bisexual. Uh, so what's that identity mean to you? 

[00:01:42] Leandra: [00:01:42] Well, it's interesting because I've actually only just within the last few months started identifying as bisexual.

[00:01:48] Um, before that I identified as heteroflexible. And before that, even I just said that I was sexually fluid. I, um, have known for a really long time that I've been attracted to. Both men and women, but there just seems something so concrete about saying bisexual, that I was kind of scared of it, I suppose.

[00:02:10] And there's a lot of quote, unquote, bad press about bisexuality, I guess, a lot of stigma attached to it. So I kind of kept thinking like, I must just be sexually fluid or I'm mostly straight, whatever, but I just finally got to a point where I, I am attracted to both men and women. I've had crushes on both men and women.

[00:02:29] I've been sexual with both men and women. So, um, that's what it means to me. It means that I'm attracted to both men and women. So that's very cool. Okay. And you also identify as, as fab. Uh, so what'd you mean by that? Yeah. Um, I do have a visible physical disability, so when I was growing up, especially. In my teen years in my early twenties, like, I always felt very feminine, but because of my visible disability, I was authentic sexualized.

[00:03:03] And so I felt that like, I wasn't the right kind of are women the right kind of feminine. And so, um, and especially in like the ways that I dressed, I wore leg braces, I had all these things, these issues. So I couldn't, um, I felt really exposed wearing feminine clothing or having a feminine identity. So I really kind of went the other way.

[00:03:25] Like I cut all my hair off and I was like, totally like androgynous for awhile, but I was never really happy. I wanted to be feminine.