Hello, and welcome back to Tales from the Pit. I'm your host, Michael Swame. This is your content warning.

Today's episode involves discussions of sexual assault and child molestation,

which is heavy stuff, but first something a bit lighter.

The introduction in which I described to you how earlier this year, in March, I came out on Twitter,

and I did so with a thread that read as follows.

I'm queer. I'm in a monogamous relationship with a partner that the world sees as female,

but I'm sexually attracted to all sorts of folks. I've never faced any special challenges as a result,

which is why I've never felt, quote, queer enough to consider myself part of what I think is a

special community. But after talking with friends, I've learned that not feeling queer enough

and being afraid of appropriating that identity is common among queer people,

and not a reason to hide behind the myth of straightness. I believe most people have a complex

sexual identity, and truly cis-het folks are probably a minority. So yeah, I mention this only in

the hopes that one of my followers might feel encouraged to fall in love with their own irreducible,

unique, beautiful sexuality. My life remains largely unchanged. See you on the next pod.

Well, here we are on that eponymous next pod, and to help me help you hopefully fall in love with

your own irreducible, unique, beautiful sexuality is my good friend and fellow queer person,

Marina Ryman. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

All right, welcome to the pit, everyone. First of foremost, I will just lay all my cards out there

and say, this is the weirdest I've felt going into a tale from the pit, probably not for the reasons

that you're already projecting onto the episode, but actually because of like imposter syndrome,

and I think my guest can relate. Lord, yeah. Hi everybody. Welcome. Welcome, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Oh, my pleasure. It's been way too long.

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