Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
LA’s #1 avant-garde personal development program. I'm Emerson Dameron. I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
The home of Ask a Sadist, Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers, and the First Church of the Satanic Buddha. Levity saves lives.
Regularly scheduled episodes premiere on the first Wednesday of the month on KCHUNG Los Angeles.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes
Ask a Sadist
He's a sadist with a heart of rugged gold. He wants to hurt you in the ways that most help you. And it means the world to him when you let him be mean to you. It's the return of "Ask a Sadist!"
Have questions for the Sadist? Have you tried to solve your problems yourself? If so, and you're still stuck, contact Emerson Dameron through Instagram.
"Ask a Sadist" premiered on "This Is How We Do It in Paradise City."
This episode also includes a new bite-sized erotic thriller and another tale of Beach Life.
The show is a production of KCHUNG. The music is Chris Rogers, Ohmu, and Visions of the Universe. Your producer, director, writer, and witty and wounded romantic lead is Emerson Penn Dameron, III.
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Emerson Dameron's Sophistication Nation - April 4th - All major music-delivery platforms
Coming Soon! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
K-Chung, Los Angeles 1630 AM. Kchungradioorg is the station you got in your ears at the moment. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes medicated-minutescom. I am Emerson Dameron, the producer, director, writer, host, etc. For the show Levity Saves Lives.
Speaker 1:It is now time, once again, for Ask a Sadist a round of Q&A with me, your host, well-known throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area as a sadist with a heart of rugged gold, choker, flogger, penetrator and occasional perforator of orifices, pending the most exquisitely enthusiastic consent, that's right. It's not enough to take it and like it. You have to beg for it and you have to surprise me. I like surprises, I like to hurt people in the ways that most help them, and it means the world to me. When you let me be mean to you, let's get into this. When you let me be mean to you, let's get into this.
Speaker 1:Dear Sadist, I recently turned 40. The party was some of the most fun I've ever had. I was surprised at how many people showed up to support me and I fully expected to enter a personal renaissance period. Three months later, I feel a sense of disappointment and encroaching dread. My demanding career, once my highest priority, has stalled out. I feel disconnected from my husband and two young daughters. I'm having mysterious health complaints. I need a big change. What do you suggest? What do you suggest?
Speaker 1:It sounds as though you have spent a lot of time under the yoke of insipid moralists and smarmy hypocrites. You allude to this high-pressure career that you're involved with, and if that were just a route to other things such as debauchery, invitations to orgies involving blood play, fire play, etc. I would understand. But by attaching your identity to the career itself, you have put yourself in a bind. You have no idea what you want, what you really enjoy, and you're not likely to get it by accident. I would be curious about what happened at your 40th birthday party Very curious about that. You say that's some of the most fun that you've ever had in your life. Could have used more details on that, Very, very curious. I bet there are clues in there somewhere, and the fact that you didn't reveal any details or send photographic evidence leads me to believe that if you think back and parse what was so pleasurable about that experience, you may have some clues about the path that you want to take as you make this transition, which I certainly applaud.
Speaker 1:You know that your passions are already having their way with you.
Speaker 1:They cannot be kept at bay is only law that we obey our decadent whimsy, our taste for all of the various bodily fluids consumed in the most disgraceful ways in debauched environments. That is what nature wants, that is what we gravitate to, that is the law, and it affects all of us, even more so if we push it out to focus on a career or on on a career or on attempting to win the esteem of other people or to look good in some public eye that we perceive that no one else cares about. Perhaps your passions have brought you to this impasse. Perhaps your passions have brought you to this impasse. They may have forced your hand in order to free you and by seeking my counsel, perhaps you are making a move to do a little bit more of what you really like, whatever it was that was going on in the coat room at your 40th. Or maybe you're stuck because part of you enjoys it. Maybe there is a part of you that is getting off on this sick freak that you are deep inside.
Speaker 1:I would encourage you to test that hypothesis, to sit with the feeling of stuckness. Feel into the details, into the fine grain of the experience. What does it really feel like to be stuck? Is there excitement or pleasure in there? Perhaps interpreted as fear or a sense of overwhelm? Sit with that. Maybe give it half an hour, see what happens with that. Maybe give it half an hour, see what happens. If you don't start feeling a little bit frisky, then you can cross that off the list and go back to your search for the debauchery that nature is driving you toward through the brutal force of your carnal passions.
Speaker 1:I believe in you, I care about you in my way and I wish you luck in that journey, dear sadist, I've been married for five years. For the last two it has been a dead bedroom situation. My wife works as an executive in a demanding corporate environment, sometimes for 12 hours a day, and seems to have forgotten I exist. When I try to bring out my frustration with our lack of a sex life, she brushes it off or gets irritated. She insists that she still loves me and would never cheat. How do I bring back the passion we once felt for each other. Not knowing any more about your situation or your relationship dynamic than that, I'm going to hazard a guess that your wife is exhausted. She is spending 12 hours, sometimes a day, in pursuit of what she's supposed to want, which may be what she really wants. That would be a pleasing and interesting coincidence. What I suspect is that she's forgotten all about what she really wants because she has poured her heart and soul into Looking good, succeeding in this way, as defined, and enriching her corporate masters at her own expense, selling herself short. I think Deep down she knows this, although I'm sure she takes pride in her work and has gotten in the habit of maintaining control of herself, of her direct reports, assuming that she has them. You mentioned that she's an executive, so I imagine there are people who depend on her emotional stability to keep things running at the usual level of maddening chaos that one finds in these horrifying environments. Your wife is exhausted and she's always told that she's doing well, that she's always told that she's doing well, that she's getting everything that she wants, that her dreams are coming true, her parents if they're alive, I'm sure are impressed and she's enriching corporations and landlords. And as long as you're doing that, no one is going to dissuade you from doing it. That has visible leverage over your life Deep down.
Speaker 1:I think that she may be too tired to really know what's going on deep down. That would be a layer between the surface and deep down. But through that, and what I find is that I'm truly exhausted, even at my most exhausted. We're talking a three-day orgy. Come down exhausted, it only takes me a few days to rest up. I just do close to nothing for a couple of days. I breathe, I play with my cats and after that I find that the force of my passions drives me to action and I get back to defiling the world. So there's always something going on right below what translates to us as exhaustion, and I would say in her case, she is tired of being in control. She is frightened and ashamed. She is tired of being in control. She is frightened and ashamed of the power of her own libidinal energy in the corporate environment. I would assume that she's forced onto the Madonna side of the Madonna-whore dichotomy that tears apart the lives of many American women, some men and others.
Speaker 1:Give your wife a place to fall apart. Create a highly controlled environment for which you take full responsibility, knowing exactly what you're doing, having done the homework, perhaps practicing on a body pillow on yourself. You didn't mention whether or not you're cheating. I'm going to assume no, but you need to practice before you do this. Because you have to do it right, because I am guessing that your wife has very high standards. She's used to being in control all the damn time. She needs a place to fall apart. Create that environment Down to the last detail. Make it a place where she is free to surrender control. Earn her trust.
Speaker 1:It sounds like perhaps you have lost it through all the static in your communications. Do what you gotta do to make your presence a place of safety for your wife and then dominate the hell out of her in the bedroom so she has one place where she does not have to be in control. Make sure that your cruelty provides comfort. It is a delicate balance. You will need practice, you will need self-inquiry and contemplation and if none of that works, if you just don't have it in you to give your wife a place, which are often found behind the closed doors that you're afraid to open, but you never stop being a little bit curious about, dear sadist, I am a woman in my mid-forties and unhappily divorced. I was never much of a looker, but now I feel fully invisible. I've tried dating apps with no success to speak of. I wonder if I'm just not attractive enough to date or have sex again. Should I accept my lonely fate? Oh, what the hell is going on. Do you have any last shred of your imagination left over?
Speaker 1:What have they done to you? Have they taken everything? The last refuge that you have is your inner world, and they've conquered that. What on earth is this? How have you allowed this to happen? Nature wants you to follow your passions where they lead and defile the world. That's what got you out of your marriage. That's what got you out of your marriage, would you say.
Speaker 1:You're unhappily divorced, but whatever happens after this is going to be partly a result of that experience and we are going to make it not good but evil. And that starts with using your loneliness. You are suffering because you feel rejected, isolated, a lack of self-confidence that comes from that. All of that is frustrating, but it doesn't sound like you like or trust yourself, and we're going to fix that. We're going to make you at home in your inner world. I would suggest, if you are not getting dates at the moment and if you are a single woman and you're not getting dates, it means that on some level you don't want to and you're not really trying, and I think that's for the best, because your opportunity is within. Read up on the practice of sex transmutation, meditation-adjacent practice, through which you focus the rays of your carnal passions and train them and use them for purposes outside of sex itself, and in your case, that is going to be building your own glorious inner hell where you will rule as a beast that you are. Consider this freedom of a sort. I know it doesn't feel great, but it affords opportunities that people in long-term relationships, like Mr Deadbedroom from the last letter, do not have.
Speaker 1:Marquis de Sade wrote his most significant works in asylums and prisons. He was not out partying. I don't think he ever used the word party as a verb. He was locked up, persecuted, denied all the comforts that society provides to the obedient, and he created timeless works of literature and philosophy. Reclaim your inner world. Banish these colonialists that have taken over your imagination. They took everything you had. It's pathetic. Take it back. What's inside you is yours, and if you make yourself at home there, people will gravitate to you.
Speaker 1:Dear sadist help. I'm afraid I might be a narcissist. I would be shocked if you weren't a narcissist. I don't think that's really what you are in essence. You are, in essence, a beast in your nature, and it is encouraging that you're concerned whether or not you're a narcissist, because that means if you are, if you're behaving in that sort of way, you do have an exit ramp.
Speaker 1:Most narcissists will preserve their delusions about themselves at the expense of their freedom. You have come to me. That's a good sign. You are cursed with the notion of a self-concept, something that is not a burden to animals other than humans. To the best of our knowledge, this hard problem of consciousness is the true horror of the human experience.
Speaker 1:I'm not a fan of narcissists. All the ones that I can think of are pathetic specimens with no true allegiance to their own truth, their own experience, what they really believe. Not fit for adventure. I'd say indulge in your debauchery, give in to your caprices, follow your passions where they lead. See how that feels for you. Lead, see how that feels for you. If you have a good time and you get out of this self-pitying, self-regarding situation that you're in right now, that's all to the good.
Speaker 1:If you find yourself concerned with presenting yourself to others the way that you think they want you to, not even the way they really do, you don't care what they really want, so you're impressing the you that lives in your projections on them, which is such a waste, so exhausting. If that's how you feel, you might need elevated help with your narcissism. But just remember, people don't care that much about you. They care about how you make them feel, and people crave cruelty. With a few exceptions, that's your greatest gift, I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:If you're exhibiting symptoms of narcissism, they may include a tendency to mistreat people in certain ways. I would get more artistic about that. Get a little creative, maybe. Mistreat people in ways that could delight, titillate, seduce, scratch an itch that they just can't reach themselves. Try it on. If you're going to be cruel, get good at it. Don't just be nasty and insecure. We've got more than enough narcissists. Large chunks of our society are optimized for it. Most of those people are aching for true cruelty as much as anyone else. May they get the bruising that they are so self-evidently cruising for. I wish the same for you and your self-awareness. I believe it may be much more glorious. There is no easy escape from the horror of human consciousness, but there's a lot of fun that we can have while we're here.
Speaker 1:This has been Ask a Sadist on Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. The Thirteenth Step is a dark romantic comedy with some erotic thriller elements, a little bit of neo-noir, set in the world of substance abuse recovery groups. We start with Amber, our soulful, bitter, washed up mess of a hero, with her overlapping substance abuse and mental health issues. We catch her on Friday night. She's having a blast issues. We catch her on Friday night she's having a blast. She's doing rails, drinking tequila straight from the large bottle and doing all kinds of stuff. And then we see her en route to the emergency room. Her friends are with her and it's implied that this is not the first time. This is in fact a regular occurrence on Friday nights. This time, when she's brought in, her friends bail because they don't want to get wrapped up in this. Amber has taken a lot of people down with her already and she is now in the process of hitting bottom once again. And when the friends are gone there is no way to identify Amber because her ID and wallet and purse are all missing. Nobody knows where they are. But she does have her cell phone phone and the medics managed to get into it and they find the number for mom and give Amber's mom a call, and so now she's in trouble. Her parents are cutting her off and she's going to have to clean up and get sober, and the only acceptable way to do that, in their eyes, is through the good offices of Recovery Central Basically the only game in town An abstinence-based recovery group based on group discussions, sponsorship, the completion of certain steps, the repetition of certain mind-numbing slogans and thought-stopping cliches.
Speaker 1:You get the picture and we see her in the meeting, as some of the other folks are sharing. She is grumbling to herself, as some of the other folks are sharing. She is grumbling to herself. This is her punishment for not being good at killing herself, whether through outright suicide attempts or self-sabotage. She has done her best and tried and the word try of course implies failure and she has failed to kill herself. And now she's here and this is obviously punishment. This is a little bit of hell and this is what she gets for screwing up her life, and she manages to stop the rumination spiral long enough to tune in and listen to some of the shares, because sometimes listening to what another person has to say she finds is a good way to get out of her head, and a good way to get out of this interminable grind of depression that she's been tangling with for as long as she can remember. That feels like it has no beginning, no end. She checks out of that for a minute and just listens to what some of the other members of the group have to say.
Speaker 1:There's Ben, who's a handsome, well-spoken kind of elder statesman of the group. He sponsors a lot of people. He's very charismatic and charming and Amber is very plugged into what he has to say. There's Sal, who's wearing a shirt with dragons on it and talking about his wild days as a pornographer. His shares are polarizing, since some of the members of the group are sex addicts and are triggered by any mention of pornography, but they're also hilarious, so he's allowed to continue. Farmer is not so lucky. Farmer is a stoner philosopher who always ends up arguing in favor of psychedelics as tools of personal inquiry, and that is frowned upon at Recovery Central. He is always shut down before he can really make his point.
Speaker 1:And then it comes to Amber and she's asked if she wants to share this time, implying that the previous time she has declined. Implying that previous time she has declined, but this time she pours her cynical, wounded heart into it. She makes the most of that three and a half minutes and then the alarm goes off and tells her it's time to wrap up and she sticks the landing. She comes in right at four minutes and basically just breaks everyone's heart by, just pours all of her intelligence and the humanity that she's preserved through her wit and grit and humor, and everyone kind of falls in love with her. We see her sense of righteousness flare up in her eyes and a little bit of what must have been there when she was young but maybe just got put aside when she was focused on getting messed up, something very essential reemerges and gives her this charismatic glow that gets everyone's attention. And after the meeting Ben comes up to her and says how impressed he is and offers to sponsor her and says she's going to do great in this program. It works if you work it. And he asks her if she wants to go grab a cup of McCafe, which is the beverage of choice for people in Recovery Central. It's what they serve at the meetings and it's a source of comfort. So they often drink it outside the meetings as well, at a McDonald's or in vehicles, having gone through the McDonald's drive-thru, and she goes out for McCafe with Ben. They hang out at McDonald's and talk about their lives and hit it off. It's the click right away and it just seems like it's instant chemistry. Ben invites her out to do a bunch of fun stuff with the group. They go bowling, roller skating, they do immersive theater experiences and those pop-up museums that are for Instagram. She is now in the inner circle and then one day she meets Ben to go over her resentment inventory and instead of going to McDonald's afterward, they drive through and they take the McCafe back to Ben's apartment and they brush their teeth and have sex.
Speaker 1:And the next day we find Amber alone at a diner, feeling weird, kind of lost, confused, like just something is off and she doesn't really know what it is. But the more she ignores it, the more she tries to focus on how well things are going, the weirder she feels. And she's scrolling through her phone, looks at her texts. She texted Ben earlier and he left it on red. Uh, her mom is calling, you know, trying to get an update, and uh is probably gonna give her some static about this, that and the other, and she kind of freaks out. She's just lonely and confused. Maybe it feels like things are going too well, she doesn't know. She calls her dealer and relapses. And we see her uh, later on that night, probably early the next morning, pacing around in a fleabag motel room probably somewhere in the South Bay, not the nice part just walking around in circles. And she calls Ben and he doesn't pick up. She calls again and he picks up kind of groggy Seems, like he's in a mood, he's dismissive. He just says come to the meeting tomorrow, it works if you work it. He goes over some of the slogans and then says you know, just sleep it off.
Speaker 1:In the meeting the next day, while Amber is waiting to share, a young woman named Sarah does her share and in it she confesses that she's deeply in love with Ben and rhapsodizes about the insane sex that they had the previous night. And we see Ben hold his head in his hands and the leader grumble about how he just can't keep this meeting from devolving into crosstalk and weirdness. And we see Amber looking bereft. And then we see amber farmer and sal is standing in a in the drizzle in a parking lot in front of the building where the meeting is usually held. This is a few days later. The meeting was called off because of rain, but that was only announced through the WhatsApp group that the Inner Circle uses. And that's how Amber finds out that she has been kicked off of the WhatsApp group, much as Farmer and Sal had been, and they meet Jess, who is somebody that was at some of the first couple of meetings that Amber went to but has not been seen lately, and they start just sharing some real talk.
Speaker 1:Amber tells everybody what happened with Ben, why she feels weird about it, and feels weird about feeling weird about it. Like, this guy doesn't owe me anything. You know why do I feel possessive of him? And yeah, I shouldn't feel bad, but I do. I feel hurt and taken advantage of and I'm better than that. So that just makes it worse. And Sal just shares some ribald tales from his pornography days in an attempt to cheer Amber up, which doesn't really work, although she appreciates the intention. Farmer suggests that she smoke the venom of Bufo Alvarius, the toad, and that'll set her straight.
Speaker 1:And Jess shares that she has also slept with Ben and that Ben sleeps with pretty much everyone, and that Ben sleeps with pretty much everyone. He's pretty. You know anyone that comes in who he likes, he'll sponsor them and sleep with them and then kind of cast them aside like wet garbage. And not only that, he is not only a sponsor, he is also a drug dealer. Some of the people that he sponsored, he knew they were going to relapse. You can kind of smell it.
Speaker 1:Basically, it happens constantly. Everyone in these groups is always relapsing and it's messy, and Ben can kind of tell who they are and when that time comes around he also sells them drums and then just makes sure that they don't come back to the group if they decide to get sober after that. And Amber asks Jess, how do you know all of this? And Jess admits that she stole a bunch of Ben's text messages and she has a whole collection and she just shows the group one of them In which Ben writes I hope she hits bottom, because I'm going to hit hers. Obviously this won't hold up in court, but Amber feels like she needs to do something. Her sense of justice is piqued.
Speaker 1:A little bit of it is revenge, and that can be part and parcel with justice in some cases.
Speaker 1:Amber and Sal combine their technical and social engineering skills to release records of the text messages to the WhatsApp group so that everyone in the inner circle of Recovery Central gets to read them.
Speaker 1:Ben is unceremoniously kicked out of the group, and so are Amber, jess, farmer and Sal, and everyone is now adrift. Amber, jess, sal and Farmer decide to start their own group that meets at Two Bit Circus a couple of times a week and they play video games and bond and get in some catharsis and talk about their lives and support each other in their sobriety, or whatever it is that works for them California sobriety in Farmer's case, or, in Amber's case, still drinking a lot of coffee and still smoking cigarettes, because when she's having a bad day, she rips off her nicotine patch and lights one up, and she's done that over and over again, and that's okay. After they make the plan, people go their separate ways and we see Sal going to get in his El Camino to drive back to his place in, I'm guessing, tujuga or somewhere, and Amber comes up to him and says hey, you want to go grab a McCafe sometime? Thank, you.
Speaker 1:I. I woke up determined to fall in love with Venice again. Deborah had told me that she had just moved to Venice. She didn't give me the full background or context. She didn't do that out of a lot of the stuff that she said about herself. But she said she was new and she didn't know that much about it. And so I decided that after a long time of being kind of sick of Venice and kind of going through the whole cycle of loving and hating Los Angeles until it's just the place where I live, I decided to fall in love with it again because I was going to be Deborah's tour guide and she was new to LA entirely.
Speaker 1:So there was so much to explore. So many days of a lot of sitting in traffic but also going to the observatory and going to Manhattan Beach, which is a very different beach experience from Venice, and going up to Santa Monica, which is its own beach experience. Going on hikes into Panga Canyon, finding the secret spots. Finding the secret spots, some of the weird museums. I was gonna be her tour guide and help fashion her LA experience, as when I moved here, a dear friend took it upon herself to show me around and show me all of her favorite things and that set the tone for my own LA experience. And your experience of a place is the people that you connect with there and the things that you do.
Speaker 1:Los Angeles has a certain reputation, but you can certainly find shallow, vapid, pathological people in Atlanta or Chicago and you can find delightful, very deep, rich, rewarding relationships in Los Angeles. That's what I felt like was developing here, although I'm not always the best judge of that, and I spent a couple of weeks showing her around and it was a wonderful experience. Although she maintained the poker face in this Like I could perceive that there was something going on. I could detect the warmth and the eroticism in her expressions, but it was quite subtle and she had this charming musical southern accent, but pretty much kept her voice at about the same tone and level most of the time.
Speaker 1:So it was a little. The effect was a little bit cryptic, but I loved spending the night. We had absolutely madcap sexual experiences, each time more debauched and gratifying, deeply Hard and smooth the whole nine yards deep, deep down and smooth the whole nine yards deep, deep down, deeply gratifying. All of the lover skills that I developed on myself were being put into play and it was absolutely delightful. She had a yin for public sex, which is has never been I I've done it before.
Speaker 1:I was once gored by mosquitoes in the act of sex in a somewhat wooded area near a small town where there was a risk of being seen but there was a greater risk of receiving dozens of mosquito bites, which is what happened to me. And I've done the drunken shenanigans in the alleys and it's all of that Friday and Saturday night stuff. For Deborah it was seven days a week and she always wanted to have sex in public places where there was a probability that was not zero of getting caught. That was thrilling for her. The fact that it was thrilling for her in a way that probably only I could detect was thrilling for me and it was a new thing for us. I don't know that I would do it otherwise. I don't know if I would have come up with the idea. I came up with some ideas of my own that she was very enthusiastic about, but that was her thing and I don't know that it would have lived on in me without her around. It was exciting. It felt like we were rebels. I think in one instance some friends of mine that I yeah, we were friends. There's a history there, but I find them to be kind of judgmental these days and we're not getting along quite as well and we hung out with them for a bit and I think Deborah picked up that way. I just didn't really talk to them and I didn't feel the same warmth that I had in the past. We were just acting it out and she got a room in a hotel across the street from where they were sitting drinking their coffee and got a room with a window that had visibility from that place and just screwed my brains out in full view of those people, which was somewhat gratifying. They have given me a wide berth since then and I'm thankful for that. We fell asleep together in the hotel room. She had it for the night.
Speaker 1:I woke up around 2 in the morning which is something that sometimes happens when I go to sleep early and I noticed that my soul was gone. I was as shocked as you are. I didn't think I had a soul. I didn't think that was real. I only understood it as a metaphor. But I was fully aware that mine was gone. It had been there and it left, and now it was absent and there was a note in big, loopy handwriting that you kind of had to read in a lilting southern accent and just the musicality of it was palpable. That said, I'm sorry. Goodbye Deborah. She took my soul. Maybe she needed it, maybe she needed it more.
Speaker 1:Why am I making excuses for this? My soul is gone. What am I going to do? My soul is gone. What am I going to do? I didn't even know I had a soul in the first place. How do I get back something I not only didn't appreciate but didn't even know I had? I never took inventory of my soul. It only makes sense to me now that it's gone.
Speaker 1:I tried my usual things. I smoked Bufo Alvarius, the venom of the Colorado River, toad, referred to as the Everest of psychedelics, and it does nothing for me. It's just highly unusual. Sometimes I will not remember anything, but I will feel profound effects later. In this case, nothing. I felt dead inside. I felt soulless. I had accidentally wished to go numb, to become calloused, and now it was happening.
Speaker 1:I did notice that several jet airplanes were taking off from LAX. I could see from where I was sitting on the beach trying very hard to cry and bitterly failing. I saw several planes in a row nosedive into the Pacific Ocean, and if I were a betting man which I am, I would say that had something to do with my soul. And then I wondered should I be here without a soul? Am I a menace to myself and others? And it seemed like the obvious answer was yes, and I considered ending my life. I could see the digital clock flashing 12. And then I could hear the anger in the voices of the people who believed in me and the hurt that I inflicted on them. That made it hard for them to trust or to believe in anyone else, and I realized I had to persist and I had to get my soul back. And I did the first thing that came to mind, which was let out the biggest scream, like I only had one scream left. I just put it all on the line and screamed for as long as I could, as loud as I could, and then I fell over backward into the sand and started making sand angels and I could feel myself shaking. And I did get my soul back. Not right away, I thought when I got up damn it, it still feels like I don't have a soul. But then by the evening I was feeling very sleepy and I went to bed early and I woke up at a reasonable time, around sunrise around five, which is when I usually get up to write, and I could feel that my soul was fully restored.
Speaker 1:I had some nasty text messages from Debra. I don't know why she was upset with me. She said I was such a self-indulgent weirdo that she wasn't buying it. She could see through my self-regard and my pretension. She referred to me as a soft boy, b-o-i, which is I'm familiar with that expression. I thought it was mostly a British thing. I wish it were entirely inaccurate. I would say it's mostly inaccurate, definitely unfair and a mean thing to say to somebody whose soul you just took and who had to go to great lengths to get it back.
Speaker 1:I would say I would be the one that would be justified in taking some snaps at her, definitely not the other way around. I think when you know that you've hurt someone and you're trying to put off feeling guilty about it, your brain finds reasons why they deserved it, and I think that's what was happening here. She was trying to offload her guilt onto me about stealing my soul. It was frustrating. I didn't want to respond. I would leave the message unread and then I would come up with a snappy comeback and as soon as I pushed back as soon as I asserted myself, and particularly when I made hilarious jokes at her expense and I know her sense of humor, so I know she could see the humor value and just the hot and cold contrast of getting hit hard by something you know is funny and she obviously found that compelling and she would suddenly become very sweet and kind and caring and warm and flirtatious the next level, beyond flirtatious and then we would start doing some pretty hardcore sexting and nothing in the world made sense, which might be my fault. That could have been something that got misaligned when I was in the process of reclaiming my soul.
Speaker 1:If your life makes no sense, if you're trying to find patterns in chaos and you can't do it, even though your brain is one of the most advanced pattern matching machines that works without you even wanting it to, nothing is helping. Nothing makes sense. You feel like you've been on acid for as long as you can remember and it's not a good trip. It's not a challenging trip, it is a hell trip and there's no beginning and no end and nothing makes sense. That might be my fault. I offer my apologies. I really wanted to get my soul back. It seemed really important. I can't say that I regret it. It's not a perfect system. Some stuff has been out of whack since then. I'm looking into it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you've been listening to Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. Medicated-minutescom is the site of the show. I'm Emerson Dameron. I'm pretty much the whole shebang. I'm the producer, director, writer, host. I'm the architect and auteur of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. I do pretty much everything except the music, which this time is courtesy of Chris Rogers, omu Shell and Visions of the Universe, and I don't broadcast the show myself.
Speaker 1:It is made possible by K-Chung LA's Rebel Radio family To support the show. That's the coolest thing you can do. I love you personally and I'll love you a little bit more if you support K-Chung and respect my boundaries and treat me with respect, if not deference, the first time we meet. Maybe we'll warm up to each other over time. But I don't need too much in-my-face friendliness right away. I might not trust you. Friend is not my default setting at the moment. Friend is not my default setting at the moment. But I appreciate respect and a level of kindness, some compassion, basic human decency. All of those things are great. Giving money to K-Chung is really where it's at kchungradioorg slash donate. Thanks for listening. Thanks for everything you do. Levity saves lives.
Speaker 1:What you need to know about me is that I don't care what you think. That wasn't always the case. I used to care what everyone thought, and it was exhausting. Sometimes it was all I could think about. But then I thought about it and I had an epiphany when I realized that people are basically pathetic animals and they'll respect the hell out of me as soon as they know that I don't care what they think. So now I don't care what you think, and you need to know that, and I need to know that you know that, otherwise I can't trust you. You see, I keep my power in relationships by always being less invested. It keeps the mystery alive for you and keeps you seeking my approval, which is cool with me, because I don't care what you think. You might even forget your own thoughts and start thinking about mine instead. That's deeply pathetic and I will lose respect for you. But I don't care, because that would count as me caring what you think, which I don't.
Speaker 1:I have fun and do what I want, and sometimes that includes messing with your head If you get offended. I kind of dig it because it reminds me that you know that I don't care what you think. If I get bored, I can always walk away. It's easy because almost anyone finds me irresistible when they figure out I don't care what they think. Trust me, I don't have to ask them. I have bulletproof self-confidence and I don't want you around if you're weak or insecure. That tells me that you think I might care what you think. And to reiterate, I don't care what you think. I don't think you understand me and I hate being misunderstood. I don't care what you think and it's important to me that you know that. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew you would think I cared what you think. I don't care what you think and you need to get that through your skull. I make the rules, you play by my rules and like them or go home. Otherwise I go home. I never apologize because I'm not sorry, because I don't care what you think. So get over yourself. Oh, one more thing I also don't care about your feelings.
Speaker 1:K-chung is a celebration of the street-level activism experimental theater, comedy and performance, art, wildly eclectic music and edge-of-the-world weirdness. The most diverse city on earth. We're LA's Rebel Radio family, the hub for Southern California conversation and chaos. We do a lot with a little and we need your help in the form of your hard-earned frog skins. Go to kchungradioorg slash, donate, give what you can, can and be honest. ¶¶, ¶¶. © transcript. Emily Beynon.
Speaker 1:Take a beat, breathe into the experience of being here and ask yourself what am I so afraid of? Maybe you're afraid of missing some essential life experience You're afraid you already have, or that it doesn't matter because nothing does. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe you're just a regular nerves McGee. Or maybe you're afraid of your own glorious cataclysmic power, the riotous multitudes you contain. You are smart enough to know how nearly infinitely ignorant you are, but you're not too smart to be hot, and you may already be a satanic Buddhist. Nothing is good or bad in isolation, only in context. The Buddha and the Beastmaster are a good team. This, right here, is all you get. Life is for living up down across, diagonally, sideways, because nothing matters. You may already be a satanic Buddhist.
