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
Loved and Lost and Learned Your Lesson
Science-backed strategies for handling heartbreak. A round of Ask a Sadist. A Bite-Sized Erotic Thriller. What might happen if you were the size of your cat and vice versa?
All this and more in November's episode of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, LA's #1 avant-garde personal development program, with your witty and wounded romantic hero, Emerson Penn Dameron, III, who does what he can because it's the most he can do.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is a production of KCHUNG.
Music by Chris Rogers, Patrizio, Rage Sound, and Visions of the Universe.
Written, performed, produced, and created by Emerson Dameron, who is solely responsible for its content. Take me to court.
Levity saves lives.
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Emerson Dameron's Sophistication Nation - April 4th - All major music-delivery platforms
It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
I'm breaking up with you again for the last time. This time have I handled this as well as I could have? Absolutely not. I would have ended it a year ago, but the sex was so good in the beginning I was still chasing that dragon God. It was degrading. I never specifically told you I hate being lied to, so maybe you thought I was into that. I don't care, because I may always love you and be the world's foremost scholar on you, but I don't trust you anymore From now on. I trust my instincts and experience because I'm a wild animal. I'm in the red chakra, I'm pure passion.
Emerson Dameron:You've been over and over and over everything I did wrong. I'm an avoidant weirdo and a screw up and a bad person. I can be a lot worse and screw up down and around a lot harder than that and you won't get to experience it. The women who do will be women who put you in the shade, who are excited about my personal growth and my hardcore slut phase this summer. It may leave me feeling empty inside. I'm willing to risk that. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, except I'm not because I'm done apologizing. I'm not sorry. I said I'm sorry that time because I'm not sorry at all anymore. I've got my confidence back. I hate you so much I want to screw you almost to death, but not entirely, because I have integrity and I care, and one day you'll realize how hot that is. I could leave tomorrow morning after a vigorous round of goodbye hate sex. But I'll leave now, no matter how touch hungry I am. Peace, call me K-Chung, los Angeles, chinatown, 1630 AM. K-chung Radio dot O-R-G.
Emerson Dameron:This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, la's number one avant-garde personal development program. Levity saves lives. I'm Emerson Dameron, the producer, host and witty and wounded romantic hero of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. I love you personally. I might be doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I might be the face to mix metaphors, because it's an audio program to mix metaphors because it's an audio program. But you are the star because the show is devoted to the most interesting and fascinating topic in the world, which is you.
Emerson Dameron:And if you're here, it is likely that you are experiencing, or have experienced in the past, heartbreak. I don't know if it ever really ends. It's like the meditation bell where. Pay attention to it as it fades out and sit with it and notice that there's not a definite moment where here it was ringing and now it's not. You wake up a couple of years later and notice that it's not ringing as hard, and then you either die or you get to a point where it just isn't ringing anymore or it doesn't bother you. I hope that's the case. If you are in the throes of heartbreak, I feel bad for you and I advise you to give yourself permission to grieve.
Emerson Dameron:This is a real pain. It has a physical component. It pumps out cortisol, which is bad stuff Nasty drugs Like the stuff that you get on Venice Beach. That's supposed to be ketamine and you know right away that it's not. But it takes a while to figure out what it is when you're waiting for your toxicology report to come back, wondering where things went wrong.
Emerson Dameron:Cortisol is powerful stuff. In a similar way, it causes physical aches and pains, fatigue, digestive problems. You can't sleep, but you also can't do anything else except listen to abstract piano music. It's bad and it doesn't matter if it shouldn't be bad, if the relationship was in fact tragically ill-advised and you knew it would end in tears and you pursued it anyway, although anyone in your life who meaningfully cared for you begged you not to. It still hurts when that goes wrong, even if you could have seen it coming from a hundred yards away, and you did, and you decided to make terrible decisions anyway. It is still legitimate grief and legitimate pain, and give yourself permission to feel that. But I don't think that time alone is enough to heal that pain. I don't think if you jump off a 12-story building and lie on the sidewalk with a bunch of broken bones for a certain amount of time, you're gonna feel better. I think it's. There's work to be done, there's healing, there's integration and processing.
Emerson Dameron:I personally find that making art is my preferred means of doing that. So I would advise you to egot your way through this, write an aria or an entire opera and sing it badly. Work it out, cry, scream, stomp around, make an absolute fool of yourself, like the actors in the old Hollywood movies and it still wasn't that far in the past that they were doing stage acting and so everything was big and big gestures, going straight to the back of the room, projecting, getting through the tears and the screams and the recriminations and the lashing out and getting down to the fear, the sadness, the existential dread, the real stuff that the fireworks and dry ice are on top of, because it hurts, to feel it directly. It's scary to even anticipate feeling it directly. Feeling that directly, perhaps working through it artistically, whether through writing a sonnet or graffiti, other kinds of vandalism perhaps, whatever your avenue of expression, I recommend making use of that. It doesn't always work for me, but I get creative product out of it, which means that it can't be all bad. Well, some of the creative product is all bad, but I personally think that you have to clean out the spider webs and execute on a lot of terrible ideas before you get to the good ones. So I think something is accomplished either way.
Emerson Dameron:That's my recommendation on how to grieve. There's no wrong way to do it. There's no right way that brings back to life whatever it is that you're grieving. If there was a kind of grief that did that, I would recommend that kind of grieving. If there is, I don't know about it. It could be something that the Illuminati or the aliens are keeping to themselves. If so, I'd certainly like to know about it. I think now is the time. It's an age of discontinuity. All bets are off. No one's ready for what already happened. Just go ahead, tell us who killed JFK and give us the secret to eternal life. Give us the information on why we should or should not pursue that. Just let what was hidden be seen, as much as that's probably going to hurt. So art is what I would recommend. I believe that there is scientific information that backs up the efficacy of that, but I'm pretty sure it's not as solid as the evidence in favor of physical exercise that can really bring down the cortisol levels.
Emerson Dameron:I've gotten a lot of mileage out of just beating the feelings out of my punching bag Because it has feelings. It holds me in contempt, it talks about me behind my back, it thinks it's better than I am, and I do not let that go unpunished. I love hitting that punching bag. It helps me make peace with my capacity for violence, it gives me a workout and it puts the punching bag in its place and lets it know once again of its inferior position to me in the great objective hierarchy of status. I also enjoy long walks on oceanfront walk where I live, walking to the venice fishing pier and then walking back through the canals after maybe getting some writing done at a coffee shop down. That way it's a good workout. It's a good noticing. First of all you have to keep your swivel head on because you've got bikes whizzing past and people trying to sell you reggae CDs that you don't want. But they come up and they hold out the CD like they're going to give it to you. And if you take it then you're in trouble because they're going to try to talk you into paying for it.
Emerson Dameron:And the hustlers in LA are some of the greatest hustlers in the country. This is where the 1% of hustlers come to compete with the rest of the 1% of hustlers. So if you're already heartbroken, if you already got rolled by someone, don't risk it. You're probably going to get hustled again. So you have to be on notice.
Emerson Dameron:But once you are, there's so much to see.
Emerson Dameron:There are so many people more interesting than you, so many variations on human decrepitude, so many families who this is their fun thing that they've spent all week anticipating and the weather's finally nice again, and so they head to the beach, and everyone else does too. So they spend hours seething in traffic and by the time they get here they're yelling at each other and everything comes out much as it does over a game of monopoly or a similar exercise that maybe is supposed to bring people together and does, but they also end up sniping at each other, because part of the game is screwing people over and part of feeling bad and small is feeling as though nothing you do matters, and so kind of testing to see if you can hurt someone and prove that you exist, because it feels like there's nothing you can do that would make any difference that would actually affect someone. I think that's how sometimes people end up engaged in these little kinky, passive, aggressive social dynamics that could be solved if everyone just had lots of rough sex with each other.
Emerson Dameron:As long as it's consenting adults, I think rough sex can save the world, because otherwise I think our sadism and masochism is gonna filter out into our quote-unquote real lives outside of the bedrooms and dungeons and alleys behind our dive bars of choice, and our work lives and friend lives and social lives and other parts of our lives are going to get kinky and degrading, and we might not even notice that that's happening until it's gotten completely out of control. So that's something to observe, to get you out of your own existence a little bit, because part of being heartbroken is being depressed and part of being depressedbroken is being depressed, and part of being depressed is solipsism, is being fascinated with your own problems and your own sphincter the most fascinating place in the world. So anything that can get you out of that, including fast-paced walks on oceanfront walk and people watching, can send you hoofing it in the right direction. You also want to make sure that you eat a lot. If you're working out, you can't put calories on a credit card. So if you're burning a lot of calories, make sure that you're taking them in. Just eat anything that is edible, and don't assume that something is not edible until you give it a chance.
Emerson Dameron:I'm not going to eat my orchid because it's a living thing. I'm responsible for its care. It's amazing that it's thriving the way that it is. It's blooming again. It's gorgeous. It proves that I can take excellent care of a living thing and it can thrive under my leadership. If it dies, I might try eating it. I might just put it in the blender with the rest of my smoothie ingredients and chop it up that way, or just eat it, depending on how hungry I am and I get pretty hungry when I'm getting some exercise.
Emerson Dameron:I don't currently have a cat. My previous cat passed on during COVID, which is very sad. I still have a fat, black and white cat-shaped hole in my heart that no other cat will ever really fill. I did not eat that cat. He died in my lap. He'd been ready to go on his own for some time and was going through the little cat rituals that they do when they're preparing to kick it, and he seemed relieved when I think he knew kind of what was happening and I was there with him. He was on my lap. I talked to him and let him know. I hope that I love him. I did then. I still do. I don't know if that got through to him or not. I did say it. My suspicion of cats is that they understand English perfectly and speak it with mid-Atlantic accents and they're just holding out on us. I probably wouldn't cook up a cat and eat it, but the cat would do it to me, so I don't really know what's stopping me. If the cat was my size and I was its size, the rest of my life would be about five seconds long.
Emerson Dameron:Eat something. That's important. Cortisol quashes your appetite and you're going to need that as well as your killer instinct. Make peace with yourself as a natural predator. You don't have to go out and hunt and kill things. You don't even have to forage, but get out into the wild.
Emerson Dameron:I personally enjoy hiking in Topanga Canyon or in the Bologna wetlands, but depending on how bad your heart is broken, you might want to go way, way, way, way, way way out into nature, off of the normally charted parts of the world. You could just go into nature and never come back, and then you would want to hunt or at least forage and perhaps drink your own urine or mine. You can bring some of that. If you need it, I will be glad to offer it. Go feral. You need that energy. Go feral for a while and then bring some of that feral mojo back into civilization when you return so that people are scared of you and you don't get hurt again. You can also distract yourself. There's more art and great literature, great film, great food, travel, more experience than you can ever possibly experience any meaningful fraction of in one lifetime. Indulge in some of that. Go to a museum on a museum dose of mushrooms which is just enough to kind of get giggly and over-appreciate works of art without freaking out. I personally am a huge fan of the music of the rock band Metallica, who I'll recommend because I try to help struggling artists on this show.
Emerson Dameron:I take a walk in the woods. I don't want to. I do it anyway. I hate it the whole time. When it's over I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.
Emerson Dameron:But there you go, act as if as much as you can, just recognize that your feelings don't matter and come up with some things to do and do them. Maybe three or four in a day is actually fairly ambitious. Do your best and don't get mad at yourself if you can't. If you just have to stay in bed all day, there's nothing wrong with that. Ask for help if it becomes a serious thing. If you're sliding into depression, be on notice. That can easily happen with a heartbreak. I think it's a very high percentage of people that end up getting clinically depressed, including people that were in extremely ill-advised relationships where they knew exactly what they were getting into and they walked right into the meat grinder. It doesn't make it any less soul-crushing and you could get seriously depressed. So just pay attention to that. Don't distract yourself so hard that you don't notice if things are getting really dire, but do distract yourself. If you haven't tried sex addiction, give it a chance. You're probably going to end up feeling empty inside. But dare to be disappointed or surprised. Try new things. Take interpersonal risks. Sex addiction meets both of those criteria, which brings us to another thing that you can do in order to deal with heartbreak, which is to be of service.
Emerson Dameron:I have mixed feelings about 12-step programs. I don't like the quasi Christianity. I don't like the original sin. I don't think you're broken. I don't think you need a higher power. Wallowing in your own powerlessness is pretty much the last thing you want to do. I'm much more on the side of empowerment than disempowerment, but realistically I know it's a mix. You have to own your power and also be humble about it and be willing to ask for help, and I have in fact held a service position in a 12-step organization in the past. Although I have mixed feelings about them, I think if you can hold the position of taking the good with the bad, being skeptical but at the same time getting what there is to get, that's going to help you, that's a good thing to practice in and of itself, because most things are like that, so that's a possibility.
Emerson Dameron:You could also be of service sexually. Do something really nasty that most people won't do. Be a really selfish, horrible person. Over-communicate. Let your partner know this is what I'm doing and ask how does it feel for you, but then be incredibly sadistic. Be someone's darkest sexual chapter, completely degrade yourself. Do just the most disgusting things that you can imagine that they want you to do, that they always thought they were going to have to pay for, and they'll never forget you. You have a special place in their hearts and you can do that with lots of different people over the course of one wild summer. You can be of service in that way and then just see how you feel about the heartbreak after that. And whatever it is that you feel, accept your feelings.
Emerson Dameron:In life people catch feelings and feelings get hurt. Life sucks in that way. There's nothing you can do about it. I think the first noble truth of Buddhism is life is miserable. Get a helmet, suck it up and deal with it. I would help out more if I could, and if I can I will let you know, because that is the spirit of radical honesty and rigor and compassion that you expect and demand from Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. La's number one avant-garde personal development program. Levity saves lives For now, not forever. You're still gonna die. Sorry, I'm not sorry. It's not my fault. There's nothing I can do about that. Enjoy what you will.
Emerson Dameron:You can make all kinds of red hot love connections. You got it like that and they've done a lot worse. But if love isn't volcanic enough for your tastes, try limer, an exhilarating and agonizing hotshot of pure infatuation. Throw your soul into the lava of romantic madness with an ill-advised, all-consuming obsession with someone who might be flattered or freaked out but realistically will never come close to reciprocating. You'll be swimming in serious drugs such as norepinephrine, oxytocin and dopamine, as you gorge yourself on compulsive, maladaptive daydreaming and caustic, unrequited devotion, caught in a doomed whirlwind, fantasy fling that can bring you to life and make you want to kill yourself. Not everyone gets out and limerence can last for years. So get ready to break your heart, lose your mind and defenestrate your dignity as you put the hope in hopeless romantic with limerence, because if love isn't killing you, what's the point of living?
Emerson Dameron:Love is beautiful. It's an essential part of the human experience, the emotional motherlode, a fireworks display of feelings that always ends in shattering disappointment. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. It's best to have loved and won, but you probably fell in love with someone better than you and got beat like a rented mule. In that case, it's okay to have loved and lost, as long as you learn and grow and never love again.
Emerson Dameron:Find your own sense of identity and community. There's all kinds of trash to pick up off the freeways and plenty of losers are desperate for friends. Cultivate sexual abundance, be assertive, spread yourself super thin, do nasty stuff. No one else will Build an army. Don't let anyone think they're better than you. No one is special, we're all gonna die. There's no Superman, no Santa Claus and no relationship that's gonna solve your problems. People can't even help themselves. When you get to know them, they're all garbage. So fall in love, lose and call it a day.
Emerson Dameron:Anger can be fuel. It can be righteous as a form of resentment of injustice, of things that are wrong in the world, that are subject to change and can be changed. The right drilling is applied. However, do not confuse intimidation and respect. Anger does not draw respect to you. It breeds alienation and retaliation, mistrust, resentment, loss of faith.
Emerson Dameron:When people understand that you care more about your feelings than their safety or their experience, it is true that hurt people hurt people and those people go on to hurt other people. That seems to just be how it works and it all goes well, until someone hurts a masochist, and then it's just confusing. But then the masochist hurts somebody else who's not a masochist and things go right back to normal, with hurt people hurting people all over the place. We love to suffer and we love to tell stories to ourselves about ourselves, mostly about our suffering, and we think somehow that we can offload our bitterness. But it is not zero sum. Hurting someone else does not unhurt us, in fact, if we create an enemy and those enemies don't go away, because the world is small, life is long. Everybody increasingly knows everybody else's business.
Emerson Dameron:Angry displays, more than anything else, exacerbate the biggest problem in your life. The biggest problem in your life is loneliness. Anger ultimately drives people away, puts you on an island, which makes you easy prey for predators and makes things worse than they were before, makes you feel bad because you did something that you thought was going to make you feel good. And now you realize that you're not just angry, you're also a fool. You made a fool of yourself and you should be angry at yourself, which you probably were anyway. That was probably the problem. You're just getting mad at versions of yourself that you see in other people with psychological projection, because you don't have a handle on this stuff.
Emerson Dameron:Anger is better than obsequiousness. I mean you can get things done sometimes through displays of anger, but just it's not that much better. It wears you out, it wrecks your health, the people around you, you're ruling by fear. They hate you. They will eat your flesh at the next opportunity, just like your cats would if you were the size of your cat and your cat was the size of you and that could happen. You don't have to feel bad about feeling bad and you don't have to get angry about getting angry. Just let it flow through physically. Get a punching bag, beat it up, go to a rage room. There's a rage room in downtown la where if you, if you go with a group and it's a little pricey but they'll let you destroy a car Do that, have fun with it, have a fun day out and bring your anger and release it into the cosmos.
Emerson Dameron:Feel your feelings, including the higher ones, feelings of compassion, of royalty, that help you curb these self-sabotaging, mean-spirited, ignorant displays of anger. Feel those feelings, but also the other feelings, the higher ones, that you experience on the perch of your highest intelligence Sorrow, empathy, remorse. Feel those things in advance. Feel what you're about to do to yourself with your display of anger, what it really costs emotionally and in terms of opportunities in the future, and understand that what you think is the cause of your anger may have nothing to do with it. It could be old childhood wounds that you just haven't addressed because you don't really understand them. And whatever it is, it's probably not anything as serious or important as you think it is If you're idling at a green light and somebody beeps their horn, they're just trying to get through.
Emerson Dameron:They did you a favor If they let you sit there and be a fool and hold up traffic. What good does that do you? It's like saying you got a booger in your nose. Be grateful for that, even if they're kind of prickish about it. We help each other out. We're not always nice about it. We see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do? And what they're saying is I love you. And sometimes the guy who's beeping his horn is what he's trying to say. If the horn could talk, it would say I'm really just trying to help and also, none of this stuff really matters.
Emerson Dameron:If you can interrupt your display of anger, you can make sure that other people have a better experience. You can help create the kind of world that you want to live in. It'll make things better for everyone up to a point, but not forever, because we're all going to die. Your feelings are very temporary. If you turn your attention away from an emotion, it tends to peter out in about I think it's 90 seconds. So learn to manage your feelings sufficiently, you know. Make sure they get to run around in the yard sometimes. Don't let them go out and cause problems for other people. Let them be inspiration and entertainment. That's what feelings are good for. Anger could be an amazing place to create from Making art, for anger can be thrilling and galvanizing and a way to understand what you're really capable of.
Emerson Dameron:When you mix these dangerous, flammable-slash-inflammable emotions with your higher intelligence, you get great art and even better comedy out of that. And if you understand other people's anger, you can make it universal. Speak to what's hurting them, the things that may be about to explode. Maybe they're about to alienate somebody they really care about, torture, a long-term friendship over some stupid stuff. If you can make art that helps them either make sense of that or see the surrealism, the weirdness, the darkness, the effed up beauty of it, that is art, that is provocation, which is the job of the artist.
Emerson Dameron:So, welcome anger. Surprise it, don't react the way that it expects. It's not going to get one over on you, and that's when you can heal it. When you destabilize your anger, you can make sweet love to it. Good sex is great, it's one of the best things. But hate sex is utterly transcendent. So if you've got some anger you're carrying around, don't be afraid to channel it in that direction. As long as it's all consenting adults and everything is above board and discussed and agreed upon, now nothing matters that much. In the end we're all dead, and that's one of the reasons why disproportionate anger over ridiculous things is hilarious. It's such an amazing form of comedy when people flip out over inconsequential BS.
Emerson Dameron:If that happens to you, play the fool as well as you can be the clown and then acknowledge what your anger has wrought, what it has cost you, what it means lost friends, lovers, future opportunities, damaged reputation, lingering shame, failure to learn and adapt and grow. When you had the green light to grow, somebody beeped at you because you were idling and you just lost it. You got out and stormed around and you thought you had a crowbar in the trunk and you were really gonna get and cause some major problems. But fortunately you were wrong about that. But you continued to hold up traffic. If somebody got it on video now you look even more like a fool and even if it's not that dramatic when you lash out, it has unknown second-order effects and a lot of them are bad. There's post-traumatic growth.
Emerson Dameron:Maybe the fact that you treated someone poorly ended up making them stronger. Don't count on it. Apologize sincerely and do it well when you mean it. Don't fake. An apology is that that's going to come across. It's a self-destructing crap apology. That's really worse than nothing.
Emerson Dameron:But cultivate the wisdom to know when it is time to apologize and then do it unequivocally. No dodges, no expectations. Make amends, change what you're doing as a result of that humbling experience. Get humble in order to get stronger. Use your anger for propulsion and rip-roaring comedy and know when you've hurt someone so badly they don't want to hear from you. That's tragic and unfortunate and you want to grow up so that doesn't happen anymore. But you know, the past is unchangeable. Some people will forgive you, Some people won't. Don't ask twice. Say you're sorry If that causes more problems. Say you're sorry for saying you were sorry. And then, gtfo, I don't go to most of the places I am wanted. I don't go to any of the places I'm not wanted. So 23 Skidoo, if your atonement is not accomplishing anything, sometimes that's just how it is.
Emerson Dameron:You gotta live with it and learn from it and let your feelings be dutiful, entertaining servants and not masters, and also contemplate the open question of catharsis Does lashing out really accomplish anything in terms of moving your emotions through. In my experience it does. I like punching bags, I like mosh pits, I like destroying cars in a safe container where that kind of thing is not only encouraged but where you pay money to do it. Experiment with it. There's also evidence that catharsis doesn't really do much of anything. The science is inconclusive. Take an empirical approach. See what works for you, see what helps the anger flow through. Don't get angry at yourself for getting angry. Hold that emotion as sacred and powerful and symphonic and let it harmonize with the other emotions, the higher ones, the ones you don't want to experience. So you will not lash out in anger, so you don't have to feel guilty or sorrowful or have to suck up and grovel. Let it all happen, observe it all, know exactly what is happening to the best of your ability, based on the reads you get from the instruments you have, and then ride it.
Emerson Dameron:Catherine is sad. She's been sad for a while and it hurts, because she's smart enough to know that she has no reason to be sad. She has an excellent life that she's made for herself. She's a loyal friend that's reflected in the strength of her friendships and she's smart enough to keep herself busy enough to not wallow. She's always got a lot going on Helping her friends' bands get bookings, helping her ex-boyfriends find dates, being an ace at her job and her two hobbies, exercising every day, taking care of her health and herself and everyone around her. Because they cannot take care of themselves, she would say God knows they can't take care of themselves themselves. She would say God knows they can't take care of themselves. But she doesn't believe in God. She does believe in herself. But lately she's had a weird vulnerable feeling. She doesn't like it. She needs not just distraction but adventure, escape, fun with a capital F-U-N. So she calls up her friends Poppy, who really can't take care of herself, and will take you down with her and screw up your life too. But you'll have the best time that you've ever had, and so will she, because she always does. There is no past or present, just the ever chaotic now. And it's a lot of work to protect Poppy from herself. But she's a lot of fun to hang out with Warm-hearted, friendly, funny, sometimes intentionally.
Emerson Dameron:And Bronson, a roller girl, natural leader, bit of a bully. She will treat you like trash, but only because she knows that you are indispensable. Much as she is. Catherine is tough enough to deal with this. She can see that it's a performance and she knows that Bronson's deep down quite envious of her, catherine. So there's some tension in the friendship, but it remains a friendship nonetheless and is arguably all the stronger for it.
Emerson Dameron:The three of them get in a car it's Poppy's car but Catherine drives. It's better that way and they drive to a city that's a full day's drive away. When they get there it is time to put on the ritz. Poppy wants to do tourist stuff, bronson wants to yell at Poppy. Catherine takes the three of them to her favorite metal bar, best metal bar in the city, one of the best in the country, thereby saving the night. Admittedly, she has a bit of an ulterior motive. And after they're a few drinks in, she hooks up with the owner of the bar, her friend Balrog, a very large heavy metal bassist for three of the most loved metal bands on the metal scene in the city. Excellent friend taught Catherine to ride a dirt bike, highly aggressive lover, perhaps the roughest that Catherine has had to which she is not averse, one of her favorite people. And after they have sex on Balrog's couch because they didn't make it to the bedroom.
Emerson Dameron:Balrog tells Catherine that he has a job for her because she's one of the three people on Earth that he truly trusts and the other two are not available. He needs to pick up some cocaine for a touring band that will be staying with him. He's already paid for it with heavy metal scene points. He doesn't want to pick it up himself because he's very large, very well known and attracts suspicion whatever he does. But no one will suspect that Catherine is up to anything on Torrin. She's small, she's non-threatening. Until you get to know her or get on her bad side or get roasted by her, then you realize you're never truly safe. Catherine knows this and that's why she wants an adventure. As long as things are going to be off balance, they may as well have some fun, and if Balrog needs help she will do it. So the three of them go to pick up this cocaine.
Emerson Dameron:They get to the house at the address that Balrog has given them and they find four really sketchy dudes shooting pool in the living room. They have pool tables. Upstairs and downstairs they also have a pool. Poppy wants to take a swim. Catherine does too, but she doesn't trust these guys. Poppy wants to sleep with them.
Emerson Dameron:Now Catherine has two jobs. She has to keep Poppy from sleeping with the dealers and she has to get the cocaine to the pickup point in time. And of course she accomplishes both, somewhat to Poppy's chagrin. They get to the pickup spot, which is the parking lot of an abandoned superstore. It's been abandoned long enough that Catherine can't tell what superstore it used to be. Not a circuit city. It's not shaped like that Could be a Toys R Us, could be a Big Lots. They are in a nowhere place. And one hour goes by. The people who are coming to pick up the cocaine are late. She kind of wonders why Balrog had other people to come pick it up. Why couldn't he just do it himself? She's starting to feel irritated.
Emerson Dameron:Another hour goes by and suddenly, seemingly without provocation, bronson stops lashing out at Poppy and turns her negative attention to Catherine. Bronson attacks Catherine. It's blunt, it's not artfully cruel, and she realizes that Catherine remains relatively unperturbed despite her display of anger and her imposing physical size. So she drops the bomb. She tells Catherine that she slept with Balrog last time. He was in town hours before Balrog slept with Catherine.
Emerson Dameron:Catherine breaks down. She lashes out at Bronson, accuses Bronson of being envious because, although Bronson is a roller girl as her passion and profession, when she's not doing roller derbies she teaches classes to other aspiring roller girls. That's where the real money is, and she teaches those roller girls to teach their own classes. It's a bit of a pyramid scheme. Catherine calls her out on this and she correctly identifies Bronson's insecurity over Catherine's dirt biking hobby, which is much tougher even than roller derby and is something that Balrog has never even offered to teach Bronson to do.
Emerson Dameron:Catherine calls Balrog in tears and assumes in the back of her mind that Poppy, while all of this is going on, is watching the cocaine. Balrog doesn't answer and by the time Catherine gets off the phone she realizes that the cocaine is gone. Poppy got distracted. Catherine pulls herself together, just like she always does, and takes them back to the. Cocaine is gone. Poppy got distracted. Catherine pulls herself together, just like she always does, and takes them back to the dealer's house. The dealers, of course, are still awake, more lively and brandy than ever, and, per Catherine's directions, poppy fake seduces the dealers, takes them into a bedroom. Catherine, cat-like, steals as much of their cocaine as she can carry on her person. It's good that she brought a large bag. Then she gives the signal to Poppy that it's time to go, which Poppy doesn't notice.
Emerson Dameron:So Bronson goes into the bedroom and beats the dealers within inches of their lives and the three of them vamoose. They realize that they're exhausted. And the three of them vamoose. They realize that they're exhausted. Catherine realizes she's been exhausted for a long time. Even Poppy is exhausted. That never happens. So they stop at a hotel. Poppy and Bronson dip into the stash of cocaine. Poppy is basically an enhanced version of Poppy on cocaine, but, as it turns out, bronson is very friendly and open-hearted and the influence of the stimulant, although one would not expect it, puts her in a position to mend her friendship with Catherine. They come out stronger than ever and now no one can sleep. So they find the nearest bar and look for three, possibly four passable dudes. All of them sleep with Poppy and Catherine gives Bronson her first lesson in riding a dirt bike.
Emerson Dameron:It's time for Ask a Sadist a question and answer segment with me, a sadist with a heart of gold. I like to hurt people. I've always wanted to hurt people. I used to feel bad about it, but that didn't feel very good. I used to feel bad about it, but that didn't feel very good. Now I am at peace with my dark side, for I have discovered there is more virtue in my cruelty than there is in your hypocrisy, false piety and anything else that you do in your tragic lack of imagination. Today's question lack of imagination Today's question.
Emerson Dameron:Dear sadist, what kink or fetish would you absolutely refuse to try if your partner suggested, and why? This is not ask a sadist anything. I'm here to give you advice, to dispense wisdom on how to live your life, and it's not me assuming that I'm somehow in a superior position to you to do life coaching. It is that you find me so interesting that you ask these personal questions because you want to know me on some personal level, when what you should do having the opportunity to receive my counsel, having the opportunity to receive my counsel is to ask something that would not go toward fostering a parasocial relationship. That is only going to waste time that you could be spending out and about exploring your passionate depravity. You should be asking me for my thoughts on how to live your life and what kinks and fetishes you should try or refuse to try. I won't say you're wasting my time, you are wasting your own. I have a feeling this is going to be used as some kind of bonus content, bonus content. But now that I'm in a mood, I will answer this question because I feel primed to treat it with the seriousness and sincerity that it deserves. So let's parse this what kink or fetish would you absolutely refuse to try? Ever? Forever, as they say, is a mighty long time. We don't know all of the experiences that we're going to experience. Some of us live forever in some sense. Others never live in another sense. Whatever applies to you, I hope that you spend the time suffering, suffering well, suffering better, learn to suffer, understand why you suffer and how you suffer, and suffer like you mean it. I wish you nothing but suffering, because I care about you. It means the world to me when you let me be mean to you. I care about you. It means the world to me when you let me be mean to you. But since you asked me, I won't say that there's anything I would never try. There are not many things that I haven't tried.
Emerson Dameron:It's been said that in order to be a good sadist, one should experience masochism. I don't necessarily think that's the case, but I'm not going to get into everything that I've ever done. I will readily admit that I have thrown myself into the flames of romantic love. I knew that it was ill-advised and yet everything I did to stifle that urge to quench those flames only made them more powerful. And I did give in and it went well. It went badly sometimes simultaneously. I won't say that it ended well. We both could have handled it better.
Emerson Dameron:I was inspired at that point to explore my decadent libertine passions. I went out on the town, I painted the town red and gold, I ripped into it. I had the summer of my life and I discovered who I was. It did not make the pain go away, but I felt much better about it when I was able to share it with others. And I think that no matter what kink or fetish you try, you should do it in a spirit of indulging fully in your own animal passions, even the self-destructive ones, within reasonable limits. Excess in moderation. Don't tear yourself apart If you have that kind of cruelty that it takes to be a pay pig or whatever it is that actually destroys your life. Not just the pain that you get off on, but the pain that tears you down and wears through your bank account, wears out your mental and physical health, sends you into an early grave and hurts everyone around you by proxy, if you have the kind of cruelty that it takes to inflict that on yourself. It's rather shallow of you to keep that for yourself and not share it. So no, I don't get financial domination, that I am kink friendly. I'm very sex positive. I'm a positive person. That's why I do this.
Emerson Dameron:I will take issue with another part of the question. What would you absolutely refuse to try if your partner suggested it? I don't have partners. I am a deeply kind person and I think you know this. You see yourself in me and you know the strength of my heart, and any animosity, any desire that you have to knock me down, to put me in chains, to take away my toys, comes from insecurity about how the parts of yourself that you see in me Because you know that I'm deeply good and honest and I reflect the best in humanity that has no god. It's certainly not the sort of imbecilic god that would rule in the manner that some of you think your god does. I'm not going to get into that. I don't have partners. I'm kind. I'm not nice, I'm not fair. I'm honest with you about that. But I'm on top, you're on the bottom. That much should be obvious. This has been. Ask a Sadist. Did you ever feel so bad inside. Here is what I think about it. Here is what I think about it. Here is what I Think.
Speaker 2:About it. It's no bad, it's not, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah Ah, dad, mom Mom, I'm not sure why I'm doing this. Thanks for watching.
Emerson Dameron:I'm sorry someone hurt you. I'm sorry they were cruel about it. I wish it hadn't happened, but there's a reason. The first noble truth of Buddhism is life sucks. Growing up is about cutting your losses, so don't hold your breath for closure. If you go back to the scene of the crime, you might get an apology or you might get robbed again, but they're probably long gone. You won't get your dignity back. Go somewhere else and get some new dignity. With a new dignity smell, it's easier to get apologies from people who care about you.
Emerson Dameron:You're gonna have to take the L on this. Look, who knows, they might offer amends years from now, when they're in AA, by which time they'll be completely insufferable and you'll just reflexively hang up the phone. For now, manage your expectations and keep it simple. For instance, all I want is an open casket funeral where everyone says you were right, I'm sorry, and then blows me. You'll get a solid turnout. Dead men have no standards. 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 of the most diverse city on Earth. We're LA's rebel radio family, the hub for Southern California conversation and chaos.
Emerson Dameron: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 and be honest. I don't know what you've done or what you have to apologize for what you're feeling remorse over. I do not think all else being equal, which it never is on balance. I, emerson Dameron, and we here at Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, the royal, we, the kings, queens, dukes, do not think that you have to apologize or feel any inkling of shame over being sensitive. I don't know how sensitive you are.
Emerson Dameron:Maybe you are too sensitive, maybe it's off the scale that I'm familiar with, but I don't think that it's bad to be sensitive. I don't think it's necessarily good, I think it just is and it could be very useful. It can make you more empathetic and compassionate and more primed to be of service for other humans and animals and plants and ideas, because you know what it's like. You have been there. You've been in the depths of the human experience. I don't know if the highest highs and the lowest lows are always together in the same vehicle.
Emerson Dameron:I know that, with a history of substance abuse and other addictive behaviors, I find myself expecting each of life's fleeting joys to be followed by a much more profound, painful and protracted crash, and sometimes I worry that the good can never be as good as the bad is bad.
Emerson Dameron:But if you've experienced either extreme, I think you're more educated about the human experience than the average bear or the modal bear. More accurately, if you're into statistics and accuracy, which are things that sometimes go together, I would exercise some caution in perceiving yourself as being too sensitive to deal with sensitive topics. You might in fact be sensitive enough to deal with that information. I don't think you should torture yourself. I don't think you should do anything that's going to throw you into a bad state or make you feel sick or pump you full of cortisol and activate your fight, flight, freeze, appease, functionality unnecessarily. Life's short enough that it doesn't make sense to feel bad on purpose, unless you're into that and you're getting something out of it. So you know you don't have to consume information that you know is gonna make you feel bad or put you in a state but.
Emerson Dameron:I wouldn't assume that you can't handle it. You might be more able to deal with it than other folks who don't?
Emerson Dameron:have your experience of sensitivity. I believe that there's a certain kind of strength in sensitivity. You know there's vulnerability in it too, and vulnerability comes with its own hazards and limitations. You are better off being a callous, shark-like sociopath if your function in life is making the world worse. You don't want to have feelings in that case, because you don't want to feel bad. That's going to make you confused and make you doubt yourself and make you bad at your job, which is screwing up the world. But if you're like most folks, I think the advantages of sensitivity can outweigh the disadvantages, and the advantages include being in a position to sit with dark, painful, complex stuff.
Emerson Dameron:Don't write it off, don't torture yourself, don't sell yourself short, unless that's part of a long game that you're playing where you're going to make some money on the other end and you're better at stocks than most people. Successful day trader. It's okay to be sensitive and in fact it has its advantages. It will freak out some people as its advantages. It will freak out some people, the cowards of the world, who are scared of their own sensitivity and vulnerability and don't want it from you, or they want to be the only ones that get to have feelings Disturbingly detached and unsympathetic ways.
Emerson Dameron:Cruelty, in some cases, willful ignorance, lack of curiosity. Cruelty, in some cases, willful ignorance, lack of curiosity. I tend to think that that's covering up, overcompensating for their own screeching vulnerabilities, but then again I don't know what's going on in their heads and hearts and they could just be empty or just not very deep. I'm an old soul, I have been around for a minute and I might have thicker skin, a little bit more of a resume, a CV experience, to not be shocked or surprised or disturbed, crouched up and defensive because I am afraid of my own sensitivity being exposed, the way that I see in some people and when I see that response. When people hold my sensitivity and contempt, or yours, I would recommend some compassion there. Up to a point I would say I can just understand the fear behind that. It's not anger. They're not angry at you. They're arguing with a version of themselves that is they think is closer to some kind of danger or social embarrassment than they are comfortable being. And when you talk about your sensitivity, they think about theirs and they feel it a little bit and they don't like it. Have some compassion, be of service to people and leave them to their fates. You don't need friends who treat you poorly.
Emerson Dameron:I'm Emerson Dameron. This is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, la's number one avant-garde personal development program on K-Chung, los Angeles, Chinatown, 1630 AM. Kchungradioorg. Medicated-minutescom. Levity saves lives, for now, again still gonna die Closer to death than you were an hour ago when the show started. There's nothing I can do about it.
Emerson Dameron:I love you personally, despite all the reasons. I probably shouldn't. You're right, I don't know your life. I've got a grip on maybe two of the eleven kinds of searing pain that you're in. Being loved by you and loving you back were peak experiences that will not soon be eclipsed. But we're not good for each other like that we're damaged in incompatible ways. You don't know my life either. You have no clue what I'm made of or how patient and present I can be. It doesn't matter. It breaks my heart and burns me alive that I let you down and I hope somewhere deep in your weird little brain you have some idea of how loved you are.
Emerson Dameron:Based on the luck I've been having lately, I suspect that I'm on my way to earning a magic cock that I can use in the next life. That will pump pure freedom and peace with the universe deep inside all comers and make therapy obsolete. I can't give up on myself. I gotta keep dreaming. At first I thought this was seriously a setup. She seemed really into it. Then I thought maybe she loved taking my discipline and also was using sex for power. I don't know if that blew my mind, but it blew something.
Speaker 2:Steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio. Crimson Transgressions, A bite-sized erotic thriller by Emerson Dameron. Find it before it finds you.
