Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes

Medical Play

Emerson Dameron Season 3 Episode 12

CW: More BDSM than usual

Give or get goosebumps. Explore the most crucial existential friction of our times. Gain the confident glow that comes from learning hard skills. Escape the Wartenberg Wheel of life and death. Discover the magic of medical play.

Referenced episodes: Limerence, April Is the Coolest Month, Win a Date With Emerson Dameron.

Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is a production of KCHUNG.

Music by Visions of the Universe. Written, performed, produced, and created by Emerson Dameron, who is solely responsible for its content. Levity saves lives.

Got something to say to me? Slide into the DMs.

Support the show

Check out "Helena the Brit Goes to Sub Space" on your platform of choice.

Speaker 1:

Do something different, something difficult, something disgusting. Give yourself a jolt. Break your patterns, learn some new bad habits. Change is painful, but it's necessary and also deeply erotic. The difference between poison and medicine is in the dose. So have a little poison as a treat. It may not make you feel better, but it will be fun to watch. So take your medicine.

Speaker 1:

My name is Emerson Dameron. I am the producer, writer, creator and talent for Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. The music is by Visions of the Universe, everything else is by me. I'm the person that does the show. I'm entirely responsible for its content.

Speaker 1:

Medicated-minutes is a dedicated site for the show where you can find all of the back episodes as well as instructions on which back episodes to listen to first, which should not be the first ones. Don't ever go back and listen to the very first episodes first. It takes shows a while to get going and this show is no exception. You will find instructions on how to best appreciate the program. I recommend following them, and this episode is going to be about following instructions in particular contexts. All will be revealed. There's some adult themes in the show, so just know that going into it. It's a production of K-Chung 1630 AM in Chinatown, downtown, parts of Echo Park in Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, also worldwide. On the World Wide Web, at kchungradioorg, this is Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes. I'm Emerson Dameron. Levity saves lives. The subject for today is medical play, so let's get ill together.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite getting to know you icebreaker questions was introduced to me by a dear friend of mine years ago. We were on our first date, which is one of my favorite first dates that I've ever been on. It didn't work out for us romantically, but we remained friends for many years because we're both fascinating people and this question was an early indicator that I was dealing with someone who was going to be fun to know, to get to know. The question was if you could collect one frivolous thing, what would it be? It can't be something useful. It can't be books or money or household cleaning supplies. It has to be frivolous and I think at the time the thing that I said was I would collect watches. One watch is arguably useful. I think most people don't need it, because most people have phones. It's not hard to figure out what time it is. But if you have a lot of watches, those extra watches don't serve any real purpose and I would say the best way to collect watches is to have them all set for wildly different times, making it even more frivolous.

Speaker 1:

I've changed my mind so many times about this. I've gone through different phases of my life where I've been drawn to collect different frivolous things. If I had the ability to do that Like, for instance, prisms or marbles For instance, prisms or marbles I think the thing that I would collect if I could collect one frivolous thing, would be Wartenberg wheels. The Wartenberg wheel is a pretty much obsolete medical device which used to be used to test nerve reactions, sensitivity, reflexes. It's a wheel at the end of a handle that rolls and has points on the end. I've seen them really spiky. The one that I have has dull points that are rounded at the end and it rolls across the skin and the original purpose of it was to test sensitivity and it can bring up goosebumps, test sensitivity and it can bring up goosebumps, which are a profound and compelling and beautiful reflexive expression of human vulnerability that I find fascinating and can be summoned with the use of a Wartenberg wheel. It came out of Germany. Which kind of figures. It's not used in medicine much anymore. They found better ways to test people's reflexes. It is still in use in other contexts.

Speaker 1:

I have one. It's one of my favorite possessions. Would it be the thing that I grab on my way out of my building? If my building were on fire? Probably not. As I mentioned, the laptop might be the first thing I would grab, because it has all of my work and a lot of my fun on it. Most of the stuff that I create a lot of that stuff's in the cloud. So I might grab the orchid instead, as I mentioned, because that is a living thing that is entrusted to my care and I can always get on my iCloud and get most of my stuff back, but I can't get the orchid back. That's the only one of that orchid that will ever exist, so that might be at the top of the list.

Speaker 1:

The Wartenberg wheel would be pretty far down, but if I happen to find it within my reach on the way out, I might shove it in my pocket, because we've been through some stuff together. I've placed the Wartenberg wheel on altars through some ceremonies that I've participated in. It's charged up with all kinds of juice as a result of that and I love it. I'd like to have more of them in different colors I different degrees of sharpness. I think once something is stainless, that's a binary thing. It's not gonna get any more stainless. So all the good ones are stainless steel. So there's not a lot of variation possible there. But I would like to have a large collection of Wartenberg wheels, maybe a giant one that you run across people's backs. That might be exciting. That right now, at this juncture in my life, is the frivolous thing that I would collect.

Speaker 1:

It starts with an intrusive intake process. There are forms you have to fill out that collect all of the arguably all of the most relevant information about who you are in terms of who you are as a physical body. Your entire medical history is compiled. All of the drugs that you're on are enumerated, are enumerated. You're not supposed to lie. You can, but lying to your doctor, much like lying to your lawyer or your therapist, is going to work against you much more often than it's going to work in your favor. So you're expected to be honest and you're expected to answer all kinds of in-your-face questions about how you're living your life, and that adds up to who you are, in a sense, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt. Because even now, after all of the time that we've spent working on these things, self-reporting, subjective self-assessment, is still the only way we really have to measure pain. So, from one to ten, from a grimacing tears coming out of its eyes, frowny face, to a beaming, grinning, smiley face, with other faces in between unhappy, sad, neutral.

Speaker 1:

How do you feel? Because I want to know. Am I going to use it against you? You don't know. I'm not going to tell you. I am going to check your reflexes. Just be patient. It only hurts a little bit. I'll put my fingertip in your mouth. Check that sucking reflex. Squeeze around the sides of your throat, checking for lumps. It's only going to hurt a little bit. Little bit. Check this reflex. Be a patient. Patient. It's in your best interests. The experiment requires that you continue. Now. Take a big deep breath. Why listen to your heartbeat whisper in your ear. Are you sure you're okay? Can you feel this? Now let's see what's going on down here. The rule is you have to submit to this, that's say thank you.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite books is the crime novel the Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson, which, if you haven't read it, it's the story of a small-town cop who tortures people with small talk. He plays dumb, he speaks in cliches and platitudes and he's such a nice person that people feel not only obligated to put up with it but kind of feel like they're enjoying it, even if they take a little bit of pity on the guy for his simple-mindedness as it's coming across. They tend to play along and that's why it's this form of torture that he's inflicting on them by wasting their time and screwing around with their heads with this kind of small talk. And medical professionals absolutely do this and they have to know what they're doing. I mean, you could charitably say maybe when the dentist puts all the stuff in your mouth and then starts asking you questions about network television shows or saying you look like this celebrity that you've been compared to so many times and every time it grates a little bit more. You could say maybe they have poor social skills. I kind of doubt it. They're in public facing jobs and they work with people all day, and I think that sadism is a much more likely explanation. And perhaps some of the patients enjoy it, maybe perhaps a little bit more than they even realize that they're noticing that they enjoy it. There's a fine line between fear and excitement. When you're uncomfortable, you feel alive. That can bring you back to life. It's easier to us to get back into than it is to go over here to. There is to put ourselves in situations where accepting that healing kind of pain from people that certainly know what they're doing we hope or have some idea or give us the impression that they know what they're doing, which is part of knowing what they're doing in that role. Part of that is getting into a situation where the contract, the agreement, involves submission.

Speaker 1:

I personally will just go right on the record and admit I love to torture people. I always have. It's always been a fascination of mine. I think it's an art. I think, just as there are excellent lovers and others who are not so good, I think that most of the people I know obviously love to torture themselves and others. Torturing the self can be a bit of a cop-out. It can also be good practice can be a bit of a cop-out. It can also be good practice. We can refine our techniques on ourselves and then apply them in other contexts. I will. I love to torture people in the ways that help them the most. I like to hurt people in ways that make them feel good, and there's obviously a lot of that in medical play. I would argue that there's a lot of that in medical play. I would argue that there's a lot of that in medicine. I would argue that there's a lot of that in life.

Speaker 1:

I think what's interesting about this category of play, of theater, of performance, is just that all of those things are so vivid and there are so many flags and exclamation points and so much fun equipment to play with and the stakes are so high and the existential frictions is so exciting that if it brings out the goosebumps, I get it and I find that appealing. Thank you. Warm their hearts with your simple-minded chit-chat. Do favors they didn't want but still feel obligated to repay. Shower them with compliments they didn't want and have no interest in living up to. Like the same things they like, but get way more into them. People love games, so play them against each other. Be so nice, they'll have no idea they're being manipulated. Be easy to get to know and impossible to get rid of. Give it all, leave them wanting less. Kill them with kindness. We could use more play in our lives.

Speaker 1:

Speaking for myself, speaking for my milieu, I think it's safe to say, americans are a mite over the top in our commitment to hard work, long hours doing stuff we don't really want to do, not always understanding why or who it benefits, knowing that it's mostly to make a lot of money for people who reward us by giving us a little bit of money that we don't know exactly what to do with, where to put it, in a place that it makes more money to invest or to own things, which keeps us in the cycle of work. I find that regrettable. I know that it's not necessarily easy to get out of. I think it can be supplemented with play, and one of my favorite kinds of play is medical play. That starts at a young age. I think most kids have the experience of playing doctor.

Speaker 1:

Medical play is an expansion on that theme because it doesn't necessarily have to be a doctor. It could be a nurse, some other kind of medical professional, an unqualified amateur pretending to be a doctor or a nurse. It could be somebody trying to perform CPR based on something they saw on YouTube. Medical play can be all kinds of things and it can be very fun and rewarding and I recommend that everyone give it a try. Recommend that everyone give it a try Basic how-to. It starts with creating the right set and setting. A cold clinical environment is nice to have. If you're a neat freak, you're way ahead of the game. If not, just scrub those baseboards, clean up, get a table, put a sheet or a piece of paper on top of it. A hanging IV bag is a good addition to the environment.

Speaker 1:

There's there's a investor, author and noted eccentric named james named james altucher, who wrote something years ago about how he likes to go around wearing lab coats. He buys lab coats off the internet and he says he finds them very convenient because they have deep pockets so he can carry anything that he needs. People tend to let him cut in line and take him more seriously. If he's walking through an airport wearing a lab coat, he's going to get some respect. He's not going to pretend to be a doctor. If there's a medical emergency, he's going to have to explain to people that he isn't a doctor. He does say that he learned CPR for real, so is able to do that if it comes up, but he's not going to be able to perform surgery. That might be a disappointment to some of the people that let him cut in line because he was wearing a lab coat. Lab coats are relatively easy to get. They are multi-purpose, very functional. You can wear them almost anywhere and you can definitely use them for medical play.

Speaker 1:

It's also a good idea to wear glasses. I need glasses to drive. If I'm not wearing glasses when I'm driving, I can't see the freeway signs, so I don't always know where to exit and I would probably benefit from wearing glasses all the time. I wear them to movies, I wear them to shows. The only reason I don't wear them when I'm performing or when I'm on a date or when I'm out and about is vanity. So if that's your situation, put the glasses on. It gives you a sense of authority. Wear a stethoscope. If you can get a hold of that, that's a pretty basic accessory. And if you can get the headband with a light, that is good for visual exams which, as we will discover, are an element of medical play, of medical play. Safety-oriented play obviously works well because that's a big part of actual practice of medicine. So it's good to apply that same kind of conscientiousness to this, but also bring in some levity.

Speaker 1:

Medicine is serious business. It's taken very seriously, for good reason. Medical play benefits from the contrast of the serious and the un, the humor, the playfulness, the mischief. Make sure there's plenty of that incorporated. But be safe, sanitize, sterilize. Learn CPR. It's a really good skill to have to walk around knowing that you can resuscitate someone if they need it. It gives you an inner glow, a sense of confidence that's hard to get any other way. And have the right mindset. Come into it with confidence. You are in charge, you know what you're doing, even if you don't know what you're doing, everybody's going to feel a lot better if they think that you know what you're doing. So act like you know what you're doing.

Speaker 1:

This is a diverse category of play, of at-home theater. You can do all kinds of different things with it, from the most simple to stuff that is incredibly dangerous and twisted. I wouldn't say it absolutely does not have to be entirely safe or entirely sane. It must always be consensual, and that can be done through intrusive questioning, through quizzes. Obviously there should be a lot of discussion before anything happens. You should avoid malpractice that carries penalties. So make sure that the recipient of these activities is fully on board, as is the person, as are the people who are performing these things.

Speaker 1:

The term in the kink community that's now used is rack risk in the context of kink, because I think kink is a wonderful thing, I think it can save the world. I think repressed kinks are the cause of so much misery, so many misunderstandings. I think bringing those things into the light can get us together, help us understand ourselves and each other, help us cultivate compassion and empathy, and it can be really, really fun. However, I will say this now, and it will not be the last time Medical play does not have to be a sex thing. If you think it does, that's your own hang-up. It can be entirely unsexy. It can be silly and ridiculous, unlike sex, which is never either of those things. It can be whatever you want and, as we will explore, it can carry a lot of charge and can just be all kinds of fun. If you haven't already gotten started with medical play, the best time to do it is now or, if that's not a possibility, soon. Just keep it safe, keep it fun and bring in the levity, because levity, like medicine, saves lives.

Speaker 1:

To reiterate, medical play is not necessarily a sex thing. You don't have to get off on any of this. You don't have to even enjoy sex at all. A lot of people don't. They should absolutely not be ashamed of that. You could hate sex. In fact. I think it may just be going out of style for good. With a lot of the technological innovations that are happening and with the specter of global warming making it hard to get excited about bringing new people into the mix, sex might just be over. I find that regrettable. It's perhaps my favorite way to spend time. I'd hate to see it go, but you don't have to be into it. You can be into whatever you want, and sex does not have to be one of the things that you're into. If you're anti-sex, that is totally fine. You can still enjoy medical play. Oscar Wilde said that everything is about sex except sex, which is about power Slight paraphrase, I believe. I think that's changed. I think maybe people are sick of sex. Everything seems to be mostly about power, including power itself, and medical play is absolutely about power.

Speaker 1:

Basic exercise in one of the basic exercises in theater, in improv, is described by Keith Johnstone in his book Impro, which I believe is one of the great works of philosophy. I recommend it, even if you're not into improv. The basic game that he teaches is status, high status or low status. All you have to do is pick one. Am I going to play high status or low status in relation to the other players on stage? If you don't know what choice they're going to make, all kinds of magic can happen. Because two high status players can be very fun to watch People shifting their status over the course of a scene. Can be very fun to watch People competing for who's going to be lower status. It can be very simple. It can be very complex. The same is true of medical play.

Speaker 1:

The basic dynamics of dominance and submission in a basic medical play scene are easy for almost anyone to crock. The doctor or nurse, the medical professional, is going to be in the dominant position and the patient is going to be in the submissive position. That's typically how it works. You kind of have to be in order to get medical care. You have to play low status in that situation in order to be taken care of. You have to trust that the person knows best and you have to make it easy for them to do their thing to you. So the basic status, dominant, submission dynamic is very simple, very easy. So it's a good way to start with this kind of play. It also affords lots of room for experimentation. The medical professional could be incompetent. The patients could take over the facility. There could be a pair of medical professionals that have some kind of twisted dynamic going on between them. There could be multiple patients that are perpetrating some kind of mischief. There could be a Stanford prison experiment kind of scenario. All kinds of things are possible within the context of medical play in terms of status. Play in terms of status, so you could go buck wild with this.

Speaker 1:

It can also be a means of working through trauma. I would be careful with that. It's not real therapy. I suppose, like a fake psychiatric kind of situation would fall under the rubric of medical play. However, I would not mistake this kind of thing with actual therapy from an actual therapist. I think that almost everyone should give therapy a try. I think it should be readily available, possibly mandatory, maybe no, I wouldn't go that far. I think it should be on offer for almost everyone, as the vast majority of people can benefit from getting therapized, at least can benefit from discovering whether or not it benefits them. There's that's a valuable experience in itself. So get therapy.

Speaker 1:

Medical play is is not a effective substitute for therapy, however, and certainly in my experience it can be a wonderful, illuminating, sometimes thrilling way of working through things and processing them in a theatrical context, and it can be a sex thing. It does not have to be. If you think that I'm saying that medical play has to be a sex thing, that's your hang-up. Get your mind out of the gutter. That said, it certainly can be and it's one of the more popular things that people can be into. I think in some surveys that attempt to measure this kind of thing, it is at or near number one. The show Grey's Anatomy is quite popular for many, many years, for many, many years. The old-school nurse outfits or perennial Halloween costume and thing that some people are very much into. Maybe sometimes there's a layer of irony, but that doesn't mean that you're not into something and that makes sense. It's kind of the most obvious example of a nurturing, caregiving kind of dynamic and there's a history there and there's a history there.

Speaker 1:

In the very early days of what became our modern healthcare system, being a nurse was of understand why some of those skills are certainly transferable between those fields, and it's just where a lot of the existential friction in the world is happening right now. Healthcare is full of all kinds of extremely charged debates, definitely in America, throughout the world. It contains big existential questions how do we take care of each other? How do we live, how do we die? How do we make decisions that affect those kinds of outcomes? What should these things cost? If anything, there's just a lot of juice, a lot of charge in the medical, in the medical category. That way of looking at the world, that prism, so you can see that medical play just affords all kinds of possibilities for exploration, as some of the most fascinating and consequential questions that we're dealing with.

Speaker 1:

As a species which is another thing that can make it hot, although it doesn't necessarily need to be. It can be ice cold and in fact one of the ways to set the setting is to make it uncomfortably cold, to the point where the patient gets goosebumps because that's vulnerable. Sex can feel good, but you shouldn't feel bad if you hate sex. Sex doesn't matter. It simply isn't a big deal. Lots of people have sex. Most of them aren't special. Lots of people hate sex and they may be the sexiest people of all. If you get really good at sex, you can ruin people's lives and drive them to madness. So if you must have sex, you should keep it mediocre. When you get down to it, sex is for people who can't handle power, and that's what's really worth raw-dogging.

Speaker 1:

I didn't expect that I was going to get back into the healthcare field. I wanted to be in entertainment like any all-American boy, and I did work in that field for a number of years. I still swing through town occasionally, but more recently a lot of my work has been in healthcare. I'm a copywriter by trade and I've focused on healthcare for the last number of years. The way I got back into it was kind of circuitous, but if you take the position that things happen for a reason which I don't or the position that things happen as a result of chains of causality that we can't necessarily understand at a glance which I do it makes sense that I got back into medicine as a line of work, because it's been part of my life for as long as I've been alive.

Speaker 1:

My mom was a physical therapist and I spent time when I was a kid screwing around in hospitals, because my mom's work shift was longer than the time I spent at school and sometimes she would have to pick us up from school and just drop us somewhere to from school and just drop us somewhere to do our thing, left to our own devices for a couple of hours, and the easiest place was somewhere in the hospital that wasn't currently in use and that meant that as a child I got to play with some medical equipment. I got to be in a hospital environment when I was very imaginative and receptive. Going back to Keith Johnstone, the improv teacher, adults are atrophied children, the way that he sees it, and part of cultivating psychological health as adults or skills in improvisational theater and those things have a lot in common, and part of that is just reawakening some of the things that seemed really obvious when we were children, some of the fascination with our surroundings and the world, and so I think it's not coincidental that I've always had a fascination with healthcare, with medicine, with that environment. It's a popular kind of thing to be into and I've always been very interested in it.

Speaker 1:

I broke my arm. I fell off of a rotting sawhorse that I was climbing on and got a compound fracture of my arm, had a bone sticking out and spent the first part of that summer vacation in a cast. And this was when I was 11 and 12, which, coincidentally, was right, as my sexuality was really starting to develop. Not that medical play has to be a sexual thing, but it can be pretty charged up if it is. And I remember we went on a beach trip on a summer vacation and I was not gonna let the fact that I was wearing a cast ruin that. I was not going to let it stop me from swimming in the ocean. So what I did was tied a plastic bag around my cast and held it over my head and waded out into the water. I had my Walkman on listening to music and I was thinking a lot about women when I was out there and about the excitement of being alive and how goosebumps are the sign of vulnerability and when the water's a little bit chilly that can happen, and how really wearing a cast is an extremely vulnerable situation to be in and you get a lot of attention, at least for a while.

Speaker 1:

Eventually people move on to something else that's been treated. That subject has been dramatized in works of fiction and entertainment, where when you get injured, all eyes are on you for a moment but you're not really doing anything because you're recovering and healing, and so it's hard to capture that attention and build a franchise on it. So a lot of times you just end up on your own. So it's there's a lot of push and pull going on, a lot of emotions involved, and both of my parents were adjacent or in the healthcare field or adjacent to the healthcare field. My dad was a public defender who became a malpractice attorney and his work got a lot more interesting at that point.

Speaker 1:

This was in the 1990s when people were getting super litigious. I think that had started a little bit earlier, but it was definitely becoming part of the culture during that time, with a lot of doctors getting sued and getting sued all the time was just part of being a doctor and getting sued. All the time was just part of being a doctor. And my dad represented doctors who got sued and I got to hear some of the behind-the-scenes details of those cases and it was pretty fascinating. The human drama on display was really something else.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to keep all of that under my hat because I'm a very discreet person. I'm good at keeping secrets, discussing between themselves who in their circle of acquaintances they would recruit to help them dispose of a body, and they both landed on me. They decided I was the person that they would choose and I'm not going to compromise that status by revealing a lot of secrets, even if they're anonymized, even if some of the details are changed. I'm going to keep that under lock and key. But I got very hooked on medical drama at a young man in my 20s after I graduated from college. There were a couple of experiences I had that locked that in.

Speaker 1:

There's a place in Chicago called the Museum of Surgical Science Museum of Surgical Science and it is perhaps my favorite makeout spot in any of the places that I've lived. I have not visited Bali or Machu Picchu or Costa Rica. I imagine those places are full of wonderful makeout spots. The old LA Zoo is a fantastic makeout spot. There's an abandoned zoo near Griffith Park that is full of old animal enclosures and if you go there and make out you're likely to have a good time. Venice Beach when it's drizzling, everybody goes inside and you have the place mostly to yourself. So if you can handle a little bit of drizzle or you enjoy it, that's a wonderful makeout spot. But I would put this Museum of Surgical Science in the conversation, possibly in the top five first-rate make-out spot.

Speaker 1:

I'm very interested in obsolete medical technology and I think it goes well with human physicality as an area of interest. There was also a young woman that I was acquainted with who was very intense, kind of an in-your-face person and also kind of a submissive brat kind of a submissive brat, and those two things I've come to find out work very well together, and she had a thing for dentists and the way she described it was quite fascinating to me. I also know a registered nurse who is very into medical play and is absolutely disgusted with dentistry, does not want to bring that into the games at all, which just shows how flexible this can be. It's certainly of interest to me and kind of brings together a lot of the big themes in my life. There's a joy in learning hard skills, especially if you grew up as kind of an artsy, liberal arts kind of kid as I was, where you actually have the goal to put storyteller as part of your occupation. Learning real hard skills feels pretty great and obviously that is a requirement for some of the more intense forms of medical play.

Speaker 1:

Medical professionals go to school for many, many years and these are not school situations that you can fake it. To make it through you have to know what you're doing, and part of knowing what you're doing is giving the impression that you know what you're doing and that comes from the sort of confidence that you can build for real if you learn some hard skills. So if you're going to go to the outer extremes of medical play, it is important to learn your hard skills. It is important to know what you're doing. I think a rigorous intake process can be part of that. Make sure that you know what medications your patient is on, what kind of triggers they might have. It's said that nothing triggers like a trigger, and oftentimes we have triggers that we don't know that we have, and the most extreme kinds of medical play are almost guaranteed to bring those out. But there's nothing wrong with having some idea of what you're getting into ahead of time. So make sure that you use the long form intake form and go down the list and make sure that you know everything that you need to know as you're getting into this need to know as you're getting into this. And then, oh my, there's so much you can do, so much equipment that you can get a hold of. Some of it is easier to get than other stuff, but you can get an EMS TENS unit online. You could buy that and have it shipped to your door and you can have a whole lot of fun with that.

Speaker 1:

X-rays, literally seeing inside someone, see inside people's souls and see what awful, disgusting thoughts they have inside them and then you can vaccinate them against sluttiness. Some of this stuff can be disgusting, humiliating. Enemas are quite humiliating in almost any context. There's a layer of humiliation there If you have to do it yourself, if it's done by someone else to you. Some people are into that, not necessarily my thing. Medicine can be disgusting. I've heard of people being served little paper cups of Jägermeister as medicine. I don't drink so I certainly wouldn't want to receive that. I could see it being kind of interesting to give it to someone else.

Speaker 1:

Speculums can be part of this. That has an unfortunate association with the film producer and director, max Hardcore Maybe not anymore. That was like the 80s and 90s. I think a lot of the younger folks have no idea who that is and that's good because speculums can be fun again. A lot of medical procedures can start in kind of a predictable way and then take bizarre twists. That's where you can combine skills in storytelling with some of the harder skills that actual healthcare professionals have.

Speaker 1:

That you could see people doing on YouTube and maybe, if you're a really quick study, you can learn some of this yourself. Although it really should be safety oriented, everything should be sterilized. I should. You should have changes of sterile gloves that you can use. But these scenes, these stories, can go into wild places and one of the outer extremes is blood play and you can carve words into human skin, you can draw blood, you can apply and remove staples. I'm just saying these are things that you can do. Once again, it does not have to be a sexual thing and none of this is anything I'm advocating for, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility and just goes to show how weird and avant-garde you can get with your medical play if you're so inclined.

Speaker 1:

You really want to know what you're doing and I would say, if you're going to carve words into someone, the winter time is probably the best time to do that, anytime when they can wear long pants. You have to know quite a bit about human anatomy, which I would recommend anyway. I think it's fascinating stuff and you get more out of this kind of do-it-yourself at home in your living room theater, if you're well versed in human anatomy in the in the canvas that you're working on, you also need to know this stuff, to practice these kinds of hard skills. But I think, especially if you're the kind of person who trades on soft skills, learning hard skills as a hobby or as something that's maybe somewhere between a vocation and an avocation a little bit more than a hobby, perhaps a passion could be really exciting and can bring out whole new dimensions of how your mind works, how your heart works, how you play with other people. And I do think that people gravitate to fun. If you watch butterflies doing their thing in their natural habitats, you will not see a brutal Darwinian struggle for survival. I think if there is a brutal Darwinian struggle for survival going on as part of that, it is only in the interest of the furtherance of fun, and I think there's a layer of fun that's possible in almost anything, including the art of bringing levity and play to the science of medicine. But obviously you want to know what you're doing quite well. Knowing what you're doing, knowing cpr, proper sterilization those things like levity save lives.

Speaker 1:

I just remembered another thing. I used to work for a life coach and one of my co-workers was a convicted felon who got through the screening process because the screening process was deeply flawed. He was not supposed to be working there. It did not pay very much, so he had some side hustles and one of those was donating sperm. And one of those was donating sperm. He would go to sperm banks and jack off and donate his swimmers and I'm pretty sure they didn't know he was a convicted felon either. I always thought there was something deeply twisted and compelling about that.

Speaker 1:

You have been listening to another fine episode of Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes on K-Chung kchungradioorg around the globe, 1630 AM on the radio terrestrial. Certain parts of Los Angeles, mostly Chinatown, also a little bit of downtown, a sliver of Echo Park. The site for the show is medicated-minutesorg. The music is by Visions of the Universe, everything else is by me. I am Emerson Dameron, producer, creator, director, host, talent writer, the person that does the show Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes, where levity saves lives as well. Medicine and sterilization and basic protocols and attention to detail and hard skills can also save lives, thank you. 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. Simple, steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio. Crimson Transgressions, a bite-sized erotic thriller by Emerson Dameron. Find it before it finds you.

People on this episode

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Self Portraits As Other People Artwork

Self Portraits As Other People

The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo
Duncan Trussell Family Hour Artwork

Duncan Trussell Family Hour

Duncan Trussell Family Hour