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
Heaving Hearts, Clandestine Clubs, and Deadly Desires: A Night of Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers by Emerson Dameron
Dive into decadent, bodacious, strangely sensual, and frighteningly familiar new worlds of thrills, chills, and room-service bills.
It's another night of Bite-Sized Erotic Thrillers by Emerson Dameron - a sequel of sorts to EDMM S5E2: Sultry Secrets of Pulse-Pounding Passion - with re-ups on Sade, chardonnay, and rolls in the hay.
Written, produced, and performed by Emerson Dameron.
A production of KCHUNG Los Angeles.
I love you, personally. Levity saves lives.
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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
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Speaker 2:The scene opens at a lively house party with thumping music, chatter and clinking glasses. A man, jack, swaggering and self-assured, approaches a shy and hesitant woman, lucy, who is standing alone by the refreshment table.
Speaker 3:Yo, yo yo what's cracky lackin' sweet thang. Mind, if I slide into your blast radius, my bomb-banging bodied baby girl. Um hi okay sure Aight cool, cool Lemme. Introduce myself properly they call me Jack, but you can call me Smooth Operator. Smooth Operator. Um, okay, I'm. Lucy, lucy, huh, that's a name as sweet as honey dipped in gold. You lookin' like a straight-up masterpiece in the midst of this chaotic art show we call life. Oh, um, thank you. That's nice of you to say.
Speaker 3:Nice Nah, girl, I'm spittin' truth like a poet on fire. Nice, Nah, girl, I'm spittin' truth like a poet on fire. You got me feeling some kinda way like I wanna dive into your vibes and ride the wave of your swing song. Um, wow, that's quite a metaphor. Metaphor. Nah, baby, I'm speakin' straight from the source of all things. Sublime, my dime. You got me in a trance and a half like. I'm mesmerized by those tasty thighs, and I ain't even mad about it. Lucy giggles nervously. I I don't know what to say.
Speaker 3:Ain't no need for words, honey dip, let's just vibe you and me and take a tantalizing train trip for two to Sexy City, capital of Provocation Nation.
Speaker 2:As the music pulses louder, Jack takes Lucy's hand and pulls her into a playful dance, spinning her around the room. Lucy laughs. This is um. This is unexpected.
Speaker 3:Unexpected. Nah, baby, baby. This was written in the roots of the rooibos that gave me these tea leaves of radical real talk with a faint twist of raspberry. And you, babes are as prophesized. You and me, we're like peanut butter and jelly, hip hop and metal, destined to make sweet music, rock arenas and break waterbeds together".
Speaker 2:As they dance, lucy's hesitance melts away and she starts to mirror Jack's moves with more confidence.
Speaker 4:You know, jack, you're kind of like charming in a ridiculous sort of way.
Speaker 3:Ridiculous. Ah shucks. You flatter me, juicy Lucy, but hey, sometimes love is a little ridiculous, ain't it? True facts.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm talking about. They continue dancing, lost in the moment, as the scene fades out, with the sounds of the party in the background erotic thrillers.
Speaker 1:Someone asked Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalist philosopher, why he didn't travel more. It seemed like he would be an effective cosmopolitan man of the world with his intelligence and insight, and Thoreau replied I've traveled extensively in Concord. That was his home. I'd like to do that in LA. That's what I want to do with the rest of this year Reintroduce myself, maybe fall in love with the city, mix it up a little bit. I used to do that a lot, now lately not so much.
Speaker 1:I'm naturally gregarious. I am naturally an extrovert. I don't always feel that way. I can feel shy. Of course I feel shy, sometimes socially awkward, but people have observed that I like mixing it up with others. But I've been doing less of that.
Speaker 1:Some stuff came up. I made some discoveries. I recently discovered energized meditation, an embodiment practice. I had a lot more power in there than I expected. As you know, I practice solo polyamory. I don't want a relationship, I just want to have lots of wild sex. I'm upfront about that. It's been bananas lately, absolutely buck wild. Wilder than that, it defies the laws of physics Quantum sex, and I just discovered it within myself. I started doing energized meditation and it just came out.
Speaker 1:What is the practice. Should I tell you? I'm not gonna tell you. You don't need that information. It's gonna do you more harm than good. Put a pin in that. Actually, put a pin right here. Yeah, in your arm. You've gotten shots before you can do this. Just stick, yeah, just like that. Maybe it hurts for a fraction of a second. Do you want me to slap you? I got a flash in your eyes and said slap me, but ask me first. That's part of my protocol. Do you want me to slap you? If I don't, you'll never know what it feels like. This could be your shot. This could be your chance.
Speaker 1:That was not bad at all. I should be honest with you about something. I don't think that you're very smart. If you look at the intelligence of the modal American, you're a lot dumber than that. I play along, I humor you. The truth would drive you insane. You're someone that needs to be lied to, protected. I've preserved the bubble, but after a while I resent treating stupid people like they're intelligent. I'm just clarifying my position. Clarity kills ambiguity. So what are you going to do about it? Take me to court, bring your IQ test, except don't Only idiots think that that's a good way to measure what they call intelligence. Hmm, alright, this is different. This is interesting. I like where this is going.
Speaker 1:We had a breakthrough, we had a moment. If nothing else, Anyway, it started to become too much. I was terrified of my own power and most people are, and that's what impedes them from greatness but I was because I thought I could really destroy the world, accidently kill someone with my mind or my power, my presence, because I was just so damned embodied On a direct flight from Los Angeles to Rio. I had many hours to think about this. When I got on board, I realized I'd forgotten everything my phone, my laptop, books, tubes of toothpaste that I could read the ingredients and facts, something to keep my mind busy. No, it was just me. It was like a sensory deprivation. It wasn't, yes, irritation. I'm six foot one Flying coach is torture for me. We need armed revolt Heads on pikes. I have friends that have believed this for a second. I was always resistant, if not contemptuous. I ridiculed their beliefs to their faces. But now we're reaching an impasse.
Speaker 1:I realized on that plane ride that I completely lost my mind. I think it's the first time I've ever been happy. Ask if you are happy and you cease to be so. I don't have a lot of experience with happiness. Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'm skeptical of happiness as a goal.
Speaker 1:By the time I touched down in Rio, I was utterly mad Cracked Bananas off the deep end, no longer playing with a full deck, it was all jokers. Then I realized a couple of things. I realized where I screwed up. I realized that I could resolve to never do the exact same thing again, that I could honor my commitment. I was capable of that. I always have been Honoring your commitments, and living in integrity is just a process of elimination.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think you're brilliant. Otherwise I wouldn't have said that. I don't want to make your head explode. You're not stupid. Whatever. The opposite of that is. If we ever really understand intelligence, you'll be in that category. Maybe pass the muscle.
Speaker 1:Rather than telling you this technique, I'd like to show you. Yes, I'm finally accepting your invitation to sleep with me and have sex before we go to sleep. Yeah, you can spend the night. No, I have always been renting. It's you, it always was. You didn't know that, huh. But you work on your sense of humor. You gotta loosen up a little bit. Energized meditation. Let's do this. Let's get out of here. I hate this song, not really. Every now and then I hate some harmless thing just to get it out of my system. You look hot in that dress. You look like Jane Birkin. I mean, you know that. You know you're too cute. You look good. You look hot enough that I don't want to alienate you by telling you how sexy you are and the things that I want to do to you. We're cool like that. You're cool like that.
Speaker 5:What if there existed an esteemed society of intellectuals, a place where the greatest minds gather, dedicated to the unfathomable pursuit of knowledge, a place known as the Ptolemy Institute? And what if this Institute played host to a game so complex, so intellectually challenging, that it's more than just a game it's a battle of minds, known as Enhanced Canasta. In the early 20th century, a group of intellectuals, scholars and scientists came together to form the Ptolemy Institute, named after the great Greek mathematician and astronomer, claudius Ptolemy. This institute, hidden away from the public eye, aimed to create a space where the brightest minds could explore, innovate and push the boundaries of human knowledge. The years rolled on, the Ptolemy Institute became a sanctuary for intellectuals worldwide, a place where they could collaborate, debate and progress without the constraints of societal norms and expectations. The Institute thrived in its secrecy, its members diligently working towards breakthroughs that would subtly but significantly influence the world.
Speaker 5:Parallel to the evolution of the Ptolemy Institute, there emerged a game Enhanced Canasta. Born out of traditional Canasta, a card game of the Rummy family, enhanced Canasta evolved to be more than just a pastime. It became a tool for intellectual engagement, a game that encompassed elements of strategy, logic and critical thinking, a game that mirrored the intellectual rigor of the Ptolemy Institute itself. Over time, enhanced Canasta became an integral part of the Ptolemy Institute. It was no longer just a game but a rite of passage, an intellectual duel, a way to challenge and stimulate the minds of the members of the Institute. The game's complexity and intellectual demand mirrored the ethos of the Institute, making it a perfect fit for this society of scholars. Today, the Ptolemy Institute and enhanced Canasta stand as symbols of intellectual pursuit and rigorous academic exploration.
Speaker 5:The Ptolemy Institute, a prestigious society of intellectuals, is a testament to the relentless pursuit of knowledge. It embodies the power of collaboration and intellectual freedom, showcasing the impact that unbounded exploration can have on the world. Enhanced Canasta, on the other hand, is a testament to the power of intellectual engagement. It is more than just a game. It is a tool for stimulating the mind, challenging notions and fostering strategic thinking. It reflects the core values of the Ptolemy Institute, embodying the spirit of intellectual rigor and challenge Essence. The Ptolemy Institute and Enhanced Canasta represent the power of the intellectual mind. They showcase the potential that lies within each of us to learn, to innovate and to challenge the norms. They stand as a reminder of the importance of intellectual freedom and the power of rigorous academic exploration. They are a testament to the untapped potential of the human mind and the wonders that can be achieved when that potential is realized.
Speaker 1:First of all, you should know there are things you are better off not knowing. No, I'm not being condescending. I'm concerned. I'm concerned for your safety. I don't know that you know what you're doing. I know what I'm doing. I don't think you need to know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:I think, I've got it under control and I think you would, if anything, compromise that. I'm delighted by your daydream obliviousness. You are so far out to lunch that it's half past dinner time. You need a team. You need people to look after you. You need a sugar daddy. I'm not one of those. I can't provide you with that. Why could I just want? I'm not really concerned.
Speaker 1:You are interesting. I could take you on perhaps as an understudy. You might get smacked around a little bit, but you would emerge an expert in the field. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people crash and burn and I don't think you're going to do that. I don't know if you're hot enough to burn.
Speaker 1:Psychological, you have nothing. Uh, well, I mean, you're compared to me. You're not that sharp in the looks department, but I sense an intelligence. I've seen a lot of neediness. What I get from you is you want to connect like a real connection, not just blood-sucking parasitism like I typically see.
Speaker 1:I am feeling a little bit conflicted because you've sent some signals that are ambiguous. A little bit conflicted because you've sent some signals that are ambiguous. I think you're trying to come on to me but not broadcast that. You're coming on to me, which is unfortunate for you because I have pretty high standards Straight up. Love bombing is really the only way to get through to me. You gotta be the bomb. Bomb me with yourself.
Speaker 1:There are multiple schools of thought on that. Yeah, you sound very authoritative when you say I don't wanna. Well, yeah, let's see what you got. I'll try it before I buy it. But I don't pay. I get it for free. You know this. I'm less concerned for your safety when you're rolling with the boss the master, not the boss of you. That's a project management and HR nightmare waiting to happen. You will get fired and you will get us both in the news. It won't be my fault because you were seducing me. You came onto me and you know that. Admit it. Come on, don't be a liar. Just tell them that Life is for pleasure. Plants grow toward the sun and adults have sex the most fun way to pass time other than parasailing. But you really haven't done either, until you combine the two.
Speaker 1:Let me tell you a story about a woman I knew. By the end of it, maybe you'll know yourself. Her name was Aurora. She was the best ballet dancer in our group. Best in the city, not in the world, but nobody cared. She was the best right there and everyone knew it. She knew that, they knew it, but she didn't know it and she only knew the rest, unconsciously. That was her secret weapon. I knew Aurora better than she knew herself. So did most people.
Speaker 1:Everyone had a different version of Aurora that lived in their heads. The version that lived in Aurora's head was arguably the one with the least purchase in reality, and that version was usually enveloped in daydreams Spinning diamonds, dangling participles, deep royal blues and burning gold. Her dream world was vivid, ensconcing, but it didn't stop her from being kinesthetically brilliant. She was a dancer like no other. Her secret was that she had no idea. She just went with it. If she tried, the effort would have been an impediment. She didn't need to get out of her own way because she never got in it. Her head was so dreamy that her physical presence was purely steamy, as could be seen in her audition for an avant-garde version of Sleeping Beauty. The director Ivan was entranced by her, spinning her graceful snakery across the stage. She was deep in her own head. She had encountered Sarah, another dancer she'd known In ballet school. They had bonded about as much as any two people can bond. Before Sarah committed suicide, aurora felt somewhat responsible. She knew something was wrong but she hadn't done anything. She didn't want to intervene on a hunch. In her dreams they become even more intimate. Yes, in a sexual sense Reality couldn't hold a candle to the cascading volcanic orgasms she experienced in the dream world that she was doing just fine in the real world. She easily scored the part of Aurora, which wasn't even what she was auditioning for.
Speaker 1:Aurora always auditioned for parts she thought were too hard for her to get because that way when she failed she could learn something. But it wouldn't be too much of a shock, not even a disappointment, really. Disappointment was fleeting. She could escape into the dream world and ask the dream characters if they had something to show her and experience acts too depraved for urban dictionary. She knew a lot of this was acting out in her frustration and confusion and wondering why left in the wake of Sarah's suicide. She did the auditions to distract herself, to get out of her comfort zone, because her comfort zone was becoming deeply uncomfortable. As she danced her mind was way, way on the other side of the earth. She knew if she didn't get the part it would remind her that she's not special which she doesn't want to be Becoming special would be the end of everything. Ivan doesn't even know her name is Aurora. He believes in the power of nominative determinism and may have given her the part just based on that. But they were auditioning under numbers, not names. She got the part.
Speaker 1:Ivan rewrote the whole production around Aurora's aura of charisma. He'd become deeply obsessed with her. She got deeply into the world of the play, which began to merge with her dream world. Sometimes it was awkward. She dove into a passionate sexual relationship with Ivan and almost got him into the dream world, but it was a little bit too self-important.
Speaker 1:Also very obsessive, aurora was his muse, his most astute critic and most enthusiastic cheerleader, which is good. Ivan had a cheerleader fetish. The uniform was not negotiable. He was also into cannibalism not practicing and he didn't feel great about it. That obsession led to his developing an encyclopedic knowledge of the history and uses of salt. He could talk about that for hours. That was his charming side. When he had too much to drink he would confess to things that he probably shouldn't have. Aurora didn't know if he was just reflexively lying, but she realized she needed to get some space. She went to her favorite bookstore or regular hangout ran into a young man named Nikolai. Nikolai wore a sport coat with patches on the elbows. He was so self-conscious that Aurora developed a fascination with him. The only thing she knew about him was he was desperate to be liked, so she could project whatever she wanted onto Nikolai and imagine him to be the ultimate dream character and combination of all of the traits she admired and ached for and longed for and drooled over. Unfortunately, nikolai took that to mean he was doing something right and continued to overthink every detail of his presentation.
Speaker 1:Aurora had a fascination with how people behave in public places, the interaction rituals that drive it. She used Nikolai as something of a lab gerbil, the test subject for experiments and debauched sex and dubiously ethical behavioral experiments. It was all good fun among consenting adults. It was a much-needed break from the play. If you're involved in a scene with a lot of drama, it's important to have friends Friends with benefits or without Outside of that scene you'll understand immediately how unimportant all of that stuff is. But Aurora had a thing for bringing her worlds together and she could bring Nikolai into the dream world easily, which she did Sometimes thrice a day for threesomes with Sarah. Sometimes each of them came once. Sometimes they all came three times. Sarah kept upping the frequency. After the play debuted, to rapturous reviews, it became the talk of the local art scene.
Speaker 1:Aurora and Nikolai took Ivan out to celebrate. Ivan had become obsessed with ceiling fans and autoerotic asphyxiation and was getting close to seeing how the two could be combined, and that was too fascinating for him to realize that Nikolai and Aurora were sleeping together. He did manage to get drunk enough to get beside himself, to get over himself, if only temporarily, and long enough to get into the dream world. Aurora, sarah, ivan, nikolai found themselves together in the dream world. A spontaneous orgy broke out At. Nikolai found themselves together in the dream world. A spontaneous orgy broke out. At. First Nikolai had too many nerves and Ivan was too drunk. Aurora got bored and started channeling some other dream characters that she'd met, which is how she discovered that there was a portal to a deeper circle of the dream world hidden in the basement of a local sex dungeon. It was three in the morning. It took them about 30 minutes to get there. When they did, sarah told Aurora they needed to get the party going before the sun came up. It took about 30 more minutes. Then Nikolai threw on massive attacks, mezzanine and pretty soon they were going at it so hard that they summoned a group of demons.
Speaker 1:That's how I got involved. I'd known Aurora for a long time. I was one of her recurring dream demons. Aurora's dreams were a high-rent district, but at this point I'm flush enough to live in the dreams of anyone I want. After some good-natured teasing, nikolai started really going at it. He realized his true desire was to find himself and become who he was, which he did, and frankly it was glorious. I don't want to talk about it because he's taken on a whole new identity now and I don't want to diamond out. Ivan got over himself for good. For real, he became someone else. He realized he wasn't special and that saved his life. He was scheduled to die in six months, a drunk driving accident. The timing was good. My timing is always good. I'm a demon, my timing is demonic. He realized he wasn't really into cannibalism.
Speaker 1:He was starving for intimacy. For a while he lost his artistic juice. He also lost his muse, as Aurora realized her true desire was to become one with Sarah, which they did. They haven't been seen since. They left in a swirl of thrilling pyrotechnics. Isaac's next play was terrible, but the one after that was a whole new flavor. He accessed a different part of his psyche. It was really interesting.
Speaker 1:Stuff Spoke to a lot of different audiences at once. I'd like to say I helped with it. But I'm a demon, not a creative consultant. I've been around for thousands of years. At this point my tastes are pretty extreme. You can't say I'm great with people. You could say that I can't stop you. I wouldn't believe it. You might lose some credibility in my eyes. I would never say that I couldn't sell it. You might lose some credibility in my eyes. I would never say that I couldn't sell it to myself.
Speaker 1:All of my relationships seemed to end with this certain flavor of disappointment on the woman's side. My relationship with my last girlfriend, mia, began, I thought, with sort of a meet-cute quote-unquote in a bookstore. We were both in the philosophy section. We ended up talking about Bataille for about an hour, which of course led to very interesting sex from an anthropological perspective. She told me later I was a project. This was a pattern for her, and her friends could see it coming at this point, which is why they never liked me. She said when she quit smoking I started to quote-unquote reek of depression and have quote-unquote pigpen-type depression lines coming off of my body. We stopped having sex, which was the end of the relationship, like it always is, broke up somewhat acrimoniously, but she would call me for booty calls in the middle of the night. I wouldn't question it, I would just go. But I started to think that maybe she wasn't playing with a full deck either, which was weird. I'm usually keen on blaming myself for everything. It gives me a sense of agency. We stayed friendly after that and we stayed in touch.
Speaker 1:She invited me to go to a meeting of a society that she was part of. Once she got in my car she told me it was a secret society and I shouldn't tell anyone about it, and if I did she had a lot of dirt on me that she was fine putting out there. I said I would take it to my grave, which I totally would. A couple of my best friends said that they were trying to think of somebody in our social circle they would go to if they needed to dispose of a body they killed, and they both agreed I was 50 points ahead of the nearest competitor. I'm like a lockbox I can keep your secrets. I spend most of my time thinking about myself, but when we got to the meeting of the M Society I could understand why she was concerned. It was so strange.
Speaker 1:The place was designed. Everything was different shades of blue, neon blue, like blue velvet. Everything was a different shade of red. There's so many of them and some of them didn't go well together in a way that was disorienting and unconventionally beautiful. The disorientation was cumulative. There were no clocks. It was impossible to tell where North was or, after a while, where I was geographically or who I was.
Speaker 1:I could remember the last four digits of my social security number, but not the rest of it, which I realized when I was having extraordinarily passionate rough sex with Angelina, a high-ranking member of the group who I hooked up with when we stimulated each other intellectually more than we planned on in one of the salons. She told me to say her name and then asked for my social and I couldn't remember it. The sex kind of fell apart after that. She seemed really angry and disappointed in a flavor that I hadn't experienced before. Eventually I figured out that the problem was I was an offering for Mia, who's one of Angelina's students. She promised I would be totally compliant but didn't add that I'm really too self-absorbed and oblivious to deliver the goods. When it comes right down to it, considering that I'm a novelist by trade, I don't pay attention to details in quote-unquote real life. It's very hard to get through to me, and the women who do tend to be super intense or they're looking for a rescue dog. That flavor of disappointment is when they realize people get excited when other people change because it's the exception, it's not the rule. How many people do you know who have really fundamentally changed? I know a disproportionate number, but that's because I made a lot of friends in the M Society. Mia left in shame, which meant I could go back as much as I wanted.
Speaker 1:There were two echelons at the M Society. It turned out Well. It was pretty obvious from the beginning. The plan was to add me to the lower stratum, which was there to serve the higher stratum to give them guinea pigs to test out their ideas. I told Angelina I would quit coming to the salons, I would quit having sex with her, I might just give up everything I loved, unless she put me in the upper stratum. The upper stratum called themselves the Manipersuaders Bad branding, but it was for internal use only.
Speaker 1:They tried to be discreet, which served them well, since they were a secret society of people who got together to learn and practice techniques for manipulating other people into getting what they wanted. The name was obviously combining manipulation and persuasion. Usually, persuasion is good and manipulation is bad. And they wanted to go beyond good and evil, the core ideas. Number one people want what they can't have, so be desirable and be inaccessible, unknowable. To balance those things requires push-pull and a lot of teasing and intermittent reinforcement. Their number two value. This took a lot of practice and eventually you needed to rely on improvisation. It had to be in your muscle memory and in your bones and your DNA. Really, you had to play people in the manner of a great jazz musician Give them enough of what they want to keep the wheels turning, and give them enough well-timed punishment and occasional random punishment to keep them in your thrall and keep them confused and off balance. This sounds like an awful way to treat people. But, number three, you are the prize Convinced a lot of us the more that we did.
Speaker 1:The daily practices, affirmations and mantras that came along with that. We were the kind of people who, if we asserted our wills over others, starting with one other person in a sexual relationship, the world would become a better place, because we knew what we were doing and it certainly didn't seem as though anyone else did. We were the adults in the room, and adults are nothing if not greedy. And what's wrong with that? If you're hardwired for greed, you're hardwired for success, you're hardwired for influence. The world is going to recreate itself in your image.
Speaker 1:If you don't take rejection as a referendum on you or take your bad luck too seriously. Number four was life is unfair and can be gained. The fact that it's unfair is why you have a chance to succeed. You have one life. This is it. This is all we get.
Speaker 1:That wasn't on the list, but that's something I believe. I'm not exactly an atheist. I haven't figured out how to spin this in a way that's appropriately coquettish, but it kind of ties in with number five. You create your own reality and eventually it becomes the reality. Everyone you know sleep with, argue with, is a guest in your reality. Using certain techniques and practicing them every day eventually gives you the ability to decide what you want to feel, which takes away really any excuse to feel bad. You can make other people feel good too, sometimes in a way that ends up transferring a lot of their resources to you. If that's what they want to do, what exactly is the harm? It's win-win, it's something for nothing. It's magic, really.
Speaker 1:Angelina had a very particular specific reality that she created for herself and her regular guests, which included me, and the sex was absolutely phenomenal. Everything on her yes list was on my maybe list and vice versa, so the trade-offs were amazing. A lot of her stuff ended up being my stuff that I just hadn't tried yet I don't know what she thought about me and it seemed like to ask would be to reveal unattractive vulnerability bordering on weakness. She was completely obsessed with Suge Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, who's currently incarcerated. She claimed to have had an affair with the man in his heyday in the mid-90s. I will say she was remarkably well-preserved. She was cagey about her age. Once we went to pick up her medications and they asked for her date of birth, she wrote it on a piece of paper and slid it over to the clerk so she wouldn't have to say it. I don't know if she had an affair with Suge Knight or not. I don't know if any of the stuff she said was true or partially true or true, but it happened to someone else, definitely not to her. She was obviously still in love with Suge Knight. The M stood for MOB, which stands for Money Over Bitches, which is something the Bloods used to say to each other. The meetings were held at 662 Calhoun Way. 662 is also Money Over Bitches on a touchstone phone. It's in a lot of Tupac records and the 662 Club, which also had a red theme because it was owned by Suge Knight, who was affiliated with the Bloods, was one of the places that Tupac hit up the night that he died. Angelina was very into the Suge Knight mythos. She wouldn't shut up about it and what we found out is that Suge Knight still has a lot of enemies.
Speaker 1:The tactics through which the principles were practiced in the real world included believing in yourself way out of proportion to your abilities or your character or anything. You had to cultivate the kind of self-confidence that can only be completely delusional, because your delusions about yourself are the only thing that no one can really take away from you, and it's usually better to be high on yourself and wrong than down on yourself and right. That's not in their scripture. I may have heard it somewhere else. It may be original to me. People pay money to read stuff that I write. I must have something going on.
Speaker 1:Becoming a jazz master of manipulation was the other thing, and that's really just something you do with hardcore practice. Some of the guinea pigs were hard cases who were brought in so that people could do this stuff at the boss level before we went out to networking meetings or speed dating or cuddle parties, ayahuasca circles, all kinds of places to try working our magic on people. We had to become scientists, artists and connoisseurs of human nature to get very, not cynical. Cynical is limiting, Skepticism is enlightening. People are pretty terrible. You get to know a lot about them. They're terrible in ways that are easy to exploit. Do we resent the powerful because they lord it over us or because we'd rather be lording it over someone else ourselves? We're just not able to believe in ourselves or transcend the sort of masochistic morality that we picked up from somewhere. Do you even remember where you got the things you believe? Do you know if, maybe, the person who taught you those things had something to gain from it? We're thinking about. What else did your parents lie to you about? What do you really believe? Why are you afraid of your own power? Take off your glasses, god. Your eyes are beautiful. I'm just gonna look at you for a minute.
Speaker 1:A lot of this stuff was straight out of Dale Carnegie. Use people's names, prompt them to talk about themselves and let them do the work. Once you get really good at this, you don't have to try and figure out who's gonna be into it and just wind them up and watch them go. The biggest principle, of course, is reality creation, worldbuilding of a sort All the world's a stage. Life is your laboratory and it seemed like my life was turning into the coolest lark I would never have allowed myself to imagine I had lots of sex. I became a millionaire within six months. I started socializing with other millionaires there were a lot of them in the Manipursuaders and we got good at walking away while we were ahead. There was always someone around to hold the bag and we got good at walking away while we were ahead. There was always someone around to hold the bag and we got good at helping other people get what they want, which is pretty much guaranteed to destroy them. You might not want to know this, but there are a lot of people who were just better off without them having any power, and if you can neutralize those people by wiping out their self-confidence, the world really does become a marginally better place. I know you feel like a jerk believing that, but start looking for it and you'll see.
Speaker 1:Emotions are something you do. You can change your state pretty easily once you learn to play green sleeves on your emotions and you're having fun doing it and also showing up every day, dedicating yourself and doing it when you don't want to do it, which is the mark of a professional. You'd be surprised how easy you can elicit any state that you want and apply what you've practiced on yourself to manipulate others. All you really have to do is elicit their strategy. Emotions and values are malleable. Pleasure is everything. That's what doesn't go away if you stop believing in it. That's why flowers turn toward the sun. That's the only thing any living creature ever wants. Everything else is stuff that our ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine brains have somehow decided is going to help us in that pursuit, and we're just so wrong about so much of it. You really have no idea. It's a lot to learn. The reading list is kind of ridiculous. Once you learn it. It still takes a lifetime to master, but it's so much fun. Eventually you'll really surprise yourself.
Speaker 1:I always wanted to be a sex addict. I knew it would probably leave me feeling empty inside. That was a risk I was willing to take. That emptiness is where I used to be and I never really liked myself. So yet another win-win I was getting really good at those and I was pretty empty and bored and frustrated by the time I met Hayley. Hayley was oblivious to all of this stuff. She thought it was ridiculous. She was very sexy and also so mean, but at the same time so blunt I don't want to say empty Stubborn Could be defensive when cornered, but much more effective on the attack. Although she didn't seem to have much of an emotional response to most of this stuff, I happened to find one thing she was sensitive about. She did get a little bit reactive, but that was about as much of an emotional response as I was able to get out of her. Of course I was totally in love. I took her to the meeting of the Manipursuaders because I thought she would be perfect for this. It's like she's bulletproof.
Speaker 1:Angelina thought she was an offering and completely fell apart. When she couldn't get through to Hayley. She lost it. We had to call her therapist and her mom. It was humiliating. We thought she was really overreacting to this. It must have touched on some major attachment wound, but it turned out that was just the Jenga block that brought down Angelina's tower.
Speaker 1:Her life wasn't going well. She had decided that she could entirely create her own reality. But some things are true and some things are not permitted. She was at the boss level. She was screwing around with the IRS and the FBI. She thought she'd figured out how to defy the laws of physics when she antagonized some people that turned out to be owed a significant debt by Suge Knight. They're never going to get that money from him, but they could get it from Angelina. She was obviously flush. The manipersuaders brought in a lot of cash tax-free. She said it was a religious organization. It's a stretch, but I'll have to think about that Now that I'm out of this. I have a very strong anthropological interest in it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, they held her hostage in a hotel room and said they were going to throw her out the window if she didn't drink a glass of urine. She drank the first glass of urine, because that's something she's into, and then asked if they were going to let her go, and they said no. There was another second glass of urine that she hadn't been informed about. She didn't like the source of that urine, so she decided to let them defenestrate her and throw her out the window. She thought she'd discovered a workaround for gravity. Turns out she was wrong. She broke her leg and was lying in the grass howling for help for maybe half an hour until the cops showed up. They took her to the hospital, but one of the cops figured out who she was and had an unrequited super crush on an FBI agent who he tried to impress by turning over fugitives that the FBI agent was hunting for, which never did him any good Nothing ever would. It just made him seem more and more pathetic. That didn't help Angelina.
Speaker 1:She went to prison for a while and when she got out she made a documentary about the Manipursuaders and how she got Manipursuaded out of everything. She was inspired by those people in NXIVM who got into NXIVM because they wanted to get rich, which is the only reason to get into NXIVM, which never said it was trying to save the world. It was hyper-capitalist personal enrichment cult. The Manipersuaders were at least trying to save the world. When NXIVM fell apart, these people started new careers as wounded refugees and critics of NXIVM, and now they're getting rich off of that. Angelina's still working on her hustle. She's obviously got some cash coming in and she's developed a thick skin. She doesn't even mind when her followers come out and raz her while she's doing community service. I had a wild come out and raz her while she's doing community service.
Speaker 1:I had a wild, passionate loving-in-its-own-way sex romp with Hayley, it turns out I really do have issues, and finding someone oblivious and thus passively enabling is not what I needed. To get better, and I really did want to get better. To me, that was always the whole point of this. I wanted to lift up other people too. I got a lot of good sex out of it and I gave the best sex of my life Like a comedian. I wasn't there to get laughs, I was there to give them. I take pride in my work.
Speaker 1:It was an interesting adventure and there were some bumps, but now I can look back on it and I might write a book about it. Maybe it'll become a New York Times bestseller. I'm still figuring out how to spin it so it makes me look awesome and doesn't incriminate me. You'd be surprised how easy it is to do that. Just don't start anything with Shug Knight. It's not worth it. There's absolutely no way it's ever going to be worth it.
Speaker 1:Outro Music, thank you. Drove all night hugging the coast headed up to to Washington State, to the Ptolemy Institute, a rickety old mansion bought and refurbished to be inhabited by a clandestine order of intellectual elites who don't like to be called clandestine. So I'm trying to get that out of my system on the way up there. Most of them were driven out of academia by the influx of sophists and their main activity was a card game called Enhanced Canasta, which is sort of like Canasta except instead of suits they have academic disciplines Philosophy, psychology, mathematics, science, geography of breakfast. Basically the sum of the intellectual capital of the human species, of the intellectual capital of the human species so far as it used to go on a university campus.
Speaker 1:I used to have an easier time with all-nighters. I tried to educate myself. I listened to Smithsonian Folkways compilations. After a while, when I realized that I didn't remember anything from the previous 45 minutes and I may have been in a hypnagogic sleep state while doing 90 on the freeway, I switched over to ghetto tech. You do what you gotta do, feeling good matters Enhanced. Canasta had mostly been an underground thing for years and years until the rise of Abraxas, the Adept Albus, aka Abraxas, bold as Love, who brought a certain rockstar charisma and self-consciously, flamboyantly obnoxious heel quality to the game. He dressed like a rockstar, communicated like a young Pauly Shore. From a strategic point of view, there wasn't really anything special about him. He got wins, but not consistently. He didn't bring any particular innovation to the game.
Speaker 1:He put on a show. Espn2 was starved for content. They started running Enhanced Canasta. Some old-school Canasta fanatics got worked up about it. A lot of other people got interested and it became a thing, but not really exciting on an intellectual level until Eurydice Fleming came along. Eurydice is a dark-haired, incandescently brilliant, fascinatingly enigmatic player of immense beauty and intellect, known for her sensual allure, five-alarm smoke show. Unbelievably hot, even more so because she downplays it. She has to, she wants to be taken seriously, and it's mostly dudes playing this game, and it's dudes that didn't get laid a lot when they were younger and didn't think they were ever going to, and now they are. But they're using it to work out their bitterness from adolescence.
Speaker 1:One of them being Albus. Albus and Fleming have clearly been lovers at some point. You can tell if you read between the lines. They're not anymore and Fleming is a much more interesting player. Typically in enhanced Canasta, games are won through gathering Canastas sets of cards in one suit. You get a lot of philosophy cards.
Speaker 1:You put those down you can change the way that philosophy works. You can innovate within the field. Fleming has made a name for herself, winning with what are called MELs, smaller sets of cards from different suits or disciplines, which are little constellations of bits and pieces and theories and ideas and facts from different areas that she puts together to come up with something that feels brand new, and it's very exciting to those of us who consider ourselves generalists, who know a little bit about many things. Most of it's probably wrong, but in her case she's changing the game. I'm trying not to use that expression when I get to the Ptolemy Institute because I don't want them to think I'm an idiot. I'm a big boy, I don't care what they think of me I can handle being disliked, it's just.
Speaker 1:I don't want to stand out. I'm not going to visit. This is an investigation. There's been a mysterious death the.
Speaker 1:Grand Dean of Enhanced Canasta, a fellow called Dean White Harrison yes, that is his middle name and yes, he does use it, or did until he died, supposedly of overthinking himself to death. Implausible on its face and a lot of suspicion immediately fell on Euretice Fleming, for reasons that made some sense. If you follow Enhanced Canasta and others, that seemed odd. She's a woman, she was disrupting the game. She's extremely attractive and she'd been saying odd things, things that didn't harmonize with the worshipful quality that these people put on being cerebrally led, the life of the mind at the expense of the body, the soul, the crotch. She was spinning fire. She seemed like she wasn't holding back anymore. She didn't care what these guys thought of her and that was a dangerous position to be in.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people thought that she had something to do with Harrison's untimely demise, especially since it left an opening for her to claim the Enhanced Canasta title, which was obviously very important to her. You could see it if you watched her play and you could totally see it when you met her in person. Oh my god, I was not prepared. She's a bombshell on the live streams, she's the total package in interviews and she's an absolute knockout in person. I knew I was going to make a fool of myself. I had to talk to her. I couldn't walk over. I had a battering ram between my legs, but I managed to get over there and I just started asking the sort of questions that you ask to sound people out. Somehow I was just right in the flow. It was one of those times when, against all odds, everything is working for you.
Speaker 1:You can't say anything. That's not brilliant and funny and a little bit adversarial to keep the push-pull happening and the sparks flying. And we just connected intellectually and sexually and what I assume it's like to connect spiritually. If you believe in anything, we hit it off. I had to work very hard to stay Switzerland. I had to stay neutral because I was investigating this death and she was not the prime suspect. Objectively, I don't think she had anything to do with it. I did a lot of investigation. I don't think there's any way that she could have been responsible for Harrison's death. But there's a lot of other weird stuff that I found.
Speaker 1:The Ptolemy Society is essentially a church. They are carrying the torch of old-school academia, of the canon of intellectual capital, of the Enlightenment project. The life of the mind is where they live. They believe that the unexamined life is not worth living and the way to keep the examined life from being absolute torture and drudgery is to read the classics. See things through that prism. Be rational, be reasonable, be above the fray, use mental models. Think of 2nd, 3rd, 69th order effects. As with any religion that represses physicality, carnality, sex, the force of creation itself, there's going to be a lot of sublimation If you watch these matches, the molten sex that they're keeping down, it's like putting a tarp over a volcano. It's incredible to watch.
Speaker 1:What I discovered about Fleming was that she was a master of sex transmutation as a way of winning enhanced canast. How does that work? The romantic tension was off the chain. Something had to happen. Every time we ran into each other, the banter was exquisite, the toads outside, the plants in the botanical garden, one-celled organisms were saying just pound it out, you two Get it over with. Eventually we did.
Speaker 1:We ran into each other in the lounge of the boutique hotel in the building, five rooms upstairs that they rented out on Airbnb. Enhanced Canasta fans would come in and pay big money to sleep there, but not all the time. Sometimes the rooms were vacant. Fleming, eurydice, knew which ones they were. We both got a little tipsy. We danced around the subject for hours and she invited me upstairs. Big ups to Eurydice. We set off a smoke alarm. We set off car alarms in Oregon and Idaho and Vancouver and I think that set something free in her. What I can only call intuition became extremely acute. Intuition is a real thing, much like charisma, which is what Abraxas had Pretty much the only thing he had. As far as I could tell, some people are, at the very least, preternaturally intuitive, if not somehow cognizant, on levels that science does not adequately explain. Eurydice is one of these people. She had figured out how to get into Abraxas' digital accounts when she knew that he was cheating on her.
Speaker 1:It was an open relationship, but they were supposed to communicate about what was going on, which Abraxas did not to Eurydice's satisfaction or at all. So she had to find out for herself what he was up to, an extremely painful process that drove her a little bit nuts, but the upshot was that she had access to Abraxas's private life. She knew that there was more going on there than he was letting on. We figured out there's a reason that he became a star. He is running an entirely different version of Enhanced Canasta on an underground circuit, and I'm laughing to keep from crying, because the stakes are much higher. This one is about total control of the human race, enslavement of everyone, slave, morality for the master, morality for Abraxas and eventually Abraxas, only because his plan is to win against these other scumbags that he's brought in. He definitely killed Dean White Harrison because he has been openly bragging about it. He's spoiled and, in the end, not very bright, but very mean-spirited, very cynical, and he's always gotten away with everything.
Speaker 1:He doesn't have the OPSEC that he needs for this kind of project. But the question is, who's going to stop him? Eurydice suddenly becomes uncharacteristically reticent when that comes up. Eurydice had a weird childhood. She was raised in a cult that you've never heard of because it wasn't one of the more interesting or successful cults. There was a woman in the cult who was from a lineage of witches practicing magic with a K who taught Eurydice a lot of what she knew. That was what was driving her mad, because she had been using the stuff to come up with melds and come up with melds that were better than Canasta's and change the game, for lack of a better description. And she knew how to stop Abraxas using those techniques. But that would expose her and her Ptolemy Institute career would be over. She didn't even want to tell me about it, but I reassured her that I'm Antonio Snow.
Speaker 1:The reason I'm helping the good guys in law enforcement is to stay out of prison. I was an international con man. I was a card counter. I beat the house every single time. I was a safe cracker. No, safe was safe when I was around. I killed the Buddha on the road because for a while I was practicing Buddhism to try to restore my reputation, and I met the Buddha on the road and I gutted him, Although I don't think he was the Buddha. I think he was just a transient.
Speaker 1:I'm a monster. That's probably flattering myself. I am a crook. I'm a crook who's trying to make good. Anybody that looks into my background is going to know enough about me to know that I'm not a good person. I don't know if anyone's a good person. I think that everyone else is as terrible as I am and I'm the only one who's being honest about it, Although it makes me question if we're really good or bad. I think those are limiting. We limit ourselves that way.
Speaker 1:I think the answer is to go beyond good and evil, which Eurydice could certainly do. We used our wits, our gift of gab banter, our chemistry, our sensuality, our carnality, our sexuality. We managed to outmaneuver Abraxas in the ultimate high-stakes round of Enhanced Canasta, which turned out to be the last I had to face the consequences of my actions. Eurydice had to really change not just the game but the way that knowledge is understood. It changed adaptability, that's, the understanding, the instinct, the ability to forget that you forgot what you knew and get out of your own way. That really matters in the age of discontinuity. You've got to take care of yourself, and for me that's life-threatening sex, Ideally with Eurydice.
Speaker 1:No-transcript. Kchungradioorg slash. Donate if you're nasty. This is Emerson Dameron. This has been emerson dameron's medicated minutes presenting a night of bite-sized erotic thrillers medicated-minutescom. I love you personally. Celebrity saves 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 something.
Speaker 3:Steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio. Crimson Transgressions, a bite-sized erotic thriller by Emerson Dameron. Find it before it finds you.
