Nothing Will Save You from Yourself

You can meditate, manifest, and “connect with your ancestors” all day, but if your sleep is wrecked and your habits are chaos, the signal you get back is going to be chaos too. We start with a hard pivot to basics: nutrition, rest, kindness, emotional control, and the kind of community you can actually maintain. From there, the question gets sharper and more personal: do you even believe you deserve what you say you want, or are you coaching yourself into irrelevance and calling it humility? 

Then things get weird on purpose. We move through lust, power, and performance, including a noir spiral with a “desire engine,” a barber shop that turns shame into evidence, and the way people use precision language to hide from accountability. Along the way, Ask A Sadist takes on a real relationship anxiety: discovering your partner watches porn. The point isn’t to panic or moralize. The point is to get specific, think about consent and values, and learn how to ask what someone actually likes about what they watch. 

The closing stretch is a practical communication tool you can use immediately: detox from rescue language for 10 days. If you hear yourself reaching for “you saved me” or “I can’t live without you,” swap it for sensory truth and clean action: tight chest, go for a walk, talk tomorrow. It’s not romance-killing. It’s drama-killing, so desire can finally tell the truth. 

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Transcript

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Ancestors And Basic Self-Care

Emerson Dameron 0:30

K-Chung Los Angeles, sixteen thirty AM K Chung Radio dot ORG. You're listening to Emerson Damron's Medicated Minutes, LA's number one avant-garde personal development program, where we talk about sex, drugs, power, and the most interesting subject of all, as well as the biggest star in the EDMM firmament. That would be you. I am Emerson Damron. I've been connecting with my ancestors quite a bit lately. I wanted to do that for years, and then it started happening, and now I cannot shut it off, because they are in my blood, they're in my DNA, they are everywhere I go. Some jacked up stuff happened on my paternal side not that many generations ago. Everybody agrees on that, nobody agrees on specifically what it is. And maybe I don't want to know, you know? I used to think I wanted to know. I used to think I wanted to know everything. I was always angry that I was not afforded enough time in one life to even possibly get through a tiny sliver of a fraction of all of the knowledge and wisdom and experience that there is to be gleaned theoretically from such a life. Now I'm wondering if I can maybe cut back a little bit. Get back to the basics. That's the thing that people don't talk about when they talk about I want to connect with my ancestors, I want to connect with myself, I want to get right and figure out who I am and what I'm doing, and do I even support that? Is it something I can get behind? This whole myself thing. It's hard to do that when things are out of whack. It's hard to do that when your health is not great, it's hard to do that when you are taking in things that are doing more harm than good, perhaps. It's always a good time to just revisit the basics. Nutrition, sleep. Is there kindness in your life? Can you handle yourself emotionally? Can you maintain a community? Can you develop and maintain habits that benefit you as well as other people around you? And yes, your future bloodline, should you have one? I have a vasectomy, so I don't have to worry about it. I'm just gonna have more great sex and then I'm out of here. No permanent damage done. If any of my descendants end up connecting with me, it will either be an accident or it will be something that they were so committed to doing that I will honor it. Because I am that kind of guy, and I will continue to be that kind of guy well after I'm dead. When you draw power into yourself, this is what magic is, and you begin to know what you really want and not be afraid of it anymore, and impose your will on the world, develop the confidence that comes from getting those wins on the board and realizing that you don't have to be perfect and that perfectionism only filters your blessings. Here's a habit you can develop. At some point during the day, I would recommend morning or evening because they're easy to remember, but pick a time and think about these questions. What lies about yourself did you grow up believing? How does your childhood experience still present itself in the ways you navigate life as an adult? Of all those absurd things that you experienced as a wee one? How many of those can be tied to the absurd things that you experience now? Do you actually believe that you deserve the things that you want for yourself? Do you think it's a good idea to give the keys to somebody like you for all of that? If you don't, then why not? What's missing? What do you have to do to get there? What ways are you making yourself small and limiting yourself and selling yourself short and coaching yourself into irrelevance? Do you just want to be seen? These are all questions you could be asking yourself and examining in some depth before you start trying to do energy manipulation and connect to your ancestors, because right now you might just get on their nerves. Do some work on yourself. Or listen to this show that's just as good. And when we're done, you're gonna be a different person than you were when you walked into this. This is Emerson Dammer's Medicated Minutes, medicated dash minutes dot com, or anywhere you get podcasts. Welcome to the show already in progress.

Eye Contact And Dangerous Intimacy

Emerson Dameron 5:32

Do you know that? Yeah, you do. I know you know that. I'm not supposed to know that you know that. You know that. You don't think you're supposed to know it, but you know. You know what's in there. You know some of what's in there. From looking in your eyes, I know that you're either curious, open to the mystery, loving the questions, or you're putting it all out there. Or wanting to think that you're in love with the questions, and or think that you're putting it all out there. In reality, the mystery has more layers to the point where it's still reality, but not any sort of reality that you've talked about or heard about. I find people that eyes like yours tend to be somewhat different from others. Off beat or on a beat that no one else can hear, your eyes tell me, your eyes tell me there's a riveting story to tell about that person, her personality. How she got her personality, how she keeps herself open to experience. When you look deep in someone's eyes, you feel like you're looking into her soul, reading her inner thoughts, making a dangerous kind of connection because intimacy is the transgression of boundaries, and there's always a twist of violence in there. You have to own your capacity for violence to put yourself and those around you completely at ease. With me, it's really interesting to see how people can communicate with their eyes alone without saying a word. Subconsciously, even tell a lot about someone from her eyes. For one example, someone can be an open book to you, or she could well be hiding something from you by making it seem like she's an open book to you, or just hiding it because she can't. She doesn't mind if you know it. What are you gonna do? Nothing. She doesn't open her book for everybody, and she never opens her book for people that get angry at her for not opening her book. But when the eyes are just so mysterious, it makes you want to really find out what's really going on with this person. And what she's really thinking about you. So interesting, don't you think?

Politics Fatigue And Private Beliefs

Emerson Dameron 8:14

Most of it is not good. He seems like a bad egg, he rubs me the wrong way. I try not to think about it any more than I have to. We are not supposed to think about the president every day. And as far as all of the admittedly bad stuff that is going on around him, like the dust or a pig pen and peanuts, I'm not sure exactly what I can do that's gonna make any big difference. I could go to a protest, I could get a stick beating, I could get laid at the protest. Lots of things could happen. I don't think that it's gonna change. I don't think he's gonna have a heart attack. From that, or anything else I do. It's gonna be the burgers, or he's gonna be eaten by a shark. It's sad when anyone dies so far that we know of, but uh this could be the first one that is hilarious through and through. But, you know, there's not a whole lot I can do, and when other people are out doing their moral grandstanding, which always seems to just coincidentally connect directly to their immediate material interests. I'm at home interrogating my own beliefs. And yes, that does mean masturbation. That's just part of it. I'm questioning myself, I'm questioning everything. I started questioning myself when I was 11 or 12. I questioned myself hard when I was a teenager. I was going crazy with questions and beliefs that I needed to interrogate. Believe me, I interrogated those beliefs, and I'm here to tell you there ain't nothing wrong with it. If you got a belief, whip it out, beat it like a red-headed stepchild. It will produce a feeling that is profoundly satisfying. Don't get hooked on that feeling. You want to be able to go get that somewhere else. And you can do that when you know the worst thing that can happen is you will go home and roll around in bed with yourself, and you are the best lover and hater you have ever had. You're keeping that all for yourself. That'll teach 'em. Try it, see what happens.

Detective Vale And The Desire Engine

Emerson Dameron 10:33

First of all, nobody exploded. That's the language of hysterics. Exploded. Very theatrical, very you. The kind of word people reach for when they need the room to gasp so they don't have to think. The correct phrase is uh experienced rapid structural disagreement. Precision matters. People who can't handle precision are the ones who end up meeting detectives. I told Detective Vale this while she stood in my kitchen staring at the scorch mark shaped like a woman arching backward. She kept looking at it like the wall had done something indecent on purpose. Walls have been making suggestive gestures since Pompeii. If that offends you, the problem is not the wall. You seem nervous, she said. I laughed, but not cruelly, educationally. The way you laugh when a child mistakes volume or authority. Detective, you're projecting. People hate that word because it collapses their entire performance into one syllable. Saves time, saves everyone the embarrassment of watching you invent feelings so you can accuse someone else of having them. I poured coffee from the machine Mara brought before she disappeared. It hissed like a blackmailer with emphysema. Mara was my wife's intimacy consultant. You already decided that sounds suspicious, but that tells me everything I need to know about the quality of your imagination. Your suspicion is not evidence. It's just the noise your mind makes when it doesn't want to feel ordinary. My wife, Celeste, hired her to restore polarity. Celeste collected phrases like that from podcasts hosted by men who moisturized aggressively and spoke in the soft, wounded voices of people who have never been told no hard enough. Mara arrived every Thursday with a leather case and the serene contempt of someone who charged by the revelation. She said my problem was control. I said her problem was saying things like that in my house while drinking my coffee. That was banter. Adults used to understand banter. Now everything is a microaggression if the wrong person feels it. Vale opened the basement door. I told her not to. She asked why, in that practice tone they teach in the academy, when they want you to know they've already decided you're the problem. I said, Because the stairs are unstable, and I'd hate for your recklessness to become my paperwork. But that was a concern. Genuine concern. But women in authority are trained to interpret concern as a threat. It keeps the seminars funded and the promotions flowing. If you find it being protected, that is not my pathology. That is yours. She went downstairs anyway. Of course she did. I followed because I'm cooperative. The cooperative ones always get treated like suspects. But notice how that works. The basement smelled a burnt velvet ozone and the expensive perfume Mara wore during our private sessions. They were not sexual sessions. That is a disgusting oversimplification invented by people who can only understand power when it's naked. They were experiments in radical honesty conducted without clothing because clothing is the first lie society tells the body. I merely respected the methodology. If that makes you uncomfortable, examine why you needed a lie so badly. Vale found the red button behind the champagne refrigerator. What does this do? Nothing. She pressed it. Of course she pressed it. People like her always press the thing they were told not to press, then act shocked when the world answers. See? Somewhere beneath us machinery coughed awake. This proved nothing. Correlation is not causation. You're better than that, or you should be. She discovered the mirrored room. Again, not a sex dungeon. The dungeon is a medievalist slander for people who need the past to feel superior to the present. It was a consensual reflection environment. The restraints were decorative mostly. If you need every object labeled with a consent form before you can look at it, that is a new problem. They'll touch the brass plaque inside the door. Panic room, occupancy three. Three? She asked. Like arithmetic was an accusation. Manufacturer's optimism. Your wife, Mara, and you? That's an accusation disguised as arithmetic. Do better. She looked at me. I look back harder. This is where weak men confess. They mistake silence for moral authority and start offering their throats. I know better. Silence is just bullying without vocabulary. So I spoke first. I explained that Celeste had become jealous of Mara. Vale said Celeste was missing too. I explained that jealousy makes people unpredictable. Unpredictable people leave rooms. Sometimes they leave towns, sometimes they leave evidence that looks convenient to someone who already decided the story. Vale asked why Mara's blood was under my fingernails. I explained that intimacy is messy. If you never left a mark on someone to claim to care about, I'm not sure you ever cared about anyone at all. She asked why Celeste's wedding ring was welded to the detonator. I explained that marriage is complicated. People who need marriage to be simple are usually the ones who fail at it first. She asked why I purchased a military grade blasting cap. I said, What about the illegal fireworks warehouse across town? She said, We're not discussing that. Convenient. See how quickly the rules change when the light points in the wrong direction? But the machinery beneath us began to throb. Not mechanically, but almost romantically. Mara had called it the hero station. She believed desire could be compressed into physical force. A sigh could be electricity, shame could be hate, betrayal could be something with a measurable blast radius. Ridiculous, obviously. Except it worked. Reality has a way of humiliating the people who decide in advance what is allowed to be true. The first time Celeste watched from behind the glass while Mara whispered instructions into my ear. I won't repeat them. Not because they were obscene, because they were proprietary. At the critical moment, every light in the house burst. Celeste applauded, then cried, then asked to go next. See their consent, their enthusiasm, the teamwork, the things people claim to want until they get them and have to live with the consequences. But Mara wanted more power. Celeste wanted more truth. I wanted everyone to stop making demands in tones I found disrespectful. The final experiment required all three of us. A closed circuit. Desire, jealousy, confession. Mara asked whom I loved. Celeste asked whom I wanted. I said they were both being insecure. Insecurity is just aggression that hasn't found its spine yet. The engine overloaded. Now Vale stood in front of it, watching the pressure gauge climb through red toward a color I can only describe as divorce. What did you tell them? She asked. Nothing explosive. Watch how carefully I choose my words. You should try it sometime. The pipes began screaming. Vail drew her gun, which was melodramatic and frankly hostile. People reach for their weapons or their narrative starts losing. I raised my hands, but not in surrender. In illustration. I'm the victim here. Where are they? I don't know. The mirrored wall flickered. Behind it, two silhouettes appeared. Celeste Amara, alive, interdependently bound in the engine's red glow, called as saints in a dirty cathedral. They had not been trapped, but they had been waiting for me. Celeste's voice came through the speaker, soft and pleased. Tell her I smiled at Vale. The smile of a man who has already won the argument and is simply waiting for the other person to notice. You see how they gang up on me? Classic. Always the same pattern, two against one, and somehow I'm the problem. Mara turned the final dial. The room tightened around my heartbeat like a fist that already knew the answer. So I told it the truth. Not all of it. I'm not a monster. Monsters are the ones who need you to believe they're monsters so they could keep the ordinary. I told Vale the engine ran on a concealed desire, and mine had always been the most volatile ingredient. Not my desire for Mara, not my desire for Celeste, my desire to be witnessed, wanting both, and forgiven before I ever apologized. The rarest commodity. The one everyone pretends they don't keep a score on. The gauge hit maximum. Celeste whispered our safe word, accountability. I had always hated that word. It is the favorite word of people who have never had to survive without an audience. Then the basement experienced rapid structural disagreement. And if that sounds like an explosion to you, Detective, that is not my failure of language. That is yours.

The Slide From Naughty To Chaos

Emerson Dameron 20:01

Not salacious. We're not going over the uh borderline into perversity just yet, but you make yourself giggle a little bit. It's a funny story. Then uh as you go on, you do some naughty things, and then maybe an evil thing or two. Pretty soon you're doing catastrophic things. You've entered the world of deviance and uh anarchy. And sexy, sexy, peachy, strawberry, eggplant time. Oh yeah. And it's undeniably alluring. You can't really share this with people. People are still prudish about this. The arousal scares them, the power that it brings. You can keep it to yourself. Uh you can be uh somewhat brazen about it if you find the right place. You can get into the clubs, the back rooms, the underground, the speakeasies, you can meet your people. You might meet a someone or someones who are just right on your wavelength, captivating, charming, funny, deep, and passionate. Um they can be rowdy, and in the end, salacious, perverse, altogether delightful. And now you've found the place for those.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

And you don't know where to begin, you can catch your second win with H on Los Angeles. Sixteen thirty a.m. H on Radio. Org too cool to be ignored.

Ask A Sadist On Porn Anxiety

Emerson Dameron 22:26

As most of you are well aware, you are listening to Ask a Sadist, LA's most feared agony columnist. I am a sadist with a heart of rugged gold, helping you solve problems that, of course, you could never solve on your own. There's nothing like having a sadist on your side. It means the world to me when you let me be mean to you. And if you are listening to a program called Ask a Sadist and you don't want to be, or you feel as though you are not fully informed coming in of what the program was going to be like, I have limited sympathy, mainly because you apparently, for all I can tell, are still listening. In which case, because you're not stupid, I will give you that much. You are doing this to yourself much more intentionally than you realize. Oh, could that be sublimated masochism at work? It is everywhere. It is a disease, and the only cure for it is sadism, and that's why sadists need to each one teach one and multiply our numbers just to take care of the vast number of aspiring victims that grows every day. We have a communique from the listening public. Dear sadist, I found out my boyfriend watches a fair amount of porn. I don't know what an unfair amount of porn would be, since it's the only thing left that's free, but we'll get back to that. I'm not opposed to it in principle, oh good, but the specific content surprised me, and now I keep wondering whether it reflects what he actually wants versus what we do together. Is this worth a conversation, or am I inventing a problem? Reading too much Seattle. There is a glaring omission in this letter, RTM, and I think you know that. It bears all of the hallmarks of an intentional omission designed to provoke me, in which case, moderately well played, save for the one hallmark that's key to most such provocations, which would be any sort of visible point. So I'm going to take this seriously, and I'm going to say, you know, a lot of this is contingent on what he is actually watching. There's a lot of porn out there. It covers the waterfront. It runs the gamut. Most of it I find distasteful. For some reasons that I can't quite articulate. I end up feeling sick to my stomach if I watch more than about 10 minutes of it, in part because it is uh skewed heavily these days toward the most vulgar, poorly thought-out, poorly presented sort of thing that passes for sadism that makes the rest of us look like a bunch of goons. I'm also not a spectator of sex, unless that's what I'm feeling that day, I'd much rather be a participant most of the time. Heavy porn consumption makes that less likely, not more. However, I can't really diagnose what this means for your relationship unless I have some idea of what this guy is into. My first thought is, you know, run-of-the-mill gonzo. Ethically dubious casting couch productions, which certainly has disturbing implications. Vis-a-vis idea of consent. But if what we're talking about is irrumatio, just standard rough oral sex, which is almost as ubiquitous as the stupid step-sibling porn that is everywhere to the point where and yes, I do survey the landscape of porn because it's relevant to what I cover here in obvious ways, and some less obvious, but from what I've seen, majority of you prefer the most frying pan to the head obvious explanations for everything, especially when you get to do some moral grandstanding. Cast aspersions on someone you suspect is having more fun than you are. If we're talking about this run-of-the-mill rough sex type porn, or BDSM light, it beggars belief that you would contact a program called Ask a Satist. Maybe you assume the opposite implication. Maybe he likes vanilla stuff, and you like the rough stuff, and you're wondering if his tastes are more MOR than he lets on. That could be the case, but you did not spell it out for me, and so I can't really spell it out for you except to suggest that you find out what it is that he likes about this stuff. You don't have to share it with him, but if you can get your head around it, you can understand it from his perspective, then the relationship is in good shape. If not, well, life is a lot shorter than you think. Reading too much in Seattle, that's why you are not writing enough. Explain yourself. Is it humiliating? Please keep in mind, I like that. I love it when you humiliate yourself. Don't hold back. This is asked.

Forgetting As A Survival Skill

Emerson Dameron 27:48

When you hear church girl, you think slut, sluting at an international level. Serious candidate for the slut Olympics. Kinda slut because it's fun. And also because you're so guilt ridden that it eats you alive, and you need some catharsis, which I was happy to provide. In this case, he also needed a benevolent disciplinarian. Another service that I offered. But having a service DOM didn't seem to do it for her all the way. That was one hole. There were a few holes that could be filled. There was one that everyone around us was still struggling with, and that was the hole in her heart. I put my work in, but I wasn't shocked, and frankly, I wasn't entirely disappointed. When she walked through the TSA checkpoint at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas and lost her entire short-term memory, including any recollection of our relationship. While she was recovering from that, I left her alone. And then when we did run into each other again, I thought, screw it. She wants it rough, I'll give her the entire B production. Reward is punishment, punishment is a reward, maybe total power exchange. Maybe I just financially dominate her. We had a great time. We did all those things. We had a great time. Until her flight from Indianapolis to Los Angeles was rerouted through Las Vegas and she got lost or confused or something happened and she had to go through the TSA checkpoint again. Still not quite sure how that happened, but this time, her entire memory was erased. I had one conversation with her since then that was frankly very difficult, just in a practical sense. And I said, this has been real. Call me when you're ready to forget who I am. You get to a point in your life where we've seen so much bad stuff that forgetting is an indispensable skill. How you do it?

Jealousy Disguised As Devotion

Emerson Dameron 30:04

It's cool to get out and hit the town. But why would your boyfriend want to be anywhere else in the world? But right here with you right now, enjoying your company right here, right now. The only place where anything is happening. He trusts you unconditionally. I totally get that, really, but he won't know if you're gonna meet some guys who will, you know, try to hit on you and pick you up. Wouldn't he be just a little bit worried? Or maybe he's out with his buddies or a guy's night, but again, you don't really know what he's doing, much less what he's thinking. Is he having a drink with his buddies? Is he out talking to strange, dangerous women? You know, I'm impressed with how open he is. But I don't really know if I could let you go out on your own like that. It's not that I don't trust you, but there are certain things that are just too important to risk. I know that security is a lie, but there's some things I really value that I want to be 100% sure about. I want what we share to be so special and drives me to conniptions thinking about losing it, and I suppose I just don't get it. That if I had a girlfriend like you, I'd want to be with you as much as I possibly could. If I had a girlfriend like you, the world would attempt to drive us apart in all sorts of ways. That's what it does. It finds beautiful things and tries to destroy them. That's why we have to not just protect the thing, but help it thrive, commit to it in the deepest possible sense. I'm sure he's a great guy. He would have to be. I know he's the guy who cares about your feelings, listens to you, makes an effort to really get it. And of course, you're the kind of woman who will expect that from a guy, and you wouldn't settle for less, right? Some people try really hard and figure it out and screw up a lot along the way. Some people really do get it. They get it so hard they want to get it some more. But, you know, everybody's got their thing.

The Barber Shop That Eats Secrets

Emerson Dameron 32:07

Everybody in Plover's mercy ended up in my chair sooner or later. That was the town's first mistake and the only license I ever needed. I had no papers from God. What I had was the pull-out front, a red vinyl chair that sighed like it knew better, and a mirror old enough to show a man his sins before he got around to his face. Ms. Vetch once told me my hands had a sacramental briskness. She wanted a discount. Men came in for a trim and left without their marriages. One kid asked for texture and walked out knowing his old man wasn't his old man. I never asked. Drop the cape, oh, it's snug enough to remind them dying was still on the table. Wait. Secrets come off a person like hair. A bad lay as a sound under the scissors. Embezzlement, too, if you know it. So does the kind of loneliness that passes for lust after two warm margaritas and a light show about cults. All of it went into the same gray pile on my floor. Same as last time, don't tell anybody. Then the purple Cadillac, Texas plates, eyelashes that can throw shade on a horse. Celestine Mercy, she said, which nobody bought. The town already had the name, and she smiled like she'd lifted it off a saint on the way in. Revival stylist. Spiritual makeovers. Hair was the antenna of the soul. Split-ins were grief looking for a shape, and so on. She walked into the shop at closing time when the dust in the window does its slow, tired dance.

SPEAKER_01 33:35

I need you to fix me.

Emerson Dameron 33:37

I cut hair.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

That's what I need.

Emerson Dameron 33:40

She took the chair like a queen mounting the throne for her own execution. The hair was black and glossy, and there was too much of it, the kind that makes widowers splash on cologne to go buy milk. But I put my hands in it, the room went cold. The clippers started muttering in Latin. Somewhere down the street, a dog confessed attacks fraud.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

You're the confessor. I'm the barber. In this town, that's higher than the priest and lower than the druggist.

Emerson Dameron 34:07

She had me there, and she knew where there was. Some once you can walk away from because they're wicked, some because they're dumb. Then there's the kind that shows up dressed like an audit, clipboard out, already knowing where you buried the evidence. She'd come, she said, to get Plover's mercy ready for a change. Everybody was getting a new look. She took cash, secrets, flirtation, or proof of guilt. Shame, she told my mirror.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Shame is just intimacy with witnesses.

Emerson Dameron 34:36

Is just intimacy with witnesses. I should have thrown her out. I trimmed her ends. I'd made one or two mistakes in my life, or nine, or I held a lifetime subscription. Inside a week, half the town was lined up out back in the shampoo room, which she'd renamed the Chapel of Corrected Vanity. The mayor got frosted tips and the nerve to admit he couldn't read curses. She carved a widow's initials into the scalp of a man who owed her. She sold Ms. Vetch a bottle of atonement mousse that stood her hair straight up whenever she lied. And for three days the woman went around looking like a scared dandelion. People left glowing or crying or enraged or engaged to somebody with whom they had pending litigation. Me, I got jealous of a miracle of bangs. Nights we stayed late over truck stop coffee and paper cups, arguing about whether the soul was a wound or just good advertising. She'd lean in close enough that my razor started thinking about unionizing. Her perfume was hot sugar and fresh evidence. Once she touched the back of my wrist, and I saw my whole life laid out as a true hotel room with nice curtains.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Do you want me?

Emerson Dameron 35:47

I want things clear. You coward. I want you. Better. She kissed me in the mirror first, then in the flesh, and that told me whose side the mirror was on. I'll keep this decent, not out of walls. Some things just need walls. We didn't make love the usual way. We took inventory of each other with our mouths. For a little while, we both believed the body was a courtroom where God had lost the paperwork. Afterward, she laughed against my neck.

SPEAKER_04 36:16

You're collecting the town.

Emerson Dameron 36:18

I'm collecting hair.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

Same thing, darling. Hair remembers.

Emerson Dameron 36:26

The first lock turned up beside the feed store. Curl of my own hair tied with red thread, right where Deputy Lyle found the church treasurer face down in a redneck pool of spoiled communion grape juice. Breathing, technically, but communicating only in 1987 radio jingles. Another by the laundromat where the drama teacher was discovered naked in a dryer, spinning on permanent press and screaming that realism was a disease. The gazebo got one. So did the mayor's mailbox. The town started giving me that small town face where the sympathy goes sharp as a straight razor. I never left the shop, I told Lyle. He took off his hat. Lyle only did that when he was fixing to be stupid in public. Hair travels. On heads, not always. Celestine was gone by then. The Cadillac sat with its doors open, packed to the headliner with hair. Mine, hers, everybody's. Blonde gray, baby fine, widow coarse official, dirty, sorry. On the windshield and lipstick, a good cut reveals the skull. I went back inside and looked in the mirror. My reflection smiled first. I was never handsome. Arraged at best. The face with the sad dignity of a potato dragged before Congress. The man in the glass, though, he had impossible hair. Hair that had been places, hair that was going places, hair that knew passwords, and the middle names of dangerous people. He said, You want to be trusted. I was trusted. You were used. There's a difference. Both leave stains. The chair behind me swiveled by itself. The cape rose like a black wing, and from the drain in the shampoo sink came the sound of the whole town breathing. Grace arrived on schedule, by blood object. Mrs. Vetch came through the door swinging the ceramic angel off her front lawn, the one with the dead eyes and the chipped trumpet, and caught me right across the back of the head so hard I saw the entire family tree of vanity. My knees went the bureaucrat. The reflection screamed, not in pain, but from the shock of being fired. She stood over me, hair straight up. You lied, the stage whispered. Like constantly. Behind her came the town. Mayor, Lyle, the widow, the drama teacher, dressed now, every one of them holding a lock of their own hair tied in red thread. Celestine stepped out of the shampoo room.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

You see a community.

Emerson Dameron 38:55

What are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 38:57

I'm giving them back their secrets.

Emerson Dameron 39:00

The locks began to move in their hands. Little live things, pets of shame. The town watched, sick and relieved as everything they'd hidden turned visible. Stupid and mortal. That was the miracle. Not forgiveness. Don't make me laugh. Forgiveness is too clean for a place like Porfer's mercy. The miracle was evidence. Celestine knelt beside me, and her good hair fell around us like curtains closing on a bad show.

SPEAKER_04 39:26

You were never the monster.

Emerson Dameron 39:27

Then who was? She kissed my forehead the way a professional does it.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

The chair.

Emerson Dameron 39:33

We all looked. The red vinyl shuddered. It had been listening for years, drinking in confessions through the neck, getting fat on shame and dandruff and aftershave on the wet little animal need to be seen without being known. It framed me because I was its waiter. Lyle shot it twice. The chair reclined. The town screamed. I laughed until I tasted blood and coffee. I travel with Celeste now. Town to town, spiritual makeovers at reasonable rates, cash secrets, flirtation, proof of shame. I keep the scissors clean. She keeps the mirror covered. We don't discuss love, just its externalities. And when a customer settles into the chair and asks, can you make me look like a better person? I tighten the cape. I find their eyes in the glass and I tell them, no, but I can show you the shape of the damage.

Money Power And Moral Grandstanding

Emerson Dameron 40:44

Money brings power, and power makes some cool things happen. But there's no power without freedom. The freedom to walk away means to be able to think about something other than making a living on an or else basis. If somebody takes away all of your options except for the one that they want you to pick, it doesn't speak highly of their intentions or of that option. The assumption is that given any other option, you would take that option over theirs. People who want to redistribute the wealth want everyone to be in a position where they don't have to think about money quite as much. People who like the status quo are rich people who don't think that they'll ever have enough money to get a good night's sleep, so they want more constantly. And the vast majority of us functionally support that, if you're going by the people we vote for. It's good that people are trying to get theirs. The economy is obviously a stat deck in many ways, and reshuffling and restacking it is the accumulation of power, which is politics. It's really all that politics is. And neither money nor politics should be nearly as big a part of our lives as they become, let alone anywhere near the center. We should be able to easily come up with a life plan that keeps us relatively comfortable, who's not destitute, in a position where we can make ourselves as comfortable as we want to be, and know that there's a floor, there's a baseline level where we can just exist and do things we want to do, which, if we cut all of the bullshit jobs, result in all of the work being done, nevertheless. It is a shame, I think, that so many things now are only talked about in materialist terms. It's a gold rush, it's the theft of intellectual property. Will the mighty record labels come and ride to our rescue? Wow, yes, here they come. The defenders of the honor of true artists. Now, let's get back to boycotting artists. Because it doesn't matter if you can separate the art and the artist. You are subsidizing the artist's lifestyle if you spin their music on Spotify. Based on the totality of what I know about the man, I don't think withdrawing my patronage from R. Kelly would have made much of a difference during the many, many years he spent doing the horrible things he did after it was widely known that he was doing them. In much the same way that recycling doesn't really do anything, and if you think that it is necessary to save the environment, that's the kind of thing that would have possibly put a dent in the environmental omni crisis had it been seriously implemented in the early 1970s. At this point, if all of the major governments and corporations of the world are not on board and committed to a fairly radical restructuring of not only supply chains and industries, but the way that we collectively determine value, go ahead and recycle. If it makes you feel good, squeeze all the pleasure out of this life that you can. Don't think that you have to do it. There are a few people who can make a difference. Your time is better spent figuring out where they live, toilet papering their houses, and then not telling anyone that I suggested that.

Kristy With A K

Emerson Dameron 44:47

Ah, Christy with a K tried to forget her and decided I didn't want to forget her, because she ruined my life, which she got me hard doing. And Christy, the brat with a knife behind her back, the sexy little devil girl, saved my life and taught me to save my own by putting me repeatedly in positions where she knew that was going to be necessary. In the beginning, it was sexy, sexy, beyond hot. Whether it was the vandalism or Christy's passion and resultant skill in breaking into people's houses when they weren't there and getting in without tripping the alarms, or indeed being seen on the security cameras, something I figured out how to do because I wanted to keep this going. I loved getting it on in other people's homes. I loved the afterglow in the hot tub. I love how that turned into more sex. I loved how in my 40s, I knew now that under the right circumstances, I could come three times a day. And it's nice to know you still got it like that, especially on a Sunday. That was Christy's favorite day for things that could potentially get us thrown in jail, since it was gonna be maximally inconvenient if that happened. It happened a few times, and our sex life got better by orders of magnitude until it was well into the territory that's gonna spoil me for anything else. She knew that. She gloated about it. I would withdraw my affection, which would lead her to seek my attention, always in a negative way. For some people, all publicity is good publicity. For Christy, that's true as long as it's negative. And by publicity, we mean reputation, vibe, gestalt, presence. Everything about Christie was chaos with a K. Things got- The more elaborate and ambitious Christie's crime spree became, the less fun it was. Mostly because she was tied up in all sorts of boring logistical stuff that I tried to understand for a while, but then screwed up on enough that she decided she was demoting me. From the spreadsheet guy to one of three guys with shovels, and from boyfriend down to lover, down to buildo with an ATM card and a pigeon for dirty talk, which is easy to do if you're beginning to resent your partner. Just say what you believe, and in my experience, it'll knock him over the moon. You might have to work on tonality and stuff. By the time Christy was involved in a very boring racketeering case that was gonna keep her in jail for months, if not years, the sex got bad. I mean, it was still happening. We were, again, masters of finding places to scramble the omelet that were risky, but at least some of the time we wouldn't get caught. We had sex all around the jail. First it was hot. The dirty talk got really edgy. It's important that we fight for our right to privacy just so we can say things in the heat of passion that we wouldn't say to the New York Times, because that makes the sex good up to a point. When the sex gets bad, and you're sneaking around the jail just for bad sex, it's already over. So cut it off now, or at least go ahead and start grieving now. I went ahead and started grieving, and then I changed my mind when Christine did the thing that always convinces me that she's always got my back. In fact, she's the only person that's ever really loved me. So I stuck with her. She got out of jail, mostly because I didn't rat her out. That wasn't the only variable, but uh had I done that, she wasn't gonna smile or see the sun for many years. And I made that decision to not do something. On a hunch, in a rare flight of optimism. When she got out, everything was calm, stable, predictable, and thus as dangerous as it's ever been. Because I knew she was gonna snap. I didn't know when, I didn't know what it was gonna look like, although I think there was at least a 90% probability that it was gonna be bad. I'm rounding down, if anything. But there I was. Not in love, because I'm not gonna admit to that. You go first, and maybe I'll go. Maybe I'll humiliate you, maybe you're into that. But the sex was dynamite, which meant I couldn't leave until I got bad again, and that wasn't gonna happen. I don't know what she picked up in jail, but believe me, the world's not ready for it.

Detox From Rescue Language

Emerson Dameron 51:13

And for most of us, that carries on in some form into adulthood. Some of us cry and whine and still get what we want. Maybe even get rescued. Most of us aren't hot enough for that. The ones who are won't be forever. So here's what I recommend. When you catch yourself using language that indicates you want to be rescued, change it. Detox from your desire to be saved, from wanting to be special, from starting a crisis every time you need acknowledgement of your existence. Just put that aside for 10 days. Feel how it feels to express your desires without that. When you hear yourself saying, I can't live without you, you're the only one. You saved me. I'm dying without you. Don't you see this? Because all I hear is that you just want to get rid of me. You only need to be fine on my own. And you know what? Screw you. I'm gonna go die in the gutter. Just so you can't forget me. You can never forget me. You have to feel bad about this for the rest of your life. Drop all of that. You're not dying because someone used to like you enough to feign compatibility and then got a little lazy and stopped. Replace that with your immediate sensory truth. What is going on for you, with you, in you, right now. I feel a constriction in my chest. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'll talk tomorrow. Don't need to talk today. Feels better not to. You will lose the power to hook people through starting a fracas, siphoning off pity, which is two words down from contempt. That's the last thing you want. Just pay attention to your language. Pay attention to when you present yourself as a victim of less than, or somebody that needs special treatment. You don't need anybody to treat you like you're special. You are special. Come on, look up. When you're walking around the city feeling down, look up. There's good stuff out there. And drop the over-interpretation for dramatic effect and just come back here. And back to yourself. There's more than enough drama going on here to keep you busy. You don't need to be rescued. If anyone offers, you don't want to be rescued. You can rescue yourself, and there's nothing to be rescued from. Just the horrific uncertainty of the human experience. It is one of the things that makes it good. Or at least a hell of a good time sometimes. Get yourself, feel yourself, be with your own experience. Love yourself. Jack off with pictures of yourself. I've done it. It's a trip. When you're really living large, when you're in Paradise City, you can feel it. You'll get challengers. You'll get haters. They must be shaken off. That'll keep you busy. You won't have to fabricate drama in your own life. You won't have to make enemies. You'll kick some of the best enemies out there, some of your best teachers, and you'll get friends who love you. Because they don't have to like you. You will bring in the right people. You might be so contained that you don't even care anymore. You'll get to experience the benefits without feeling like you have to trick people into hanging around. If you're starting from scratch, it'll be a little rough. If you have a friend who supports you, even when the stuff you're saying sounds ridiculous, not everybody works on themselves. All the people who do quit. If you stay with it, you're gonna be explosive sooner than you think. Come back. We need you here. Don't get sucked into nostalgia. Don't walk right into the quicksand of self-pity. Feel what you feel, notice what you notice. Feel witness to the fluid flow of the human experience. No one will save you. You will not need to be saved. The bad news is there's no parachute. The good news is there's no ground. I just gained that from Chogim Trump Barimpa shape, and what's he gonna do about it? It's mine now. I took it. See? I'm rescuing myself now.

SPEAKER_06 55:20

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, so it's gonna have two minutes for two minutes.

Returning To Desire With Control

Emerson Dameron 55:43

So if it's the Perhaps uh lesser man would have learned his lesson. I couldn't forget a second of it. The woman in the blood red dress, the purple and red lights oozing through the room, playing dirty games with the shadows. Last time I saw her, she deconstructed me, unraveled me strand by strand, turned me into everything I never wanted to be. Made me think I wanted it. I got scared. Scared of my own desires. I'd wanted it. That was six months ago. Why am I back? This time, I'm running things. I'm the one sending the coded five-word messages. I'm the one choosing the venue. Different bar, but same basic energy, because I've learned that aesthetics matter. There's nothing shallow about knowing that. There's something sad about not knowing it. The scapegoat was her sacred ground. My place, a wine bar in Echo Park where the candles are made of beeswax and possibilities. This place is mine. She walks in, wearing white this time, clearly getting off on the various ironies. She slides into the booth. I learned from the best. I lean in. Her perfume is still floral and flammable, but now I know the notes. Jasmine, night blooming, all orchestrated to disarm. I called you here because I lost last time, and I felt like I got the best possible deal. It was perhaps the most remarkable experience of my life, and I've been wondering, what does it feel like from your side? For the first time, I see something like uncertainty flicker across our face. I know that's what I'm counting on.

Naming Hidden Desire Without Shame

Emerson Dameron 58:22

Question that people don't want you to ask, and some people appear in your life to help you understand and find the answers, or just enjoy the seeking. What do I really, really desire? When you're completely true and honest to yourself, you'll realize that there are no limits, no boundaries to what you truly desire. You will see the arbitrary nature of the rules that you made for yourself that you didn't even know you were still following. Because inside yourself, all those rules and restrictions that others impose on you do not exist at all. Inside that special place where you keep all your true desires hidden from the outside world is where only you alone can set the table and make rules. It's where you can truly see what you really want out of love and out of life. There's that special place where you're able to see all of your hidden desires in their full, violent, naked glory. When you get what you truly desire, the experience is tremendous, even orgasmic. It's really powerful. You'll feel excited that you can fulfill those hidden desires, and you'll want to share that excitement with someone who truly understands you and loves to watch you change. Once you truly embrace your hidden desires, you'll never fear the judgment of others, because you'll know it's worth it. You should only be true to yourself and the people you love, people who reciprocate your desire, people who get it.