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.
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It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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life, union of opposites, thatbig sexy Ouroboros of destiny.
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(00:23):
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Dameron's Medicated Minutesalready in progress minutes
(00:48):
already in progress.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The scene opens at a lively house party with thumping
music, chatter and clinkingglasses.
A man, jack, swaggering andself-assured, approaches a shy
and hesitant woman, lucy, who isstanding alone by the
refreshment table.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yo, yo yo what's cracky lackin' sweet thang.
Mind, if I slide into yourblast radius, my bomb-banging
bodied baby girl.
Um hi okay sure Aight cool,cool Lemme.
Introduce myself properly theycall me Jack, but you can call
me Smooth Operator.
Smooth Operator.
Um, okay, I'm.
(01:24):
Lucy, lucy, huh, that's a nameas sweet as honey dipped in gold
.
You lookin' like a straight-upmasterpiece in the midst of this
chaotic art show we call life.
Oh, um, thank you.
That's nice of you to say.
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 kindaway like I wanna dive into your
(01:48):
vibes and ride the wave of yourswing song.
Um, wow, that's quite ametaphor.
Metaphor.
Nah, baby, I'm speakin'straight from the source of all
things.
Sublime, my dime.
You got me in a trance and ahalf like.
I'm mesmerized by those tastythighs, and I ain't even mad
about it.
Lucy giggles nervously.
(02:09):
I I don't know what to say.
Ain't no need for words, honeydip, let's just vibe you and me
and take a tantalizing traintrip for two to Sexy City,
capital of Provocation Nation.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
As the music pulses louder, Jack takes Lucy's hand
and pulls her into a playfuldance, spinning her around the
room.
Lucy laughs.
This is um.
This is unexpected.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Unexpected.
Nah, baby, baby.
This was written in the rootsof the rooibos that gave me
these tea leaves of radical realtalk with a faint twist of
raspberry.
And you, babes are asprophesized.
You and me, we're like peanutbutter and jelly, hip hop and
metal, destined to make sweetmusic, rock arenas and break
waterbeds together".
Speaker 2 (02:56):
As they dance, lucy's hesitance melts away and she
starts to mirror Jack's moveswith more confidence.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
You know, jack, you're kind of like charming in
a ridiculous sort of way.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Ridiculous.
Ah shucks.
You flatter me, juicy Lucy, buthey, sometimes love is a little
ridiculous, ain't it?
True facts.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's what I'm talking about.
They continue dancing, lost inthe moment, as the scene fades
out, with the sounds of theparty in the background erotic
thrillers.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Someone asked Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalist
philosopher, why he didn'ttravel more.
It seemed like he would be aneffective cosmopolitan man of
the world with his intelligenceand insight, and Thoreau replied
I've traveled extensively inConcord.
That was his home.
I'd like to do that in LA.
That's what I want to do withthe rest of this year
Reintroduce myself, maybe fallin love with the city, mix it up
a little bit.
I used to do that a lot, nowlately not so much.
(04:19):
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, sometimessocially awkward, but people
have observed that I like mixingit up with others.
But I've been doing less ofthat.
Some stuff came up.
I made some discoveries.
I recently discovered energizedmeditation, an embodiment
(04:39):
practice.
I had a lot more power in therethan I expected.
As you know, I practice solopolyamory.
I don't want a relationship, Ijust 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 thelaws of physics Quantum sex,
(05:02):
and I just discovered it withinmyself.
I started doing energizedmeditation and it just came out.
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 harmthan good.
Put a pin in that.
Actually, put a pin right here.
Yeah, in your arm.
You've gotten shots before youcan do this.
Just stick, yeah, just likethat.
(05:23):
Maybe it hurts for a fractionof a second.
Do you want me to slap you?
I got a flash in your eyes andsaid 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 knowwhat it feels like.
This could be your shot.
This could be your chance.
That was not bad at all.
I should be honest with youabout something.
(05:46):
I don't think that you're verysmart.
If you look at the intelligenceof the modal American, you're a
lot dumber than that.
I play along, I humor you.
The truth would drive youinsane.
You're someone that needs to belied to, protected.
I've preserved the bubble, butafter a while I resent treating
stupid people like they'reintelligent.
(06:08):
I'm just clarifying my position.
Clarity kills ambiguity.
So what are you going to doabout it?
Take me to court, bring your IQtest, except don't Only idiots
think that that's a good way tomeasure what they call
intelligence.
Hmm, alright, this is different.
This is interesting.
I like where this is going.
(06:29):
We had a breakthrough, we had amoment.
If nothing else, Anyway, itstarted to become too much.
I was terrified of my own powerand most people are, and that's
what impedes them fromgreatness but I was because I
thought I could really destroythe world, accidently kill
someone with my mind or my power, my presence, because I was
just so damned embodied On adirect flight from Los Angeles
(06:53):
to Rio.
I had many hours to think aboutthis.
When I got on board, I realizedI'd forgotten everything my
phone, my laptop, books, tubesof toothpaste that I could read
the ingredients and facts,something to keep my mind busy.
No, it was just me.
It was like a sensorydeprivation.
It wasn't, yes, irritation.
I'm six foot one Flying coachis torture for me.
(07:15):
We need armed revolt Heads onpikes.
I have friends that havebelieved this for a second.
I was always resistant, if notcontemptuous.
I ridiculed their beliefs totheir faces.
But now we're reaching animpasse.
I realized on that plane ridethat I completely lost my mind.
I think it's the first timeI've ever been happy.
(07:36):
Ask if you are happy and youcease to be so.
I don't have a lot ofexperience with happiness.
Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'mskeptical of happiness as a
goal.
By the time I touched down inRio, I was utterly mad Cracked
Bananas off the deep end, nolonger playing with a full deck,
it was all jokers.
Then I realized a couple ofthings.
(07:58):
I realized where I screwed up.
I realized that I could resolveto never do the exact same
thing again, that I could honormy commitment.
I was capable of that.
I always have been Honoringyour commitments, and living in
integrity is just a process ofelimination.
Yes, I think you're brilliant.
Otherwise I wouldn't have saidthat.
I don't want to make your headexplode.
(08:18):
You're not stupid.
Whatever.
The opposite of that is.
If we ever really understandintelligence, you'll be in that
category.
Maybe pass the muscle.
Rather than telling you thistechnique, I'd like to show you.
Yes, I'm finally accepting yourinvitation to sleep with me and
have sex before we go to sleep.
Yeah, you can spend the night.
(08:38):
No, I have always been renting.
It's you, it always was.
You didn't know that, huh.
But you work on your sense ofhumor.
You gotta loosen up a littlebit.
Energized meditation.
Let's do this.
Let's get out of here.
I hate this song, not really.
Every now and then I hate someharmless thing just to get it
out of my system.
You look hot in that dress.
You look like Jane Birkin.
(08:59):
I mean, you know that.
You know you're too cute.
You look good.
You look hot enough that Idon't want to alienate you by
telling you how sexy you are andthe things that I want to do to
you.
We're cool like that.
You're cool like that.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
What if there existed an esteemed society of
intellectuals, a place where thegreatest minds gather,
dedicated to the unfathomablepursuit of knowledge, a place
known as the Ptolemy Institute?
And what if this Instituteplayed host to a game so complex
, so intellectually challenging,that it's more than just a game
it's a battle of minds, knownas Enhanced Canasta.
(09:33):
In the early 20th century, agroup of intellectuals, scholars
and scientists came together toform the Ptolemy Institute,
named after the great Greekmathematician and astronomer,
claudius Ptolemy.
This institute, hidden awayfrom the public eye, aimed to
create a space where thebrightest minds could explore,
innovate and push the boundariesof human knowledge.
(09:54):
The years rolled on, thePtolemy Institute became a
sanctuary for intellectualsworldwide, a place where they
could collaborate, debate andprogress without the constraints
of societal norms andexpectations.
The Institute thrived in itssecrecy, its members diligently
working towards breakthroughsthat would subtly but
significantly influence theworld.
(10:15):
Parallel to the evolution of thePtolemy Institute, there
emerged a game Enhanced Canasta.
Born out of traditional Canasta, a card game of the Rummy
family, enhanced Canasta evolvedto be more than just a pastime.
It became a tool forintellectual engagement, a game
that encompassed elements ofstrategy, logic and critical
thinking, a game that mirroredthe intellectual rigor of the
(10:37):
Ptolemy Institute itself.
Over time, enhanced Canastabecame an integral part of the
Ptolemy Institute.
It was no longer just a gamebut a rite of passage, an
intellectual duel, a way tochallenge and stimulate the
minds of the members of theInstitute.
The game's complexity andintellectual demand mirrored the
ethos of the Institute, makingit a perfect fit for this
(10:58):
society of scholars.
Today, the Ptolemy Instituteand enhanced Canasta stand as
symbols of intellectual pursuitand rigorous academic
exploration.
The Ptolemy Institute, aprestigious society of
intellectuals, is a testament tothe relentless pursuit of
knowledge.
It embodies the power ofcollaboration and intellectual
freedom, showcasing the impactthat unbounded exploration can
(11:19):
have on the world.
Enhanced Canasta, on the otherhand, is a testament to the
power of intellectual engagement.
It is more than just a game.
It is a tool for stimulatingthe mind, challenging notions
and fostering strategic thinking.
It reflects the core values ofthe Ptolemy Institute, embodying
the spirit of intellectualrigor and challenge Essence.
(11:40):
The Ptolemy Institute andEnhanced Canasta represent the
power of the intellectual mind.
They showcase the potentialthat lies within each of us to
learn, to innovate and tochallenge the norms.
They stand as a reminder of theimportance of intellectual
freedom and the power ofrigorous academic exploration.
They are a testament to theuntapped potential of the human
(12:01):
mind and the wonders that can beachieved when that potential is
realized.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
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 whatyou're doing.
I know what I'm doing.
I don't think you need to knowwhat I'm doing.
I think, I've got it undercontrol and I think you would,
if anything, compromise that.
(12:28):
I'm delighted by your daydreamobliviousness.
You are so far out to lunchthat it's half past dinner time.
You need a team.
You need people to look afteryou.
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.
(12:49):
You are interesting.
I could take you on perhaps asan understudy.
You might get smacked around alittle bit, but you would emerge
an expert in the field.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of peoplecrash and burn and I don't
think you're going to do that.
I don't know if you're hotenough to burn.
Psychological, you have nothing.
Uh, well, I mean, you'recompared to me.
(13:10):
You're not that sharp in thelooks department, but I sense an
intelligence.
I've seen a lot of neediness.
What I get from you is you wantto connect like a real
connection, not justblood-sucking parasitism like I
typically see.
I am feeling a little bitconflicted because you've sent
(13:30):
some signals that are ambiguous.
A little bit conflicted becauseyou've sent some signals that
are ambiguous.
I think you're trying to comeon to me but not broadcast that.
You're coming on to me, whichis unfortunate for you because I
have pretty high standardsStraight up.
Love bombing is really the onlyway to get through to me.
You gotta be the bomb.
Bomb me with yourself.
There are multiple schools ofthought on that.
(13:51):
Yeah, you sound veryauthoritative when you say I
don't wanna.
Well, yeah, let's see what yougot.
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 yoursafety when you're rolling with
the boss the master, not theboss of you.
That's a project management andHR nightmare waiting to happen.
(14:11):
You will get fired and you willget us both in the news.
It won't be my fault becauseyou were seducing me.
You came onto me and you knowthat.
Admit it.
Come on, don't be a liar.
Just tell them that Life is forpleasure.
Plants grow toward the sun andadults have sex the most fun way
to pass time other thanparasailing.
But you really haven't doneeither, until you combine the
(14:33):
two.
Let me tell you a story about awoman I knew.
By the end of it, maybe you'llknow yourself.
(14:54):
Her name was Aurora.
She was the best ballet dancerin our group.
Best in the city, not in theworld, but nobody cared.
She was the best right thereand 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 sheknew herself.
So did most people.
(15:14):
Everyone had a different versionof Aurora that lived in their
heads.
The version that lived inAurora's head was arguably the
one with the least purchase inreality, and that version was
usually enveloped in daydreamsSpinning diamonds, dangling
participles, deep royal bluesand burning gold.
Her dream world was vivid,ensconcing, but it didn't stop
(15:38):
her from being kinestheticallybrilliant.
She was a dancer like no other.
Her secret was that she had noidea.
She just went with it.
If she tried, the effort wouldhave been an impediment.
She didn't need to get out ofher own way because she never
got in it.
Her head was so dreamy that herphysical presence was purely
steamy, as could be seen in heraudition for an avant-garde
(16:01):
version of Sleeping Beauty.
The director Ivan was entrancedby 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 muchas any two people can bond.
Before Sarah committed suicide,aurora felt somewhat
(16:23):
responsible.
She knew something was wrongbut she hadn't done anything.
She didn't want to intervene ona hunch.
In her dreams they become evenmore intimate.
Yes, in a sexual sense Realitycouldn't hold a candle to the
cascading volcanic orgasms sheexperienced in the dream world
that she was doing just fine inthe real world.
(16:44):
She easily scored the part ofAurora, which wasn't even what
she was auditioning for.
Aurora always auditioned forparts she thought were too hard
for her to get because that waywhen she failed she could learn
something.
But it wouldn't be too much ofa shock, not even a
disappointment, really.
Disappointment was fleeting.
She could escape into the dreamworld and ask the dream
characters if they had somethingto show her and experience acts
(17:07):
too depraved for urbandictionary.
She knew a lot of this wasacting out in her frustration
and confusion and wondering whyleft in the wake of Sarah's
suicide.
She did the auditions todistract herself, to get out of
her comfort zone, because hercomfort zone was becoming deeply
uncomfortable.
As she danced her mind was way,way on the other side of the
(17:30):
earth.
She knew if she didn't get thepart it would remind her that
she's not special which shedoesn't want to be Becoming
special would be the end ofeverything.
Ivan doesn't even know her nameis Aurora.
He believes in the power ofnominative determinism and may
have given her the part justbased on that.
But they were auditioning undernumbers, not names.
She got the part.
(17:53):
Ivan rewrote the wholeproduction around Aurora's aura
of charisma.
He'd become deeply obsessedwith her.
She got deeply into the worldof the play, which began to
merge with her dream world.
Sometimes it was awkward.
She dove into a passionatesexual relationship with Ivan
and almost got him into thedream world, but it was a little
bit too self-important.
Also very obsessive, aurora washis muse, his most astute critic
(18:17):
and most enthusiasticcheerleader, which is good.
Ivan had a cheerleader fetish.
The uniform was not negotiable.
He was also into cannibalismnot practicing and he didn't
feel great about it.
That obsession led to hisdeveloping an encyclopedic
knowledge of the history anduses of salt.
He could talk about that forhours.
That was his charming side.
(18:38):
When he had too much to drinkhe would confess to things that
he probably shouldn't have.
Aurora didn't know if he wasjust reflexively lying, but she
realized she needed to get somespace.
She went to her favoritebookstore or regular hangout ran
into a young man named Nikolai.
Nikolai wore a sport coat withpatches on the elbows.
He was so self-conscious thatAurora developed a fascination
(19:01):
with him.
The only thing she knew abouthim was he was desperate to be
liked, so she could projectwhatever she wanted onto Nikolai
and imagine him to be theultimate dream character and
combination of all of the traitsshe admired and ached for and
longed for and drooled over.
Unfortunately, nikolai tookthat to mean he was doing
something right and continued tooverthink every detail of his
(19:24):
presentation.
Aurora had a fascination withhow people behave in public
places, the interaction ritualsthat drive it.
She used Nikolai as somethingof a lab gerbil, the test
subject for experiments anddebauched sex and dubiously
ethical behavioral experiments.
It was all good fun amongconsenting adults.
(19:45):
It was a much-needed break fromthe play.
If you're involved in a scenewith a lot of drama, it's
important to have friendsFriends with benefits or without
Outside of that scene you'llunderstand immediately how
unimportant all of that stuff is.
But Aurora had a thing forbringing her worlds together and
she could bring Nikolai intothe dream world easily, which
(20:06):
she did Sometimes thrice a dayfor threesomes with Sarah.
Sometimes each of them cameonce.
Sometimes they all came threetimes.
Sarah kept upping the frequency.
After the play debuted, torapturous reviews, it became the
talk of the local art scene.
Aurora and Nikolai took Ivan outto celebrate.
Ivan had become obsessed withceiling fans and autoerotic
(20:29):
asphyxiation and was gettingclose to seeing how the two
could be combined, and that wastoo fascinating for him to
realize that Nikolai and Aurorawere sleeping together.
He did manage to get drunkenough to get beside himself, to
get over himself, if onlytemporarily, and long enough to
get into the dream world.
Aurora, sarah, ivan, nikolaifound themselves together in the
(20:51):
dream world.
A spontaneous orgy broke out At.
Nikolai found themselvestogether in the dream world.
A spontaneous orgy broke out.
At.
First Nikolai had too manynerves and Ivan was too drunk.
Aurora got bored and startedchanneling some other dream
characters that she'd met, whichis how she discovered that
there was a portal to a deepercircle of the dream world hidden
in the basement of a local sexdungeon.
It was three in the morning.
(21:12):
It took them about 30 minutesto get there.
When they did, sarah toldAurora they needed to get the
party going before the sun cameup.
It took about 30 more minutes.
Then Nikolai threw on massiveattacks, mezzanine and pretty
soon they were going at it sohard that they summoned a group
of demons.
That's how I got involved.
I'd known Aurora for a longtime.
(21:32):
I was one of her recurringdream demons.
Aurora's dreams were ahigh-rent district, but at this
point I'm flush enough to livein the dreams of anyone I want.
After some good-natured teasing, nikolai started really going
at it.
He realized his true desire wasto find himself and become who
he was, which he did, andfrankly it was glorious.
(21:54):
I don't want to talk about itbecause he's taken on a whole
new identity now and I don'twant to diamond out.
Ivan got over himself for good.
For real, he became someoneelse.
He realized he wasn't specialand that saved his life.
He was scheduled to die in sixmonths, a drunk driving accident
.
The timing was good.
My timing is always good.
(22:14):
I'm a demon, my timing isdemonic.
He realized he wasn't reallyinto cannibalism.
He was starving for intimacy.
For a while he lost hisartistic juice.
He also lost his muse, asAurora realized her true desire
was to become one with Sarah,which they did.
They haven't been seen since.
They left in a swirl ofthrilling pyrotechnics.
(22:38):
Isaac's next play was terrible,but the one after that was a
whole new flavor.
He accessed a different part ofhis psyche.
It was really interesting.
Stuff Spoke to a lot ofdifferent audiences at once.
I'd like to say I helped withit.
But I'm a demon, not a creativeconsultant.
I've been around for thousandsof years.
At this point my tastes arepretty extreme.
(22:59):
You can't say I'm great withpeople.
(23:24):
You could say that I can't stopyou.
I wouldn't believe it.
You might lose some credibilityin my eyes.
I would never say that Icouldn't sell it.
You might lose some credibilityin my eyes.
I would never say that Icouldn't sell it to myself.
All of my relationships seemedto end with this certain flavor
of disappointment on the woman'sside.
My relationship with my lastgirlfriend, mia, began, I
(23:44):
thought, with sort of ameet-cute quote-unquote in a
bookstore.
We were both in the philosophysection.
We ended up talking aboutBataille for about an hour,
which of course led to veryinteresting sex from an
anthropological perspective.
She told me later I was aproject.
This was a pattern for her, andher friends could see it coming
(24:06):
at this point, which is whythey never liked me.
She said when she quit smokingI started to quote-unquote reek
of depression and havequote-unquote pigpen-type
depression lines coming off ofmy body.
We stopped having sex, whichwas the end of the relationship,
like it always is, broke upsomewhat acrimoniously, but she
would call me for booty calls inthe middle of the night.
(24:28):
I wouldn't question it, I wouldjust go.
But I started to think thatmaybe she wasn't playing with a
full deck either, which wasweird.
I'm usually keen on blamingmyself for everything.
It gives me a sense of agency.
We stayed friendly after thatand we stayed in touch.
She invited me to go to ameeting of a society that she
was part of.
(24:48):
Once she got in my car she toldme 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 fineputting out there.
I said I would take it to mygrave, which I totally would.
A couple of my best friendssaid that they were trying to
think of somebody in our socialcircle they would go to if they
needed to dispose of a body theykilled, and they both agreed I
(25:12):
was 50 points ahead of thenearest competitor.
I'm like a lockbox I can keepyour secrets.
I spend most of my timethinking about myself, but when
we got to the meeting of the MSociety I could understand why
she was concerned.
It was so strange.
The place was designed.
Everything was different shadesof blue, neon blue, like blue
(25:34):
velvet.
Everything was a differentshade of red.
There's so many of them andsome of them didn't go well
together in a way that wasdisorienting and
unconventionally beautiful.
The disorientation wascumulative.
There were no clocks.
It was impossible to tell whereNorth was or, after a while,
(25:54):
where I was geographically orwho I was.
I could remember the last fourdigits of my social security
number, but not the rest of it,which I realized when I was
having extraordinarilypassionate rough sex with
Angelina, a high-ranking memberof the group who I hooked up
(26:15):
with when we stimulated eachother intellectually more than
we planned on in one of thesalons.
She told me to say her name andthen asked for my social and I
couldn't remember it.
The sex kind of fell apartafter that.
She seemed really angry anddisappointed in a flavor that I
hadn't experienced before.
Eventually I figured out thatthe problem was I was an
(26:37):
offering for Mia, who's one ofAngelina's students.
She promised I would be totallycompliant but didn't add that
I'm really too self-absorbed andoblivious to deliver the goods.
When it comes right down to it,considering that I'm a novelist
by trade, I don't pay attentionto details in quote-unquote
(26:58):
real life.
It's very hard to get throughto me, and the women who do tend
to be super intense or they'relooking for a rescue dog.
That flavor of disappointmentis when they realize people get
excited when other people changebecause it's the exception,
it's not the rule.
How many people do you know whohave really fundamentally
changed?
I know a disproportionatenumber, but that's because I
(27:22):
made a lot of friends in the MSociety.
Mia left in shame, which meantI could go back as much as I
wanted.
There were two echelons at the MSociety.
It turned out Well.
It was pretty obvious from thebeginning.
The plan was to add me to thelower stratum, which was there
to serve the higher stratum togive them guinea pigs to test
(27:43):
out their ideas.
I told Angelina I would quitcoming to the salons, I would
quit having sex with her, Imight just give up everything I
loved, unless she put me in theupper stratum.
The upper stratum calledthemselves the Manipersuaders
Bad branding, but it was forinternal use only.
They tried to be discreet, whichserved them well, since they
(28:04):
were a secret society of peoplewho got together to learn and
practice techniques formanipulating other people into
getting what they wanted.
The name was obviouslycombining manipulation and
persuasion.
Usually, persuasion is good andmanipulation is bad.
And they wanted to go beyondgood and evil, the core ideas.
(28:24):
Number one people want whatthey can't have, so be desirable
and be inaccessible, unknowable.
To balance those thingsrequires push-pull and a lot of
teasing and intermittentreinforcement.
Their number two value.
This took a lot of practice andeventually you needed to rely
(28:44):
on improvisation.
It had to be in your musclememory and in your bones and
your DNA.
Really, you had to play peoplein the manner of a great jazz
musician Give them enough ofwhat they want to keep the
wheels turning, and give themenough well-timed punishment and
occasional random punishment tokeep them in your thrall and
keep them confused and offbalance.
(29:05):
This sounds like an awful wayto treat people.
But, number three, you are theprize Convinced a lot of us the
more that we did.
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 otherperson in a sexual relationship,
(29:28):
the world would become a betterplace, because we knew what we
were doing and it certainlydidn'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.
(29:49):
The world is going to recreateitself in your image.
If you don't take rejection as areferendum on you or take your
bad luck too seriously.
Number four was life is unfairand can be gained.
The fact that it's unfair iswhy you have a chance to succeed
.
You have one life.
This is it.
This is all we get.
That wasn't on the list, butthat's something I believe.
(30:12):
I'm not exactly an atheist.
I haven't figured out how tospin this in a way that's
appropriately coquettish, but itkind of ties in with number
five.
You create your own reality andeventually it becomes the
reality.
Everyone you know sleep with,argue with, is a guest in your
reality.
Using certain techniques andpracticing them every day
(30:33):
eventually gives you the abilityto decide what you want to feel
, which takes away really anyexcuse to feel bad.
You can make other people feelgood too, sometimes in a way
that ends up transferring a lotof their resources to you.
If that's what they want to do,what exactly is the harm?
It's win-win, it's somethingfor nothing.
(30:54):
It's magic, really.
Angelina had a very particularspecific reality that she
created for herself and herregular guests, which included
me, and the sex was absolutelyphenomenal.
Everything on her yes list wason my maybe list and vice versa,
(31:15):
so the trade-offs were amazing.
A lot of her stuff ended upbeing my stuff that I just
hadn't tried yet I don't knowwhat she thought about me and it
seemed like to ask would be toreveal unattractive
vulnerability bordering onweakness.
She was completely obsessedwith Suge Knight, the founder of
Death Row Records, who'scurrently incarcerated.
She claimed to have had anaffair with the man in his
(31:37):
heyday in the mid-90s.
I will say she was remarkablywell-preserved.
She was cagey about her age.
Once we went to pick up hermedications and they asked for
her date of birth, she wrote iton a piece of paper and slid it
over to the clerk so shewouldn't have to say it.
I don't know if she had anaffair with Suge Knight or not.
I don't know if any of thestuff she said was true or
(32:00):
partially true or true, but ithappened to someone else,
definitely not to her.
She was obviously still in lovewith Suge Knight.
The M stood for MOB, whichstands for Money Over Bitches,
which is something the Bloodsused to say to each other.
The meetings were held at 662Calhoun Way.
662 is also Money Over Bitcheson a touchstone phone.
(32:24):
It's in a lot of Tupac recordsand the 662 Club, which also had
a red theme because it wasowned by Suge Knight, who was
affiliated with the Bloods, wasone of the places that Tupac hit
up the night that he died.
Angelina was very into the SugeKnight mythos.
She wouldn't shut up about itand what we found out is that
(32:44):
Suge Knight still has a lot ofenemies.
The tactics through which theprinciples were practiced in the
real world included believingin yourself way out of
proportion to your abilities oryour character or anything.
You had to cultivate the kindof self-confidence that can only
be completely delusional,because your delusions about
(33:07):
yourself are the only thing thatno one can really take away
from you, and it's usuallybetter to be high on yourself
and wrong than down on yourselfand right.
That's not in their scripture.
I may have heard it somewhereelse.
It may be original to me.
People pay money to read stuffthat I write.
I must have something going on.
Becoming a jazz master ofmanipulation was the other thing
(33:29):
, and that's really justsomething you do with hardcore
practice.
Some of the guinea pigs werehard cases who were brought in
so that people could do thisstuff at the boss level before
we went out to networkingmeetings or speed dating or
cuddle parties, ayahuascacircles, all kinds of places to
try working our magic on people.
(33:50):
We had to become scientists,artists and connoisseurs of
human nature to get very, notcynical.
Cynical is limiting, Skepticismis enlightening.
People are pretty terrible.
You get to know a lot aboutthem.
They're terrible in ways thatare easy to exploit.
Do we resent the powerfulbecause they lord it over us or
(34:13):
because we'd rather be lordingit over someone else ourselves?
We're just not able to believein ourselves or transcend the
sort of masochistic moralitythat we picked up from somewhere
.
Do you even remember where yougot the things you believe?
Do you know if, maybe, theperson who taught you those
things had something to gainfrom it?
We're thinking about.
(34:34):
What else did your parents lieto you about?
What do you really believe?
Why are you afraid of your ownpower?
Take off your glasses, god.
Your eyes are beautiful.
I'm just gonna look at you fora minute.
A lot of this stuff was straightout of Dale Carnegie.
Use people's names, prompt themto talk about themselves and
let them do the work.
Once you get really good atthis, you don't have to try and
(34:57):
figure out who's gonna be intoit and just wind them up and
watch them go.
The biggest principle, ofcourse, is reality creation,
worldbuilding of a sort All theworld's a stage.
Life is your laboratory and itseemed like my life was turning
into the coolest lark I wouldnever have allowed myself to
imagine I had lots of sex.
(35:18):
I became a millionaire withinsix months.
I started socializing withother millionaires there were a
lot of them in theManipursuaders and we got good
at walking away while we wereahead.
There was always someone aroundto hold the bag and we got good
at walking away while we wereahead.
There was always someone aroundto hold the bag and we got good
at helping other people getwhat they want, which is pretty
much guaranteed to destroy them.
(35:39):
You might not want to know this, but there are a lot of people
who were just better off withoutthem having any power, and if
you can neutralize those peopleby wiping out their
self-confidence, the worldreally does become a marginally
better place.
I know you feel like a jerkbelieving that, but start
looking for it and you'll see.
(36:01):
Emotions are something you do.
You can change your statepretty easily once you learn to
play green sleeves on youremotions and you're having fun
doing it and also showing upevery day, dedicating yourself
and doing it when you don't wantto do it, which is the mark of
a professional.
You'd be surprised how easy youcan elicit any state that you
(36:22):
want and apply what you'vepracticed on yourself to
manipulate others.
All you really have to do iselicit their strategy.
Emotions and values aremalleable.
Pleasure is everything.
That's what doesn't go away ifyou stop believing in it.
That's why flowers turn towardthe sun.
(36:43):
That's the only thing anyliving creature ever wants.
Everything else is stuff thatour ridiculous Rube Goldberg
machine brains have somehowdecided is going to help us in
that pursuit, and we're just sowrong about so much of it.
You really have no idea.
It's a lot to learn.
The reading list is kind ofridiculous.
(37:04):
Once you learn it.
It still takes a lifetime tomaster, but it's so much fun.
Eventually you'll reallysurprise yourself.
I always wanted to be a sexaddict.
I knew it would probably leaveme feeling empty inside.
That was a risk I was willingto take.
That emptiness is where I usedto be and I never really liked
myself.
So yet another win-win I wasgetting really good at those and
(37:27):
I was pretty empty and boredand frustrated by the time I met
Hayley.
Hayley was oblivious to all ofthis stuff.
She thought it was ridiculous.
She was very sexy and also somean, but at the same time so
blunt I don't want to say emptyStubborn Could be defensive when
(37:48):
cornered, but much moreeffective on the attack.
Although she didn't seem tohave 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 bitreactive, but that was about as
much of an emotional response asI was able to get out of her.
Of course I was totally in love.
I took her to the meeting ofthe Manipursuaders because I
(38:10):
thought she would be perfect forthis.
It's like she's bulletproof.
Angelina thought she was anoffering and completely fell
apart.
When she couldn't get throughto Hayley.
She lost it.
We had to call her therapistand her mom.
It was humiliating.
We thought she was reallyoverreacting to this.
It must have touched on somemajor attachment wound, but it
(38:33):
turned out that was just theJenga block that brought down
Angelina's tower.
Her life wasn't going well.
She had decided that she couldentirely create her own reality.
But some things are true andsome things are not permitted.
She was at the boss level.
She was screwing around withthe IRS and the FBI.
She thought she'd figured outhow to defy the laws of physics
when she antagonized some peoplethat turned out to be owed a
(38:56):
significant debt by Suge Knight.
They're never going to get thatmoney from him, but they could
get it from Angelina.
She was obviously flush.
The manipersuaders brought in alot of cash tax-free.
She said it was a religiousorganization.
It's a stretch, but I'll haveto think about that Now that I'm
out of this.
I have a very stronganthropological interest in it.
(39:17):
Anyway, they held her hostage ina hotel room and said they were
going to throw her out thewindow if she didn't drink a
glass of urine.
She drank the first glass ofurine, because that's something
she's into, and then asked ifthey were going to let her go,
and they said no.
There was another second glassof urine that she hadn't been
informed about.
She didn't like the source ofthat urine, so she decided to
(39:42):
let them defenestrate her andthrow her out the window.
She thought she'd discovered aworkaround for gravity.
Turns out she was wrong.
She broke her leg and was lyingin the grass howling for help
for maybe half an hour until thecops showed up.
They took her to the hospital,but one of the cops figured out
who she was and had anunrequited super crush on an FBI
(40:05):
agent who he tried to impressby 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 andmore pathetic.
That didn't help Angelina.
She went to prison for a whileand when she got out she made a
documentary about theManipursuaders and how she got
(40:26):
Manipursuaded out of everything.
She was inspired by thosepeople in NXIVM who got into
NXIVM because they wanted to getrich, which is the only reason
to get into NXIVM, which neversaid it was trying to save the
world.
It was hyper-capitalistpersonal enrichment cult.
The Manipersuaders were atleast trying to save the world.
(40:48):
When NXIVM fell apart, thesepeople started new careers as
wounded refugees and critics ofNXIVM, and now they're getting
rich off of that.
Angelina's still working on herhustle.
She's obviously got some cashcoming in and she's developed a
thick skin.
She doesn't even mind when herfollowers come out and raz her
(41:08):
while she's doing communityservice.
I had a wild come out and razher while she's doing community
service.
I had a wild, passionateloving-in-its-own-way sex romp
with Hayley, it turns out Ireally do have issues, and
finding someone oblivious andthus passively enabling is not
what I needed.
To get better, and I really didwant to get better.
To me, that was always thewhole point of this.
(41:29):
I wanted to lift up otherpeople too.
I got a lot of good sex out ofit and I gave the best sex of my
life Like a comedian.
I wasn't there to get laughs, Iwas there to give them.
I take pride in my work.
It was an interesting adventureand there were some bumps, but
now I can look back on it and Imight write a book about it.
(41:50):
Maybe it'll become a New YorkTimes bestseller.
I'm still figuring out how tospin it so it makes me look
awesome and doesn't incriminateme.
You'd be surprised how easy itis to do that.
Just don't start anything withShug Knight.
It's not worth it.
There's absolutely no way it'sever going to be worth it.
(42:12):
Outro Music, thank you.
(43:36):
Drove all night hugging thecoast headed up to to Washington
State, to the Ptolemy Institute, a rickety old mansion bought
and refurbished to be inhabitedby a clandestine order of
intellectual elites who don'tlike to be called clandestine.
So I'm trying to get that outof my system on the way up there
.
Most of them were driven out ofacademia by the influx of
(43:58):
sophists and their main activitywas a card game called Enhanced
Canasta, which is sort of likeCanasta except instead of suits
they have academic disciplinesPhilosophy, psychology,
mathematics, science, geographyof breakfast.
Basically the sum of theintellectual capital of the
human species, of theintellectual capital of the
human species so far as it usedto go on a university campus.
(44:30):
I used to have an easier timewith all-nighters.
I tried to educate myself.
I listened to SmithsonianFolkways compilations.
After a while, when I realizedthat I didn't remember anything
from the previous 45 minutes andI may have been in a hypnagogic
sleep state while doing 90 onthe freeway, I switched over to
ghetto tech.
You do what you gotta do,feeling good matters Enhanced.
(44:51):
Canasta had mostly been anunderground thing for years and
years until the rise of Abraxas,the Adept Albus, aka Abraxas,
bold as Love, who brought acertain rockstar charisma and
self-consciously, flamboyantlyobnoxious heel quality to the
(45:13):
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 notconsistently.
He didn't bring any particularinnovation to the game.
He put on a show.
Espn2 was starved for content.
They started running EnhancedCanasta.
(45:34):
Some old-school Canastafanatics got worked up about it.
A lot of other people gotinterested and it became a thing
, but not really exciting on anintellectual level until
Eurydice Fleming came along.
Eurydice is a dark-haired,incandescently brilliant,
fascinatingly enigmatic playerof immense beauty and intellect,
(45:59):
known for her sensual allure,five-alarm smoke show.
Unbelievably hot, even more sobecause she downplays it.
She has to, she wants to betaken seriously, and it's mostly
dudes playing this game, andit's dudes that didn't get laid
a lot when they were younger anddidn't think they were ever
going to, and now they are.
(46:20):
But they're using it to workout their bitterness from
adolescence.
One of them being Albus.
Albus and Fleming have clearlybeen lovers at some point.
You can tell if you readbetween the lines.
They're not anymore and Flemingis a much more interesting
player.
Typically in enhanced Canasta,games are won through gathering
(46:41):
Canastas sets of cards in onesuit.
You get a lot of philosophycards.
You put those down you canchange the way that philosophy
works.
You can innovate within thefield.
Fleming has made a name forherself, winning with what are
called MELs, smaller sets ofcards from different suits or
(47:02):
disciplines, which are littleconstellations of bits and
pieces and theories and ideasand facts from different areas
that she puts together to comeup with something that feels
brand new, and it's veryexciting 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
(47:25):
the game.
I'm trying not to use thatexpression when I get to the
Ptolemy Institute because Idon't want them to think I'm an
idiot.
I'm a big boy, I don't carewhat they think of me I can
handle being disliked, it's just.
I don't want to stand out.
I'm not going to visit.
This is an investigation.
(47:48):
There's been a mysterious deaththe.
Grand Dean of Enhanced Canasta,a fellow called Dean White
Harrison yes, that is his middlename and yes, he does use it,
or did until he died, supposedlyof overthinking himself to
death.
Implausible on its face and alot of suspicion immediately
fell on Euretice Fleming, forreasons that made some sense.
If you follow Enhanced Canastaand others, that seemed odd.
(48:11):
She's a woman, she wasdisrupting the game.
She's extremely attractive andshe'd been saying odd things,
things that didn't harmonizewith the worshipful quality that
these people put on beingcerebrally led, the life of the
mind at the expense of the body,the soul, the crotch.
She was spinning fire.
(48:33):
She seemed like she wasn'tholding back anymore.
She didn't care what these guysthought of her and that was a
dangerous position to be in.
And a lot of people thought thatshe had something to do with
Harrison's untimely demise,especially since it left an
opening for her to claim theEnhanced Canasta title, which
was obviously very important toher.
(48:55):
You could see it if you watchedher play and you could totally
see it when you met her inperson.
Oh my god, I was not prepared.
She's a bombshell on the livestreams, she's the total package
in interviews and she's anabsolute knockout in person.
I knew I was going to make afool of myself.
(49:17):
I had to talk to her.
I couldn't walk over.
I had a battering ram betweenmy legs, but I managed to get
over there and I just startedasking the sort of questions
that you ask to sound people out.
Somehow I was just right in theflow.
It was one of those times when,against all odds, everything is
(49:38):
working for you.
You can't say anything.
That's not brilliant and funnyand a little bit adversarial to
keep the push-pull happening andthe sparks flying.
And we just connectedintellectually and sexually and
what I assume it's like toconnect spiritually.
If you believe in anything, wehit it off.
(50:01):
I had to work very hard to staySwitzerland.
I had to stay neutral because Iwas investigating this death
and she was not the primesuspect.
Objectively, I don't think shehad anything to do with it.
I did a lot of investigation.
I don't think there's any waythat she could have been
responsible for Harrison's death.
(50:22):
But there's a lot of otherweird stuff that I found.
The Ptolemy Society isessentially a church.
They are carrying the torch ofold-school academia, of the
canon of intellectual capital,of the Enlightenment project.
The life of the mind is wherethey live.
(50:42):
They believe that theunexamined life is not worth
living and the way to keep theexamined life from being
absolute torture and drudgery isto read the classics.
See things through that prism.
Be rational, be reasonable, beabove the fray, use mental
models.
Think of 2nd, 3rd, 69th ordereffects.
(51:05):
As with any religion thatrepresses physicality, carnality
, sex, the force of creationitself, there's going to be a
lot of sublimation If you watchthese matches, the molten sex
that they're keeping down, it'slike putting a tarp over a
volcano.
(51:25):
It's incredible to watch.
What I discovered about Flemingwas that she was a master of sex
transmutation as a way ofwinning enhanced canast.
How does that work?
The romantic tension was offthe chain.
Something had to happen.
Every time we ran into eachother, the banter was exquisite,
(51:46):
the toads outside, the plantsin the botanical garden,
one-celled organisms were sayingjust pound it out, you two Get
it over with.
Eventually we did.
We ran into each other in thelounge of the boutique hotel in
(52:06):
the building, five roomsupstairs that they rented out on
Airbnb.
Enhanced Canasta fans wouldcome in and pay big money to
sleep there, but not all thetime.
Sometimes the rooms were vacant.
Fleming, eurydice, knew whichones they were.
We both got a little tipsy.
(52:27):
We danced around the subjectfor hours and she invited me
upstairs.
Big ups to Eurydice.
We set off a smoke alarm.
We set off car alarms in Oregonand Idaho and Vancouver and I
think that set something free inher.
What I can only call intuitionbecame extremely acute.
(52:48):
Intuition is a real thing, muchlike charisma, which is what
Abraxas had Pretty much the onlything he had.
As far as I could tell, somepeople are, at the very least,
preternaturally intuitive, ifnot somehow cognizant, on levels
that science does notadequately explain.
Eurydice is one of these people.
(53:09):
She had figured out how to getinto Abraxas' digital accounts
when she knew that he wascheating on her.
It was an open relationship, butthey were supposed to
communicate about what was goingon, which Abraxas did not to
Eurydice's satisfaction or atall.
So she had to find out forherself what he was up to, an
(53:32):
extremely painful process thatdrove her a little bit nuts, but
the upshot was that she hadaccess to Abraxas's private life
.
She knew that there was moregoing on there than he was
letting on.
We figured out there's a reasonthat he became a star.
He is running an entirelydifferent version of Enhanced
(53:54):
Canasta on an undergroundcircuit, and I'm laughing to
keep from crying, because thestakes are much higher.
This one is about total controlof the human race, enslavement
of everyone, slave, morality forthe master, morality for
Abraxas and eventually Abraxas,only because his plan is to win
(54:16):
against these other scumbagsthat he's brought in.
He definitely killed Dean WhiteHarrison because he has been
openly bragging about it.
He's spoiled and, in the end,not very bright, but very
mean-spirited, very cynical, andhe's always gotten away with
everything.
He doesn't have the OPSEC thathe needs for this kind of
(54:38):
project.
But the question is, who'sgoing to stop him?
Eurydice suddenly becomesuncharacteristically reticent
when that comes up.
Eurydice had a weird childhood.
She was raised in a cult thatyou've never heard of because it
wasn't one of the moreinteresting or successful cults.
There was a woman in the cultwho was from a lineage of
(55:02):
witches practicing magic with aK who taught Eurydice a lot of
what she knew.
That was what was driving hermad, because she had been using
the stuff to come up with meldsand come up with melds that were
better than Canasta's andchange the game, for lack of a
better description.
And she knew how to stopAbraxas using those techniques.
(55:25):
But that would expose her andher Ptolemy Institute career
would be over.
She didn't even want to tell meabout it, but I reassured her
that I'm Antonio Snow.
The reason I'm helping the goodguys in law enforcement is to
stay out of prison.
I was an international con man.
(55:46):
I was a card counter.
I beat the house every singletime.
I was a safe cracker.
No, safe was safe when I wasaround.
I killed the Buddha on the roadbecause for a while I was
practicing Buddhism to try torestore my reputation, and I met
the Buddha on the road and Igutted him, Although I don't
(56:06):
think he was the Buddha.
I think he was just a transient.
I'm a monster.
That's probably flatteringmyself.
I am a crook.
I'm a crook who's trying tomake good.
Anybody that looks into mybackground is going to know
enough about me to know that I'mnot a good person.
I don't know if anyone's a goodperson.
(56:28):
I think that everyone else isas terrible as I am and I'm the
only one who's being honestabout it, Although it makes me
question if we're really good orbad.
I think those are limiting.
We limit ourselves that way.
I think the answer is to gobeyond good and evil, which
Eurydice could certainly do.
We used our wits, our gift ofgab banter, our chemistry, our
(56:52):
sensuality, our carnality, oursexuality.
We managed to outmaneuverAbraxas in the ultimate
high-stakes round of EnhancedCanasta, which turned out to be
the last I had to face theconsequences of my actions.
Eurydice had to really changenot just the game but the way
that knowledge is understood.
(57:14):
It changed adaptability, that's, the understanding, the
instinct, the ability to forgetthat you forgot what you knew
and get out of your own way.
That really matters in the ageof discontinuity.
You've got to take care ofyourself, and for me that's
life-threatening sex, Ideallywith Eurydice.
(57:35):
No-transcript.
(01:00:14):
Kchungradioorg slash.
Donate if you're nasty.
This is Emerson Dameron.
This has been emerson dameron'smedicated minutes presenting a
night of bite-sized eroticthrillers medicated-minutescom.
I love you personally.
Celebrity saves lives, Thankyou.
At first I thought this wasseriously a setup.
(01:00:39):
She seemed really into it.
(01:01:37):
Then I thought maybe she lovedtaking my discipline and also
was using sex for power.
I don't know if that blew mymind, but it blew something.
Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio.
Crimson Transgressions, abite-sized erotic thriller by
Emerson Dameron.
Find it before it finds you.
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Focus, sleep repeat Magic Mind,proud sponsor of LA's number
one avant-garde personaldevelopment program, emerson
Dameron's Medicated Minutesalready in progress minutes
(00:48):
already in progress.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
The scene opens at a lively house party with thumping
music, chatter and clinkingglasses.
A man, jack, swaggering andself-assured, approaches a shy
and hesitant woman, lucy, who isstanding alone by the
refreshment table.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yo, yo yo what's cracky lackin' sweet thang.
Mind, if I slide into yourblast radius, my bomb-banging
bodied baby girl.
Um hi okay sure Aight cool,cool Lemme.
Introduce myself properly theycall me Jack, but you can call
me Smooth Operator.
Smooth Operator.
Um, okay, I'm.
(01:24):
Lucy, lucy, huh, that's a nameas sweet as honey dipped in gold
.
You lookin' like a straight-upmasterpiece in the midst of this
chaotic art show we call life.
Oh, um, thank you.
That's nice of you to say.
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 kindaway like I wanna dive into your
(01:48):
vibes and ride the wave of yourswing song.
Um, wow, that's quite ametaphor.
Metaphor.
Nah, baby, I'm speakin'straight from the source of all
things.
Sublime, my dime.
You got me in a trance and ahalf like.
I'm mesmerized by those tastythighs, and I ain't even mad
about it.
Lucy giggles nervously.
(02:09):
I I don't know what to say.
Ain't no need for words, honeydip, let's just vibe you and me
and take a tantalizing traintrip for two to Sexy City,
capital of Provocation Nation.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
As the music pulses louder, Jack takes Lucy's hand
and pulls her into a playfuldance, spinning her around the
room.
Lucy laughs.
This is um.
This is unexpected.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Unexpected.
Nah, baby, baby.
This was written in the rootsof the rooibos that gave me
these tea leaves of radical realtalk with a faint twist of
raspberry.
And you, babes are asprophesized.
You and me, we're like peanutbutter and jelly, hip hop and
metal, destined to make sweetmusic, rock arenas and break
waterbeds together".
Speaker 2 (02:56):
As they dance, lucy's hesitance melts away and she
starts to mirror Jack's moveswith more confidence.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
You know, jack, you're kind of like charming in
a ridiculous sort of way.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Ridiculous.
Ah shucks.
You flatter me, juicy Lucy, buthey, sometimes love is a little
ridiculous, ain't it?
True facts.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
That's what I'm talking about.
They continue dancing, lost inthe moment, as the scene fades
out, with the sounds of theparty in the background erotic
thrillers.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Someone asked Henry David Thoreau, transcendentalist
philosopher, why he didn'ttravel more.
It seemed like he would be aneffective cosmopolitan man of
the world with his intelligenceand insight, and Thoreau replied
I've traveled extensively inConcord.
That was his home.
I'd like to do that in LA.
That's what I want to do withthe rest of this year
Reintroduce myself, maybe fallin love with the city, mix it up
a little bit.
I used to do that a lot, nowlately not so much.
(04:19):
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, sometimessocially awkward, but people
have observed that I like mixingit up with others.
But I've been doing less ofthat.
Some stuff came up.
I made some discoveries.
I recently discovered energizedmeditation, an embodiment
(04:39):
practice.
I had a lot more power in therethan I expected.
As you know, I practice solopolyamory.
I don't want a relationship, Ijust 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 thelaws of physics Quantum sex,
(05:02):
and I just discovered it withinmyself.
I started doing energizedmeditation and it just came out.
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 harmthan good.
Put a pin in that.
Actually, put a pin right here.
Yeah, in your arm.
You've gotten shots before youcan do this.
Just stick, yeah, just likethat.
(05:23):
Maybe it hurts for a fractionof a second.
Do you want me to slap you?
I got a flash in your eyes andsaid 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 knowwhat it feels like.
This could be your shot.
This could be your chance.
That was not bad at all.
I should be honest with youabout something.
(05:46):
I don't think that you're verysmart.
If you look at the intelligenceof the modal American, you're a
lot dumber than that.
I play along, I humor you.
The truth would drive youinsane.
You're someone that needs to belied to, protected.
I've preserved the bubble, butafter a while I resent treating
stupid people like they'reintelligent.
(06:08):
I'm just clarifying my position.
Clarity kills ambiguity.
So what are you going to doabout it?
Take me to court, bring your IQtest, except don't Only idiots
think that that's a good way tomeasure what they call
intelligence.
Hmm, alright, this is different.
This is interesting.
I like where this is going.
(06:29):
We had a breakthrough, we had amoment.
If nothing else, Anyway, itstarted to become too much.
I was terrified of my own powerand most people are, and that's
what impedes them fromgreatness but I was because I
thought I could really destroythe world, accidently kill
someone with my mind or my power, my presence, because I was
just so damned embodied On adirect flight from Los Angeles
(06:53):
to Rio.
I had many hours to think aboutthis.
When I got on board, I realizedI'd forgotten everything my
phone, my laptop, books, tubesof toothpaste that I could read
the ingredients and facts,something to keep my mind busy.
No, it was just me.
It was like a sensorydeprivation.
It wasn't, yes, irritation.
I'm six foot one Flying coachis torture for me.
(07:15):
We need armed revolt Heads onpikes.
I have friends that havebelieved this for a second.
I was always resistant, if notcontemptuous.
I ridiculed their beliefs totheir faces.
But now we're reaching animpasse.
I realized on that plane ridethat I completely lost my mind.
I think it's the first timeI've ever been happy.
(07:36):
Ask if you are happy and youcease to be so.
I don't have a lot ofexperience with happiness.
Maybe it's sour grapes, but I'mskeptical of happiness as a
goal.
By the time I touched down inRio, I was utterly mad Cracked
Bananas off the deep end, nolonger playing with a full deck,
it was all jokers.
Then I realized a couple ofthings.
(07:58):
I realized where I screwed up.
I realized that I could resolveto never do the exact same
thing again, that I could honormy commitment.
I was capable of that.
I always have been Honoringyour commitments, and living in
integrity is just a process ofelimination.
Yes, I think you're brilliant.
Otherwise I wouldn't have saidthat.
I don't want to make your headexplode.
(08:18):
You're not stupid.
Whatever.
The opposite of that is.
If we ever really understandintelligence, you'll be in that
category.
Maybe pass the muscle.
Rather than telling you thistechnique, I'd like to show you.
Yes, I'm finally accepting yourinvitation to sleep with me and
have sex before we go to sleep.
Yeah, you can spend the night.
(08:38):
No, I have always been renting.
It's you, it always was.
You didn't know that, huh.
But you work on your sense ofhumor.
You gotta loosen up a littlebit.
Energized meditation.
Let's do this.
Let's get out of here.
I hate this song, not really.
Every now and then I hate someharmless thing just to get it
out of my system.
You look hot in that dress.
You look like Jane Birkin.
(08:59):
I mean, you know that.
You know you're too cute.
You look good.
You look hot enough that Idon't want to alienate you by
telling you how sexy you are andthe things that I want to do to
you.
We're cool like that.
You're cool like that.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
What if there existed an esteemed society of
intellectuals, a place where thegreatest minds gather,
dedicated to the unfathomablepursuit of knowledge, a place
known as the Ptolemy Institute?
And what if this Instituteplayed host to a game so complex
, so intellectually challenging,that it's more than just a game
it's a battle of minds, knownas Enhanced Canasta.
(09:33):
In the early 20th century, agroup of intellectuals, scholars
and scientists came together toform the Ptolemy Institute,
named after the great Greekmathematician and astronomer,
claudius Ptolemy.
This institute, hidden awayfrom the public eye, aimed to
create a space where thebrightest minds could explore,
innovate and push the boundariesof human knowledge.
(09:54):
The years rolled on, thePtolemy Institute became a
sanctuary for intellectualsworldwide, a place where they
could collaborate, debate andprogress without the constraints
of societal norms andexpectations.
The Institute thrived in itssecrecy, its members diligently
working towards breakthroughsthat would subtly but
significantly influence theworld.
(10:15):
Parallel to the evolution of thePtolemy Institute, there
emerged a game Enhanced Canasta.
Born out of traditional Canasta, a card game of the Rummy
family, enhanced Canasta evolvedto be more than just a pastime.
It became a tool forintellectual engagement, a game
that encompassed elements ofstrategy, logic and critical
thinking, a game that mirroredthe intellectual rigor of the
(10:37):
Ptolemy Institute itself.
Over time, enhanced Canastabecame an integral part of the
Ptolemy Institute.
It was no longer just a gamebut a rite of passage, an
intellectual duel, a way tochallenge and stimulate the
minds of the members of theInstitute.
The game's complexity andintellectual demand mirrored the
ethos of the Institute, makingit a perfect fit for this
(10:58):
society of scholars.
Today, the Ptolemy Instituteand enhanced Canasta stand as
symbols of intellectual pursuitand rigorous academic
exploration.
The Ptolemy Institute, aprestigious society of
intellectuals, is a testament tothe relentless pursuit of
knowledge.
It embodies the power ofcollaboration and intellectual
freedom, showcasing the impactthat unbounded exploration can
(11:19):
have on the world.
Enhanced Canasta, on the otherhand, is a testament to the
power of intellectual engagement.
It is more than just a game.
It is a tool for stimulatingthe mind, challenging notions
and fostering strategic thinking.
It reflects the core values ofthe Ptolemy Institute, embodying
the spirit of intellectualrigor and challenge Essence.
(11:40):
The Ptolemy Institute andEnhanced Canasta represent the
power of the intellectual mind.
They showcase the potentialthat lies within each of us to
learn, to innovate and tochallenge the norms.
They stand as a reminder of theimportance of intellectual
freedom and the power ofrigorous academic exploration.
They are a testament to theuntapped potential of the human
(12:01):
mind and the wonders that can beachieved when that potential is
realized.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
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 whatyou're doing.
I know what I'm doing.
I don't think you need to knowwhat I'm doing.
I think, I've got it undercontrol and I think you would,
if anything, compromise that.
(12:28):
I'm delighted by your daydreamobliviousness.
You are so far out to lunchthat it's half past dinner time.
You need a team.
You need people to look afteryou.
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.
(12:49):
You are interesting.
I could take you on perhaps asan understudy.
You might get smacked around alittle bit, but you would emerge
an expert in the field.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of peoplecrash and burn and I don't
think you're going to do that.
I don't know if you're hotenough to burn.
Psychological, you have nothing.
Uh, well, I mean, you'recompared to me.
(13:10):
You're not that sharp in thelooks department, but I sense an
intelligence.
I've seen a lot of neediness.
What I get from you is you wantto connect like a real
connection, not justblood-sucking parasitism like I
typically see.
I am feeling a little bitconflicted because you've sent
(13:30):
some signals that are ambiguous.
A little bit conflicted becauseyou've sent some signals that
are ambiguous.
I think you're trying to comeon to me but not broadcast that.
You're coming on to me, whichis unfortunate for you because I
have pretty high standardsStraight up.
Love bombing is really the onlyway to get through to me.
You gotta be the bomb.
Bomb me with yourself.
There are multiple schools ofthought on that.
(13:51):
Yeah, you sound veryauthoritative when you say I
don't wanna.
Well, yeah, let's see what yougot.
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 yoursafety when you're rolling with
the boss the master, not theboss of you.
That's a project management andHR nightmare waiting to happen.
(14:11):
You will get fired and you willget us both in the news.
It won't be my fault becauseyou were seducing me.
You came onto me and you knowthat.
Admit it.
Come on, don't be a liar.
Just tell them that Life is forpleasure.
Plants grow toward the sun andadults have sex the most fun way
to pass time other thanparasailing.
But you really haven't doneeither, until you combine the
(14:33):
two.
Let me tell you a story about awoman I knew.
By the end of it, maybe you'llknow yourself.
(14:54):
Her name was Aurora.
She was the best ballet dancerin our group.
Best in the city, not in theworld, but nobody cared.
She was the best right thereand 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 sheknew herself.
So did most people.
(15:14):
Everyone had a different versionof Aurora that lived in their
heads.
The version that lived inAurora's head was arguably the
one with the least purchase inreality, and that version was
usually enveloped in daydreamsSpinning diamonds, dangling
participles, deep royal bluesand burning gold.
Her dream world was vivid,ensconcing, but it didn't stop
(15:38):
her from being kinestheticallybrilliant.
She was a dancer like no other.
Her secret was that she had noidea.
She just went with it.
If she tried, the effort wouldhave been an impediment.
She didn't need to get out ofher own way because she never
got in it.
Her head was so dreamy that herphysical presence was purely
steamy, as could be seen in heraudition for an avant-garde
(16:01):
version of Sleeping Beauty.
The director Ivan was entrancedby 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 muchas any two people can bond.
Before Sarah committed suicide,aurora felt somewhat
(16:23):
responsible.
She knew something was wrongbut she hadn't done anything.
She didn't want to intervene ona hunch.
In her dreams they become evenmore intimate.
Yes, in a sexual sense Realitycouldn't hold a candle to the
cascading volcanic orgasms sheexperienced in the dream world
that she was doing just fine inthe real world.
(16:44):
She easily scored the part ofAurora, which wasn't even what
she was auditioning for.
Aurora always auditioned forparts she thought were too hard
for her to get because that waywhen she failed she could learn
something.
But it wouldn't be too much ofa shock, not even a
disappointment, really.
Disappointment was fleeting.
She could escape into the dreamworld and ask the dream
characters if they had somethingto show her and experience acts
(17:07):
too depraved for urbandictionary.
She knew a lot of this wasacting out in her frustration
and confusion and wondering whyleft in the wake of Sarah's
suicide.
She did the auditions todistract herself, to get out of
her comfort zone, because hercomfort zone was becoming deeply
uncomfortable.
As she danced her mind was way,way on the other side of the
(17:30):
earth.
She knew if she didn't get thepart it would remind her that
she's not special which shedoesn't want to be Becoming
special would be the end ofeverything.
Ivan doesn't even know her nameis Aurora.
He believes in the power ofnominative determinism and may
have given her the part justbased on that.
But they were auditioning undernumbers, not names.
She got the part.
(17:53):
Ivan rewrote the wholeproduction around Aurora's aura
of charisma.
He'd become deeply obsessedwith her.
She got deeply into the worldof the play, which began to
merge with her dream world.
Sometimes it was awkward.
She dove into a passionatesexual relationship with Ivan
and almost got him into thedream world, but it was a little
bit too self-important.
Also very obsessive, aurora washis muse, his most astute critic
(18:17):
and most enthusiasticcheerleader, which is good.
Ivan had a cheerleader fetish.
The uniform was not negotiable.
He was also into cannibalismnot practicing and he didn't
feel great about it.
That obsession led to hisdeveloping an encyclopedic
knowledge of the history anduses of salt.
He could talk about that forhours.
That was his charming side.
(18:38):
When he had too much to drinkhe would confess to things that
he probably shouldn't have.
Aurora didn't know if he wasjust reflexively lying, but she
realized she needed to get somespace.
She went to her favoritebookstore or regular hangout ran
into a young man named Nikolai.
Nikolai wore a sport coat withpatches on the elbows.
He was so self-conscious thatAurora developed a fascination
(19:01):
with him.
The only thing she knew abouthim was he was desperate to be
liked, so she could projectwhatever she wanted onto Nikolai
and imagine him to be theultimate dream character and
combination of all of the traitsshe admired and ached for and
longed for and drooled over.
Unfortunately, nikolai tookthat to mean he was doing
something right and continued tooverthink every detail of his
(19:24):
presentation.
Aurora had a fascination withhow people behave in public
places, the interaction ritualsthat drive it.
She used Nikolai as somethingof a lab gerbil, the test
subject for experiments anddebauched sex and dubiously
ethical behavioral experiments.
It was all good fun amongconsenting adults.
(19:45):
It was a much-needed break fromthe play.
If you're involved in a scenewith a lot of drama, it's
important to have friendsFriends with benefits or without
Outside of that scene you'llunderstand immediately how
unimportant all of that stuff is.
But Aurora had a thing forbringing her worlds together and
she could bring Nikolai intothe dream world easily, which
(20:06):
she did Sometimes thrice a dayfor threesomes with Sarah.
Sometimes each of them cameonce.
Sometimes they all came threetimes.
Sarah kept upping the frequency.
After the play debuted, torapturous reviews, it became the
talk of the local art scene.
Aurora and Nikolai took Ivan outto celebrate.
Ivan had become obsessed withceiling fans and autoerotic
(20:29):
asphyxiation and was gettingclose to seeing how the two
could be combined, and that wastoo fascinating for him to
realize that Nikolai and Aurorawere sleeping together.
He did manage to get drunkenough to get beside himself, to
get over himself, if onlytemporarily, and long enough to
get into the dream world.
Aurora, sarah, ivan, nikolaifound themselves together in the
(20:51):
dream world.
A spontaneous orgy broke out At.
Nikolai found themselvestogether in the dream world.
A spontaneous orgy broke out.
At.
First Nikolai had too manynerves and Ivan was too drunk.
Aurora got bored and startedchanneling some other dream
characters that she'd met, whichis how she discovered that
there was a portal to a deepercircle of the dream world hidden
in the basement of a local sexdungeon.
It was three in the morning.
(21:12):
It took them about 30 minutesto get there.
When they did, sarah toldAurora they needed to get the
party going before the sun cameup.
It took about 30 more minutes.
Then Nikolai threw on massiveattacks, mezzanine and pretty
soon they were going at it sohard that they summoned a group
of demons.
That's how I got involved.
I'd known Aurora for a longtime.
(21:32):
I was one of her recurringdream demons.
Aurora's dreams were ahigh-rent district, but at this
point I'm flush enough to livein the dreams of anyone I want.
After some good-natured teasing, nikolai started really going
at it.
He realized his true desire wasto find himself and become who
he was, which he did, andfrankly it was glorious.
(21:54):
I don't want to talk about itbecause he's taken on a whole
new identity now and I don'twant to diamond out.
Ivan got over himself for good.
For real, he became someoneelse.
He realized he wasn't specialand that saved his life.
He was scheduled to die in sixmonths, a drunk driving accident
.
The timing was good.
My timing is always good.
(22:14):
I'm a demon, my timing isdemonic.
He realized he wasn't reallyinto cannibalism.
He was starving for intimacy.
For a while he lost hisartistic juice.
He also lost his muse, asAurora realized her true desire
was to become one with Sarah,which they did.
They haven't been seen since.
They left in a swirl ofthrilling pyrotechnics.
(22:38):
Isaac's next play was terrible,but the one after that was a
whole new flavor.
He accessed a different part ofhis psyche.
It was really interesting.
Stuff Spoke to a lot ofdifferent audiences at once.
I'd like to say I helped withit.
But I'm a demon, not a creativeconsultant.
I've been around for thousandsof years.
At this point my tastes arepretty extreme.
(22:59):
You can't say I'm great withpeople.
(23:24):
You could say that I can't stopyou.
I wouldn't believe it.
You might lose some credibilityin my eyes.
I would never say that Icouldn't sell it.
You might lose some credibilityin my eyes.
I would never say that Icouldn't sell it to myself.
All of my relationships seemedto end with this certain flavor
of disappointment on the woman'sside.
My relationship with my lastgirlfriend, mia, began, I
(23:44):
thought, with sort of ameet-cute quote-unquote in a
bookstore.
We were both in the philosophysection.
We ended up talking aboutBataille for about an hour,
which of course led to veryinteresting sex from an
anthropological perspective.
She told me later I was aproject.
This was a pattern for her, andher friends could see it coming
(24:06):
at this point, which is whythey never liked me.
She said when she quit smokingI started to quote-unquote reek
of depression and havequote-unquote pigpen-type
depression lines coming off ofmy body.
We stopped having sex, whichwas the end of the relationship,
like it always is, broke upsomewhat acrimoniously, but she
would call me for booty calls inthe middle of the night.
(24:28):
I wouldn't question it, I wouldjust go.
But I started to think thatmaybe she wasn't playing with a
full deck either, which wasweird.
I'm usually keen on blamingmyself for everything.
It gives me a sense of agency.
We stayed friendly after thatand we stayed in touch.
She invited me to go to ameeting of a society that she
was part of.
(24:48):
Once she got in my car she toldme 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 fineputting out there.
I said I would take it to mygrave, which I totally would.
A couple of my best friendssaid that they were trying to
think of somebody in our socialcircle they would go to if they
needed to dispose of a body theykilled, and they both agreed I
(25:12):
was 50 points ahead of thenearest competitor.
I'm like a lockbox I can keepyour secrets.
I spend most of my timethinking about myself, but when
we got to the meeting of the MSociety I could understand why
she was concerned.
It was so strange.
The place was designed.
Everything was different shadesof blue, neon blue, like blue
(25:34):
velvet.
Everything was a differentshade of red.
There's so many of them andsome of them didn't go well
together in a way that wasdisorienting and
unconventionally beautiful.
The disorientation wascumulative.
There were no clocks.
It was impossible to tell whereNorth was or, after a while,
(25:54):
where I was geographically orwho I was.
I could remember the last fourdigits of my social security
number, but not the rest of it,which I realized when I was
having extraordinarilypassionate rough sex with
Angelina, a high-ranking memberof the group who I hooked up
(26:15):
with when we stimulated eachother intellectually more than
we planned on in one of thesalons.
She told me to say her name andthen asked for my social and I
couldn't remember it.
The sex kind of fell apartafter that.
She seemed really angry anddisappointed in a flavor that I
hadn't experienced before.
Eventually I figured out thatthe problem was I was an
(26:37):
offering for Mia, who's one ofAngelina's students.
She promised I would be totallycompliant but didn't add that
I'm really too self-absorbed andoblivious to deliver the goods.
When it comes right down to it,considering that I'm a novelist
by trade, I don't pay attentionto details in quote-unquote
(26:58):
real life.
It's very hard to get throughto me, and the women who do tend
to be super intense or they'relooking for a rescue dog.
That flavor of disappointmentis when they realize people get
excited when other people changebecause it's the exception,
it's not the rule.
How many people do you know whohave really fundamentally
changed?
I know a disproportionatenumber, but that's because I
(27:22):
made a lot of friends in the MSociety.
Mia left in shame, which meantI could go back as much as I
wanted.
There were two echelons at the MSociety.
It turned out Well.
It was pretty obvious from thebeginning.
The plan was to add me to thelower stratum, which was there
to serve the higher stratum togive them guinea pigs to test
(27:43):
out their ideas.
I told Angelina I would quitcoming to the salons, I would
quit having sex with her, Imight just give up everything I
loved, unless she put me in theupper stratum.
The upper stratum calledthemselves the Manipersuaders
Bad branding, but it was forinternal use only.
They tried to be discreet, whichserved them well, since they
(28:04):
were a secret society of peoplewho got together to learn and
practice techniques formanipulating other people into
getting what they wanted.
The name was obviouslycombining manipulation and
persuasion.
Usually, persuasion is good andmanipulation is bad.
And they wanted to go beyondgood and evil, the core ideas.
(28:24):
Number one people want whatthey can't have, so be desirable
and be inaccessible, unknowable.
To balance those thingsrequires push-pull and a lot of
teasing and intermittentreinforcement.
Their number two value.
This took a lot of practice andeventually you needed to rely
(28:44):
on improvisation.
It had to be in your musclememory and in your bones and
your DNA.
Really, you had to play peoplein the manner of a great jazz
musician Give them enough ofwhat they want to keep the
wheels turning, and give themenough well-timed punishment and
occasional random punishment tokeep them in your thrall and
keep them confused and offbalance.
(29:05):
This sounds like an awful wayto treat people.
But, number three, you are theprize Convinced a lot of us the
more that we did.
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 otherperson in a sexual relationship,
(29:28):
the world would become a betterplace, because we knew what we
were doing and it certainlydidn'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.
(29:49):
The world is going to recreateitself in your image.
If you don't take rejection as areferendum on you or take your
bad luck too seriously.
Number four was life is unfairand can be gained.
The fact that it's unfair iswhy you have a chance to succeed
.
You have one life.
This is it.
This is all we get.
That wasn't on the list, butthat's something I believe.
(30:12):
I'm not exactly an atheist.
I haven't figured out how tospin this in a way that's
appropriately coquettish, but itkind of ties in with number
five.
You create your own reality andeventually it becomes the
reality.
Everyone you know sleep with,argue with, is a guest in your
reality.
Using certain techniques andpracticing them every day
(30:33):
eventually gives you the abilityto decide what you want to feel
, which takes away really anyexcuse to feel bad.
You can make other people feelgood too, sometimes in a way
that ends up transferring a lotof their resources to you.
If that's what they want to do,what exactly is the harm?
It's win-win, it's somethingfor nothing.
(30:54):
It's magic, really.
Angelina had a very particularspecific reality that she
created for herself and herregular guests, which included
me, and the sex was absolutelyphenomenal.
Everything on her yes list wason my maybe list and vice versa,
(31:15):
so the trade-offs were amazing.
A lot of her stuff ended upbeing my stuff that I just
hadn't tried yet I don't knowwhat she thought about me and it
seemed like to ask would be toreveal unattractive
vulnerability bordering onweakness.
She was completely obsessedwith Suge Knight, the founder of
Death Row Records, who'scurrently incarcerated.
She claimed to have had anaffair with the man in his
(31:37):
heyday in the mid-90s.
I will say she was remarkablywell-preserved.
She was cagey about her age.
Once we went to pick up hermedications and they asked for
her date of birth, she wrote iton a piece of paper and slid it
over to the clerk so shewouldn't have to say it.
I don't know if she had anaffair with Suge Knight or not.
I don't know if any of thestuff she said was true or
(32:00):
partially true or true, but ithappened to someone else,
definitely not to her.
She was obviously still in lovewith Suge Knight.
The M stood for MOB, whichstands for Money Over Bitches,
which is something the Bloodsused to say to each other.
The meetings were held at 662Calhoun Way.
662 is also Money Over Bitcheson a touchstone phone.
(32:24):
It's in a lot of Tupac recordsand the 662 Club, which also had
a red theme because it wasowned by Suge Knight, who was
affiliated with the Bloods, wasone of the places that Tupac hit
up the night that he died.
Angelina was very into the SugeKnight mythos.
She wouldn't shut up about itand what we found out is that
(32:44):
Suge Knight still has a lot ofenemies.
The tactics through which theprinciples were practiced in the
real world included believingin yourself way out of
proportion to your abilities oryour character or anything.
You had to cultivate the kindof self-confidence that can only
be completely delusional,because your delusions about
(33:07):
yourself are the only thing thatno one can really take away
from you, and it's usuallybetter to be high on yourself
and wrong than down on yourselfand right.
That's not in their scripture.
I may have heard it somewhereelse.
It may be original to me.
People pay money to read stuffthat I write.
I must have something going on.
Becoming a jazz master ofmanipulation was the other thing
(33:29):
, and that's really justsomething you do with hardcore
practice.
Some of the guinea pigs werehard cases who were brought in
so that people could do thisstuff at the boss level before
we went out to networkingmeetings or speed dating or
cuddle parties, ayahuascacircles, all kinds of places to
try working our magic on people.
(33:50):
We had to become scientists,artists and connoisseurs of
human nature to get very, notcynical.
Cynical is limiting, Skepticismis enlightening.
People are pretty terrible.
You get to know a lot aboutthem.
They're terrible in ways thatare easy to exploit.
Do we resent the powerfulbecause they lord it over us or
(34:13):
because we'd rather be lordingit over someone else ourselves?
We're just not able to believein ourselves or transcend the
sort of masochistic moralitythat we picked up from somewhere
.
Do you even remember where yougot the things you believe?
Do you know if, maybe, theperson who taught you those
things had something to gainfrom it?
We're thinking about.
(34:34):
What else did your parents lieto you about?
What do you really believe?
Why are you afraid of your ownpower?
Take off your glasses, god.
Your eyes are beautiful.
I'm just gonna look at you fora minute.
A lot of this stuff was straightout of Dale Carnegie.
Use people's names, prompt themto talk about themselves and
let them do the work.
Once you get really good atthis, you don't have to try and
(34:57):
figure out who's gonna be intoit and just wind them up and
watch them go.
The biggest principle, ofcourse, is reality creation,
worldbuilding of a sort All theworld's a stage.
Life is your laboratory and itseemed like my life was turning
into the coolest lark I wouldnever have allowed myself to
imagine I had lots of sex.
(35:18):
I became a millionaire withinsix months.
I started socializing withother millionaires there were a
lot of them in theManipursuaders and we got good
at walking away while we wereahead.
There was always someone aroundto hold the bag and we got good
at walking away while we wereahead.
There was always someone aroundto hold the bag and we got good
at helping other people getwhat they want, which is pretty
much guaranteed to destroy them.
(35:39):
You might not want to know this, but there are a lot of people
who were just better off withoutthem having any power, and if
you can neutralize those peopleby wiping out their
self-confidence, the worldreally does become a marginally
better place.
I know you feel like a jerkbelieving that, but start
looking for it and you'll see.
(36:01):
Emotions are something you do.
You can change your statepretty easily once you learn to
play green sleeves on youremotions and you're having fun
doing it and also showing upevery day, dedicating yourself
and doing it when you don't wantto do it, which is the mark of
a professional.
You'd be surprised how easy youcan elicit any state that you
(36:22):
want and apply what you'vepracticed on yourself to
manipulate others.
All you really have to do iselicit their strategy.
Emotions and values aremalleable.
Pleasure is everything.
That's what doesn't go away ifyou stop believing in it.
That's why flowers turn towardthe sun.
(36:43):
That's the only thing anyliving creature ever wants.
Everything else is stuff thatour ridiculous Rube Goldberg
machine brains have somehowdecided is going to help us in
that pursuit, and we're just sowrong about so much of it.
You really have no idea.
It's a lot to learn.
The reading list is kind ofridiculous.
(37:04):
Once you learn it.
It still takes a lifetime tomaster, but it's so much fun.
Eventually you'll reallysurprise yourself.
I always wanted to be a sexaddict.
I knew it would probably leaveme feeling empty inside.
That was a risk I was willingto take.
That emptiness is where I usedto be and I never really liked
myself.
So yet another win-win I wasgetting really good at those and
(37:27):
I was pretty empty and boredand frustrated by the time I met
Hayley.
Hayley was oblivious to all ofthis stuff.
She thought it was ridiculous.
She was very sexy and also somean, but at the same time so
blunt I don't want to say emptyStubborn Could be defensive when
(37:48):
cornered, but much moreeffective on the attack.
Although she didn't seem tohave 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 bitreactive, but that was about as
much of an emotional response asI was able to get out of her.
Of course I was totally in love.
I took her to the meeting ofthe Manipursuaders because I
(38:10):
thought she would be perfect forthis.
It's like she's bulletproof.
Angelina thought she was anoffering and completely fell
apart.
When she couldn't get throughto Hayley.
She lost it.
We had to call her therapistand her mom.
It was humiliating.
We thought she was reallyoverreacting to this.
It must have touched on somemajor attachment wound, but it
(38:33):
turned out that was just theJenga block that brought down
Angelina's tower.
Her life wasn't going well.
She had decided that she couldentirely create her own reality.
But some things are true andsome things are not permitted.
She was at the boss level.
She was screwing around withthe IRS and the FBI.
She thought she'd figured outhow to defy the laws of physics
when she antagonized some peoplethat turned out to be owed a
(38:56):
significant debt by Suge Knight.
They're never going to get thatmoney from him, but they could
get it from Angelina.
She was obviously flush.
The manipersuaders brought in alot of cash tax-free.
She said it was a religiousorganization.
It's a stretch, but I'll haveto think about that Now that I'm
out of this.
I have a very stronganthropological interest in it.
(39:17):
Anyway, they held her hostage ina hotel room and said they were
going to throw her out thewindow if she didn't drink a
glass of urine.
She drank the first glass ofurine, because that's something
she's into, and then asked ifthey were going to let her go,
and they said no.
There was another second glassof urine that she hadn't been
informed about.
She didn't like the source ofthat urine, so she decided to
(39:42):
let them defenestrate her andthrow her out the window.
She thought she'd discovered aworkaround for gravity.
Turns out she was wrong.
She broke her leg and was lyingin the grass howling for help
for maybe half an hour until thecops showed up.
They took her to the hospital,but one of the cops figured out
who she was and had anunrequited super crush on an FBI
(40:05):
agent who he tried to impressby 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 andmore pathetic.
That didn't help Angelina.
She went to prison for a whileand when she got out she made a
documentary about theManipursuaders and how she got
(40:26):
Manipursuaded out of everything.
She was inspired by thosepeople in NXIVM who got into
NXIVM because they wanted to getrich, which is the only reason
to get into NXIVM, which neversaid it was trying to save the
world.
It was hyper-capitalistpersonal enrichment cult.
The Manipersuaders were atleast trying to save the world.
(40:48):
When NXIVM fell apart, thesepeople started new careers as
wounded refugees and critics ofNXIVM, and now they're getting
rich off of that.
Angelina's still working on herhustle.
She's obviously got some cashcoming in and she's developed a
thick skin.
She doesn't even mind when herfollowers come out and raz her
(41:08):
while she's doing communityservice.
I had a wild come out and razher while she's doing community
service.
I had a wild, passionateloving-in-its-own-way sex romp
with Hayley, it turns out Ireally do have issues, and
finding someone oblivious andthus passively enabling is not
what I needed.
To get better, and I really didwant to get better.
To me, that was always thewhole point of this.
(41:29):
I wanted to lift up otherpeople too.
I got a lot of good sex out ofit and I gave the best sex of my
life Like a comedian.
I wasn't there to get laughs, Iwas there to give them.
I take pride in my work.
It was an interesting adventureand there were some bumps, but
now I can look back on it and Imight write a book about it.
(41:50):
Maybe it'll become a New YorkTimes bestseller.
I'm still figuring out how tospin it so it makes me look
awesome and doesn't incriminateme.
You'd be surprised how easy itis to do that.
Just don't start anything withShug Knight.
It's not worth it.
There's absolutely no way it'sever going to be worth it.
(42:12):
Outro Music, thank you.
(43:36):
Drove all night hugging thecoast headed up to to Washington
State, to the Ptolemy Institute, a rickety old mansion bought
and refurbished to be inhabitedby a clandestine order of
intellectual elites who don'tlike to be called clandestine.
So I'm trying to get that outof my system on the way up there
.
Most of them were driven out ofacademia by the influx of
(43:58):
sophists and their main activitywas a card game called Enhanced
Canasta, which is sort of likeCanasta except instead of suits
they have academic disciplinesPhilosophy, psychology,
mathematics, science, geographyof breakfast.
Basically the sum of theintellectual capital of the
human species, of theintellectual capital of the
human species so far as it usedto go on a university campus.
(44:30):
I used to have an easier timewith all-nighters.
I tried to educate myself.
I listened to SmithsonianFolkways compilations.
After a while, when I realizedthat I didn't remember anything
from the previous 45 minutes andI may have been in a hypnagogic
sleep state while doing 90 onthe freeway, I switched over to
ghetto tech.
You do what you gotta do,feeling good matters Enhanced.
(44:51):
Canasta had mostly been anunderground thing for years and
years until the rise of Abraxas,the Adept Albus, aka Abraxas,
bold as Love, who brought acertain rockstar charisma and
self-consciously, flamboyantlyobnoxious heel quality to the
(45:13):
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 notconsistently.
He didn't bring any particularinnovation to the game.
He put on a show.
Espn2 was starved for content.
They started running EnhancedCanasta.
(45:34):
Some old-school Canastafanatics got worked up about it.
A lot of other people gotinterested and it became a thing
, but not really exciting on anintellectual level until
Eurydice Fleming came along.
Eurydice is a dark-haired,incandescently brilliant,
fascinatingly enigmatic playerof immense beauty and intellect,
(45:59):
known for her sensual allure,five-alarm smoke show.
Unbelievably hot, even more sobecause she downplays it.
She has to, she wants to betaken seriously, and it's mostly
dudes playing this game, andit's dudes that didn't get laid
a lot when they were younger anddidn't think they were ever
going to, and now they are.
(46:20):
But they're using it to workout their bitterness from
adolescence.
One of them being Albus.
Albus and Fleming have clearlybeen lovers at some point.
You can tell if you readbetween the lines.
They're not anymore and Flemingis a much more interesting
player.
Typically in enhanced Canasta,games are won through gathering
(46:41):
Canastas sets of cards in onesuit.
You get a lot of philosophycards.
You put those down you canchange the way that philosophy
works.
You can innovate within thefield.
Fleming has made a name forherself, winning with what are
called MELs, smaller sets ofcards from different suits or
(47:02):
disciplines, which are littleconstellations of bits and
pieces and theories and ideasand facts from different areas
that she puts together to comeup with something that feels
brand new, and it's veryexciting 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
(47:25):
the game.
I'm trying not to use thatexpression when I get to the
Ptolemy Institute because Idon't want them to think I'm an
idiot.
I'm a big boy, I don't carewhat they think of me I can
handle being disliked, it's just.
I don't want to stand out.
I'm not going to visit.
This is an investigation.
(47:48):
There's been a mysterious deaththe.
Grand Dean of Enhanced Canasta,a fellow called Dean White
Harrison yes, that is his middlename and yes, he does use it,
or did until he died, supposedlyof overthinking himself to
death.
Implausible on its face and alot of suspicion immediately
fell on Euretice Fleming, forreasons that made some sense.
If you follow Enhanced Canastaand others, that seemed odd.
(48:11):
She's a woman, she wasdisrupting the game.
She's extremely attractive andshe'd been saying odd things,
things that didn't harmonizewith the worshipful quality that
these people put on beingcerebrally led, the life of the
mind at the expense of the body,the soul, the crotch.
She was spinning fire.
(48:33):
She seemed like she wasn'tholding back anymore.
She didn't care what these guysthought of her and that was a
dangerous position to be in.
And a lot of people thought thatshe had something to do with
Harrison's untimely demise,especially since it left an
opening for her to claim theEnhanced Canasta title, which
was obviously very important toher.
(48:55):
You could see it if you watchedher play and you could totally
see it when you met her inperson.
Oh my god, I was not prepared.
She's a bombshell on the livestreams, she's the total package
in interviews and she's anabsolute knockout in person.
I knew I was going to make afool of myself.
(49:17):
I had to talk to her.
I couldn't walk over.
I had a battering ram betweenmy legs, but I managed to get
over there and I just startedasking the sort of questions
that you ask to sound people out.
Somehow I was just right in theflow.
It was one of those times when,against all odds, everything is
(49:38):
working for you.
You can't say anything.
That's not brilliant and funnyand a little bit adversarial to
keep the push-pull happening andthe sparks flying.
And we just connectedintellectually and sexually and
what I assume it's like toconnect spiritually.
If you believe in anything, wehit it off.
(50:01):
I had to work very hard to staySwitzerland.
I had to stay neutral because Iwas investigating this death
and she was not the primesuspect.
Objectively, I don't think shehad anything to do with it.
I did a lot of investigation.
I don't think there's any waythat she could have been
responsible for Harrison's death.
(50:22):
But there's a lot of otherweird stuff that I found.
The Ptolemy Society isessentially a church.
They are carrying the torch ofold-school academia, of the
canon of intellectual capital,of the Enlightenment project.
The life of the mind is wherethey live.
(50:42):
They believe that theunexamined life is not worth
living and the way to keep theexamined life from being
absolute torture and drudgery isto read the classics.
See things through that prism.
Be rational, be reasonable, beabove the fray, use mental
models.
Think of 2nd, 3rd, 69th ordereffects.
(51:05):
As with any religion thatrepresses physicality, carnality
, sex, the force of creationitself, there's going to be a
lot of sublimation If you watchthese matches, the molten sex
that they're keeping down, it'slike putting a tarp over a
volcano.
(51:25):
It's incredible to watch.
What I discovered about Flemingwas that she was a master of sex
transmutation as a way ofwinning enhanced canast.
How does that work?
The romantic tension was offthe chain.
Something had to happen.
Every time we ran into eachother, the banter was exquisite,
(51:46):
the toads outside, the plantsin the botanical garden,
one-celled organisms were sayingjust pound it out, you two Get
it over with.
Eventually we did.
We ran into each other in thelounge of the boutique hotel in
(52:06):
the building, five roomsupstairs that they rented out on
Airbnb.
Enhanced Canasta fans wouldcome in and pay big money to
sleep there, but not all thetime.
Sometimes the rooms were vacant.
Fleming, eurydice, knew whichones they were.
We both got a little tipsy.
(52:27):
We danced around the subjectfor hours and she invited me
upstairs.
Big ups to Eurydice.
We set off a smoke alarm.
We set off car alarms in Oregonand Idaho and Vancouver and I
think that set something free inher.
What I can only call intuitionbecame extremely acute.
(52:48):
Intuition is a real thing, muchlike charisma, which is what
Abraxas had Pretty much the onlything he had.
As far as I could tell, somepeople are, at the very least,
preternaturally intuitive, ifnot somehow cognizant, on levels
that science does notadequately explain.
Eurydice is one of these people.
(53:09):
She had figured out how to getinto Abraxas' digital accounts
when she knew that he wascheating on her.
It was an open relationship, butthey were supposed to
communicate about what was goingon, which Abraxas did not to
Eurydice's satisfaction or atall.
So she had to find out forherself what he was up to, an
(53:32):
extremely painful process thatdrove her a little bit nuts, but
the upshot was that she hadaccess to Abraxas's private life
.
She knew that there was moregoing on there than he was
letting on.
We figured out there's a reasonthat he became a star.
He is running an entirelydifferent version of Enhanced
(53:54):
Canasta on an undergroundcircuit, and I'm laughing to
keep from crying, because thestakes are much higher.
This one is about total controlof the human race, enslavement
of everyone, slave, morality forthe master, morality for
Abraxas and eventually Abraxas,only because his plan is to win
(54:16):
against these other scumbagsthat he's brought in.
He definitely killed Dean WhiteHarrison because he has been
openly bragging about it.
He's spoiled and, in the end,not very bright, but very
mean-spirited, very cynical, andhe's always gotten away with
everything.
He doesn't have the OPSEC thathe needs for this kind of
(54:38):
project.
But the question is, who'sgoing to stop him?
Eurydice suddenly becomesuncharacteristically reticent
when that comes up.
Eurydice had a weird childhood.
She was raised in a cult thatyou've never heard of because it
wasn't one of the moreinteresting or successful cults.
There was a woman in the cultwho was from a lineage of
(55:02):
witches practicing magic with aK who taught Eurydice a lot of
what she knew.
That was what was driving hermad, because she had been using
the stuff to come up with meldsand come up with melds that were
better than Canasta's andchange the game, for lack of a
better description.
And she knew how to stopAbraxas using those techniques.
(55:25):
But that would expose her andher Ptolemy Institute career
would be over.
She didn't even want to tell meabout it, but I reassured her
that I'm Antonio Snow.
The reason I'm helping the goodguys in law enforcement is to
stay out of prison.
I was an international con man.
(55:46):
I was a card counter.
I beat the house every singletime.
I was a safe cracker.
No, safe was safe when I wasaround.
I killed the Buddha on the roadbecause for a while I was
practicing Buddhism to try torestore my reputation, and I met
the Buddha on the road and Igutted him, Although I don't
(56:06):
think he was the Buddha.
I think he was just a transient.
I'm a monster.
That's probably flatteringmyself.
I am a crook.
I'm a crook who's trying tomake good.
Anybody that looks into mybackground is going to know
enough about me to know that I'mnot a good person.
I don't know if anyone's a goodperson.
(56:28):
I think that everyone else isas terrible as I am and I'm the
only one who's being honestabout it, Although it makes me
question if we're really good orbad.
I think those are limiting.
We limit ourselves that way.
I think the answer is to gobeyond good and evil, which
Eurydice could certainly do.
We used our wits, our gift ofgab banter, our chemistry, our
(56:52):
sensuality, our carnality, oursexuality.
We managed to outmaneuverAbraxas in the ultimate
high-stakes round of EnhancedCanasta, which turned out to be
the last I had to face theconsequences of my actions.
Eurydice had to really changenot just the game but the way
that knowledge is understood.
(57:14):
It changed adaptability, that's, the understanding, the
instinct, the ability to forgetthat you forgot what you knew
and get out of your own way.
That really matters in the ageof discontinuity.
You've got to take care ofyourself, and for me that's
life-threatening sex, Ideallywith Eurydice.
(57:35):
No-transcript.
(01:00:14):
Kchungradioorg slash.
Donate if you're nasty.
This is Emerson Dameron.
This has been emerson dameron'smedicated minutes presenting a
night of bite-sized eroticthrillers medicated-minutescom.
I love you personally.
Celebrity saves lives, Thankyou.
At first I thought this wasseriously a setup.
(01:00:39):
She seemed really into it.
(01:01:37):
Then I thought maybe she lovedtaking my discipline and also
was using sex for power.
I don't know if that blew mymind, but it blew something.
Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
Steamy, dreamy and way too hot for radio.
Crimson Transgressions, abite-sized erotic thriller by
Emerson Dameron.
Find it before it finds you.
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