Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: Sanctum Unmasked is about a sex club and describes various
Speaker 2: sex acts. Please use discretion where and when you listen.
Speaker 2: It's ten am on a sunny LA Saturday on a
Speaker 2: bubbly blonde wakes up in her low, scaleless apartment to
Speaker 2: her dog's Scout, impatiently licking her face. She gets up,
Speaker 2: makes coffee and scrolls Instagram and The New York Times interchangeably.
Speaker 2: She takes Scout for a hike in Griffith Park, the
Speaker 2: trail up to the Hollywood Sign, of course, then meets
Speaker 2: a friend for lunch. She orders the Little Gem salad
Speaker 2: instead of the egg and cheese bagel she actually wants,
Speaker 2: noting that she's working later and doesn't want to look
Speaker 2: five months pregnant, a mistake she made last month. At home,
Speaker 2: she does four hundred sit ups in front of reruns
Speaker 2: of Gilmore Girls, and then she starts the grooming process. Shower,
Speaker 2: intense conditioning masks to sit on her bleached hair while
Speaker 2: she shaves everything else. She calls her mom for a
Speaker 2: quick ketchup while aggressively tweezing stray hairs from her bikini line, ouch,
Speaker 2: rinse hair, apply fake tanner, moisturizer, hair serum. She throws
Speaker 2: on jeans, Converse, and her favorite ex boyfriend hoodie and
Speaker 2: calls an uber to the Sanctum mansion. In the green
Speaker 2: room with a handful of other Sanctum performers, she ditches
Speaker 2: the sweatshirt and sneakers and slips into a robe. A
Speaker 2: makeup artist begins caking on her foundation in feathery eyelashes. Tonight,
Speaker 2: she's performing in the live sex show. Now she has
Speaker 2: to sit for like ninety minutes while the woman meticulously
Speaker 2: applies rhinestones to her boobs to create a makeshift diamante bra.
Speaker 2: She takes a large shot of vodka, followed by an aldoyd,
Speaker 2: and now she's ready. Each time a Sanctum party rolls around,
Speaker 2: she and the other performers put in all this effort,
Speaker 2: always aware that as sex workers, their bodies are part
Speaker 2: of everyone's experience. Okay, so I made that scene up,
Speaker 2: but I'm probably not that far off. Since its inception
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, sex work was happening at Sanctum in
Speaker 2: various forms. Some are pretty straightforward. The monthly party became
Speaker 2: known for its elaborate live sex shows, so they would
Speaker 2: obviously hire performers to have sex with each other in
Speaker 2: front of the guests. But there were other more gray
Speaker 2: areas of exchange of sex for money happening too.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was running prostitution, but it was like indirect.
Speaker 3: It was an eyewink prostitution if nothing else.
Speaker 2: That's journalist Mike Saeger again, the writer from Esquire who
Speaker 2: shadowed Damon. Now reminder, we live in a puritanical society
Speaker 2: where the consensual exchange of sex for money is illegal,
Speaker 2: meaning at Sanctum and basically everywhere else in this country.
Speaker 2: Negotiating payment and boundaries in the arena of sex work
Speaker 2: is often vague and indirect, leaving a lot of room
Speaker 2: for misinterpretation. Throw in some entitled billionaires, very young women,
Speaker 2: copious amounts of alcohol, and probably some white powder too,
Speaker 2: and unsurprisingly it can get messy pretty fast.
Speaker 3: Some of the high rollers, they were assured of being rolled.
Speaker 3: At some point it was charging one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five thousand, and like, how are you going to not
Speaker 3: have troubles with the people that are spending that much
Speaker 3: money with you?
Speaker 2: What did these men who paid exorbitant amounts of money
Speaker 2: to get into Sanctum think they were buying what were
Speaker 2: the rules? Were their rules? In this episode, we're going
Speaker 2: to explore the intersection of sex, money, and power at
Speaker 2: Sanctum through the lens of sex work.
Speaker 3: When I was back in my newspaper days, everything always
Speaker 3: had to be black and white, you know. I think
Speaker 3: there's like a lot of gray with this. People's pleasure, desire, needs, guilts,
Speaker 3: all those things come to a flash point with sex.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Sanctum Unmasked. I'm your host, Carly schortinau.
Speaker 4: By.
Speaker 2: Now you know Claudia who worked as an atmosphere model
Speaker 2: at Sanctum for multiple years. In our conversation, part of
Speaker 2: what we talked about was what exactly is a sex
Speaker 2: worker anyway?
Speaker 5: I have this discussion with so many people all the time,
Speaker 5: like are we sex workers or are we not?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I guess I haven't broken down the definition I guess of.
Speaker 2: Sex worker exactly.
Speaker 5: But I don't know if I necessarily consider that a
Speaker 5: sex worker at least as an atmosphere model. Maybe, if
Speaker 5: I was doing the performances, maybe, But I think that's
Speaker 5: such like a gray area saying it as far as like, oh,
Speaker 5: I don't want to be categorized into that because you know,
Speaker 5: at this point, when you do everything that I do
Speaker 5: in my day, like call me whatever you want to
Speaker 5: call me, I've been called worse because there are so
Speaker 5: many people that are so offended by the term sex worker.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's like, Okay, if I am, I am,
Speaker 1: If I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 2: See, even just defining the term is a nebulous task,
Speaker 2: and this conversation has grown even more broad and confusing
Speaker 2: with the explosion of OnlyFans, you know, the extraordinarily popular
Speaker 2: subscription site that's primarily used to create and sell erotic content.
Speaker 2: Considering that your pre men neighbor and your great aunt
Speaker 2: Judy are both killing it on OnlyFans, well, are they
Speaker 2: sex workers?
Speaker 5: Like me? For example, I don't do any triple X
Speaker 5: on my only fans at all, So is me being
Speaker 5: naked on my only fans? Is that considered sex work?
Speaker 5: Or do I cross that line as soon as there's
Speaker 5: masturbation or partner involved.
Speaker 2: Some of the performers at Sanctum Hired, we're already working
Speaker 2: in what would traditionally be considered the sex industry, like
Speaker 2: some work to porn or aserotic dancers. Take Jenna For example,
Speaker 2: she was a performer at Sanctum for multiple years, but
Speaker 2: before that she worked in the adult film industry, and
Speaker 2: her experience had not been so great, being.
Speaker 7: Eighteen years old, not even watching porn and kind of
Speaker 7: like throwing myself into this whole bdsmkink dot com like pornworld.
Speaker 7: Starting out there, I kind of lost my boundaries and
Speaker 7: I sort of lost my concept of consent. I was
Speaker 7: going to parties where all of these porn stars were
Speaker 7: just in your face with their cameras, like trying to
Speaker 7: get content posts on their Snapchat subscriptions. So I mean,
Speaker 7: I was, you know, in this sort of culture where
Speaker 7: the consent didn't matter because oh, you're a porn star,
Speaker 7: the consent's already there.
Speaker 2: So this was the world that Jenna had become accustomed to,
Speaker 2: a world where people felt entitled to take without asking.
Speaker 2: But then she took a job at Sanctum as a
Speaker 2: performer in the live sex shows, and it instantly felt different.
Speaker 7: It wasn't really until I found Damon and Sanctum that
Speaker 7: I realized that there are so many different cultures within
Speaker 7: the adult world and the porn world and sex work.
Speaker 7: I felt like this energy around me at the events
Speaker 7: that I think is incomparable to any other type of
Speaker 7: sex work or any other sexual interaction that I've ever had,
Speaker 7: because you feel like this overwhelming sense of love, consent, respect,
Speaker 7: and that people are there for the art, people are
Speaker 7: there for the outfits, people are there for the performance,
Speaker 7: and there are not cameras or phones allowed. So that
Speaker 7: was the huge difference for me feeling like I had
Speaker 7: a choice overall.
Speaker 2: Jennera calls her experience at the club as extremely supportive
Speaker 2: because her boundaries were being respected, it became a safe
Speaker 2: space to explore her sexuality.
Speaker 7: It definitely gave me erotic freedom and a sense of individuality,
Speaker 7: less like a product and more like a person. It
Speaker 7: really gave me a sense of belonging at a time
Speaker 7: that I felt like I didn't belong anywhere.
Speaker 2: Which is incredible. And she's certainly not the only performer
Speaker 2: we talked to who felt this way. Damien wasn't only
Speaker 2: recruiting from within the sex industry, by the way, there
Speaker 2: was another big way he found girls to work the club,
Speaker 2: doing outreach on the popular sugar Daddy website seeking arrangement
Speaker 2: in case you need a refresher. A sugar Daddy website
Speaker 2: is a dating site that connects sugar daddies aka rich
Speaker 2: guys with sugar babies who tend to be younger women
Speaker 2: interested in dating rich guys. Convenient. Of course, there are
Speaker 2: sugar mamas on these sites too, and not all sugar
Speaker 2: babies are women, but I mean the vast majority of
Speaker 2: users tend to fit this heterosexual cysgender mold. So the
Speaker 2: idea is that people meet on these sites and then
Speaker 2: go on to create a quote arrangement, and that word
Speaker 2: can mean a whole range of different things, from a
Speaker 2: genuinely romantic long term arrangement that functions essentially like a
Speaker 2: traditional relationship but with an implied financial caretaking component, all
Speaker 2: the way to a solely transactional arrangement aka paying for
Speaker 2: a hookup and everything in between. Essentially, sugaring is a modern,
Speaker 2: increasingly visible form of sex work that's been dressed up
Speaker 2: and repackaged to be somewhat socially acceptable, and these sites
Speaker 2: are widely used by college students. Some even give free
Speaker 2: upgrades if you sign up with a dot edu college
Speaker 2: email address. So anyway, Damon had a profile on Seeking Arrangement,
Speaker 2: and he messaged women about potentially coming to work at
Speaker 2: Sanctum in various atmosphere roles.
Speaker 6: It was actually a great place to find girls who
Speaker 6: are open to sexual performances and all of I was
Speaker 6: always incredibly straight up about everything. I'm hiring atmosphere performers,
Speaker 6: you know, five hundred bucks for the night. They were
Speaker 6: dressed in wild costumes. Atmosphere girls were girls that were
Speaker 6: just you know that atmosphere. My old creative director Lena
Speaker 6: would create all these scenarios, you know, and there'd be
Speaker 6: like a girl who was a living table or a
Speaker 6: lamp or like, you know, some character or something, and
Speaker 6: they'd be, you know, in that character the whole night.
Speaker 2: And seeking arrangement was more than just a hiring tool,
Speaker 2: a slutty zip recruiter, if you will. It was also
Speaker 2: just a place to find young, hot women who might
Speaker 2: want to come to the party as guests for fun.
Speaker 2: And remember, women who made the invite list got in
Speaker 2: for free. Essentially, Demon was curating a very specific environment.
Speaker 2: He was filling the club with men who have a
Speaker 2: ton of money and women who are at least open
Speaker 2: to the idea of some sort of sexual exchange for compensation,
Speaker 2: something for everyone. So he throws them together adds some
Speaker 2: champagne and says, Okay, you guys, figure it out.
Speaker 6: People wanted to be in this world. They were meeting celebrities,
Speaker 6: They're meeting, you know, very wealthy men. The atmosphere of
Speaker 6: what was going on there was pretty amazing. You know,
Speaker 6: a lot of these girls were sort of looking for
Speaker 6: arrangements and stuff like that anyway, So this gave them
Speaker 6: an opportunity to meet people and to create the kind
Speaker 6: of life they wanted for themselves.
Speaker 2: It makes sense he's essentially just replicating the website, But
Speaker 2: in real life.
Speaker 8: I think venues like this are a great opportunity for
Speaker 8: money and fun.
Speaker 2: That's Elle Stanger. She's a sex educator who speaks about
Speaker 2: safety and consent, particularly in environments like these. She also
Speaker 2: works as a stripper in Portland. I wanted to get
Speaker 2: her take on this particular dynamic within the club.
Speaker 8: For the workers who are hustling, if they can name
Speaker 8: their own prices and negotiate, that's a great opportunity because
Speaker 8: you can also make regulars that will see you outside
Speaker 8: of that particular venue. And I understand why they would
Speaker 8: want the workers to be happy and to populate the
Speaker 8: venue with a lot of them. Because they want to
Speaker 8: be able to charge, you know, thousands of dollars per
Speaker 8: head for these wealthy, mostly men that come in.
Speaker 1: I would be really interested to be a fly on
Speaker 1: the wall.
Speaker 2: Basically, if you're good at hustling, it can be a
Speaker 2: gold mine. And like she said, you can sometimes make
Speaker 2: connections inside the club that can turn into more long
Speaker 2: term arrangements outside the club. One of the beneficiaries of
Speaker 2: Damon's particularly curated party environment was David Winkler. David's a
Speaker 2: movie producer in his fifties who he met in a
Speaker 2: previous episode. The way David first heard about Sanctum was
Speaker 2: actually through seeking arrangement. Basically, after he got divorced, he
Speaker 2: was looking to have some casual fun. His sex life
Speaker 2: up until that point had been pretty conventional, and he
Speaker 2: needed a minute to thrive as his single, sluty self,
Speaker 2: you know, and he discovered that seeking arrangement was a
Speaker 2: great way to date women without the expectation of commitment
Speaker 2: if you're interested. He actually detailed his experiences of being
Speaker 2: a sugar daddy in a book he published in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, aptly titled The Arrangement.
Speaker 9: Seeking Arrangement is Tender for people with money.
Speaker 4: I started out out of my marriage just paying for
Speaker 4: a night, you know whatever, six hundred and two fifteen
Speaker 4: hundred dollars for a date.
Speaker 9: We'd go to.
Speaker 4: Dinner, we'd travel together, and I felt like I was
Speaker 4: supporting their career goals and ambitions. I was never interested
Speaker 4: in it being monogamous, but I liked how honest.
Speaker 9: It was, like know what he lied, Everybody knew what
Speaker 9: we were doing.
Speaker 2: In other words, the money, which is often called an
Speaker 2: allowance on sugar sites, you know, just to really lean
Speaker 2: into that whole perverse daddy daughter thing, acts as a boundary.
Speaker 2: For David. The money kept things casual, and he liked that. Also,
Speaker 2: he felt the site was a place he could talk
Speaker 2: openly about his sexual turn ons in a way that
Speaker 2: felt new and exciting to him. His first few Sanctum
Speaker 2: parties were a ton of fun. If you remember, he
Speaker 2: told us that Sanctum made him feel like he wasn't
Speaker 2: the only purve in town. So sweet. At the beginning,
Speaker 2: he always went to the club with a date, but
Speaker 2: eventually he decided to go solo, literally single and ready
Speaker 2: to mangle, and that night turned out to be his
Speaker 2: best yet.
Speaker 4: The highlight for me was once I did go alone
Speaker 4: and I ended up hooking up with two women. I
Speaker 4: knew one of the girls well, we had spoken on
Speaker 4: seeking arrangement and had not met, and she said, you know,
Speaker 4: you want to have some fun and I said absolutely.
Speaker 4: And as we were going, she grabbed a friend and
Speaker 4: she said, you want her to join us? I thought
Speaker 4: she's beautiful. I said absolutely. She said, you know, will
Speaker 4: you take care of us? And I knew exactly what
Speaker 4: she was saying, and I said yes. You know, nobody
Speaker 4: ever comes out and says, you know, what, are you
Speaker 4: going to pay me? It's much more subtle than that,
Speaker 4: will you take.
Speaker 2: Care of us? In other words, if we all rail,
Speaker 2: you're going to venmo us later. Right, The sugar world
Speaker 2: is chock full of vague terminology like this in order
Speaker 2: to pretend you're not fucking for money, whether it's for
Speaker 2: legal reasons or to preserve someone's sense of morality or
Speaker 2: the guy's ego or whatever. As Joan Diddyon famously wrote,
Speaker 2: we tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Speaker 4: I remember having sex with these two women and seeing
Speaker 4: maybe twenty people in the room, and when it was over,
Speaker 4: they applauded. I mean, you know, I write about that
Speaker 4: in my book, literally hearing applause that I remember after
Speaker 4: I having threesome, we walked upstairs and one of the
Speaker 4: girls said, you want to get a drink? And I said,
Speaker 4: you know, no, I think I'm going to go home,
Speaker 4: and she said why, I said, well, it just doesn't
Speaker 4: get any better than this. You know, I was the
Speaker 4: king of Sanctum for five minutes. Where am I going
Speaker 4: to go from here?
Speaker 9: I had pushed my sexual boundaries.
Speaker 2: From now on, I'll be offended if my partners on
Speaker 2: a clawed me every time we have sex. Maybe I
Speaker 2: can get Damon to facilitate this for me. After hearing
Speaker 2: about David Sugar through some bonanza, I asked, did he
Speaker 2: feel like there was a lot of this quote take
Speaker 2: care of you stuff happening at Sanctum.
Speaker 4: I think the fact that they got a lot of
Speaker 4: their hostesses and performers from seeking arrangement, you know, sort
Speaker 4: of encouraged that exchange. But I think there was just
Speaker 4: always this given that you could walk up to most
Speaker 4: women there.
Speaker 9: And say, hey, are you interested in an arrangement?
Speaker 2: In other words, yes.
Speaker 4: Damon never walked up and said, hey, you know, do
Speaker 4: you want that girl? She'd costs this, and he made
Speaker 4: it feel classy. You never felt like you were purchasing sex,
Speaker 4: but you knew it was there. At one point, he
Speaker 4: had this other level of membership called like Dominus, and
Speaker 4: I think you spent fifty thousand dollars to join, and
Speaker 4: I think it was kind of a given that, you know,
Speaker 4: you'd go to the party and Damon would have a
Speaker 4: girl for you. And I'm not sure that Damon would
Speaker 4: want to talk about this, and you know, he may
Speaker 4: feel that it cheapens it.
Speaker 9: I don't.
Speaker 4: I'm pro sex work, so I don't think there's anything
Speaker 4: to be ashamed about.
Speaker 2: So I asked Damon about this, and actually he didn't
Speaker 2: shy away from talking about it.
Speaker 6: This gets into the realm of sex work morality. What's
Speaker 6: okay and what's not okay, what's consensual and not consensual.
Speaker 6: I have very clear boundaries from myself of what that is.
Speaker 6: You know, I have absolutely no judgment against anyone that
Speaker 6: wants to participate in that. At Sanctum like, the performers
Speaker 6: were definitely open to doing all kinds of things, and
Speaker 6: they would have their own personal exchanges and their own
Speaker 6: personal interactions with people. And I left that up to
Speaker 6: them to their own judgment. I didn't get girls from
Speaker 6: seeking arrangements and say you're going to have sex in
Speaker 6: my club for money. That would have brought my club
Speaker 6: down to the ground really quickly.
Speaker 2: Although sometimes Damon can get touched about what this might imply.
Speaker 6: You know, there's bullshit stories in the press about, oh,
Speaker 6: you know, most of the women there were paid. That
Speaker 6: is so fucking false. Most of the women there were
Speaker 6: not paid. Most of the women there were there because
Speaker 6: they wanted to be there, and they'd had nothing to
Speaker 6: do with money. Quite honestly, I absolutely did hire performers
Speaker 6: to have sex with each other because we did sex shows,
Speaker 6: but they were like foreign performers, and so for girls
Speaker 6: who did make extra money, who did you know whatever,
Speaker 6: sleep with a member and get money from them like
Speaker 6: that was on them. So these girls were not hired
Speaker 6: to fuck anybody.
Speaker 2: So yes, girls did get work on the side, but
Speaker 2: Damon's basically saying that was not part of their job,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't directly involved in it. However, as we'll
Speaker 2: see after the break, Sanctum wasn't completely hands off in
Speaker 2: this department. Of course, by now you know Ambrose in
Speaker 2: his three years working at the club. He recalls making
Speaker 2: a ton of money on the side, like sometimes he
Speaker 2: meet rich guys at Sanctum who'd then go on to
Speaker 2: see as escorting clients outside the club. However, he says
Speaker 2: there was also a system in place at Sanctum for
Speaker 2: facilitating this stuff in house. It feels a little weird
Speaker 2: to keep saying this, but just for clarity, Ambrose is
Speaker 2: a trans man but was still presenting as femme back
Speaker 2: when he was working at Sanctum. Anyway, here's how he says.
Speaker 2: All this stuff went down.
Speaker 1: Like around two am, sometimes one am.
Speaker 10: If we got the approval prior, we could get paid
Speaker 10: out from working the performance, or we could try to
Speaker 10: circulate the crowd and try to find someone who wants
Speaker 10: to like rent a room with you, essentially, and whatever
Speaker 10: occurs in there is between two consensual adults, but there's
Speaker 10: no promise of sexual intercourse or anything sexual happening. However,
Speaker 10: before that, Damon would always encourage us to like help
Speaker 10: them finish essentially, But then there was a person that
Speaker 10: was put in a more managerial position that would handle
Speaker 10: the transactions of those things.
Speaker 2: And according to Ambrose, the system was working for him.
Speaker 10: Sometimes if I hustled hard enough, I could get booked
Speaker 10: multiple times in a night before I went home as
Speaker 10: a devotee, so I could come away with like several
Speaker 10: thousand dollars from that night, which I sometimes did.
Speaker 1: We could do it his doubles also like do.
Speaker 10: A sessions with other performers if we wanted to, and
Speaker 10: which I prefer doing because let's work. Also if like
Speaker 10: one of you is like sitting on their face, like
Speaker 10: looking at their body kind of thing, and the other
Speaker 10: ones like riding them facing towards them, the person that
Speaker 10: you're on top of can't see shit, and then you
Speaker 10: guys can just make faces at each other, Like that's
Speaker 10: so exhausting. I can't wait for this to be over,
Speaker 10: like fake vomiting like dagny, or like signally like you
Speaker 10: want to go to the bath room together, have a
Speaker 10: little break, rest our, coot cheese, Lol.
Speaker 2: Threesomes less work and more fun.
Speaker 10: So girls would get like a grand for that, And
Speaker 10: it wasn't u ttill a little bit later on that
Speaker 10: I found out the people booking that hour they were
Speaker 10: paying the club two K. We were only getting half
Speaker 10: of that and doing all the freaking work.
Speaker 2: That's Ambrose's experience anyway, and that specific part he wasn't
Speaker 2: happy with, but he was still making enough money to
Speaker 2: make it feel worth it. According to him, at a
Speaker 2: certain point at Sanctum, it evolved past members paying to
Speaker 2: book a room for an hour or so to paying
Speaker 2: to stay overnight at the mansion with a performer. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 2: there were never any contracts written up by Sanctum around
Speaker 2: the operation of this stuff. Everything was conducted verbally, so
Speaker 2: we are taking people's accounts at base value.
Speaker 10: I was one of the first people that got it
Speaker 10: going with like we should do overnights, and like I
Speaker 10: convinced this guy. He was like twenty one, twenty two,
Speaker 10: he's like the son of a musician. I forget who,
Speaker 10: but he had daddy's black card.
Speaker 2: On file there how much do you get paid for
Speaker 2: an overnight?
Speaker 10: So I went back into like the kitchen area, green
Speaker 10: room area and is like talking to Damon and someone
Speaker 10: else and like I was like, I think I got
Speaker 10: him convinced to one an overnight and they're like, we've
Speaker 10: never done that before, Like how much we charged?
Speaker 1: Should we charge like three hundred?
Speaker 10: I was like no, I was like, you could charge
Speaker 10: like five six k for this right here, right now,
Speaker 10: And I was like, don't bullshit me.
Speaker 1: I know I'm making half of what you charge them.
Speaker 2: So what did they charge? They went with five thousand,
Speaker 2: so you got twenty five hundred.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was one of my best nights.
Speaker 2: Given Ambrose's telling of this, we felt like we had
Speaker 2: to go back and ask Damon about this again. Remember
Speaker 2: Ambrose is a stage name, not his real name, hence
Speaker 2: the bleep you hear. The one thing that we did
Speaker 2: have to ask you about is that you said I
Speaker 2: definitely let these girls make money on the side. At
Speaker 2: a certain time, we stopped letting them do that. But
Speaker 2: I wasn't involved, but just saying that sometimes members could
Speaker 2: like rent a room at the club and the performer
Speaker 2: or devote whatever would have sex with them, and then
Speaker 2: Sangdon would take a cut of that money.
Speaker 6: There's definitely some truth in that, you know, I was
Speaker 6: definitely walking a line that. You know, it's a scary
Speaker 6: thing to talk about, but I feel like I've been
Speaker 6: devastatingly honest with everything, and I want to continue to be.
Speaker 6: The way I set those things up, or the way
Speaker 6: that I made that okay for myself was you know,
Speaker 6: maybe a member would get a private room, and then
Speaker 6: I would ask girls if they want to, you know,
Speaker 6: joined the person in the room, and they would get
Speaker 6: a cut of the room fee or whatever it was.
Speaker 6: But I also said, like, you know, don't do anything
Speaker 6: that you don't want to do. It's totally up to you.
Speaker 6: Don't ever have sex with anyone unless you feel comfortable.
Speaker 6: They're not paying to fuck you. They're paying for the room,
Speaker 6: they're paying for some time with you, for whatever the
Speaker 6: experience might be. I set it up in a way
Speaker 6: where I felt like it was up to them to
Speaker 6: consent or not consent.
Speaker 2: Right, So we've talked about this before. This intentionally gray
Speaker 2: area language is a loophole of sex work, very often
Speaker 2: employed by the sex workers themselves, Like a client is
Speaker 2: booking the worker for quote their time, not for sex,
Speaker 2: and then within that time you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 2: So this is how Damon protected the club and himself
Speaker 2: and the performers from the legal implications of these exchanges.
Speaker 2: Remember this is the same language that Damon used with
Speaker 2: the performers during the dominant ceremonies. If you recall from
Speaker 2: a couple of pisodes ago, that's when certain members would
Speaker 2: pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for special Dominance memberships,
Speaker 2: which included a blood oath initiation ritual that resulted in
Speaker 2: the new member having a threesome. Obviously, well, participation in
Speaker 2: those was always completely voluntary for everyone. Damon never told
Speaker 2: anyone you have to have a threesome. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the billionaire got the blood orgy
Speaker 2: he wanted.
Speaker 6: We had dominant ceremonies and the girls were paid to
Speaker 6: do those dominant ceremonies, and some of those ceremonies were
Speaker 6: with some of the biggest rock stars in the world,
Speaker 6: and it was like five six, seven girls all wanting
Speaker 6: to do that dominans ceremony, and like, you know, how
Speaker 6: do I choose which one gets to do it? It
Speaker 6: was like they were so fucking excited to fuck that
Speaker 6: rock star.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 6: It was the opposite of me going, oh God, who
Speaker 6: am I going to get to do this? The people
Speaker 6: that were working for me, like they kept coming back,
Speaker 6: They kept coming to me, can I work the next party?
Speaker 6: Is there anyone that's going to come in that maybe
Speaker 6: you can help me arrange something, or you know, they
Speaker 6: kept coming back to me to facilitate what I assumed
Speaker 6: they wanted.
Speaker 2: And notably, Damon actually had some help finessing all of this.
Speaker 1: And that was able to happen.
Speaker 10: Actually all that because they had an LA sheriff in
Speaker 10: their pocket.
Speaker 1: He would go to the parties. So I actually met
Speaker 1: him and knew him a bit.
Speaker 10: But Damon called me aside once and it was like,
Speaker 10: that's a sheriff.
Speaker 1: We're good.
Speaker 10: Basically, he was like, nothing's going to happen to us
Speaker 10: for doing this, which was essentially escorting.
Speaker 6: I had people that were members of my club, like
Speaker 6: a sheriff. I had people in there that you know,
Speaker 6: that were telling me like, you can do this, and
Speaker 6: you can't do this. If you go in this direction,
Speaker 6: you could get in trouble, so don't do that. And
Speaker 6: I listened to them because I wanted to keep this
Speaker 6: thing alive as long as I could.
Speaker 2: It's always helpful to have a professional on your side.
Speaker 8: Also reminds me of why wealthy people will always be
Speaker 8: able to pay for things they want and get what
Speaker 8: they want. If the client tele was poor, I'd say
Speaker 8: that they'd get rated.
Speaker 1: I'd say if.
Speaker 8: They have incredibly high roller clients, they're probably a little protected.
Speaker 2: That's Elstanger the sex educator again telling it like it is,
Speaker 2: so it sounds like it's sanctum. Everybody was getting what
Speaker 2: they wanted, right. Well, there's also some potential dangers to
Speaker 2: this undefined space, Like all of these terms take care
Speaker 2: of you, arrangement, et cetera. They don't really mean anything specifically,
Speaker 2: so they leave a lot of room for misinterpretation.
Speaker 8: And because it's so broad and gray area, there's a
Speaker 8: lot of i think, potential opportunity for conflict where a
Speaker 8: client thinks that because they spent X amount of dollars,
Speaker 8: they can do whatever they want to you, which is
Speaker 8: not how that works. I can see so many instances
Speaker 8: and opportunities where dudes are like, I spent ten K,
Speaker 8: twenty K, what do you mean I can't lick your pussy?
Speaker 8: You know, like I'm sure it's happened, Like I've heard
Speaker 8: people complain for a lallas Again.
Speaker 2: Exactly, when you're paying a fuck ton of money, you
Speaker 2: usually want what you paid for, or at least what
Speaker 2: you think you paid for. So these members who paid
Speaker 2: tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a sanctum,
Speaker 2: what exactly did they think they were purchasing? And what
Speaker 2: did that mean for the performers who worked there. For example,
Speaker 2: Ambrose clearly had some great and lucrative times at the club,
Speaker 2: but he also has some unsettling memories. Was there parts
Speaker 2: you enjoyed, parts you didn't enjoy? Basically, like did you
Speaker 2: like it?
Speaker 1: Sometimes?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 10: Sometimes no? Sometimes I hated it. Sometimes I've got sexually
Speaker 10: assaulted quite frankly, or sometimes I had to like stop
Speaker 10: or like deflect someone from doing something I got really
Speaker 10: good at, Like if someone was trying to put their
Speaker 10: fingers in like my vagina or ass, I.
Speaker 1: Could move my foot to like get to.
Speaker 10: Stop doing that in kind of a way that wasn't
Speaker 10: like so off putting, says someone trying to do something
Speaker 10: unconsensually to you. And then there were moments when you know,
Speaker 10: I had to like be like, oh, I'll be right back,
Speaker 10: and then I'd like leave the room and I'd like
Speaker 10: tell the security guard, I'm like, nope.
Speaker 1: Not good, not a good time.
Speaker 10: I'm done. You got to get him out of here.
Speaker 10: And then I'd go to the green room and they'd
Speaker 10: have the guy leave. They didn't blacklist people enough, though.
Speaker 2: As someone who's worked in the sex industry for years,
Speaker 2: Elle also has a lot of experience with this type
Speaker 2: of thing. Basically, some idiot feeling entitled to your body
Speaker 2: just because you're a sex worker, and then you have
Speaker 2: to negotiate consent with this drunk person in an environment
Speaker 2: where you're a performer whose job it is to make
Speaker 2: sure everyone's having a blast, so you have to keep
Speaker 2: it quote sexy while telling someone not to finger you
Speaker 2: against your will.
Speaker 8: As an entertainer, it is I'm so stressful trying to
Speaker 8: keep the illusion of a good time, you know, sexiness,
Speaker 8: relaxed or party or whatever, and try to manage someone
Speaker 8: who like won't stop touching you even though they never
Speaker 8: asked or they never paid or both, or someone that's
Speaker 8: done something malicious like put a finger inside of you
Speaker 8: when again they didn't ask.
Speaker 2: It can be really really scary.
Speaker 8: And also, like when I get nervous about going to shift,
Speaker 8: I don't get nervous because I know that I'm going
Speaker 8: to be naked. I don't get nervous because I know
Speaker 8: that I'm going to have to do difficult pull tricks
Speaker 8: or try to walk in heels. I get nervous because
Speaker 8: I don't know how people are going to treat me
Speaker 8: and what I'm going to have to emotionally or maybe
Speaker 8: physically navigate.
Speaker 2: Basically, the burden of guests shitty behavior lands on the performer.
Speaker 2: Of course, this stuff happens out in the regular world too,
Speaker 2: not just illuminati orgies. Many of us have been in
Speaker 2: a situation where some creep pinches your ass and you
Speaker 2: find yourself riggling away from them, all fake laughing at
Speaker 2: their bad joke. It's to not quote make it off.
Speaker 2: I know plenty of women who have experienced the swift
Speaker 2: anger of a rejected man who yells, I didn't want
Speaker 2: to fuck you anyway, ugly bitch, after simply saying you
Speaker 2: weren't interested. And that's without money being involved. And these
Speaker 2: interactions can be heightened in an environment like sanctum or
Speaker 2: the entitlement can be even more rampant. Over the years,
Speaker 2: Damon's ex wife Melissa saw a lot of these blurred
Speaker 2: lines and it raised some serious red flags for her.
Speaker 11: There was a lot of gray area, you know, And
Speaker 11: some girls are different than others. Some are like, yeah,
Speaker 11: you know, throw another two hundred bucks my way, and
Speaker 11: like you can do this out or whatever to me,
Speaker 11: and then some girls are like hell no, And then
Speaker 11: those lines will get crossed and boundaries will get cross.
Speaker 1: So that's where it got scary.
Speaker 11: People start to come into your world and if you're
Speaker 11: the owner of this club, you're gonna have some issues
Speaker 11: with some girls.
Speaker 1: And that happened for sure.
Speaker 11: What do you mean girls coming to us and being
Speaker 11: like this guy touched me and he should and that
Speaker 11: touched me, and this guy asked me to go to
Speaker 11: the bathroom with him and do sexual favors with him,
Speaker 11: And so we would have to manage that person, kick
Speaker 11: them out of the club if they were like a
Speaker 11: big high spender, and that with bottle surface and like
Speaker 11: the whole thing that becomes difficult. It was just a
Speaker 11: lot to manage, and all of those little layers behind
Speaker 11: the scenes, it was a lot.
Speaker 1: It was scary.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of times when Damon would come out
Speaker 11: and be like, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 2: It's killing me. I can't do it anymore.
Speaker 11: And then he would do the next one, and do
Speaker 11: the next one and keep moving forward.
Speaker 1: And he just kept doing it and building it.
Speaker 2: So how do we solve the problems of consent within
Speaker 2: these undefined sex work situations? Well, a lot of people
Speaker 2: would argue that that's asking the wrong question. Maybe a
Speaker 2: better question is is it even possible to properly negotiate
Speaker 2: consent in a world where sex work is illegal, where
Speaker 2: people can't even consent to what they want to do
Speaker 2: with their own bodies as according to the law. Look,
Speaker 2: sex work is happening everywhere, whether it's at a sex
Speaker 2: party or only fans, or a porn set, or the
Speaker 2: office of your favorite member of Congress, or anywhere else
Speaker 2: that humans frequent, and many sex work advocates insist that
Speaker 2: the best way to keep workers paid and safe is
Speaker 2: to decriminalize sex work.
Speaker 8: So I would say in a decriminalized world, it would
Speaker 8: be a lot safer for the workers because in this
Speaker 8: great area of negotiation and legality, if something bad happens
Speaker 8: to the workers again, they are not going to be
Speaker 8: in a position to report it to police. In twenty
Speaker 8: twenty one, over two hundred and fifty scientists, researchers, academics
Speaker 8: who are advocates for harm reduction wrote a formal letter
Speaker 8: to President Biden and VP Harris formally recommending the full
Speaker 8: decriminalization of sex work. They're not alone in this. Organizations
Speaker 8: like World Health Organization, Amnesty International, UN AIDS have been
Speaker 8: stating for years globally and for decades why full decriminalization
Speaker 8: is the best way to prevent extortion, to prevent trafficking,
Speaker 8: to make it easier to address victimization. Any sex worker
Speaker 8: who gets robbed or raped or assaulted is not going
Speaker 8: to go to the police if what they're doing is illegal.
Speaker 2: And do Criminalization also allows trafficking victims to go to
Speaker 2: the police without fear of being criminalized themselves. In fact,
Speaker 2: the term sex work was created by activist Carol Lee
Speaker 2: as an alternative to prostitution. I put the idea of
Speaker 2: decriminalized sex work into the lexicon of a labor movement
Speaker 2: rather than a moral or sex based movement. Now, decriminalization
Speaker 2: is different from legalization. As El explains, legalization gives power
Speaker 2: to the government, whereas decriminalization gives power to the worker.
Speaker 8: Legalization is not the answer. So just one example as
Speaker 8: to why no legalization. Think about people who want to
Speaker 8: work sex. But under a legalized system, there's going to
Speaker 8: be things like government required forms or documents. If you're
Speaker 8: someone who doesn't have a fixed address, or your domestic
Speaker 8: violence survivor, or you're a transperson without updated documents, you
Speaker 8: may not be able to meet the requirements in order
Speaker 8: to be a legalized worker, so if they work sex,
Speaker 8: they'd still be arrestable, which again targets most marginalized populations.
Speaker 2: Basically, we don't need the government involved in our sex lives. Thanks,
Speaker 2: but no one's trying to get arrested for the consensual
Speaker 2: work that they do. And Damon agrees with all this.
Speaker 6: It offers protections to these girls that are so important.
Speaker 6: Sex works an interesting thing. It's obviously it's consensual. Two people,
Speaker 6: adults are deciding that they want to do this, they
Speaker 6: have a consentual agreement with each other, but that's still illegal.
Speaker 6: You're not allowed to pay someone to have sex with you.
Speaker 6: Because I assume that you wanted to be legal because
Speaker 6: you want to protect these people, right, but you're not
Speaker 6: doing that. You know you're doing the opposite.
Speaker 2: When you look at it that way, the criminalization makes
Speaker 2: total sense. Whether or not this will actually happen in
Speaker 2: this country, well, it's not looking great at least for now.
Speaker 2: So all of these dilemmas with negotiations and consent and safety,
Speaker 2: they started to get too much for Damon walking this line,
Speaker 2: it was messy and dangerous. So he decided to bring
Speaker 2: in some help.
Speaker 1: For a while.
Speaker 6: I did not shun that. I allowed that for sure,
Speaker 6: But at some point I got a more professional manager
Speaker 6: in management of a high end hotel, so his approach
Speaker 6: to things was so different, and I think just right
Speaker 6: away he just stepped in and was like, the last
Speaker 6: stuff here that you can't be doing, you know, And
Speaker 6: he changed some of the rules and we were like, okay,
Speaker 6: you know what, these girls making this money is dangerous
Speaker 6: and we have to put an end to it. So
Speaker 6: that line started to get to me very uncomfortable, and
Speaker 6: that would have ended my whole journey, and I probably
Speaker 6: could have gone to jail. And I'm like, well, you
Speaker 6: know what, you'd take over because I don't want to
Speaker 6: do this anymore. So it started to shift.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, solving the issue by just stopping it all
Speaker 2: together sounds easy enough, right, But the one new issue
Speaker 2: this created was that the side huzzle sex work was
Speaker 2: how Ambrose and some of the other performers were actually
Speaker 2: making the majority of their money.
Speaker 10: They did get to a point while I was working
Speaker 10: there where they hired the operations manager. Our pey got
Speaker 10: cut so hard they kind of stopped being so out
Speaker 10: in the open or upfront even with me about doing
Speaker 10: the devotee work.
Speaker 1: Like, to my knowledge, it was done.
Speaker 6: That their fee went down.
Speaker 9: It was that.
Speaker 6: I mean, I always paid them like four or five
Speaker 6: hundred bucks, but they were no longer able to hustle
Speaker 6: that extra money, and at some point certain people left
Speaker 6: because of that. They made a decision that if I
Speaker 6: can't hustle that extra couple thousand dollars in a night,
Speaker 6: then you know whatever, I'll go work at a strip
Speaker 6: club or I'll go do something else.
Speaker 2: This decision actually indicated a larger shift at the club,
Speaker 2: one of moving away from the more free for all,
Speaker 2: almost willfully messy nature of things to something generally more cautious,
Speaker 2: more regulated. And it's not a coincidence that this happened
Speaker 2: right around the start of the Me Too movement toward
Speaker 2: the end of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 6: The girls that worked for me, in a sense, I
Speaker 6: feel like I was in the same kind of strange
Speaker 6: gray area where you know, I had people paying me
Speaker 6: a lot of money to facilitate these things that I
Speaker 6: didn't always feel comfortable with. You know, I didn't always
Speaker 6: feel like it was the right thing to do, but
Speaker 6: I did it for.
Speaker 2: Many of us. Me too, encouraged us to think about
Speaker 2: consent and power dynamics in a more nuanced way, and
Speaker 2: it made a lot of us look back and think,
Speaker 2: meek I should have done that differently. Damon included.
Speaker 6: I had that realization, and it's a very strong one
Speaker 6: that people will consent to things because they're desperate. There's
Speaker 6: a bunch of money being dangled, and so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I want to do this. And when you're dealing with
Speaker 6: powerful people and celebrities and all of that, and you
Speaker 6: just want to be close to them and you just
Speaker 6: want to kind of like touch on that magic for
Speaker 6: a night, you might get yourself into a situation where really,
Speaker 6: the next day you're just left alone. They're not going
Speaker 6: to call you the next day. And at that time,
Speaker 6: I allowed that concept of consent to make me feel
Speaker 6: like I was walking a moral path. I'm not everyone's dad.
Speaker 6: It's not my role to decide if someone 's consent
Speaker 6: is enough. But today, you know, in my life now,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't allow some of the stuff that I allowed.
Speaker 6: I just wouldn't because, yeah, because consent isn't enough.
Speaker 2: Eventually, Damon got to the point where his dream was
Speaker 2: becoming more of a nightmare. There were all the pressures
Speaker 2: of running the club, obviously, and then there was the
Speaker 2: havoc the club was reaking on his personal life, on
Speaker 2: his family, and on his own relationship with sex. He
Speaker 2: was rethinking what exactly he wanted for his future and
Speaker 2: whether Sanctum should be a part of it at all.
Speaker 2: Next on Sanctum Unmasked.
Speaker 6: The crazier I got, the more everyone in the mental
Speaker 6: institution was just like, you know, cheering me on, Like
Speaker 6: we're all in this asylum together.
Speaker 3: He's pulled towards certain universal truths, and then he like
Speaker 3: goes too far into the volcano.
Speaker 1: It just got bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, he thought, with people's kids, and it's like war.
Speaker 2: Sanctum Unmass is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts, hosted and written by me Carly Shortino. Etily's
Speaker 2: Perez is our lead producer and story editor. Amelia Brock
Speaker 2: is our senior producer. Sound design, scoring and mixing by
Speaker 2: George Hicks. Original music composed by Jesse Niswanger, backchecking by
Speaker 2: Austin Thompson. Local illustration by Linda McNeil. Graham Gibson is
Speaker 2: our recording engineer. Recorded at iHeart Studios in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Nick Stump, Jason English, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 2: Elsie Crowley, and me Carl Shortino. If you're enjoying the show,
Speaker 2: help us get the word out by leaving a rating
Speaker 2: in your favorite podcast app. You can keep up with
Speaker 2: Damon on Instagram. He's at Father Damon. Tune in next
Speaker 2: week