Speaker 1: School of Humans. Sanctum Unmasked is about a sex club
Speaker 1: and describes various sex acts. Please use discretion where and
Speaker 1: when you listen. Damon Lonner is sitting by his pool,
Speaker 1: sipping a cocktail and thinking there's a handful of young
Speaker 1: women swimming naked, playfully splashing each other. A busty brunette
Speaker 1: jumps performatively on the giant trampoline in the yard. Damon's
Speaker 1: trying his best not to get too distracted, though, because
Speaker 1: he has a lot of work to do. Later this week,
Speaker 1: he will be hosting a special event for a man
Speaker 1: who paid him fifty thousand dollars to curate a custom
Speaker 1: sexual experience. So he's busy brainstorming, and with another sip
Speaker 1: of his drink, he comes up with this. The scene
Speaker 1: would begin with the man blindfolded and tied to a
Speaker 1: wooden beam in Damon's mansion. Then three naked nymphs with
Speaker 1: antlers would remove his blindfold and release a kaleidoscope of
Speaker 1: live butterflies into the room. Think florist fantasy vibes. The
Speaker 1: nymphs untie the man and then taking turns hand feed
Speaker 1: him lobster chocolate and vintage dom Perignon, then they have
Speaker 1: their way with him. Damon thought this was a pretty
Speaker 1: good idea, but he wanted to try it out for
Speaker 1: himself first, you know, for professional reasons. So he calls
Speaker 1: up three of his performers from the club and ask
Speaker 1: them if they want to come over to swim, hang
Speaker 1: out and you know, rehearse. Sure enough, the girls show
Speaker 1: up and the four of them spend the afternoon doing
Speaker 1: research and development in the form of an orgy. At
Speaker 1: one point, Damon stacks the women on top of each
Speaker 1: other so he can fuck them from behind, one after another,
Speaker 1: like going down a fuck ladder, until finally he feels
Speaker 1: satisfied that, Yep, he was right. This is a great idea.
Speaker 1: This is a pretty normal day in Damon's life.
Speaker 2: I had so many girls at my house all the time.
Speaker 2: It was like a playboy mansion kind of a setup.
Speaker 2: At that time, the idea of monogamy was insanity. I
Speaker 2: had just gotten out of a twenty year monogamous religious like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get attached to anybody. I mean,
Speaker 2: at my parties, I would have sex with three.
Speaker 3: Or four or five different people.
Speaker 2: I was on fucking fire.
Speaker 1: It's twenty sixteen, Damon's now living by himself in the
Speaker 1: newly dubbed Sanctum Mansion. He's a bachelor now and he's
Speaker 1: leaning in.
Speaker 2: I mean, my doorbell would ring, and you know, some
Speaker 2: girl that I met at a party would come over
Speaker 2: with three of her girlfriends.
Speaker 3: You know, can we go swimming?
Speaker 2: You know, can we jump on the champoline in? And
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, come on in, you know, and
Speaker 2: like I mean, it was just wildness.
Speaker 1: He was now fully embarking on a journey of sexual
Speaker 1: self discovery, and it was something he felt like he
Speaker 1: had to do alone, or as alone as you can
Speaker 1: be if you're almost always literally inside someone else. But
Speaker 1: you get the idea. Welcome to Sanctum Unmasked. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Carl Schortino. Breakups are rough, even when it's the right decision.
Speaker 1: They're sad, lonely, destabilizing. They forced you to question everything
Speaker 1: you did wrong or could have done better. But something
Speaker 1: I feel like we don't hold enough space for is
Speaker 1: just how embarrassing breakups can be. Like, never have I
Speaker 1: ever acted more like a psycho than while going through
Speaker 1: a breakup. You're like crying at the deli counter. You
Speaker 1: fuck some idiot, from the subway under the guys that
Speaker 1: it's empowering you cut bangs. When we left you last episode,
Speaker 1: Damon and Melissa were going through a breakup of their own,
Speaker 1: and they were each experiencing their own very different versions
Speaker 1: of coping.
Speaker 2: Remember I got to the Sanctum Mansion and I pulled
Speaker 2: Melissa aside for a talk. I had come to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that I wasn't monogamous. It was like a revelation
Speaker 2: for me at the time. It was like, there's nothing
Speaker 2: wrong with me. I'm not a bad person. I don't
Speaker 2: want to have sex with only one person for the
Speaker 2: rest of my life. I'm now declaring my non monogamous status,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to enjoy myself and not feel guilty
Speaker 2: all the time because of these desires.
Speaker 1: Before the split, Damon and Melissa had been together for
Speaker 1: twenty years. She felt like she knew him pretty well,
Speaker 1: but even she was surprised by his rebrand.
Speaker 4: He was discovering himself as a hedonist, and he actually
Speaker 4: said that to me. He's like, I'm you know, I
Speaker 4: don't want to pretend to be some outstanding guy anymore.
Speaker 1: When Damon moved out, Melissa and their two young daughters
Speaker 1: continued living together in the family's apartment, and the separation
Speaker 1: was hitting her understandably hard.
Speaker 4: I was crying in the fetal position on my bathroom
Speaker 4: floor every day, pulling it together, driving my kids to school.
Speaker 4: The second they would get out of the car and
Speaker 4: run into school, I'd be a bawling mess. If a
Speaker 4: song came on the radio that was sad a fuck
Speaker 4: adele Hello, that CD that came out nineteen was like
Speaker 4: around that time, and I would just be a fucking bawling, crying,
Speaker 4: blubbering mess.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, at the Sancta Mansion.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was like, you know, high on Molly
Speaker 2: and kocaine. This porn star that's like just fucking world
Speaker 2: famous for her blowjobs makes her way in with me
Speaker 2: to this room and we're by ourselves, and she just
Speaker 2: says like, I want to suck your cock like it's
Speaker 2: never been sucked in your life. And I'm like, and
Speaker 2: I'm in the perfect state of mind to do it,
Speaker 2: so I just like relax into this experience. And forty
Speaker 2: five an hourly, I don't I don't know how long
Speaker 2: this went on. I mean, my eyes were rolling back
Speaker 2: into my head, like I'm on another planet for a while,
Speaker 2: and uh wow, I mean that was that was quite
Speaker 2: an orgasm.
Speaker 1: Until now, Damon felt like he'd been living in the closet,
Speaker 1: hiding his true horny self, feeling shame about his kinky,
Speaker 1: promiscuous desires. But he didn't want to hide anymore. He
Speaker 1: was running a famous sex club for fock's sake, and
Speaker 1: he was just embracing the character.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Did I mention that he converted his wine cellar into
Speaker 1: a BDSM dungeon?
Speaker 3: Just trying to paint a picture here.
Speaker 1: Anyways, the Same to mansion was proving to be the
Speaker 1: perfect accommodation for Damon's shifting lifestyle in some ways that
Speaker 1: were pretty surprising.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, I would share that space with my two
Speaker 2: young children on every other weekend, So the sanct dimension
Speaker 2: became this like playground for grown ups when I did Sanctum,
Speaker 2: and this unbelievable playground for kids when I wasn't doing Sanctum.
Speaker 2: I would have sleepovers with you know, I mean ten
Speaker 2: twelve kids, and I'd set up all of these like
Speaker 2: blow up mattresses, and I had this huge while where
Speaker 2: I'd project movies for them, and I had you know,
Speaker 2: my staff that was doing my parties. I'd invite them in,
Speaker 2: they would cook, they would make popcorn. There would be like,
Speaker 2: you know, everything these kids could want, and then in
Speaker 2: the backyard there was a big pool and a trampoline
Speaker 2: and they would go fucking crazy.
Speaker 1: Sure he was a sex fiend, but most importantly, he
Speaker 1: was a dad, and he felt like these two parts
Speaker 1: of himself could exist in harmony.
Speaker 2: And the parents started to kind of know about what
Speaker 2: I was doing, you know, And I know that some
Speaker 2: of the parents were probably freaked out, but most of
Speaker 2: the parents were like, You're the most amazing dad, Like
Speaker 2: how the fuck do you handle all these you know?
Speaker 2: And I just loved it.
Speaker 1: Melissa was less enthusiastic about this. She was in the
Speaker 1: midst of a rebrand of her own. She'd become a
Speaker 1: personal trainer, and she'd recently gotten sober. Damon, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was basically partying for a living, and no
Speaker 1: matter how much she wanted to distance herself from him,
Speaker 1: there wasn't really much she could do about it. He
Speaker 1: was the father of her kids and also clearly not
Speaker 1: the most discreet person in the world.
Speaker 4: We were growing in such different directions, and it was
Speaker 4: into health wellness, fitness, and he was further and further
Speaker 4: into his role as the next Hugh Hefner. And so
Speaker 4: for me, I don't want to say it was about image,
Speaker 4: but I'm gonna fucking say it. It was about image,
Speaker 4: and I just didn't want that image.
Speaker 1: If you remember, part of the reason they broke up
Speaker 1: was because Damon wanted to experiment sexually outside of their
Speaker 1: marriage and Melissa didn't.
Speaker 3: Their priorities were shifting.
Speaker 1: But it's not like he didn't want to be with
Speaker 1: her or that he wasn't still attracted to her. It
Speaker 1: was just at the club, he was seeing all these
Speaker 1: examples of how an open relationship could potentially work, and
Speaker 1: he thought maybe he and Melissa could try that.
Speaker 2: They started to watch all of these couples and they
Speaker 2: sure looked happy, they really did, and you know, and
Speaker 2: they were free and they were like fucking other people
Speaker 2: and they had a commitment to each other. And I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, that's that's a really interesting way of
Speaker 2: doing things, and I wanted to try that.
Speaker 1: What Damon was essentially asking for is what the kids
Speaker 1: these days are calling ethical non monogamy. So sleeping with
Speaker 1: people who aren't your partner has become very fashionable in
Speaker 1: recent years. Realistically, this has been happening since the dawn
Speaker 1: of time. It's just that people used to call it cheating,
Speaker 1: with some exceptions like hippies and swingers who called it
Speaker 1: free love. But today, younger generations, full of open minded,
Speaker 1: sex positive and gender fluid cool kids, have started a
Speaker 1: larger cultural conversation about how incorporating some space and novelty
Speaker 1: into your romantic relationships can actually be healthy and potentially
Speaker 1: keep things exciting and sexy for longer. You want to
Speaker 1: sleep with my bff, cool with me. Let's just share
Speaker 1: a Google cal to make sure our schedule is align.
Speaker 1: You've probably been privy to at least some of this.
Speaker 1: The famous sex writer and podcast or Dan Savage has
Speaker 1: aggressively brought the phrase monogamish into our lives. As he
Speaker 1: puts it, opening the door of your relationship just a
Speaker 1: crack keeps it from blowing off its hinges.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've been.
Speaker 1: To an it girl apartment in years without seeing the
Speaker 1: book The Ethical Slut on the Shelf aka The Quintessential
Speaker 1: Guide to Nominogamy. Also, I'm not sure if it's just me,
Speaker 1: but it seems like roughly ninety percent of TV characters
Speaker 1: are in open relationships. I'm exaggerating, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Now, I get it. Non monogamy does seem
Speaker 1: like a potentially more progressive, more realistic approach to long
Speaker 1: term relationships. But just because something's trendy doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's easy, and just because something seems evolved doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that it will drive you to the brink of mental collapse.
Speaker 1: At Sanctum, Daemon had a front row seat to this
Speaker 1: sort of personal exploration.
Speaker 2: I mean, I had many people tell me that Sanctums
Speaker 2: saved their marriage by opening things up and staying together.
Speaker 2: They were able to, you know, work through whatever it
Speaker 2: was that was keeping them from kind of being horny
Speaker 2: for each other, and that Sanctum was this playground for
Speaker 2: them where they met other people. They were able to
Speaker 2: have these discussions, they were able to explore.
Speaker 1: But for all the people who said the club enlivened
Speaker 1: their relationship, Damon also saw some train wrecks.
Speaker 2: Specifically, I remember a couple that was non monogamous, but
Speaker 2: the man snuck off and had sex with someone in
Speaker 2: a bathroom and she found out about it, and she
Speaker 2: was like, what the fuck are you doing, you know,
Speaker 2: like we're here together, like we're being honest with each other,
Speaker 2: and you sneak off and hide it from me. That
Speaker 2: makes me feel like I can't trust you at all,
Speaker 2: and that obviously fucked up their relationship. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: this exploration is scary. It takes bravery, It takes a
Speaker 2: little bit of craziness, you know, like you have to
Speaker 2: be willing to like walk through some feelings that could
Speaker 2: be really.
Speaker 3: Hard for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Going to a sex party is pretty intimidating, even for
Speaker 1: non monogamous couples. It feels like something you maybe work
Speaker 1: up to. But actually these parties can sometimes be a
Speaker 1: good first step for couples who are looking to explore openness.
Speaker 1: This is according to sex researcher doctor Jana Frangalova. She's
Speaker 1: the Human Sexuality Professor at NYU and she also specializes
Speaker 1: in coaching couples into nominogamy.
Speaker 5: Sex parties are such a fun little way to introduce
Speaker 5: some form of non monogamy. There are actually quite a
Speaker 5: few circumstances that I would recommend a sex party for,
Speaker 5: and it starts with people who don't actually want to
Speaker 5: be non monogamous. But who just want some level of spark,
Speaker 5: something that is sexual and can arouse some of that
Speaker 5: sense of novelty that often gets lost in relationships.
Speaker 1: Perhaps pause this to search Yelp for the highest rate
Speaker 1: of sex parties in your neighborhood.
Speaker 5: When couples want to explore, there's a lot of fear
Speaker 5: around what is introducing a third or a fourth person
Speaker 5: going to do to our relationship? Is that gonna ruin
Speaker 5: what we have in some way? Is it gonna lead
Speaker 5: to a lot of jealousy and conflict and all of that.
Speaker 5: So in those cases, I often recommend people to go
Speaker 5: and check out a sex party where they don't actually
Speaker 5: play with anybody else where, they just go observe, watch
Speaker 5: other people play, maybe get naked themselves, maybe play with
Speaker 5: each other. So there is that voyeuristic component that can
Speaker 5: be very arousing and fun. There can be that exhibitionist
Speaker 5: component and still done in a way that doesn't actually
Speaker 5: invite that third into the relationship.
Speaker 1: So you remember Claudia who worked as an atmosphere model
Speaker 1: at Sanctum, Well, she experienced exactly this. She met her
Speaker 1: husband back when she was working with the parties, and
Speaker 1: she invited him to come along to Sanctum within the
Speaker 1: first couple months of dating.
Speaker 6: The first party I took my husband to, there were
Speaker 6: these girls totally naked, and they had these lamp shades
Speaker 6: on their heads, and the lights were on in the
Speaker 6: lamp and one girl was holding like a jar full
Speaker 6: of pins, like little like lapals and one set of
Speaker 6: voyeur and another girl was holding a different thing and
Speaker 6: said participant. And there are a lot of people that
Speaker 6: just and I think they got excited and they took
Speaker 6: that energy home with them.
Speaker 1: Claudia described her husband as a quote good Midwestern boy,
Speaker 1: so all this naked lamp woman, mansion orgy stuff was
Speaker 1: very new to him. Obviously, Claudia worked at Sanctums, so
Speaker 1: it was familiar to her, but she had never been
Speaker 1: to a sex party as a couple, and she realized
Speaker 1: that it was a totally different experience.
Speaker 6: He was like, I've never even had a threesome before, like,
Speaker 6: let alone this kind of party. But it just made
Speaker 6: us open minded. So I think for us, like the
Speaker 6: first couple of parties were like, huh, this is hot.
Speaker 1: Together, they realized that Sanctum's sparked conversations that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had otherwise.
Speaker 3: And that was.
Speaker 1: Really exciting and made them feel connected.
Speaker 6: You know, your partner is like, Okay, well we saw
Speaker 6: this person getting whipped. Is that something you're into? And
Speaker 6: what if You're like hell yeah, you know, and like
Speaker 6: that opens up a line of communication for you and
Speaker 6: your partner that you've never had before, and that leads
Speaker 6: to other life of communication and it just keeps growing
Speaker 6: from there. There's nothing we can't talk about now regarding sex.
Speaker 6: There's nothing that's tabooed, and I feel like that's where
Speaker 6: a lot of relationships fail is there's desires that are
Speaker 6: never discussed until they go explore these desires with either
Speaker 6: somebody else or behind their partners back.
Speaker 1: She's right, the stuff you feel comfortable talking about even
Speaker 1: with strangers when someone in the background is being fucked
Speaker 1: over a railing. It's definitely a step up from your
Speaker 1: casual dinner party combo.
Speaker 6: It completely shapes your relationship. I mean, how do you
Speaker 6: go to something so open minded and then go home
Speaker 6: and just like turn that off. I don't think that's possible.
Speaker 6: I walked into it thinking it was going to be
Speaker 6: a job, and I had no idea it would literally
Speaker 6: flip my entire life upside down in a positive way.
Speaker 1: Basically, some people went to Signing Tom because they were
Speaker 1: horny little goblins. For others, it was offering an avenue
Speaker 1: for exploration within their marriage, and apparently that's where thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars a ticket. But as we'll see after the break,
Speaker 1: it's not always a walk in the park for everyone.
Speaker 1: Non monogamy comes with many challenges. For one, there's a
Speaker 1: real stigma around it. Sure it's having a hipster rebrand,
Speaker 1: but in most polite company, if you tell someone you're
Speaker 1: in an open relationship, they look at you like garislut
Speaker 1: or an idiot, or some combination of the two to
Speaker 1: be perhaps too frank. There's also an issue I've found
Speaker 1: with no monogamy where some of the people in the
Speaker 1: lifestyle can be kind of well, annoying.
Speaker 2: I did it in a way that was like kind
Speaker 2: of righteous, you know, like this is who I am.
Speaker 2: You just need to understand that, you know, the way
Speaker 2: society has set things up is just all wrong, and
Speaker 2: marriage is all wrong and monogamy is all wrong. There
Speaker 2: was no empathy. It was just like everyone else is crazy,
Speaker 2: and I'm sane. I'm enlightened.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: I was drinking the kool aid.
Speaker 1: Sometimes identifying as nominogamous can come with this holier than
Speaker 1: now energy that's not so appealing. I've encountered many men
Speaker 1: with CNM in their hinge bios, standing for consensual nominogamy,
Speaker 1: and all of them want to preach for four hours
Speaker 1: about how birds or squirrels or whatever are polyamorous. I'm like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: they also eat dirt, So let's move on. I'm being harsh,
Speaker 1: but this is a personal trigger of mine. Sorry, So
Speaker 1: exploring openness is going to involve navigating some of this
Speaker 1: type of personality. And then, of course, there is the
Speaker 1: whole jealousy issue. Damon experienced his firsthand when he tried
Speaker 1: to open his relationship with Melissa. Remember he had a threesome.
Speaker 1: She fucked her Equinux trainer, but it didn't bring them
Speaker 1: closer together. In fact, it did the opposite.
Speaker 2: Her having sex with another man was so devastating to me.
Speaker 2: As soon as she came home, I was fucked up
Speaker 2: in my mind. I was thinking about it. I was imagining.
Speaker 2: There's jealousy, there's insecurity, there's anger, there's a feeling that
Speaker 2: the ground you're on is now like shaky. There's so
Speaker 2: many feelings that come up when your partners with another person,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know how to deal with them or
Speaker 2: handle them. I mean, I owned this thing, and I
Speaker 2: was supposed to be the guy that knew all about this,
Speaker 2: but I didn't. I'd never delved into non monogamous relationship,
Speaker 2: so I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.
Speaker 2: So I just like thought, oh, wow, this looks easy,
Speaker 2: and it's not. But it's not like that at all.
Speaker 1: Speaking of someone who has been in multiple open relationships,
Speaker 1: I'm intimately familiar with jealousy, and it's a nauseating cocktail
Speaker 1: of suspicion and threat. I understand that jealousy is part
Speaker 1: of being human and a little bit can be considered healthy,
Speaker 1: but it's also embarrassing.
Speaker 3: It can feel desperate.
Speaker 1: Clingy, and unattractive, and frankly, it just feels basic. I'm like, wait,
Speaker 1: I thought I was a progressive, free loving, a reference millennial.
Speaker 1: Shouldn't I be above jealousy? Well, nonminogamy can see them
Speaker 1: appealing intellectually or politically. In practice, it's like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: my feelings don't care about politics.
Speaker 2: You know, you can step into it with this feeling
Speaker 2: like okay, I'll fuck her, she can fuck him. We
Speaker 2: can do this. I feel good about this. This couple's
Speaker 2: really cool. And then you know it's happening and she's
Speaker 2: moaning a little bit louder than she does with you,
Speaker 2: or maybe she's having multiple orgasms and the wife hasn't
Speaker 2: had an orgasm in ten years, you know, and it's like, oh, oh, man,
Speaker 2: like why are they making such a great connection? What's
Speaker 2: going on here? So you open up that door. You
Speaker 2: never know what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: But for some freaks, a little bit of jealousy can
Speaker 1: actually be a good thing. It's well known polylor that
Speaker 1: a primary virtue of being open is that it prevents
Speaker 1: you from getting lazy or taking each other for granted.
Speaker 1: So basically, if you're open, your husband's less likely to
Speaker 1: get a beer gut. To that point, seeing your partner
Speaker 1: with another person at a sex party can be motivating.
Speaker 2: For some couples, something else happens where it's like they
Speaker 2: do that, and then they go back home and they
Speaker 2: fuck their brains out because they're like, did he fuck
Speaker 2: you better? You know, like everyone is on their game,
Speaker 2: because man, this is scary territory. Now, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna fucking suck his cock like that young little girl
Speaker 2: at the club, Like you know, I'm gonna show him
Speaker 2: who can suck dick, and like all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: their sex life is on fire.
Speaker 1: Last year, in twenty twenty two, the award winning journalist
Speaker 1: Rachel Krantz wrote a book called Open, an uncensored memoir
Speaker 1: of love, liberation, and nominogamy. In it, she chronicles her
Speaker 1: first experience in a polyamorous relationship, and part of what
Speaker 1: she talks about is jealousy's potential benefits. Rachel met her
Speaker 1: boyfriend back in twenty fifteen when she was twenty seven.
Speaker 1: He was significantly older than her and was literally a
Speaker 1: professor of desire, like he studied the psychology of romantic
Speaker 1: desire and had been in multiple previous poli relationships.
Speaker 8: Before we even kissed, he told me he was non
Speaker 8: monogamous and really framed it as like, this is about morally,
Speaker 8: how I believe I want to be towards a partner.
Speaker 8: It's not so much about me being with other people.
Speaker 8: It's just I don't want to restrict people's freedom.
Speaker 1: And then came another piece of information.
Speaker 8: He revealed early on that he basically had a hot
Speaker 8: wife in kink where his fantasy was to see me
Speaker 8: with other men, and brought up a sex party as
Speaker 8: a place where we could explore.
Speaker 1: That hot wifing. This is basically a cousin to the
Speaker 1: more widely used term cuckolding, but minus the intended humiliation part. Basically,
Speaker 1: hot wifing is when you're turned on by watching your
Speaker 1: partner have sex with someone else, but where you're also involved,
Speaker 1: like in a threeesome for example.
Speaker 8: Interesting He had been to this party in Brooklyn called Chemistry,
Speaker 8: and he was like, I think it would just be
Speaker 8: really interesting for you to see I had. One part
Speaker 8: of me was like, God, can I handle him being
Speaker 8: around all these other naked women and seeing the desire
Speaker 8: in his eyes for other women. But then another part
Speaker 8: of me was like, all right, I'm glad he's pushing me,
Speaker 8: because going to a sex party, you know, it was
Speaker 8: on my bucket list ever since I was you know,
Speaker 8: a preteen masturbating to eyes wide shut on HBO late
Speaker 8: at night. It was like, obviously you do that at
Speaker 8: some point, like a fully evolved person goes to a
Speaker 8: sex part. Whatever my idea was.
Speaker 1: I've actually been to that sex party. For context, Chemistry
Speaker 1: is kind of the anti Sanctum in terms of vibe
Speaker 1: and aesthetic. Think less champagne and ritual sacrifice and more
Speaker 1: craft beer and stick and poke tattoos. Basically everyone looks
Speaker 1: like they were born and raised at Burning Man. Rachel
Speaker 1: did pay to get in, but it was less than
Speaker 1: one hundred bucks to Sanctum six figure memberships.
Speaker 8: It was Brooklyn. It really looked like any sort of
Speaker 8: hipster loft party, except that in certain corners, like people
Speaker 8: were fucking. After one of the parties, we did get scabies,
Speaker 8: which was something I didn't even know to be afraid of.
Speaker 1: That's Scavy's anecdote isn't relevant to the story, but I
Speaker 1: had to include it because it's truly an orgy worst nightmare.
Speaker 3: Anyway, back to the point.
Speaker 8: A man approached me who was actually like pretty good looking.
Speaker 8: I ended up sleeping with him. He came super quickly.
Speaker 8: But what was fun was that during it I felt
Speaker 8: all these people watching us. Even though I didn't think
Speaker 8: the sex was that great. Adam was like totally transformed
Speaker 8: into just this kind of beast feeling like very primal
Speaker 8: energy of reclaiming me instead of me sleeping with whoever.
Speaker 8: I wanted being something that diminished my lovability or my
Speaker 8: value you. It was something that only made Adam desire
Speaker 8: me more.
Speaker 1: Kind of reminds me of how Damon turned into a
Speaker 1: literal lion when he thought about Melissa fucking her personal trainer.
Speaker 2: Ah ah no, and my you know, like, no, you
Speaker 2: know this is fucking I'm fucking this. You go fuck
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, it's uncomfortable to imagine their
Speaker 1: partner on a date touching pinkies at the movies, followed
Speaker 1: by slow, diptyque candle sex, and that's what we all imagine, right,
Speaker 1: But part of the appeal of a sex party is
Speaker 1: that it's impersonal, like a networking event, but for threesomes.
Speaker 1: So to see your partner banging a relative stranger at
Speaker 1: a random party and then go home with you, for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, that's way easier to handle. Here's
Speaker 1: doctor Johanna again.
Speaker 5: The sex there is often much more in the casual
Speaker 5: side of things. Sometimes you can call it sport fucking.
Speaker 5: Not necessarily that it has to be that way, but
Speaker 5: there is more more of a detachment. So those worries
Speaker 5: that people might have about oh this person falling in
Speaker 5: love or my partner developing feelings with these some of
Speaker 5: these people that we hang out with, that's reduced.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, it all goes back to personal preference in terms
Speaker 1: of opening up. Going to a sex party can actually
Speaker 1: be a way of testing the waters together. Damon came
Speaker 1: to this realization for himself, but after the fact.
Speaker 2: What I learned subsequently is that the couples that do
Speaker 2: this successfully, they do it together. They share this experience
Speaker 2: with each other. They bring in someone, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: it's a girl or maybe it's a couple. When they're
Speaker 2: all together, there's lines drawn, you know, no intercourse, but
Speaker 2: orals okay, and they dip their toe in the water
Speaker 2: and they try it out and they see what works
Speaker 2: experimenting together.
Speaker 3: How romantic.
Speaker 1: No, But seriously, and look, this kind of exploration obviously
Speaker 1: isn't for everybody, and that's okay. And also it's not
Speaker 1: the easiest environment for sex just generally. If you find
Speaker 1: it hard to come with an audience of one, try
Speaker 1: one hundred. But as we'll see after the break, if
Speaker 1: you are the kind of person who wants sexual novelty,
Speaker 1: bottling it up probably isn't the answer. Something I found
Speaker 1: really interesting from my conversation with doctor Jhanna is that
Speaker 1: a lot of our personal desire to engage with any
Speaker 1: of this nonminogamy stuff or to avoid it at all costs,
Speaker 1: is down to our brain chemistry. Literally, some of us
Speaker 1: have a set of genes that make sexual adventure much
Speaker 1: more appealing. Seeking novelty feels authentic and you get a
Speaker 1: lot of reward from doing it, whereas for other people
Speaker 1: with a different set of genes it can feel like
Speaker 1: a traumatizing nightmare. But if you're someone who does want
Speaker 1: novelty and you suppress that desire, that can cause problems.
Speaker 5: You have someone who is relatively high on that spectrum
Speaker 5: of need for sexual novelty seeking, and you pair that
Speaker 5: up with a long period of time where that need
Speaker 5: was completely suppressed, then when you open that door, it
Speaker 5: can be easy to just get lost in that world
Speaker 5: and really overdo it and do it in ways that
Speaker 5: are often not going to be healthy. You're not going
Speaker 5: to be doing it in a way that's ethical for
Speaker 5: everyone involved, simply because there's so much going on. All
Speaker 5: of those things should be things that you think about,
Speaker 5: as opposed to just letting it kind of take control
Speaker 5: over you.
Speaker 1: Hearing that I can't help but think that's a pretty
Speaker 1: accurate description of Damon. He didn't get his chance at
Speaker 1: novelty in his twenty year relationship, a non monogamy wasn't
Speaker 1: an option, so when the gates of sexual freedom finally opened,
Speaker 1: he kind of went berserk, you know, the whole nymphs
Speaker 1: with handfuls of lobster and assembling a fuck ladder thing.
Speaker 1: By the way, that actually happened, Like, we didn't make
Speaker 1: that up. I'm creative, but not that creative. For Damon,
Speaker 1: after many months of surviving on a cocktail of sex, drugs,
Speaker 1: and money, he was starting to feel a little empty.
Speaker 1: He was coming to terms with just how seriously he
Speaker 1: was grieving the end of his marriage and how much
Speaker 1: he'd hurt the people around him. The journalist Mike Sager,
Speaker 1: who followed Damon around in twenty sixteen for Esquire, had
Speaker 1: an inside look at all of this. It's no coincidence
Speaker 1: that his article was titled why the founder of Sanctum
Speaker 1: Sex Club is so damn Unhappy. Here's him describing Damon
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 9: He's just got a creamy, loving center, good heart either really,
Speaker 9: big balls are just so narcissistic that he can't see
Speaker 9: the consequences of his own actions vis a vis the
Speaker 9: people in his life that he loves, because therein lies
Speaker 9: like the reason this story. Oh, it's so fascinating because
Speaker 9: he's in betwixt and in between there's the devil and
Speaker 9: the angel, and he's like trying to, like you know,
Speaker 9: be a little to the Devil's side, and like it's
Speaker 9: just never gonna work. If anything, Damon is a victim
Speaker 9: of his own good intentions for himself and the world.
Speaker 1: By this time, Damon and Ambrose had become quite good
Speaker 1: friends and confidants. Remember Ambrose was a longtime performer at
Speaker 1: Sanctum who we met last episode, and he could see
Speaker 1: that Damon was struggling.
Speaker 7: At the time. I really looked up to him like
Speaker 7: an older brother type figure and really felt like we
Speaker 7: had like a siblinghood, if you will. And I could
Speaker 7: see that he was hurting and like was trying to
Speaker 7: fill a void and whatnot. Through all these experiences, I
Speaker 7: also did damage control.
Speaker 3: When he'd have dates.
Speaker 7: He would invite them to Sanctum, tell them nearly enough
Speaker 7: at all about the party, and then just like throw
Speaker 7: them into like the lions done, if you will, And
Speaker 7: then while at the party, he's like caught an eye
Speaker 7: for another woman already and is like spending time with her,
Speaker 7: and then he's gonna invite her to the next party
Speaker 7: into the exact same thing to her. A lot of
Speaker 7: them resembled his ex wife. He'd always talk about her also,
Speaker 7: and like wanting her back, and like how he fucked up,
Speaker 7: and like stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Now I personally know what it's like to distract yourself
Speaker 1: with the sex rampage. Sex can be transformative and connective
Speaker 1: and adventurous, an intimate and a million other wonderful things,
Speaker 1: and it can also be compulsive and numbing. As my
Speaker 1: therapist says, sex is a great way to distract yourself
Speaker 1: from real life, but after a while, annoyingly, real life
Speaker 1: has a tendency to catch up with you.
Speaker 2: I was in such good she I was in the
Speaker 2: best shape of my life. I was meditating all this shit.
Speaker 2: But I would be up in that room and I'd
Speaker 2: be working out like a motherfucker, and then I would
Speaker 2: just like break down and start crying, and that song
Speaker 2: by Leonard Skinner Simple Man would come on, and I
Speaker 2: would just like fucking start bawling my eyes out, as
Speaker 2: I'm like curling, you know, I just and it sounds
Speaker 2: I don't know what it sounds like. I don't really care,
Speaker 2: but it's just it was such a hard time for
Speaker 2: me because I had everything I wanted and I was
Speaker 2: losing the most important things in my life, and I
Speaker 2: couldn't figure out how to have both. I created the
Speaker 2: kingdom and I had the key, and so I was
Speaker 2: like constantly in between these two worlds of like, fuck,
Speaker 2: I miss my wife, Like what am I doing?
Speaker 1: This internal conflict, the need for safety and stability in
Speaker 1: a relationship while also wanting novelty and adventure is a
Speaker 1: universal feeling. Most of us who have been in a
Speaker 1: long term relationship can relate to this core idea, at
Speaker 1: least on some level. Can you really have the best
Speaker 1: of both worlds? Over these same months, Melissa had been
Speaker 1: on a different trajectory. Her grieving of the marriage was
Speaker 1: a media and all consuming soundtrack by Adele as you remember.
Speaker 1: But now she was beginning to move through it, and
Speaker 1: then she meets Billy.
Speaker 4: I ran into Billy, who was He was actually our
Speaker 4: neighbor who lived across the street from us when we
Speaker 4: had our house on Marmont, So I started to date
Speaker 4: him and started to fall in love with him, and
Speaker 4: he was such a natural, like he was a very secure,
Speaker 4: grounded person. He's like a low hum and I needed
Speaker 4: that that time, and he was so so great. And
Speaker 4: so then I have Damon like this spinning crazy Tornida,
Speaker 4: like doing sanctum and like causing so much pain in
Speaker 4: my life. But then I had this other beautiful person
Speaker 4: that was like giving me so much security and grounding,
Speaker 4: and you know, someone listen to me that would understand.
Speaker 1: I call this the relationship pendulum swing. Like you break
Speaker 1: up with a neurotic type, a overachiever, and suddenly a
Speaker 1: stone surfer bro seems surprisingly appealing been there. After the
Speaker 1: turbulence of her relationship with Damon, Melissa finally felt like
Speaker 1: she'd found the calm in the storm. But when Damon
Speaker 1: found out about Melissa's new relationship, unsurprisingly it was not
Speaker 1: easy for him. When I spoke to Mike Zager, he
Speaker 1: told me his favorite parable, and I think it sums
Speaker 1: up Damon's position pretty well.
Speaker 9: There's a dog carrying a bone. He's walking across a
Speaker 9: bridge and he looks down into the river and he
Speaker 9: sees Courus his reflection. But to him there's a bigger
Speaker 9: dog with a bigger bone, and he wants that bigger bone,
Speaker 9: so he barks and then he loses everything.
Speaker 1: Next on Sanctum Unmasked, if you're auctioning something off that
Speaker 1: it means that someone bought you.
Speaker 4: That's someone paid for you.
Speaker 5: So now what does that mean?
Speaker 7: Do they own you? It wasn't said outwardly like you're
Speaker 7: going to have a threesome with them, but you could
Speaker 7: tell that was like what was expected of you.
Speaker 2: There are a couple things I saved from that time,
Speaker 2: and some of it is the blood of some of
Speaker 2: these huge celebrities.
Speaker 1: Sanctum one Mast is a production of School of Humans
Speaker 1: and iHeart podcasts, hosted and written by me Carly Schortino.
Speaker 1: Italy's Perez is our lead producer and story editor. Amelia
Speaker 1: Brock is our senior producer. Sound design, mixing and mastering
Speaker 1: by Chris Childs. Original music composed by Jesse Niswanger, fact
Speaker 1: checking by Austin Thompson. Local illustration by Linda McNeil. But
Speaker 1: Heid Fraser is our recording engineer. Recorded at iHeart Studios
Speaker 1: in New York City. Executive producers are Nick Stump, Jason English,
Speaker 1: Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, Elsie Crowley, and me Carly Schortina.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, help us get the word
Speaker 1: out by leaving a rating in your favorite podcast. You
Speaker 1: can keep up with Damon on Instagram. He's at Father Damon.
Speaker 1: Tune in next week