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. So when we left you last episode,
Speaker 1: two women from Craigslist were fucking in a birdcage and
Speaker 1: the first Sanctum party was a huge success, and the
Speaker 1: club's founder, Damon Lonner, realized that his purpose in life
Speaker 1: was to curate sexually transcendent experiences for the one percent?
Speaker 1: But how could you forget? As word got around that
Speaker 1: Sanctum was a hit, the press ate it up. The
Speaker 1: La Times wrote a steamy article about the club, along
Speaker 1: with the popular website Urban Daddy.
Speaker 2: Behold the quivering majesty of Sanctum and invite only Beverly
Speaker 2: Hills night spot to begin. We can't tell you where
Speaker 2: it is, sorry, that would blow the whole secrecy thing.
Speaker 2: What we can tell you is how to get a
Speaker 2: admitted and what you'll see.
Speaker 1: That's from the Urban Daddy piece from February twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: right after the launch. But wait, it keeps going.
Speaker 2: Go to their Facebook page. Send Sanctom a note if
Speaker 2: they like what they see in terms of your attractiveness,
Speaker 2: number of mutual friends, and artfully chosen cover photo. Congratulations,
Speaker 2: you're invited. We really can't say much else, but maybe
Speaker 2: you'll see a girl wearing latex and a bathtub pouring
Speaker 2: milk all over herself. Or maybe you'll see naked girls
Speaker 2: rubbing themselves with oil, and hey, maybe some guys doing
Speaker 2: the same. It's a real something for everyone, kind of place.
Speaker 3: The press loved this story. They loved it.
Speaker 4: They loved that Hollywood was involved, They loved that it
Speaker 4: was moneied and you know, powerful people. They loved that
Speaker 4: it was kind of this erotic vibe. And this played
Speaker 4: on myth It played on mythology, It played on spirituality
Speaker 4: and religion, It played on colt, It played on all
Speaker 4: of these things that people are intrigued by and interested in.
Speaker 4: It just felt like, especially in twenty thirteen, no one
Speaker 4: was pushing this envelope.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Sanctum Unmasked. I'm your host, Carly Schortin. Out
Speaker 1: Off the back of the flurry of publicity, Damon starts
Speaker 1: hosting parties monthly at various nightclubs around LA. Every event
Speaker 1: sells out, and while Sanctum began as more of a
Speaker 1: sexy party with live erotic performances, it very quickly evolves
Speaker 1: into just a full blown sex party, which actually came
Speaker 1: as a surprise to Damon.
Speaker 3: It got very sexual.
Speaker 4: I mean there was sex at the tables in bathrooms,
Speaker 4: and I was like, whoa, what the you know, what's
Speaker 4: going on? Like, I didn't plan on doing that, necessarily
Speaker 4: throwing a sex party.
Speaker 1: The problem, as you might imagine, is that nightclub owners
Speaker 1: don't love a bunch of people railing all over the
Speaker 1: place because it's illegal and grounds to lose their liquor license.
Speaker 1: So Damon spent the first months of Sanctum's existence just
Speaker 1: getting kicked out of clubs, and it became a bit frustrating.
Speaker 1: He knew he needed to find a way to throw
Speaker 1: a party where his desperately horny guests could just fuck
Speaker 1: in public in peace. Goddamn it. He needed to find
Speaker 1: a private home where he could set up a bar,
Speaker 1: hire his own staff, and just let everybody purve out
Speaker 1: to their heart's desires. But finding homeowners to rent him
Speaker 1: their la mansions for raucous sex parties proved to be
Speaker 1: annoyingly difficult, and the people who were down tended to
Speaker 1: be a really specific type creepy rich guys in their
Speaker 1: fifties who liked the idea of a bunch of hot
Speaker 1: young women fucking in their infinity pool.
Speaker 4: Dealing with the owners of these houses was always very stressful.
Speaker 4: The biggest thing was the homeowners feeling entitled to grope girls,
Speaker 4: to get drunk and be assholes, and it was their home.
Speaker 4: Plus I've got a staff of like twenty five people,
Speaker 4: maybe thirty people. These were like weddings, you know, flowers
Speaker 4: and chocolates and all the liquor and the champagne, all
Speaker 4: the glass were all that. I mean, these were major
Speaker 4: productions every single month.
Speaker 1: Damon was not living it up at those early parties.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the homeowners would get cold feet and cancel last minute,
Speaker 1: leaving him struggling to find an orgy mansion at the
Speaker 1: eleventh hour. Not easy. Plus, at this point, Damon and Melissa,
Speaker 1: his wife and the mother of his two kids, were
Speaker 1: making just enough money to cover their overhead. The whole
Speaker 1: thing was.
Speaker 4: Chaotic those parties. I was like running around for hours NonStop.
Speaker 4: I was making sure everyone was happy. I was making
Speaker 4: sure that there wasn't a drunk girl in some back room,
Speaker 4: you know, getting assaulted. I mean, this was a fucking
Speaker 4: sex party where people were wild and intoxicated, and if
Speaker 4: anything happened, I would lose everything. It was the wild
Speaker 4: West for me. I didn't have like insurance, I didn't
Speaker 4: have NBA agreements. In the beginning, it was just like,
Speaker 4: I mean, I was very exposed.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The parties were started at ten o'clock.
Speaker 4: At like nine to fifty five, I'd be getting out
Speaker 4: of whatever I was working in and putting on my
Speaker 4: tuxedo and sort of like putting on my masks, so
Speaker 4: to speak. But like, you know, my mask that I
Speaker 4: put on was Okay, I've got to be this guy.
Speaker 4: I've got to be the guy that like leads these
Speaker 4: people into like sexual rebellion and freedom.
Speaker 1: The pied Piper of debauchery, one might call him if
Speaker 1: bad jokes are your thing. In that first year of
Speaker 1: the club, Demon and Melissa were building Sanctums brand and
Speaker 1: really just figuring out what the party was in real time.
Speaker 1: They started putting on bigger and more intricate live shows,
Speaker 1: which meant hiring erotic performers, makeup artists, costumers, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Demon also brought on a creative director, Alina Ratuska, to
Speaker 1: help with the choreography of it all. We reached out
Speaker 1: to Aleena multiple times, by the way, but she didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to us. There was also an increasing
Speaker 1: fetish presence at Sanctum. Remember this was twenty thirteen, aka
Speaker 1: a year after every basic Bitch on the planet went
Speaker 1: s and m hysterical over fifty Shades of Gray. So
Speaker 1: Damon hired a dom to work the party to educate
Speaker 1: the guests about BDSM. Here's Melissa remembering it.
Speaker 5: We had like a professional dom, like he was this,
Speaker 5: like that's what he did for a living, and you
Speaker 5: as a couple, you guys could go over to him
Speaker 5: and he could talk to you about like different tools
Speaker 5: that are like tintalizing on the skin or something that's
Speaker 5: going to be a little more firm or a little
Speaker 5: you know, like what do you like, And then he
Speaker 5: would walk you through what that was and you guys
Speaker 5: could experiment that together.
Speaker 1: The overall goal was to create an environment that felt
Speaker 1: sophisticated while also being a place you'd feel inclined to
Speaker 1: bend a stranger over an end table. It's a delicate
Speaker 1: balance because Damon's very attentive to detail. He also created
Speaker 1: more unexpected roles for his performers to add to the
Speaker 1: ambiance and fantasy of it all.
Speaker 6: It didn't feel like a sex party. It felt like
Speaker 6: an event that people had sex at.
Speaker 1: That's Claudia, one of Sanctum's early hires. She's a big presence,
Speaker 1: a platinum blonde with a bright smile, and she's not
Speaker 1: afraid to be blunt, which is a quality that I
Speaker 1: personally love. She ended up working at the club for
Speaker 1: three years, and the story of how she got her
Speaker 1: start is pretty interesting.
Speaker 6: When I started Sanctum, I was I was young. I
Speaker 6: was twenty twenty two, twenty three, so I feel like
Speaker 6: I got into that right where your brain really starts developing,
Speaker 6: like into thinking about sex and like thinking about what
Speaker 6: do I like, what do I not like?
Speaker 1: What's my sexuality?
Speaker 6: You know, my straight and my vice actual Like I
Speaker 6: was very naive living in La So that.
Speaker 1: Was like a very shaping period. I think when Claudia
Speaker 1: heard about Sanctum, she was working at the Playboy Mansion,
Speaker 1: getting paid to swim in the infamous grotto and look hop. Basically,
Speaker 1: she got word that a new exclusive club was looking
Speaker 1: for girls who were fun and open minded, but it
Speaker 1: was all very hush hush, gets crazy. She was intrigued
Speaker 1: and was given an address to meet for an interview,
Speaker 1: but when she showed up, she didn't even know what
Speaker 1: she was applying for.
Speaker 6: So I went and I met Damon at this like
Speaker 6: small little club on I think it was like on Melrose.
Speaker 6: And I go in there and it was just him.
Speaker 6: The whole place is pitch black, literally pitch black. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 6: I'm definitely in the wrong place. And I go in
Speaker 6: there and he's sitting there just like literally just him,
Speaker 6: no papers, no no mad nothing like.
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, like what is this?
Speaker 7: And I go in and he introduced himself and he's
Speaker 7: like are you comfortable being naked? Like one of his
Speaker 7: first couple questions, and I was like, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 7: And he's like, okay, get naked, like literally like that.
Speaker 7: And I was like there's literally nobody here, like this
Speaker 7: is okay whatever. So I literally I stripped down like
Speaker 7: to my underwear and he's like, okay, you're hired, and
Speaker 7: I'm like hired for what?
Speaker 1: I don't even know, Like what am I hired for
Speaker 1: the job. It turns out was to be an atmosphere girl.
Speaker 1: I'll just let her explain it.
Speaker 6: And my job literally ninety nine percent of the time
Speaker 6: was just walking around and just existing as like the
Speaker 6: party started progressing for me, Like he would then like say, okay,
Speaker 6: get dressed up. We're gonna drape you in like diamonds
Speaker 6: and rhinestones, and your job's just gonna be You're gonna
Speaker 6: walk around with like a feather and like just dust.
Speaker 6: People don't talk to anyone. You're just there to like
Speaker 6: look beautiful. Or if Damon was like, I want you
Speaker 6: naked today, then you know I would just PLoP down
Speaker 6: on a chaise lounge somewhere naked and say hello to
Speaker 6: the world.
Speaker 1: Claudia speaks of her time at Sanctum so fondly that
Speaker 1: the experience was extremely fun and eye opening, and she
Speaker 1: clearly has the perfect temperament for the job. I mean,
Speaker 1: she's the sort of person who genuinely finds it amusing
Speaker 1: to show up for an interview and be asked to
Speaker 1: strip naked by a strange man sitting in a dark
Speaker 1: basement like a vampire. However, not everyone found Damon's hiring
Speaker 1: practices so charming. For instance, another early hire was Ambrose.
Speaker 1: Damon was looking for someone to play the quote bunny
Speaker 1: role at the club, which basically meant dressing up in
Speaker 1: skimpy lingerie, donning a bunny mask with cute little bunny ears,
Speaker 1: and following Damon around the party as his little pet.
Speaker 1: Ambrose is shy with a sweet, nervous laugh. He's a
Speaker 1: trans man, but during his years at Sanctum was still
Speaker 1: presenting as femme. Ambrose, which by the way, is a
Speaker 1: stage name, not his real name, heard about Sanctum from
Speaker 1: a friend who was already performing at the party and
Speaker 1: thought he'd be a great fit. Here's Ambrose.
Speaker 8: Well, so initially she was like, you need to meet
Speaker 8: up with this guy Damon and just like set up
Speaker 8: an interview and he'll ask you some questions and whatnot.
Speaker 8: And she did mention that they were looking for model
Speaker 8: esque type fem people or women or whatever. And since
Speaker 8: I was like pre transitioning at that point, you know,
Speaker 8: I kind of fit that mold. And at the time
Speaker 8: I had really long brown hair into my ass.
Speaker 1: Ambrose was twenty at the time. For his interview, Damon
Speaker 1: set up a meeting at a hotel restaurant in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 8: And then he asked me this very interesting question, which
Speaker 8: at the time, you know, if I was very young, innocent,
Speaker 8: naive like. He asked me if he could see my
Speaker 8: body without clothes on to see if I was fit
Speaker 8: for the role that he was wanting.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, how would that happen.
Speaker 8: He's like, there's bathrooms upstairs above where we are, and
Speaker 8: no one ever.
Speaker 3: Really goes in them.
Speaker 1: So we went upstairs with this bathroom.
Speaker 8: Area, and sure enough no one was in there, and
Speaker 8: we went to like the handicap stall. He stood on
Speaker 8: one side and I tried to stand as.
Speaker 5: Far away from as claus as we could.
Speaker 8: I got down to like being naked. He asked me
Speaker 8: to do a little spin around and he was like,
Speaker 8: all right, brilliant, perfect, We'd love to have you. And
Speaker 8: I was like, all right, cool, this sounds good.
Speaker 1: At the time, Amberse found this kind of uncomfortable, but
Speaker 1: he was young and just starting out in the industry
Speaker 1: and thought, well, I guess this is just how this
Speaker 1: stuff works, and to be real, in some corners of
Speaker 1: the sex industry, this can unfortunately be how this stuff worked.
Speaker 1: But Ambrose was curious about the job and decided to
Speaker 1: take it. Despite this, he started out working the floor
Speaker 1: in various atmosphere roles.
Speaker 8: They asked you to work the crowd essentially, but it
Speaker 8: was always like implied, do it in a very flirtatious,
Speaker 8: like sexual kind of way, and like I was really
Speaker 8: good at it, Like there was a lot of people
Speaker 8: that I knew and recognized and recognized me, and like
Speaker 8: I feel like would look forward to seeing me and
Speaker 8: vice versa at the parties.
Speaker 1: To give you a picture of how this all operated,
Speaker 1: each Sanctum event had a cast of about ten to
Speaker 1: twelve performers. Most of them were atmosphere models, basically people
Speaker 1: who were paid to roam around in costumes acting as
Speaker 1: different characters, like maybe you were the bunny that night,
Speaker 1: or sometimes they'd have a girl dressed up as a lamp.
Speaker 1: Loull Damon calls this interactive performance art. These performers would
Speaker 1: be paid between three hundred and fifty and five hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars a night. But then there'd be a
Speaker 1: few cast members who would have sex in front of
Speaker 1: the guests as part of the live sex show, and
Speaker 1: these were the highest paid performers at Sanctum. You can
Speaker 1: think of the sex shows almost like porno ballet, dramatic strings,
Speaker 1: impressively flexible women smoke machines, and lots of lube obviously.
Speaker 1: For example, they sometimes did ritualistic type performances where the
Speaker 1: atmosphere girls would hold candles and lead out the virgin
Speaker 1: or the princess or whatever character it was on the night,
Speaker 1: who would then be fucked to death by a guy
Speaker 1: with an eight pack. You got the idea. After working
Speaker 1: for a while as an atmosphere model, Ambrose wanted a
Speaker 1: pay jump and started working as a live sex performer.
Speaker 1: I love how he recalls how the cast members would
Speaker 1: prepare for going on stage.
Speaker 8: So we're getting ready for the performance and we go
Speaker 8: back in the green room. If someone is getting something
Speaker 8: inserted into them, like penetration wise they like kind of
Speaker 8: like a fluff themselves or someone helped them out back there.
Speaker 5: I'd always have my little Hatachi, like.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm good Hatachi meaning his faithful vibrator of course,
Speaker 1: a tried and true classic. Mike Saeger, who we met
Speaker 1: last episode, is the journalist from Esquire who followed Damon
Speaker 1: around for a few months back in twenty sixteen. He
Speaker 1: gave us his take on the live sex show.
Speaker 9: At a certain time of the evening they would have
Speaker 9: the show and it was basically choreographed fucking, but yet
Speaker 9: also artsy and lit and costumed. It's almost like you
Speaker 9: get the impression you're watching like the Follies or or something.
Speaker 9: But it was a sex act and it was very
Speaker 9: much a vibe like cabaret, you know that kind of
Speaker 9: like welcome ladies and gentlemen to the sex show.
Speaker 1: So like Sondheim meets eyes wide Shot. Honestly, I'm down.
Speaker 9: I remember one had a piggy mask being led by
Speaker 9: a chain on, another who was wearing like an eye cage,
Speaker 9: and another one with like a leather police hat with
Speaker 9: a flog. And they would go among the visitors. Instead
Speaker 9: of handing out cannapas, they would like say, you know
Speaker 9: it said stroke me or hit me or whatever, so
Speaker 9: they could stroke her, you know, fondle her, or they
Speaker 9: could like hit her with a whip, whatever their predilection was.
Speaker 1: As time went on, characters began to emerge within the
Speaker 1: world of the club. One of Damon's favorite regulars was
Speaker 1: this male porn star who, according to Damon, had one
Speaker 1: of the biggest dicks in the industry. Glamorous and this
Speaker 1: guy had a very special party trick.
Speaker 4: He would just like, lay on one of the master
Speaker 4: beds in the bedroom and there would be a line,
Speaker 4: I'm not fucking with you, a line of women and
Speaker 4: he would just put on a condom and he stayed
Speaker 4: hard because he's a fucking porn star. Whatever they inject
Speaker 4: into their dicks or whatever they're on, I don't know,
Speaker 4: but you know, four hours five hours of a heart on,
Speaker 4: which seems like.
Speaker 3: It would be painful.
Speaker 4: But he would lay on the bed like a fucking
Speaker 4: amusement park ride and women would walk in and there
Speaker 4: would be a line and they would get on him,
Speaker 4: they would ride him. They would come and they would
Speaker 4: get off, and the next woman would step on.
Speaker 3: And it was like this.
Speaker 4: Guy treated me like I was his hero, and I
Speaker 4: was like, bro, what the fuck? Like, you're like this god,
Speaker 4: you know, like you're welcome any time.
Speaker 3: And he would come to almost every party.
Speaker 1: So this is the kind of stuff you'd see at Sanctum,
Speaker 1: And for a lot of the guests, this was all
Speaker 1: pretty shocking. The club attracted a specific crowd, often the
Speaker 1: sort of people who never imagined they'd end up at
Speaker 1: a sex party, but because it had this upscale reputation
Speaker 1: and was being covered in mainstream public locations, they thought,
Speaker 1: fuck it, maybe I am one of those depraved sex
Speaker 1: party people. Just like the rich version, Sanctum felt approachable,
Speaker 1: almost safe. Basically, there were a lot of Orgie virgins.
Speaker 1: One notable Orgi virgin was David Winkler, a Hollywood movie producer.
Speaker 1: He's in his fifties and has this really warm, non
Speaker 1: judgmental energy. When he heard about Sanctum, he was recently
Speaker 1: divorced and looking to explore his sexuality. He'd never been
Speaker 1: to anything resembling a sex party and described his sex
Speaker 1: life then as pretty vanilla. After he went through Sanctum's
Speaker 1: application process, he spent months feeling way too nervous to
Speaker 1: actually go, But eventually he started dating a woman who
Speaker 1: was intrigued and encouraged him to make the leap.
Speaker 10: Here's David, the girl I was dating, and I decided, okay,
Speaker 10: well, well I needed a new tuxedo if I'm going to
Speaker 10: go to my first sex party. So we went and
Speaker 10: spent a whole weekend beforehand shopping. I bought like this
Speaker 10: platinum four hundred dollars masks, and we ended up at
Speaker 10: a famous lingerie store Welcome, and we found this beautiful
Speaker 10: outfit for her, and the saleswoman says, let me ask
Speaker 10: you something. Is this for a specific event? We kind
Speaker 10: of looked at each other and we didn't know what
Speaker 10: to admit. We said, yeah, we're going to a party tonight.
Speaker 10: Oh she said, oh, you're going to Sanctum. Yeah, she said, yeah,
Speaker 10: I do really well on the fourth Saturday of every month.
Speaker 10: I sell whiffs, I sell chains, I sell blindfold so
Speaker 10: much laingerie like she made her entire commission on the
Speaker 10: fourth Saturday of every month.
Speaker 1: Love that for her. For David, who considered himself pretty conservative,
Speaker 1: even just having this conversation with the stranger was crazy.
Speaker 10: Well, what was incredible is is just that what sanctums
Speaker 10: showed me is that there's this whole world of people
Speaker 10: who know about things and just don't talk about them.
Speaker 10: Everybody's afraid to talk about everybody's afraid to talk about
Speaker 10: the kinky things they do. But the minute you open
Speaker 10: up and you start talking about it, people feel comfortable
Speaker 10: and they start sharing.
Speaker 1: When David finally did make it to Sanctum, let's just
Speaker 1: say first impressions were good.
Speaker 10: You know, the first time you go to a sanctum,
Speaker 10: it's like walking into a private, victorious, secret catalog runway party.
Speaker 10: You know, you're met at the door by the most
Speaker 10: beautiful women in these huge feathered headdresses and you know,
Speaker 10: gold capes and nothing else and high heels and walking
Speaker 10: around was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: But the appeal extended beyond just the opportunity to leer
Speaker 1: at models dressed as horny exotic birds. Personally, I think
Speaker 1: the goal of any sexual space is to create an
Speaker 1: environment where people can explore their sexuality without judgment or shame.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately there aren't enough places like that in the world.
Speaker 1: But as many guests and performers recall it, David included,
Speaker 1: Sanctum was starting to build a community that resembled something
Speaker 1: of this sort.
Speaker 10: That's the one thing that I got from it was
Speaker 10: just like you walk into a club where people are
Speaker 10: having sex and there's no shame. But I think for
Speaker 10: the most people, even open minded people, you know, going
Speaker 10: to a party where there's you know, dozens of people
Speaker 10: naked and having sex in front of you and everybody
Speaker 10: thinking oh that's cool and talking about it make me
Speaker 10: feel like I was not the only perverent town.
Speaker 1: Honestly, kind of wholesome when we come back after a break,
Speaker 1: Damon tries to bring his work into bed with him.
Speaker 1: So by this point, Damon and Melissa have been running
Speaker 1: Sanctum for over two years, and the bigger the club gets,
Speaker 1: the more it starts to spill over into their personal lives.
Speaker 1: Sanctum is becoming something that they, or at least Melissa,
Speaker 1: often feels like she needs to hide.
Speaker 5: Like we're living in Beverly Hills. We're friends with all
Speaker 5: of those parents and families, and you know, going to
Speaker 5: birthday parties and like living that kind of domesticated lifestyle
Speaker 5: all the while, on the down low, my husband runs
Speaker 5: this naughty ass sex club in the hills, like double life.
Speaker 5: No one knew, so as soon as this shit started
Speaker 5: to get successful, I was like fuck.
Speaker 1: Basically, they were the orgy masters and a sea of
Speaker 1: cardiologists and entertainment lawyers, and it was getting kind of awkward.
Speaker 1: At this point, Melissa was still heavily involved in managing
Speaker 1: the club with Damon, and her tasks were shall we
Speaker 1: say why I ranging.
Speaker 5: In the beginning stages I was working in the club.
Speaker 5: I would do the door, I would cast the girls.
Speaker 5: I'd run out to the valley and buy a bunch
Speaker 5: of dildos and like nippleshit and floggers. Like I was
Speaker 5: doing the deal and like helping him with with this
Speaker 5: fucking sex club, and I was like big supporter once
Speaker 5: again after.
Speaker 1: Years of building the club. She's sick of getting awkward
Speaker 1: stairs from other mothers on the playground and she's sick
Speaker 1: of foraging for nippleshit in the valley. One night, she
Speaker 1: hits her breaking point.
Speaker 5: There's just one party that we had in bel Air.
Speaker 5: It was like at a huge mega mansion that was
Speaker 5: like empty because it was like being sold or something.
Speaker 5: And I was doing the door with like two other
Speaker 5: people and managing bottle service for all of these high
Speaker 5: rollers that were coming in and Damon was nowhere to
Speaker 5: be found. They literally couldn't find him anywhere for hours,
Speaker 5: and I felt like I was holding it up and
Speaker 5: you know, trying to put out fires left and right.
Speaker 5: And finally I find him and he's like upstairs in
Speaker 5: some room with all these different people and like two
Speaker 5: porn stars. They weren't doing anything sexual, but like they
Speaker 5: were all just like hanging out up there, partaking and drinking,
Speaker 5: and like he's like upstairs just like living his best life,
Speaker 5: you know, So that was the last party I attended,
Speaker 5: worked at, went to any of.
Speaker 1: It from then on. She tells Damon she's going to
Speaker 1: stay home with the kids on the nights of the parties. Also,
Speaker 1: it's relevant to note here, despite them hosting these big
Speaker 1: events at mega mansions, Damon and Melissa are still struggling
Speaker 1: financially because they're putting almost all the money they earned
Speaker 1: back into the parties. So that adds this whole other
Speaker 1: stress on top of the whole secret sex cult leader thing.
Speaker 4: Once the house party started, my budgets were in the
Speaker 4: area of like twenty five thousand to thirty five thousand.
Speaker 4: That was about what I was making, and I would
Speaker 4: basically just spend it all on the party. I would
Speaker 4: probably walk away with enough money to pay my rent,
Speaker 4: buy groceries. So if I took out five thousand a
Speaker 4: month in profit, I was okay.
Speaker 3: I was fine.
Speaker 4: And so any ticket sales, any membership sales, anything we
Speaker 4: had went into the party, and it was really not
Speaker 4: ever enough to do what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Damon knows he has to figure out a more stable
Speaker 1: long term plan for the club. Finding a different rental
Speaker 1: house for the party every month was expensive, and exhausting,
Speaker 1: like literally lugging a whole sound system and a giant
Speaker 1: cage for your sex slaves in a thousand boxes of
Speaker 1: wet wipes into a different house every month. Like No,
Speaker 1: he was over it. So he and Melissa come up
Speaker 1: with a plan to rent a house where they could
Speaker 1: both live and host the parties. Plus this had the
Speaker 1: added benefit of getting their family out of their cramped apartment.
Speaker 1: So they start house hunting and they get insanely lucky.
Speaker 4: I found this incredible nineteen sixties Tudor mansion in Hombee
Speaker 4: Hills that was going to be torn down. They were
Speaker 4: going to put up a SuperMansion on it. And the
Speaker 4: guy told me, he's like, we're going to tear this
Speaker 4: house down. So I had twelve months.
Speaker 1: Damon was in love with this place. It was his
Speaker 1: Barbie dream house, the orgy version.
Speaker 4: You know, seven bedrooms, eight nine bathrooms on an acre,
Speaker 4: grand staircase. You know, just a beautiful nineteen sixties totally original,
Speaker 4: but very opulent.
Speaker 1: Mike Segar remembers the mansion a bit differently.
Speaker 9: No, it was not genuinely opulent or genuinely impressive, but
Speaker 9: the people were genuinely into it and having a good
Speaker 9: time obsessed. It's like if you're there in the daytime,
Speaker 9: it's like this is moldy, and this cabin is shitty,
Speaker 9: and like it had this gross carpet. But at nighttime
Speaker 9: with the uplighting and the candles and I mean, they
Speaker 9: did a wonderful job setting stuff up.
Speaker 1: House, which would come to be known as the Sanctum Mansion,
Speaker 1: would be theirs for just over a year and what
Speaker 1: would be the height of the club's success. And opulent
Speaker 1: or not, it was perfect for what they wanted to do, AKA,
Speaker 1: throw a giant party where people get drunk and break
Speaker 1: things and come all over the place. Melissa couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to get out of their apartment. She went into interior
Speaker 1: design mode, you know, making mood boards, fantasizing about wallpaper,
Speaker 1: all that fun stuff. However, as she would come to
Speaker 1: find out, Damon wasn't exactly on the same page.
Speaker 5: I was excited because I as like the mom and
Speaker 5: the wife and the domesticated person that I was, was like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, finally we get out of this apartment
Speaker 5: and we get into a house that was my Oh
Speaker 5: you going to decorate it. I'm going to buy a
Speaker 5: couch I'm going to do this. It's going to be great.
Speaker 5: So that was where my brain was. But pretty much
Speaker 5: the whole time that was happening, I think in his
Speaker 5: head he's like, now, y'all aren't moving in here.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's zoom out for a sec. After dedicating nearly
Speaker 1: three years to the club, things are starting to shift
Speaker 1: for Damon. The day to day struggles had given way
Speaker 1: to a larger, more internal struggle. Up until now, Damon
Speaker 1: was behind the scenes, the charming host, facilitating other people's indulgence,
Speaker 1: but he never participated himself. He and Melissa had been
Speaker 1: monogamous for two decades. But now he's starting to become
Speaker 1: interested in getting involved, like sexually. He's being tempted by
Speaker 1: the world that he created and he wants to experiment.
Speaker 1: Like literally, he's constantly surrounded by hot women and smm
Speaker 1: bunny costumes and he's a man with a dick.
Speaker 4: There was like this kind of BDS something creeping in
Speaker 4: where you know, I was kind of learning a bit
Speaker 4: about shabari, how to tie someone up, like how to
Speaker 4: spank someone, what flogging was, you know, like all this
Speaker 4: stuff because the performers were doing it. You know, we
Speaker 4: are choreographing everything, and I was around it and someone
Speaker 4: would hand me a paddle and say like this.
Speaker 3: Is how you do it, and I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 3: that's kind of cool.
Speaker 4: But I remember asking Melissa, like, are you okay with
Speaker 4: me experimenting with this? Like it's not sexual, there's no kissing,
Speaker 4: there's no fucking, there's nothing like that. I'm tying someone up,
Speaker 4: or I'm flogging someone, or I'm spanking someone with my
Speaker 4: bare hand. You know, that is erotic in nature. And
Speaker 4: I asked her, like, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 4: And it was an interesting discussion, you know, and she
Speaker 4: said she decided to like allow that.
Speaker 1: He would come to me.
Speaker 5: And be like, mel what do you think if I
Speaker 5: just flogged this one girl, you know at the party.
Speaker 1: I think it's good.
Speaker 5: It's a good show, Like this is my brand, and
Speaker 5: you know, let me just like spank and flog this girl. Like, okay,
Speaker 5: I think it's fine. I didn't. I didn't have an
Speaker 5: issue with it.
Speaker 1: So they begin to experiment with pushing the boundaries of
Speaker 1: their relationship. For Damon, this is all really exciting. He's
Speaker 1: been spanking up a storm at the club and loving it,
Speaker 1: and he's hoping this can spice up his sex life
Speaker 1: with Melissa, so he tries bringing some of his new
Speaker 1: skills into the bedroom.
Speaker 4: I kind of wanted to kind of, you know, push
Speaker 4: some of that in bed a little bit, and I
Speaker 4: don't know, I put my hand on her neck or something, and.
Speaker 3: She just like slapped it away and was like, what
Speaker 3: are you doing?
Speaker 4: And I was like, you know, I don't know, I'm
Speaker 4: like experimenting, and she's like, no, I'm not into this,
Speaker 4: not at all, Like I don't I don't like this,
Speaker 4: I don't want it.
Speaker 3: And I was like okay. So our sexuality remained what
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 1: For a while anyway, but suppressing his desires only made
Speaker 1: things worse, and it wasn't long before his desires extended
Speaker 1: beyond BDSM light.
Speaker 5: He kept pushing the boundary, pushing the boundary and wanting
Speaker 5: more and more and more, until he was finally like,
Speaker 5: I think we should fuck other people. I'm like, no, dude, Literally,
Speaker 5: we're already barely hanging on, financially strapped, two kids, tiny
Speaker 5: little apartment. This new club thing idea that he's conceptualizing
Speaker 5: it was already like way too much. And I was
Speaker 5: like no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing that.
Speaker 1: Okay, he gets it. Everything Melissa is saying makes logical sense,
Speaker 1: and yet he just can't get the idea out of
Speaker 1: his head. The conversation about opening up their relationship keeps
Speaker 1: coming up, and Melissa feels like she's stuck in a loop,
Speaker 1: saying no over and over again, like she's the uptight
Speaker 1: bouncer of their relationship.
Speaker 5: We wanted to open up our marriage all the time.
Speaker 5: He would like, at the dinner table, so what do
Speaker 5: you think about opening up our marriage and even with
Speaker 5: other people? And I think, you know, it's a good idea,
Speaker 5: and he would try to pitch me.
Speaker 1: This until finally she changes her strategy.
Speaker 5: And this one night at dinner and when the girls
Speaker 5: left the table, they went to their room, and I
Speaker 5: try to call his bluff. I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: let's do it. Yeah, I know exactly who I want
Speaker 5: to have sex with. And you know, it's like seeing
Speaker 5: what you would do. And He's like started to get uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Damon's squirming, which, let's be real, is kind of predictable,
Speaker 1: but this is ultimately the conversation he's been wanting to have.
Speaker 1: So he goes with it.
Speaker 5: And so we actually did this, We actually open up
Speaker 5: our marriage. We agreed that this one night he would
Speaker 5: go do whatever he wanted to go do, and I
Speaker 5: had that same freedom. And we did that when we
Speaker 5: had those intimacies with other people.
Speaker 1: After the break, can you have your cake and fuck
Speaker 1: it too? So, after Damon's persistence about opening up their relationship,
Speaker 1: he gets his wish for one night only they would
Speaker 1: each bang other people and then they'd come back together
Speaker 1: to discuss how it felt. And they each already had
Speaker 1: someone in mind.
Speaker 3: Did open it up, and she was okay with it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I told her what I was gonna do.
Speaker 4: I left for the evening, and of course my first experience,
Speaker 4: you know, I had a threesome, you know, like I'm
Speaker 4: like really adventuring, you know, Wow, I get my hall passed,
Speaker 4: so I'm gonna go for it fun.
Speaker 1: And then it was Melissa's night, And how did that
Speaker 1: turn out? For everybody?
Speaker 3: When it was her turn?
Speaker 4: She made love with with her like her personal trainer,
Speaker 4: and it fucking destroyed me.
Speaker 3: I couldn't deal with it.
Speaker 1: Wow, I've just got to interject here, fucking your personal
Speaker 1: trainer both extremely cliche and extremely hot. But anyway, dame
Speaker 1: and spiraling.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 4: It feels like animalistic, it feels like it's an ancient feeling,
Speaker 4: like a feeling of I'm a lion on the on
Speaker 4: the wherever the fuck they are, you know, and I'm
Speaker 4: just like ah ah no, and min you know, like no,
Speaker 4: you know, this is fucking I'm fucking this.
Speaker 3: You go fuck something else.
Speaker 1: He's kind of regretting this whole thing. And I get it.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've all had that feeling of wanting to
Speaker 1: have personal sexual freedom while our partner stays locked in
Speaker 1: a cage. Right. That can't just be me. But for
Speaker 1: Melissa it was a little different.
Speaker 5: You know, in like glass breaks and it's just this
Speaker 5: little crack and then it just starts to slowly slowly
Speaker 5: the crack gets bigger and bigger and bigger until the
Speaker 5: glass breaks. And that's kind of how I pictured that.
Speaker 5: We were still together and we were still living this
Speaker 5: life together, but it was punctured and it just kind
Speaker 5: of was a downhill from there.
Speaker 1: So in the aftermath of all of this, they're trying
Speaker 1: to find a path forward. They'd been together for twenty years,
Speaker 1: they'd always figured it out. Why would this time be
Speaker 1: any different. Meanwhile, Sanctum's expanding and they're doing their first
Speaker 1: party in New York. So Melissa goes along with Damon
Speaker 1: to make the trip of vacation for the two of them.
Speaker 1: One she says, they desperately needs. So we go to
Speaker 1: New York.
Speaker 5: It's like our first time that we're actually like on
Speaker 5: a vacation away from La. My mom's got the girls.
Speaker 5: It was fabulous for me. But little did I know
Speaker 5: that he was actually like on Instagram and on all
Speaker 5: these different sites like corresponding with girls. He invited this
Speaker 5: one girl. He flew her in from Texas to come
Speaker 5: to New York, put her up in a hotel. He's like,
Speaker 5: mel I'm going to go to a meeting, why don't
Speaker 5: you go shopping? And so I'd go into Soho and
Speaker 5: go shopping. But he was really willing to see her.
Speaker 1: After the New York party, they come back home to
Speaker 1: LA and Melissa is still in the dark about all
Speaker 1: of this, And then, like a scene out of some
Speaker 1: cheesy Lifetime erootic thriller, Melissa's at home and she starts
Speaker 1: hearing all of these texts dinging, and she doesn't know
Speaker 1: where they're coming. From So she starts searching the house
Speaker 1: and she realizes that it's coming from her daughter's iPad,
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert, she finds Damon's texts with the girl
Speaker 1: from Texas.
Speaker 5: And I start to read it and then I start
Speaker 5: to go back into the history and it goes back
Speaker 5: far and I start shaking. It was the first time
Speaker 5: I felt deceived in a way. You know, we'd always
Speaker 5: talked about everything, and I just didn't feel like he
Speaker 5: would deceive me like that. And just to see the
Speaker 5: love that he was pouring out in the words and
Speaker 5: the little emojis and the hearts and the roses and
Speaker 5: all those things that he was throwing out at her hurt.
Speaker 5: It just hurt. I'm like running out the door, crying,
Speaker 5: running around my block. He was like running after me,
Speaker 5: and it was it was hugely devastating, heartbroken just to
Speaker 5: see all of that stuff. Even though I knew he
Speaker 5: was running the Sanctum, I knew he was a part
Speaker 5: of the sex club. I knew it was going on
Speaker 5: at the clubs, but in my delusioned mind, I just
Speaker 5: thought that that was that and he was mine.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: It's it's interesting because that was a very devastating experience
Speaker 4: for her. And what's so strange is that this girl
Speaker 4: is so meaningless to me. I think I met her
Speaker 4: in New York and she was going to come to
Speaker 4: a Sanctum party. She probably applied, said.
Speaker 1: You flew her out from Texas.
Speaker 4: Oh, maybe I did fly her out. Maybe I did.
Speaker 4: Whatever Melissa said is probably is true. I mean I
Speaker 4: don't I don't remember the details. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 4: makes it even worse. Yeah, I probably flew her out
Speaker 4: from Texas.
Speaker 3: You know I would.
Speaker 4: I would meet up with her and like hang out
Speaker 4: with her and then go back to Melissa. It was
Speaker 4: completely fucked up. Yeah, and then I think Melissa found out.
Speaker 4: I don't remember how. I don't remember if she saw
Speaker 4: us talking.
Speaker 1: There was a Sanctum party, then you went back to
Speaker 1: La and then she found texts between you guys because
Speaker 1: they were like going to your kid's iPad.
Speaker 3: You're reminding me that I went into like full blown
Speaker 3: sex addict mode for a while. For years, just.
Speaker 5: That was me.
Speaker 4: Sanctum was almost like my excuse, but I was really
Speaker 4: just like a full blown sex addict. It was the
Speaker 4: perfect job for me because I was so fucking into it.
Speaker 4: Finding all these girls and contacting all these girls and
Speaker 4: like fucking all these girls.
Speaker 3: I was a liar. I was hiding things.
Speaker 4: I probably had tons of videos and pictures and messages. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I was a really fucked up, fucked up individual.
Speaker 1: And then that glass that Melissa mentioned it finally shattered.
Speaker 5: After that, a lot of other stories came out that
Speaker 5: he became honest and truthful with that went back to
Speaker 5: our days in Hancock Park when I was, you know,
Speaker 5: having the babies. At that point, the infidelity in what
Speaker 5: he had done was just like it was part of
Speaker 5: a huge explosion. I was just gonna go off because
Speaker 5: I just couldn't handle the lifestyle anymore. And I just
Speaker 5: fell alone in the house with the kids, and like
Speaker 5: it was just imploding and crumbling from underneath us. And
Speaker 5: the infidelity was the nail on the coffee with that
Speaker 5: was it.
Speaker 1: In the midst of all of this horror, they signed
Speaker 1: the lease on the sanct Di mansion, but the plan
Speaker 1: of turning the house into a place of both domestic
Speaker 1: bliss and sexual liberation doesn't pan out. Instead, Damon moves
Speaker 1: into the sanct Di mansion alone. Melissa stays in the
Speaker 1: apartment with the kids and Thus Damon begins his era
Speaker 1: of sexual freedom or reckless sexual abandon depending on how
Speaker 1: you look at it. Next time on Sanctum Unmasked.
Speaker 6: Okay, well we saw this person getting whipped. Is that
Speaker 6: something you're into? And what if you're like, Hell yeah?
Speaker 5: He was discovering himself as a hedonist and he actually
Speaker 5: said that to me.
Speaker 4: I was like in a bedroom, high on molly and cocaine,
Speaker 4: you know, and this porn star says, I want to
Speaker 4: suck your cock like it's never been sucked.
Speaker 3: In your life.
Speaker 9: Therein lies the reason this story is so fascinating, because
Speaker 9: in betwixt and in between, there's the devil and the Angel.
Speaker 1: Sanctum Unmasked is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, hosted him written by me Carl Schortino. Edily's
Speaker 1: Prez is our lead producer and story editor. Amelia Brock
Speaker 1: is our senior producer. Sound design scoring mixing by George Hicks.
Speaker 1: Original music composed by Jesse Niswanger, fact checking by Austin Thompson.
Speaker 1: Logo illustration by Linda McNeil. Graham Gibson and Doug Bame
Speaker 1: are recording engineers. Recorded at iHeart Studios. In Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Nick Stump, Jason English, Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 1: Elsie Crowley, and me Carly Schartino. If you're enjoying the show,
Speaker 1: help us get the word out by leaving a rating
Speaker 1: in your favorite podcast app. You can keep up with
Speaker 1: Damon on Instagram. He's at Father Damon. See you next week.
Speaker 1: School of Humans