Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This episode contains graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse and
Speaker 2: drug addiction. Please use discretion when listening. To understand Damon
Speaker 2: today his ideas about sex and money and status and
Speaker 2: drugs and parenthood. It takes looking back at his history.
Speaker 2: Damon's success with Sanctum and his ability to create this
Speaker 2: world of excess and status and wealth didn't come out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. So let's go back for a minute to
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies to Marin County, California. If you drive
Speaker 2: over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, that's Marin.
Speaker 2: One might call it the heart of the self obsessed seventies.
Speaker 2: Out of the hangover of the sixties counterculture and protest
Speaker 2: movements came the human Potential movement, and Marin was at
Speaker 2: the center of that. Fads of the time included transcendental meditation,
Speaker 2: zen jogging, organic food, cocaine, wife swapping, and just generally
Speaker 2: getting in touch with your true self, whatever that means
Speaker 2: to you. This is where Damon Launer grew up among
Speaker 2: the hot tubs and redwood forests. On today's episode, we're
Speaker 2: going to take a look back at Damon's life before
Speaker 2: Sanctum to piece together exactly how he ended up where
Speaker 2: he did, and it's a pretty wild story, at times
Speaker 2: dark and harrowing and other times truly spectacular. Welcome to
Speaker 2: Sanctum Unmasked. I'm your host, Carl Schortino. Damon wrote a
Speaker 2: memoir a few years back. It was never published, but
Speaker 2: still he's done some digging into his past, which we
Speaker 2: used as a reference for some of what we talk
Speaker 2: about in this episode. Now, when Damon describes nineteen seventies Marin,
Speaker 2: he really lights up.
Speaker 1: It was a really amazing time, you know, hippies in
Speaker 1: the park and music. The Grateful Dead and bands like
Speaker 1: that when they were first getting started, would come into
Speaker 1: the town where I lived, which is called Fairfax, and
Speaker 1: play music. My dad was a classically trained violinist, so
Speaker 1: he played in the Grateful Dad.
Speaker 2: At times in the band might be a stretch, but
Speaker 2: this is how Damon explains it.
Speaker 1: They would do these really long sets and then would
Speaker 1: break for like an hour in between sets, and he'd
Speaker 1: go up on stage in this red flowing robe and
Speaker 1: play electric violin and he would probably be on LSD
Speaker 1: and just make all these noises and everything. And I mean,
Speaker 1: he was a really trippy guy, and he was someone
Speaker 1: who was really kind of anti society if he was
Speaker 1: just a very freethinking guy.
Speaker 2: But Damon's life at home was far less zen than
Speaker 2: the one outside. That same care free, trippy dad also
Speaker 2: had a darker side.
Speaker 1: I mean, my dad certainly would do cocaine and get high.
Speaker 1: I think he was doing heroin at one point too't
Speaker 1: realize it at the time, but he was fucked up
Speaker 1: around me a lot. I didn't understand this when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, but I do now. When he'd come down,
Speaker 1: he'd be very angry, and he'd be violent. This is
Speaker 1: like five years old to seven, eight, nine, ten years old,
Speaker 1: you know, pick me up, slamming against doors, tell me
Speaker 1: I'm a fucking piece of shit, like just you know,
Speaker 1: just be this really evil person.
Speaker 2: Most of the time, Damon and his younger sister Hadria
Speaker 2: lived with their mom, who wrote poetry, and their stepdad,
Speaker 2: a clothing designer with a Jim Morrison vibe. But life
Speaker 2: with mom wasn't easy either.
Speaker 1: My mom was very much the same. We all knew
Speaker 1: something was off. She was an alcoholic, she was in
Speaker 1: abusive relationships. She was an absolutely beautiful woman who over
Speaker 1: time just really deteriorated. There were nice when there was
Speaker 1: no dinner. There were mornings where there was no breakfast.
Speaker 1: There's no food in the house. I'm going across the
Speaker 1: street to get toast.
Speaker 3: In Cereal.
Speaker 1: When I was seven eight years old going to school,
Speaker 1: there were no clean clothes to wear, there were no haircuts.
Speaker 3: It was very chaotic.
Speaker 2: In his memoir, Damon writes that he and Hadria became
Speaker 2: inseparable in the midst of the chaos. We verified as
Speaker 2: much of the story as we could, but obviously childhood
Speaker 2: memories are difficult to fact check, so we asked Hadria
Speaker 2: to fill in some of the gaps. She's a year
Speaker 2: and a half younger than Damon, and the two of
Speaker 2: them are still really close to this day.
Speaker 4: Well, as they call it today, trauma bonding.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get emotional.
Speaker 4: We were very close because of it, Like we would
Speaker 4: hide under the bed and cry or be afraid, but
Speaker 4: we were like, you know, we'd watch what was going
Speaker 4: on and just we had each other.
Speaker 2: You know, Damon and Hadria have that kind of sibling
Speaker 2: relationship that I love where they obviously adore each other,
Speaker 2: but they also love to troll each other or at
Speaker 2: least she does. She describes Damon as a kid who
Speaker 2: had a really crazy imagination, which, if you've been listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast tracks.
Speaker 4: I feel like when we were really young, he definitely
Speaker 4: had a lot of big idea. Yes, Like he would say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: we drive around in like Ferraris and live in a mansion,
Speaker 4: and I'd be like, yeah, it's true. Now that I
Speaker 4: say that, I wonder if that was kind of like
Speaker 4: in a skate because our life was so shitty and
Speaker 4: so the opposite of that that, you know, it was
Speaker 4: like a fantasy.
Speaker 2: Looking back, the seventies was a time famous for its
Speaker 2: lax and arguably neglectful parenting styles, a time before people
Speaker 2: cared about car seats or sunscreen or just like supervision
Speaker 2: in general. But Damon's parents took this to a whole
Speaker 2: other level. He recalls having this eerie feeling of being
Speaker 2: invisible for much of his childhood.
Speaker 1: We were like the ghosts in the room, you know,
Speaker 1: like we didn't exist. They just did what they wanted
Speaker 1: to do, and that included drugs, alcohol, sex.
Speaker 3: We were exposed to all of that.
Speaker 4: That's where we grew up witnessing a lot of things
Speaker 4: that were super inappropriate. So there's certain experience is that
Speaker 4: I remember, like, Okay, my mom was giving my step
Speaker 4: daud a blowjob, Like he was standing up against the
Speaker 4: wall in the living room giving him a blowjob, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, what are you doing? Like I didn't know,
Speaker 4: but I remember it being uncomfortable, and I remember like
Speaker 4: seeing his penis hard and wet, and I remember being like,
Speaker 4: something's wrong. I felt uncomfortable and I'm like, Mom, what
Speaker 4: are you doing? Because I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 4: She's like, I'm getting my child support. Like I remember
Speaker 4: her saying that, like she was, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: get money from him, and that was how she got it.
Speaker 1: My mom was just like a very overly sexualized person.
Speaker 1: So like my stepdad had this van that he would
Speaker 1: drive around in with this bed in the back, one
Speaker 1: of those like old seventies, you know, vans with the
Speaker 1: carpeting and velvet seats. I remember specifically this one time,
Speaker 1: I'm six or seven, my sister's five years old or something.
Speaker 1: My mom's friend starts sucking my stepdad's father in the
Speaker 1: front seat of the van. They're drunk. My sister and
Speaker 1: I are in the back of the van. The curs
Speaker 1: are not closed all the way. And then my mom
Speaker 1: and my mom's friend getting this fight, you know, like
Speaker 1: I don't want you sucking his cop you know whatever
Speaker 1: it was, This stuff is filtering through me.
Speaker 2: What Damon and Hadria experienced was clearly something no children
Speaker 2: should have been exposed to. In our conversations, Damon was
Speaker 2: also very candid about a period of his childhood where
Speaker 2: he was molested by a female relative who was a
Speaker 2: teenager at the time, and the deeply complicated reality of
Speaker 2: this experience. Now, we want to be careful when talking
Speaker 2: about sexual abuse. Our hope is that by sharing, other
Speaker 2: survivors will feel less alone. With that in mind, the
Speaker 2: next two minute section includes a description that listeners may
Speaker 2: find disturbing. Here's Damon.
Speaker 1: When she would be over at the house. She would
Speaker 1: come into my bedroom late at night and she would
Speaker 1: experiment with me. I'm five six years old, so my
Speaker 1: dick is like the size of my pinky now, right,
Speaker 1: But she would give me head and we would have sex.
Speaker 1: So I was, you know, having some form of sex
Speaker 1: or being molested. I mean, that's really what was going
Speaker 1: on at five six years old. The thing though, at
Speaker 1: that age for people out there that have or haven't
Speaker 1: experienced that is, there's pleasure in it. You know, it
Speaker 1: feels good. So it's very fucking confusing because you feel
Speaker 1: this feeling that feels really good, and you don't know
Speaker 1: when you're that age that it's like really fucking wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, like, that's not okay. It really wasn't until
Speaker 1: I had my own kids and I saw them at
Speaker 1: five six years old, and I was like, my god, like,
Speaker 1: how the fuck did that happen? Why wasn't anyone watching
Speaker 1: or there to protect me or there to stop that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I mean because they were all
Speaker 1: fucked up, you know.
Speaker 4: He says, it's almost like a dream. But I remember
Speaker 4: it perfectly because I was there. But I didn't realize
Speaker 4: that anything was wrong. Neither did he. We just thought
Speaker 4: this is normal, and in fact, I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: what's going on? I want to do it too. And
Speaker 4: now obviously that I'm older, I'm like, oh, my god,
Speaker 4: that was not a good thing. But then at the
Speaker 4: time she was molesting him, she was also being molested
Speaker 4: by our stepfather, so it's kind of like she was
Speaker 4: copying what was happening to her to my brother, and
Speaker 4: I was just there witnessing it.
Speaker 2: Clearly, Damon and Hadriat were not being protected by the
Speaker 2: people who were supposed to be looking out for them,
Speaker 2: and this is the environment where they spent their formative years.
Speaker 2: But then every summer from the time he was six
Speaker 2: years old into his early teens, Damon's paternal grandparents would
Speaker 2: fly him and his sister out to their home in Woodmere,
Speaker 2: a rich suburb on Long Island, New York. Damon's grandfather
Speaker 2: was a wealthy businessman. He and Damon's grandmother lived in
Speaker 2: a seven bedroom mansion. The experience was basically the photo
Speaker 2: negative of their life in California.
Speaker 3: New York was heaven.
Speaker 4: It was the best thing in the world. Like, we
Speaker 4: went from this dark place and then we would go
Speaker 4: see my grandparents, who were wealthy, had a big home,
Speaker 4: tennis court, swimming pool.
Speaker 1: I mean, it couldn't have been more polar opposite. We
Speaker 1: had this idyllic experience. I mean, my grandma would wake
Speaker 1: up every single morning and make French toast and pancakes.
Speaker 3: The pantry was.
Speaker 1: Filled with cereal and cookies and chips.
Speaker 4: My mom didn't even make sure that we had food,
Speaker 4: you know, I was like so fucking hungry all the time.
Speaker 4: My grandparents just had food and we got to experience normalcy.
Speaker 4: It saved our lives.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of my father's family they're great people,
Speaker 1: you know, and they would take care of us. We
Speaker 1: go bowling, and I mean, maybe that's actually what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to have, you know. I definitely had this early
Speaker 1: realization that you can be poor and drugs and you know,
Speaker 1: be violent and be those kinds of people, or you
Speaker 1: could be like really wealthy and have it together and
Speaker 1: have a beautiful life.
Speaker 2: At various points, Damon's grandparents fought to keep Damon and
Speaker 2: his sister living with them full time, but Damon's mother
Speaker 2: wasn't having it. As Demon remembers it, their mom would
Speaker 2: accuse their grandparents of kidnapping, which would ultimately result in
Speaker 2: the children being put on a plane back to chaos
Speaker 2: in California. It was like whiplash. Deamon grew into a
Speaker 2: pretty rebellious teen. This is the late eighties moving into
Speaker 2: the nineties, the era of Ferris Bueller and Heathers and
Speaker 2: just general bad boy fuck school delinquent energy. Fittingly, teenage,
Speaker 2: Damon developed a real skill for lying, just like when
Speaker 2: he was a kid. If he didn't like something about
Speaker 2: his reality, he'd just tell a different story. He lived
Speaker 2: his life in sort of truths. It was a way
Speaker 2: to feel special in a world where we often felt
Speaker 2: the exact opposite. He likes telling people that his dad
Speaker 2: was in the Grateful Dead rather than the reality, which
Speaker 2: is that a few times his dad got high and
Speaker 2: made weird sounds on an electric violin between dead sets.
Speaker 2: Damon was also a particularly talented thief. At one point,
Speaker 2: when he was seventeen, he stole a duffel back with
Speaker 2: over four hundred thousand dollars in it from a local
Speaker 2: drug dealer's house. It was his friend's dad. Actually, it
Speaker 2: was only after the guy came to Damon's school and
Speaker 2: threatened to kill him that Damon gave it back. I mean,
Speaker 2: most of us go through a shoplifting phase his kids,
Speaker 2: but rarely does it go that far. Kind of impressive, honestly.
Speaker 2: Damon was also notably very handsome. He wasn't so aware
Speaker 2: of his looks back then, but in hindsight.
Speaker 1: Looking back at pictures of myself, I can say this
Speaker 1: very clearly. I mean, I'm like a specimen. I'm a
Speaker 1: gorgeous kid. I really am, I mean, perfect body. I'm
Speaker 1: totally into sports. I don't do any drugs or drink
Speaker 1: because I've totally rebuilding as my parents. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: never want to be like them. I never want to drink.
Speaker 1: I never want to do drugs. That shit is fucked up.
Speaker 1: So I am like healthy. I just looked like this
Speaker 1: gorgeous California surfer boy.
Speaker 2: One day, when Damon was nineteen, he was out skateboarding
Speaker 2: in San Francisco with some of his friends when this
Speaker 2: guy walks up and he's like, hey, kid, can I
Speaker 2: take some photos of you. I'm a model scout. Damon
Speaker 2: didn't know what that meant, but the guy explained that
Speaker 2: his job was basically to look for people to model
Speaker 2: in fashion campaigns for big brands like Calvin Klein.
Speaker 3: For example.
Speaker 2: Remember Calvin Klein was the epitome of nineties school like
Speaker 2: those minimalist black and white photos of Kate Moss and
Speaker 2: Mark Wahlberg looking impossibly hot in their briefs iconic.
Speaker 1: I knew about Calvin Klein because Marky Mark was like
Speaker 1: this Calvin Klemont and we all saw those ads. You know,
Speaker 1: him in his underwear, and so I remember when he
Speaker 1: said that. I was like, oh, where You're like thinking
Speaker 1: like I could be one of those models, And he
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I really do. I'm asked to come
Speaker 1: into this audition and it was for a brand I'd
Speaker 1: never heard of, Johnny VERSACEI.
Speaker 2: In other words, one of the biggest fashion brands in
Speaker 2: the world. So damon naive to the world of high fashion,
Speaker 2: shows up to this Versace casting without a clue what
Speaker 2: that means, and he's intimidated. He's up against all these
Speaker 2: experienced models. Meanwhile, he's just rocked up from the skate park.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in this room with all these male models.
Speaker 1: I'm like five foot ten. You know, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: get any taller. They're like six foot three. They're all
Speaker 1: really handsome men. They've got these big books of all
Speaker 1: their photographs, you know, and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: And I was like, what the fuck.
Speaker 1: Am I doing here? And I go in and I
Speaker 1: meet this photographer named Bruce Weber.
Speaker 2: Bruce Weber, if you're not familiar, he's one of the
Speaker 2: most influential fashion photographers of all time. He shot campaigns
Speaker 2: for everyone from Ralph Lauren to Calvin Klein to Abercamie
Speaker 2: and Fitch covers of Vogue and Rolling Stone.
Speaker 3: You get the idea.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Damian doesn't know who this guy is or how
Speaker 2: important he is in the industry, but he does want
Speaker 2: to make a good impression. So when Bruce Weber asked
Speaker 2: him some questions about himself, Demon whips up some of
Speaker 2: his classic white lies. For instance, he tells Bruce that
Speaker 2: he's headed to an Ivy League university to study philosophy
Speaker 2: after the summer, when in reality, he's going to the
Speaker 2: College of Marin aka the community college in the town
Speaker 2: where he grew up. Eventually, Bruce asked Damon to take
Speaker 2: off his shirt and spin around and then sends him
Speaker 2: on his way, and Damon leaves the casting and feeling
Speaker 2: like what the hell was the point of that? A
Speaker 2: week later, he gets a call he booked the job.
Speaker 1: This photographer was. I know, he just made me feel
Speaker 1: like really beautiful. I mean it was a different kind
Speaker 1: of interaction than I ever had. It was this big
Speaker 1: set with all of these people and all of these models,
Speaker 1: and there was tons of money and fancy hotel rooms
Speaker 1: and like they treated you so well, and it was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is a cool world, Like what is this world?
Speaker 2: The shoe became a major campaign in all the big
Speaker 2: fashion magazines. Then a week after the ads started running,
Speaker 2: he gets another call. Bruce Weber wants to shoot him
Speaker 2: with supermodel Christy Turlington, this time for Calvin Klein Hot.
Speaker 1: It just opened the door to this whole like Los
Speaker 1: Angeles kind of scene. I had a billboard on Sunset Boulevard,
Speaker 1: Like I could walk out of the nightclubs on Sunset
Speaker 1: Boulevard in the late eighties early nineties and I'm on
Speaker 1: the fucking billboard. You know.
Speaker 3: It was like, how the fuck did this happen?
Speaker 2: After that, Damon got an agent and moved down to
Speaker 2: La He spent the next handful of years on the
Speaker 2: model circuit, working everywhere from New York to Japan. He
Speaker 2: started booking commercials. Then he met the actor Jared Leto,
Speaker 2: who at the time was on a show called My
Speaker 2: So Called Life, one of the seminal shows of My
Speaker 2: youth if anyone cares inspired by Jared. James started thinking
Speaker 2: about being an actor. He started taking lessons, and he
Speaker 2: was taking it pretty seriously. He even did a mid
Speaker 2: level production of Shakespeare's The Tempest Cliche Yet Cheek. But
Speaker 2: this is when things started to fall apart, the attention,
Speaker 2: hustling for fame, the endless, often dehumanizing cattle call of
Speaker 2: castings and auditions. It was a lot of pressure. Eventually,
Speaker 2: in order to deal with his anxiety, demon gave up
Speaker 2: on sobriety and turned to booze. Now the demons of
Speaker 2: his traumatic past are catching up with him. And then
Speaker 2: at a certain point even alcohol wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: I was one of those people that was just like
Speaker 1: sabotaging myself all the time in so many ways. And
Speaker 1: I ended up, actually around twenty five, addicted to heroin.
Speaker 1: And from twenty five to twenty six, all I wanted
Speaker 1: to do was just you know, be cooped up in
Speaker 1: this little apartment. I was basically selling drugs to survive,
Speaker 1: and I was doing heroin. I had so much pain
Speaker 1: that I could not understand how to deal with. I mean,
Speaker 1: my childhood fucked me up and that pain was unresolved.
Speaker 1: Heroine made me feel comfortable, It made me feel okay,
Speaker 1: and it made the thoughts of everything that had happened
Speaker 1: to me as a kid just like kind of like
Speaker 1: float away. My parents, my friends, everyone was like, you
Speaker 1: gotta stop, man, you know you're gonna die.
Speaker 3: And I didn't care.
Speaker 1: Having so much trauma inside and not knowing how to
Speaker 1: deal with it, death sounded like a really good option.
Speaker 2: The next year of Damon's life played like a nineties
Speaker 2: Gus Van Samp movie, basically just being hot and on
Speaker 2: drugs and that's about it. He bailed on la in
Speaker 2: his dreams of being an actor and moved back to
Speaker 2: Northern California, and if even death from an overdose wasn't
Speaker 2: incentive enough to get clean, he figured this was probably
Speaker 2: it for him. But then one day, Deamon gets a
Speaker 2: call from his grandfather, and his grandfather basically tells him, look, dude,
Speaker 2: if you don't go to rehab, I'm taking you out
Speaker 2: of my will. And this was the kick that Damon needed.
Speaker 1: For some reason. And maybe this goes to how fucked
Speaker 1: up I really was at that time. The thought of
Speaker 1: maybe one d getting some money when I didn't know
Speaker 1: how I was going to make a living, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was doing, and I kind of
Speaker 1: just liked doing drugs, and like fucking off, you know
Speaker 1: that I was going to get some money at some point,
Speaker 1: and that he was telling me, like go to rehab,
Speaker 1: or that's never going to happen.
Speaker 3: If I'm going to be honest, that was the spark.
Speaker 2: In other words, if I don't die, I'm eventually going
Speaker 2: to need that money to buy drugs. So he appeases
Speaker 2: his grandfather and heads to rehab.
Speaker 1: Within like two weeks of rehab, I was like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck was I thinking? You know, the fog clears.
Speaker 1: I got my soul back in rehab. I was getting
Speaker 1: therapy in rehab. I was talking about what got me
Speaker 1: there every single day. You know, that's all you're doing
Speaker 1: is talking about your child, and you're talking about all
Speaker 1: these issues I really hadn't done yet. And I was
Speaker 1: hearing other people and hearing them share similar stories, and
Speaker 1: I was like.
Speaker 3: Oh, fuck, okay, there's a way out.
Speaker 2: But one Stanton therapy doesn't reboot your entire personality. Believe me,
Speaker 2: I've tried. And a week before Damon was supposed to
Speaker 2: be released from rehab, he actually got kicked out because
Speaker 2: while he was caught fucking a female patient, which isn't allowed,
Speaker 2: very unbrand for him. But despite that, the important thing
Speaker 2: was that he'd gotten clean, and so he leaves rehab
Speaker 2: with a new lease on life, and just a month
Speaker 2: later he's out at a club in San Francisco, sober
Speaker 2: Now and he finds a new fix.
Speaker 1: I'm off of Heroin for about a month and I
Speaker 1: meet this girl and she's literally the most beautiful thing
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: I see this girl and I'm like, where did she
Speaker 1: come from? Absolutely as far as I'm concerented perfection, and
Speaker 1: we ended up meaning up and we just I've had
Speaker 1: this like unfucking believable connection.
Speaker 2: This girl, you might have guessed, was Melissa.
Speaker 5: Nineteen ninety six, San Francisco ten fifteen full Sums like
Speaker 5: a nightclub and I was eighteen and I used to
Speaker 5: sneak in there with my girlfriend, go dancing and smoke cigarettes,
Speaker 5: be older. And I was there one night and he
Speaker 5: was there, and just it was like in the movies
Speaker 5: when the whole world stops and he comes walking towards
Speaker 5: me and he just sits right down and it was
Speaker 5: like boom done. He has a charisma, this sparkly energy
Speaker 5: that exudes out of him. I mean, he's just attractive
Speaker 5: in all of these ways and larger than life.
Speaker 1: I go home and I tell my mom, I'm like, mom,
Speaker 1: I met the girl I'm gonna marry like, this is
Speaker 1: the person I want to be with for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life.
Speaker 5: We are together ever since I left my parents' house.
Speaker 5: I moved in with him. We were connected at the
Speaker 5: hip from that moment on. Honestly, you never saw one
Speaker 5: without the other. Doctor's appointment, Dennis appointment, Come with me here,
Speaker 5: let's go here, you know what I mean. So we
Speaker 5: were best friends and living the life for better or worse.
Speaker 2: But Melissa did give him one condition. She said, if
Speaker 2: you ever do Heroin again, I'm going to fucking leave you,
Speaker 2: And he was like, I'm in.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for meeting her, I would have I'm
Speaker 1: sure I would have gone back to Heroin at some
Speaker 1: point at that time, at twenty six years old, Melissa
Speaker 1: undoubtedly saved my life.
Speaker 2: Damon was trying to focus on the positive. He was
Speaker 2: off Heroin, he was in love, his life was on
Speaker 2: the upswing again, and interestingly, one unexpected upside of Damon
Speaker 2: being a junkie was that one of his Heroin buddies
Speaker 2: was a guy who owned investment properties in San Francisco
Speaker 2: back in the day. They'd get high together and he'd
Speaker 2: rant and flex about everything he knew about real estate.
Speaker 2: So once Damon gets out of rehab, he comes up
Speaker 2: with a plan to flip a rundown, three story Victorian
Speaker 2: home he'd found in San Francisco. So he lays out
Speaker 2: this strategy to his grandfather, who goes for it. He
Speaker 2: loans Damon one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the
Speaker 2: down payment. So Damon and Melissa move in and they
Speaker 2: start fixing the place up.
Speaker 1: So Melissa and I went to work on like restoring
Speaker 1: this old Victorian. To the two of us, we'd wake
Speaker 1: up every morning and just like paint and I'd be
Speaker 1: on the floor sanding, and we turned this fucking raggedy
Speaker 1: old Victorian apartment in San Francisco into somebody that was
Speaker 1: pretty nice. We had this unbelievable life there. We would
Speaker 1: go out to raves, we were doing molly and just
Speaker 1: partying and just like enjoying the fuck out of life.
Speaker 2: If this were today, they'd be one of those annoyingly
Speaker 2: symmetrical TikTok influencer couples who do diy home renovation. Just saying, now,
Speaker 2: while Damon was off heroin, he still wasn't sober, so
Speaker 2: there was no reason to not consume his body weight
Speaker 2: in other white powders. Over the next couple of years,
Speaker 2: Damon and Melissa did an impressive amount of partying in
Speaker 2: There are moments of vague sobriety. Damon played in a
Speaker 2: band that was getting some traction, and Melissa was modeling
Speaker 2: doing the Runway Show circuit in Milan, New York. In Paris,
Speaker 2: things were going well. A couple of years in Melissa
Speaker 2: got interested in moving to la to pursue acting, so
Speaker 2: they sold the remodel Victorian for over a million dollars,
Speaker 2: way more than he'd paid for it, and after paying
Speaker 2: back his grandfather, Damon had seven hundred thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: his pocket. So they started house hunting.
Speaker 1: So we go to LA and we find this cool
Speaker 1: house right above the Chateau Marmont, which is this really
Speaker 1: famous hotel in Los Angeles where all the rock stars
Speaker 1: and movie stars you know, are in that block. And
Speaker 1: then this whole other life begins in La.
Speaker 5: I saw us as this incredible kind of modern bohemian couple.
Speaker 5: We had our beautiful home above the Chateau Marmont, and
Speaker 5: we were fixing it up and like doing it ourselves.
Speaker 5: And we were like really invested in our life and
Speaker 5: doing everything together, and we had fabulous dinner parties.
Speaker 2: He and Melissa were basically living that stereotypical cool kid
Speaker 2: La lifestyle. She was twenty three, he was thirty. They
Speaker 2: were more in love than ever, and on the morning
Speaker 2: of their fifth anniversary, they impulsively fly to Vegas and
Speaker 2: get married.
Speaker 1: Melissa and I were like the it couple. We were
Speaker 1: the couple that everyone kind of wanted to be, So
Speaker 1: no matter where we went, people would be like, oh.
Speaker 3: My god, you guys are so beautiful, and we'd.
Speaker 1: Be like, yeah, come back to our house. We live
Speaker 1: right above the chateau, Like, let's do some fucking drugs
Speaker 1: and party all night.
Speaker 2: Damon and Melissa bought their house in La at the
Speaker 2: perfect time, during the real estate dip of the early
Speaker 2: two thousands following nine to eleven. The home they bought
Speaker 2: for seven hundred thousand dollars was quickly worth one point
Speaker 2: five million, which is a positive obviously, but there was
Speaker 2: one little glitch.
Speaker 1: I began to kind of live on credit, so I
Speaker 1: would pull money out of my house as needed. I just,
Speaker 1: you know, got in touch to the bank and got
Speaker 1: a house worth a bunch of money. I own it,
Speaker 1: so getting a loan from them was real easy. I
Speaker 1: guess write checks, but at that time banks were lending like, yeah,
Speaker 1: here we go. Are you breathing and do you have equity? Okay,
Speaker 1: then you can get a loan.
Speaker 2: So they're living off the equity of the house, and
Speaker 2: Damon is busy with different entrepreneurial ventures. He launches an
Speaker 2: energy dream company called Marquee Platinum, and he invests a
Speaker 2: half a million dollars into an LA restaurant called Bridge.
Speaker 2: In their free time, Damon and Melissa attempted to counteract
Speaker 2: the copious amounts of drugs they were taking with facials
Speaker 2: and massages and health food restaurants. For clarity, this is
Speaker 2: why rich people look younger than everyone else. But at
Speaker 2: some point, for Melissa, the partying was starting to get old.
Speaker 2: She wanted to slow down, which wasn't the news Damon
Speaker 2: wanted to hear.
Speaker 3: She wanted to.
Speaker 1: Have more of a traditional life, you know, have children,
Speaker 1: kind of down. That wasn't really my idea. I didn't
Speaker 1: really want to do that. I just wanted to be selfish.
Speaker 1: I just wanted her and me to be selfish and
Speaker 1: just enjoy life together. For as long as we could
Speaker 1: ride this thing out. And she didn't want to be
Speaker 1: selfish anymore. She wanted to create a child and be
Speaker 1: a different kind of person, which is so beautiful, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready for that.
Speaker 2: Funny thing about babies is that they're narcissists who don't
Speaker 2: care about your timeline.
Speaker 3: And guess what.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and five, Melissa found out she was
Speaker 2: pregnant on New Year's Eve, of all nights. When Damon
Speaker 2: heard the news, he was like, well, I already bought
Speaker 2: an eight ball of really good coke and I've got
Speaker 2: friends over, so would you mind if I got high
Speaker 2: and partied? Then he went on an insane bender. I'm
Speaker 2: sure Melissa was thrilled, but it turned out he was
Speaker 2: more ready to be a dad than he thought.
Speaker 1: When she had our first child, it changed me for sure,
Speaker 1: and I just fell madly in love. I mean, I'd
Speaker 1: never felt a feeling like that. You can't know what
Speaker 1: that feeling is until you hold your child in your arms,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't wait to like see this little baby
Speaker 1: grow up.
Speaker 2: He recalls that time after his daughter was born as
Speaker 2: the happiest of his life, and he made his best
Speaker 2: attempt in a more settled, conventional lifestyle, you know, strollers,
Speaker 2: baby clothes, literal silver spoons.
Speaker 3: They sold their place.
Speaker 2: Above the chateau and bought a house in Hancock Park, which,
Speaker 2: if you don't know LA is basically an upscale, bougie neighborhood,
Speaker 2: great farmer's market.
Speaker 3: I recommend My.
Speaker 1: Own view is that I was a really like present
Speaker 1: and loving, an active father. But that didn't mean that
Speaker 1: I got sober. It didn't mean that, you know, I
Speaker 1: stopped some of my behavior and stuff like that. I
Speaker 1: think what it meant was that a struggle began to
Speaker 1: really be a good man and to get my shit together.
Speaker 2: That push and pull between the desire to be an
Speaker 2: upstanding family man and his impulse to stay out until
Speaker 2: six am every night grinding his tea with a bunch
Speaker 2: of bless celebrities would continue on for years to come,
Speaker 2: well into his time at Sanctum. I mean, if you've
Speaker 2: been paying attention, you probably get this by now.
Speaker 1: I remember this one night, but I went out with
Speaker 1: a friend, you know, we started drinking and then I
Speaker 1: ended up with like, you know, just all of the
Speaker 1: like it girls who were doing everything wrong. And I'm
Speaker 1: there until fucking the sun comes. I've got I've got
Speaker 1: a two three year old child at home with my wife,
Speaker 1: and I'm like partying like a fucking crazy person, Like
Speaker 1: back into that lifestyle. And I remember I came home
Speaker 1: at six o'clock in the morning, the sun's up. Melissa
Speaker 1: sees me walking up the backstairs to our place and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know what I did with my keys.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like fucked up, and she's like, just
Speaker 1: go sleep in your car. I put her through shit
Speaker 1: like that, you know that's not okay.
Speaker 2: For years, Damon had shunned drugs and alcohol because, in
Speaker 2: his words, he never wanted to be like his parents,
Speaker 2: sobriety wasn't sustainable for him. But one line that he
Speaker 2: said he never crossed was being intoxicated around his kids.
Speaker 1: The thought of exposing my kids, you know, to any
Speaker 1: of that kind of behavior, I couldn't live with myself.
Speaker 1: I can't even think of a time when I haven't
Speaker 1: been sober around them because of what I experienced as
Speaker 1: a kid, I think I went overboard and trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that they never saw me that way.
Speaker 2: Still, in pretty quick succession, Damon and Melissa have another daughter.
Speaker 2: While all this is happening, Damon's still borrowing a lot
Speaker 2: of money from the bank and he's not conservative about it.
Speaker 3: To put it.
Speaker 2: Lightly, They've got the bougie La couple, starter pack, the
Speaker 2: big house, the Porsche, the land Rover, designer bags, and
Speaker 2: they're not really making any money. I mean, I'm bad
Speaker 2: at math, but even I can see that those numbers
Speaker 2: don't add up.
Speaker 3: I had created this really big life for us.
Speaker 1: You know, we were flying on private jets with celebrities.
Speaker 1: I had a Black American Express Card and if you
Speaker 1: don't know what that is, you have to spend a
Speaker 1: minimum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: on your Platinum American Express Card to get a Black card.
Speaker 1: The main difference is its ability to make everyone you're
Speaker 1: with feel like they are below you.
Speaker 3: I was that guy.
Speaker 1: I was at LA guy, that successful guy with a
Speaker 1: wife and two little girls and a white pick of fence.
Speaker 1: But yeah, in the back of my mind, I'm going
Speaker 1: at some point, this train is going to pull into
Speaker 1: the station and I'm going to be fucked.
Speaker 2: And then came the financial crisis of two thousand and eight,
Speaker 2: and spoiler alert that didn't help people living high on
Speaker 2: home equity. There's a pivotal moment from that time when
Speaker 2: the scales fell away from Damon's eyes, and it couldn't
Speaker 2: be more cinematic.
Speaker 3: I'm in Whole Foods.
Speaker 1: I go to the checkout and it's one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty bucks for the groceries, and the car gets declined.
Speaker 1: And another feature of the UH Black card is it
Speaker 1: does not get the client. I had no way to
Speaker 1: pay for those groceries and not American Express card. When
Speaker 1: I get to the client, I was like, this is the
Speaker 1: end of the road, you know, like it's done.
Speaker 3: I Am done this.
Speaker 1: Whatever life I thought I had, it's over.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: The symbol of wealth and success became this symbol of
Speaker 1: like utter failure in that moment.
Speaker 2: All this time, Damon had been in charge of the
Speaker 2: family cash flow and Melissa was busy with two babies. Essentially,
Speaker 2: Demon had built the trappings of this bourgeois fantasy life
Speaker 2: that he thought Melissa wanted, but unbeknownst to her, it
Speaker 2: was all a house of cards.
Speaker 5: I was a new mom. I was also young, and
Speaker 5: I wasn't really paying attention to our finances. I was
Speaker 5: kind of just leaving that to him. I mean, I
Speaker 5: do take responsibility. Like I didn't inquire. I wasn't in
Speaker 5: our finances I should have been, so I didn't realize
Speaker 5: how underwater we were, and we were like living this
Speaker 5: lifestyle that I thought was all good, but it all
Speaker 5: came crashing down.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just about making Melissa happy. Damon also
Speaker 2: wanted to keep up appearances with their rich celebrity friends
Speaker 2: because he wanted their validation. I'm going slightly armchair therapy here,
Speaker 2: but I have talked with Damon at length about how
Speaker 2: ping ponging between chaotic poverty and rich comfort as a
Speaker 2: kid is a dichotomy that he's replicated multiple times as
Speaker 2: an adult. Eventually, it became more important for him that
Speaker 2: they appeared rich than to accept that they were really,
Speaker 2: really broke.
Speaker 3: It's all an illusion. But I didn't tell her that.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell her that until the very very end,
Speaker 1: until the foreclosure notice gets taped onto the front door
Speaker 1: of our place, until my brand new Porsche gets towed
Speaker 1: out of the driveway by the repull man. At that point,
Speaker 1: I couldn't hide it anymore. Yeah, she must have been
Speaker 1: in literal shock.
Speaker 3: There were signs.
Speaker 1: It's not like she was completely in the dark. But
Speaker 1: by the time I sort of like let her into
Speaker 1: the secret that we were living on borrowed money.
Speaker 3: It was too late. It was too late. We were homeless.
Speaker 3: That was it.
Speaker 2: They knew the bank was about to repossess all of
Speaker 2: their assets, including their home, so they started selling everything
Speaker 2: they could. Their furniture, Melissa's jewelry, Damon's rolex. Everything they
Speaker 2: built was crumbling beneath them in the economic crisis. Damon's
Speaker 2: energy during company fails, his restaurant fails. They're literally a
Speaker 2: million dollars in debt to AMEX. Meanwhile, they have a
Speaker 2: two year old and a newborn baby. So out of options,
Speaker 2: Damon calls up his dad, who was living in Bali
Speaker 2: at the time.
Speaker 3: I call him up.
Speaker 1: I said, Dad, I'm fucked like I have nothing. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm almost a million dollars in debt. And my dad says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're going to be homeless, Bali's a
Speaker 1: good place to be homeless, he said. Food's cheap, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to live. You'll be able to live out here.
Speaker 2: Now, flying to Bali with all of their worldly possessions,
Speaker 2: stupped into seventeen suitcases was certainly not their life plan,
Speaker 2: although to be honest, every time I've ever heard someone
Speaker 2: talk about moving to Bali, it's somehow associated with a
Speaker 2: mental breakdown. So actually it feels kind of fitting, so
Speaker 2: they go. The plan was to stay in Bali for
Speaker 2: a few months while they figured out their life. The
Speaker 2: whole family moved into one room in Damon's dad's house.
Speaker 2: It was tough, obviously, but there were things about being
Speaker 2: there that they really loved.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a cool fucking community. You don't need
Speaker 1: anything but a pair of shorts, you right around on
Speaker 1: a scooter, you don't need much money.
Speaker 3: So I felt like the first.
Speaker 1: Year that we were there, although we were dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, the trauma of what had just happened to us,
Speaker 1: for me, I was like, oh my god, thank god,
Speaker 1: there's something outside of like the Western materialistic, non stop
Speaker 1: grind of trying to be someone and carry a fucking
Speaker 1: black card and drive a portion, doing drugs with celebrities
Speaker 1: and be this thing that I'm not really and then
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be to be cool or whatever
Speaker 1: the fuck I was doing. Like this place was like
Speaker 1: I couldn't have felt more free and in my element.
Speaker 3: I loved it.
Speaker 2: So they start settling in and they're making friends. I
Speaker 2: mean they're good at that. They're fun and outgoing and
Speaker 2: being ha Oways helps. So one night and Balie, Damon,
Speaker 2: and Melissa are out at a bar. They're drinking and dancing,
Speaker 2: and the owner comes over and says, hey, I've seen
Speaker 2: you guys in here a couple times. You're always with
Speaker 2: great people and I love your energy. Bring in a
Speaker 2: group of your friends this weekend and I'll give you
Speaker 2: free bottle service. Obviously, they're down, So they show up
Speaker 2: with their friends and get drunk for free, and it
Speaker 2: creates a fun vibe in the place. So the owner's like,
Speaker 2: if you want to keep this going, i'll pay you
Speaker 2: a percentage of the bar.
Speaker 1: At that moment, I was like, you can make money partying,
Speaker 1: Like is this a thing? It was such a moment
Speaker 1: of like, holy fuck, I can party with my friends
Speaker 1: and get paid. Okay, this is something I can do.
Speaker 3: It's kind of funny.
Speaker 2: Yet again, it feels like these semi random opportunities just
Speaker 2: fall into Damon's lab. It makes me think of that
Speaker 2: quote from Zulander where He's like, I'm pretty sure there's
Speaker 2: a lot more to life than just being really, really
Speaker 2: ridiculously good looking. But then when you hear a story
Speaker 2: like Damon's, you're like, is there. Soon Damon starts hosting
Speaker 2: his own regular party at the bar, and he's packing
Speaker 2: the place. Eventually, he starts approaching other venues about promoting
Speaker 2: club nights, and over the next couple of years, Demon
Speaker 2: becomes a big figure in Bali's night life scene, and
Speaker 2: he's making pretty good money. What began as a plan
Speaker 2: to stay in Bali for three months turns into three years. Hadria,
Speaker 2: who was seeing all this from a distance, was slightly
Speaker 2: bewildered by how everything was playing out for Damon.
Speaker 4: He would kind of leave a trail of ship behind him,
Speaker 4: but he was in front of it, you know, like
Speaker 4: somehow instead of paying the government or going to jail,
Speaker 4: he just moved on. There they went. But it wasn't
Speaker 4: like he had to clean up the mess. There's not
Speaker 4: a sense of responsibility.
Speaker 2: I get what she's saying. Demon kind of reminds me
Speaker 2: of that meme of the cartoon dog smiling and drinking
Speaker 2: coffee as his house goes up in flames and he's like,
Speaker 2: this is fine. To that point, there was this one
Speaker 2: day in Bali when Demon was hosting a pool party
Speaker 2: he created called Splash at the Kakum Beach Club, and
Speaker 2: it gets a very special guest, this.
Speaker 1: Man who's a local Boalanese guy, very wealthy.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was told he was a gangster. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what that meant. He comes to one of my events
Speaker 1: and I was told to treat him with respect, so
Speaker 1: I did that. Then I like, you know, brought him
Speaker 1: a bottle of champagne and I got along with him
Speaker 1: really well, and we had this I thought, what was
Speaker 1: a cool raport. Now I was making money and he
Speaker 1: and his group weren't getting anything from that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I wasn't slipping an envelope to these guys every month.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know who they were. But apparently that's
Speaker 1: something that other people were doing. So when he came
Speaker 1: to my event and saw how popular it was and
Speaker 1: how great it was, he wasn't there to become my friend.
Speaker 1: He was there to like do reconnaissance.
Speaker 2: This guy was a powerful member of what is essentially
Speaker 2: the Indonesian mafia. The following week, he gave Damon a
Speaker 2: call and Damon Naively was like, yeah, hey, come back
Speaker 2: next week. I'll put you on the guest list. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the guy wanted more than to sit in an embarrassing
Speaker 2: via IP area with a bunch of drunk influencers with
Speaker 2: too much filler.
Speaker 1: And he says, you think I need you to put
Speaker 1: me on the guest list. He's like, what the fuck
Speaker 1: do you think you are? You're a dog, You're nothing.
Speaker 1: He did end up taking me to an undisclosed location.
Speaker 1: There were many armed men, guns drawn, and he starts
Speaker 1: fucking with me, putting a gun to my head, putting
Speaker 1: a gun in my mouth. I told him I have
Speaker 1: some money in my safe. I said, look, I'm not rich.
Speaker 1: He said, you're gonna give me what you have. I'll
Speaker 1: fucking kill you. I'll kill your family. I'll bury you
Speaker 1: in a fucking rice field. I don't give a fuck
Speaker 1: about you. He kept telling me you're a fucking dog
Speaker 1: in the street to me. So, yeah, that was fucking scary.
Speaker 2: Yikes. Still, somehow this didn't make Damon want to leave Bolli.
Speaker 2: He felt like he could work things out with the
Speaker 2: gangster who'd threatened to bury him below a rice patty.
Speaker 2: He thought, next time he comes into my club, I'll
Speaker 2: just be like, what do I owe you? As you
Speaker 2: might imagine, Melissa wasn't having this. She was like, you're
Speaker 2: an idiot. We're getting the fuck out of here, or
Speaker 2: at least that's how I imagine it went down.
Speaker 5: We really we differ on this subject. We still do.
Speaker 5: We'll still fight about it. You made us leave. We
Speaker 5: could have had the greatest life ever in Bali, And
Speaker 5: I'm like, dude, what the like we were about to
Speaker 5: He was being kidnapped by the Banjar, which is like
Speaker 5: the Balinese mafia, and he's making all this money and
Speaker 5: you have to pay the Banjar their percentage. Like every
Speaker 5: expat that has a company there knows that. He just
Speaker 5: thought he was always above the law or above that
Speaker 5: kind of authority or that kind of thing. So he
Speaker 5: didn't and he made a lot of enemies there. Other
Speaker 5: promoters did not like him or appreciate him whatsoever. Damon
Speaker 5: would promote at their clubs for his club, and like
Speaker 5: he had some people that did not care for him.
Speaker 2: But even before the whole kidnapping threat debacle, Melissa was
Speaker 2: feeling like it was time to leave. It had been
Speaker 2: years and she missed home.
Speaker 5: My girls were growing up not knowing their family. We
Speaker 5: couldn't afford to, like all four of us fly back
Speaker 5: to la once a year or twice a year to
Speaker 5: see everyone.
Speaker 3: Way too expensive.
Speaker 5: They weren't like trekking halfway across the world to come
Speaker 5: see us.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: So it was like sad, I felt lonely, and I
Speaker 5: just felt like, this isn't my home, This isn't my
Speaker 5: place where I'm going to rebuild my life and raise
Speaker 5: my kids.
Speaker 1: I think she didn't like Bali like I did. Balie's
Speaker 1: not an upper class white picket friends experience. It's a
Speaker 1: very spiritual place. There was a lot of yoga, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of meditation, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: incense being burned. There was a lot of spirituality. And
Speaker 1: we both got off on that. But I think that
Speaker 1: she wanted to get back to Beverly Hill, you know,
Speaker 1: she wanted to get back to the United States, and
Speaker 1: I kind of was like, I don't want to go
Speaker 1: back and be broke. I don't want to go back
Speaker 1: and try to start from square zero again.
Speaker 2: Melissa won the fight back to square zero. It's now
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen. As we talked about in our first episode,
Speaker 2: they leave Bali and they move back to la and
Speaker 2: they have to face their million dollar debt. They declare bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: They move in with Melissa's mother into her kitchen to
Speaker 2: be exact, and a handful of months later, Damon creates
Speaker 2: Sanctum from rags to riches and back again, rinse and repeat,
Speaker 2: an EKG machine of success and misfortune, of incredible luck
Speaker 2: and then squandering it all. This is pretty much the
Speaker 2: cycle of Damon's life. The reverberations of trauma are likely
Speaker 2: to inform who we become as adults, for better and
Speaker 2: for worse. Like none of us have a full handle
Speaker 2: on our emotional baggage, right, Damon included. So I asked him,
Speaker 2: how did all of this, the highs and the lows,
Speaker 2: lead him to founding one of the most exclusive and
Speaker 2: controversial sex clubs in the history of sex clubs.
Speaker 1: It was a childlike experience for me in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Sexuality in some ways for me has always been like
Speaker 1: this childlike experience, this experience of like discovery and amazement
Speaker 1: and like wow.
Speaker 3: And in some ways that stayed with me.
Speaker 1: So you know, somehow I'm not a therapist, but must
Speaker 1: have somehow manifested over time into this thing where I
Speaker 1: don't know it just loved sex. I love the feeling.
Speaker 1: There's nothing okay about what happened to me. But somehow
Speaker 1: I think I did take that. It didn't like destroy me.
Speaker 1: It ended up in some strange way, kind of like
Speaker 1: part of the tools in my toolbox that I used
Speaker 1: to create the sex club.
Speaker 2: Next on Sanctum Unmasked, some of.
Speaker 5: The high rollers they were assured of being rolled. You know,
Speaker 5: nobody ever comes out and says, you know, what, are
Speaker 5: you gonna pay me?
Speaker 3: It's much more subtle than that.
Speaker 1: This gets into the realm of sex work, morality, what's
Speaker 1: okay and what's not okay.
Speaker 2: It also reminds me of why wealthy people will always
Speaker 2: be able to get what they want.
Speaker 3: If the clientele was poor, I'd say they'd get rated.
Speaker 2: Sanctum Unmasked is a production of School of Humans and
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts, hosted and written by me Carly Shortino. Etaly'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. Back checking
Speaker 2: by Austin Thompson. Local illustration by Linda McNeil. Graham Gibson
Speaker 2: is 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 Carly Shortino. If you are enjoying
Speaker 2: the show, help us get the word out by leaving
Speaker 2: a rating in your favorite podcast app. You can keep
Speaker 2: up with Damon on Instagram. He's at Father Damon. Tune
Speaker 2: in next week