Episode 667 - Neil Strauss
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckadelics?
Marc:What the fuck is happening?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my show.
Marc:This is WTF the podcast.
Marc:I'm broadcasting today.
Marc:from a snowed-in room in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:I do not think that it's any similar.
Marc:I don't think it's similar at all to The Hateful Eight, which I have not seen yet, but apparently there's a situation where there are several characters snowed in, and it gets a little rough.
Marc:That's all I know about that movie.
Marc:There's a weather situation, and then shit hits the fan in many different bloody ways.
Marc:I am going to see the film, but this does not seem to be happening.
Marc:What do we got going on?
Marc:Let's just try to stay in the moment here.
Marc:I have Neil Strauss on the show today.
Marc:Now, Neil Strauss wrote a book that caused a little trouble for some people, but I think some people got a lot out of it.
Marc:It was a relatively controversial book a few years ago called The Game.
Marc:It was an investigative piece that began as an investigative piece.
Marc:He went into the world of
Marc:of pickup artists, the secret societies of these men who who have an angle and a system.
Marc:And, you know, basically, you know, I guess the idea is to have sex with the women.
Marc:Now, there was a lot of wrong about this whole idea and there was a lot of flack.
Marc:But, you know, it kind of took Neil.
Marc:in a direction he didn't really anticipate and moved him through a world and through a series of behaviors that he is not necessarily proud of.
Marc:Now, you have to understand, I met Neil when he was this very quiet, nebbishy Jewish writer hanging around the alternative comedy scene back in the early 90s or mid 90s.
Marc:And when I heard he written that book, I was like, is that the same fucking guy?
Marc:How is that the same guy?
Marc:What did he beat?
Marc:That guy?
Marc:Come on.
Marc:So now he's written a new book.
Marc:called The Truth, which is basically, I believe, his recovery from the game.
Marc:That whatever he went through emotionally and sexually and personality-wise, through getting sucked into the game, it has hit the wall.
Marc:And now he has this new book called The Truth, an uncomfortable book about relationships.
Marc:And I have a very...
Marc:candid, intense, loaded conversation with Neil, who knows some things about me in the past and has his experience of what I was like back.
Marc:And they interviewed me, actually, for a piece of his writing back in the mid-'90s, but also just sort of moving through what he learned about relationships and himself in the process of writing this newest book.
Marc:I was very excited to talk to him, and it was a very intense conversation.
Marc:So look forward to that coming around the bend here.
Marc:So I've been in Albuquerque, my hometown, for a couple of days.
Marc:As some of you know, I was up in Santa Fe enjoying the spa relaxation life.
Marc:And then we come down to Albuquerque.
Marc:Now, as some of you know, I grew up here, born in New Jersey, moved to Alaska, Albuquerque, 71, 72, started here in third grade.
Marc:My life began in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:So I chose to do something that I don't usually do.
Marc:I mean, I see a couple of the people I know from when I grew up, Dave Kleinfeld, Devin Jackson, a couple people, Sam Howarth.
Marc:I see some friends that I've kept in contact with for the last 40 years, 35 years.
Marc:But I never really did the...
Marc:Let's go look at the elementary school.
Marc:Let's go look at the first house I lived in when we moved here.
Marc:Let's go do that.
Marc:Let me drag my girlfriend through some sort of this is your life episode where I sit in front of structures and try to connect emotionally and memory wise with my past.
Marc:And what I sort of learned was I learned something about myself.
Marc:What memories do you have?
Marc:as a person, because those will sort of dictate or at least should be a window in how your brain works.
Marc:Are the memories that you hold on to the shitty ones?
Marc:Or are they the like, wow, that was the best time of my life.
Marc:Or I remember that one time where I almost lost my finger.
Marc:You know, like what kind of person are you?
Marc:Are you like, I remember that one time that my, you know, the car almost, or are you the person that's sort of like, oh, that was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Marc:As you can imagine, I tend towards the finger loss type of memories, but not so much.
Marc:They still reveal things, you know.
Marc:I mean, I went to my elementary school where I went from third to fifth grade and then moved to a private institution.
Marc:the groovy, hipster, sort of hippie private school for fifth and sixth grade.
Marc:But I remember third and fourth grade, but there's weird memories that happen.
Marc:I'm just sitting there.
Marc:I'm looking at this playground where I sort of wandered.
Marc:I walked down the street.
Marc:It was right at the end of my block, Mark Twain Elementary.
Marc:But I remember walking down to school, and the memories that sort of flooded back, there was a couple...
Marc:One of them was I remember spending time during recess and helping the special needs kids.
Marc:I just remember doing that.
Marc:And I remember there was this very profound moment where a severely mentally challenged guy
Marc:who I was playing football with, you know, tackled me with a force and energy that was astounding and made me cry.
Marc:But he couldn't have been more excited about it.
Marc:It's just, I don't know what I learned in that moment, but it was something about being a person and the sort of...
Marc:the sort of differences in minds.
Marc:But I kept working with them, and I'd go over there and play with them and get them laughing.
Marc:So that was sort of one of my first sort of gigs as an entertainer and decent person was helping the intellectually and mentally challenged have a fun recess.
Marc:I remember that.
Marc:I remember breaking my leg because my dad adjusted my bindings too tight and having a full leg cast and not being able to go to lunch.
Marc:And my girlfriend in fourth grade, Elizabeth, used to come and eat lunch with me.
Marc:alone in the room that's sort of a nice memory it'd be nicer without the broken leg but whatever I remember I had a roadrunner lunchbox which I thought was stupid and one day you know all the other kids had better lunchboxes I don't even know what kind I really wanted but I remember I kicked it all the way home until it just broke and the lid broke off and I told my mother I told my mother the big kids got me the big kids did this to my roadrunner lunchbox that was their sole focus
Marc:She didn't buy it, and I ended up never having another lunchbox.
Marc:Just brown bagging it.
Marc:So those were the lessons in elementary school.
Marc:Pretty exciting stuff, right, folks?
Marc:Right?
Marc:And then we went to my old house.
Marc:Very few memories in the old house.
Marc:I have some trying to mow the lawn, but I didn't understand how to mow a lawn, that you had to do it in lines.
Marc:I just kind of randomly...
Marc:mowed the lawn around in a circle until my neighbor Gary said he got to mow it in lines.
Marc:That was a big lesson.
Marc:I remember Old English Sheepdogs.
Marc:I remember a Janice Joplin record, a Melanie record, a James Taylor record.
Marc:I remember telling the Latino maid, cleaning lady that my parents had hired, who did not speak any English, that she was using the wrong detergent in the dishwasher and she needed to use dish soap.
Marc:And then we...
Marc:We had a kitchen full of about a foot of foam and bubbles, and that was not a good day for her or me, but I copped to it.
Marc:I guess the bottom line is it's good to be home.
Marc:It was good to see a couple of old friends.
Marc:I feel very comfortable here, but sometimes when I come out here with people, I don't always know.
Marc:It's overly emotional.
Marc:There's no way you're not going to get a little tweaked out revisiting your childhood and wondering and then seeing people that you knew back then now who are your friends since second grade, third grade, and now we're 52, 53 years old.
Marc:It's hard.
Marc:There's a weird beauty to it, but there's also a little bit of heartbreak to it.
Marc:Like, hey, we're still alive.
Marc:We're doing okay, but man...
Marc:If I don't see you for a couple years, one of us might be using a cane.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:It's a little heavy, but I guess this is what life is.
Marc:Season three of Marin premieres on Netflix today.
Marc:Today.
Marc:If today is the 28th, this is the day you can watch season three of my IFC show Marin on Netflix.
Marc:It's a good season.
Marc:It's very exciting.
Marc:It'll set you up for the season we're about to do.
Marc:It gets pretty heavy at the end.
Marc:Enjoy it.
Marc:Watch it.
Marc:It's your time to do that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So right now, let's go to my conversation with Neil Strauss.
Marc:His book, The Truth, an uncomfortable book about relationships is available now.
Marc:And this is a this is an intense conversation.
Guest:So I hope you dig it.
Guest:Like, I don't think I've seen you in 20 years.
Guest:I was on your Air America show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Maybe that was 10 years ago.
Guest:But it was kind of like you weren't really there.
Guest:You didn't really have a conversation.
Marc:It was so early in the morning, too.
Guest:It was early in the morning.
Guest:I don't know if you were where you were at doing it.
Marc:Did you come in live or were you on the phone?
Marc:No, I came in live.
Marc:So like it was that morning show at Air America, like between six and nine you came in?
Guest:Yeah, but we already had more connection here in 20 seconds than we did there.
Guest:Well, it was crazy there, dude.
Guest:Yeah, it was crazy.
Marc:You're in real time, you're half awake.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like I remember you hanging around Luna Lounge when you were writing for what, Spin?
Marc:New York Times.
Marc:New York Times.
Marc:Oh, did you write that piece about alternative comedy in the Times?
Marc:That was the piece that Lorne Michaels had read.
Marc:Oh, no way.
Marc:It all comes back to Lorne Michaels.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, that was the piece where, you know, I think he had read because he said, I don't know what you think you're doing down there below 14th Street.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:But it doesn't mean anything.
Marc:But that was that piece.
Marc:There was a picture of me, Ross Broccoli, and Jeff Ross.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:In the piece.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was the big, you know, that was putting it on the map.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Alt comedy was on the map because of Neil Strauss.
Marc:And I remember I came to the thing and you're like, this is the guy who ruined the scene.
Marc:You singled me out.
Marc:I did?
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You came to the show after that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I remember we talked, and I remember talking to you, and you were kind of like, you barely could talk for some... It's so true.
Guest:I was just so nervous.
Marc:Yeah, you were very nervous, and then I remember, what was the first big ghostwriting job you had?
Marc:Was it Manson?
Marc:Yeah, Marilyn Manson.
Marc:So then I heard Neil Strauss co-wrote this huge book, Marilyn Manson.
Marc:I'm like, that fucking guy?
Marc:That guy can't even talk.
Marc:He was...
Guest:I think it was disarming.
Guest:They had nothing to fear for me.
Guest:It was very disarming, maybe.
Guest:What is that process of ghostwriting?
Guest:How does that work?
Guest:Oh, it's the best.
Guest:You just hang out in their world as much as you can and absorb as much of their life as you can, and then when they're ready, you talk.
Guest:So sometimes...
Guest:Maybe after a show, Manson would be doing a bunch of kind of, he'd want to do a bunch of coke and then talk all night and record him all night.
Guest:Or other time, you just sort of embedded yourself in your world and waited for those moments and observed the moment.
Guest:So for example, he'd have his bodyguard guard the bathroom door while he did coke in the bathroom.
Guest:So you'd watch that and that would become a little detail that would inform the story.
Marc:And did he let you put all that in?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't write a book with someone if they had anything to hold back.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, that's the rule.
Marc:But you don't get final edit.
Guest:You just get an agreement.
Guest:Yeah, you get an agreement, but I make some agreements up front.
Guest:I say, if you're going to take anything out, you have to put something better back in.
Guest:That's a little broad, but it usually works?
Guest:It usually works.
Guest:And also, I try to write it well enough that even if they're resistant, when they tell me, they read it, and they're like, oh, this has to stay.
Guest:And you were factual.
Guest:Yeah, always, yeah.
Guest:The only thing you change is stuff for legal reasons and you'll maybe change someone's name or their details.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:So you had to sit there and watch Marilyn Manson do Coke a lot.
Marc:A lot of Coke.
Guest:And indulge that.
Guest:Right, and home movies.
Guest:It was fun because as a journalist, people only show you exactly what they want to show you because they know you're writing.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:But when they know they have the approval, they show you everything.
Marc:Sure, and when they're on Coke, you get more than you hope for.
Guest:You get more than you hope for.
Guest:It's really weird.
Guest:Rock stars are so... Here's the crazy thing.
Guest:You might call to do an interview and everybody seems so busy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But most of their life, they're completely bored doing nothing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I remember some nights we'd be bored and he'd dress up in this giant chicken outfit and we'd go down to Sunset Boulevard and he'd chase people in a chicken suit.
Guest:For no reason.
Guest:For no reason.
Guest:No one would know this giant chicken that just chased him was Marilyn Manson.
Guest:and he's all jacked up on blow yeah yeah we would have like four i don't remember those dvds or videos back then but we'd watch like four movies in like 10 minutes because they're so coked up oh right oh it's oh just fast forward yeah exactly now when you do that stuff do you do you gain do you did you do blow with him you know it's a great question so my first night out with him uh
Guest:And he had this CD case, which is what you did it on back then, right?
Guest:Really dates it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But depending on what, you have CDs right here though.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, and he said, do the dust.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wasn't sure if like, was it Coke or was it angel dust?
Guest:No.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:Well, I was kind of naive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I wanted to fit, you know, I wanted to fit in.
Guest:I wanted to not make them feel weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did the move where I kind of bent down, but I kind of blew it a little bit to get it off the tray and look like it went up my nose and went all over the floor.
Guest:It was a mess.
Guest:He knew though, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was like, what are you doing?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you're like, I don't do this.
Guest:It was a party fall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But eventually, I would do enough.
Guest:I would do a little bit.
Guest:To me, it was like coffee.
Marc:It was like coffee.
Marc:Oh, so you didn't do too much to where you... Because I imagine you strike me as... Well, I don't know if it's introverted, but slightly neurotic.
Marc:I can't imagine you in a panic situation.
Guest:Yeah, totally neurotic.
Guest:I'm not good with psychedelics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those are the worst.
Guest:So, but I remember one night I was doing a little bit more with them and I noticed I was losing my temper more often.
Guest:I would lose my, I would be temperamental.
Guest:A little edgy.
Guest:Edgy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went to the guys.
Guest:I'm like, you know what?
Guest:I've been losing my temper a lot.
Guest:I don't think maybe it's because of the Coke or something.
Guest:And one of the guys looks at me goes, that's the best part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the last time I did it.
Yeah.
Guest:They were using you as a clown.
Guest:No, they were.
Guest:They totally were.
Guest:I remember like a high point in my maturity came after I'd kind of done the game and I went over to Manson's birthday party and he had a giant sperm outfit and he said, will you dress up in the sperm outfit and dance around?
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:And that was like a big moment for me that I wasn't there a clown anymore.
Marc:Oh, look at you speaking up for yourself.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I will not put the sperm outfit on.
Marc:So after that, you did the Jameson book?
Guest:Yeah, after that, I did the Motley Crue book.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And by the way, we've got to go back at some point to Luna Lounge because I want to talk about my impressions of you back there as well.
Guest:Well, let's go.
Marc:Let's start there because once you did the Manson book, I was so amazed and slightly resentful that somehow or another this mousy little fuck had figured out a way to make it.
Marc:I love it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I really had no idea I would be one of the people you resented.
Guest:I'm proud to be amongst the powerful contingent.
Marc:Well, I always liked you, but there's always a slight distrust for journalists in general.
Marc:Maybe at that time, I don't know why I would have thought you ruined it, but maybe I thought because you brought attention to it, because it did get quite overwhelming after that.
Marc:There were lines out the door, and it became a little crazy.
Marc:But I don't think I really resented you.
Marc:I was just sort of amazed
Marc:That you'd figured this thing out.
Marc:Like, I never know what a writer's trajectory is.
Marc:And I don't know that I would have understood, you know, music journalists and that, you know, doing what you do is actually a good call and a good way to earn a living and also, you know, continue writing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, to do those type of ghostwriting things, I thought was pretty impressive.
Marc:So I probably just resented you because of your success.
Marc:Right.
Marc:No, exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But I remember you had hair.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you had a kind of little beard and wireframe glasses.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Not as bold as the glasses you have now.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The confidence you're exuding with your new frames.
Marc:That's exactly it.
Guest:What were your impressions?
Guest:So I remember going to that scene and you were like the...
Guest:Yeah, the sweaty.
Guest:You see yourself as sweaty, but I see yourself as kind of the master of that scene because you hosted the whole show.
Guest:Most of them.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:A lot of them, I guess I did.
Guest:And I remember after I did this story, I decided I got so into comedy seeing this, and you've talked about the show all the time, so I don't need to go over what it is, but...
Guest:So many incredible people were there.
Guest:What you were doing was so enjoyable.
Guest:I never liked stand-up comedy until I went to the Luna Lounge and saw those shows.
Guest:And I was covering music.
Guest:I went to the New York Times.
Guest:I said, we've got to cover comedy.
Guest:There are all these incredible, talented people.
Guest:And I got so obsessed that I did an article afterward where I went undercover six months to try and make it as a comic.
Guest:And I did one show at Luna, and that was kind of the highlight of it.
Guest:And I remember I was looking over my notes before I came here and I said, you know, I'm terrified because in one phrase, like Mark Maron could eviscerate me, you know, and that was my biggest fear was I said, I know I can do this.
Guest:I know I got it handled.
Guest:This is what you were going to Luna.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is what I was doing that one show.
Guest:I was worried in a phrase you would just.
Guest:Was I even there?
Guest:You were there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're hosting.
Guest:And I brought you up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that would have made me mad at you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:How'd you do?
Marc:I did fine.
Marc:Like I got, I got laughs.
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:I didn't bomb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, well, that's good.
Marc:I don't remember that article, though.
Guest:I'll get it to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I kind of went undercover and did the whole, because I realized it was just the hardest way to make it in any kind of form of entertainment is comedy, because you're used by the clubs who just use you to make money at pre-shows, and it was fascinating.
Marc:You had this quality, then, that you could kind of zealig a little bit, and you were willing to take some risks in sort of a gonzo fashion to get your story.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So let's go through, like, what did you learn from the Manson experience?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And, yeah, so from the Manson, I think he really taught me how to write in a lot of ways in the sense that it had to be interesting.
Guest:You didn't have to tell everything, just tell the interesting parts.
Guest:He was also a writer, so he would, of all the people I worked with, he would call me up and suggest phrases because you always think the ghostwriter wrote it all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he'd call me up and he's like, I just thought of this metaphor like the blades of grass squished brown by the wheels of lawn chair furniture.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I'd be like, okay, I'll get that in there.
Guest:Somewhere.
Guest:I'll put that in.
Marc:Thanks for your contribution.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:I'm trying to edit nine hours of Coke talk.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's pretty much it.
Guest:He had this section of the book called The Rules, which are the rules for cheating when it's not cheating doesn't count.
Guest:So he might call from Spain and say, well, here's a reason why it's not cheating.
Guest:It's not cheating if you have sex with her in another country, then you call your girlfriend and
Guest:in the States before, before the time zone has caught up.
Guest:Well, that's because that means it hasn't happened yet.
Guest:So it's okay.
Guest:Or he'd call from South America and say, if you have, if she has a tattoo of you on her, it's just common courtesy to have sex with her.
Guest:And is he still with the woman he was cheating on?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He's gone through many since then.
Marc:Well, that must have planted into your head, given the future that became you.
Marc:I imagine that once you took the shift from rock and roll into Jenna Jameson's wife, that must have had some impact on what became your future.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think all along I was trying to put myself in the way of sex so I could have some, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So with Motley Crue, I just thought if I can go on the road with Motley Crue, I'm going to finally get sex.
Marc:But you had no game.
Guest:No game.
Guest:And literally...
Guest:I mean, I really... I still can't imagine you having game.
Guest:Right, thank you.
Guest:But it's the guy who goes under the radar that does the best, but thank you.
Guest:I mean, if I came in and I looked like a guy who had game, that's probably the most unlikable guy you can imagine.
Guest:So I'd go backstage and there'd be a road case.
Guest:I'd get a stack of backstage passes during the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I kind of hand them out to women.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And just, and then they say thank you.
Guest:And then they go try to fuck the star.
Guest:Yeah, and I wouldn't figure out, so I couldn't figure out when am I supposed to, how does the sex happen for me?
Marc:Yeah, you were still a clown, weren't you?
Marc:Yeah, pretty much.
Marc:You were the guy that, you go find the hottest women, and he'd be like, hey, you want to come backstage?
Marc:And they're like, yeah, thank you, loser.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:But I didn't have, but also it's like, I didn't want to be the dick who's like, okay, if you get this, if you, you know.
Guest:Well, me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like that's.
Marc:You never did that.
Marc:i don't think i could ever do that could you no no no yeah i uh it just it's i can't no i you know i can't i wouldn't get there would be no pleasure and i wouldn't be able to get i would feel like such a shithead i i have a very hard time with uh like i i require somewhat of a you know a a slightly deeper connection than just you know using somebody to masturbate with or you know to you know complete objectification i'm not i have never been that good at it i need to feel like we're connecting somehow yeah that's a nice thing right
Marc:It is a nice thing, but that can be problematic, too, because if you need that and you find it, but then right afterwards, you're still sort of like, all right, well, I guess I'm done.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you've connected in that way with another person.
Marc:It doesn't necessarily mean it's lasting.
Marc:And I think the results could be worse if the emotions are felt.
Marc:And what do you mean by that?
Marc:The results can be worse if the emotions are felt?
Marc:Well, I mean, like...
Marc:like because there's a you know like i guess there are some guys that you would know better that that really just see the um the conquest and the sex and the moving through you know having the sex and then being done with it well if you put emotional connection in with that too which i think happens a lot of times anyways i've in my life i found it very rare where you can have a clean kind of like sexual experience that doesn't
Marc:carry some baggage afterwards.
Marc:Maybe you can find it with those people, but I know you've had some experience with swinging communities and whatnot, but in my experience, swingers are usually kind of just lumpy and game.
Marc:You know, just kind of like... Mine was different, but I'll fill you in later if you want.
Guest:Well, yeah, I'm sure you're... Lumpy and game.
Guest:That's the swinging handbook, lumpy and game.
Marc:But no, I just found that it's very hard for me to just completely sexualize.
Marc:And it becomes a little more confusing like that.
Guest:I'm totally going to ask an inappropriate question, which is I was thinking the eating issues, the steam issues, the anger, all those issues.
Guest:I thought, and I don't know if you've written about this or talked about it, I thought it must play out in your sex life in some way where you want some submission or dominant stuff.
Marc:Well, I don't like I'm still sort of like figuring some of that stuff out, like the sex issues, you know, in codependency and sort of love addiction.
Marc:And, you know, I've never I've I know compulsive sex addicts and I know porn addicts.
Marc:And, you know, I know guys that have, you know, I've dabbled in all that stuff, but it never made my life unmanageable, which is really the the the determining factors deciding that.
Marc:But I understand it.
Marc:So, yeah, sure.
Marc:If you have an addictive personality, it's going to find its way to whatever it is.
Marc:You know, it's going to have a preference.
Marc:But if you deny it that it'll find the other one.
Guest:But I was I was thinking more separate from the addiction stuff with you.
Guest:I'll ask it again.
Guest:But there may be maybe a dead end question.
Guest:I'm so curious, though, with, you know, there's a lot of that the shame that you have.
Guest:And then there's the anger.
Guest:And I feel like does that come on some odd way?
Marc:I don't know that I've explored it thoroughly.
Marc:There's parts of me that think, well, maybe I should explore that a little more.
Marc:But then there's a fear of that.
Marc:Well, then do I want to become that guy?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I'm okay with sex.
Marc:Could it be amazing if I did a little more, if I found somebody who was willing to get choked out or spank around a bit?
Marc:Maybe, but then it's a slippery slope, right?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I think it's not what you're doing, it's why you're doing it.
Marc:You know, if you are... No, but that's... You're backloading that.
Marc:Go ahead, tell me.
Marc:But I mean, when you're in it... Right.
Marc:That, you know, if you keep raising the stakes of fulfilling your desire and opening your mind... Right.
Marc:...or your experience, that you're eventually going to hit a wall if you have an addictive personality.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Yeah, it's like some people can...
Marc:have a drink or try a drug and it's fine other people it's going to be a slippery slope and they're going to go off the edge but let's go let's go back to well no we're going to get there so so okay so you're you're you're dweeby guy who is not thank you who's not great at talking to women right and now you've got to follow jenna jameson around
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, I thought if it didn't work with Motley Crue, it's definitely going to work with Janet Jameson.
Marc:You must have gotten something.
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:Not from her, but from someone.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I remember being in a limo and there are all these kind of other porn stars and they're all making out.
Guest:I'm just sitting there watching them.
Guest:I'm thinking, how do I get in on this?
Guest:Like, I didn't know how to get in on it.
Guest:I don't even know today how I, maybe I would, they were all just kind of making out.
Guest:I was like, oh, I don't want to get my male energy all over their female kind of makeout session.
Marc:You were like immediately codependent to the situation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They call it,
Guest:Pathological accommodation where you're like, so don't want to make anyone else uncomfortable.
Guest:So you just put yourself in the backseat.
Guest:Just disappear.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You're invisible guy.
Guest:Yeah, which is the recipe for being a journalist, right?
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:But what was your experience in the porn life?
Marc:What did you find out about porn?
Guest:You know, so first of all, it was fascinating because, again, this is not a surprise, but they'd get together and talk and they would all have, you know, just so many abuse stories.
Guest:And I know it's the cliche and people try to pretend like it's not.
Guest:But, for example, Jenna Jamison would do interviews.
Guest:It would do Howard Stern.
Guest:He'd say, you must have had some kind of abuse in your background.
Guest:She'd say, no, never.
Guest:But, of course, when we talked, she did.
Guest:She just wanted to be that cliche.
Guest:So that was really a common story.
Marc:So publicly, a lot of them would not cop to it, but privately it was there.
Guest:Yeah, because they didn't want to be that cliche.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And and and well, they didn't want to be there's something about the image of the the sexual the sexual object, which is their job as not necessarily of having some power and not being a victim.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Publicly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I suppose, you know, I suppose it would ruin the fantasy for guys if they.
Guest:Some guys.
Guest:If you thought about that.
Guest:Yeah, that's probably true.
Guest:And the funny thing, too, again, it was kind of like she was the number one porn star that time.
Guest:So I'd walk around at the airport.
Guest:I think, man, all these guys have probably masturbated.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:It's fascinating.
Marc:I one time went up to a porn star.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And like, I didn't know quite how to do it.
Marc:I don't remember which one it was, but it was before Jenna.
Marc:It was early on.
Marc:When I would watch it, you know, I was never a guy who rented porn.
Marc:So like, you know, I'd see clips and this and that or give, you know, get these DVDs or whatever.
Marc:But there was one that I forget her fucking name, but I saw her at the airport, you know, with her husband who was also in it or her guardian or whatever.
Guest:They call them suitcase pimps.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I, you know, I had to say something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And all I came up with was like, hey, I really like your work.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which is just saying like- I masturbated to you last night.
Guest:Yeah, a lot.
Guest:A lot.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You can't say like, God, when you take it in your mouth and then put it, you know, you can't like go into detail.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I guess you could because they certainly feel that stuff all the time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it's funny because one of the most surreal experiences in my life was sitting with her and she was showing the movie and forwarding past the sex to show me the acting.
Guest:No.
Guest:Swear to God.
Guest:Was she proud of it?
Guest:Yeah, she was proud of it.
Guest:She thought it was really good.
Guest:It was like really a sweet thing.
Marc:Was it good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, was it good?
Guest:Good enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I got, I get, when I do the books, I really immerse myself, you know, with Mance and I like, whatever, playing on one of his albums with her.
Guest:I decided they wanted me to write a porn script for her.
Guest:So I based it on Ambrose Beer short story, which nobody's going to know who watched it.
Guest:But it won the AVN for best video or best whatever it is.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, so I felt like- Did you get one?
Guest:No, it would have been awesome though, right?
Marc:They don't give writers awards for- They didn't give it to the writers.
Guest:No, but I always knew I had a backup career.
Marc:Of course you did.
Marc:A lot of dudes do that.
Marc:Michael Bloomfield, the amazing guitar player, was strung out on heroin and he used to do Mitchell Brothers soundtracks.
Guest:Did Jerry Stahl do that stuff too or-
Marc:I'm sure he did.
Marc:Did he script pornos?
Marc:I don't know if he did.
Marc:I'll ask him.
Marc:We could call him later.
Marc:I mean, he's done just about everything.
Marc:It's safe to assume that that was probably part of his story.
Marc:All right, so here was the big shocker.
Marc:So when the game comes, I had it.
Marc:I was looking for it.
Marc:I don't know what happened to it.
Marc:But what I had heard was, I saw the book, and I got what it was, and I was like, all right, Neil's doing another investigative thing.
Marc:But then I started hearing bits and pieces of like, no, no, he's out there speaking.
Marc:He runs workshops.
Marc:I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, Neil Strauss?
Marc:Neil Strauss.
Marc:And they're like, yeah, yeah, he's like this guy, like this pussy magnet, this pickup artist.
Marc:He's running these workshops, and he lives in a mansion in Malibu, and there's women all around.
Marc:I'm like, whoa, wait.
Marc:Wait.
Guest:this is saint neil strauss did that happen yeah but i but see you see it like i see it you know i'll do like a new show and they'll be like and here's the biggest douchebag in the world who who just wrote the manual for men with no but you see how i see it which is i was just a nerdy right writer dude who somehow went immersive in this community wrote a book about it and then uh
Guest:And again, I really got into it in the book.
Guest:I wasn't just sort of detached.
Guest:Well, of course you did because this was like what you've been waiting for.
Guest:It's what I've been waiting.
Guest:It's what basically like Motley Crue couldn't do it.
Guest:Jenna Jabison couldn't do it.
Guest:But he's kind of nerdy, weirdly dressed guys somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Somehow did it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were, I imagine, revered and demonized.
Guest:Yeah, it was a weird... Yeah, it's a weird... I still don't... I still don't... Even 10 years... So I just got a call from Nightline.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they want to do a piece on... They're like, we want to write about this pickup workshop and then talk to you.
Guest:I'm like, no, this book's 10 years old.
Guest:I don't even want to talk about it.
Guest:It's just... It doesn't go away.
Marc:Well, what happened?
Marc:Like, you know, walk me through it.
Marc:Like, you know, not assuming I read the book or didn't read the book.
Marc:Walk me through it like a slaw pitch.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:My name is Neil Strauss and I'm a sex and love addict.
Yeah.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:What was it like?
Guest:What happened?
Guest:And what's it like now, Neil?
Guest:The funny thing, at my first meeting, there was a woman there I thought was kind of attractive.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:So I don't want to say I was a sex addict because it might ruin my chances with her.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:You're not alone with that.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So what happened was...
Guest:The book editor I did The Motley Crue book with called me up and he said, hey, I found out about that there's this community of guys online.
Guest:They don't have money, looks, or fame.
Guest:And they're exchanging this knowledge on how to meet, attract, seduce women.
Guest:And they've got it kind of figured out to a science.
Guest:And he's like, I want you to take their information and put it into a how-to book for me.
Guest:And I said, listen, I write for The New York Times.
Guest:I'm a serious writer.
Guest:That's not something I'm interested in.
Guest:But can you give me the URL?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I sort of started reading this stuff, and there were all these posts with guys with weird names of Mystery and Form Handle and Kandor, all these weird names, but they would describe blow by blow everything they did, and I'm like, oh my God, this is it.
Guest:Because when I was writing for the New York Times, I'd go to these shows, concerts, you go to every concert, and I'd try and meet these women, and I'd have tickets to the next school concert, and they'd come with me, and I'd just always end up in friend zone no matter what I do.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So I felt like these guys had the secret to finally...
Marc:Yeah, you were going to get some.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you hadn't had a girlfriend or anything?
Guest:No, what it would do, if I slept with someone, I would make them, try my best to make them my girlfriend so that I could keep, stay with somebody for a few years and not be so lonely.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Maybe like a couple years, you know, a few years dry spell between that.
Marc:So you go into this and you see these guys got the answers.
Marc:So you pitch a piece where you're a book where you're going to be among them.
Guest:No, no, I didn't dare tell anyone that I was into it.
Marc:So, so this is your highbrow, man.
Marc:You're New York.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And so what I did was I found out that one of this guy, the guy named mystery was doing his first workshop and a workshop is he meets you out in quote the field in a club or a bar and he shows you how to approach women then has you do it.
Guest:How many guys are involved in this?
Guest:You mean how many guys?
Marc:Like when you go to a workshop, is it like there's 20 guys sitting at the end of a bar while this one guy goes watch?
Marc:It was like six guys.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But some of them now are like 20 guys.
Guest:So the whole thing's insanely weird.
Guest:So it was $600 or $500, I forget which.
Guest:I put the money in an envelope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Terrified to meet this guy and terrified that anyone will find out I work for the New York Times.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I remember we were at the, I guess the Standard was the cool place then, the bar there.
Guest:And Scott Baio was there with this beautiful woman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he walked in, started doing magic tricks.
Guest:And next thing I know, Scott Baio turns to me and goes, is this a magic trick or is he stealing my girlfriend?
Guest:I'm like, whoa, this is amazing.
Guest:This guy can walk.
Guest:Just anyone who could talk to him was my hero.
Guest:And this guy's walking in, stealing a celebrity's girlfriend.
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:that was it I was done it was like who was like that first hit of crack mystery was the coke did nothing for me but watching mystery do this thing was my coke was he he was the one doing magic he was doing magic tricks so that was his way in he's like look at what okay yeah but he doesn't like look what I can do he'll be talking like oh that's kind of interesting you know it's kind of like this and he would do it in a way that wasn't braggy or show off right right and you know but he knew magic yeah and he'd make them beg yeah sort of like you know oh I oh okay if you insist kind of yeah right
Guest:so magic whiskey is kind of way in or swayed it to sort of like upstage everybody uh-huh and uh and did he get his ass kicked by scott bea no no he didn't he got the he got the woman's phone number and now and that was it okay yeah guys see what just happened right that's what and you were like do i need to learn magic i did learn magic i could probably do table magic as a background i can read minds make things levitate all that
Guest:Really?
Guest:Really.
Guest:And you were hooked.
Guest:Like my reality was blown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then what happens?
Guest:So then I just tried to start to hang around him as much as I could.
Guest:And eventually he's like, oh, I need a wing for my workshops.
Guest:It's so weird, man.
Guest:It's so surreal, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Surreal.
Guest:So he's like, I need a wing for my workshops.
Guest:I'm like, oh, I want to do that just to learn what you're doing.
Marc:Is he an attractive guy, this guy?
Guest:It depends on how you see him.
Guest:He's tall.
Guest:He's like six feet tall.
Guest:But it's funny that we go to looks.
Guest:I don't think it has anything to do with looks.
Guest:No, no, of course not.
Guest:But some people find him attractive.
Marc:But would you classify him as a guy who was once like you?
Marc:Is this like the back of a comic book?
Marc:Is it like Charles Atlas kicks in in your face?
Guest:Oh, you know, he's super nerdy.
Guest:Like, if he's not going out and putting on the whole show, it's sort of like long, greasy hair in a ponytail, computer nerd guy.
Guest:Right, okay.
Guest:But then you go out and, you know, really dress up and act all unconfident and become that other guy.
Marc:Okay, okay.
Guest:That was an illusion.
Guest:Okay, so he asked you to be his wingman.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's so immature.
Guest:I mean, again, like, I got so caught up in it, it's ridiculous to talk about it.
Guest:Why, do you feel ashamed of it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I mean, it's embarrassing, right?
Guest:My biggest opportunity in life was not when John Perales of the New York Times called me and said, will you write for us?
Guest:It was when mystery asked me to be his wingman.
Guest:But obviously it spoke to some deep need inside me to finally really get acceptance.
Marc:Well, there's nothing like getting sex is exciting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it means a lot.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you for validating that.
Guest:And so then we started traveling around the world doing workshops and eventually I started to get good at it.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I found all the other guys who I read about in that community and kind of befriended them all and learned their different tips and tricks.
Guest:And I think the surreal thing happened was about maybe like a year and a half or two years into it, they did a survey in this weird world of pickup artists of the top pickup artists.
Guest:And I was number one and Mystery was number two.
Guest:The student has surpassed the master.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It's such a weird book.
Marc:It's such a fascinating, bizarre story.
Marc:So Grasshopper was going to go out to the West on his own now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then at some point before this, I'd realized this community is so insane.
Guest:I got to write about this and it's got to be a book.
Marc:And you pitched the book?
Marc:Or you wrote it on spec?
Guest:No, my publisher, this woman, Judith Regan, who's fantastic.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, I think I know who she is.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:She's like the Medici of publishers.
Guest:So I would just sit with her, I was telling her about it, and I told her book, she's like, let's do it.
Guest:She's the kind of person who goes off her intuition, no pitch.
Guest:She just said, that's cool, let's do it, and that was it.
Marc:And she had done your other books?
Marc:She'd done my other books, yeah.
Marc:So she knows you can sell books.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:She knew I could write it, but I'd never done one on my own before.
Marc:Now, so this book was sort of a half memoir, half investigative journalism.
Marc:The game was.
Marc:But you were in over your head.
Guest:There's a little kind of a Donnie Brasco element to it where I didn't know my journalist or my mafia.
Guest:I love that movie.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:It's like, I think it's an unsung movie.
Marc:I think it's a great movie.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you're in and now you're the number one guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And now how much are you getting laid?
Guest:Um...
Guest:I mean, I remember like it was my birthday and I said, oh, I know to brag about it is unseemly.
Marc:No, you can.
Marc:Maybe not frame it as bragging, but like at my lowest.
Guest:There we go.
Guest:That's a humble brag, right?
Guest:At my lowest.
Guest:No, I mean, I think...
Guest:I think it was such that you would sort of decide each night, am I going to kind of call someone over or go out with someone I've met?
Guest:Or am I going to go out and kind of meet new people?
Guest:Or it was weird.
Guest:It was like a skill set you would work on.
Guest:It's like, it wasn't enough to have sex.
Guest:It was like, okay, how can I kind of turn getting a threesome into a science?
Guest:And how can I, you would work through all the stuff.
Guest:At this point, we're all living together in a house too.
Guest:We were all living together a house.
Guest:I just did an article for Rolling Stone and Courtney Love.
Guest:She moved into the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So we had a house with maybe six pickup artists and Courtney Love.
Guest:What?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it sounds like a reality show, like a reality show.
Guest:And what was she doing?
Guest:I think she was having money issues and hiding from paparazzi, and she lived with us.
Guest:And so these guys would be in the living room doing a pickup workshop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Courtney Love would come careening through topless.
Guest:And for some guys, that was their first sight of a female breast.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, so those were the kind of guys that were coming.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Just like sad, desperate men who were lonely and wanted to know what that trick was.
Guest:It was a mix of a lot of guys who just came out of divorces.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And felt like just- Bitter, angry, brokenhearted guys.
Marc:For example.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Broke, probably.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Spending their last $600-
Marc:Speaking from experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some were guys who were really good looking, cool guys, but they didn't know it inside.
Guest:They didn't have that esteem.
Guest:Other guys, a lot of people who were over as exchange students from somewhere else and just felt out of place in the culture.
Guest:So a lot of guys like that.
Marc:But did you get the sense that any of them were really looking for relationships or they were just looking to... I mean, I guess that's where it got sort of blurry for you is that you somehow annihilated your ability or your capacity on top of whatever psychological issues that you come to grips with in this new book, The Truth.
Marc:You sort of annihilated the ability to have any sense of what that would be.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, I think when you're in it, no one was like, nobody just wanted to have sex with women for the rest of their lives.
Guest:Very few people.
Guest:People wanted to have a relationship.
Guest:They wanted to be able to pick the person and choose the person.
Guest:Nobody was like, we want to be pickup artists and just have one night stand.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That was a rare breed of person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even when I was doing it, I was like, I just want when I really meet someone, I'm really attracted to them to be able to not blow it.
Guest:So it was never like, I'm not going to have a relationship.
Marc:But wait, there's a big leap between that, you know, saying when I meet the one that I want, that I'm not going to blow it.
Marc:And like, what's the craft of threesomes?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yes, yes, exactly.
Guest:It was like, I want to do that, but a little bit later because I'm having fun right now.
Guest:But the big divide was like a divide existed in your mind between men and women.
Guest:So the real problems with it were objectification, obviously, and manipulation.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:So in other words, if I saw a woman, their word was sarging.
Guest:So sarging is their word.
Guest:They had their own language.
Guest:So if I saw a woman, I would have to sarge.
Guest:I could be in a business meeting and I would perform it all for her.
Guest:What does it mean?
Guest:Sarging was like going out to pick up or seduce.
Guest:The approach, the first step.
Guest:Um, no, I think Sarge was just the, the, the, uh, the whole going out to the whole thing with Sarge.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:The, I guess, seduction process.
Marc:You're going out to Sarge.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So you, you, you at some point realized in the midst of all this living in a house full of guys figuring out how to get women.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Uh, that, that you might not be respecting women.
Marc:Right.
Guest:How long did that take you?
Guest:It took me longer.
Guest:The funny thing about writing a book is you read it and you realize pretty early on.
Guest:But for sure, it all combusted, even within the book.
Guest:All these fake alpha males, because you're trying to be an alpha male, and it's nothing worse than anyone who...
Guest:sees the world as alpha and beta male.
Guest:So all these fake alpha males living in a house started fighting with each other.
Guest:One guy slept with some other guy's ex and that guy tried to kill him.
Guest:A mystery.
Guest:The book begins with mystery trying to commit suicide over a woman.
Guest:So the whole thing became just the immaturity of it.
Marc:Sounds like you guys underestimated the power of women.
Yeah.
Guest:I think we underestimated.
Guest:Your own vulnerability.
Guest:Yeah, your own vulnerability.
Guest:And that somehow you're going to somehow become a better person through whatever.
Marc:Was it really a better person or just a winning person in the eyes of what masculinity has been defined as?
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:It's a nuanced world, and that's exactly what it is, and that's exactly the problem with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, so what did your bottom look like?
Guest:Oh, I think the bottom for me was...
Guest:uh was just living in that house all the guys fighting each other one guy trying to commit suicide i met somebody actually was in courtney love's band who i really had this really had this huge crush on yeah and uh and i had to sort of get real to have a real relationship with her and she was like she said the wisest words which we like you were even though mark baron doesn't think so she was like you're cool all along you didn't need these guys to show you anything you
Marc:No, I have no issue with you.
Marc:I'm just judging you in the context of how you saw yourself in a way.
Marc:It's so true.
Marc:And the weird thing is, yeah, I bust your balls a little bit, but you and I are more alike than we are different.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because I, you know, I sort of process through a lot of this stuff in terms of, you know, what, you know, I did a bit on it in my last special about what kind of man am I really, you know, because, you know, you judge yourself against what you think are alpha guys.
Marc:And, you know, you're insecure in certain ways.
Marc:And even if you do find somebody that loves you for who you are, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to make you feel better about yourself.
Marc:It could be the worst thing in the world because then you're sort of like, you know, I don't like me.
Marc:How can you like me?
Marc:And then you fucking implode that thing.
Guest:And people are attached to their own low opinion of themselves.
Guest:If something rocks that, for some reason, they want to hold on to that reality.
Marc:For some reason, it's who you are.
Marc:For whatever reason, it's the most consistent disposition you know.
Marc:And it happened a long time ago because of some emotional deprivation that was done on behalf of your parents.
Guest:And that's exactly what, with the retrospect now, that I realized what the game was, was just... If the game was me...
Guest:overbearing, dominant, neurotic mom having a total fear of women and feeling like I needed to have some sort of power or control over the situation.
Guest:So it had nothing even to do with sex.
Guest:It was just about self-esteem and fear.
Marc:But sex is good.
Marc:The truth of the matter is, no matter what your psychological issues are, when you do get to have sex, there's still very little difference between that immediate experience when it's happening from...
Marc:however old you are now to when you were 13 i mean the stakes might be higher it might be weirder than you might have thought it might not be the best situation but that moment where you're like i'm having sex that's pretty constant right i mean like that's what shooting up heroin yeah right so the moment that's fine in the very moment when the needle enters your arm and you feel the rush go to your heart that feels good
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But I guess that's true.
Marc:And I sort of stepped out of the addiction model is that, you know, it can you you it does eventually stop working.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And oh, good.
Marc:And you hate yourself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if you're just having sex, it's pleasurable and it's nice and it feels good and you enjoy people.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:But if you're doing it to fill some hole, that's it.
Guest:It's if you're doing it to you're doing to fill some hole inside or just because you like it.
Marc:right yeah you know i don't you know it's weird i you know i i don't know ultimately how clear i am on all this stuff because like i still deal with this stuff all the time i'm in a relationship now and i've not i've not been able to sustain a relationship i don't have children i've definitely had you know sexual issues and emotional issues uh for my entire life it's the one part of my life which is you know still tricky and difficult even with self-awareness and some practical work
Marc:But it really does come down to cognitive behavior, cognitive choices after a certain point.
Marc:Do you want to talk about what I learned?
Marc:Because that's what I'm most excited about.
Marc:I'm here to talk about it.
Marc:But what I want to make sure everyone understands is that the game sold millions of books.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It propelled you reluctantly into a career that you probably didn't see that you were going to have.
Marc:It characterized you culturally in a very specific way that some people might find hucksterish, other people might find obnoxious, but there was enough men out there that thought you were a portal to some wizardry necessary to them that it validated you.
Marc:And so in retrospect, even though we have the truth here, the new book,
Marc:You know, you did make a deal with the devil.
Guest:Well, I'll tell you the way I kind of see it.
Guest:But go ahead.
Marc:No, but I mean, like, and now, you know, you know, you're negotiating your way out through personal enlightenment.
Guest:That's not the way I see it, but I see that narrative.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And maybe it is right.
Guest:I'll think it through.
Guest:So here's the way I kind of see it.
Guest:But it was weird.
Guest:So when the game came out, I just thought, it's just a weird, it's a book I wrote about, like any other book.
Guest:And I remember my phone started ringing that day with guys calling like, hey, there's this one girl I met.
Guest:Can you help me?
Guest:Literally the day it came out.
Marc:Guys you know?
Guest:Guys I didn't know.
Guest:They looked at my number.
Guest:I was listed there.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And that's the moment I got my number unlisted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, I kind of kept, I did the book tour.
Guest:I was ready to do the next book.
Guest:What was the next book?
Guest:The next book was, I'm trying to remember.
Guest:So you were out?
Guest:Oh, I was going to do a graphic novel with this Bernard Chang illustrator.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was out and then these guys came up to me and they said, hey, you should.
Guest:And I didn't really even have a website, no website address.
Guest:And these guys came up to me and they said you should.
Guest:And they were marketers and like you should do this teaching thing.
Marc:Make the manual.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was really reluctant to made him jump through a bunch of hoops and said, it's not what I did.
Guest:And eventually I let them kind of take over and did it.
Guest:oh right that's uh so it wasn't your fault at all it wasn't my fault no no but i remember like i remember like i remember the day like it sold out in half an hour the manual the game what was it called the game no no rules the rules of the game rules the game was like my public it's weird my publisher said let's do this how-to thing yeah and i said only do i'm a storyteller it's weird i've just totally resisted it's i've almost compartmentalized that side of my life yeah you have you have uh compartmentalized the actual faustian deal yes but i
Guest:So I felt like I said, I'll do this how-to book.
Guest:Half of it can be stories.
Guest:The other half will be how-to book.
Guest:What I think is nice.
Guest:Go ahead, tell me.
Guest:Show me my own hypocrisy.
Guest:Throw it in my face.
Guest:It's not hypocrisy.
Marc:Yeah, go ahead.
Marc:It was how you can live with yourself.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's not hypocrisy.
Guest:Explain it.
Marc:I can't explain it, but what I'm hearing is like, it's not really what I do, but if we can integrate a little bit of what I do into your agenda as well and make a little cash, let's do that.
Marc:But I don't want to sell out completely.
Marc:Let me tell some stories because I'm a writer.
Yeah.
Guest:it's like the best interview ever oh man it's really that that's i've been outside the cash because i don't think like that i you don't do a book for i don't know it's probably all right i don't fucking know well no no you're so but you're so right it totally you like you trick yourself into doing these things yeah you i mean that's how selling out works for people with integrity but you have to
Marc:But, you know, whether or not you saw the profit end of it anyways, like when you are, and I've said this before, I mean, you don't really make big money until you make someone else big money.
Marc:And you were in that position.
Marc:Like your publisher, you know, knew, they all knew, you know, the marketers and the publisher, they knew it was like almost like a guarantee.
Marc:Right.
Guest:No, you're so right.
Guest:I mean, it really is a forking path.
Guest:I think about it all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you're so right.
Guest:There's a book called Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this guy has a choice between becoming a total hack and being an artist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He chooses the hack road because of his mother issues and the pressures of the time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I always think of that as a forking path.
Guest:And I've tried to keep one foot on both sides of the forking path, but now it's getting too wide that I can't straddle them anymore.
Marc:And that's where it was when you did the rules of the game.
Marc:And that's when, after that.
Guest:It's kind of where it is now in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just feel like I tried to like, okay, I'll do this stuff, but I'm still a serious writer and journalist.
Guest:I'm still writing for Rolling Stone.
Guest:It doesn't count that I do this.
Marc:So this book, this new book, the truth is, is, is this is your, this is your redemption.
Guest:I don't think of it that way.
Guest:I hate to think of it that way.
Guest:Cause I don't think it, tell me how you see it.
Guest:Maybe you're right.
Guest:Maybe you have a better perspective.
Marc:No, I don't have any perspective, but, but you, you know, you had a, a, a cathartic,
Marc:existential crisis of self around where you were in the world and also you hit a personal wall and bottom where you realized that you were empty and your integrity had been drained from this fucking thing that the sex addiction and the publishing industry and your requirements and what was required of you and this is your sort of like I have to redeem myself for myself
Guest:Yes, I got to tell you, this is the best narrative because I'm outside myself.
Guest:You see it better, but there's a press narrative that's totally not true.
Guest:I really want to listen back to this because you understand this book better than I am.
Marc:No, because when you are consumed, and not necessarily greed, but when you're consumed in something that is as powerful as
Marc:sex addiction, and it's your bread and butter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, because when I was in rehab, they said everyone was adding up what their sex addiction has cost them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they're like, it cost me a home.
Guest:And you're like, it got me my home.
Guest:Yeah, it was exactly it.
Guest:They're like, I spent a quarter million dollars on prostitutes.
Guest:I'm like, I made a quarter million dollars off this
Marc:You are not the sympathetic case at the sex addiction meeting.
Marc:I'll tell you, man, if it weren't for my sex addiction, I would not have my house or my car or the opportunities that I have in life.
Marc:I'm in such a bad place, you guys.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:All right, so, okay, so the rules of the game come out, and now you're overwhelmed, I would imagine, with that type of notoriety, and I imagine it's quite conflicting and also painful, I would assume.
Guest:yeah and yeah it's yeah it's weird i sort of became yeah i would read about myself in the media and be like is that i sort of became a i just feel like the game and what was your mother saying uh my oh my mother my mother was cool with everything until i went to sex addiction rehab to get better then she had a problem with stuff oh really because like you know what you lost control i don't understand no uh
Guest:yeah okay let's oh because then you were identified as a sex addict i think it's she she really said like so people have affairs big deal like no but like you know nothing's wrong with you uh this book this book the last one i think she has no problem with me having casual sex the whole problem was she didn't want me having relationships so the whole if you go back she didn't know that she didn't know that right but she wanted her relationship with me to be the primary one in my life this is what you learned uh through your recovery right
Guest:okay so what happened recovery sounds like i hate okay this is what happened no no recovery is fine but it's got so many recovery is a fine word well no well let's let's uh unload it from uh from what it means in the context of um psychological treatment yeah i'll tell you the way the way i see it is when i found out like what are what's all the like what's all the programming that i'm operating on and how can i change that program yeah how
Marc:What essentially was it in your childhood that created the emotional deprivation that made you seek self-completion through these various ways that were dangerous?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Great way to say it.
Marc:Good.
Marc:So what did happen?
Marc:You met the girl from Hole, or from her new band.
Guest:And then we had a relationship, but of course, in my mind, she was turning into my mom, so I had to break up with her.
Guest:But in reality, I was probably just making her.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:She might do one thing that reminds me of my mom.
Marc:Have you read The Fantasy Bond?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Firestone.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Great book.
Marc:So when you say turning into or whether you projected it or not, because you end up in that same relationship every time, one way or the other.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Because whatever you have that interfaces with what they have is exactly what you grew up with or what drives you into the pathological self-parenting that creates the self-loathing.
Guest:Yeah, there's a line in the book that says when it's love at first sight, run in the other direction.
Guest:You know, all that's happened is your child, your wounds have met their wounds.
Guest:Yeah, trauma bonding.
Marc:Yeah, trauma bonding.
Marc:What were those attributes?
Marc:In terms of identifying the emotional manipulation of your mother, what was it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'll never forget, like, there's that moment where life changed and maybe the equivalent of Mystery picking up Scott Baio's girlfriend, which again is the most pathetic epiphany in the world, is I was sort of, right?
Guest:That was the moment my life changed when Mystery picked up Scott Baio's girlfriend.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh boy, you're going to tell your grandkids that.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So I was sort of in, I was being really, by the way, I was really cynical about the whole rehab sex addiction thing.
Guest:When I checked in, they said anyone who masturbates is a sex addict.
Guest:Anyone who watches porn is a sex addict.
Guest:There are some groups, not this one, that say anyone who has premarital sex is a sex addict.
Guest:So basically everyone listening would be a sex addict by someone's definition.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, culturally, it's actually this very weird and unspoken malignancy that the access to pornography is completely annihilating millions of people's ability to maintain intimacy.
Marc:I believe that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You?
Yeah.
Guest:I think that there's sort of the swing states of compulsion that like, if you already have that compulsion, it's really easy to dive into it.
Marc:Right, but that's what I mean, just access.
Marc:It was better when you had to go to the gross store.
Guest:Right, but you would still mastermate just as much of that one magazine.
Guest:That's fine, but still, that seems better.
Guest:And the variety, I mean, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Versus channel flipping between 50 women for one orgasm.
Guest:It's insane.
Guest:It's fucking nuts, dude.
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot of writing.
Marc:I mean, it really must rewire your brain.
Marc:Oh, yeah, you know, yeah, I mean, I track my entire perception of sex to seeing porn too young, and it fucking hobbled me, man.
Marc:What did you see that did that?
Marc:When I was, like, 14, we found a Betamax of Deep Throat in the opening of Misty Beethoven.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then when I was 15, we actually had fake IDs and went to porn theaters, but...
Marc:The assumption at that age, especially for a socially awkward, sexually awkward kid that I was, was that that's the way it's done.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And anything below that or that doesn't happen that way is not good sex.
Marc:So, you know, I was fucked from the get go.
Guest:Yeah, because they call it that's your attraction template.
Guest:Like it sets a template in your mind for what sex is supposed to be.
Guest:Your first experience molds you.
Guest:It creates those neural connections that don't exist.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you do a lot of research.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's fascinating.
Marc:And it's all in the truth.
Marc:You went scientific.
Marc:You went spiritual.
Marc:You went cognitive.
Marc:You went straight up psychological.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And entered all these alternative communities of alternative relationships.
Guest:So the moment that my life kind of changed was I was sitting there really being cynical about this with what I thought was this kind of castrating therapist who didn't want men to have any sex at all.
Marc:You projected that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And she started, you do something called a timeline, which is all the high points, all the big moments of your life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she looked at it and she saw...
Guest:this pattern, and she said, you know why you can't be in a relationship?
Guest:I'm like, no.
Guest:And she goes, because your mom wants to be in a relationship with you.
Guest:And I just felt this cold wind blue, and it seemed so preposterous, yet something in me just sort of recognized this.
Guest:The queasiness.
Guest:Yeah, and then she goes, and there's a name for this, and it's called emotional incest.
Guest:And I was like, what the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Keep talking.
Guest:You're helping me.
Guest:So, so, and the idea of this, of emotional incest is this, is that when your parents, when your need, your years exist to, uh, to serve your parents' needs versus your parents serving your needs.
Guest:i had the same childhood i i knew that i mean i knew that because i looked at i had an emotionally absent dad yeah like yours right and then a mom who's overplayed by her problems to take care of mine yeah so it's that one clue of it is where you grow up feeling sorry for a parent right did you what i felt was um uh a loyalty yes that was unnatural yeah and
Guest:A loyalty to their emotional states.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So their emotional needs come before yours.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And what happens... They use you.
Guest:Yeah, and you're used.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you just don't realize it because it seems normal.
Guest:In fact, the sort of...
Guest:the thing about it is where if someone's, where, where something's sort of physical abuse or yelling at someone or criticizing, well, we know that makes us feel bad.
Marc:You can identify it.
Marc:It's like the difference, it's like, you know, like alcoholics, when you don't drink, you're not, you're not, you know, that you're, that's almost of the problem.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when it's vague, what was your, be sexual?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:Did they hit you?
Marc:No.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's actually more insidious.
Guest:And it's empowering because when your daddy's little girl or mommy's little man, you know, or you're kind of emotionally smarter than them, you feel empowered.
Guest:So it feels good.
Guest:So you don't even recognize it as abuse.
Marc:But you end up with no sense of self.
Guest:No sense of self.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:And in fact, myself, Robert Greene, who wrote The Art of Seduction, you know, Tucker Max, who's kind of the, you know, frat boy writer guy.
Guest:We all had kind of, you know, depressed or narcissistic moms and didn't have that sense of self.
Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I've been very aware of the project of completing myself.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I it wasn't until I read Firestone within the last year that, you know, that because of something my therapist passively mentioned about the fantasy bond that I was not able to to that one piece that I got from Firestone that blew my mind is that.
Marc:there's no one, if you're uncomfortable because of your parents' emotional abuse, you don't know as a kid, you know, you assume your parents are good.
Marc:So there's no one to blame but yourself.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that happens at a very young age.
Marc:So your attempt to self-parent is really, is self-loathing.
Guest:Yeah, and there's another great book called Silently Seduced.
Guest:I don't know if you've read it.
Guest:I forget the name of the author, but Silently Seduced is the book.
Guest:He talks about how what happens in relationships, and tell me if this is true for you, is you'll start taking care of their needs.
Guest:You get your worth and value by taking care of their needs, but it's never enough, and you start to build up resentment, and that resentment starts to poison the relationship, so you stay with them out of a sense of duty while this resentment piles up, and eventually it all goes wrong.
Marc:Right, well, no, that's happened.
Marc:That codependent piece of me, like I didn't identify completely until pretty recently, until I was engaged to somebody and it blew up, and that was that relationship.
Marc:But before that, I was sort of the other side.
Marc:I was this sort of emotionally volatile, kind of problematic person, constantly in a state of contrition.
Marc:And then I sort of learned to shut my mouth, and then I became dramatically, like I tried to nurture a very insane relationship.
Marc:almost blindly thinking that the other person would change.
Marc:And that was a big wake-up call.
Guest:Yeah, because maybe there's this idea, if I can change, I can heal my childhood wounds.
Guest:If I change her, it's like I fix my mom and she's okay.
Marc:Yeah, well, you're not thinking that way.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Subconsciously, unconsciously.
Guest:I guess that's right, yeah.
Guest:But so the most freeing thing was for me to realize, like,
Guest:what's the best yeah that was kind of running these unconscious patterns over and over and over again and if i could but by the way recognizing was not enough like once i recognized him like i still blew it for like years uh until i finally said okay i gotta take like the stuff that's wrong with me and think of it like a cancer and just like attack it with every you know therapy possible and also like i don't know if you do talk therapy is that mostly what you do um i find the talk therapy
Guest:like the information didn't come in rationally through your mind.
Guest:It came in emotionally through your feelings.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:It's hard to talk about that stuff, isn't it?
Guest:Is it hard to talk about that?
Guest:Because I feel so passionate about it, but I don't, I find that it's hard to explain that deep.
Marc:I think we're, I don't, I, I'm not having a hard time understanding you.
Guest:And, and in, I'm just thinking for someone listening, they're like, okay, get over this therapy shit and tell us about the other stuff.
Marc:Don't, don't, you don't assume.
Marc:You still have that weird accommodating thing.
Marc:I might want to work on that a little more.
Marc:Great man.
Right on.
Yeah.
Marc:But no, because a lot of this work I've been reluctant to do.
Marc:And it's still fairly intellectual for me right now.
Marc:Because what?
Marc:Yeah, the intellectual, yeah, and look.
Marc:I guess because I've learned to live with pain.
Marc:And I see it as sort of ground zero for me.
Marc:And as a comic and as somebody who is emotionally insulated a bit, except when I'm talking to strangers or people that I know are going to leave in 20 minutes like you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:that my capacity to stay open and to not live in those childhood fears that are not real anymore is muted.
Marc:And I think that one of the reasons I haven't done the type of almost life-saving work that you felt you had to do was because of a different type of fear that there is a deeply wired comfort and discomfort for me.
Guest:Yeah, I understand that fear.
Guest:And I think I had that too, that I would somehow lose something instead of gaining something.
Guest:But I think you've got to do it because something has to change or something has to crack and you've got to take yourself outside your comfort zone.
Guest:And the other thing is if you look at the way you're raised, dad was emotionally distant, right?
Guest:And volatile.
Guest:And volatile.
Guest:So you're kind of walking on eggshells, there's no connection.
Guest:Mom was kind of consumed with her own stuff and her love was kind of conditional in a way.
Marc:And there was a lot of, yeah, it was conditional, but it was more based on their own fears.
Marc:There was a lot of worry on behalf of both of them that what they saw as love was a sort of panic.
Marc:You were almost like an appendage and not a separate person.
Marc:You were like this, in moments of panic, you were just part of them that they were like, I've gotta deal with that.
Marc:My mother had eating disorders, so her panic was mostly around my being fat.
Guest:And so what it wires you is to, A, have no idea what intimacy is.
Marc:None.
Marc:And the inability to give or receive love.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so this makes sense.
Guest:I can connect.
Guest:This is the game to you, which is I can connect with people, but in this position of power, we're in my garage, I'm controlling the conversation, you're going to leave later.
Guest:So this almost is probably why you're so good at it, because this is your...
Marc:Kinda, yeah, there's that, but it is my intimacy, right.
Marc:But in other relationships, there's also the fact that people start to see you a certain way, which you experienced, and they'll want to interface with what they see, and you may be putting it out, but in your mind and in your heart, you're like,
Marc:That ain't really me, but you're not going to do anything about it.
Marc:You're going to let yourself just be taken.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that's some other horrible thing.
Guest:And the other thing I'd imagine is that you can't, if you can't be calm, if something's at peace, you can't, there always has to be some emergency, some danger, something about to go wrong.
Marc:Yeah, like, yeah, there's definitely a drama element.
Guest:It's exhausting.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's a lot less with me now, and I'm fairly cognizant of trying to sort of cognitively manage it, you know, to not make choices that will cause it.
Marc:So I'm on top of that a bit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I think, yeah, I think so.
Guest:And what's your resistance, do you think, to doing the things that will actually...
Marc:shift something it will become sort of time and just sort of investigating how i need to do it like i don't like you you know i know that i'm i've made progress right and i know that and i've recently really realized that there is another leap i have to make uh you know that that could free me and open my heart um i i just i i just have not pursued it as as much but i know it right yeah i'm not just blithely in denial
Guest:I'll speak for myself that I was so scared of marriage.
Guest:I was scared of being with someone for the rest of my life.
Guest:I was scared of, you know, connection.
Guest:If someone got too close or maybe clean with me, I would just sort of like my skin would crawl.
Guest:And, uh, and now it's like, oh man, I, I mean, it's the sex is better.
Guest:Cause it's super, so connected.
Guest:Like I'm happier than I've ever been.
Guest:And, uh, I can select the world's a little bit brighter cause I can see the,
Guest:yeah whatever you see the sunshine and add it just like it's incredible how much energy I invested in keeping myself from being happy like it's so much work to keep myself from being happy it was insane but you but when you're in it you just think it's who you are exactly and because it's so hard to see yourself everyone else can see it so the journey through the truth is is this psychological journey and all its manifestations pretty much and and you move through a lot of different you know alternative lifestyle communities to see if there were solutions there
Guest:It's funny because I sat down to write the book and it was going to be this kind of semi-angry book about how monogamy doesn't work, relationships don't work, it doesn't make sense, it doesn't scientifically make sense, biologically, and monogamy is from the Catholic Church Institute in the 9th century.
Guest:Why are we still doing this?
Marc:So you were still operating from your disease point of view, trying to justify your behavior.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I thought, I'm going to go invent a new kind of relationship that's true and authentic to me and show the world how it's better and they're wrong.
Guest:And so I tried the polyamory scene, the swinging scene, tried having an open relationship, all those different things.
Marc:Well, let's talk about those quickly.
Marc:The polyamory scene, what went wrong?
Guest:So I went to this thing called the World Polyamory Conference, and I thought they'd talk about how you deal with multiple relationships.
Guest:And it was this very weird new age thing where they had something called a puja, P-U-J-A.
Guest:And they were just sort of in a, it was just the weirdest thing.
Guest:I don't even know what I, I don't, it was so confusing, but I was, they were kind of having this kind of group orgy, but it was all kind of new agey.
Guest:And they were talking about priestesses.
Guest:They didn't talk about your, your penis was your wand.
Guest:The sacred cathedral was the woman.
Guest:What the fuck was this?
Marc:It was just some weird... I don't know that that would be the... That wasn't the answer.
Marc:...representational of the polyamorous community.
Guest:And I got kicked out of the orgy for eating popcorn.
Guest:I was eating popcorn.
Guest:They said, you can't eat food in a temple.
Guest:You need to leave.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So I got kicked out of the orgy for eating popcorn.
Guest:And so that was my... A blessing in disguise.
Guest:It was a blessing in disguise.
Guest:So then I decided, like you said, I said, well, that's a part of the community, but it's not.
Guest:It must be something else.
Guest:And so I moved in with three girlfriends.
Guest:And I said, I'm going to live in a free love nirvana, right?
Guest:They're all non-monogamous.
Guest:We're going to have this great life.
Guest:and uh it totally blew up in my obviously anyone listening knows it blew up in my face um little things that they don't teach didn't teach you the conference like who gets the front seat of the car you'd really have three people standing at the door and have to choose one and i ended up literally sleeping on the couch almost every night uh-huh alone now how like when you were in the the the grips of your sex addiction we talked about dominant submissive and that stuff now where did you end up with in that world
Guest:I really like that.
Guest:I think I looked at the kink community and watched some of that stuff.
Guest:But I'm really like, I like to be equals.
Guest:I don't like to be dominant or submissive.
Guest:It wasn't my thing.
Marc:And so, okay, so you tried the living with three girlfriends.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Now, was there more of an equality sense?
Marc:Did you start to regain your respect for women or develop it?
Guest:Yeah, I don't think I ever had a disrespect or consciously, but I think I always, that maybe sex was so important to me that I would do or say what I needed to get.
Guest:I think it was less true now, but I think what I learned in this, it was a fear of love.
Guest:If someone in the group became too attached, it was the pathological accommodation.
Guest:I try to make everybody happy.
Guest:And trying to make everybody happy, I made nobody happy.
Guest:So this person might get jealous, this person might get upset.
Guest:So I just felt like I was walking on just eggshells around three people's feelings.
Marc:And what was the swinging situation?
Marc:If it wasn't lumpy and game, what was it?
Guest:The swinging situation, I went to this amazing party.
Guest:People were just, they were gorgeous, just insane.
Guest:It was in Vegas, the party was called Bliss.
Guest:All the most gorgeous people in Vegas were at this party.
Guest:And I really talked to the guys about it.
Guest:Oh, and somebody gave me some GHB, and I passed out in the middle of the first orgy.
Guest:Like, everything was a disaster, whatever I did.
Guest:But what was interesting is I talked to the guys about why they would do it.
Guest:And so one guy, or actually, he's somehow a child actor, ends up in every book.
Guest:It was like Corey Feldman who was running the orgy or something.
Guest:He's already in the wrong place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, so he said like the jealousy, he's like, I get high off the jealousy.
Guest:If I feel jealous that someone's having sex with my wife or girlfriend, I'll just sort of work through it and turn it into pleasure.
Guest:So he got like high on the jealousy.
Marc:Yeah, that's a, but that's a form of, uh, emotional masochism.
Guest:well it's a form of being submissive yeah yeah and another guy said like i just i want male approval so i share my wife or girlfriend with these guys to get male approval so i really kind of got into the that's another submissive yeah yeah it's interesting um but it just felt it felt like very almost more objectifying than the game world because everyone their wives were almost like this piece of property to be yeah but what was it like at home
Marc:Like, what was it like over breakfast and after work?
Guest:That was kind of like the nice stuff is like the couples would like hang out afterward and they kind of were like, you know, a couple would be dating another couple.
Guest:They'd hang out.
Guest:It was kind of intimate and cool.
Guest:Actually, what I liked about it in this case, in this scene, was that the couples were kind of intimate friends.
Marc:But it's weird.
Marc:It seems like there's no way to avoid in those type of situations ultimately experiencing what you experienced, which was it takes a lot of energy to sort of maintain that lifestyle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't see, it doesn't sound like it could ever be just matter of fact and like, yeah, this is what we do.
Guest:I mean, I think if you do anything enough, right, there's this concept they call the burn-in period, which is if you're going to do one of these alternative lifestyles, it takes a few years to get used to it.
Guest:But after a while, I guess anything can be, this is what we do.
Marc:So you move through all this stuff, and I saw in the book, what did you learn about alpha and beta and that kind of stuff?
Guest:Those are nonsense concepts.
Marc:They are?
Guest:I think they are.
Marc:But what did you find medically?
Guest:Oh, that was less than this.
Guest:Oh, I mean, here's what I think.
Guest:You know, I always have these discussions as monogamy natural is all this I think honestly if you're basing your behavior on a scientific theory.
Guest:Yeah, then you're an idiot I Think I think you'll use science to justify stuff like well, it's evolutionary okay to spread my seat So thus I'm gonna go have said, you know, it's fucking like I think evolution is such a slippery argument You can use it to justify anything.
Guest:It's so open-ended by the way one interesting thing is I talked to a geneticist I thought you know what?
Guest:Maybe I'm just not born to be monogamous.
Guest:And this guy found the gene, the gene responsible for monogamy.
Guest:And I guess it's a gene with a coating for a long vasopressin receptor, if you want to drop some science.
Guest:That is why that creates kind of monogamy.
Guest:And so I thought maybe I just have...
Guest:the wrong size vasopressin receptor or whatever no test for that though there's no test but i went to him so i said listen am i just doomed or can i get a transplant or something yeah and he said he said i found that there's no behavior that's purely genetic like you the environment that's how adaptation works exactly right so he kind of says you know you and we're making a choice you and our control you're choosing to stay yeah as you are right choosing
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To be to feel like.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, if everyone was confined to their genetic behavior, everybody would be everything would be dead.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The whole thing is nonsense.
Marc:No evolution.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You have to make right adjustments in order to for the species to survive.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And we have the amazing power to rationalize any kind of behavior.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, I know you talk about, you know, your relationship with your mother.
Marc:And I know at the beginning of the book, you know, you start to you begin a thread through the book about what you found out about your father.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Do you want to talk about that or do you want people to read the book?
Guest:I mean, I'll talk about anything.
Guest:I'm open to it.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:I'll see if I can say.
Guest:So I guess like my father had like basically my mom and dad had a horrible relationship.
Guest:I mean, but you knew that I didn't know.
Guest:I just, I knew that I was a child.
Guest:I'd always knew they had a horrible relationship.
Guest:Yelling or screaming or what?
Guest:No, because, and my mom would come into my room and complain about my father and tell me, and again, I'm 11, 12, 13.
Guest:Tell me no matter what you do, when you, uh, never grow up to make anyone as miserable as your father makes me.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Why are you going to say that to a kid?
Guest:It's sad, dude.
Guest:It's so sad what parents do and not realizing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, I found a punishment that my parents gave me when I was a kid.
Guest:I had to write, I am a dumb jerk over like 500 times.
Guest:Like you're programming someone to think they're a dumb, I mean, all the self-esteem, nothing's a surprise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and what was the core of their problem oh the core of their problem it's so fucked up it's weird so so my my dad i mean there's so many problems but the main thing my dad had a fetish for handicapped and amputee people with physical deformities that he kept secret and my mom has a limp and a physical deformity um and so she found out later she never knew this in fact to this day he they've never discussed it or are they married they're married they're still married they just
Guest:That's why I love the movie Bitter Moon that I mentioned earlier, because it's two people staying together, keeping each other miserable.
Guest:And and so basically she was his like she was his secret fetish object.
Guest:Like he took videos of their honeymoon and cut it together just with photos of her limping.
Guest:And then he has some kind of group of friends or guys who he trades this stuff with.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:It's the weirdest shit.
Guest:Yeah, so it's that the skeletons in the closet.
Guest:And I really thought until I found this stuff, I thought I had a normal family and a normal childhood.
Guest:I wrote about the weird people, the mysteries in the game and the Motley Crue's.
Guest:It was kind of this moment when I realized, oh, I'm just as fucked up as all those guys.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And we're all just as fucked up as those guys.
Guest:We just don't see it because we're so used to living with ourselves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what did you experience emotionally upon processing this?
Guest:think what it did for me was it caught me up with my mom like I kind of just got involved her secrecy and we would investigate my dad together and we'd you know she'd call on me trade this information about it when you were a kid recently kind of once I just I think when I was a kid she just complained about my dad and saying but what I found this maybe about 17 or 18 so since then till like I stopped it maybe for three or four years ago that was it like our relationship was investigating my dad and
Guest:trying to figure this stuff out.
Guest:And she'd say, well, I found these new photos of him doing this.
Guest:And we had this, just this, and it's like- And he's just in the room.
Marc:He's in the other room.
Guest:He'd be, yeah, he'd be in the other room, like oblivious.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And what's your relationship with them?
Guest:She was always paranoid.
Guest:He had cameras around the house filming.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:So sad, man.
Guest:So sad.
Guest:Like, I mean, that's why you have, ah.
Marc:And it's also very defined, though.
Marc:It's not like, because then you step from just this emotional abuse to something that's tangible and bizarre, and then you bond with your mother over the bizarreness of the situation.
Marc:But where do they stand now, and where do you stand with them?
Guest:So the most fascinating thing happened, and I'd be curious to ask you this about your mom as well.
Guest:So as I was doing this book, I set boundaries with my mom.
Guest:I said, hey, I'm not going to keep secrets anymore.
Guest:It really made me a cheating.
Guest:I'm not going to keep secrets anymore.
Guest:I'm not going to talk to you about what's wrong with dad.
Guest:It's hurting my relationship, so no more of that.
Guest:So she kind of got upset and then stopped talking to me for a while.
Guest:And then she texted me and she said, oh, I've got this new secret email address.
Guest:Don't tell anyone.
Guest:And I wrote a book about your dad.
Guest:Will you kind of help me with it?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And I said, and I got excited.
Guest:She was talking again.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, sure.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Like a dutiful son.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then about a day later, she said, when can we talk?
Guest:And I realized, what the fuck am I doing?
Guest:You get caught up in it, man.
Marc:Oh yeah, you've been deprived of it.
Guest:And you're like, I want to read the book.
Guest:And so I texted her back, hey, I'm happy to talk about anything, but I just can't keep secrets and have these conversations.
Guest:And you know what she said back?
Guest:What?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Last time I heard from her.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:I mean, this is, I shouldn't even say this.
Guest:This was maybe like six months ago.
Guest:And literally, I shouldn't even fucking say this, but fuck it.
Guest:Like, so we, I just had an eight month old.
Guest:You were married?
Guest:I'm married of an eight-month-old.
Guest:They have not come out to visit their only grandchild.
Guest:Their shit is stronger than wanting to see your only grandchild.
Guest:It's insane to me.
Marc:It's insane, dude.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the upside is...
Guest:The upside is all this, let me know that, okay, that the stories that I'm hearing in therapy, these are true.
Guest:There's this behavior is still happening.
Guest:And so that divorcing, say divorcing my parents was what enabled me to actually become an adult and have an adult relationship.
Guest:So the, so the upside is seeing the reality, seeing what it really is that you're there to serve their needs.
Guest:They're not there for your needs can allow you to sort of divorce yourself from your parents and start to have your own life.
Marc:And, and are you a happy person?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like, like, yeah, like I'll just be changing in the bathroom with Ingrid and I'll think, fuck, why was I resisting this shit for, for so long?
Guest:So much happier than, yeah, it could have been.
Guest:There's some sadness and some grieving over the loss of.
Marc:The relationship with your parents.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The horrible relationship.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So what are you grieving anyway?
Marc:Like if your friend treated you like that, you'd be like, good riddance, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They made you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They made you mentally and they made you emotionally and they made you physically.
Marc:So you're trapped.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you don't have to be trapped.
Guest:No, that gets you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm keeping this diary for my son of everything that I feel like I'm doing right or wrong, all our decisions about parenting.
Guest:So when he grows up, he can know maybe what his emotional DNA is and make of it what he will.
Marc:It's interesting, man.
Marc:And it's beautiful.
Marc:It's a beautiful story.
Marc:So you do the work that you need to do day to day to nurture and be emotionally upfront and honest with your monogamous relationships.
Guest:Yes, and also being aware of when you're getting stuck in your story.
Guest:Like, simple thing.
Guest:She texted me.
Guest:I was coming home.
Guest:It was 15 minutes late.
Guest:I was working out 15 minutes late.
Guest:There was a film crew waiting in the house to film me for something.
Guest:And she said, they've been waiting here for 15 minutes.
Guest:That's so rude.
Guest:And I texted her back saying, I'm coming.
Guest:And she responded just, so rude.
Guest:So I thought, fantastic.
Guest:Fuck her.
Guest:She's like my mom, nagging.
Guest:She hates me like she hates my dad.
Guest:Leave me the fuck alone.
Guest:Can't I live my own life?
Guest:And then I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Guest:What's going on here?
Guest:How many times has she said nice things to you over the week?
Guest:And how many times has she said negative things?
Guest:If you expect someone to love you, always be positive about you.
Guest:You're insane, right?
Guest:They don't have to like everything about you.
Guest:So I thought that.
Guest:And then I thought, let me ask myself a question.
Guest:If you have an appointment with a film crew and you go to work out, you leave all those people waiting at your house for 15 minutes while you go to the gym, is that rude?
Guest:I'm like, yes, of course it's rude.
Guest:So I responded to her like, yes, it is rude.
Guest:And she said, oh, you know, she responded to say, sorry, I was just stressed out.
Guest:And we got to have a relationship instead of me starting to think she's naggy, resentful.
Guest:I need my freedom.
Guest:I just thought.
Marc:Making a monster with misperception.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Getting out of your own story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Well, this is great, man, and it sounds like a real fucking emotional, cathartic, and courageous journey you took with this thing.
Guest:It was the best journey of my life, and now I can actually stop the cycle and be a better parent than the ones you and I may have had.
Guest:Congratulations.
Guest:Thank you, man.
Marc:And I'm excited for you, Neil.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:We covered a lot.
Guest:It's great.
Thank you.
Guest:so wait what wait what what do you have so before we came over i looked at the interview i did with you maybe 20 years ago really you were um 33 really yeah so hold on what are you i'm 52 i just turned so yeah almost 20 years ago and i looked over because i wanted to think well you know were there clues here that you'd be doing what you're doing now really yeah and then we have that yeah i have that i kind of wrote down some of those quotes
Guest:when i was like at luna or when did you were at luna and we're talking about the luna scene and by the way and i wrote some of the stuff you said made like you were really cerebral maybe stoned yeah uh because some of the stuff made no sense but i wrote down some quotes oh i want to hear it makes sense oh come on this is crazy yeah so um let's see
Guest:Alright, so the first thing, and this is kind of you, you said if narcissism were a political movement, we would be unstoppable, which I thought was funny.
Guest:That was a bit.
Guest:That was a bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then you lambasted the idea of Dennis, I don't know, I wrote this lambasted the idea of Dennis Miller and references implying wisdom.
Guest:I have no idea what that is.
Marc:I do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so here's another thing.
Guest:These are more where you were.
Marc:That's a fake intellectualism.
Marc:Chris Kelly's dad, Sean Kelly, who was a writer for the National Lampoon, who I'd met briefly, and we were talking about comedy, and he said, Dennis Miller, fearlessly attacking trivia.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:So funny.
Guest:Still, still.
Guest:And then here's another thing I just thought was funny of where you were.
Guest:You wrote, I'm here reading Wilhelm Reich and listening to the Verve Collection.
Guest:And I'm going to have to talk to people who worked as a temp all day.
Guest:And about some of the stuff you said, part of the lunar trip is people embracing their marginal existence or how they use their free time and indulging their liberty.
Guest:And then you said, it's hard to take into consideration what liberty really is.
Guest:And I, we had this long interview and I could almost only, only had like one quote I could use because it was really, I was out there.
Guest:Abstract.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Here's one that you said, and then we'll get to the stuff that I think led to that is similar to what you do now.
Guest:This one, I actually wrote WTF next to it.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Ironically.
Marc:Let me see if I can explain it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's hard to do comedy that makes an impact.
Guest:Discussions of morality evaporate.
Guest:We're evolving into perfect consumers and history is a pool of references.
Guest:In that context, it's impossible to speak in a human voice.
Marc:Well, that makes sense to me that what I was reacting to was that everything on the internet and everything that's coming at you no longer has a historical context.
Marc:So there is no narrative of time.
Marc:You're just dealing with bits and pieces, which I think is...
Marc:I'm not going to say prophetic, but it is what content is and what content implies and that as perfect consumers, content is what we consume and it is all anyone talks about, content.
Marc:So I think that was sort of me reacting to the fact that there was no historical narrative to anything anymore and it was breaking down.
Guest:That is pretty prophetic because that's exactly what's happening now.
Marc:So so I think what I was experiencing is that, you know, if you don't have some foundation in either a personal history or point of references that sort of define you or your outlook, how do you talk like humans?
Guest:That makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:I still think about these things.
Guest:That's amazing because I was wondering if you know what you had said.
Guest:So this is what was interesting is what you liked about Luna was the type of intimacy makes it interesting for you, which is kind of what you have now.
Guest:And you liked it because it was more like having a real conversation here, which you were attracted to.
Guest:And you said, I'd like to have the opportunity to have more of those.
Marc:yeah um interesting yeah isn't it great and then you said um uh let's see oh uh taking the freedom to indulge having that freedom it seemed like you wanted the freedom to indulge to have on stage yeah yeah yeah to like the thing that luna gave me was that you know because i would force myself not to construct material but to work through ideas that i was thinking about like that idea of uh
Marc:perfect consumers and whatnot because I was very hung up on that because at that time I was putting a lot of stuff into my brain that was sort of postmodern theory and stuff like that and trying to process it through my own emotions so yeah the freedom to just be in the present and talk about now was very important to me
Marc:I wanted to be emotionally available in a very real and present way as a performer, doing comedy, which is sort of antithetical to that.
Marc:And there's only been a couple of guys that did that.
Marc:You know, Pryor was probably, might be the only one where you really felt that this was an emotionally risky undertaking for this guy.
Marc:And that, his sense...
Marc:Of that, what I got from him was really what I aspire to over being an entertainer was the ability to live it, to have it be a kind of a life or death situation up there.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny, and you mentioned that.
Guest:It's fascinating, the kind of threads, because we talked about prior and that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I have some consistency.
Guest:You have some consistency.
Guest:And I was thinking, and maybe it's the critical of the psychoanalysis and stuff, I was thinking like the Lorne Michaels stuff that's gone on here.
Guest:And I was thinking there's some point where you're maybe making, I'm not sure, making him your dad, and there was this rejection that needs to be.
Marc:It just did the interview.
Guest:Right, yeah, I heard that, because it made me think about it.
Guest:I felt he was evasive.
Marc:the question he started talking about how like uh he was talking about why he didn't give me the job yeah first he talked about like how network tv was like the railroad of what the fuck does i have to do with the question right and then oh no you would have been new and i was trying to protect you from that new thing like that was i felt like that was well he did his best to try to to be my dad as best he could at that moment right and not hurt my feelings too much i did get a lot of closure but i had a bit before going in i made it very large but i i you know i did feel that he showed up for me
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you know what's great, what I love?
Guest:And again, there are these moments that are really impactful in your life.
Guest:And somebody, I heard one person listen, he said, oh, it's so narcissistic.
Guest:He's talking about himself.
Guest:I'm like, no, if you talk to someone, why would you not ask if they remembered, why not ask Keith Richards if he remembered you?
Guest:That's really what you want to ask.
Guest:Or to ask Lorne Michaels what he remembered about this moment.
Guest:So why not ask that and get some resolution?
Marc:That's actually not narcissistic.
Marc:That is saying, I didn't make it about me.
Marc:I just was looking for a point of connection.
Guest:And the great thing is now they remember.
Guest:They forgot then.
Guest:Now it's become an impactful moment in your life.
Guest:You made it exist.
Marc:Oh, well, I'm glad that I was true to myself.
Marc:To me, hearing that stuff, some of that stuff was raw, and clearly I was trying to resolve some things intellectually, but I seemed to be pretty true to myself.
Guest:Yeah, it's funny.
Guest:I'll read one more.
Guest:I'll see if there's anything I just wrote.
Guest:Oh, it was a hard lesson to learn that alternative comedy, I guess, doesn't work on a big stage.
Guest:That's what you're talking about.
Guest:I do bits and personal stories.
Guest:They're hard to do on TV.
Guest:People need closure.
Guest:If you expose yourself, people don't know where to laugh.
Guest:uh, how do you get closure on a spot that's personal?
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Um, and again, I think that's kind of, that was a, that was an ongoing thing.
Marc:Um, but it was, it, it did become sort of, uh, you know, as I got older and more adept at the craft of comedy, you know, that was really, uh, resolved by an application of craft.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's, but it's fascinating because I think all those things that you wanted the freedom to express, not to worry about where people are laughing, to take emotional risks is what you're doing here.
Guest:Probably why it's done what it's done.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:It's so nice to hear that, Neil.
Marc:It's so nice to know that I did know what I wanted.
Guest:Yeah, you weren't as dumb and naive and bitter as you thought.
Marc:Well, thanks for sharing that.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:That was my talk with Neil Strauss.
Marc:I thought it was pretty intense, but there's a lot of information in that book.
Marc:Some of it is frightening information, but he did his homework.
Marc:So if you're interested in that stuff, The Truth, an uncomfortable book about relationships is available now.
Marc:What else?
Marc:My name's Mark.
Marc:I have a website, wtfpod.com.
Marc:You can go there, pick up some justcoffee.coop.
Marc:You can get some t-shirts, I think.
Marc:You can maybe get a poster.
Marc:You can get on the mailing list.
Marc:You can check the episode guide.
Marc:to see who's been on this show and perhaps move your way over to howl.fm for the archives.
Marc:You know, that stuff.
Marc:And New Year's coming.
Marc:I'll talk to you in the new year if you don't listen to the New Year's Eve broadcast, the New Year's Eve day broadcast.
Marc:We're going to have a nice, not a full hour with me and Bill Burr, but a nice chunk of me and Bill Burr.
Marc:And then I think we're going to do some highlights.
Marc:Doing them year-end highlights things.
Marc:That'll be fun, right?
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Boomer lives!