Ep. 343: "My German Underpants"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: We're still doing this.
Merlin: But you started it.
John: Interesting.
John: It happens to Murgatroyd, even.
John: Yes.
Merlin: It's very eventful.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I guess we should talk about our lives.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Rather.
Merlin: Rather.
John: We could talk about Belle Delphine.
John: Belle Delphine.
John: Is that her name?
John: Belle.
Merlin: Is that Billie Eilish?
Merlin: Billie Eilish?
John: I know who you know.
John: I know you know who she is because I read the internet and people talk about you.
Merlin: on the internet no no no no no no is this the bathwater girl yeah oh john no i'm facing this on several fronts now we need to not talk about her and people were talking about it online as though it was a thing that you didn't want to talk about it so of course i brought it i didn't i didn't see that no no no
Merlin: You should do that.
Merlin: You love taking baths.
John: I've thought about it.
John: As soon as I saw that she was pioneering the way, I was like, what am I doing?
Merlin: Okay, so there's a person who lives on the internet.
Merlin: And apparently she knows how to make an anime horny face.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: This is all, as they say, word of mouth.
Merlin: I refuse to look any of this up.
Merlin: Oh, you've never seen her.
Merlin: No, I was compelled to see her on another program that I do.
Merlin: Somebody made me watch her, like, eat an egg.
Merlin: Uh-huh, yeah.
Merlin: And shit like that.
Merlin: And I was doing everything in my power.
Merlin: Hi, everybody.
Merlin: Welcome back.
Merlin: I was doing everything in my power to un...
Merlin: memorize what i was seeing because it's here's my wheelhouse and then way over there is is the anime horny face anime horny face now okay this now when i say this does seem like it's in your wheelhouse i don't mean that that it makes you have uh you know uh bone growth i do mean that in your travels yeah
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: On the internet and beyond, you are interested in finding where the edge is.
Merlin: What's happening in the corners?
Merlin: I think I just saw something move up in the rafters.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I need to interrogate this.
John: Yes, let's go see.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I think it's fallacious to think that that means it's a horny thing.
John: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: But I do think that certain people, and I'm not talking about you, certain people are not comfortable admitting that it goes beyond academic research.
John: Uh, now what do you know?
Merlin: There's a, there's a person who lives on the internet and she makes an anime horny, happy face.
Merlin: And, uh, supposedly you could buy for a while.
Merlin: You could buy her bath water.
Merlin: Um, that's, that's mostly what I know.
Merlin: And then she ate an egg and it dribbled out of her mouth in the anime style.
John: Yes.
Um,
John: I think that she is a canny business person.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I've heard this point of view.
John: I think that she's actually very smart and funny.
John: Supply and demand.
John: Well, not just that, but I think that she is funny.
John: I think she's funny.
Merlin: You think she's having fun with it?
John: Yes.
John: I was not aware of her until the controversy.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: What do you identify as the controversial part, just for our listeners?
Merlin: Just out of curiosity.
Merlin: Let's see here.
Merlin: What do people say about this that makes it seem controversial?
John: Well, that was what I really liked about it because it went across, it swept across the world and everybody had a take, which of course, as you know, is something that I really like when something happens and every single person has a take.
John: Yes.
John: And there was a lot of take.
John: There was just every take, basically.
John: So many takes.
John: That this was the world gone mad, that this was disgusting.
John: But wait, no, it was empowering.
John: But wait, no, it's disempowering because it masquerades as empowering.
John: And then there was the take of like, it's, it's, she's a sex worker.
John: And then the sex workers came out and said, she's not actually a sex worker.
John: And then the, the Japanese.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: You're saying, you're saying this is like, I don't want to work ping pong, but it's a little bit of a pachinko.
Merlin: It's that ball, that ball gone bounce.
Merlin: And even when it gets to the bottom, it's got the dead cat bounce and there's going to be a bounce.
Merlin: And then somebody's going to say, why'd you even say pachinko?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, there's turns is turns is out turns is turns.
John: There are there are lots of people that are like, well, she's co-opting Japanese culture.
John: And so it's racist.
John: And then there are Japanese people that are like, but she's amazing at this.
John: This is exactly what we love.
John: And then there are other Japanese people that are like, that's exactly the thing that's wrong about it.
John: And so on and so forth.
John: Every single take.
John: And I think they're all bad takes.
John: I think she's hilarious.
John: I think she's just looking at her thing, what she's doing.
John: Right.
John: uh she's com she's very knowing she's completely she just knows exactly what she's doing you can just tell that she does self self self-aware that she's making the joke she's in on the joke she's so in on the joke and you know it's one of those things that we often do in the world which is like this girl is legitimately cute and she also puts on a lot of cute makeup and cute costumes
John: But the fact that she's cute, just like fully 70 percent of the world is just going to not take her seriously no matter what she's doing.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Because she's cute.
John: How can she be smart?
John: How can she be in on the joke?
John: Because she's so cute.
Merlin: And she doesn't.
Merlin: And that there's a phrase that is going through my mind right now that I imagine already exists, which I'm going to I don't want to delve into this too deeply.
Merlin: I'm just going to call it a fence by proxy.
Merlin: There's a lot of offense by proxy where you choose to take offense on someone else's behalf in a way that some people might say is a little paternalistic where you go in and you decide to, as my friend Max Tempkin says, you put down the visor on your helmet and you go into internet battle as someone's champion, even if they super didn't ask for it.
Merlin: Sure, the white knight.
Merlin: Very white.
Merlin: Caucasian knight.
John: So watching her do her thing, she ate an egg like she'd never seen an egg before.
John: It's so fucking great.
John: It's so great.
John: And that's her whole trip.
John: Her whole trip is like, I just fell from the sky.
John: I'm so new that I don't know how to... Does she always shoot it in her hallway?
Yeah.
John: I didn't watch enough videos.
John: I only saw one if she was in her hallway.
John: Oh, there's one where she's in her bathtub, clearly.
John: Okay, all right.
John: No, I just think she's... So, we haven't really talked about this a lot, but I have, over the course of the years, over the course of the many years, I dated an internet sex worker.
Hmm.
John: for a time and i don't know if i knew that yeah and and um and it was a and it was a lovely relationship that that that was like a lot of my relationships it kind of went for a while and it was you know sort of bonding off and it was um it was and we were we were good friends um
John: And I, uh, I liked her a lot, but it was not, you know, it wasn't like we were, we didn't move in together.
John: In other words, it was a, it was a relationship of the style that I'm, that, that was the style of the time.
John: It's practically European.
John: It's, it was fairly European.
John: It's like meeting in, in the, in the South of France every year.
John: Um, anyway, um, and she was a woman who is my age and age appropriate lady friend, um,
John: who had discovered that she could make videos, that she could go on cam, as they say.
John: Not make videos.
John: It was live.
John: It was live on cam.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And people would get on her portal, as it were.
Merlin: They'd jack into her matrix.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And she would basically sit and keep them company for hours at a time.
John: And there are hundreds of presumably men in this chat room space.
John: And she's keeping them company.
John: And she's talking to them and interacting with them.
John: And they're tipping her with coins.
John: And she's cleaning her apartment.
Merlin: If they're pleased by the company that is kept, they can mash on a button to send her coin.
John: That's right, coins.
John: And they would write her and say like,
John: Because she'd be there with a feather duster and a little apron with an undergarment, perhaps.
John: And she'd be dusting or something.
Merlin: So she was basically doing housekeeping on the internet, and then you could send her coin if she dusted well.
John: And you'd be writing and you'd say like, oh, you missed a spot up there.
John: And she'd then go, oh, you mean over here?
Merlin: Tell him to use a coaster.
Merlin: Yeah, give him a coin.
Merlin: Would you consider it kind of specialty video?
No.
Merlin: Well, that's what she described it as.
Merlin: Because, I mean, there's so much stuff out there to achieve the more quotidian finish.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And then I guess there's other kind of specialty things.
Merlin: And sometimes, I don't know, you could watch a lady fill out a form with...
John: uh in her bare feet well so you can get real specific with with your interest specialty okay and and what she had going for was that she was um you know she's attractive and petite and she uh and she's shapely okay okay okay and uh she's very into costuming and this is she you know she's from an era uh the same as mine where there wasn't a word like cosplay there was only
John: That you went to thrift stores and you bought old dresses, old crinoline, and then you put it on with a bow in your hair and you went swing dancing or whatever it was that we used to do.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Yeah.
John: And then – but, you know, undergarments and the stockings and the garters and so forth.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That's straight out of our era.
John: I think of that as a ZZ Top thing.
John: Sure.
John: It's like a Betty Page thing.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And then she would – and so people were –
John: uh coming to watch her and there were uh there were bona fide rock stars that would come to watch her a couple of guys that you and i would know by name pretty well this is like when you saw your friend walking around in the handjob district it was
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Merlin: Hey, buddy.
Merlin: It was super surprising.
John: You want to get lunch sometime?
Merlin: I'm good.
John: Super surprising to me, too, when she was like, oh, yeah, so-and-so is a fan.
John: And I was like...
John: Really?
John: So-and-so.
John: Because, you know, I had all this inside information because I'm, you know, I wasn't like exactly on the other side of the camera, but I was, you know, like privy, privy to the people that were there because they're talking to her and they have online lives themselves.
John: You know, they're not a lot of the fans.
John: What you're saying is so interesting.
Merlin: They're not anonymous.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's so much stuff that's going on under the hood that we – I mean not even just these kinds of special things, but there's a lot of things where like – I don't want to sound naive, but I think one of the great things that can come out of the internet is that you end up discovering that there's people who like the thing that you like.
Merlin: I mean that could be Pearl Jam bootlegs or whatever it is or like with YouTube especially.
Merlin: I see things on Twitter trending about YouTube people and I'm like I –
Merlin: My wife and I were talking about this yesterday where there's this phenomenon.
Merlin: For example, we went to the mall because her iPhone needed to be repaired.
Merlin: And we went to the mall and there's a place there that sells something called Japanese pancakes.
Merlin: I've never heard of Japanese pancakes.
Merlin: And they have exactly three times in the day that they will sell Japanese pancakes until they sell out.
Merlin: And people, they have chairs lined up.
Merlin: They got permission from the mall to have chairs outside where people line up
Merlin: for sometimes hours to come and get the limited supply of Japanese pancakes.
Merlin: And I don't have a name for this yet, but I know this phenomenon, which is,
Merlin: In exactly the same moment, you find out that something is a thing and you find out it is more popular than you could possibly imagine.
Merlin: Do you know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: You suddenly hear about a thing and you're like, that's a thing?
Merlin: No shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: I'm not against the Japanese pancake.
Merlin: I just didn't know it was a fucking thing until yesterday morning.
Merlin: we're waiting for Apple to fix her phone.
Merlin: And she says, you got to see this and read the sign.
Merlin: Like they deliberately like run out of pancakes and people line up.
Merlin: And I think that needs a name.
Merlin: And I said, why do you think people do that?
Merlin: And she says, I think it's because millennials like waiting in line for experiences.
Merlin: And I said, I think that might be right.
Merlin: And that's all I'm saying.
Merlin: And so with YouTube, I learned that a couple broke up.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be 52, but I fucking am.
Merlin: I find out that a couple...
Merlin: who are YouTubers are breaking up and it's a really, really, really big deal.
Merlin: And there are hundreds of black lady reaction gifs about it.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Well, you know, I mean, they repurpose a lot of them, but it's a whole like kind of, Oh no, you didn't kind of, kind of thread happening.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Anyhow.
Merlin: So she has, so, so Maria Abramovich does it and it's art.
Merlin: She pulls out her feather duster, does some internet house cleaning, and everybody gets their Victoria's Secret in a wad.
John: Well, so what was crazy is she was... So these camsites are major, major places on the internet.
John: Like Cam Girl.
John: If you put in like Cam Girl, I think it'll tell you what's going on there.
John: So I learned all this through my friend, right, who's describing the ecosystem of
John: And she's saying there are a lot of young girls on these campsites, 18, 19 years old, and they're on there just doing whatever they can.
John: And, you know, they're often doing very, very porny things.
John: They're doing what, you know, guys are in their chat site and they're like, stick a banana in your ear.
John: And they're like, OK, right on.
John: They call it fruiting.
Merlin: The problem is now it's a monoculture.
Merlin: You can really only get one kind of banana now, but you know that's going to go in anyway.
John: Anyway, she said the dark side of it is that in places like Romania and Ukraine, you know, there are girls being pressed into service and kind of being held in a room.
John: Less consensually.
John: Right.
John: But
John: For a lot of people, it's a thing you can do from home and you capitalize on the fact that you're attractive and you're personable and you can sit on on cam, as they say, and and you're in the safety of your own home and you're doing sex work.
John: But it's a kind where you're not putting yourself at risk and you're giving a lot of people companionship, which is something that I... And fandom.
John: It's fandom also.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I don't want companionship.
John: Either do you.
John: No, I want the opposite companionship.
John: Right.
John: So the idea of going onto my computer and specifically going somewhere to pay someone to hang out with me
John: is very alien to me, but we are abnormals relative to, you know, most people are like, Oh God, I'm just sitting around.
John: I'd really like somebody to hang out with.
John: And they go find, and this is, I'm hearing all this in my friend, right?
John: Uh, I'm going to hang out with this pretty girl and yes, she's going to show me her panties or, you know, every once in a while she's going to go take a bath and I'm going to, and I'm going to come along.
John: I'm basically going to be sitting on the toilet seat while she's taking a bath.
John: Um,
John: Uh, and that's just the kind of, that's just kind of the, how I want to spend my afternoon.
John: It's not, it's not as expensive as, I mean, you and I have talked before about going to a strip club with our mutual friends and how you and I sat in the corner, just, just desperately wanting to be invisible while we watched our very close friends having the time of their lives.
John: And I remember you and you looking at me and me looking at you.
John: Oh, well, the best part was we were standing at the door and the guy said 20 bucks each to get in.
John: And you and I looked at each other like, well, so much for that idea.
John: And then we turned just in time to see our friends.
Merlin: Other guys didn't have a problem.
John: having already slapped the 20 down, like going through the door into the dark space.
John: And we looked at each other like, wait a minute, 20 bucks?
John: Are you serious?
Merlin: You get inside and you find out they've gone to like a booth.
Merlin: Oh, they went to a booth.
Merlin: Well, you know, like a booth, like a banquette.
Merlin: Oh, they went to a banquette and we had to go there too.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And there's no really good place to sit because you're either near the banquettes or you're near the dais.
Yeah.
John: You're near the dais.
John: Yeah.
John: Rock me on the dais.
Merlin: Yeah, I wanted to be far, far away.
Merlin: I wanted to be a team player, and I didn't want to be meh guy.
Merlin: But I was extremely uncomfortable.
Merlin: Who knows?
Merlin: Maybe I need to explore my sexuality.
Merlin: Maybe I'm being approved.
Merlin: I'm probably being approved.
John: I don't think so.
John: It's just not what you want.
John: We've talked about this before.
John: I've been to a lot of strip clubs.
John: And I'm a very sex-positive person.
John: It's just not what I want.
John: It's not what I want.
John: But so my friend was in a situation where she was in her mid-40s.
John: And was one of the top.
John: She was often in the top 10 of all the cam girls on cam girl site.
John: She was making a very, very good living enough that she bought a separate condo just for her cam studio.
John: She bought a condo away from her house where she would go just to do her shows in Seattle.
John: A nice condo.
John: And this is from feather dusting.
John: on uh on the internet while people uh around the world watch along she she went downtown one time and rented an office in seattle's tallest office building like an office with one of those offices with like glass walls and glass walls that people can see in while they're walking down the common hallway that ironical
John: And she would sit at a desk in like an extremely cute little sort of secretary, like, you know, pinstripe suit.
John: Like a professional gal.
John: Like a professional gal.
John: She would sit at the desk and she had like little GoPro cams.
John: Like one of them was over here.
John: One of them was under the desk.
John: One of them was over there.
John: And she would sit as though working.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: She's like us.
Merlin: She's just doing a Skype call for her work.
John: That's right.
John: She's just sitting at work doing a Skype call.
John: And she's switching between these cameras so that you can see her pantyhose.
John: You can look up her skirt.
John: And then you can switch to another camera where you see real live people who are actually at work walking by in the hall.
John: And the titillation.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: for her audience of this being actually in public, even though they're watching it on a computer.
John: It was, you know, they were just like throwing coins at her.
John: So,
John: Having learned when I first was learning this, when I was on the bottom of my learning curve and I was saying, you what now?
John: So, you know, doing the thing that, you know, that I like to do, which is go.
John: So if this, then what if X, then what?
John: And she was patiently, you know, explaining to me her.
John: what was a side career, she was a Roderick on the Line fan.
Merlin: Oh, cool.
Merlin: You're like a Studs Terkel.
Merlin: I mean, you just want to talk to people about what they do all day.
John: I want to join the football team.
John: I want to go... Oh, you're like a Plimpton.
Merlin: You want it in television, ads.
John: Yeah, sort of.
John: Uh-huh.
John: That's right.
John: I want to start a literary magazine that never makes a penny.
John: Yeah.
John: And he was a paper tiger, memory serves.
John: Paper tiger.
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
John: uh so so you're you're getting you're getting schooled by her and a friend of the show hello i don't know if you're still a listener but if you're out there uh thank you for your service that's right thank you for your service and i learned about uh i learned about internet sex work as being a separate culture it's obviously not sex work where you're having physical contact with people right uh which is a you know which is this same kind of work
John: But it's much riskier and caters to a different clientele.
Merlin: But you're also diversifying your income stream because – like I just sent you a link to this really good – they did this really good series in The Cut, which is a very good website.
Merlin: uh... did you series and cut called what's it called but they would basically talk to people about uh... and this is in the sex diary series but it's about it's called the stay-at-home mom turned foot fetish model is basically it uh... kind of like a a few days in the life for her uh... of what she does and you know it it kind of seems practically wholesome
Merlin: But the revenue stream thing strikes me as, well, if you're out there and you get that hustle on, if you're doing the hustle, you don't want to have just the one thing.
Merlin: You want to get ads plus Amazon affiliate links, plus sponsored content, et cetera.
Merlin: And in this instance, I'm saying you don't have to be a full-time person in a hotel room.
Merlin: That could be a thing you could choose to do within limits that are –
Merlin: Safe and satisfying, mutually satisfying, maybe.
Merlin: And that might not be your full-time grind, as they say.
Merlin: Poor choice of words.
Merlin: But you could be camming on it 60% of the time.
Merlin: You take some time off, maybe go to Barbados, get a tan.
Merlin: But then some of the other time, yeah, maybe once a week, you get the key card, if you know what I'm saying.
John: Yeah.
John: So in this instance – I imagine.
John: I'm imagining.
John: She had the whole nine, right?
John: She had the Amazon thing.
John: She had the – she was connected all across the different income opportunities.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And so, for instance, like I would stop by as as you do when you're seeing somebody and she would say, do you want any chocolate?
John: And I hate to give this away because, you know, of course, there may be a lot of listeners here.
John: There may even be some on the line listeners who unwittingly, unknowingly were also spending time with her.
John: Oh, they may have coined her.
John: Who knows?
John: But I would go into, you know, she would take me into the kitchen and the kitchen would be stacked with
John: gifts that that uh that her you know online suitors had sent her and a lot of it is like wine and you know and obviously there's a lot of underwear in there not the things i don't need i bet she never has to buy her own underwear unless it's just for comfort well she goes on she goes on to send her just some nice hanes her way that she could roll with
John: I don't think so, no.
John: But they do – she does go online and specify what is on her list.
John: I bet she's got a wish list.
John: I got a wish list.
John: Everyone should have a wish list.
John: I don't have a wish list.
John: Oh, you can do that.
John: Maybe I should go on there and say like here's – What kind of panties do you want?
John: Do you want chocolates?
John: Sexy little things.
John: I prefer a robust red.
John: Here's the funny thing.
John: Although I've been sex positive and, you know, I try to be sex positive, but I have never put on a lady undergarment.
John: Oh, for yourself?
John: It seems like something I would have done, right?
John: You feel like you missed your window?
John: Check it out.
John: I'm putting on your lady undergarments, lol.
Merlin: You might really stretch him out just by virtue of the fact she's a petite person.
Merlin: That's part of the problem.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't want to ruin her.
Merlin: You don't want to ruin her underwear.
Merlin: Well, she might have some spares.
John: But you see it online.
John: Well, believe me, more than a half a dozen of my lady friends have taken my underpants.
John: I told you that.
John: That's better than taking your Filson bag.
John: When I got, don't get me started, but when I got those German underpants when I was walking across Europe and then I came back and my girlfriend at the time was like,
John: These are little underpants.
John: And I was like, yeah, they're German underpants.
John: Oh, they annex the Sudetenland.
John: Yeah, they wear these little huggers.
John: And I realized walking long distance that boxer shorts are a bad choice for underwear.
John: Because there's bunching and chafing.
John: So I went into a German department store and I was like...
John: you know, havensy, uh, under, uh, underpants.
John: Right.
John: And they were like, yeah.
John: And they came out with these things and they're just like little, they're not like, uh, they don't go up your bottom, but they're like little bikinis, cotton, cotton ones.
John: Um,
John: And I got some, and they were very comfortable walking across your room.
John: But when I got back, my lady friend, because, you know, lady friends have bigger derrieres sometimes, right?
John: She said, like, I can wear these, and she used them as her period underpants.
John: Oh, that's nice.
Merlin: No, no, that's nice.
Merlin: Now, I'm not sex positive, but I am period positive.
Merlin: I've known you for a long time.
Merlin: I have a healthy attitude about menstruation.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And so it's important.
Merlin: Unterhose appears to be German for underpants.
Merlin: Unterhose.
Merlin: Unterhose.
John: This is something that I learned, I think, at the time, which is that you want a pair of period underpants, which are not, you know, you're going through a time, you want some comfortable under drawers.
John: And my German underpants were all solid dark colors.
John: You know, they were maroon, they were navy blue.
John: You know, they're very good for periods.
John: And so over time, my German walking underpants, they walked right out the door.
John: Meine Unterhosen.
John: Meine Period Unterhosen.
John: My Bluthosen.
Merlin: No, no, no.
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John: They went out the door and, and, and then I was in a, I was in a position where I was like, Hey, you know, sometimes I liked wearing those because it's a hot day and of the chafing as we described.
John: Uh, and now they're all gone and I'm not going to go down to Nordstrom and say like, do you have any German underpants here?
John: That's the closest I came to wearing lady underpants.
John: Ich möchte deutsche Unterhosen.
John: They became lady underpants.
John: That's what's crazy about it.
John: They didn't start that way.
John: Like the guy that came into my newsstand and was like, do you have any...
John: Do you have any magazines about poopy pants?
John: Oh, right.
John: I told you this story.
Merlin: Say it again.
Merlin: Say it again.
John: And I was like, what?
John: No.
John: What are you talking about?
John: And he was like, Wall Street Journal.
John: What are you talking about?
John: What are you talking about?
John: Poopy pants.
John: What's that mean?
John: Like poopoo pee pee.
John: And I was like, what?
Yeah.
John: And he had this look on his face, just like this devilish little boy.
John: And I was like, and he's like, well, you know, he's six foot two and 300 pounds.
John: I was like, what?
John: And he said, magazine's about, you know, poopoo.
Merlin: He's talking about like, like incontinence issues.
John: No, he was talking.
John: I looked down and he's wearing diapers.
John: You get out of here, you.
John: And he was like, T.
John: Oh, he's a bad boy.
John: He was, and he ran out on his tiptoes.
John: Did he titter?
John: He tittered.
John: He tittered so hard.
John: And I gave him what he was looking for.
John: I stood up and pointed my finger and said, no, you go.
John: He should have coined you.
John: You get out of here, you batty.
John: He should have coined you.
John: You gave him a special thing.
John: He should have.
John: Well, you know what?
John: I do a lot of that for free.
John: That's a lot.
Merlin: Did you speculate that at that point, do you think he came in?
Merlin: And I don't want to shame anybody because of their incontinence.
Merlin: But if he was wearing a visible diaper, as far as you could tell, do you imagine?
John: Yeah, right.
John: I could see.
Merlin: I mean, do you think he was riding dirty or do you think he was rolling clean when he came in?
John: I don't.
John: No, I think he may have.
John: I think he probably.
Merlin: Well, what do you imagine he might have made while he was there?
Merlin: Anybody's guess.
John: No, I think when I yelled at him, his sphincter tightened up like a. No, I think a lot of that is to take home with you.
John: You take that experience home with you and then you're like, then you sit.
John: Oh, I see.
John: You put in the nappy bank.
John: Well, because, for instance, if you're on cam with a girl and you're there for four hours throwing tips at her.
John: I'm guessing that you're not jacking it all four of those hours, right?
John: You're also doing other things.
John: You've got a window on your computer, and you're going tickety-tackety.
John: I see.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I mean, there are people that want to jack it for four straight.
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, maybe that's part of the fun is saving your pennies a little bit.
John: I feel like if you sit there for too long without tipping,
John: I don't know what happens.
John: Maybe like a little taxi meter goes like, dang, you can't just sit here.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I'm not sure.
John: The thing is she gave me after we'd been seeing each other for a pretty long time.
John: Because, you know, I am curious, but I also want there to be clear boundaries.
John: And the times in my life since I graduated to whatever it is that I am now, a confirmed bachelor, nice guy, never married, which used to be a euphemism.
John: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: You'd say that about a Paul Lind, right?
Merlin: I mean, yeah, you try to be subtle about it.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm and I but now I fall into that category.
John: Nice guy, never married.
John: But as I as as time has gone on, right, I had to learn what boundaries were.
John: And sometimes I still cross them in the in the sense that I like somebody.
John: And I'm like, well, now, wait a minute.
John: You know, I like you like you.
John: What are we going to how are we going to do this?
John: Like, where are you going type of thing?
John: And I have to check it.
John: I have to learn.
John: I've had some very strong lady friends say that they need boundaries.
John: I also need them.
Merlin: I think that's arguably one of the most important and difficult things to discuss.
Merlin: very hard it's very hard boundaries in general because they could be very trivial but they could also be very important and sometimes boundaries can seem weird but like you need like you know sometimes i'll just just as a example i would share is that sometimes i'll say to my family i know this sounds abnormal but if i've been recording a show and editing a show and i've been like paying 100 attention to somebody for a while i need to just chill a little bit after i've done a show like i know that's not that's not like a very cool thing to say like you know there are people who like work on you know
Merlin: Beams with their lunch pail all day who are really working for a living.
John: But I say like – Those guys go home and get on cam with their lady.
Merlin: They get on cam and coin.
Merlin: But I mean I think that's true for so many things and it's one reason I think it's not a terrible idea.
Merlin: If one is interested in a partner and is considering a long-term relationship, I don't think it's bad to live together.
Merlin: I mean, I know that's a controversial thing to say in 2019, but I can't imagine an era where you would date somebody for eight months to a year, get married, and the first time you ever have carnal knowledge and cap on the toothpaste knowledge is arguably the first night that you're in a room together.
John: Oh, that seems very weird to me.
John: That seems so risky to me.
John: It does, it does.
John: Boundaries, John.
John: Well, and also, you know, we're living in an era now where a lot of my lady friends are nice girls never married, right?
John: Nice girls never married.
John: Oh, yes.
John: That's definitely a thing.
John: They're also learning what their boundaries are and trying to practice a kind of like, oh, this is what I'm cool with.
John: This is what I'm not.
John: And I don't have a nine-to-five job, so I've got a lot of time to sit around and get all dramatic if the mood strikes.
John: Anyway, in this instance, she never offered me – she never explained exactly where I could find her online.
John: And I respected our relationship as being an IRL one.
John: And I didn't have any interest in watching her online.
John: So I never asked.
Merlin: It's an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry is dating the massage therapist and he keeps trying to get a massage out of her.
Merlin: And you watch that now.
Merlin: That's probably what?
Merlin: From probably 1993 or four.
Merlin: It's funny because it's creepy.
Merlin: But now it seems real creepy that you would go like, well, why don't you put on a little show for me?
Merlin: Like, why don't you?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, why don't you go in the other room and get on Skype with your feather duster?
Merlin: And I'll just be here in the kitchen, you know, making a sandwich, if you know what I mean.
John: So most of our time together, we were in sweatpants and she would whatever, take her makeup off or something when she knew I was coming over.
John: So we had a very sort of casual grown-up relationship.
John: thing and i would see you know and like i i would take her candlesticks and i would i would bring i would find things that i felt like were funny accoutrements to have sort of in her various rooms of of uh her dungeons or whatever not dungeons but you know what i mean she had like a finished basement yeah yeah and um and so i would you know i'd sort of populate her space and she was a vintage shopper too so she had all this stuff closets for days
John: But so I never – I did not – honestly, it didn't occur to me for a couple of years to go and –
Merlin: sit and watch her on tv like it wasn't um did that feel did that feel invasive to you when you did that yeah yeah yeah it felt like i'm imagining you had not said first hey i'll be tuning in today no well no i see i never did in the entire time we dated each other i never won oh how interesting did you ever were you wherever so you had seen her like in the room doing the thing with you out of out of shot
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You never saw her doing it at all?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: That's so interesting to me.
Merlin: She would say so.
Merlin: I mean, I say that because like, you know, I mean, when we were dating, my wife had been to where I work.
Merlin: I've been to where she worked.
Merlin: Like, you know, we carpooled and stuff.
Merlin: So I've been to where she worked many times.
John: I just was never there when she was working.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And so she would, you know, I would text her and say, hey, what's up?
John: And she would say, I'm on cam.
John: I'll, you know, I'll call you later.
John: And I would go, great.
John: You know, it was just exactly like I'm at work.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Can I ask a quick question?
Merlin: Yeah, of course.
Merlin: How long into the relationship was it before you knew – I'm guessing she knew what you did?
Merlin: How long was it before you knew what she did?
Yeah.
John: It's an interesting question, right?
Merlin: It was like, you know, you're hanging out the first night or was it something?
John: Okay.
John: So we met on the early days of Twitter.
John: Oh, Twitter.
John: When, you know, Roderick on the line was maybe a year old.
John: And we were having, you know, we were back.
Merlin: She had listened to the show before you met her?
John: Oh, she was an avid listener.
John: Shut up.
John: There's a cam person who listens to our program.
John: There are multiple, because I've heard from a handful.
John: People love you, John.
John: People love you.
Merlin: You draw so much water in so many communities.
Merlin: It's fucking incredible.
Merlin: I don't know why this is surprising to me.
John: They're out there hanging out with people who are coining them.
John: Okay.
John: And then they come hang out with us.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And we don't, you know, we don't allow ourselves to be coined or we never have.
John: You can't really coin.
John: It's, you know, it's, there's all kinds of issues with that.
John: But people like to hang.
Merlin: Just buy a shirt, man, you know?
John: They like to hang out with us, right?
Right.
John: Yeah, I'm glad.
John: I'm really glad.
John: I like that.
John: But the thing that was funny is that she was also one of, and I think you probably knew her, she was one of the fun Twitter people from the fun days.
Merlin: I don't imagine for a second that as soon as we get off air, I'm going to ask you who this person is, because this is very interesting to me.
Merlin: I've never cammed.
Merlin: No, you haven't.
Merlin: I sent you a link.
Merlin: This is on cammingskillswithaz.xyz.
Merlin: The kind of domain that you can buy with Squarespace.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's got a guide to how to cam.
Merlin: For example, they have a section here I like, which is choosing a cam model name, which seems smart.
Merlin: It seems smart to have a nom de guerre.
John: It does.
Merlin: Before you sign up for your account at Chatterbait.
Merlin: So Chatterbait, I guess that's Portmanteau.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Now, Portman Toto could be a foot fetish site, but Chatterbait, you should carefully think about what your model name will be.
Merlin: It's important that you try to pick a name that's cool and memorable, but that's not being used by anybody else.
Merlin: See, to avoid, you don't want namespace pollution.
Merlin: The way I came up with my name was I just looked through a magazine until I found a cool word I liked.
Merlin: And then I paired it with a commonly used first name.
Merlin: Like, you might use a name like Jenny and pair it, Jenny with an I, and pair it with a word like Broad Street for Jenny Broad Street.
Merlin: Jenny on the block.
Merlin: Jenny from the block.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: If you want my love, you should coin me.
Merlin: You could also go more profane and dirty, et cetera.
Merlin: If you're setting on a name, Google it to make sure no other models are using it.
Merlin: See, that's smart.
Merlin: That's smart.
John: Yeah, you want to make sure.
John: And I think there was a little bit of, there was a little bit of problem in my friend's life
John: when some other girl came in and took...
John: took a name that was uncomfortably close to my friend's name chomped on her brand because she was so successful and and she my friend was on mfc which is my free cams but she was routinely one of the top 10 uh my free cams girls and so some young girl you know 22 year old came on and basically had just a just
Merlin: her name except with an underscore in the middle and it became like no really that tacky it was super tacky it was like uh sorny you know you know what i mean like you're just that's that's so cheap i'm sorry now i'm distracted because now i'm on this is i'm still on the camming skill sky i'm gonna close this close this tab but right now i'm um author uh aria wrote an article called how to sell used panties online
John: Yeah, there's a whole thing, and I think there was a little bit.
John: I don't think that my friend was quite in the used panties game, although I'm not sure.
John: See, as I'm seeing.
Merlin: I didn't mean to imply that, but it's nice that they've got this all written out.
Merlin: Campsite's best for selling dirty underwear.
Merlin: You've got the how and the why.
Merlin: And then you have a section, and I think this is really the nut graph, as they say, how selling used panties works is a section.
Merlin: They have a picture of a panty here.
John: I don't think they say dirty panties.
John: I think they would say used panties.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Pre-owned.
John: What do I have to do to put you in this panty today?
John: There's a whole group, I'm sure, of cam girls that specifically say dirty panties.
Merlin: Isn't that a Japanese thing, John?
Merlin: Now, is that racist?
John: They have vending machines.
Merlin: And I think the deal is, you buy the panties, and I think it has a photograph of the woman who has nominally worn the pre-owned panties.
John: I wonder if I...
John: If I could have sold my German panties.
Merlin: Sure sounds like it.
Merlin: I mean, you know, everybody hurts.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, there's a lot of people in the fecundity of the age where they're going to be making, you know, an ant flow and they'd really enjoy that.
John: People just want, they just want to use it as a pocket square.
John: You're going to go out at night.
John: Oh, that's fun.
John: That's just for me.
Merlin: Would you like people to send you underwear, John?
John: Nope.
Merlin: Do you want to give them a P.O.
Merlin: box or something where you can receive underwear?
Merlin: No, thank you.
John: That's not my thing.
John: I don't want anybody touching my underwear.
Merlin: Don't touch my feet in the morning.
Merlin: Don't touch my underwear ever.
John: That's right.
John: I just want a Red Bull out of this machine.
John: Don't touch my feet in the middle of the night either.
John: Oh, just don't touch them.
John: I'm not one of those don't touch my feet people.
John: I've known people.
John: There was a gal that if you touched her feet, she'd scream.
John: This was a person that I knew in the old days.
John: And not in a fun way.
John: No, no, no.
John: She'd scream.
John: And, uh, and, and one of the ways that we started, uh, one of the ways that we started dating, we were all, we were sitting in a room together with some other friends and she had her shoes off and I, and I touched her, I was talking to her and I touched her feet.
John: And, uh, as you know, as you do when you're talking to somebody and, uh, and she didn't scream.
John: And we sat and talked because I didn't know about the foot thing at the time.
John: And we sat and talked and I had my hand on her foot.
John: And then someone else, a person that, you know, a rock musician was sitting in the room and they looked and they were watching this and they said, right, he's touching your foot and you're not doing anything.
John: You're not screaming like every time I've ever touched your foot.
John: You've screamed at me like you're being murdered.
John: And she looked down and realized I was I had been touching her foot.
Merlin: Oh, and suddenly she's like Wally Coyote running in the air and looks down.
John: Yeah, and then she was like, ah!
John: And I was like, what, what, what?
John: What just happened?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And that was when we realized, that was when she realized, oh, wait a minute, you touched my foot and I didn't mind.
John: Maybe we should take this conversation elsewhere.
John: And I was like, interesting.
John: I had the electric fingers.
John: Okay.
Yeah.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I'm not sure if that's how that worked.
John: We never talked about it again.
John: It's not like she said.
John: No need.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not boundaries.
John: I'm saying boundaries.
John: But but in terms of how long it took before I knew this person was working in this in this vernacular.
John: Mm hmm.
John: I knew her on Twitter and didn't know.
John: On Twitter, she never revealed that she listened to Roderick on the line.
Merlin: I like to think that everyone is doing that.
Merlin: That's how we don't know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Isn't that wonderful?
John: When you walk past people on the street and you're like, hey, how's it going?
John: And they're like, oh, just fine.
Merlin: They see me wearing my own shirt in New England, and they don't want to acknowledge it because they don't want to make it weird, you know?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Professor Madden.
John: And this was that, right?
John: We were shooting the dozens.
John: We were playing like we used to do.
John: She was very funny.
John: She said funny things.
John: I would say funny things.
John: She would say funny things to you.
John: You would laugh.
John: We would say funny things to back and forth.
John: Scott Simpson was there.
John: I remember that.
John: Do you remember that?
John: Oh, so much fun.
John: It was so much.
John: I had some times, man.
John: So then she, and she was, I think, lived in California at the time.
John: She moved to Seattle.
John: And she she sent me a DM and she said, I moved to Seattle.
John: We should get coffee sometime.
John: And I was like, totally.
John: You're hilarious.
John: And then, you know, as as I do, I then I didn't I dropped the ball or I didn't actually want to get together with anybody and.
John: To get coffee.
John: And so about a year went by where every once in a while, you know, because we're still having fun on the Internet.
John: Every once in a while, she'd be like, hey, yeah, we should get coffee.
John: And I was like, totally.
John: And then one time enough of those had gone by where I felt like, oh, yeah, I actually we should get coffee.
John: I'm sorry that I've been so recalcitrant.
John: Mm hmm.
John: And we and then I met her for coffee and, you know, and she showed up and she was wearing, I think, a poodle skirt maybe with a bit of froofy.
John: And she had a little handbag.
John: That was fun.
John: I like that was fun little handbag.
John: And I think of like a mohair cardigan.
John: And the whole thing was just so – she was just so put together.
John: She's like a lifestyle vintage person.
John: She was just like kapow.
John: But it wasn't Betty Page.
John: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: No, I have a friend.
Merlin: I have a really good friend.
Merlin: A kid – well, it doesn't matter.
Merlin: But one of my daughter's best friends, her mom used to be a technology person.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And like, you know, it doesn't matter.
Merlin: But she'd been a very well-known technology person.
Merlin: And then she got into like crafts and vintaging.
Merlin: And she went deep into this rabbit hole of like discovering like vintage bolts of cloth.
Merlin: And like she did a whole thing.
Merlin: So she makes all her own clothes.
Merlin: She makes most of her kids' own clothes.
Merlin: And yeah, it doesn't have to be a coining thing.
Merlin: Like some people are just really into that like as a thing.
Merlin: It's, you know, it's kind of like chronological LARPing.
John: It's, yeah, a little bit of chronological LARPing.
John: She's living in a modern world in a modern context.
John: Well, so anyway, on this coffee date, I said, you know, what do you do?
John: Like, it never occurred to me to ask.
John: And she said that she worked in tech.
John: And I was like, of course.
John: That's a good answer.
Merlin: I tell people I'm a ceramicist, but telling them you work in tech.
Merlin: Before I discovered telling people I'm a ceramicist, I used to say, I do stuff with computers.
Oh.
John: I tell people I'm a ceramicist now.
John: Not everybody.
John: Yes.
John: Every once in a blue minute.
Merlin: But when you meet somebody in business class and you know they just want to compare dick sizes, just tell them you're a ceramicist.
John: Yeah, I just say I'm a ceramicist.
Merlin: And it really, I mean, it works.
Merlin: I research scabs.
John: Just whatever.
John: Just don't talk to me.
John: Please don't talk to me.
John: But so at this date, which at first it was just a coffee drink,
John: She did not, she neither revealed that she listened to Roderick on the line, nor did she reveal what she did.
John: And then we started dating.
John: And it was then that she felt like, I should tell you that I listened to Roderick on the line.
John: And I was like, oh, okay.
John: That's not bad.
John: I mean, I'm not made uncomfortable.
Merlin: There's so many people I know where the only thing they really know about me is that I listen to their podcast.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I think part of what makes this program so interesting for me are the little differences, the contrasts.
Merlin: You're meeting people who don't tell you they listen to your show, and I'm very happily married to a person who super clearly does not listen to my shows.
Merlin: And I think that's a blessing.
Merlin: It's a mitzvah.
John: You get what you need.
John: My daughter's mother listens to Friendly Fire religiously.
John: But it's very hard for her to listen to Roderick on the Line.
John: And I understand.
John: I think it's hard for a lot of people.
John: I understand.
John: But, you know, the only thing I really know about John Sarcusa is that he listens to Roderick on the Line and is mad about it.
John: He likes Ferraris.
Merlin: He's very concerned about interrogation.
John: He skied.
John: Oh, skeed.
Merlin: I thought that was an adjective about being cool.
Merlin: Oh, man, John is so skeed.
John: He's skeed.
John: He's the most skeed of all your friends.
John: You know, I met Max Temkin in real life several times, so I feel like I know Max.
Merlin: You knew Max way long before.
Merlin: You met him on a boat, if memory serves.
John: A ship.
John: I'm sorry, a ship.
John: I met Max early days.
John: It wasn't a dinghy.
John: And so I know Max, but I also, you know, Max also listens to the program.
John: He's behind, but I think he has listened.
John: Yeah, he's listened over time.
Merlin: That's so interesting.
Merlin: I really don't like to think about people listening to the show.
Merlin: It really throws me off my game.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Well, it doesn't throw me off my game.
Merlin: This started as phone calls.
Merlin: It turned into not having phone calls often enough.
Merlin: And now I do mostly think of it kind of as a phone call.
Merlin: And I think that's good for everybody.
John: Yeah, it's largely a phone call.
John: Every once in a while, I think, did I say a bunch of things that other people shouldn't hear?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: I've written you a couple of times and said, wait a minute, did I grossly insult a super good friend of mine?
John: And then you say, I listened to it and I don't think so.
Merlin: Whatever's in the show is in the show, and that's for better and sometimes for worse.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I think I took you off your anecdote.
Merlin: Oh, you're having coffee and she's in tech.
John: Now we're like seeing each other.
John: And we're seeing each other for a surprisingly long time.
John: Oh, before she had the podcast.
John: Was the podcast revealed the first thing?
John: That happened pretty fast.
John: And then she was just like my friend who worked in tech who always had a wonderful outfit of some kind when we would see one another.
John: And then it was fairly long time went by before she said, I have to tell you something.
John: I was like, yeah, let's lay it out there.
John: She said, I don't work in tech, really, actually.
John: Per se.
John: I mean, I work in a kind of tech.
John: She utilizes technology.
John: And then the thing is, it was early enough days that she had to explain to me what it was.
John: She had to explain how it worked because I was like, so you what now?
Mm-hmm.
John: And it was, you know, it was great.
John: It was like the girl that's selling her bathwater.
John: Yeah.
John: It was a thing where I didn't know about it before.
John: But the thing is, the girl that was selling her bathwater is within the context of this cam thing.
John: So when I saw it, when I saw her deal, I immediately recognized it as part of this larger cam ecosystem.
John: And I know that my friend...
John: very definitely played the role of like, oh, teehee?
John: I mean, she has a little bit of teehee in her because she's fucking feather dusting in her underpants.
Merlin: Now see, when the poopy diaper man does it, it's not quite as cute to me as when she would do that, probably.
Merlin: I think if poopy diaper guy was... It's not her special thing to go teehee in the same way that it's poopy pants man.
Merlin: Do you think he drove there or do you think he walked there?
John: I think he walked there.
John: It was Capitol Hill in Seattle.
John: It's a very walkable neighborhood.
John: I think she lived in some Section 8 housing up the street.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Section 8?
Merlin: Isn't that what Klinger wanted?
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: He did want to section eight.
Merlin: And so, and so he dressed up in ladies vintage clothes.
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: It's all coming together.
John: I miss it.
John: A clinger already.
John: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: That's how I got my, that's how I got my braille play boys right there.
John: Same thing.
John: Except, you know, except he was mad at me.
John: Not me mad at him.
John: So, okay.
John: All right.
John: Okay.
John: But what I was, I think about to say is that, uh, cleaning with a feather duster in a little French maid's outfit is a pretty broad, like that appeals across a fairly broad section of the people up there with, uh, with chests, uh,
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: In terms of the big part of the curve, I bet a lady with a feather duster, and she's a maid in the French style, is probably pretty high up there.
Merlin: And you know what else?
Merlin: I'm going to go a step further.
Merlin: I'm going to say if somebody who was being kept company by her in a technical way, if that person did get clocked by their partner, there could be worse things to be caught with.
John: There's a lot worse things than to be like, oh, I have a little bit of a maid fetish or whatever.
Merlin: It might be harder for the poopy pants guy to meet the kind of person he would like to meet in life.
Merlin: Because that's going to come up.
Merlin: That's going to come up at some point.
John: He has to go to the Scheisse Club.
Merlin: If you're a lifestyle diaper man... I wish I had it to this show.
Merlin: If you're a lifestyle diaper man, there's going to be challenges.
Yeah.
John: Right?
John: Right.
John: If your significant other comes in, doesn't know this about you.
Merlin: You don't buy one diaper.
John: I know.
Merlin: I had a baby and we went through a shit ton of boobie pants.
Merlin: We had a special device called a diaper genie.
Merlin: Did you ever have a diaper genie?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: A diaper genie is a thing that's like a trash can with a lid.
Merlin: But inside of it is a very clever device, which is basically, imagine like a long snake-like thing of like saran wrap, but it's a tube.
Merlin: And what you do is when there's a diaper, you put it in there.
Merlin: And then when it gets full, you kind of cut off the bag a little bit.
Merlin: And then you take that out to the trash.
Merlin: And you tie a knot on the bottom of the... Is this making sense?
Merlin: And so basically you make this giant tube.
John: I think we did have this.
John: I think we did have it.
John: I just don't think we knew that it was called a diaper genie.
Merlin: I think we just thought it was like... But you can tell how poorly you're parenting when you have too large of a very, very big poopy snake to take out.
Merlin: And you're like, wow, I should do this more often.
John: I mean, we didn't have anything else to do.
Merlin: So he walked there, probably.
John: So anyway, so... So, yeah, you would have a harder time explaining to your spouse, like, oh, yes, I'm looking at this site where people's butts are covered with poo.
John: Then, like, oh, I'm looking at this site where this nice lady cleans her apartment in her underpants.
John: Right?
John: It's pretty... Maybe you're just a tidy person, you know?
John: The whole thing about, like...
John: Like her sitting in an office all day and you can see her garter belt or whatever while she's typing away.
John: Like that's very, very tame.
John: It's kind of sweet.
John: Sort of mainstream.
John: Sweet.
John: That's right.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to be crass, but I have to ask.
Merlin: So in these ones where she's especially in the glass room, as much as you're comfortable saying, she's not...
Merlin: to the people looking through the glass, she's not expressing nudity.
Merlin: It's only the GoPro that sees the ZZ Top actioning happening under the desk.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: So if I went to that office because my insurance agent was down the hall or something, and I was walking through the office, and I peeked, and I peered in through the glass, and I saw this young woman sitting at a desk typing away, my thoughts would be, she is a very well-tailored person.
John: young lady, even though she's 45, but she represents as a, you know, she's wearing youthful tailoring.
John: And then I think I would probably take a second glance and say, she's extremely comely.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: She's very attractive.
John: You're not made of stone.
John: And she's there working and she has good posture.
John: Business, business, business.
John: Oh, I love good posture.
John: She has very good posture.
John: And the other thing about it is that she's a woman.
Merlin: I just sat up straighter just now because of that.
Merlin: My back cracked because I sat up straight and then I did it more and it cracked even more.
Merlin: Now I'm getting down by my coccyx.
Merlin: It's all cracking.
Merlin: Holy shit, my posture's bad.
John: Oh, that feels good.
John: Thank you for reminding me.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I'm holding myself erect.
Merlin: My shoulders are... Listen to me.
Merlin: I have become very proactive suddenly.
John: Oh, I feel good.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Is good posture a kind of cosplay, John?
John: Thank you.
John: My ex-lady friend.
John: I feel tall.
John: I think so.
John: Well, the thing is that her posture and her manners went along with her whole outfit.
John: So she was not just cosplaying.
Merlin: If I dressed up like that and I'm hunched over my very loud keyboard, that's not going to be as cool.
John: No, you might as well be wearing a diaper on your head.
John: I really need a haircut.
John: But she, like, she, and the other thing was that in our interactions with one another, she had expectations that I would, and that was, I think, part of why she was attracted to me, was that she understood that I would treat her with respect.
John: 100%.
Merlin: Like, is she going to meet one of her coinies, coiners?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Her Queenie A's?
Merlin: I don't think she's going to want to meet a Queenie A. No, no, no.
John: That's very – and there were people in her chat rooms that were there every day, people that she knew very, very, very well.
John: Right.
John: But she was always behind – Well, it's not like I don't look at Twitter once a month.
John: Right.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah.
John: But they would never know who she was.
John: She made it very – she went to great lengths to sort of disguise her actual self and that no one would ever know what her story was, her real story.
John: Um, and I don't think I'm outing her in any, in any way that anybody could know who, who we were talking about.
John: Uh, but, but yeah, she was, she was extremely proper and the properness was part of her.
John: Like you, you didn't, you, I don't think you could go, go into her chat room and use profanity for very long before she sounds very, very dignified and send you out.
John: Right.
John: She, she was like white glove, white glove treatment.
John: But, uh, but so, but I never knew, I never knew any of this in real time.
John: I was, I liked her.
John: I was content to just be, and when I say sweatpants, I have to say that she had, she had very impeccable sort of lounge wear as well.
John: She was not a slob at any time.
John: But later, so, so eventually we, we stopped seeing each other.
John: Uh, now also a long time ago.
Mm-hmm.
John: And, you know, just because life gets in the way, it was, you know, sort of pre-millennium girlfriend era.
John: And so as time passed, time passages, several years went by, and I said, I wonder...
John: You know, like, I like to keep in touch with people, and we would continue.
John: You do.
Merlin: Maybe even to a fault.
Merlin: You really encourage follow-up with people.
John: I like follow-up.
John: I like to keep people in my life just because it doesn't seem...
John: even if you've had a bit, even if you had a bad falling out, even if you've had a big fight with somebody, if you loved them at some point, how could you ever really stop loving them?
John: Yeah.
John: And the problem is that most people don't agree with me.
John: And a lot of them are like, no, I definitely have it.
John: Well, no, what they say is it's not that I haven't, it's not that I have stopped loving you.
John: I still love you.
John: It's just that I hate you more.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, also, I think it's easy to keep loving the idea of someone.
Merlin: But to love them actively is a lot of work.
John: Yeah, I find it hard to love the idea of somebody because the idea... See, these are the contrasts that I'm talking about here, John.
Merlin: We're like a yin and a yang.
Merlin: We just fit together real good.
We do.
John: I love you, Merlin, but not the idea of you.
John: Oh, no, that's so funny.
John: And you love the idea of me, but not me.
Merlin: I don't love your underwear.
Merlin: You can keep going if you want.
Merlin: Of course you do.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I've been so brave this episode.
John: Oh, you have.
John: You've been wonderful.
Merlin: You've been wonderful.
Merlin: One time I was at a food court downtown.
Merlin: And I got my lunch and I sat down at a table.
John: Downtown in San Francisco?
John: Where would you eat downtown in a food court?
Merlin: I don't want to go into it, but I was at a food court, a popular food court in the Powell Street area.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I was there.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I was definitely.
Merlin: I feel like I remember I was by myself.
Merlin: I don't know if my kid was there.
Merlin: The only point of the story is I went to the food court, as you do.
Merlin: And at literally the next table, perhaps eight feet away, dining alone,
Merlin: was a woman whose media I'm very familiar with.
John: Okay.
Merlin: And she's just there eating in the food court.
John: A media person.
Merlin: She's a media figure whose work I know fairly well.
Merlin: And of course, your first thought is, hey, it's you.
Merlin: Hey, I know you.
Merlin: And I'm so grateful that I didn't yell, hey, it's you in the food court that day.
Merlin: I'm glad I just sat with my brisket and my shame, and I kept it to myself.
Merlin: I did kind of steal a couple glances and go, wow, that's so wild.
Merlin: That person is smaller than I expected.
Merlin: But you knew not to... Oh, I can't imagine a worse thing to do.
Merlin: It's bad enough to do it.
Merlin: The truth is, you know what?
Merlin: If you see me out and about, say hi.
Merlin: I think it's cool.
Merlin: I think it's a goddamn shame that when I go with my wife to the Apple store, I am no longer recognized by anyone.
Merlin: I think that's a goddamn shame.
John: Oh, that is a shame.
Merlin: It's just the same thing happened to Hodgman.
Merlin: When Hodgman got out of that commercial racket, remember?
Merlin: I think he was a little bummed.
Merlin: People didn't, like, when he would go to the Apple store, I think people noticed that he was there.
Merlin: Oh, for sure they did.
Merlin: I think people took photographs.
Merlin: They rolled out the red carpet.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, that's just smart.
Merlin: But no, not anymore.
Merlin: I give my name, and I say it very quietly because I don't want to embarrass anyone.
Merlin: And they're like, okay, your appointment's at 10.
John: Well, you know, I told you, I think that I was standing next to Jimmy Kimmel one time at a at a rock concert.
Merlin: And you're very familiar with his media.
John: Well, and the thing is that, you know, I watched Ben Stein's Money in the in the early days.
John: Right.
John: Of course.
John: And, uh, and Jimmy Kimmel is like, basically he's between you and me in age.
John: He's like, he's like our age.
John: And, uh, and I thought he was funny on Ben Stein's money.
Merlin: I always think of him being on that terrible trampoline lady show, but I guess he was on, I forgot he was on Ben Stein's money.
John: Well, so I never saw the trampoline show and I never really saw his late night.
John: I think that other guy has a very popular podcast now.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: The one guy, the less funny guy.
Yeah.
Merlin: uh but uh so i'm standing next to him at a at a rock concert he's like a human adidas shower sandal who the the the guy i'm talking about you know you never trust never trust a guy wearing adidas shower sandals you know that right it's it's up there with puka shell necklace a lot of the time wait a minute now i used to wear a puka shell what about feathers in your hair you wore feathers in your hair no of course not okay i never had a roach clip earring either
John: Anyway, I'm standing next to Jimmy Kimmel, and I look over and I recognize him.
John: That would hurt.
John: That would hurt so much.
John: It's an alligator clip.
John: It was a thing.
John: I look over, I recognize him, and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, hey, man, what's up?
John: And I recognize him enough that I feel like, yeah, we know each other.
John: We've known each other in the – because, you know, we know a lot of people.
John: and so i sit and talk to him and he's very he's very easy to talk to and we you love my shows we talk about my show which show no no no this is a different one i was like i know i know i know i'm guessing you're probably a long winners fan since we're standing here sure and we talked for uh for like 10 minutes before i was like oh shit i don't know this guy this is this famous guy oh fuck it's
Merlin: every single time because it's somebody you know so well you know them you know i mean like if i if i i mean like i think he kind of knows me but if i bumped into griffin mcelroy somewhere i'd be like hey how are you doing you know how's your ips what's up like i know so much about you that i feel like we are extremely good friends and we are not
John: A guy did a really nice thing to me at the MaxFunCon this year.
John: I think it was there.
John: It was one of those things.
John: Somebody walked up.
John: He's had a lot of travel.
John: He said, listen, I know you.
John: You don't know me.
John: I know you really well.
John: But I know that we're not friends.
John: And I just want to say, like, hello.
John: And, you know, we're standing in line together here.
John: And so anyway, like, high five.
John: And I was like, high five.
John: High five, friend.
John: Like, thank you for...
John: thank you for just laying all that out there.
Merlin: So we don't, so it's not like, you know, it's such a nice Venn diagram of kindness, like at that kind of event to do it in that particular way.
Merlin: Respectful is not the right word for that, but kind it's, it's very kind to do it that way instead of just, just, just run up and go like, I know your daughter's name or something like that.
John: He also takes, he takes, he makes it easy on himself because I think there's a lot of defensiveness when you are a
Merlin: fan of someone and they don't know you there's a tendency that you would be on edge already like oh hey well um you don't know me but uh you know and he took all that absolutely absolutely it's so frustrating and off-putting because because like you know even when i do like something as simple as a the little uh meetup at the comic store that i used to do like it's it's so low-key and
Merlin: And like, so really serious, you, you know, you guys, you guys can control this any way you want, whatever you want to do.
Merlin: If you just want to, if you just want to hang out and talk, if you've got a question about John Syracuse, like, or, or you just want to like talk about whatever the fuck is fine.
Merlin: But you know what I don't need is you coming up.
Merlin: And like using information and attention to try and do some kind of a weird power thing, because I don't know, are you nervous?
Merlin: Are you what?
Merlin: But it's weird how often even somebody playing at my very low level, how often the first interaction you have with somebody is weirdly hostile.
Merlin: You want to just go like, I mean, I feel this way on Twitter all the time where it's like, cause it's awful.
Merlin: It's awful now, but I want to go like, you know, this is the first time we've ever interacted and that's what it's going to be.
Merlin: Like, that's, that's how you choose.
Merlin: And I'm not saying you have to come in bowing and scraping, but like, dreamy like a fucking human being.
Merlin: Like why I would certainly try to accord that same respect to you.
John: Yes.
John: You don't have to.
Merlin: You don't have to do that.
Merlin: There's so much unnecessary hostility in this world where just a teaspoon of kindness would help everybody so much.
Merlin: I'm so ready to be kind to people.
Merlin: I feel like I'm – you know me, right?
Merlin: Like I'm not actually a dick, right?
Merlin: Too much?
John: No, I mean pretty much not.
John: Sure.
Merlin: It's difficult.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm glad I just ate my lunch and left.
John: Well, let me tell you what happened.
John: Oh, okay.
John: All right.
John: Okay.
John: Which is that several years after she and I stopped being special friends, I said, what is this whole cam girl thing anyway?
John: And I went online and I logged into the internet and I did a search where I said, all right, now I know her stage name.
John: And, uh, I know that she, you know, somewhere along the line, like there was some modifications.
John: I think she had, she had some other online properties and there was, you know, like there was, it was during that.
Merlin: So she, she had what our friend John Hajimo call a platform.
Merlin: She had a platform.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like you got more than one thing going on.
Merlin: You're not just, Oh, I'm not just that.
Merlin: I have a bunch of things I do that kind of relate to each other.
John: Right.
John: Uh, anyway, so then I found, so I was not prepared to,
John: To join my free cams and go show up in her space.
John: I felt like that would be extremely, extremely intrusive and wrong.
John: I would feel bad.
John: If she knew I was there, I think she would feel bad.
John: It was just like, that's not how I'm going to do this.
John: But I was like, what is there to find?
John: I guess is what I did.
John: You know, you do that sometimes on the internet.
John: What is there to find?
Mm-hmm.
John: And I found some record of her that some of her fans, I guess, had used some sort of software to digitally record and post records.
Merlin: some things that had happened that would had been happening live and i don't i don't think that's probably bad form oh i see what you're saying uh well she was talking to them online and they were recording that's what uh that's what brady heron calls freebooting like where you like on youtube you take somebody else's video and then repost it as your own in this case that's an unauthor you have to talk to major league baseball if you want to if you want to put up the um i guess dodgers game
John: In this case, she's the Dodgers.
John: There was a handful of these.
John: There was a dozen of them that someone— Okay, and this is on a bespoke video hosting site somewhere.
John: Yeah, they posted it, and it ended up on a place somewhere.
John: And so I was able to watch a few of these videos that I could tell from the environment and from just where she – I could tell that this was a video that was made during the period when we knew one another.
John: Oh, I hate this.
John: And it was super –
John: strange for me it was a super strange experience because it was like i remember that you know like you could pull up your day timer and flip through it and probably find out like you know if you had tacos that day with her well or just like i remember so that shelf i mean i like i gave her that candles type of thing
John: And and so, you know, so I watched a couple of these and it was it was weird because she had somewhat maybe misrepresented a little bit how tame was.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Sure.
John: You know, because she had kind of said like, oh, no, it's just like a sort of like I show them my my certain amount of situational awareness in that game.
Merlin: Like you need to know when to zig and zag and pivot back.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, like you you're a performer.
Merlin: You're doing improv.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's exactly how she would characterize it.
John: Right.
John: She was like, I'm there.
John: I'm I'm keeping them company.
John: I'm doing a I'm doing a performance of a friendly person who is
John: who is very interested in them.
John: And I was like, right, right, right, of course.
John: But you know, she's like also like doing a, she's also doing a little sexy show too.
John: So it's like, but so in watching Belle Delphine, I instantly recognized her knowingness, the fact that she's, you know, she, because the, because my lady friend was very, very smart.
John: And so was putting on a kind of,
John: A culpability, a kind of dumbness to put other people at ease.
John: Okay.
John: You know, she's sitting and she's like, oh, oops.
John: This type of like...
John: This will make you, this is, this is, it's titillating, but it's also, it's putting you at ease.
John: I'm not sitting here, like, laying a bunch of Rilke on you.
John: I'm just like... The German poet?
John: The German poet.
John: Okay, thank you.
John: Of whom she is a fan, my lady friend.
Merlin: She was more just... Sorry, I'm looking at clip art of vintage dresses, so it's slowly distracting.
Merlin: You're like, say what now?
Merlin: Yeah, I just felt some good show art.
John: Okay, all right, so Reiner Maria Rilke...
John: Belle Delphine is very, she's very young.
John: You can just tell that she's young, but she's, I feel like super, super aware.
John: And I think she's at the beginning of a brilliant career and I support her 100%.
John: I do not want to go on her feed.
John: I do not want to buy her drinking water.
John: No bathwater.
John: I don't want anything.
John: I do not want to participate because it's not for me.
John: No, it's not for you.
John: Exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: Right.
Merlin: I think for me, like I may not be sex positive.
Merlin: I don't think I'm sex negative.
Merlin: I just don't want to hear about it.
Merlin: But but you know what I say?
Merlin: I say good for you.
Merlin: And in life, it's important to know when something is not for you.
Merlin: That's the best.
Merlin: That's the best kind of positive.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: This is not for me.
Merlin: This is not made for me.
Merlin: It's not here to please me.
Merlin: And no one owes me an explanation about this.
Merlin: That's the other thing.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I am not owed an explanation about why this is a thing.
Merlin: And I really need to remember that.
John: I just gave a hot take on the thing that everybody has a hot take on.
John: And that's fairly unusual, right?
John: Well, no, it's not.
John: I usually have a take.
Merlin: No, I mean, I think you're a student of life, John.
Merlin: Like it or not, life is your class.
Merlin: You can't clap out of life.
John: You can't clip out, no.
John: No.
John: I don't want somebody to be doing something where people are coining them or where everybody's got to take, and I don't even know what's going on.
John: My reaction is never...
Merlin: uh to watch something for one second and go what the is this this is wrong oh it's it's it it has become so difficult not to do that it has become so difficult there's so there's so much there's just there's there's such a an expectation at this point that you're going to have a opinion a strong opinion about everything very very quickly
John: Right.
John: Do you know what I mean?
John: I don't.
John: I'm trying not to.
John: I don't want to be like that.
John: No, it's bad.
John: It's bad.
Merlin: Nobody hit the intercom and asked you to say how this should be.
Merlin: Nobody did that.
John: Hey, Merlin, how should this be?
Merlin: Oh, I just want people to be happy.
John: She ate an egg.
John: She did.
John: She'd never seen an egg before.