America

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Hey, folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Risk, you'll hear Oz. I got undressed, and I put the nightshirt on, and I got my dick hard, and I took a picture. That and more.

But before that, I just want to give a little shout-out to our latest Patreon patron, Brittany Carr. Thank you so much, Brittany. We give a little shout-out every time someone donates $25 a month or more to us via Patreon. But the deal is, a lot of people just do like $10 a month, or $5, or even $1 a month.

There's all kinds of options there. We now have 879 patrons giving a total of $4,242 per month. That is a huge, huge help to us. Remember, it only adds up to about $50,000 per year.

And that number is amazing, but that's only a little more than enough to cover one person's annual salary with us. And we have over 20 people on our staff. We keep the show going with other income sources like live shows, advertisements. But advertisers come and go.

And it's not possible for us to do more than a couple live shows a month because they take so much work to do. That's why support from our fans via Patreon is the best way for us to have a reliable income source every month that doesn't require us to take on additional expenses and additional work. And best of all, almost every penny you donate to us through Patreon goes directly to us with only minimal fees deducted to help keep Patreon going. So even if you do donate $1 per month, it is a big help to us.

When you're a RISC Patreon supporter, you get access to an incredible amount of exclusive RISC stories and check-ins that are only available to Patreon supporters. So head on over to patreon.com slash RISK. Become a patron for as little as $1 a month if you want or whatever amount you want to give. And as soon as we hit our goal of 1,000 patrons a month giving a total of $5,000 per month, I'll make a silly song about it and put it on the podcast.

That's patreon.com slash RISK. Thank you so much. And now here's the show. Hello, kids.

This is RISK, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison. This is Stefan Harris and Blackout behind me now. And we're calling this week's episode America for a few reasons.

First, once I chose the stories, I realized they're from all over the country. One from Portland, Oregon. One from Chicago, Illinois. One from Denver, Colorado.

We have a story from a black man, a white woman, an Asian-American fella raised in Alabama. We're always welcoming stories from people of all walks of life on the show. Rich or poor, urban or rural, religious or secular, LGBTQ, even liberal or conservative. However you might interpret those words.

To a large extent, it pretty much depends on who pitches us stories. And the people who pitch us stories are you, the RISK listeners. But the other reason that I wanted to call this episode America is because I care so very deeply about the future of our nation right now. I am not shy about talking about this stuff every now and then on the podcast because it should not be that the Democrats are the only one of the two major parties that thinks children should not be kidnapped by the government and put in concentration camps.

It should not be that the Democrats are the only one of the two major parties that think if you're an American citizen, you should have the right to vote. It should not be that the Democrats are the only one of the two major parties that think, you know, we ought to do what we can to try to keep the planet we're living on from imploding in 15 years. It should not be that the Democrats are the only one of the two parties that think the United States should remain a democratic republic. Just today, the New York Times wrote that the GOP is pushing a government-wide effort to roll back protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

Yet another, yet another attack on marginalized American citizens from this endlessly corrupt and cruel political party. So this past weekend, I volunteered. I did some phone banking, calling up people and encouraging them to vote for the Democrats, the party that thinks taking health care away from 23 million Americans would be a harmful thing to do. And I know that a lot of you out there have probably thought to yourself, oh, fuck yeah, geez, I should probably do some volunteering before November 6th also, even as busy as I am.

Well, you really should. I had a blast. I was sitting right next to a former Marine. This guy must have been like six foot six.

And he had climbed Mount Everest at one point. Anyway, I think he was definitely from down South. And he had the most hilariously charming way of chatting with the people he was talking to on the phone. And then right to my left is this tiny little old lady who was Native American.

She looked like she couldn't hurt a fly, but she was fierce about making as many phone calls as she possibly could that afternoon. And the three of us were laughing it up and eating pizza and calling folks and getting them excited about voting. And that's just one of the dozens, dozens of ways you could be helping get out the vote. You know, writing letters, door-to-door canvassing, giving money to campaigns.

One amazing method, to make a little video testimonial about why you're voting on November 6th at realvotervoices.moveon.org. Or you can go to swingleft.org or indivisible.org or thelastweekend.org for plenty more opportunities to help out. Ask your friends if they're volunteering and tag along or have them tag along with you. Let's get the vote out for November 6th like our lives depend on it because they do.

Now in a little bit, we're going to hear a story from the immensely talented storyteller Vara Cooper. But before that, a man we are so happy to be having on the show for the very first time. He too is an immensely talented storyteller. And he told this one at the last RISK live show that we did in Portland, Oregon.

This is Oz with a story we call Honey 420 and Me. January 2017, I'm sitting in my living room in Milwaukee, Oregon, near downtown. I'm going through old emails to find out details about a band that I started back in 2002-ish. And while I'm looking at those old emails, I see an email from Honey 420.

And that took me back 15 years. And 15 years ago, 2002, I was living in Chicago, living alone in a studio apartment in a nice part of Chicago. I was an entry-level data analyst, playing bass in blues and rock bands. And I had this turning point with my relationship with porn.

Because typically, you know, some Saturday morning, I feel like, yeah, I'm going to rent some porn. Nothing else happening. So I rent some porn, come back, and I'm laying on the bed with the remote control in my hand, and the scene is unfolding. And across the room, past my glistening, baby oil dick glowing in the sunlight, how is she fucking in the bed with shoes on?

And where did her pubic hair go? And all this fake moaning and scripts. I never got it. I'm thinking, you know, I had a normal level of porn consumption, but I had that stuff, I never got it.

But around that time, this small genre started to show up. Mardi Gras footage. Just raw Mardi Gras footage. Just seeing the camera go up to some, this pair of soccer moms with their hair just pushed back and they got glasses on and turtleneck sweaters and beers up, beads up to their ears.

And the camera said, all right, tits for beads. I want the butterfly beads. No, those are bush beads. Honey, you don't have beads good enough to see my pussy.

And then she walks away. But her friend says, how about the blue ones? Yeah, the blue ones. All right.

Ah, happy Mardi Gras. And the cigarettes and the money and her ID fall out on the street because that's where she had her stuff and I was brought it up to her neck and the shit is falling all over the place. That was hot to me. Ordinary.

The calamities and everything. No fake moaning and scripts. Yeah, I like that. So around that time, I stumbled across this website called eBand.

And that shit came up after eBay. It said, you women selling your toenail clippings and your used dildos and stuff, get out. Go. No more for you.

And it was fascinating when I found eBand and I would look Hey, I need to contribute something. This is not freeloading. All right, get in an auction. All right, let's see, her bras would go for $200 and $300 a piece because there's like these G-cup titties right there, and it's like, yeah, that's a prize there.

All right, that was too rich for my blood, so I would check out her auctions and she auctioned off this pink nightshirt. Okay, so I got in that auction and I won it for about $40. And then I got it and yeah, it was the one in the auction that she was wearing nothing but that with the big old titties and the shaved pussy. Yeah, this was the one.

And she had written on it, honey420 and a couple of hearts. Now, what do I do with it? I'm not gonna wear it. I'm not gonna jack off onto it.

So what I did, I got undressed and I put the nightshirt on and I got my dick hard and I took a picture. I looked good. Y'all laughing. That was a good picture.

So I sent it to her and a day later she emailed back, honey, I'm glad you got the nightshirt and that you like it and oh, that dick would tear my pussy up. But I know, don't believe the hype. Thanks for the hyperbole. But I felt acknowledged.

My appreciation of her seemed to have gotten through that she was a regular person. But I didn't have any use for this nightshirt, but what would I want? I sent her a message. What would it take for you to do a clip of just flashing me and say my name?

And we went back and forth to make sure that I wasn't trying to lure her into doing some pussy spread or a dildo insertion or something. No, I'm a simple man. Just a flash and my name. Oh, honey, I'll do that for $30.

So she shut up the auction. I paid for it. And now we have to go off of eBay because there was no mechanism in 2002 to attach our embed a video file. So I send her my Yahoo email address.

She replies back with her Hotmail email address. Just to let know that now we're connected. Eventually I do get the clip and it was nice. And so sitting in my apartment in 2017, I figure somewhere in my 10 terabytes of external hard drives, that clip has got to be somewhere.

Yep, simple search. There's the video. I pull it up, hit play, and here it goes. Opens up.

Polka dotted shower curtain immediately is seen. She comes in and then she says, hey, Oz, don't mind my makeup. I just got home from work, but here's the booby shot you wanted. You ready?

And she's got this floral print dress that buttons down to the waist and it's a short sleeve. And she unbutton, unbutton, unbutton, pull the dress apart. And there's this big silver gray bra. All right.

Boom, boom. Big old titties. Yeah. And send me the tingling.

Want to see them bounce? They're heavy. All right, Oz. Talk to you later.

Pull the bra down. She goes off the camera. There's a shower curtain and it goes black. Wow.

Thank you, honey420. So while I'm sitting there, you know, that whole clip was all of 26 seconds. But I'm sitting there and I think, okay, it's 2017. I wonder what's become of honey420.

So I take the Hotmail email address and put it in a Google search like I couldn't in 2002. Search. Oh, shit. Oh, no.

I have way more information about Julia, who lives in Maryland and was born in 1979. Now, see, back when we were discussing that clip and had to go off of eBay, we did exchange a few short emails. And I know on my side, I was trying to be respectful and have a boundary. I didn't ask her about her life.

She didn't ask me about my life. But I did know she had a fiance. I knew that he had a daughter. But that's it.

We kept it about the transaction. But now Google has given me no, not honey420, but Julia. And it was so easy. That much information took less than a minute to get.

And it's so easy to just click some links. I don't want to be here, but it's easy. Click some links. And the next thing I know, I feel like I have gotten on this 15-year-long ice path that I'm smacked up against the front window of her life, meaning her active, open Facebook page.

Real name. I see her husband. He's got a red beard and he wears glasses and he's kind of thin. And there's posts about her and these other moms planning a big birthday party for a bunch of their little kids.

There's a selfie of her in the passenger seat of the car and the husband is driving and two little kids in the backseat. Two little kids that didn't exist back in the honey420 days. I feel nasty. I feel like I've violated our, something happened that had me on the other side of this barrier that we tried to keep back in 2002.

But I'm on Facebook. I've got 2,000 friends. Let me make a friend request. Let me think about this.

Okay, so if I make this friend request, what's possible? She could say, Hey Oz, I remember you. You're the pink nightshirt guy. Oh yeah, you're a great guy.

Accept. Come on in. She could say, I don't know how the fuck or why the fuck you dug me up, but stay the fuck away from me and then block me. She could say, I remember you and I'm gonna accept your friend request, but don't put anything about eBay and the honey420 on my page, please.

All right, but you're, I like you. And then she's got to hold her breath in case I do something funny tomorrow, five months from now. But I don't know how she would feel about that. I don't know how she would respond.

But I start thinking, What do I have to add to her life? Because from what I can see, Julia gave us a path to honey420. And from what I can tell, even after I logged into eBay, that path has had weeds grow over it and nature has taken it back. There is no path anymore to honey420 and there was no path from Julia to Julia.

And if we were Facebook friends, would she care that I've got an Excel channel on YouTube? Would she like the pictures of when I go to New York or Sao Paulo? Would she want my beef jerky recipes when I post? I don't know.

But I scroll and I look and I see a picture of her and one of her kids in the hospital and his moms are expressing get well wishes because he had just had his tonsils out. But still, she's an adult. I can make this request and she can say no, like the clip. She said yes and she named her price.

She could have said no. I can make this request and she can block me or whatever. It could be her decision. But it felt like there are some requests that can be too far.

So I looked more and then I saw this backyard barbecue. Her and her really old grandparents. They're sitting on lawn chairs. She's behind them with her arms around them and they're smiling.

And that showed me this curated life that she's created on Facebook is family. Family in big sweeping cursive letters. Family. I'm not part of Julia's family.

So I grabbed my mouse and got it away from that friend request button and left that the hell alone. But if she is holding on to some 15-year-old dick pic that I sent her back in 2002 and she finds me and wants to send me a friend request, accept and come on in, Julia. Hi, boys. Are you craving the sweet scent and taste of a real woman?

Well, you're in luck because I sell just about anything that can be harvested off my body. At the right price, you can buy my well-worn panties, my sweaty socks, or even my sexy pantyhose. Who said men are purely visual? Now you can enhance your solo time by experiencing true nasal nirvana.

Maybe you have more transgressive tastes? Well, you're in luck too. Fresh toenails clipped straight from my perfect feet. A divine topping on your next meal.

A 12-ounce bottle of my golden pussy nectar. Better for your gut than kombucha. And for those of you who are particularly generous, you can buy a Tupperware full of my delicious booty caviar. For men who truly know what it means to worship everything about a living goddess such as myself.

On a Wednesday night in the middle of my senior year of high school, I walked out of my parents' house wearing my pajamas and carrying only my schoolbooks. I just could not take it anymore. My father was what some of my therapists have called a soul murderer. Others called him a malignant narcissist.

But for our purposes here, we'll just make sure to just know that he was a miserable prick. I mean, I was an honor student. And I never embarrassed my family by getting into trouble. I played sports and I volunteered.

And yet, as the second daughter that my father never wanted, I would just always be that stupid piece of shit to him. So I figured that if I just left, I'd probably be better off. And he thought so highly of me that Mom later told me that the night that I left, he put her in the car and drove down to Hunts Point, the notorious hangout for prostitutes in the Bronx, and made her look for me, saying, see what this stupid piece of shit does to you? Little did they Then like Dave.

Dave was one of those 30-something-year-old guys who hung out with us high school kids. And I'm a few years older now than Dave was back then, and I still have no idea what he got from hanging out with us. But we didn't mind because he always had beer. And he sold ecstasy.

And he let us hang out in his big old nearly empty house where he had blankets nailed up over the windows and a couch that was all chewed up but no cat or dog to explain why the couch was chewed up. And he used an upside-down bucket for a table. And to us kids, this was paradise. And one night in March, we were all drinking on Dave's porch, and one by one, my friends started stumbling home to break their curfews.

But I was too drunk to walk back to Mary's house, and it was too late anyway. So Dave just pointed at his bed and then went to the bathroom. And I knew how this worked. I was wearing those 50-inch kickwear raver pants.

So I just let them drop to the floor and climbed over the mound, got under the covers to wait for Dave. The pillows smelled earthy and unwashed. And it reminded me to get up and get some condoms from my bag because guys never had their own condoms. And then when I got back under the covers, I posed like a drunk sleeping beauty.

And I wondered, how long would a guy Dave's age last? I'd never had sex with a guy that old before. I estimated about four minutes, and I was already bored. But then I heard the toilet flush and the sink swished, so I held my breath and braced myself for Dave to crawl on top of me and leave his stale beer breath all over my face.

But then the TV in the living room clicked on. And I heard the couch moan and groan as Dave struggled to get comfortable. And I realized, Dave gave me his bed. And he didn't expect anything in return.

And because I had been raised by this transactional monster who taught me that I had no value as a human being, my feelings were kind of hurt that he didn't try to fuck me. But in spite of the rejection, after that, I just started letting myself into Dave's house at any hour whenever I had nowhere else to go. And usually he was passed out drunk in the bed when I'd fallen beside him. But if he wasn't a snoring corpse already when I got there, he'd get up and we'd go babble and smoke a cigarette on the porch.

And then he'd take the couch and give me his bed. And I'd wake up around the crack of noon, shower, and Dave's keys and wallet would be gone from the dresser and his boots wouldn't be by the door and the cigarettes wouldn't be on the porch railing. They'd be in his pocket on a construction site somewhere. So I would just walk to my job at Perfect Pizza.

I'd always wanted a brother. And for a while, Dave was kind of it. Although I never even bothered to learn his last name. But I do remember picking on him like a much younger sister would.

And he used to put this silver pomade in his hair and it looked ridiculous. And I took every opportunity to tell him that, especially once he started drinking and rolling and sweating and it would just start oozing and making this greasy mess in like a V down the back of his t-shirt. But he'd always say, who thinks me look like Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots, doesn't it? And I'd be like, well, maybe his grandfather.

And he'd be like, shut up, JB. And I'd be like, make me grandpa. But Dave always ignored the innuendo. By the time I should have been taking my AP exams that May, my life had gotten pretty out of control.

If I wasn't delivering pizza and cigarettes or making cold calls as Clarice from Home Gold Mortgage in the cubicle next to my best friend Vito's, even though neither of us had any idea what a mortgage even was. Then I was applying rhinestone eyelashes, strapping on platform shoes, twisting my hair into these little Bantu knots and painting them with glitter, tucking a lollipop and a Dutch master cigar into each one. And it created this psychedelic crown that club kids up and down the eastern seaboard would recognize. Eventually Vito and I got fired from our telemarketing job.

He for being chronically late and unproductive. I for being dependent on him for my ride. And we ended up spending that next week or so snorting heroin at Dave's while Dave was at work. And the memories I have of that blob of time are about as clear as mud.

But I do very clearly remember that first night we went to go pick up Vito's friend Coco at night school. And by the time we made it up the block, she started overdosing in the backseat of Vito's 1980 Mercury Cougar. We were really fucked up. So we were thrilled because it felt like a scene from Pulp Fiction.

I mean, remember, this is the 90s when assholes like us were feeding the narrative that heroin chic was a thing. It wasn't and it's still not. And I have no idea what we even did with Coco that night. The only reason I know that she survived is because I remember where I was a few months later when I found out that she had died.

Later that week, a few of us were in the Cougar on our way to an after party in Manhattan at six in the morning on a Sunday, like you do. And we saw a guy get stabbed in the head over a parking space. And we were still tripping. So perhaps the only sensible decision I made that week was to insist that we go home instead of to the after party.

And in the car on the cross Bronx expressway, Huey in the backseat was sucking on his binky and his eyes were so big that they could have fallen out of his face. Next to him was Max, who was being quiet for perhaps the only time in his life. And he had his finger out to hold that ripped piece of ceiling fabric off his face like it had to when you sat behind the passenger in Cougar. And the car maxed out at 45 with this lurching motion.

And we were going back and forth in the rhythm of Jason Nevin's remix of Run DMC's It's Like That because the single was stuck in Vito's tape deck. The week ended one morning when we were snorting heroin in Dave's living room and petting the suede paint on the wall. And Vito reaches out and grabs my arm and goes, Duchess, where's Junkies? And in spite of his delivery, he was right.

So we smoked a couple of cigarettes and walked to school like the middle school kids we once were. And a few days later, Dave decided to crush up about a zillion pills and lay out rails all over his house. And he called it a graduation party for Vito and me. And after all that Vito and I had been through over the past week, this sounded like a chill night in.

And I have hazy blacklighted memories of dozens of fucked up teenagers in sweaty half-naked piles all over Dave's house. And we were trading face massages and body paintings made with ketchup from Dave's fridge. And I don't remember Dave even being at the party, just briefly grinding up those pills beforehand. The next morning, I woke up in Dave's bed alone.

It was a sunny day, my graduation day. And I had that desiccated post-Ecstasy binge sensation in my stomach, in my bones, in my skin. And when I saw Dave's keys and wallet on the dresser, I was like, oh shit, Dave overslept. So I walked into the living room to wake him up and it took me a second to process.

Dave's not here. But his boots were by the door. And his cigarettes were on the porch railing and Dave would have gone to work barefoot before he would have gone anywhere without his cigarettes. So I stepped over the chewed up pacifiers on the floor and the spent tubes of Vicks vapor inhaler, that ketchup graffiti that was still kind of lying around.

And I went into the bathroom, which was dark and trashed, but Dave wasn't in there. He wasn't in the kitchen either. And I had this unique blend of hyper-awareness and hungover dullness. So when I stepped to the center of his house and asked, Dave?

And the only responses I got were my own echoes and a visceral warning to leave. I was really freaked out. And my beeper said that I only had about an hour until graduation. So I tiptoed out of there as if being quiet would erase any evidence that I had ever been there.

And I took my seat next to Vito at the ceremony and he stopped fanning himself with a program for long enough to say, don't even talk to me. I'm a complete crackwhore today. And I was relieved because I didn't want to say anything. I mean, I didn't know what happened to Dave, but I had a feeling it was something bad.

And I lay low for the rest of that summer and I quietly went off to college where I met a nerdy boy who told all of his nerdy Jesuit high school friends that my real name was Duchess. And we passed some of the bored snowy time with a pill here and a 10 strip there. And I only drove his granddad with no power steering to Buffalo in a blizzard once to buy DMT. Like it was just different.

Quieter, I guess. And by the time I made it back to the neighborhood around Thanksgiving, Coco and several others had died from a bad batch of heroin. Vito was in rehab. And I found myself walking past perfect pizza one day So by our friend Sierra Lynch.

Now you might have thought that that was a joke, but that is for real. Sierra, if you go to C-E-A-R-A Lynch dot com, Sierra Lynch dot com, you can purchase any of those things she was talking about. Her used panties or socks, some sort of nectar. What do you say?

Booty caviar. Who wouldn't want some booty caviar? My goodness gracious. Yes.

So go on over to eband.com slash Sierra, C-E-A-R-A, to find what she's selling. And we're gonna have another one of those at the very end of the episode. Having a little fun with some of our friends who enjoy selling stuff like that. Our final story on this week's episode is, I was so moved by this.

We brought the show to Denver, Colorado a couple weeks ago. And this young man, Britt Adams, he's new to storytelling. He's very new to Denver as well, shared this story that just blew me away, blew the whole audience away. And here it is now.

This is Britt Adams with a story we call Reunion. When I was six months old, I was adopted from Seoul, South Korea by an entirely white family from the South. A mom from Alabama, dad from Tennessee, a cowboy-loving, football-playing older brother, and a Southern belle, just perfect baby sister. Now, just to put into perspective how white and Southern my family actually is, I have over 50 extended family members in Alabama that I have never met before.

Disregard the hundreds upon hundreds of members that I have in pretty much every Southern state, but just in Alabama. 50 that I had never met. Insane. Every year for Christmas, my family and I always listen to Randy Travis's holiday season Christmas special because he has the voice of an angel, and it's true, yes.

And to put the cherry on top, my family still owns a big-ass dairy farm in McDonough, Georgia that I grew up on for the majority of my teenage years. I had white friends, white teachers, white coaches, grew up in this entirely white culture. And I was happy. You see, growing up, my brother and my father, they were my heroes.

You know, I wanted to be just like them in every single way. Now, my father was very strict, very formal, hence me calling him father. But he taught me the values that I still hold near and dear in my heart today. He showed me the value of hard work from being a farmer to going all the way through college to having a corporate job to now being a senior-level position at a Fortune 500 company.

Like, I am the man I am today because of him. And my brother, he was truly, still is, my superhero. Like, everything he did, I wanted to be. The way he acted, what he said, the way he...

anything. I just wanted to be him. In fact, I wanted to be like him so bad that through all of middle school, I wore a cowboy hat, boots, and a big-ass belt buckle to school. It's true.

Because my brother thought it was cool, and I wanted to be just like him. In December 2016, my family and I all gathered in Nashville, Tennessee for our biggest family reunion ever. 250 of my closest relatives all gathered at my grandparents' house. Yeah, big family.

And at this point, I was a senior in college about to graduate, and I hadn't seen my immediate family in almost three years. So, needless to say, I was excited. So I got off the plane, got into the rental car, drove to my grandparents' house, and the first person I saw out of the car was one of my aunts, who I hadn't seen in almost 15 years. So I closed the door, run up to her, go, Hi, auntie, how's it going?

Open up my arms for a big old hug. Instead of, you know, giving me the normal response, the hug, my aunt shuts her eyes as tight as she can, flexes every muscle in her body, and goes as stiff as a board, waiting for me to walk into the house. Now, immediately, I think, okay, here come the Asian jokes, you know, time to time, it happens, whatever, not a big deal. And I look around to see if anyone's noticed anything, but they'd all gone inside, so I didn't really pay much mind, and I walked inside.

Now, then I was at the kitchen with my brother, waiting for some food, and my little baby cousins just run up to me, about 15 or 20 of them, with their tiny jaded hands, and I go, Hey, kids, how's it going? I give them high fives. And simultaneously, they all take their hands, put them to their eyeballs, pull their lids back, and the entire room laughs. Okay, that's not very funny, right?

What's going on? Like, I know there are jokes, and there are backhand comments, but I've never seen anything like this. Like, what's going on? And I turned to my brother for some support, and he's right behind me, just hunched over, dying laughing.

He finally comes to me, and he says, Hey, man, that was some funny shit, right? It happens every year. All right, let's go get some food, man. It happens every year?

That shit was funny? I don't understand. Am I just jet-lagged? I'm just so confused.

I don't... My family's never said anything like that. What's going on? And so my mind continues to spin, and I try to get just all the food I can and just go and sit down so I can think.

But before I can even get to the cold turkey, a swarm of our family's dogs just run into the kitchen, knocking over chairs, and then run out to the other side of the dining room. But before that last dog can get to the side, one of my uncles from the back of the line says, Hey, Britt, there go the dogs. Don't go try to eat them. And I kid you not, it's like someone just landed the biggest punchline at Madison Square Garden because what seems like the entire house just erupts with laughter.

And I'm just standing there going, What the actual fuck is happening? Like, what is this? This isn't normal. I don't remember anything like this.

Why are y'all laughing? And so I quickly just grab my plate, get some silverware, go to a corner table by myself, and just sit. And I think. I think for about an hour, and slowly but surely, all these memories start washing over my mind.

And I begin thinking of every family reunion, every family event, holiday that I've been with my family. And slowly but surely, these two distinct pictures come to mind. The picture of what I thought my life was and the reality of it. And the reality of it is, these backhand comments were a lot worse than what I thought they were.

You see, you all have to understand, right? Like, for 22 years, these were my people, right? This was my family. Like, I thought it was normal for every single one of your family members to make fun of you because you failed your driver's license test because it was just inevitable.

I thought it was normal for all of your friends to make fun of you and laugh when you won a video game because you just had the Asian gene. Hell, my head coach for soccer in high school gave me the name Chinky, and everyone caught on to it, and I thought it was funny. It sounds absurd, but you just have to understand. This was my life.

This was my environment that I was in. I didn't know any better. And when I went away to college, I very quickly realized that most families don't say these kind of things. Most friends don't make fun of you because you have squinty eyes or yellow skin.

And on top of everything that was happening at my family reunion, my head just started spinning, and I just got so angry and frustrated that I just, I had to leave, right? So I get up, walk to the dining room table where the majority of the adults are, including my father and mother, and I walk over to my father, and I say, sir, I'm sorry, but my head is just really killing me right now. I think I'm just gonna go to the hotel and lie down for a bit and come back. And I look at my father, and he's got these glossy eyes, red cheeks.

He's about four or five Jack and Cokes in. And he's sitting in his chair, holding his glass, and he leans back a little bit and says, son, come on, we just got here. Have a seat, get a drink. We were just talking about how Trump is finally gonna make this country great again.

And I said, yeah, dad, I'm just really tired. My head's killing me. I'm just gonna go lie down for a bit. And I mean, I didn't even vote for Trump.

And immediately, I knew I fucked up. Because my entire redminded family stopped talking, and all eyes were just on me and him. My father puts down his drink, leans forward in his chair and says, what was that, son? Sorry, I couldn't quite hear you.

And I knew I fucked up, so I was trying to just revert the conversation as fast as I could. And I said, sorry, dad, yeah, yeah, I just, my head hurts. I just want to go lie down. What the fuck did you just say?

My father had gotten up, and he was toe to toe, nose to nose with me. I could smell the whiskey breath on him. My father, if I could have just forgotten the jokes, just blended in. If I was just whiter, you know?

None of this would have happened and my entire life wouldn't have been turned upside down and my superheroes wouldn't have turned into my supervillains. Now it took six weeks just for me to be able to fully walk again. And I can't tell you exactly when it happened or where I was, but eventually I realized that shit wasn't my fault. I realized that just because I wasn't from here and I don't have white skin and I didn't necessarily fit in physically, that should have no indifference as to who my family is and how my friends treat me.

So on August 21st, 2017, I packed up all my things, talked to the very few friends that I still had, reached out to my family who didn't respond, and I moved. And that's what I've been doing for the past year and a half until five days ago, I moved here. And I have no friends here, so if anyone wants me to drink later, let me know because... But in all seriousness, I moved here and I got to tell you all for the first time in my entire life, I finally feel happy.

For the first time in my life, I feel like I don't have to just fit in or be someone I'm not or conform to some bullshit, and I love it. I really do. Now don't get me wrong, I will always be a Southern kid at heart. I will always eat my grits and gravy, listen to Randy Travis and Kenny Chesney and Silver Bells.

I will always say, yes ma'am, no sir, or gender non-binary pronouns. I will do it because that's just who I am. And yes, my life may not be the best and I'm going through some things with my family, but that's okay because I'm working on it and time will tell, and that's fine. But I cannot wait for what Denver has to show me and what I can make of this life.

Thank you. That is all for this week's episode, folks. This is John Legend behind me now. And we just heard from Brit Adams.

We wish him the very best in his new home there in Denver, Colorado. There's some lovely places around there. We're going to put up, you know, on our Patreon, we put up these check-ins. Well, Jeff Barr, the episode editor of Risk, he lives out there near Denver and the two of us got very stoned and walked around a sort of a nature preserve out there and recorded a conversation between the two of us just about life in general that we're going to put up on our Patreon as one of our latest check-ins.

So don't miss that. Also, don't forget to wait to the very end of today's episode for another very special, very sexy message from our friend Casey Calvert. Also, don't forget the Risk book. I just checked.

It's 273 reviews on Amazon and average of five stars. It's absolutely fabulous. It's available in audiobook and e-book and paperback, and it's just loaded. Don't forget to buy the Risk book and buy copies for your friends.

Don't forget, you can always find new information about where the next Risk live shows are happening at risk-show.com slash tour. And remember, you can find out more about the storytelling training that we do for one-on-one over Skype or in group sessions or the videos that you can download and take courses in your own time and pace or the corporate workshops we do. That is all at thestorystudio.org. Folks, today's the day.

Take a risk. Hey there, I'm porn star Casey Calvert. When you spread your legs on the internet as often as I do, you get a lot of people wanting to buy your personal shit. Shoes I wore for a certain gangbang, a dildo that was in my butt, panties I peed in, and yes, actual shit.

I draw the line at peddling poop, but I've sold all the rest. In honor of Kevin asking me to be a tiny part of Risk, I've posted a special Dutch auction on my site, CaseyCalvert.com. I have here in my hands a pair of dirty, stained, white cotton panties that I wore for a double anal scene and never washed. Whoever places the highest blind bid wins these panties.

They've been marinating in a sealed Ziploc bag just for you to do whatever your twisted little mind comes up with. Jerk off on them, stuff them in your girlfriend's mouth, or make tea for all I care. Sound good? Mention Risk in the form at CaseyCalvert.com for a special bonus.

Let's get dirty. That is all for this week's episode, folks. This is John Legend behind me now. And we just heard from Britt Adams.

We wish him the very best in his new home there in Denver, Colorado. There's some lovely places around there. We're gonna put up, you know, on our Patreon, we put up these check-ins. Well, Jeff Barr, the episode editor of Risk, he lives out there near Denver, and the two of us got very stoned and walked around a sort of a nature preserve out there and recorded a conversation between the two of us just about life in general that we're gonna put up on our Patreon as one of our latest check-ins, so don't miss that.

Also, don't forget to wait to the very end of today's episode for another very special, very sexy message from our friend Casey Calvert. Also, don't forget the Risk book. I just checked. It's 273 reviews on Amazon, an average of five stars.

It's absolutely fabulous. It's available in audiobook and e-book and paperback, and it's just loaded. Don't forget to buy the Risk book and buy copies for your friends. Don't forget, you can always find new information about where the next Risk live shows are happening at risk-show.com slash tour.

And remember, you can find out more about the storytelling training that we do for one-on-one over Skype or in group sessions or the videos that you can download and take courses in your own time and pace or the corporate workshops we do. That is all at thestorystudio.org. Folks, today's the day. Take a risk.