Touch & Go

Hey folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Risk, you'll hear Fancy Feast. And he said, it feels right, but it also feels like my chest is being crushed. I feel like I'm going to die.

And I said, so die. And more. But first, folks, we have been so moved by the outpouring of love and support by Risk fans lately. If you don't know, Risk is going through a financial crisis this summer.

Long story short, our main income stream, advertising got screwed up for about 10 months by the prior network we were at. And our new network should have our advertising flow back up to speed sometime in the fall. And other income streams should be picking up then, too. But we're in danger of running out of money entirely before then.

Everyone on staff has taken pay cuts. Everyone is working five times as hard as usual. It's Pride Day in New York, but here I am working. I have not been able to take much time away.

We're working on getting new things happening, like new Risk curated social events where attendees will be guided to share stories with one another. But we need every single person who cares about Risk's continuing ability to exist to donate to us either at PayPal.me slash RiskShow for a one-time donation or at Patreon.com slash Risk for a membership, including all that bonus content. So many people have been writing in to say the show is essential to them and that Risk has got to keep on keeping on. And we'll move mountains to make that happen.

But we still need people to be donating more. If you'd rather not do PayPal or Patreon, you can email me at Kevin at Risk-Show.com to figure something else out. But please do give even if you can only give a little. Thank you so much, everyone.

We'll be right back. Life comes with a lot of decisions. And whether you're making a choice about your career, relationships, location, or all of the above, it can be hard to know the right path before you take it. A therapist can help you map out what you really want and trust yourself with the decisions you need to get there.

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I've been free my life. For more information, visit WeBuyAnyCar.com slash info. Now here's the show. Hello, folks.

This is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison. This is The Cars behind me now. And we're calling this week's episode Touch and Go.

How we learn to live with things feeling impermanent or even unstable. But listen, we had a Risk live show in New York a few nights ago, and I am still basking in the afterglow. It felt so reassuring to have a spectacular show and a full house and to have so many people telling us how this show is an institution and irreplaceable and how it's invaluable to their own well-being. I met a young woman after the show who was crying.

She was so excited to tell me how much she loves the show. So we really couldn't help but start to feel like we really are going to make it through this summer with your continued help, of course. And if you're anywhere within a couple of hours of New York, pitch us funny stories. We could always use more lighthearted or funny stories to pepper into our upcoming New York shows.

You can pitch us at risk-show.com slash submissions. And that young woman I was talking about, she said she lived near me in my neighborhood of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. You know what? Anyone listening who lives in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn or fairly close to it, email me at Kevin at risk-show.com.

Maybe I can make some social stuff happening soon for folks who are literally my neighbors. Now, in a little bit, we're going to hear from writer and director Jessica Thompson. Her latest film, The Invitation, is now on Netflix. But before that, something from James Urbaniak from The Venture Brothers on Cartoon Network and Difficult People on Hulu.

James told this one at the Risk live show in San Francisco last February, the story we call Stage Doors. Thank you. So this takes place in the mid 80s when I was kind of a quintessential slacker. I had gone to a community college in New Jersey, Brookdale Community College, the largest community college in New Jersey.

And I was doing a lot of plays there and then I stopped going. And then I just got like a day job in an office, went to bars with my friends and did community theater, amateur theater in New Jersey. And I wasn't really on a career track or anything, but I was very drawn to the theater, even though I didn't necessarily know that that's what I wanted to do at that time. I was in New Jersey and I used to go to New York a lot and see plays.

And back then you could get standing room for Broadway plays for like $20. You would stand in the back behind a little wall in the orchestra section and you could just stand there and watch the whole play. And then what I would do is at intermission, sometimes people would leave or you would see that there was a seat that had never been taken and then I would upgrade myself. I would go down the aisle and get an orchestra seat.

And I really enjoyed being in these theaters watching actors on stage. I had a friend named Nick. And one night, Nick and I got tickets to see a production of Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill, starring Jack Lemmon. I was excited to go.

I'd heard of this play. I don't think I'd ever read it. But we went to see this play and it was Jack Lemmon and his sons were played by Kevin Spacey, before he was famous. Sorry to bring him up.

And Peter Gallagher, before he was famous. And it was really great. It was Long Day's Journey Into Night. And then it ended and I turned to my friend Nick and I said, I want to go backstage and meet Jack Lemmon.

Now, there's no way I could get backstage at this play. I didn't know Jack Lemmon. And I thought, I have an idea. There's a maid in the play, a maid character, small part.

And I said, we go to the stage door. We ask to see the actress who played the maid. And they let us in. And then we go to Jack Lemmon's dressing room.

So I go to the stage door. Let's say the actress who played the maid was named Susan Jones. I said, Susan Jones. We're friends with Susan Jones.

And they went, come right in. Instant access. And there was like a steps. And they went, yeah, you go up there.

And my hand to God, as we're going up these steps, a woman is arguing with someone at the stage door because her name is not on the list to see Jack Lemmon. This is absolutely true. And she's going, I'm a friend of Jack's. And they're like, sorry, you're not on the list.

And she went, would you please tell Jack that I was here? And as we're going up, someone else said, who's that? And someone said, friend of Susan's. So now we're backstage in a big Broadway theater and we don't know where to go.

But it's very exciting to be there. And we're kind of wandering around. It's a very large theater. And the backstages of these theaters are very delightful places like this.

I mean, they're cavernous. They're mysterious. And then a woman who's very well dressed is walking in the opposite direction. And my friend Nick said, kind of putting on an air of benign exasperation.

He goes, where is Jack's dressing room? And she goes, oh, it's right. You go down there and make a right. And so we go down there and make a right.

And there's a large room, sort of like as big as this sort of stage area, with very high ceilings. And it's like a foyer to another dressing room. But standing in this larger room where there are classic, like, makeup tables and mirrors is Jack Lemmon, the movie star. And he's alone.

And we walk up. We stand there. And we go, hey. And Jack Lemmon puts on a big, very genuine smile and says, hey, We can see the audience leaving, and I said to Nick, do you want to go back and meet Judd Hirsch?

I pick up the program. There's literally a character who's like, policeman! And I got this. And I go, and I go like, Joe Smith.

And they're like, right this way. Don't do this, kids, by the way. You're not supposed to be there. Now, this is a smaller theater.

I can't believe this worked so often, but it did. There's like a tight, narrow stairway where the dressing rooms are, and we're kind of going up, and there's one on the right, and there's an actress in there, and there's one over here, and we just keep going, and we get to the top, and there is this very small room with the door open, and sitting there in front of a makeup mirror with his shirt off, using a sponge to remove his old man makeup, is Judd Hirsch, the star of Taxi. And he turns and looks at us. We're standing there, and he goes, where'd you guys come from, the street?

And I said, yeah, we did, as a matter of fact, which sounded like a joke, but was actually true. And then he goes back to taking his makeup off. And then we just stand there in our mid-80s jersey stonewashed jeans or whatever we were wearing, and go, hey, you're really great. And then he goes, well, good night, right?

Which was the best way to say, please get the fuck out of here. And then I don't know if he literally walked out backwards, like... But we basically slinked out back down the long, narrow staircase. And I'm thinking, yeah, I think that's the end of this period.

I think the next time I'm backstage at one of these places, it's because I'm in the show. And then within a couple of years, I moved to Manhattan, and I became an actor, and did that for a long time, and then still do that. And then in 2007, I moved to LA. So this is like over 20 years later.

And my first gig in LA is an episode of Numbers, the procedural starring Judd Hirsch. Now, I don't have a scene with Judd Hirsch, but I become friendly with the showrunner, and I tell him this story. And then I do like a week on the show, and then a couple of days later, the showrunner says to me, I told that story to Judd Hirsch, and he remembered you. And he's really delighted that you've become an actor on this show.

And I still haven't met Judd Hirsch, but he was just nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Steven Spielberg's The Fablemans. And I'm also in The Fablemans. I play young Fablemans high school principal. I'm in one scene, but I'm rooting for Judd Hirsch.

That's it. James Amalek, everyone! Oh, my gosh, he quickly mentioned someone that brought a tiny little story to mind. When I finally moved out of my brother's apartment in Coney Island, I moved in with another college freshman at NYU, my friend Ray, who looked, he looked like he couldn't possibly be a college freshman.

He looked like he probably couldn't be a high school freshman. He was just one of those people who just looks weirdly much younger than he is. But he did start seeing a guy. There was a guy that would show up at our apartment whose name was Kevin.

This was before he was famous. And I used to ask Ray, you know, what goes on? Because it was all behind closed doors and everything. He was like, it's really wild.

He ties me up and he spanks me and he whispers things in my ear. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I like had no familiarity with kink at that time. It went on for, I don't know, a couple of months.

And then I became aware that Kevin was becoming successful. But the relationship ended and I asked Ray, what happened? And he said, oh, my God, the stuff that he would whisper to me when I was tied up became so terrifying that I had to end that. So I don't know if we can run that on the podcast, but there there it was.

I'm just a Broadway baby walking off my tired feet, pounding 42nd Street to be in a show. Broadway baby learning how to sing and dance, waiting for that one big chance to be in a show. We'll be right back. Did you ever wonder what it's like to live alone, hidden in the woods, not speaking to a single soul for 30 years?

Or wander the desert, uncover a hidden well and dive to the bottom of the deepest water hole for 2000 miles? Snap Judgment podcast takes you there with amazing stories told by the people who live them with original soundscape that drops you directly into their shoes. Snap Judgment. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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Join the mother lovers at Maltesers.co.uk. Maltesers. Let's lighten the load for working moms. We're back.

Sometimes my mom would have these moments where it seemed like her soul and her sanity had left her body. Us four kids would be fooling around being the brats that we were and probably breaking something. And she'd suddenly turn to the four of us and just scream over and over again. And then without saying a word, she'd get in the car and drive off.

And we had no idea where she went. The four of us would stare at each other, completely dumbfounded. And the fear would creep in. She was the only parent we had.

And if she left for good, what would become of us? So we'd spend the next hour or so cleaning the house and doing our homework. And we'd be in absolute silence. When she returned, we promised to be on our best behavior.

And she always returned without fail about an hour or so later after taking, you know, the time she needed to contemplate how the fuck she got to this point in her life. And after mentally preparing herself to mother the four of us brats again. And of course, within a few hours, though, we'd be back to our antics, running amok and completely forgetting what had just happened. I'm the youngest of four and I was raised by a migrant single mother in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

This isn't the pretty part of Sydney with the blue, blue oceans and the golden sand. This is the dregs of Sydney. I loved my childhood, though. It was tough.

We never had much, but we always had each other. But still, I don't know how my mother did it. I don't know how she woke up every day and raised the four of us and went to work and put herself back through school. I really don't.

The first time I really, truly realized how hard life was for my mom was on one fateful night when I was about four years old. And my brother, who was six at the time, he'd suffered severe asthma. You know, he'd had it since he was a baby. And this one night he had had an asthma attack, which was not an uncommon occurrence.

I remember having to go to the hospital a lot. But as a single mom with four kids and no other parent to help her, she had to put all four of us in the car and she left us all to the ER in order to get treatment for my brother. And it was about 3 a.m. in the morning and my brother's attack had finally subsided and we were released from the hospital.

And we drove back home and all of us were groggy and sleepy and irritable. And I think the next day was a school day. And, you know, previously my mom had this staunch habit of not letting us into the house before she had gone in and done like a quick look around to ensure there wasn't a strange man laying in the dark waiting to bludgeon us all to death. But on this particular night, she was beyond exhausted, understandably.

And I was asleep in the backseat of the car. And so she let my older brother and my older two sisters into the house and, you know, without doing her usual security check. And she just told them, you know, go upstairs and get into your pajamas. And she'd just gotten me out of the car seat and was holding me.

And she heard this almighty blood-curdling scream coming from upstairs. Like there was nothing like it. It woke me up. And my mom turned, you know, panic stricken.

And she turned towards the doorway and this parade of small feet was storming down the stairs. And my middle sister was, you know, she was running. She ran into the garage and she was screaming and crying. And my mom, you know, fearing the worst, she was fearing that some lecherous pedophile was in our house and had taken her kids or something.

And she whispered yelled at my sister. She was like, what is it? What's happened? And it took my sister a few deep sobbing breaths before she could answer.

And she wailed and she choked out the words. I can't find my pajama top. My mom was holding me in one hand and she was clenching the car keys in her other hand. And all of her fear and tension was clenched into that fist.

And then when she realized that everything was okay, she released the keys and she threw them to the ground near my sister's feet. But at that very moment, my high on steroids post asthma attack brother had crawled between my sister's two feet to get a better vantage point. You know, he Your father, you know, loved you so much and, and would be so proud of you. And when, you know, he, he never, never thought of you as anything other than his son.

And like, I was at work when I got this and I literally had to, like, go outside and just, like, hide inside of the building because, like, it just, it, it was, it was everything I had been afraid of, every fear I've had my entire life, just lifted. So yeah, you don't want to miss that conversation about how life-changing risk can be over at patreon.com slash risk, along with hundreds more stories and conversations and check-ins. Thank you so much to all who have donated over there. We give shout outs to all who give $25 or more per month, like Zach Ravine, Madeline Erasmus, Vishwas Pate, Cora Cretton, Benjamin Ironside, Sylviana Amethyst, Jason Axley, Tony Moody, Ray Fat Cobra Comstock, and Gray Newland.

Thank you guys so much. And to everyone else, please, please, please keep it coming. We got a long ways to go. Let's get that Patreon going like never before.

Now up next, we're going to hear from Fancy Feast. This will be Fancy's second time on the show. She wrote the book Naked on sex, work, and other burlesques available for pre-order now. And here she is at the risk live show in Philly in March with a story we call Connected.

In the winter of 2020, I learned that doing phone sex work requires many of the same skills as long-form improv storytelling. So I was like, I'm gonna be amazing at this. I was living in Brooklyn with three roommates and my cat during the pandemic, and a third of my income had gone away. So the third of my income that I make from doing burlesque and performing in nightlife was just evaporated in an instant.

And my laptop was 10 years old, so I needed some money. The other two thirds of my income, the stuff that I was keeping, was from my day job as a therapist. Working as a therapist during the pandemic in New York, boy, nothing to say about that. I was not able to escape reality, which was the thing that I wanted to do most in the world.

Instead, I was really helping people cope with the here and now, helping to integrate the traumas that they were experiencing. And so I didn't get to do the like, I'm just gonna rewatch all the shows that I loved in the 90s. There just was none of that in my life. And anything that was a surprise was unpleasant.

I don't know if you remember that phase of things. It was like anything that was good was planned and predictable, and then unpredictable shit would happen and it would be bad. So I was missing novelty. I was craving entertainment and most of all, escapism.

So when my friend was like, yeah, I started doing phone sex work, I was like, okay, me too, great. And I opened a profile and I was absolutely delighted by what I found there. So I wanted novelty and I got it. So whether I was playing multiple characters in an immersive law firm orgy role play, and it takes all types, or I was asked to, um, pretend in a scene that I was like being picked up at a farmer's market and the guy who picked me up, like the color spanked my ass raw when I went home and tried to refrigerate the tomatoes card, a card, you never do it.

Or, um, I had a color, a conservative older man from Texas with whom I played out a transformation fetish. So turning him into a socialist cross-dressing witch. I was like, yes, I couldn't have made this shit up. This is fucking gold.

Incredible. I was, I was like, okay, I, I was really hoping to get involved with like a niche fetish community because I was like, that's, it's like consistent. It's where the money is, you know? And so week one, a guy like sent me a 50 bucks and was like, Hey, would you pretend to be a robot?

And I was like, would I? So I ended up doing a lot of robot fetish work, which was fantastic because not only did I not need to be a therapist in Brooklyn during the pandemic, I didn't even need to be a person. And that was perfect. Did not want to be a person.

So, uh, it felt really good to give other people that special fantasy space and I got kind of addicted to it. I got addicted to the money. The money was excellent. I was outstripping my, uh, therapist wages.

I was able to like got the laptop in a fucking second. It was not a problem. And I could just focus all of my energy into becoming the perfect shape for the other person. Just contorting myself around whatever these fantasies were.

And that was regardless of what the fantasies were, by the way. So whether what these colors needed from me was, you know, to be their perfect whore or the spoiled little bitch or their daughter, or whether they wanted me to tell them like my dirtiest secrets as if I have those or to like, ask me if my parents were safe or just to tell them over and over again that I loved them until they fell asleep. And I was like, Oh, the men are not well, but there was no No time to dwell on mental health because I had another color on the line. So it was just that kind of that fun little roulette.

And, uh, my next color that day was like a little shy. And so I started with one of my lines, sort of one of my typical, like, Hey, thank you so much for calling. Like, tell me what's going on. Like, what, what are you thinking about tonight?

And he was like, hi, my name is Noah. This is so weird. Am I really just supposed to like, tell you what turns me on? That feels like kind of gross.

Like, is that okay? Like, I'm just gonna tell you what gets me off. And I was like, no, it would be weird if you were calling old navy customer service to do that. But I'm a phone sex worker and that's exactly the name of the game.

So like, hit me. What's going on? What turns you on? So Noah was a cuckold.

I don't know if any of you have had the pleasure of playing with a cuckold. It's so much fun. So cuckolding fetishes is when somebody has a fetish for being in a relationship with a dominant woman who cheats on them and fucks other guys and doesn't fuck them. Fun.

It's just a very, it's an intellectual fetish. You know, it's something that people like to sort of twist around. It's like a very sort of, um, it's like a fetish that derives from something that is not done, like an absence of an act. I just find it very interesting.

And I clearly, I love cucks. Some of my best friends are cucks. I've dated them, you know, whatever. So I was like, this is fantastic.

I'm totally in my wheelhouse. Like we're gonna have a really cute time. People want to know, does phone sex turn me on? Like as the, as the provider.

And usually the answer is absolutely not. I am playing candy crush. I am online shopping. Uh, truly most often I'm taking notes cause I want to make sure that I'm meeting the customer's needs.

I, you know, I spent seven years in retail. Like you meet the customer's needs. But this time was different. And I was feeling my body react and we come up with a scene together that was pretty low key, I would say for like the things that I'd seen, like the robots that I've been, this was, this is a very, this is a very sort of reality-based one.

So at some point, like he was on his knees in front of me in our fantasy together. And it was like I was there. I was feeling my body feeling that strong, powerful way that you feel when a man is on his knees in front of you. And I told him, I was like, you know, I want you to crawl towards me so that your nose is pressed up against my pussy, so close that you can fucking smell it.

And I want you to understand what other men get to fuck and they don't even have to try hard to do it. And you never will. How does that make you feel? And he said, it feels right, but it also feels like my chest is being crushed.

I feel like I'm going to die. And I said, so die. He didn't. He came, which was great.

That was a great choice. He was, he was submissive. It's just, you know, it's just, it's improv. You close up.

Um, and, and after somebody comes, that's usually where, where calls end, right? Like somebody, they come, they hang up. Or if they're really polite, they stick around and say thank you and then good night. But he was, he was sad.

He was in subspace. Um, so that's like a sort of far away. Like sometimes, yeah, sad, upset. Like you've had endorphins and then they drop.

So he was feeling really small. So we kept in a scene. I was still in the room with him as far as he was concerned. And I was like, and now I'm going to the kitchen and I'm getting you a glass of water.

And he was like, no, that's my move. I go when I get the glass of water. And I was like, okay, Noah, so we're both going to the kitchen and we're both just like his mouth with my spit in it. It was also brunch.

If you're fantasizing about brunch, you know you're pretty far gone. Noah didn't call on Saturday and he didn't respond to my text when I followed up. And in fact, we didn't talk for months until I contacted him about an essay that I wrote in my forthcoming book about him, which I needed to get his approval for the legal department so I wouldn't get sued for libel. Really, I was very excited to have a reason to reach out again.

I sent it to him. He wrote back right away. He read it at his desk at work and it made him cry. He loved it and he had no idea that my feelings had been that profound and that I truly had meant every word that I said.

So we talked constantly that month. Another flurry of phone contact, nearly falling asleep with each other on the phone. And then he blocked my number. So my fantasies imagined that his shame, the shame that we played with sexually was staying compartmentalized, but in reality it had spilled out everywhere and that I had become a thing that he was ashamed of.

I still think about Noah. I'm with people. I date lots of people now and they all have a much healthier relationship to shame, much more fun to play with when it's in a nice little box. But I do still think about him.

There's something that feels really unresolved about what happened and I'm kind of haunted by the ghost of what isn't, what wasn't. And so I'm reminded that most phone sex calls end abruptly and if you don't keep the meter fed, the fantasy is going to stop. So sometimes despite your best efforts, you are simply disconnected. And then you are left to tell yourself the rest of the story.

Thank you. Want to have phone sex? It's emotional. I'm emotional.

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This is RISC. This is Pamplemousse behind me now. We just heard a phone sexy interstitial by Taj Easton as well as Fancy Feast with her phone sexy story before that. And you can find Fancy on Instagram at Fancy Feast Burlesque.

Folks, we have some Hispanic Lives episodes coming soon and we wondered if there are any Hispanic musicians in our audience who might like to do covers of the Risk theme song or send in other sorts of music for those episodes. You can email me about that at Kevin at risk-show.com. And of course folks, stay tuned about these social events we'll be announcing soon. We're going to start producing these events where you buy a ticket, you show up, I'll be there hosting, curating an evening of sharing stories or story-ish stuff with one another in pairs, in small groups, up on stage and hanging out afterwards.

It'll be low pressure, encouraging, a fun way to connect with others and go beyond small talk. Even introverts will have fun and we hope to be bringing these far beyond New York City very soon too. And finally, remember I'm starting an online workshop soon as well for folks who are interested in doing daily exercises in creativity, in therapeutic journaling, in guided meditations, or even somatic exercises like breathing or stretching. It's a workshop for people who are willing to devote at least a half hour a day, most days, to doing some self-care work the way I've been doing every morning now.

I'm on this path and I'm finding it helpful for healing and growing and I want to share it with others where we can support one another in the effort. So email me at Kevin at risk-show.com and ask about this workshop if you're interested. I'm calling the workshop practice. So the list of folks who are interested is growing, so I might teach more than one and I can put your name on that list if you just email me at Kevin at risk-show.com.

We'll be right back. We're back. Next week, Alyssa Marcus discovers that their abusive ex is now dating someone else named Alyssa who looks just like them. That sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, but it's next week on Risk.

Meanwhile, folks, today's the day. Take a risk. Call me, call me, call me any, any time. Call me, call me, call me any day or night.

Call me, call me, call me any, any, any time. Call me, call me, call me any, any, any time. Hello. Hello.

Hello. Call me, call me, call me any, any time. Call me, call me, call me any day or night. Call me, call me, call me any, any, any time.

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