Loading summary
Transcript31 lines
- [00:01]
Kevin Allison
Hey folks, this is Kevin. On this week's episode of Risk, you'll hear Mark Sam Rosenthal.
- [00:06]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
Our provisions consisted of a granola bar and a half a bottle of wine, and we walked on that road with our spirits high. Because we are stupid. We are so stupid.
- [00:23]
Kevin Allison
That and more. But first, if you're ever looking for episodes our team has created that are safe to play at work or in the car with your kids or anything like that, look for the five episodes of a spin off podcast we created called real. You can recommend them to anyone, even if they prefer programs that are family friendly and let us know what you think. Episodes of Real can all be found at risk-show.com real we'll be right back.
- [00:58]
Midi Health Sponsor
Today's podcast is sponsored by Midi Health. At any given time, 61% of adult women say they want to lose weight. But for many, that's easier said than done. If you've had trouble losing weight, don't lose hope. Midi Health uses a deep understanding of women's hormones and a combination of weight loss medications to create a customized plan for each user. Midi Health can help you achieve more effective and sustainable weight loss by addressing hormone imbalances. Midi can also prescribe proven weight loss medications that help you experience reduced appetite and increased feelings of fullness. When paired with hormone optimization, you're not just managing your weight, you're also supporting your body's natural processes, which means you can overcome those weight loss plateaus that in the past have been so difficult to move beyond. So if you're ready to combine the power of hormones with the power of weight loss medications, visit joinmidi.com today. Discover how this innovative approach can lead you to lasting success. That's join midi.com when it comes to.
- [02:02]
Indeed Sponsor
Hiring, don't search for great talent, match with them. Thanks to Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find qualified candidates fast. And Indeed doesn't just help you hire faster. 93% of employers agree Indeed delivers the highest quality matches compared to other job sites, according to a recent Indeed survey, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use indeed, the better it gets. Join more than 3.5 million businesses worldwide that use Indeed to hire great talent fast. Just go to indeed.com listen right now and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility, go to indeed.com listen and tell them you heard about them from this podcast. Terms and conditions apply.
- [03:01]
Instacart Sponsor
Why get all your holiday decorations delivered through Instacart? Because maybe you only bought two wreaths, but you have 12 windows. Or maybe your toddler got very eager with the Advent calendar. Or maybe the inflatable snowman didn't make it through the snowstorm. Or maybe the twinkle lights aren't twinkling. Whatever the reason, this season, Instacart's here for hosts and their whole holiday haul. Get decorations from the Home Depot, CVS and more through Instacart and enjoy free delivery on your first three orders. Service fees and terms apply.
- [03:32]
Kevin Allison
Now here's the show hello folks, this is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they dare to share. I'm Kevin Allison, this is Moss behind me now, and we're calling this week's episode Overcoming. Now, this episode is scheduled to drop on election day 2024, so at the time I'm recording this, the kind of overcoming I have in mind is our national overcoming of this fascist movement that has arisen in the nation during the time we've been producing this podcast since 2009. My highest hopes and prayers are that this tide finally breaks and begins to recede. If you're hearing this episode on the week of November 5th, I guess as the saying goes, hang on to your butts. I went door to door canvassing in Pennsylvania this past weekend to get out the vote alongside my friend Livia, who's been on the podcast before. She was telling me that remaining optimistic no matter what, or cherishing what you're grateful for, what you value, what your intentions are when you're in your most creative and compassionate flow, keeping that candle flame of love and hope alive in you even in the stormiest of times. If you can always remember that and live into that as much as possible, who knows what the ripple effects might be. Whereas if you're crouched down in fear or wallowing in resentment, or just overly anticipating things getting worse and worse, who knows what those ripple effects might be? You know, I am someone who struggles with anxiety and depression chronically, and I'm someone who grew up taking in a sort of doom and gloom mindset from the religion I was raised in. And I have also acquired a fair amount of storm damage from weathering storms in the past. So I have to remind myself over and over and over again what my friend Livia was saying. We can be the change we want to see in the world, and to do that we must hold fast to Hope and faith and love. However this election goes, we have the resources to live into love. We shall overcome. So here's a couple of stories about being there for one another, about staying hopeful. In a little bit, we're going to hear from nisa, but before that, a story from the wonderful Mark Sam Rosenthal. The last time Mark Sam was on the podcast was in 2010. Make sure to look him up at Marksamiam. And here he is now, recorded at our LA show recently with a story we call Back it Up and get a running start.
- [08:30]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
A few years ago, a couple years ago, I was hiking with my best friend Coco and her six year old daughter in the Sierra Nevada mountains when suddenly the little girl lost her footing and slid 30ft down into a rock ravine. Yeah, I know. This is like the only child of my best friend. And let me tell you, there's no sound more terrifying than the scream of a child combined with tumbling rocks and sliding earth. Yeah, grim, right? So we froze, right? Except for just for a split second. And then I like dove down the ravine, like, just to see, like, is this child alive? Of course she's alive. I'm not gonna come here and tell you a story about a child dying. Like, what the fuck? No. I mean, I do love a good JonBenet Ramsay joke, but that is a different show. No, she's alive. Of course she's alive, because I'm not going to do that. And also she's alive because that is not the first legendary scrape Coco and I have gotten into when we travel. And we have survived all of them. Let me tell you a little bit about how Coco and I met. We became friends freshman year of college because we lived right next door to each other. Our dorm rooms were right next door. And she. It was so striking. I never met anyone like her. In Baton Rouge, where I was from, she had jet black hair, she had Bettie Page bangs. She wore flowing vintage dresses that had belonged to her grandmother. She's an artist and she has style. And my look was like a sweatshirt from the campus bookshop. No style. We met in the hall of the dorm because I had a roommate who was an engineering nerd that I didn't really ever want to be around. And she had a roommate who was constantly fucking this guy Jason from San Antonio. So we both were in the hall there we are two 18 year olds on the outside, literally and metaphorically. But we discovered we had three things in common. We loved the Indigo girls, the B52s, and the parent Trap. Yeah, the original one with Haley Mills. I've never seen the other one. So in case you're like one of those Gen Z people who's like, oh, the other. I only know the other one. Like, get your facts. So we became best friends, of course. And it was not long before we established one of the recurring themes in our friendship, which is that whenever we travel or do anything that involves a vehicle or transportation, disaster follows. It started when I was driving her car one night and I ran over a downed light pole and ripped out the undercarriage of the car and totaled it. It was a great start to a friendship. And then other things happened. Like we got stuck in an ice storm in Arkansas, driving down to Mardi Gras. And then years later we got stranded for three days on a Greek island in a windstorm. Like, I mean, did you even know there's ice storms in Arkansas and wind storms in Greece? Like, we didn't. But the granddaddy of all of our disaster stories happened in 2002. I had always wanted to drive down the Oregon coast. I don't know why, but I had. And so we did. We flew to Portland and we rented a Chevy Malibu that we called uta. And we drove down the Oregon coast and we almost made it to the California border. We were stopped in a little town not far north of the border called Golds Beach. And that's when I noticed on a map that we were actually not that far from Crater Lake. It was just over the mountains, like inland a little bit. Now, Crater Lake, the second deepest lake in North America. I mean, Right, Right. It's so dangerous to walk around the rim of this lake that it's forbidden by the National Park Service. I mean, this lake was calling our name. So the way you get to Crater Lake from Golds beach is you drive over this two lane, twisty turny mountain road from this town of Agnes on the coast side to this town called Gilles on the other side. So we're driving up this twisty turny mountain road in the Chevy Malibu uta. And you know, it's a gorgeous day, early June, blue sky, and we're jamming. We got the Indigo Girls followed by the B52s. We drive for like an hour, hour and a half, two hours. We don't pass another car on this road. Like, it's like we have this road to ourselves. Like, amazing. I mean, what, where can you do that in this world? Right? And the scenery is awesome. And we get to what must be the crest of this mountain road. And I stopped the car because there's A patch of snow on the road. Which is kind of weird because it's June. And what's even weirder is it's like pure snow. Like, there's no tire tracks in it. It's just there. Like, when did this snow fall? How long has it been there? And the thing is that we've just driven, what, one, two hours up this mountain road, and it doesn't look like that big of a patch of snow, right? Like, it doesn't look deep. And it's maybe 15ish yards. I mean, we're in a Chevy Malibu, you know, I think we can take this. So I drive forward and realize that we can't take this. I get the front tires, they're spinning. I get them stuck. So get it backed out. And that's when I utter what is now the most famous phrase in our friendship. It is the thing we still say to this day to each other whenever we are about to do something that is a really bad idea. I say, why don't we back it up and get a running start? And that's what we do. And that's when we discover that there is more snow than we thought. And our Chevy Malibu ute is no match for the snow. Only thanks to the running start, we are now squarely well into the patch of snow. Four wheels stuck spinning. And we have cell phones, 2002, a StarTech flip phone. But you know, we don't have any service. There's no service on this mountain road from Agnes to Gulisse. There's nothing to dig it out with either. So I was looking around, I walked back the road a little bit. I find a metal pole along the side of the road. It's just a pole. Like, it doesn't have a thing on the. It's just like poking at the snow. It doesn't do anything. So I gotta get rid of that. We tried digging out. We cannot dig this car out. We are stuck. So we realize we gotta walk for it. But which way are we, you know, how do we know? Are we closer to where we're going or where we are coming from? So it's me and Coco. So I'll give you one guess which way we walked. Of course, into the unknown, right? You know, our provisions were consisted of a granola bar and a half a bottle of wine. And we walked on that road with our spirits high because we are stupid. We are so stupid. So we're walking an hour, hour and a half, two hours. It feels okay, though. Like, how much further can it be? Dusk is approaching, but, you know, it's okay. We're walking until we round a bend and freeze in our tracks. And I just say, what the fuck is that? That is a giant spruce tree covered in hundreds of shoes hanging from their laces. It's the only sign of human life we have seen on this road. And it's the creepiest fucking thing ever. It is literally a Christmas tree from the Blair Witch Project. I mean, and all of the shoes are, like, faded. The color is gone. Like, how long have they been hanging there? Like, when was the last time anybody was on this road besides me and Coco? Like, what the actual fuck? And I say to Coco, are we going to die here? And she just says, why are you still holding that empty wine bottle? So we keep walking. And now darkness comes. Yeah, no flashlight. Just the stars. And, you know, at this point in our lives, we don't have any partners. It's going to be years before Coco has that daughter that we almost killed and. But we have mothers, you know, who would miss us if we don't make it back. I'm missing my mother on this mountain. You know, I'm thinking about her sweet southern accent and the way she sticks her tongue out when she wants to be sassy. And the way she smells like, tea rose perfume. And I'm starting to smell tea rose perfume on this mountain. Like, I'm getting delirious. And that's when we start to hear mountain noises. Owls, hooting things, growling, bobcats, mountain lions. I really don't know what the fuck lives in Oregon, but, like, it's growling, and it's not like sounds we've heard in the woods before. It's like these are the sounds animals make when there are no people there to hear them. Like, it's that kind of sound. So we're holding each other. We're walking in the dark, you know, keeping our spirits up. And I'm starting to sweat even though it's getting colder. And I say, you know, Coco, I'm really sorry I totaled your car. And she said, that's 10 years ago. Can you please focus? And then the pavement ends, and we're just standing in front of a wall of fallen boulders higher than our heads. And then we realize why we haven't seen another car or living soul since we left Agnes in the morning. This road is closed because of a landslide. They just didn't bother to put up a sign. We are not religious people, but I tell you that when we started to climb that wall of boulders in the dark, we both Started singing Amazing Grace spontaneously. I am not kidding. No irony, just amazing grace. So now it is just the owls and the bobcats and us singing Amazing Grace in the dark. It is just the noises animals make when there are no people to hear them. And we get to the highest boulder and start to descend backwards in the dark. Slowly, slowly. And then our feet are on pavement again, like, oh, God. We managed to find the road again. Okay, that means we gotta keep walking. We keep walking for hours. We would find out later that when it was all said and done, we had walked 23 miles down this mountain in the dark. Most of it on a granola bar and a half a bottle of wine. Yeah, thank you. I don't live like that anymore. Now it's after midnight and finally see a house and it's really overgrown. It's dark, it's unpainted wood screen porch. But the screen door is like half hanging off one of the hinges. And a dog starts barking at us. And I grab Coco's arm and I just say, be careful. These people have guns. And so we start screaming like, hello, Hello. We got stuck on the mountain. We just walked down. We walked all the way down. Like, we're just trying to, like, preempt, you know, anybody from coming out and opening fire. And a light goes on in the house and we see a shadow moving around. And I'm squeezing Coco's arm and she's like trying to get out of my grip because I'm squeezing her to death. And then the door opens and this woman in her 60s walks out. She's wearing a sweatshirt with teddy bears on. You're not the first. That's what she said. You're the first this year, but you're not the first. That was all she said. And then she motioned for us to come inside, so we did. And inside, what we found was scarier than guns. It was a custom built shelving unit containing an entire collection of first lady dolls from Martha Washington to Laura Bush. I mean, this woman was deep into QVC and it was 2002. And, you know, Coco and I have often speculated in the years since, like, you know, did this older, rural white lady, like, keep her collection going with Michelle or did she just call it a day after Laura? Like, we don't know. And the truth is it doesn't matter because she and her husband, in the middle of the night, drove me and Coco 45 minutes to the Motel 6 in Grants Pass, dropped us off, got checked in. Coco got in a hot shower and I walked across the street to Denny's to finally get us some food. And I remember I was sitting at the counter at Denny's, like, waiting for them to prepare our order, just, like, holding this hot cup of coffee in my hands and, like, looking at. I just remember the giant, silver, shiny coffee urns. I think there was three of them, and they were so big and full of coffee. And I was just seeing my reflection in them and, like, the reflection of all the people behind me in the diner. And I was like, people, people, people. You know, like, we were just climbing over a landslide, singing Amazing Grace in the dark, like, and how here we are. And I just started crying because I am a person who likes to think life is pretty fucking ridiculous. And to quote our beloved Indigo Girls, every five years or so, I look back on my life and I just have a good laugh. But, you know, to get to the point where you can have that good laugh, sometimes you gotta sit by yourself at the counter at Denny's and cry first. And I did. And I cried because I was alive, and I cried because I have a best friend, and I cried because I had a cup of coffee. And those are the two most wonderful things in the whole fucking world. And that is why I will never go back to Oregon. Thank you.
- [24:22]
Kevin Allison
Thank you.
- [24:31]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
Let's get together yeah, yeah, yeah why don't you and I come by let's get together what do you say? We could have a swing in time maybe a crazy team why don't we met a scene together oh, let's get together yay, yay, yay 2 is twice as nice as one let's get together right away we'll be having twice as fun and you can always count on me A gruesome twosome we will be let's get together Yay, yay, yay.
- [25:17]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
We'Ll be right back.
- [25:19]
Instacart Sponsor
As we gather with loved ones this holiday season, consider how learning a new language can enhance your connections and enrich your experiences. What are your goals for the upcoming holiday season? Whether it's traveling internationally or connecting with family and friends, a new language can open doors to meaningful conversations and cultural appreciation. With that in mind, there's no better tool than Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program available on desktop and mobile. Rosetta Stone immerses you in the language so you truly learn to think, speak, and understand it naturally. With Rosetta Stone's intuitive approach, there are no English translations. You're fully immersed. And the built in true accent feature acts like a personal accent coach, giving you real time feedback to make sure you sound just right. Don't put off learning that language. There's no better time than right now to get started. For a short time, listeners can get Rosetta Stone's Lifetime Membership Holiday Special. This offer will not last long. Visit rosettastone.com Rs10. That's unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your Holiday offer@RosettaStone.com Rs10 today for yourself or as a gift that keeps giving.
- [26:28]
Kevin Allison
Hey folks, I want to tell you about a new podcast called Reflektor. If you love Risk, you love true stories, right? And on each episode of Reflector, they really dive into some of the thorniest, messiest issues facing our society today, from addiction to election denial to what inspires people to commit violence. And they weave together a story that highlights the nuances and idiosyncrasies of our human nature. On a recent episode, I was so excited to see that they have my friend Mike Pesca come on to talk about how and why politicians lie. Well, some more than others. So you can find this new podcast by searching for Reflector right now on whatever app you're using to listen to Risk.
- [27:23]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for Career Day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.
- [27:37]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn.
- [27:40]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
You'Ll be able to reach people who do.
- [27:41]
Kevin Allison
Get a hundred dollar credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com campaign to claim your credit.
- [27:47]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
That's LinkedIn.com campaign.
- [27:49]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
Terms and conditions apply.
- [27:50]
Indeed Sponsor
LinkedIn the place to be to be.
- [27:53]
Midi Health Sponsor
Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu we're back.
- [28:34]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
America is waiting for a message of.
- [28:36]
Mark Sam Rosenthal
Some sort or another.
- [28:41]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk. This is the song America Is Waiting by David Byrne and Brian Eno. Before the break, we heard Haley Mills singing a song from the original 1961 version of the Parent Trap. I met her a few years ago and she was super duper sweet. And before that, we heard from outdoor adventurer Mark Sam Rosenthal on YouTube, you can go check out the short comedy film he made recently called West 40s folks. One of our Patreon patrons, Colby Flynn, recently sent us this message. Colby said Risk changed my life and is partially the reason I am who I am today. Risk would become important to me as I pulled the roots of transphobia, racism, homophobia, and many other biases from myself that had been put there down south. I now live in Canada with my boyfriend, and while Risk isn't the only reason, I will say it is a big part in why I want to be a better person, why I am who I am, and why I've gone on to study psychology. Wow. Thank you so much, Colby. That is what we're all about. And by the way, we continue to get messages from prison inmates writing to us on a platform called Securus. So many have written in now that Risk has changed their lives while they're listening to it in prison. But unfortunately, Secura seems to have stopped uploading new episodes of Risk in August and I'm not sure what we can do about that. I don't know if anyone out there is familiar with what I'm talking about. Let me know in any case, if you do happen to be hearing me from behind bars right now. We send our love to you too, and to everyone else. The best way to ensure that Risk keeps running is to join us over on Patreon. There's an ad free feed of the podcast that you can plug right into your regular podcast app there too. That's all at patreon.com/risk. Next up, we're going to hear from Nisa, who shared this story at a Risk live show in New York. Now, just to let everyone know, our new experiment for 2025 is going to be having far less live shows in New York and Los Angeles and seeing if we can get the show on the road again going to other cities. Also in her story here, Nissa discusses sexual assault. Just to let you know that beforehand. And here she is now, Nissa, with a story we call Coming to Terms.
- [32:05]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
I lost my virginity much later than I would have liked. I was 24 and once I got it over with, it was like a damn broke Dixon and out one vulva. I really felt the need to catch up and I wanted to gather all the experience I could to have the kind of sex that I read about as a little girl in my disgusting anime fan fictions where everybody knew exactly what to do to turn the other person on. And everybody came at the same time as I got into the double digits and through them, that wasn't happening. Sex actually felt kind of unnatural, a little performative, and worst of all, I wasn't coming. I could come find by myself, but even if the person I was with, like, used my vibrator on me in the same way I did, it didn't work. I couldn't come. And this was something I had to fix right away. So I did some therapy and some soul searching, and of course, my mother came up. I didn't have a very typical relationship with my mom. I was primarily raised by my dad, and my mom, when I was a baby, was addicted to crack cocaine and was a sex worker on the streets to fuel her addiction and to feed her family. She got the help she needed and was able to use her experience to advocate for prison reform and drug policy reform. And she helped a lot of mothers who were in the same situation that she had been in. She was very open about her life, and she was a very open person in general. Coupled with the fact that she relapsed into alcoholism when I was about 10, she really didn't have a filter. So when I was very young, I knew my mom's entire sexual history. It started with her being raped as a kid, and she was raped a lot throughout her youth and life. When she was on the street, she was raped by johns, she was raped and beaten by cops, and she just experienced a lot of really brutal violence at the hands of men. But she also loved sex, and she loved to crack sex jokes and share, like, funny details about her sex life. Like, when I was 15, she told me that because her husband was old, his balls hang lower, so when they did it from the back, his balls would hit her clit. And I have a lot of images like that seared into my brain from my mom. She would be open about her life with everyone wherever we went, and she would be cracking jokes. And it guaranteed that any restaurant we went to, by the end of that meal, she would have changed the lives of three of the waitstaff with her story. Somebody would have cried. Everybody would have laughed. We would have probably gotten something comped. There was one story in particular that she told me over and over again because she forgot. She had told me because she was drinking, about how when she was a kid, a child, she was friends with a bunch of teenagers in her neighborhood. And every so often, they would go out into the woods and where there was a bunch of picnic tables, and they would fuck on the picnic tables, and my mom would Watch. It was the 60s, I guess, and there one particular time, she's watching a couple of her friends fuck, and she sees that the girl is looking up at the guy while he's fucking her on the picnic table with so much love and trust in her eyes. And the guy's looking back at the girl the same. And between them, it just felt to her like such a beautiful, innocent connection. And I could tell by the way she told that story and the frequency at which she told it that that really stuck with her. And that was the kind of connection she was longing for. And it was not so different from the kind of connection I was longing for too. So surprising. No one but me. My therapist let me know that learning about sex for my mother probably affected my sex life. And I had a lot of evaluating to do around this time that I'm working through these my history with sex. I read a book with my feminist book club called Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin. Yes, I highly recommend this book. It's a piece of radical feminist literature from the 70s, written by a woman who was also raped and who, like my mom, still believed in the beauty of sex. The book posits to really shortly summarize it, that getting your guts rearranged is actually a really big deal and requires the highest level of consent and basically a hell yes to be allowed to happen. And together with all the exploration I was already doing, I realized I was not having that kind of sex. I wasn't having hell yes sex. I was trying everything, and I wanted to experience everything. I was very adventurous and I was very lucky to have experienced only consensual sexual encounters. But I wasn't in consent with myself. Sex had been a numbers game to me. Kissing all the frogs to get to my prince of coming. I wasn't honoring what my body really wanted. I was doing what I thought you were supposed to do. And I was also scared during sex. My mom's experiences always lived in the back of my head. So I decided to take a break from sex to digest this newfound information and to work on developing the skills, communication, showing up genuinely to have the kind of sex I wanted. And after six months of celibacy, I felt confident enough to get back out there. And also I was so, so thirsty. So I got back on the apps and I met a great guy who I really connected with and. And on date three, when I told him, listen, I read a piece of radical feminist literature that changed my life, and we're not going to be able to fuck for a while. He took it shockingly well. And after about two months, I felt like we were comfortable enough for me to have that coming kind of sex. So we get to it, and I'm ready at this point. I've worked eight months, eight months of hard soul work to get to a place where I can come. And he starts going at it. I'm going to get my nut. I feel it. He's going down. Feels great. I'm closer than I've ever come. And I'm waiting for it. And I'm waiting. And after about an hour, when his tongue is so scratched up underneath from working on me, I still don't cum. I was so disappointed in myself. I figured I had to start accepting that reading all that disgusting fanfiction as a child ruined real sex for me. At this point, I'm 27, and my mom has really mentally and physically deteriorated from the alcohol abuse. She's in and out of the hospital so much that I don't even hear about it half the time because of how old it is for her. So when her husband texts me that she's in the hospital again and it's not good, I know that it's really bad. It turned out that she had an allergic reaction to one of her medications and her throat closed so tight that they had to traumatically intubate her, meaning they had to brute force the tube down her throat. And when I get to the hospital, she has tubes and wires coming out of every orifice, and she's in and out of consciousness. She has PTSD from all the violence that she experienced. So whenever she does gain consciousness, she's in like a PTSD flight state, and she's trying to grab the tube and pull it out, and we have to bring her arms down gently each time so she doesn't get it. She knocks out again. And that cycle continues for days. I can't help but think every time she gains consciousness like that, she's so disoriented that she thinks because of all the strange things penetrating her and the strange place she's in, that she's being raped again each time. At one point, a nurse comes in to clean her catheter area, if you will, and kind of rubs her clit professionally. And my mom makes the first positive expression I've seen her make the whole time in the hospital. It's the kind of face she made when she was making a really lewd sex joke. Like when her husband would come up behind her and rub her shoulders and she'd say something like, oh, yeah, Baby, just like that. It was so good to see that my sex joke, joyful mom, was still in there, but it didn't last. And soon after, but not as soon as is merciful, she died in the hospital. I was devastated. I was haunted by the stories that she told me about all the violence and terrible things she experienced. And it was also an awkward time in my new relationship because we only knew each other for a few months, and he had to console me through my mom's death. But he did the best he could, and life goes on, and eventually I was ready to have sex again. I pretty much gave up on the idea of coming, but I needed some stress relief. My mom was freshly dead, so I was like, let's get back to it. And as he is ardently going down on me after dinner one day, working so hard, I'm thinking about my dead mom. So hot. The stories she's told me of her rape and assaults and the violence she experienced is playing like a reel through my mind. And I start to sob, but I play it off as moans because I don't want him to stop eating me out. And then that picnic table story pops into my mind. And it reminds me that my mom, despite everything, loved sex, and she loved the connection it could bring. And she was able to enjoy sex despite everything. She also always wanted me to have good sex. She said as much to me probably from the time I was 12. And just the thought that despite everything she had been through, my mom could still come and could still enjoy sex. What was stopping me? She would want me to come. And something washed over me. And I'm not a very spiritual person, but I felt my mom in the room, and I felt literally like her spirit went through me. And I came. And yes, my boyfriend, my then boyfriend, put in a lot of good tongue action, but it was my mom who made me come.
- [45:31]
Nisa
What I do today is I advocate for women in recovery. One of the things that is really sadly lacking in our justice system is any programs for women with children somewhere where they can go for support. I'm one of those people that the criminal justice system arrested not because I ever hurt anyone or because anyone was scared of me. You know, I wasn't dangerous. I was arrested because people were mad at me. They were mad at me because of the lifestyle I led, and they didn't agree with it. And that's no reason to arrest someone or to put them in jail. Jail was worse for me a lot of times than when I was in the street. I overcame the system so other people can do that, too. I want people that can act jail to not say, oh, my God, you know, my life is over, because it's not. I want people to know that jail's not the answer. And that, again, you shouldn't. We should be putting people in jail that we're afraid of, not people like me. And that's another thing. I was arrested 50 times and incarcerated 45, something like that. But the men that did this stuff to me, they're still out there.
- [46:41]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
And that's scary.
- [46:43]
Nisa
And one more thing. I love my children, but I always love my children. Drug users love their children. And I'm happy. And even though all those bad things happen to me, the weird thing is that I actually am more of an optimist. Today, I believe we're more good than we are bad, and that's why we still exist. But it's a precarious balance to do the positive things and to help folk instead of hurting them. It makes sense to me to help them. And it was save us a lot of money and a lot of grief and a lot more people would recover faster as well.
- [47:19]
Rosetta Stone Sponsor
Well, thanks for help.
- [47:20]
Nisa
Thank.
- [47:44]
Kevin Allison
This is Risk. This is Felix Roche behind me now. And we just heard from Nisa and afterward from her mother, may she rest in peace, sharing part of her own story right after the story of her daughter Nisa. I just loved being able to do that, to have some experience shared with us by someone who was talked about in the prior story, to be able to hear Nisa's mother's voice and perspective. I'm really touched by that, and I hope we can do more things like that in the future. That clip, by the way, came from the Exile Nation project that you can find on YouTube. And thanks to our editor, Hope Brush for the work she did on that and on the stories. Folks, there's still time to sign up for our fundraiser. It's a trip to Portugal for a group of Risk fans in May of 2025, where myself and J.C. cassis, our business director, will be celebrating Risk's 15th anniversary with sightseeing and story sharing, wonderful meals and so much more. Go to risk-show.com Portugal to sign up and join us on a little vacation journey with your fellow Risk fans. And folks, next week's episode will be guest hosted by another beloved member of our team, Taj Easton. But that's next week. Week. And folks, today's the day. Take a risk. Hey, folks, there's so much more of Risk in the holiday season. Risk is always publishing new episodes and new stories, as well as holiday favorites this holiday season. Don't forget, click on Risk.