Pretending to Be Human

Summary

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RISK! Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Pretending to Be Human

Host: Taj Easton (filling in for Kevin Allison)

Guest: Inky Montane

Date: November 12, 2025

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Main Theme / Purpose

In this deeply personal and raw edition of RISK!, Taj Easton is joined in conversation by his housemate and close friend, Inky Montane. Together, they explore Inky’s lifelong journey of feeling like an outsider, his later-in-life autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, and how these revelations colored his understanding of his own experiences, relationships, and creativity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Early Feelings of Alienation & The Superman Metaphor

• Inky’s earliest memories are dominated by a sense of being fundamentally “alien.”
  • As a child, Inky gravitated to Superman—not for the superpowers, but because Superman was a humanoid pretending to be human.
  • Quote:

    "I don't know how my parents got me. I'm secretly from somewhere else. And Superman had the fortune of having a crystal with a recording from his father that told him what happened and what he was doing there. And I didn't have that message from anybody." (Inky, 04:07)

• A traumatizing childhood incident at a costume contest highlights his social confusion.
  • Inky wins for his Superman costume, but misunderstands the social script, handing his trophy to a pageant queen and feeling exposed and humiliated.
  • Quote:

    "I'm not a fucking human being. Apparently this is where I'm getting found out." (Inky, 07:00)

2. Literal Thinking, Social Rules, and Family Dynamics

• He recounts being too literal as a child, leading to comedic and dangerous situations.
  • Story: The house beanbag catches fire, but he follows his mother's rule not to interrupt her on the phone—so he acts out charades instead of telling her.
  • Quote:

    "I will obey the rules." (Inky, 13:18)

• Dealing with double binds and conflicting social expectations.
  • Later, this extends to difficulty reconciling loyalty to different people or conflicting instructions.

3. Persistent Fear of Not Belonging & Hypervigilance

• Living in fear that his difference would lead to violence or rejection.
  • Felt that if people ever knew “how not human” he was, "they would be compelled to murder me instantly." (Inky, 14:44)
  • Even parents seemed “in on it” and tried to prepare others for his differences.

4. Social Isolation, Imagination, and Artistic Expression

• Schools and social settings were sites of discomfort.
  • Prefers isolation or drawing over participating in playground games.
  • Felt most at home in imaginative play and fluid roles, especially at home with his autistic sister.
• Struggles with rigid gender expectations and language in school.
  • Early exposure to gender and language policing felt random and punishing.

5. Adolescence: Rebellion, Identity, and Subculture

• Embracing punk style and philosophy as a reaction to alienation.
  • Creates DIY punk clothes, connects with like-minded misfits, but is also targeted for bullying.
  • Parental responses shift from concern for his safety to concern for appearances.
  • Quote:

    "Huge parts of me more than anything else just wanted to be a crazy looking punk chick." (Inky, 25:58)

6. Navigating Higher Education With “Invisible” Disability

• Struggles academically (especially with math) despite proficiency elsewhere.
  • Undergoes multiple, sometimes bizarre attempts at diagnosis—from dyslexia screenings to being labeled “schizophrenic.”
  • Quote:

    "They didn't want it to be any kind of learning disability, dyslexia or whatever, going like, no, you're just crazy. We don't have to accommodate that." (Inky, 30:49)

7. Late Discovery of ASD / Asperger's

• Researching Glenn Gould (the eccentric pianist) leads to seeing himself in descriptions of Asperger's.
  • The realization is physically and emotionally overwhelming—equal parts terror and relief.
  • Quote:

    "There was this feeling that had started happening. And it started in my feet ... until it went all the way up into my skull... this burning... wildly exposed." (Inky, 37:51)

• Stigma and stereotypes around autism are a challenge.
  • Assumes autism means "Rain Man" or "short bus" archetypes from childhood taunts.

8. Coming Out About ASD and the Aftermath

• Inky describes telling his wife about his self-diagnosis with trepidation, worried she might leave.
  • She is nonplussed—in fact, barely seems to register it—bringing huge relief.
• Integration of diagnosis is gradual.
  • Not instant comfort, but a growing sense of self-acceptance.
  • Begins to understand his sensory sensitivities, rituals, and needs as features—not flaws.

9. Official Diagnosis and Reflections on Mental Health

• Pursues an official diagnosis, partly to avoid jury duty and as a symbolic act of self-advocacy.
  • Is surprised to be told he has 'severe anxiety' and 'mild depression,' as these were not salient to him.
• Living with chronic tension and sensitivity, but also capacity for profound beauty and connection.
  • Quote:

    "How could I have that much anxiety when ... so much of the time is just utterly fucking magical? ... It still doesn’t make sense to me." (Inky, 50:15)

10. After a Year of Profound Loss

• The episode gestures to Inky’s recent devastating losses—wife, pets, home, friends—but focuses on his ongoing resilience and creativity.
  • Quote:

    "Yes. I got to the back door of heaven by way of hell." (Inky, 52:42)

11. Radical Sensitivity and Acceptance

• Taj expresses admiration for Inky’s emotional range, openness, and inspiration.
  • Quote:

    “It feels like this kind of aspirational level of care that I want to believe in ... You're an inspiration to me in regards to your depth of feeling.” (Taj, 53:23)

• Inky reflects on the dangers and liberation of emotional openness.
  • Quote:

    "At a certain point, the only point where things truly feel safe is when you're completely abandoned to the infinite." (Inky, 55:11)

12. Neurodiversity and Friendship

• Both discuss the gifts and challenges of “different brains” and how diagnosis (ADHD, in Taj’s case) brought acceptance.
• Insightful moment around the meaning of diagnosis:
  • Quote:

    "Diagnosis is so strange. Because it's just essentially ... just words. They're just tags that are attached to something ... But they're fragments of mirror." (Inky, 57:10, 57:40)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On alienation:
  "I was just so out of my depths. I have no idea what's going on. I'm not a fucking human being. Apparently this is where I'm getting found out." (Inky, 07:00)
• On following rules:
  "I will obey the rules." (Inky, 13:18)
• On masking and safety:
  "There was just this lingering feeling if they ever really got any idea how not human I am, they would be compelled to murder me instantly." (Inky, 14:44)
• On creative affinity:
  "Let's make up characters and let's be all the characters ... That was what I really like. Those, those were games that were not games to me. It was, it, it was pretty wild." (Inky, 18:43)
• On punk as lifeline:
  "Whatever that is [punk], that's what I am." (Inky, 23:03)
• On diagnosis:
  "There was this feeling ... everything felt hot. I just felt this burning, and I just felt wildly exposed. This feeling of a very strange kind of humiliation ... and it was accompanied with this feeling of just utter terror, this terror of recognition." (Inky, 37:51)
• On emotional coexistence:
  "This level of extreme tension that apparently is unimaginable to most people, coexisting with what is just being immersed in just ineffable beauty and that it's all the same thing." (Inky, 51:10)
• On empathy:
  "It's possible that people can care about each other that much. I want to be able to feel things more." (Taj, 53:23)
• On the nature of diagnosis:
  "They're just words. They're just tags ... But they're fragments of mirror." (Inky, 57:40)
• On liberation:
  "At a certain point, the only point where things truly feel safe is when you're completely abandoned to the infinite." (Inky, 55:11)

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Important Timestamps

• 03:50 – Inky’s “alien” childhood and Superman metaphor
• 07:00 – Trophy mishap, feeling exposed as “not human”
• 10:37 – Literal thinking and the beanbag fire incident
• 14:44 – Deep fear of being “discovered” as alien/different
• 18:43 – Drawing, imaginative play as preferred modes
• 23:03 – Embracing punk identity
• 29:06 – College struggles and Kafkaesque diagnostics
• 37:51 – Revelation and physical reaction to learning about Asperger’s
• 45:52 – The aftermath: self-acceptance and what diagnosis changed
• 47:48 – Pursuing official diagnosis (with some comic relief)
• 52:42 – "Back door of heaven by way of hell"—recent turmoil
• 53:23 – Taj on inspiration: “aspirational level of care”
• 55:11 – Safety and transcendence: “abandoned to the infinite”
• 57:40 – "Fragments of mirror" metaphor for diagnosis

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Tone

• The conversation is candid, irreverent, self-deprecating, and at times, profound. Inky’s vivid storytelling is laced with humor, vulnerability, and a willingness to confront pain and paradox. Taj is an empathetic listener, often marveling at Inky’s openness and his capacity for intensity and bliss. The language is casual and occasionally coarse, matching the show’s ethos of “stories you never thought you’d dare to share in public.”

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode is for anyone who’s struggled with not fitting in, who’s found solace in subcultures or art, or who’s wondered what it means to discover your own neurodivergence late in life. Inky Montane’s story is a celebration of weirdness, resilience, and the beauty (and pain) of feeling things deeply. There is no easy resolution, but there’s hard-won acceptance, inspiration, and some great punchlines along the way.

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Transcript

[Taj Easton]

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[Inky Montane]

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[Podcast Host]

Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply hello everybody. This is Risk, the show where people tell true stories they never thought they dared to share. I'm Taj Easton and you are listening to the musical stylings of Inky Montane. In a little bit you will be listening to the storytelling stylings of Inky Mold Dream. This is one of our conversation stories and this one features the aforementioned Inky Montane in conversation with me about the life and times of of Inky Montane. Inky Montane is my dear friend. He is my housemate. He is my compadre, my compatriot. We sat down to have this conversation about him coming to a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum disorder or ASD later in his life. I'm going to give a content warning that this story features weirdness and discussions about disorders, dissociation and existing on the brink of reality. If that is something that you find triggering, that you find can take you close to or beyond the limits of your sanity, you're gonna be tested if you choose to continue to listen. Also, I think he uses some fairly strong self deprecating language to refer to himself, related to his own neurodivergence and also one of the more upsetting ableist slurs. Lastly, it will become important to know that Inky went through some pretty dramatic life changes. At one point I talk about how hard his last year has been. We don't go into any detail, but I'll just say here that Inky lost virtually everything that brought him comfort and security in his life overnight. He lost his wife of 17 years, he lost his cats, he lost his home, he lost virtually all of his close friendships and he kind of had to start anew and obviously that was extremely hard. I don't think I need to say much more. I am pleased to present to you Inky Michael telling me a story that we call pretending to be human.

[Inky Montane]

Man. Well, the earliest thing to get back to that's the, the easiest point of entry is that persistent feeling of being alien. From as early as I can remember. You know, a lot of it always went back to Superman and I was obsessed with, as an extremely young Child. You know, I saw that movie when it came out in the theater, and. And that was 1978, so I was 4 years old. And I know I was already into Superman before I saw it in the theater because my grandma had made me the little blue and red Superman costume with the S on the chest and the whole lot. And I wore it to the movie. The thing that was the takeaway with that was this idea of this humanoid alien being that had been raised by human parents and was pretending to be a human to the best of his abilities. I didn't think of myself in any way having any kind of, like, superpowers or anything like that. That wasn't the thing that resonated to me about Superman. It was simply that he had pulled this off and that this was the position he was in. I was just firmly. I was like, oh, yeah, that. That's me. I don't know how my parents got me. I'm secretly from somewhere else. And Superman had the fortune of having a crystal with a recording from his father that told him what happened and what he was doing there. And I didn't have that message from anybody.

[Taj Easton]

Did you look around real good for it?

[Inky Montane]

I undoubtedly did. I looked around for several decades, but. But Superman, I mean, it was. It was a big thing. I wore that costume all the time. I wore the shit out of it. I remember around then. I can't remember if it was before or after the movie. There was a parade in our town, and there was a costume contest. My parents entered me in the costume contest, and I actually won. I won first place for my grandma's Superman costume. I had to go up in front of all these people and accept this little trophy for winning this costume contest at a parade. And it was absolutely horrific. It was given to me by a clown, like a classic big shoe, big nose, rainbow wig clown. And next to him was a row of, like, pageant queens that were part of this parade.

[Taj Easton]

This is like, a nightmare.

[Inky Montane]

So there was this whole string of these pageant queens next to a clown. So my parents, you know, like, go up there, Go up there. You gotta go get your thing. So I go up to this clown, and he leans down with the thing, you know, handed to me, like, you won this contest. Here you go. And I had this thing in my hands, and I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't understand what was going on. And then he tilted his head towards the. The pageant queen next to him, and he's like, go ahead. You know, And I'm like, What? I didn't know what was supposed to happen, so I handed the trophy to her. I was like, okay, so she wins. And I handed her. And then everybody, everybody started laughing. All the pageant queens, the clown, everybody watching my parents. And I was just so out of my depths. I have no idea what's going on. I'm not a fucking human being. Apparently this is where I'm getting found out. And this is, it's all going to fall apart right now. I was trapped in the pageant queen. She, she laughed and she like handed me the trophy back. Like, no, this is for you. You did wrong.

[Taj Easton]

You did wrong.

[Inky Montane]

Right? And then she kissed me on the head or something like that. I mean, I don't even know what the clown was insinuating with like, like, hey, you know, plant one on this chick next to me or something like that. It's like I'm a little, you know, like a three, four year old kid. I have no idea what he' talking about. If I wasn't sobbing, I was feeling like that on the inside. And I walked back to my parents with this damn trophy. And I remember as we were walking home, because this was in walking distance of our house, the clown and all these pageant queens on a fire truck and the fire truck driving away with all of them and all of them waving at me as they went by, watching me and my parents walk home. And I was just so baffled and humiliated and just felt doomed. I was just like, it's already all over. I didn't pull this off. Oh, I still have this damn trophy in a box somewhere too.

[Taj Easton]

No wonder you have nightmares every night, bro.

[Inky Montane]

They started then.

[Taj Easton]

I'm sure it sounds like it wasn't your read at all, but the town applauded you for wearing a costume or pretending to be something that you weren't.

[Inky Montane]

Right, right, right. And that was where it was. The creepy thing was like, you know, that's so cute. You thought you were getting away with this. Everybody is in on this. We all knew all along. And this is the big reveal. And it was the beginning of the horrible revelation that life is this vast metaphysical joke that you're the butt of. And this is the dawning of that revelation. Damn. Yeah, that was kind of the beginning of it. But yeah, there were a lot of other tells. Then I apparently pestered my mom a lot. She told me at one point, like, okay, if I'm on the phone, no matter what, do not talk to me, okay? Don't talk to me when I'm on the phone. Okay? Okay. I get it. I accept that. So apparently I must have bothered her a lot while she was on the phone because she laid that down. Yeah. Okay. That's new gospel. Mom has the phone. She's talking on it. I do not say anything to her. Well, one day I was sitting and staring, which is, you know, something I've always enjoyed. And I was looking at this. This old piano that we had that had a beanbag in front of it. Yeah. And next to that was a space heater. And the space heater was on because it was Oregon, it was cold, and we were in an old, drafty, you know, Victorian house.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

And I saw in the reflection on this dark, stained wood of this piano, this orange dancing. And I was watching that, and I was just hypnotized by it. And it was getting bigger, and I was like, wow, you know, this is wonderful. And then I realized that it was fire. I was like, oh, this is fire. Our beanbags on fire. Our beanbag is on fire. And I'm looking at the reflection of the fire, like, okay, this is bad. I know that fires are bad, and that fires burn down houses and people die trapped inside. I was like, okay, need to tell mom. Go to tell Mom. Mom's on the phone. This is a problem. Mom's on the phone. I need to tell her, but I cannot talk to her while she's on the phone. So what the hell do I do with this? So I start. I start running around in circles around my mom, swinging my arm around the top of my head, making woo woo siren noise. I'm going, woo, woo woo. Swing my arm. And she is looking at it. She has this look on her face like, what in the fucking hell is going on? And, you know, I just keep doing it over and over again. And then I'm going, like, I'm holding my arm, like I'm holding a fire hose. I'm going. And she's just staring like this kid has fucking lost his mind, looking at me with this look. And then a different look comes over her face, like, this look of, like, horror. And I don't know if my. My terrible game of charades had worked or she had just smelled this fucking burning beanbag. And she just. She bolted into the other room where the fire was, and she had, like, an old quilt, and she's slamming it on this beanbag, and she drags the bean bag out the front door and she's blowing it with the hose. And, like, the house is full of smoke. And. And she tells me after that she's like, okay, you know, we have the don't talk to mom when she's on the phone rule, but there are exceptions to this rule.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

And one of the exceptions to this rule is if something is on fire. You can express this in words from now on.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

It's like, okay, I get it now.

[Taj Easton]

I can't talk to mom, but there's no rule against being as fucking annoying as possible.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, yeah. Very literal. Well, this is the way it is. And I go, okay, that's the way we're gonna do it. I will obey the rules.

[Taj Easton]

That's fucking beautiful.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah.

[Taj Easton]

That story definitely speaks to something. I don't know, I wanna say, like, loyalty or trustworthiness.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm hardwired for that. I mean, the points where it becomes difficult is when, you know, double binds. Where your house is on fire. Yeah. When your house is on fire. You know, like, you got one person who says, like, do things this way and someone else says, do things the other way. It's like, wow, how are you going to be loyal to them both? And how are you going to.

[Taj Easton]

How are you going to survive in America if you're not able to be a fucking liar?

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, it takes some juggling. I definitely learned to be dishonest in my own ways because, I mean, I already felt inherently dishonest because I was hiding this thing. I was hiding the fact that I'm not like everybody else. And there was just this lingering feeling if they ever really got any idea how not human I am, they would be compelled to murder me instantly.

[Taj Easton]

And that was literal. That's not a turn of phrase.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. Yeah, I really was. Just that he wouldn't have any choice and that I wouldn't be able to blame them. It would just be instinct. That would just come from them needing to preserve their species and just realizing what a profound threat my existence among them would be.

[Taj Easton]

Holy fuck. And that includes your parents?

[Inky Montane]

You know, I wasn't really sure. I really thought that they were in on it because I felt like they were ashamed. I felt like it was a difficult thing for them because so many times it seemed like they were struggling to get people to kind of. Kind of prepping them to deal with me in advance. That I took, you know, as. As them knowing and getting it. And things were fine if it was just us at home doing our things. But if you introduce these other variables or outside the family or if I had to go somewhere else, that's when stuff got messy. They had to prep these people. And I felt when I would show up in these spaces, you know, if it's some kind of preschool thing or whatever, that already I was getting a slightly different sort of treatment. And I don't know if that was actually the case or not, but I felt it.

[Taj Easton]

That does not sound like a good feeling.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I mean, it was. It was a mixed thing because I. I never wanted to be there. It's like, you know, I'd be fine if I could just sit around and watch and just everybody ignore me. Just pretend I'm not even here. That would really be the best thing for me. And I'd think for you guys as well, but it was just a being compelled to participate. I hated it so much. I hated it so much. I mean, one of the earliest memories I have of doing some kind of preschoolish thing was being in this building that had a lot of floors and a lot of windows. There were all sorts of different little groups of children. And I was with some group of maybe 12 kids or so, with some adults all around in a circle, which I was super uncomfortable with. And they're playing Duck, Duck, Goose. I didn't understand the game. I didn't understand the rules. And it was so horrifying to me to actually have to be a part of it and to have to do something at some point when it was my turn. And just like having no idea, I could not retain the rules. I couldn't. It made no logical sense why any of us would do any of these things to play this game. I just. And if I couldn't connect a purpose to it, I couldn't retain it because it just didn't logically add up. I still can't remember the rules to Duck, Duck, Goose. I don't even know how it goes.

[Taj Easton]

It's total inanity. The thing that stands out to me, though, is it's a game about one of the things here doesn't belong. One of the beings here is not like the other beings.

[Inky Montane]

And we are going to find it.

[Taj Easton]

And root it out.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. That must have resonated with me. Like I said, I can't even remember how the game went. It's just like, Duck, Duck, Goose. Yeah. And. And then a bunch of running around the circle. Yeah.

[Taj Easton]

Because if you're the goose, you run for your fucking life. Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

Well, no wonder I hated that game. Yeah. It's so traumatic. I blocked it all out.

[Taj Easton]

Oh, my God, it's perfect.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, it's. It's been a deal breaker in all relationships since you Know when it gets to that point when, you know, they want to go off and, and you know, play a little duck, duck, goose and you're like, oh, I am sorry, but we're not gonna work out. I'm sorry.

[Taj Easton]

Holy.

[Inky Montane]

But yeah, PE was my least favorite. I hated recess. I didn't get why anybody enjoyed any of this stuff. And I would just stay in the library and draw, you know, and every once in a while I would have, you know, another friend who liked to draw and we would sit in there and draw together. But if there wasn't a friend who liked to draw, then I would just sit in there by myself and draw. But, you know, I would find friends who wanted to play the kind of games that I did, which were all just imaginative, just story games. It was like, let's make up characters and let's be all the characters, you know, see what we come up with. And just. That was what I really like. Those, those were games that were not games to me. It was, it, it was pretty wild stuff got pretty racy, you know, and, and, and we're playing all the characters. I was very used to young age just being pretty gender fluid.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

I didn't really have to commit.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

Until kindergarten. And it was terrible. Yeah, it was awful. It ruined everything. You know, before that, my sister's autistic as hell too. But, you know, we had all sorts of games that we would play. And we had a big old trunk full of dress up clothes, old lady dresses and pumps and jewelry and clip on earrings and all that stuff. And yeah. I would be like full drag into it, you know. Yeah. Yes. A lot of bliss. A lot of blown out, ecstatic epiphanic moments. But it was so disappointing when I found out that that was all done. It was all over with. I don't remember my parents warning me this is not going to be okay. Because they never objected around the house or said anything about it like, you can't wear that there at home. There were no rules. Nothing was forbidden. I was never warned. And I was immediately, apparently, you know, cussed like a sailor. It was just utter shock, you know, to these kindergarten teachers. And everybody was just like, it was insane. I don't know how to just deliberately not use swear words.

[Taj Easton]

I'm totally fucking fucked.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I was totally fucking fucked. And I was, it felt like I was like, man, if I had been prepped better for my parents, I wouldn't have to suffer all this. Everybody else gets this. It seems intuitively my intuition does not lead in any of these directions. I'm not a human. But, yeah, it did take a while before I started deliberately disobeying and still, like, taking it, but taking it in such a way of like, go ahead and fucking kick my ass. But no matter how much you do this to me, keep punching me in the face, kicking the hell out of me, and I'm just gonna stare at you know something and wait till it's over, and I'm still gonna hate you. And there's nothing you can do about that. So that's my power over you. But, I mean, it was a rough thing to cement because I really did put me down a different path.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah, because you're one of the most caring fucking people I've ever met. So that. I bet that took a little.

[Inky Montane]

This. I definitely became a teenage misanthrope. I mean, once I discovered certain kinds of punk rock, Nietzsche and Charles Bukowski and all that kind of, I was like, oh, okay, this makes sense to me.

[Taj Easton]

Makes sense. That was satisfying.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, yeah, that. I mean, I had, like, my house keys hanging off my nose ring. I. You know, I had some wild getups. Yeah. I remember when I first kind of discovered the idea of punk more than actually being able to hear any, because it was so hard to access any of this stuff. You know, it was years after just hearing of punk and just kind of seeing really horrible renditions of the idea of, you know, on shit like chips, you know, like, oh, the bad guy. Punks on chips, right? Or whatever. You get those kind of presentations of punk rockers and in popular culture. But it's like, you know, whatever that is, that's what I am.

[Taj Easton]

You were instantly drawn to even those representations.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I just knew that that was what I. But I came up with my own version of it. Like, my dad had this old Levi jacket that he had finished with because I had, you know, paint splotches all over it from working on the house. And the collar was kind of torn out, so it made this loop so I could wear it around my neck like a cape. So I continued painting on it and drawing on it with Sharpie pens. And then, you know, it's like, oh, I'd like to make this thing, you know, spiky and jagged. How am I going to do that? So I got a bunch of super long, you know, like, drywall screws through the shoulder of this thing, just kind of randomly sticking out. You know, I just made these weird get ups like that. Of course, that was pretty alarming to my parents because I was already getting Beat up and all that kind of thing at this point. And I had just quit carrying this. Like this is just going to make you more of a target. You're going to get beat up by more people now for doing this.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

So they didn't want me leaving the house, so I'd start having to like kind of sneak this stuff out. It's like, no, you know, this is me. But yeah, I remember them thinking, like rationalizing with the drywall screws, like someone is going to when they hit you in the side of the head, because inevitably people are going to punch you in the side of the head. If they hit you on the other side, your head is going to smash into these wicked sharp drywall screws and you're going to, you know, jab your eye out or one's going to go in your ear and you're going to get these big holes in the side of your head from bashing your head into these drywall screws. So, you know, cadet at least like sands the top of the drywall screws so they're more blunt. And I'm like, absolutely not.

[Taj Easton]

Yo.

[Inky Montane]

No.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah, but solid parenting, mom.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, solid parenting. But that, that became more and more of a struggle as it started to be them not wanting me to do this stuff and look like this. And then it became a power struggle. And then more going from, you're going to get more hurt because of this to this makes us look bad. And that especially coming from my mom, that it made her look bad.

[Taj Easton]

And oh, my God.

[Inky Montane]

And that was a rough thing to feel knowing that they didn't really care about any of this stuff, but just not wanting me going out of the house looking like that more for that reason.

[Taj Easton]

Damn.

[Inky Montane]

At this point, I was, you know, I actually gotten oddly into going to friends churches because every friend went to church. There was one girl, Episcopal church, who was punk as fuck. And I just, I wanted to be her. I mean, essentially, she. She looked how I wanted to. To look huge. Parts of me more than anything else just wanted to be a crazy looking punk chick.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

You know, that was really more my ideal look than anything else. But, you know, I could only go so far in that direction and really pull it off. And I think when I would connect with. With some girls like that, some of them would come out of the closet and they're not really into dudes anyway. Or if they were into dudes, they weren't into dudes like me.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

So I was a great friend because, you know, I would talk for hours on the phone and they could tell me all their shit about the guys that were fucking their world up or whatever, and it was. It was great.

[Taj Easton]

I am super love you in those kind of girlfriend ways.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I live for it. I mean, I still do. And I have unending capacity to just. It's bottomless for me.

[Taj Easton]

Did the punk. Did he fall in love with punk music at this stage?

[Inky Montane]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. From the first point, I actually was able to get legit punk. I was definitely obsessive about it, and the repetition came into it as well. You know, it was before CDs or anything like that. And I would wear out my tapes just from rewinding it over and over again and listening to it hundreds of times. So I'd make mixtapes. There was just one song. What, over and over again, both sides? Yeah, yeah. I could just pop that in, listen to it all the way through on one side, flip it over, listen to it again, and I could just. That way I could hear my same song and just keep doing it and doing it. And I particularly like those tapes for going to bed because then I could just. It was so soothing and made it so much easier to go to sleep, to be able to keep getting that repetition. It was so vital.

[Taj Easton]

I think by definition, this is not a mixtape, though.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, yeah. There's no mixing involved. Yeah. When I got to college, functionally illiterate in math but enjoying most everything else, four years in, I still hadn't been able to pass any kind of math classes.

[Taj Easton]

Okay.

[Inky Montane]

My four years were almost up. I was going to this school because my mom worked in the library. So I got four years for free tuition, remission. So I was about wrapped up, you know, fourth year in, I'm not going to get a degree. At that point I was thinking, oh, well, probably just stay in academia and end up teaching philosophy or something like that. But, you know, we need to figure out how I can actually get away with this. The dean was not enthusiastic at the idea, but they, you know, had to go through the motions as if they were. So, like, okay, well, you know, go to this place and we'll test you for dyslexia. You know, they sent me to one place to get tested for dyslexia, and they went, oh, yeah, you know, this guy's dyslexic as fuck. Okay, well, you know, let's get another opinion. And they sent me to somebody else and did some really weird things. Like one of the places that the woman's technique for testing for dyslexia Was listening to Mozart with all these different subtle things, filters on it.

[Taj Easton]

What.

[Inky Montane]

And checking to see what I could hear or not hear while listening to this. And coming out of that, somehow being able to tell whether I was dyslexic or. I don't know what the technique was or how, but this was one of the many. Just hours and hours and hours of different kinds of testing for this stuff.

[Taj Easton]

That is bizarre.

[Inky Montane]

But she ended up saying I was dyslexic as well. And so they said, like, okay, well, let's just do one more set of tests with a student in our grad psychology department and see how that goes.

[Taj Easton]

Okay?

[Inky Montane]

And like, okay, so I started going to this guy, and we're doing fairly different testing for the most part, and we're getting into, like, Rorschach tests and all these kind of things, not knowing how these necessarily go with dyslexia.

[Taj Easton]

Me neither.

[Inky Montane]

But went to many sessions with this guy, and at the end of all that, he happily concludes, you know, his little interview room after the whole thing, gives me this little piece of paper and just wants me to read it first. Firstly, you know, nights think like, oh, he's incredibly intelligent young man who will maybe one day write an important novel. You know, this thing like, oh, wow, you know, that's. That's all night's very good. But then his summary was that I wasn't actually dyslexic, but I was schizophrenic.

[Taj Easton]

Whoa.

[Inky Montane]

Like, oh, okay. All right. I remember coming out of that with this piece of paper and this kind of being like, the end thing. Like, okay, they finally got the answer they wanted.

[Taj Easton]

This was the answer they wanted.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. They didn't want it to be any kind of learning disability, dyslexia or whatever, going like, no, you're just crazy. We don't have to accommodate that.

[Taj Easton]

Oh, they were looking for an answer that let them off the hook is what you're saying.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. And they kept on getting dyslexia, and they didn't want dyslexia because that could be considered a learning disability.

[Taj Easton]

They have to accommodate.

[Inky Montane]

They would have to accommodate me in some way, and that would set a precedent that they didn't want to set because they hadn't done anything like this before. But if they could conclude that I was simply crazy, I didn't know what to do with that. And that was just going to be. It's like, okay, I went to college for four years, and I guess I'm done. No degree, no anything. And I don't care. Whoa. It doesn't matter. I'm just gonna go do something else.

[Podcast Host]

All right, we're gonna take a quick break and then we will hear the Risk podcast True Terrorism boldly talked about.

[Inky Montane]

It's okay not to be perfect with finances. Experian is your big financial friend and here to help. Did you know you can get matched with credit cards on the app? Some cards are labeled no Ding Decline, which means if you're not approved, they won't hurt your credit scores. Download the Experian app for free today. Applying for no Ding Decline cards won't hurt your credit scores. If you aren't initially approved. Initial approval will result in a hard inquiry which may impact your credit scores. Experian Kay Jeweler's early Black Friday sale is happening now. Get up to 50% off Black Friday deals and up to 40% off everything else. Don't miss this sale. Start your season with savings only at K. Exclusions apply. See kay.com exclusions for details. This episode is brought to you by Netflix from the creator of Homeland. Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in the new Netflix series the Beast and me as ruthless rivals whose shared darkness will set them on a collision course with fatal consequences. The Beast in Me is a riveting psychological cat and mouse story about guilt, justice, and doubt. You will not want to miss this. The Beast in Me launches November 13, only on Netflix. We're back. At that point, I was well into what you might regard as a career of alcoholism, but also getting more and more involved in writing plays. I had several chapbooks worth of poetry, a few novels, and hundreds and hundreds of short stories. And all this stuff I had accumulated over this four years. A lot of paintings and drawings and sculpture and photography. So I had a lot of stuff. But what I actually wanted to do then was just like, you know what? Fuck it. I just want to be in a band. Anyway, I guess we'll try and jump forward. Massive chunks of time, skipping over years of rough stuff. Yeah, a relationship that went as south as it could have possibly gone.

[Taj Easton]

Where are you at with feeling like you were the alien hoping not to be discovered? It's a big question, you know, that.

[Inky Montane]

Just like came and went in different ways and morphed into different things. Yeah. Over the decades because I had some periods of deep psychosis, mostly from taking too many hallucinogenic drugs. But yeah, I had an episode where I had taken way too many mushrooms and I was pretty much gone for a couple months. And that came and went, triggered by different things for years you know, I couldn't. I couldn't smoke pot anymore. I couldn't even have certain kinds of conversations anymore. Or I would go down what is essentially the. The K hole. I would have a dissociative episodes and I would. I would go to the void. Things would quit being real. And, you know, I guess essentially what that guy would have. Would have. Would have said was I was. I was becoming schizophrenic. It was during those years when I was working on a particularly involved novel. But an aspect of it was a character, a high school kid who is obsessed with Glenn Gould, who. Yeah, I loved. I loved Glenn Gould, but I actually didn't know a whole lot about him. I had never really gone deep with him in that regard. But I loved his music and I loved him. You know, the snippets I'd seen of him. I really, I was like, wow. I really, I really vibe with this guy. But anyway, this kid, this high school kid loves Glenn Gould too. It's his main thing. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, well, if this kid knows everything about Glenn Gould, I need to know everything about Glenn Gould.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

Because that's, that's the way we're gonna build this character. Of course.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

So I started researching Glenn Gould and I didn't get too far into it really, before I started seeing all this speculation about what exactly was up with Glenn Gould. Why was he so fucking strange? Why does he do this weird singing to cattle? And his truly bizarre sense of humor. Wearing piles of layers of clothes any time of year, trying to sue somebody because they shook his hand. You know, always wearing gloves. He drags around this one chair that he's had since he was a child. This little chair that's too low and the seat is falling out of it, but he's got to bring this chair everywhere. He plays a certain regimen of drugs. And he was like, wow, I get this guy. I love this guy.

[Taj Easton]

Eccentric.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, this is an eccentric. So what's going on with him? And I kept seeing this term Asperger's, which is like, you know, the first time I heard is like, ass burger. I know ass and a burger. Like, wow, that's like. That's kinky as. I love it. But so it's like, okay, well, what's, you know, Asperger's? Let's look this up. So I looked up Asperger's and I start reading a description of, you know, a general person that has Asperger's. Some. Some of the features and at a Certain point while I was reading this, I realized I wasn't even exactly registering the words on the screen because there was this feeling that had started happening. And it started in my feet. There was this strange kind of heat. And it started rising up and moving through my shins and through my legs and in my knees and up through my groin and into my spine until it went all the way up into my skull, and then it was settling in my face. Everything felt hot. I just felt this burning, and I just felt wildly exposed. This feeling of a very strange kind of humiliation that I had never felt anything like before. And it was accompanied with this feeling of just utter terror, this terror of recognition. And I was sweating, and I realized that this was what was wrong with me. And I didn't know what to do with it. I just had no idea what to do. I was just fucking terrified. Terrified of having this page open on my computer. Like, I was afraid my wife, for some reason, might come in and be like, oh, what are you looking at? And see it. And then she would read it and then go, oh, my God. Yeah, now I know what you are. I don't even know what I did then. It took a while to absorb, but I knew that I had finally found what the thing was. Yeah. And, you know, I was. After. I was able to kind of start to, like, actually register words and read more carefully again. I just kind of kept reading the page over and over again. And then, you know, seeing like, oh, it's a form of autism. I'm going like, okay, autism. You know, my understanding of autism was, you know, what it had been growing up in high school. It's like, oh, you know, these kids will wear, you know, football helmets all day. You know, yeah, short bus back. All these kind of things. And those were all things I had had hurled it at me as well. You know, like, people say you retard you more on short bus. I had gotten that kind of stuff since kindergarten.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

And I had all these stereotypes about autism. You know, it was like, what? You know, Rain man, something like that.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah, yeah, Rain Man. That's all the culture had, really. Right.

[Inky Montane]

Right at that point in time. And I was just like, wow, that's really me. That's all the things everybody said. It's like, yeah, short bus. That's. That's me. And they were all right. Everybody was right. They totally called it. I just settled for, you know, eccentric alcoholic who may or may not be schizophrenic. I'm like, eh, whatever. That's fine. I'm cool with that. I don't. I don't really give a. I don't really feel it, but I don't care either. But this was something I could not escape from. I couldn't rationalize my way out of. It wasn't something that I could prefer to identify as or not. This was just the most inescapable recognition that I had ever felt. And there was nothing I could do about it except for just keep reading. So I just kept reading about it and just everything clicking into place. You know, so many aspects about my father, my whole life, just everything was making sense. Everything made sense now, and I didn't want it to make sense. I don't know how long I sat with it and kept reading about it until I finally, like, well, I have to tell her, you know, I can't. I can't just, you know, let her be with someone who has this and just think, you know, I'm eccentric or an alcoholic or schizo or whatever things that she is okay with. Right, Right. So I remember we were in the living room of our house. I said, you know, I tell you about this. I think I. I think I know something about myself now that I didn't know before, but I should tell you to see how you feel about it. And she's like, okay. And I think she. I think she probably thought that I was, you know, gonna come out or something.

[Taj Easton]

Sure, sure. It sounds like that. Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

And I told her, you know, I literally checked just about every box for autism. And I don't know what you think about any of that kind of thing. And I didn't know. Basically saying, I'm sorry, you know, I'm sorry that I. That I inadvertently got you into this.

[Podcast Host]

Fuck.

[Inky Montane]

And, you know, whatever you want to do with this, it's okay. And that was essentially my perspective at this point when I'd finally gotten it together to confess this to her, to fully accept whatever she was going to do and if. And if she wanted to leave, if this was just too much for her, you know, disgusted her, whatever that was, fine. And I was ready for that. And she didn't freak out. I can't even really remember exactly what she said, but she did seem more interested than anything else. It didn't sound like she actually knew much about any of this or really had any opinion on it one way or the other. She hadn't heard of Asperger's. She'd heard of autism, of course, but I don't think, as far as I know, she had she hadn't seen Rain man or. Yeah, yeah. She didn't really seem like she cared one way or the other, which was, of course, just a massive relief to me that she didn't really seem to give a fuck. And I just continued reading about it and, you know, taking these tests as I heard about new ones, but, you know, I really wasn't comfortable identifying with anything yet either. Yeah, and this was kind of before it became almost more of a buzzy thing. I mean, at this point in time, there was no such thing as, like an autistic influencer. It wasn't, you know, this cool, like, hashtag thing or there wasn't, you know, any kind of communities that I was aware of or anything else. It was just something that I just kept reading about and just being able to think of more and more incidents throughout my life and going, oh, so that's what was going on? Or, oh, this is what's going on. And anyway, I went on for years like that, just understanding my life through this new. I don't know if I want to call it a sensibility or a filter, but it was a new way of grasping everything that was more effective than anything I've ever been able to access before.

[Taj Easton]

Okay, that's something because unless I've missed something that you said, it's. There hasn't been a lot about, oh, this. This helped in some way to know this, or it felt a comfort or a relief or something, but it helped with functioning.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I think to a degree. I mean, it. It definitely a lot of things going like, wow, you know, I wasn't just obsessed about this or that thing or difficult about this or that thing just because I'm a weird, eccentric dick.

[Taj Easton]

Right, Right.

[Inky Montane]

Just like, can't deal with, you know, like this or that color or.

[Taj Easton]

Right.

[Inky Montane]

Motorcycles or, you know, dogs barking and onions or whatever, you know, particular textures. Like, I can't have, like, certain kinds of fabric. You know, I can't have, like, wool touching my neck, you know?

[Taj Easton]

Yes.

[Inky Montane]

I can't do those kind of socks stuff that just doesn't work and weird things that I just had to do and if they didn't happen, I would just borderline not be able to function and just be grumpy, miserable person and just kind of like, well, God, you know, there was a reason for all this. I wasn't just a weird, ingrown, myopic asshole. It was. I really didn't have a choice.

[Taj Easton]

Yeah. And would you call that something like self acceptance or giving yourself permission maybe to, like, Be those things without fighting it or telling yourself it should be another way.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. I mean, it definitely made it easier to lean into some of that stuff and just accept it and, like, you know, this is okay. But yeah, eventually, for various reasons, I wanted to finally get a legit diagnosis. And a big part of it was really I just.

[Taj Easton]

Jury duty.

[Inky Montane]

Every time I got a summons for jury duty, I would have a full blown panic attack and I just wouldn't know what to do because I needed to follow the rules. Yeah. Other people be like, oh, dude, whatever. I just wad those up and throw them away. Yeah. I'm like, it says on here that you'll go to jail, but it's like, I want this to be over with. I don't want to deal with this anymore. If I can have, like a permanent thing to where they never bother me about this again, that would be one of the greatest gifts I could ever receive. But, yeah, I went through that process. I did all that testing, I did all the observation, all the interviews. Yeah. Obviously I was autistic as hell. And I think they could tell when I came through the door. But that's not the way they. They gave the stuff out. And the only thing that was a surprise, they said I had severe anxiety and mild depression. And I had never thought of myself as having anxiety before, but depressed. I was like, oh, yeah. My mom wanted us all on antidepressants and we were all depressed and everyone in Oregon was depressed and all that shit. So it's like, I didn't think anxiety was even a part of the equation.

[Taj Easton]

Sure.

[Inky Montane]

So I was surprised to hear that. I was only mildly depressed. I was like, oh, wow. You know, that's. I guess. I guess I showed up kind of weak in that department. I didn't bring my depression a game. Fuck. Sorry.

[Taj Easton]

I was too busy being autistic. Can we test again?

[Inky Montane]

Right. Yeah. See, I still don't know what to do with that. But obviously that anxiety is just due to being insanely fucking autistic. You know, in a world that I don't really deal well with. But I. I just. That degree of. Of tension and confusion and frustration and just the level that I'm on all the time. Yeah.

[Taj Easton]

Is that was just being alive for you.

[Inky Montane]

Right. I didn't think. Yeah. And even with autism, it was all just difficult. Just like, oh, this is all still normal or about average. Sure, I assumed. But it's like, no. Very few people are keyed up to the degree that you are internally all the time. Yeah. While you're sleeping, you know, I'm. I'm. That I'm heat up, you know, it's. It's. It's not good. It's. It's not healthy. I would like to. I do have a lot of ways of dealing with it. And it's always strange to me, too. It's like, wow, you know, how could I have that much anxiety when so much. To me so much of the time is just utterly fucking magical? Oh, how can that equate. How can I have anxiety if I just love all of this so fucking much? I just doesn't make any sense. I just couldn't. It still doesn't make sense. So I just. It's just hard thing for me to accept.

[Taj Easton]

Damn.

[Inky Montane]

But trying to get it more and more that these things can coexist, that it's all part of the same thing. It's a lot, but it's. I mean, I feel probably more now than I ever have been able to. That that's really what I'm. What I'm leaning into is that sense of it all being one, that this does all coexist, this level of extreme tension that apparently is unimaginable to most people, coexisting with what is just being immersed in just ineffable beauty and that it's all the same thing.

[Taj Easton]

It's been a hell of a year for you and Key.

[Inky Montane]

Mm. Mm. Yeah, it's. It's been some hell, but all the way to the other end, you know? Yes. I got to the back door of heaven by way of hell. Yeah. Yeah.

[Taj Easton]

I'm amazed by your capacity for bliss. Despite everything else that I know you're also going through. It's like living with a certain vibrancy that I think is beautiful and probably really hard.

[Podcast Host]

Sometimes.

[Taj Easton]

If I see you experiencing a really powerful emotion, there's something like maybe kind of envy. And it feels like this kind of aspirational level of care that I want to believe in. And, you know, often I'll see you just feeling really something really powerful for other people, and it's like, oh, shit. It's possible. It's possible that people can care about each other that much. I want to be able to feel things more. And you really are an inspiration to me in regards to your depth of feeling.

[Inky Montane]

Wow. Thank you.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, a lot of time I really think, like, wow, I wouldn't wish this on anybody, you know?

[Taj Easton]

Thank you for your immense capacity to be tormented.

[Inky Montane]

You're welcome. You're welcome.

[Taj Easton]

I Got. I'm crying a little bit, man. I didn't expect. I thought we were just gonna shoot this shit a little bit. Now I'm over here crying. Thinking back, I think I got the impression that, oh, that's not so much a safe thing to do or welcome in these spaces to. To feel that much and show it.

[Inky Montane]

Okay. Yeah. First I thought you were talking about safety in another sense, as in, like, maintaining your sanity and going like, well, I don't know if it's that safe in that regard, but regards like safe as in I can express this and it's not going to be held against me or judged in any way about. Yeah, it's safe in that way. At a certain point. The only point where things truly feel safe is when you're completely abandoned to the infinite.

[Podcast Host]

Oh.

[Taj Easton]

Oh, wow. I didn't know you're gonna go there.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. But that is kind of the scariest point because it can really flip either way.

[Taj Easton]

I get the sense that your grip on reality feels very unsafe to you sometimes.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going through dissociative episodes and falling into fugue states, things like that, that's the worst. That's definitely the flip side, but at the same time, it just doesn't seem like you can really have one without the other.

[Taj Easton]

I love how your brain and my brain are different, and I love talking to you about stuff that I feel like you grasp that I can't really grasp. And those are fun conversations because they kind of encourage me to stretch or see something new or I guess, just maybe connect with you in, like, a deep and sort of like, engaged way where it's like, holy shit, what is. What is this man talking about when he says infinity?

[Inky Montane]

Oh, no.

[Taj Easton]

One thing I've enjoyed about our relationship, and it almost feels a little embarrassing, but the ADHD diagnosis that has brought into focus for me that, like, my brain and other people's brains are different, something that comes easy to someone else may not come easy to me. And it's fabulous to kind of accept that more that, like, yeah, this person is different. They see things differently, they're unique, and I don't have to be like, oh, why don't they see things like me? Or why don't these things that come easy to them come easy to me? It's been beautiful.

[Inky Montane]

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's excellent.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah. That's fabulous. Yeah. Especially insofar as you can find it liberating. I know. It's. It's really complicated for a lot of people. Yeah. Diagnosis is so strange. Because it's just essentially. I mean, they're just words. They're just tags that are attached to something. I mean, that's the way language works in general. I mean, this is. It's. It's all just nonsense. But they're fragments of mirror. Who.

[Taj Easton]

God damn, Inky. Have you ever said that before?

[Inky Montane]

That's a.

[Taj Easton]

That is a poignant little description.

[Inky Montane]

No, I don't think I've said that.

[Taj Easton]

Before, but that's fucking tight. You were saying maybe with the diagnosis, for some people, there's a moment where you can sort of look and a little retrospective on your own life and things maybe make sense, or you can help to locate yourself in a way that you weren't located before. I don't. I'm sure I didn't state it as eloquently as you did, but you know the kind of bullshit I'm talking about.

[Inky Montane]

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I'm not sure what. What I. I don't know. I can't remember. Right.

[Taj Easton]

You said something brilliant, and it was, like, poetic. I could run back the recording and I'll play it for you, and you'll be like, damn, Ethel said that. Good.

[Inky Montane]

Good. Talking fool. Duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck, duck. Goose. Let's make up characters, and let's be all the characters. That was what I really liked.

[Podcast Host]

All right, folks, we've done it. We listened to a podcast. Almost the whole thing. If you have just now become a fanboy or girl of Inkymontane, you are in for a treat, because there are many places where you can revel in the creations of this man's fabulous mind. You can find Inky Montaigne on Instagram Henk Mountain, where there's a lot of drawings that Inky does which are fantastically not generated by AI. If you search up Inky Montaigne on YouTube and find the Inky Montaigne YouTube channel, you can find some music videos. For the music you're hearing right now that I put a ton of effort into, it's a comfort to know that those are being seen. Please watch them.

[Inky Montane]

Please.

[Podcast Host]

And then you can send me an email and say, I watched them. And you could say, I didn't like them, and I would still be like, phew, someone watched them. Thank goodness. You can also buy the album that features the music you're hearing right now, but also features Inky singing Like a Wild man over the top. Best place to do that is on Bandcamp. Search up Inky Monkey. The album is called from the Drama Office. And it's cool. And I produced it and I recorded it and then fucked it all up with a lot of crazy effects and reverb. And I mean fucked it up in a good way. I like it when things are fucked up. It's a reminder that life is fucked up. And lastly, there's a goddamn website, inkymontane.com if you know somebody who has an ASD diagnosis and they might be interested to hear Inky's story, they might experience some validation or encouragement or whatever. Maybe it'd be engaging and interesting for them and we wouldn't mind having more people listening to the show. If we had more people listening, then we might not go under. It's very real possibility that we are going to go under. And I don't want that because I'll have to look for a different kind of job that I won't like. Probably you could support the show by spreading the good word. Send it along, share it. Press a button on your phone or something and it'll let you share it. I'm sure there's a button like that. I don't know what it is, but it's there. Please do share your money. If you can afford it. You're basically our only hope. Go to patreon.com risk to become a patron. You'll get a lot of bonus content and you will contribute substantially to our survival, which relies on the support of listeners like you. We would already be extinct if it were not for the support of our patrons. We couldn't do stuff like make this show. So if you're supporting us, thank you very much. If you're not supporting us, thank you very much. You don't need to, but if you can, I will say thank you very much. And that's worth it. If you have found out that you are one of the many neurodivergent people who are my superhero friends, like Inky Montaigne. Maybe there's a story in your experience how you came to understand that you fit into this sort of classification. Send us a pitch about that story. There seems to be a growing awareness about the fact that different people are different. And I, for one, am glad. It has changed my life in myriad positive ways. Send us your bitch, Risk Dash. Okay, that's it. It's over. The episode is basically over. I'm gonna talk a little bit and then it's gonna stop. And then you'll have to find another podcast to listen to. Or you can turn off the podcast and go kiss your boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever life goes on. Life goes on for Inky. He's in the other room right now, probably staring at something. You are all highly thankable people right now. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a supporter. Thank you for thanking me. Anyone who thanked me, that is. All right, I'm gonna disappear in a second here. I'm gonna fade up the vocals on Inky's music, and you can. And we can have him take this out with some of these wildly unhinged ramblings on top of the guitar. Don't forget that today is the day and they take her the best.

[Inky Montane]

D.