The Last Normal Day

Transcript

Speaker1: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are, I hope you got blue skies, a breeze on your back, and sand between your toes. Welcome to the Other Lifestyle Podcast. I'm your host, Jason. Leave vanilla behind as we talk about the last normal day. This show is for adults only. We will talk about sex, relationships, a lifestyle, and ethical non-monogamy in an honest way with lots of real talk. I do a lot of cussing. If you're under 18, this is your your only warning to stop listening now. Around here, on the beaches of sexual freedom, consent, education, and good times, everyone is welcome. Lifestyle vanilla or just the curious. Whatever your gender identity, expression, truth, flavor, you are welcome here. I do my best to use inclusive language, though you may hear words like husband or wife or man or woman. Keep things simple. You want to connect, you can send me an email at host at thatotherlifestyle.com. Go to my website, thatotherlifestyle.com, and also go to to get an STI test. Use my promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. For the best lifestyle parties, check out RisquéLifestyleParties.com. We love their vibe, attitude, always have fun, and I promise you will too. Their next party is going to be in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, April 30th and May 1st. It is a giant glow party, so go check out their website. Let me ask you a question. When was your last normal day? My wife and I have a strange unit of measurement for time. Little notes on the calendar I make each year. We call it the last normal day. We recognize the last day of our old normal lives before our lives change. Change happens, alright? This is a natural part of life no matter how much we may try to embrace it or fight it. And for some reason, life, the universe, God, or the devil has a way of changing my life. very fucking quickly and decisively. My wife and I, I've learned after all these years of marriage, are not the kind of people that get the slow buildup or the gradual change of seasons. No, we are the kind of people to get the fucking hurricane bearing down on us, standing in the storm, waiting for it to pass. Then we pick up the pieces and move on. We honor those days now. I do. Markers, important dates on the calendar that let us see the contrast of our old lives. That's what this episode is about. were and what we are now. On the calendar every year, August 12th is important to me and my wife. We recognize that as the last day of normal. Now I need to add a new one, a new day to recognize as another holiday on the calendar. We came up with this unit of measurement 10 years ago this year. August 12th, 2016 was our last normal day before we lost our home in a flood on August 12th. August 16th, 2016. There's a lot of dates in this. I still remember that day, August 12th, because it started raining. It rained nonstop for days. A pouring, angry sky that made the river close to our house at the time rise from six feet to 44 feet, 20 inches of rain in four or five days. The great flood of Baton Rouge, as it was called. And it wasn't a hurricane, despite being where we were on the coast. It was just a pissed off rainstorm. We evacuate on August 16th, the gravity of it all hitting us the whole way as we left. The gravity of our old life ending. You wake up one day, and it's normal. You go through the motions, go through the routine, blissfully unaware that it is the last normal day. Ignorant that all those routines and actions, that's the last time you're going to do them. There is a gravity, a power, unseen waves of ethereal in those moments, and we didn't know. You never know. And I won't say our vanilla lives ended then, but our life did end. I lost my job right after because my boss got angry that while I was technically homeless at the time, I could not cover meetings on the other side of the state. We had to replace everything we owned. And there's little things no one thinks about, like nail clippers. There was a night about a month after the flood, I was standing in a wall looking for nail clippers. They had the soft music playing in the empty store, and it felt like a funeral procession. 11 o'clock at night, a final dirge of death playing under these neon lights. Now, no one's sad. There's a happy one. There is a second happy date on the calendar that we observe as another last normal day. And look, you can have as many of these as you want. Just fill up the whole fucking calendar. This one, I believe, is just as important as observing the last normal day before the flood because it also had a huge impact on our lives. It's the last normal day of being vanilla. It was a Saturday in March because everything happens in this fucking month. It was a Saturday a couple years ago that a couple reached out to us to do lunch the next day. Four days later on a Thursday night we had our first full swap. We got Burger King on the way home and it felt like a little feast after a battle. I recognize now, that was the last day of our vanilla lives, the yearly reminder of when everything changed and we made the jump into ethical non-monogamy. Now, we do honor the date of our first full swap, which was actually March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. But that's Saturday, before the rapid cascade of events that led to that first full swap was so normal in hindsight. I, I don't know, my brain's wired this way. like recognizing these special dates on the calendar anniversary of friendships birthday special occasions the days are special the first time we meet new friends or the last time we spoke to old friends and yeah pretty soon my entire year is going to be full of silent memorials joys to joys or scars all over the place it's just something i do which now leads me into recognizing and officially designating a new last normal day last sunday Nothing special happened. I got up. I worked out. We went grocery shopping. Totally normal day. And then Monday happened. March 16, 2026. Started as a perfectly normal Monday morning for me. Me and my team lead prepped for a webinar we have coming up. I scribbled notes on my podcast script between client meetings and it was generally like a really happy morning. I woke up that day feeling great. Feeling better than I have in months. My mental health back to 100%. Body happily soared. from a good workout. So, my day is going along. At work, I had this little meeting slip onto my calendar. A 15-minute meeting called Quick Team Meeting at 2 p.m. Didn't think anything of it. I fucking should have. I've been in corporate America long enough to know better. When there is a big team meeting that gets dropped on your calendar out of nowhere, it is never fucking good. Raises and bonuses? Those are shared in private conversations. So I go to the meeting and I am informed that me and about 30 other people are getting laid off. Bye-bye, source of steady income. Get the fuck out. All of your hard work and those little awards you got every quarter for going above and beyond, they mean nothing. Really, nothing. Am I exaggerating? Yes. I shouldn't say it like that. Really, it wasn't like that. They were actually super nice about it, as kind as they could be. March 15th, the Sunday before, is now another last day of normal for me, and I barely remember what we even did that day. I know I talked to my wife about events coming up this year. She was excited about parties and dressing up. I know the weather outside was beautiful. I probably took a nap. A normal Sunday for me. And then boom, March 16th, getting laid off from my job. No warning, no water cooler gossip giving me hints that it might happen. Nope. It was out of the blue like a lightning bolt. A simple meeting, and now my life is in chaos. And fuck me, I really like that job. They treated me great, it was a super nice company to work for, and now it's gone. Now I have to join the glorious battle of finding a new job. In the lifestyle, might be five conversations to get laid, you know, find a new sexy friend, that is a manageable ratio, five to one, between reward and rejection. In the job market, it is like a thousand applications turn into one interview, and that doesn't even get into your job. That's just to get to go talk to somebody about a job. It's daunting and it can be depressing, though I have decided to make my OCD superpowers useful for once and attack this. This means daily applying for jobs, full focus, no breaks. I did not appreciate March 15th because I did not know how much my life would change on the other side of March 16th. I didn't appreciate the last normal day of this year, which as a side note, Okay, I am breaking the narrative here. If you know anyone who might be interested in a client, relationship manager, customer retention, life cycle management, corporate buzzwords for sales, a guy that can talk really well, stunt dick, let me know. Send me an email to host at thatofthelifestyle.com and we can talk. And oh, Jason, that's kind of tacky to appeal to your audience for this. Fuck you, I agree. But I also like to be able to eat and pay bills. We're going to talk about the job search later. Last normal day. The last day you wake up and life is normal enough. The day before the wind gets sucked out of the room, the cliff falls away beneath you. Life-changing moments when the darkness arrives or the dawn breaks. You know these moments. You've lived them. Looking back on a day and realizing it was significant and its insignificance. Like the first time you make eye contact with a man who gives you that butterfly feeling. Like the first time you dance with a new friend. say hello to a new person. It's funny how my brain works. I remember little details of encounters. What a person is wearing, the tone of their voice, maybe a few words. Can't remember names for shit. It's like my mind is trying to record everything in case it becomes important later, trying to gather the insignificant, looking for significance later. And yeah, looking back, realizing how special a day was, and you never know it. It's poetic and tragic and beautiful, really. Sunday, March 15th this year, was the last normal day I will have for a while until I get a new gig and it's important that's important and weird because I wasn't even paying attention I also call out the last normal day of being vanilla also happened in March something about this fucking month a couple of years ago the date on the calendar in memorial when we were not swingers and not lifestyle but still vanilla I recognized the point in time when we weren't ethically non-monogamous we changed, before we took that ride. For us, joining the lifestyle, deciding to become E&M wasn't still as a big deal. It was a big decision for us that I feel we agonize over more now that we are in the lifestyle than in the days leading up to our first swap. Leading up to it, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion. We just fucking did it and went hard and heavy our first time. Everyone's journey to the line is different. I know couples who stumbled into this by deciding to go to an adult-only resort because they didn't want to be around a bunch of kids on vacation. Sometimes the story involves a hot tub and too many margaritas, or a smut book given life. Maybe it's a couple in a bar asking the right questions, fantasies shared through fear and tears, or maybe they make this leap to fix or repair something. Whatever the reason, however a couple decides to take the ride, step into the elevator, unsure what is going to happen when they hit that button. I'm going to fucking tell you. Life Changes And yeah, people may not be as dramatic about it as I am portraying it Don't fucking care It feels like a dramatic kind of day and a dramatic kind of episode The lifestyle swinging fucking around with friends I get it, it isn't a big deal to everyone It is just another hobby Like cornhole or a family vacation to an amusement park Fun for a weekend and then back to normalcy I don't have the benefit of turning the lifestyle off So I exist wholly over on this side waiting for people to come meet me upstairs when the elevator doors open where the wild shit happens at the hotel takeovers. I can't go back downstairs to the proverbial lobby of life with all those normal fuckers. That sounds way too damn boring now. This concept, it is bigger than a lifestyle. It could be the day before medical diagnosis or remembering the last time someone was genuinely happy or remembering the day something good happened. It doesn't have to be bad. The change, the shift. are so subtle that no one notices it for years. And beyond swinging, I like this idea because it honors our lives in a way that feels special and unique. It honors the mundane motions that we go through. It honors the peace before the storm. That may not be a happy place, but sometimes people will struggle to return to the peace before because it's the only peace they can remember. The lifestyle does not always bring peace that people are looking for. for. It can be messy and chaotic and dramatic and full of regret, leaving a man desperate for that peace and quiet again, however boring it was. Because boring is safe, right? The time before all the chaos, remember fondly longed for, wondering if they can just hit the button and go back down. Join the lifestyle opening of a marriage. It is a big fucking deal. It should be a big deal, okay? There is no going back from this. I know couples like to advertise themselves as, we're just dipping our toes. No, you're fucking not. Once you're in, you're in. Looking for connections first, seeing where it goes, great. Look, let's be fucking honest. You tend to look at your wife differently after you've seen her been dicked down by another man. You usually feel a little bit different about your life after you're face deep in the vagina of a woman that you were not married to. That has gravity. That has weight. That's why remembering the last day is important because the contrast is so damn sharp. We need a way to measure it and appreciate it. I'm not the one to sit here and convince anyone to become swingers, join the lifestyle, become ethical non-monogamy. Most times if you ask me, I'm going to tell you no. That's not my business or my place. I am the one standing there when the elevator doors open, waiting to tell people there's no going back with a chuckle. The fucking elevator, the ride you just took, elevators busting, the only option is to go back down the stairs. That takes work. Each floor is going to be a reminder. It could be framed as infidelity. It could be framed as coercion or the final nail in a marriage. It is heavy shit. We couldn't go back to our lives before the flood no more than we can go back to our vanilla lives. The water washed away. What we were, just like the heat of a new lover, will burn a new couple in the most beautiful way possible. The day after the last day. The day of change. That's the one most people are going to remember, though. They will remember the emotions, the feelings, the chaos, maybe the peace. is going to change. It's all pineapples and sunshine and smiles and encouragement. And then there's jackass Jason getting on the elevator with them with my resting murder face dressed up like a devil, probably inebriated, giving them a half smile knowing what's on the other side of those doors. You can't go back, man. You can only go forward. And yeah, a couple could try this once, have one night of fun, and stop. That's allowed. Do whatever in the fuck you want. Try it. If it ain't for you, don't do it again. The best way to share this, give an example, is around jealousy. The vanilla world does not prepare us at the fuck-all for the kind of jealousy that the lifestyle is just gonna ball up and chunk at you. Vanilla jealousy. That shit is basic compared to the kind of stuff we have to deal with. Oh, no, my husband looked at another woman's ass. Big fucking deal. He didn't touch it. How about the emotions when a couple rejects one couple and then runs off and fucks a different couple at a house party? Yeah, that's some complicated shit. Rejection, anger, and jealousy mixed together to make the stew of confusion and feelings. That vanilla life? No, never seen all this come up on a sitcom teaching us a proper way to deal with it. A new couple in this has to change their perceptions of so many emotions and outlooks and ways they handle each other and others. It is a full-on identity shift. that incorporates ideals and etiquette that half of us learn halfway through this. A person's self-worth shifts dramatically. Suddenly at 40, I have to start worrying about being attractive and shaving my balls and flirting. All these skills and concerns that will certainly atrophy in the middle of life. In my adult life, I have been laid off a few times, and I have learned to not associate my self-worth with my job. My identity as a person is not tied to a position, or a title, or how I receive income. When people ask what I do or did in this case, simple answer, sales consultant, it is the most succinct way to describe it. My whole title was very long and mysterious and corporate sounding, and technically, I had four titles at one point, which would then elicit questions about my work, and I don't want to fucking answer these questions when I'm trying to have fun, okay? the last normal day implies a change in a person. There is a line here that has been crossed. Cannot be uncrossed. That implies a change in identity. Now, I'm currently going through one of those changes in identity myself. Going from employed to unemployed. Definitely a culture shock to my system. I promise I will not sit around in my bathrobe all day long. It works. We can recognize that change in identity, honor it, hate it, love it, whatever needs to be done. It gives form to the formless moment that life did change. And for those experienced people out there, ask yourself, what did your life look like now after jumping in? Or what did it look like before? For us, now that we're in this, we certainly have a whole lot more to talk about. Weekends are a lot more fun. I have a social life. I now have a fantasy involving gallons of lube, a kiddie pool, and a willing friend that I cannot shake. Overall, I would say that our life on this side of the line, this side of the elevator, is better. I know now that we can't go back. We have contemplated stopping the lifestyle in some fashion, and fuck me, it isn't feasible. To disconnect, to sever, to change back to vanilla? I know we can't. I know people who have been in this as long as us, even longer. They can't. The lifestyle is sticky like that. I find I can't be my true self. And no one realizes it. We can't. We can't be our true selves. And no one notices it until they walk through those elevator doors and get introduced to something different. Hacking out with vanilla people, friends, family, whatever. Lifestyle? We can't be authentic. There are topics that are off limits. Conversations have to be limited. We can't share what we actually did last weekend. Instead, a white lie must suffice. There's a point of realization where the lifestyle identity becomes the truth underneath everything. In the vanilla world, they get the mask. Need a real-life example of this? Real-life example is something that changes. Text messages. Vanilla people get a text message they will pick with their phone with no hesitation, look at it, show it off, wave around the message they got for everyone to look at it. Come on, everybody, take a look at the cookies, grandma babes, right? Not lifestyle people. Not the fuck all. We now have to worry if that text message is going to be a nude, a dick pic, a proposition, or a random sexy flirt. Gotta hide the screen or you go check that shit in the bathroom. And it happened to me recently. Having lunch with a relative, I happen to get a sexy text from someone. What the fuck? And of course, I have to look. I mean, I have to. I take my phone, I hold under the table, and I take a look. There is a nude waiting. on me. I am so happy because I needed this. And of course, my relative notice. Yeah, I'm gonna tell you, fuck yes, you send me a nude, I'm gonna look, company be damned. I looked, sure as shit, my relative asked, who are you texting with? Now I cannot be honest in this moment and say, oh, this is a woman I have put my penis in repeatedly and I hope to do so again this weekend. So I had to tell a little white lie. sitting right next to me at that exact moment, and then I immediately change the subject. Another example of how life changes after joining the lifestyle, after that last normal day, the conversations between spouses change. It goes from, hey, how was your day? to, hey, how was that dick? It goes from, oh, we need to pick up some milk later to, don't forget the hoe bag. Instead of, how was your workout? It becomes, hey, you want to go fuck some people tonight? It's a subtle shift. A person's relationship to sex changes. Instead of being a big grand gesture with all this buildup, maybe done from obligation in extreme cases, getting laid becomes easier in so many ways. Instead of date night and flowers and convincing someone to have sex with you, it becomes just something friends do. If we're sitting on the couch together long enough, I'm gonna want to have sex. There's no great buildup. It's a simple question. Hey, do you want to get naked and put my pecker in your mouth? Telling vanilla people this blows their fucking minds how nonchalant sex can become. I am at the point now. Yes, dates are fun, but we all know where we all want this to end up, so how about we just skip the dinner and go straight to fucking? I see this with the newbies. They want to make the experience this big production. I know we did this when we started, so no hate. I cut straight through all that. Instead of dinner and a bar and dressing up, Just come over in pajamas. So much easier. Sex does become easier, and it becomes harder. Sex has a different meaning when other people are involved. It's complicated. Emotions, sir, that would never surface in a vanilla marriage. Yeah, there may be jealousy if a wife catches her husband checking out another woman, like I mentioned. It's possible, okay? But it is fucking nothing compared to the quagmire of jealousy. and emotions that can arise when actual sex with another couple is involved and the nuances all around that. I like sharing the orgy example. If I tell a vanilla person that I felt left out at some point during an orgy, they're going to shrug and laugh and say, well, at least you got to go to an orgy. If I tell a lifestyle person that I felt left out, they fucking get it. They get the deeper meaning and the impacts of that feeling. morality changes. This one needs to be addressed even though I try to stay away from morality on this show. Sex becomes decoupled from marriage. Sex becomes a fun physical activity and different. Your outlook on sex is going to change. Physical intimacy no longer holds the same position in a marriage as it did. Not lower, not higher, different. Sex still matters, yes, but again, it just, it matters. It is no longer only good people have sex inside a marriage. It becomes good people tell the truth. Good people honor their marriage as best they can. Respect boundaries, protect, cause no harm, harm consent, all of that. Sex blossoms into something else, something that can be shared safely with others without disrupting a marriage. Exclusivity becomes consent. Possession becomes agreement. It is no longer this is right because society, said so it opens up to become this is right because we said so and we respect it the last day matters because what comes after that last day matters it could be a life-changing natural disaster like the flood we went through it could be losing a job like i went through or it could be joining the lifestyle like i also went through holy shit the significance of a day is only known once it has passed and everything changes those changes could be really really bad or really They're really good. They could be things that no one ever truly recovers from or hopefully they open up a whole new chapter of a person's life. Remember the last days. Fill up the calendar with memorials to win life changes. Appreciate that change. And when you get off the elevator and you see a mysterious man standing there, just follow him. He probably knows where there's a cool party at. As I said earlier, I now sit in my office looking for a new battle, a new vanilla job. Podcasting and content creation is fucking fun, but it's not enough. I'm throwing this out there in the universe and to all my listeners. I am not broken. I am not bowed. I am not stopped. I am looking for a new adventure. Shit happens. In the middle of an orgy, we like to pretend the fun will never stop. The vanilla world doesn't exist outside the rooms, outside the walls of a room with But it does. Eventually, the passion fades. The lube dries. We get dressed, and we go back to work on Monday. Well, not me. Not right now. I need a new adventure. I need a new job. A new place that I may land ready to do client relations and sales and talking and presenting. Anyone who wants to help me out in this quest, my email address is host at thatofthelifestyle.com. Reach out. Let's see what happens. Now, as I said, I am not broken. I have I'm starting a Patreon, which is patreon.com slash that other lifestyle for anyone who wants to support the show, support me, and get more. Chasing money, being rich, flashy, that's not me. My prayer to God, the divine, the universe, whatever is listening, is very simple. Fuck me, feed me, and give me a warm place to sleep. Give me enough to share, give me enough to provide and take care of my friends and pets. Give me enough so no stranger or friend who shows up at my door leaves with nothing. There's a quote I love. When you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher wall. Maybe that's what this Patreon is. My way of building a longer table for more people to enjoy the lifestyle with me, with us. I like that, and I can get behind that. My passion is writing. The blank white page is where I go to live, to express, process. I enjoy it. I could be so happy writing 5000 words every day. This really is my happy place. Sitting in my office at 4.36am with my coffee and Bart my cat next to me in a bathrobe. I never wanted to really ask my audience for money directly. Look at that. Shit happens. Go support STD Hero and Risque. They mean a lot to me and I get a few dollars from the promo code. Maybe it is time though. is time I offer more. With Patreon, I can offer more than just audio once a week. So go check out the Patreon page, patreon.com slash that other lifestyle. Go check it out. I have two tiers, $4.99 a month. If you want to support the show, that is the cheapest I could set it. You get everything for that price. I also have a $99 a month tier because fuck it, I get enough rich people sending me money. I don't have to go back to corporate America. Take a look. No press. I will still give everyone a big hug in person, regardless if you're members of the Patreon or not. Everyone has a place at my hall and at my table. We are all on this wild journey together, and that matters. And to answer one question, oh, Jason, is there going to be a dedicated community online for the show? I don't fucking know yet. I've been applying for jobs, and I haven't really thought about it, so maybe? And if you don't want to commit to the Patreon, but you still like me, right? I do. You can buy me a coffee. Send me a tip. Haha, just a tip. Go to buymeacoffee.com slash thatofthelifestyle. It can be a cold, brutal world out there. And hey, a cup of coffee makes everyone's day brighter. Every little bit helps. So go make someone else's day brighter. If you don't want to do the Patreon, you don't want to send me a cup of coffee, then go do this. Go text a friend today. Let them know they matter. Thank you for listening and tuning in every week. Make sure you tell a friend about the show. Thank you to the love of my life, my wife, who is on this wonderful journey with me. If you want to reach out, ask a question, suggest a topic, send me an email to host at thatotherlifestyle.com. Maybe you got a job lead. My website, thatotherlifestyle.com. And now the Patreon. Patreon.com slash thatotherlifestyle. My personal disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional nor a trained and certified educator of any kind in any way. I am a guy with a microphone sharing my personal experiences with you. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only, and please join us for the next episode. stdhero.com. Promo code TOL15 for 15% off your order. Go get tested. Risky lifestyle parties. Go check out their event coming up first weekend of May. Fort Walton Beach is called Luminous. You will love it. Whatever you may do today or tonight, I hope you do it with enthusiasm, consent, curiosity, and a whole lot of fucking spice. You are appreciated and loved, and I will see you next time. See you for the next episode.