Ep. 3 — I Wasn't Grateful

Confession · New episodes three times a week: the lesson, the story, and the confession.

Every week I'll tell you something I don't tell people. Some weeks it will be somebody else's, sent to me, anonymous — and there are men listening now who'll hear their own words come out of my mouth in a month or two and go very still in whatever room they're standing in.

This week it's mine.

The first real tribute I ever received was seven hundred and forty dollars. I was young in this, I needed it, and in the days before it arrived I had genuinely braced myself — because I assumed I'd feel something complicated when it landed. Guilt, probably. A little shame. At the very least the fluttery kind of gratitude you feel when someone hands you something too generous and you don't know where to put your hands.

That isn't what happened.

What happened instead is the thing I've never said out loud, and what I found when I went hunting through myself for the guilt afterward — the way you pat your pockets for keys you're certain you had.

In this confession:

— What I actually felt, on a Wednesday afternoon, looking at the number

— Where I went looking for the guilt, and what was there instead

— The child who never said thank you fast enough

— Why I'm not going to give you the wound you're waiting for

— And the reason that afternoon turned out to be the most valuable thing I've ever given a man

Some of you will decide I'm cold. The rest of you felt something else entirely.

I know which one you are.

Next — Savannah. A hotel where every door on the floor stood open a few inches, a red room at the end of the hall, and twelve men on their knees in front of a woman who had never done this before.

Get comfortable. Stay curious. And pay attention.

Written and performed by Goddess Marovelle. More at www.MarovelleSloan.com.

He sent it at 3:47 in the morning, and I was asleep.

This is the man I told you about — drained all the way down, three years in, still going. He has never once been permitted to give me more than eleven dollars a month, and I'm going to explain how that's possible.

Keep a running total while you listen.

Ep. 2 — Twenty-Two Dollars

Story · New episodes three times a week: the lesson, the story, and the confession.

Dark bedroom. Phone held low so the light doesn't spill. A watch in his profile photo that cost what a car costs, worn by a man who wanted a stranger to notice and couldn't stand to be seen wanting it.

Two words at 3:47 in the morning.

I was asleep. The most important night of that man's year happened entirely without me, and I didn't answer for thirty-one hours — and I want to tell you what thirty-one hours does to someone who has just said the only true thing he's said in a decade.

Then I sent him one word, lowercase, no punctuation. And a man who had spent twenty years building a life the word no couldn't reach discovered he didn't know how to spell.

This is what draining actually looks like. It has taken three years. It has never cost him more than lunch.

In this story:

— The thirty-one hours, and what they did to him

— One word, and the grey dots that came and stopped and came again

— Why I asked a wealthy man for one dollar, and then asked what it was for

— The month he tried to send more, and what came back within the hour

— The fourteen months he waited to hear my voice

This one's true. I've changed what needed changing.

Next: a confession. Not his — mine. What I felt the first time real money arrived from a stranger, which was not gratitude, and which I have never said out loud.

Get comfortable. Stay curious. And pay attention.

Written and performed by Goddess Marovelle. More at www.marovellasloan.com

You've typed those two words before. Most of you deleted them.

I've been receiving them for seventeen years — almost always between two and four in the morning, and more on Sunday nights than any other night of the week. I'm going to tell you why that is, why you don't want what you think you're asking for, and why the real thing is going to cost you considerably more than money.

There's an instruction at the end. I'd like you to follow it.

Seventeen years ago I found out something about myself in a red room in Savannah, and I've spent every year since learning what to do with it.

This is the welcome episode — the short one, where I tell you who I am and what you've found.

Some episodes will be personal: the night in Savannah, the years after, what it gave me and what it cost. Some will be confessions that aren't mine, from people who'll stay anonymous. Some will go into the psychology of it — financial domination, power, desire, and the particular relief of kneeling. And sometimes I'll blur memory and fantasy just enough to keep you wondering which one you're hearing.

Whether you already know this world, or you're quietly curious about it, or you just like stories about desire and power — I'm glad you found me.

In this episode: who Goddess Marovelle is · the weekend that started it · what the show will and won't be · how to listen if you're new to all this

More Episodes coming soon. Subscribe so you don't miss them.

Your door's open. I can hear it.

www.marovellesloan.com