It was more than a call-in radio show. It was permission. It was access and it was must tune-in for me in the mid 1990s.
I didn’t have internet porn. I had a yellow boombox,
a headboard with a hidden jerk-off sock,
and a radio show that came on just late enough to feel dangerous.
Loveline. Dr. Drew. Adam Carolla.
Where Callers spilling their guts at 11pm while I laid there
smiling, listening, hard, and hyperfocused.
Sometimes I turned the volume down
so I wouldn’t get caught.
But more often, I was just listening.
Studying. Learning.
Not jerking off to the calls, but looping on them.
The tone. The silence. The breath before the confession.
That was my first porn. But it wasn’t about images. It was about access.
I was raised Catholic. Right-wing suburbia.
But Loveline gave me access to messy shit.
People admitting things out loud that they weren’t even sure were okay to say in their own heads. Women who loved sex.
Men who cried after masturbating. Married couples fighting about porn.
It didn’t matter what the kink was.
What mattered was someone finally saying it.
That’s what got me off.
It was the crack in the voice.
That moment where pretending fell apart mid-sentence.
I didn’t know I was building a Soft Dom identity.
I didn’t even know what kink was yet.
But I kept hearing callers say things they weren’t sure they were allowed to say.
And I kept thinking
God, I wish someone would just hold that with them for a second instead of jumping in with a fix.
I didn’t want to give advice.
I wanted to make it safe enough to say more.
That’s what I try to do now.
In DMs. In confession threads.
In voice notes people leave when they’re three spirals deep and can’t name what they’re craving.
Sometimes it sounds like:
“Who told you that was wrong?”
And then teasing them into wanting to tell me more.
“I feel broken because I can only get off to fantasies I’d never act out in real life.”
And this is how I would answer:
“Well, no shit, that’s actually not a bad thing.
Who said that’s a bad thing? Part of the beautiful thing about fantasies is that we get to make-believe.
I’m curious what about those fantasies makes you upset?
Who says they couldn’t come true? Let’s face it, you don’t ever know what the future holds.
Bet you a few of them will. Prove me wrong.”
That’s not therapy. That’s not a script.
That’s Loveline-coded Dom language:
That’s how I learned to answer people.
Because of radio the voices that came throw the airwaves.
Because of strangers who whispered things
I didn’t even know how to want yet.
Another voice message:
“I love CNC fantasies but I also want to be worshipped. I feel like a contradiction.”
Then I woudl tell them:
“My friend, there’s a thing called switch, or a thing called fluid, and it’s a beautiful hybrid of not having to decide.
Fuck labels. Fuck being told you can only be one. You ever try both?
Within one scene? One night?
It’s a challenge for your brain and your cock.
Let’s get you into that fluid state of mind—and just watch what happens.”
On Loveline Dr. Drew would’ve labeled it.
I reframe it.
That’s the difference.
I’ve spent decades being the guy people call.
Late-night DMs. Friends of friends. Married women. Exes.
People open up to me. Because I don’t flinch.
Because I learned from from the radio airwaves that you don’t hang up when it gets uncomfortable, you lean in.
But sometimes I wonder:
Who holds the space for the guy who holds everyone else?
Loveline gave me the blueprint.
But it didn’t give me the boundaries.
And I’ve spent the last 20 years living inside that tension.
But working thru that and Identifying what I need is for a different post.
I don’t judge Drew.
He was doing something no one else was doing at the time.
He made space for stories that had never been said out loud.
And sure, sometimes he missed the moment.
Sometimes he shamed when he should’ve softened.
But guess what?
That’s how I figured out how I wanted to do it differently.
I don’t have a PhD. But I have this voice.
I have this ache.
And I have this fucking playground.
NeuroCurious is the confessional space I needed at the age I was listening to Loveline.
The one where you don’t have to know what your kink is before you say it.
The one where you can be the confessor and the craver.
The witness and the wreck.
So yeah. Loveline made me a Soft Dom.”
I don’t have the yellow boombox.
But the voices live in me.
Every breath before a confession, every DM that starts with ‘this is weird but…’
It all traces back to those radio airwaves.
And for that?
Thank you, Dr. Drew.