Philip Markle

Or, What I Learned In Ketamine Therapy

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Can I change?

I’ve been trapped by that question, in a loop I can’t break, most of my life.

I broke the loop once — my Senior Year of Catholic high-school, when I stood up during Mass and told a crowd of my classmates — and assorted nuns, deacon, and priest– that Jesus would want me to “Tell you all right now I’m gay.”

Historical data is unclear, but it appears a young Philip Markle may have told his parents they were “jerks.”

While this timeline of events can not be confirmed, archeologists have unearthed relics from his childhood bedroom carbon dated to 1998 proving at the very least, he had to apologize for something:

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I am a grown-ass adult, and I need my digital pacifier.

I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be bored. To do nothing. To stare into the void and daydream.

Instead, I reach for my pacifier. It’s always got something to distract me.

• News (always outrageous, always apocalyptic).

• Notifications (someone’s thinking of me, someone likes me — they really do, even after eight months of isolation).

• Emails (make feel important because I get emails at all hours and check these work emails at all hours for I am an important boss who works hard - aka has no boundaries or work/life balance)

• Social media (the rabbit hole of entertainment is endless, the algorithm knows me better than my off switch, I keep scrolling…and scrolling…and scrolling until my eyes see red).

Read this interview with Philip on Quiddity.com.

Today marks the 27th #SmallBizSpotlight produced in my Brooklyn apartment — not a particularly meaningful number (except, of course, in rock and roll), but it speaks to the duration of our collective isolation. I saw one of my best friends for the first time in seven (!) months last weekend, and I shed a tear on my way to meet her. We’ve lost and learned so much since March, and it’s worthwhile to take a random beat once and while to remember that fact. So, happy 27!

This week, I'm featuring Philip Markle, the founder and artistic director of the Brooklyn Comedy Collective (BCC). Launched in 2018 with the mission to pay artists equitably and amplify diverse voices, the Williamsburg-based theater and school is known for a particularly joyful take on comedy (read: no jokes at the expense of others). Since losing the physical space in April, Markle has transitioned BCC into an entirely online operation — keep reading to learn how.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you react to the shutdown in March?
The first thing we did was pivot to online classes in subjects that we felt could translate to Zoom. We started off with storytelling, stand-up, and musical comedy classes… Things that were more or less one person at a time presenting. From there, we added a class on digital comedy, specifically creating content for online satire pieces. As of this session, we brought improv back, which we piloted with a couple of workshops.

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Hello family! I hope you are as well as can be right now.

I’m sending this to my family members who I’ve shared a table with at holidays, and danced to Motown music with post-dinner, and opened White Elephant Christmas gifts together, and known my entire life.

I know some of you may be planning to vote for Trump. I realize any email starting out with that sentence probably makes you not want to read the rest of what I have to say. I get it.

So, I will try to keep this email as much to the point as I can — and not about being a Republican or a Democrat.

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The impetus to retake the most powerful hallucinogen on Earth was two of my closest friends who’d observed changes in me after my first trip. They’d independently noticed that I’d seemed less anxious — less of what they referred to as “Little Phil” (the needy child in me sulking for attention or feeling sorry for myself when life doesn’t go my way) showing up socially.

I thought — well, bottom’s up! Here we go again!

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I paid for the dream with six nightmares in a row in a haunted hotel in Reno.

Reno can be a sad place to return to after an ecstatic experience at Burning Man. The sunken faces of chain-smokers starring into the voids of glittery slot machines themed around magical animals, Ancient Gods, or just Lucky Number 7. Punctuated every now and then by a random alarm going off indicating one of the lost had scored a reprieve from the steady drip of pennies disappearing. In Vegas, I could imagine being swept up by the glitz and glamour of over-the-top heterosexual fantasy making gone bananas. The tuxedo-clad gamblers! The famous strip! The lights! The babes! Celine Dion! But Reno’s greatest attraction was the distant peaks of Tahoe, calling me away from the desert.

Check out this podcast I did recently with THE UNHAPPY HOUR’s Matt Bellassai, in which we dish about German sex dungeons, Burning Man, The Instagays, and above all - self-care: 

LISTEN HERE

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Note: This story is NOT safe for work or for those uncomfortable with graphic descriptions of male-on-male sex.

“Red blindfold or white blindfold?” asked the bouncer wearing ass-less chaps and a T-shirt with a logo of a horse’s ass above the name ‘Fickstutenmark.’ “Red means bareback is ok. White means Condom only.” This was the second thing asked of me at The Horse Fair — the kinkiest, craziest, sexiest, scariest thing I have ever done in my life. The first question the bouncer asked me was, “Have you read the FAQ?”

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The trouble began in Bratislava.

Something in the Slovakian water? The hand-tossed salad I ate at the bus depot? Whatever the culprit, my stomach was queasy by the time my Flixbus pulled in to Prague Central Station on a Friday at 6:00 PM. I wrote it off as travel fatigue, a low-grade cold — something to push through and not slow down my itinerary. I had a whole city to see!

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My ears were ringing and I was rushing away from my body; I was losing control of myself; I was shouting the word “Surrender! Surrender! Surrender!” in my mind — but my mind was being shattered and flung into a nameless void that was infinitely dark and infinitely bright at the same time.

This was the onset of me smoking the crystalized venom of the Bufo Alvarius toad on the floor of a chic apartment on the Upper West side of NYC. Also known as the Sonoran Desert Toad, this little sucker secretes a venom containing 5-MeO-DMT (four–six times more potent then synthesized DMT). This chemical is the most powerful psychedelic known to man (it should be noted the toads are not harmed in the milking of the venom, and the venom is physically harmless to humans so long as it is vaporized). I had elected to blow my mind apart at the well-furnished home of a healer I’d met on my recent Ayahuasca experience. I wanted to see what was on the other side of my ego.

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I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony in Brooklyn, NY with seven other woman, one man who looked like the Big Lebowski, and a shaman raised in Brooklyn who said the word “coffee” just like you’d imagine he does. I couldn’t wait to “Eat, Pray, and Blow My Mind Apart” with these questers.

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Want to watch this story performed live (AS A SONG?), click here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUdGuUInnvE

For a time, I sublet a spare bedroom of mine in Brooklyn on Airbnb. I was a Superhost, which meant I sported a listing with great reviews and provided a quality stay in New York City. But, every success story is a product of surviving nightmares. Here are my three favorite Airbnb tales:

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I was in tenth grade and dating the hottest girl in my Catholic school, when I received a chain email from gaycurse@geocities.com. The end of it read:

FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO 69 PEOPLE by tomorrow MORNING…or you will suffer the CoNsEQuEnCeS. If you fail to do so, you will be cursed with..HOMOSEXUALITY!!!!!1!

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“You’re not as good as you think you are,” Michael The Realistic Mystic told me in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

I was in NOLA for a friend’s wedding. On the night before it, I’d drunkenly walked past Michael without noticing him in his beach chair on the sidewalk. I was lost in the humid, hedonistic spirit of the city, as well as the contents of my to-go cup filled with Coffee and Kahlua milkshake. But my friend Julia, who has an eye for mischief, saw Michael and tugged the back of my purple-beaded necklace to halt me. “Look,” she said, “It’s Michael The Realistic Mystic! Should you get a reading, Flybot?” Julesbot and I had known each other long enough to have robot nicknames for one another.

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It’s cold out. Let’s take a bath to Robyn’s latest album HONEY:

1. Procure and place the following items next to your bathtub: one waterproof speaker, one bag of your favorite scented Epsom salt, one towel of at least Wamsutta quality, one rubber ducky (ideally the one you’ve saved since childhood), and one jar of all-natural, local honey.

2. Ensure you have nothing to do for the next 40:18 minutes. Light your bathroom appropriately with a candle, disco ball, or color-changing LED lights on a pre-programmed loop. Load up HONEY, Robyn’s latest album, on your streaming platform or musical library of choice. Remove your clothes.

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As an artist and a human being, I’ve found four emotions that trap me:

Pity: no one wants pity you. It’s seductive to want pity, to be consoled, to be told nothing’s your fault, and the world isn’t fair. But the truth is: no one really wants to feel sorry for you. And you don’t want someone to pity you, as much as you may imagine you want it. It’s humiliating. Pity is a useless emotion. Nothing comes from pity — no release, no catharsis. It just wastes everyone’s time.

• What is the antitode to Pity? Anger. As a 65-year old man in a clown outfit named Lunatic at Burning Man told me once, Anger is a transformative emotion. You can do something with anger. You can write your anger, sing your anger, create from your anger. It transmutes your depression into something tangible, and whether or not you share what you create with the world, it leeches the poison out of you. Honoring your anger is part of honoring yourself — warts and all. Anger is valid and helpful and it’s part of your human dignity. Best of all: it can lead to something — it moves the pain and releases it.

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This quote was the main piece of wisdom given by Anna Shapiro at my college’s commencement speech. She described feeling devalued early in her career, misunderstood, used, and unappreciated by those in power. And she advised us not to let assholes ever dictate our sense of self-worth.

I’ve always had a hard time understanding this quote.

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I went to Burning Man this year and got in touch with rage.

I consider myself a joyful person. I can be the life of the party. I put on a great show; I exist to entertain; I love to light up the dance floor.

And there’s a part of me that I never express, that I hide, that I keep behind a veil. And it’s mad as hell.

I went exploring through old drawers yesterday in my childhood house, and I found this letter I wrote to myself the day after coming out of the closet on Feb, 13, 2004. My mom kept it. She had such a difficult time accepting me coming out; even so, she had the wherewithal to keep this letter because she knew it was a big moment in my life.

I am struck by the words I wrote in this — I think it may be one of the wisest things I’ve ever written, and I wrote it 14 years ago.

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I worry I’m a border-line alcoholic.

I don’t know if I am. The worlds I socialize in — comedy and artists and gays — are notoriously full of heavy-drinkers.

But even in that world, I’ve always found myself having one more drink than my neighbor. I finish my pint about twice as fast as the rest of the table. I’m not even polite these days to wait for others to catch up — I go and get started on my second round. I’ve always assumed it was natural for me to drink more than others—justified because I’m a 6 foot tall, 180-pound guy —so I’m “meant” to drink more to feel the same buzz. I’m allowed to “ramp” up at the start of an evening, to “stay even” with my more lightweight friends. I did not attend a “Fraternity” in college, but I somehow got familiar with all these binge-drinking related “terms.”

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I love horror films. As a ruthless Capricorn, I’ve always believed that I would be the second-to-last person to survive in one. Not the final survivor — no. My hubris at having come so close to triumph would doom me in an epic failure at the last second. But my pragmatic nature would get me very far along — I would do whatever it took to survive, including sacrificing others if needed.

I wanted to put this theory to the test and found the means to do so in a NYC interactive horror-themed experience called THIS IS REAL. The show is no longer running in NY, but for those who for some reason don’t want to have the actual details spoiled, do not read on!

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Berlin is the untamed city. It is harsh. The people are not people-pleasers. Their attitude is direct, the rejections from clubs brutal.

I have been to Berlin five times; it may be my favorite city on earth. I love that it is wild, that it resists gentrification, that it oozes weirdness, that it is full of insanity and inanity everywhere one looks. I love that no one thinks of going out Monday-Thursday nights but takes clubbing on the weekend dead seriously. You go hard —dancing from Friday-Monday morning. I love that an ‘expensive’ meal out with a beer might cost you 12 Euros. I love their falafel; it’s the best falafel outside of Tel Aviv. I love that German trains run on the honor system. Can you imagine the NYC subway surviving one day on the honor system? It would be anarchy. I love that German trains run on time. I love that there isn’t much to sightsee or many pretty buildings to look at in Berlin; the best spots are underground, meshed into the Post-war remnants and repurposed bomb shelters. I love Tempelhof, the World War II airfield that Berlin turned into an outdoor garden. Where else can you ride your bike down an actual runway and pretend you’re a 747? I love the beer garden Klunkerkranich, with a spectacular view of the city that someone set-up without signage on the fifth floor of a Kreuzberg parking garage. I love the Berliners themselves — the people I’ve worked with, played with, danced with, made love with, with with’d.

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I am sitting on a veranda in the California sunshine, typing up a story about my last two months living in Los Angeles.

I am not new to odysseys, journeys where I leave home for months at a time. I’ve travelled and worked and played around Europe, and Bali, and many places that called my name when I needed a change.

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I have a best friend named Aaron, who travelled the world to find himself. He used to run PR for major NY entertainment clients in a 9–5 job he dreamed of having, until the reality proved a waking nightmare. So he invested early in Bitcoin, did well enough to quit his job, and travelled for years to Bali and India to learn about himself. Along the way, he developed a passion for the Tama-Do school of sound healing and studied with the master of the movement, Fabian Maman, in Switzerland. He spent months all by himself, cultivating intimacy with his mind and heart and fears and intuition. He repaved his path in life, and his journey inspired me to seek my own way. I left my steady job in 2016 to freelance as a teacher, writer, and performer, engaging in my own solo odyssey into the unknown. 

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I’m staying in my childhood home over the Winter Holidays in Northern California. I’m 31 years old now, and my earliest memories come from this house.

It’s morning on the day after Christmas, and I just meditated on the porch. There’s no one around but a deer on the hillside, wary of me as it nibbles grass. The only sound is the far off hum of cars driving on the 101.

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I’m obsessed with doing. I like to get things done. Much like those horrible Fiverr campaigns plastered right now across the NY subway attest, I am a Do-Er:

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I saw my mind like a department store, and I was the security guard in the middle of the atrium.

For once, I could see my problems labeled clearly: There was the department of Distractions. There was the bodega of Crippling Anxiety. There was the greeting card store with a sale on Comparing Yourself To Others. There was the fast food court with News about our country falling apart. There was the Responsibility and Task Management desk, control panels blinking with notifications. All these stores in my mind, open for business, ready to set the tone for my day as I woke.