May 14, 2025 • 44 mins
Jess discovers Talina Zar isn’t the missing Oklahoma woman’s real name, and the meaning of the moniker unlocks a door to a fantasy world ripped from the pages of 1970s pulp fiction — a fictional world where men reign and women serve and a real-life subculture where people try to live according to the principles in the books. Talina may have found her people in this fringe BDSM community, but was there something more sinister hiding among the kink? And did it have something to do with her disappearance?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
In my hands. I hold a slim paperback novel titled
The Tarnsman of Gore, published in nineteen sixty six by
author John Norman. It's the first in a sprawling series
of fantasy novels set on a counter Earth. Here's the
blurb from the back cover.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Earth could never.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Know of Gore, the world always on the opposite side
of the sun. But Gore somehow knew about Earth. As
Tarro Cabot soon discovered. Taken my force to that savage world,
Cabot was compelled to become a Tarnsman, a warrior trained
to master the great warbirds of Coroba.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
This book, it's not the type of fiction I typically
gravitate towards. It's giving pulpy romance. Novel meets planetary sci
fi vibes. On the cover is a suggestive illustration. A shirtless,
muscular man brandishes a sharp weapon, his stance exaus dominance.
Below him, a topless woman kneels, her head bowed in submission,
(01:06):
her hands bound behind her back. Looming in the distance,
A warrior rides a massive, savage looking bird. I read
the first book for research purposes, but honestly, it was
a struggle listening as an audiobook on double speed helped.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Among the trees on the clover, I threw her to
my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of
her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away,
and she lay at my feet. As it is said
on Gore face stripped.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
The Gore series spelled Gor starts off pretty tame, following
a British professor abducted from Earth and forced into the
life of a warrior on Gore. Gores differ from Earth
in a lot of ways. Fantastical creatures, homestones that hold
mythical powers for different clans, that sort of thing. Plus
(01:56):
there's your typical array of human activities plundering, nomadic wandering, kidnapping, wars.
But the most notable thing is that men on Gore
can own female slaves. They're called kajira. They wear collars
and have no rights. These women are considered akin to pets,
(02:18):
and this arrangement is mutually beneficial according to the philosophy
described at length by author John Norman, as men are
naturally dominant and women are inherently submissive. Here's a typical passage,
the likes of which is repeated ad nauseum throughout the series.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Most Gorrian slave girls, once they make the adjustment to
the caller, are radiantly happy. Society, particularly it's males, rejoices
in their existence. The male fulfills himself and the mastery,
and the girl, sheltered and cared for and nurtured and
commonly loved, even madly, receives the strict, uncompromising domination without
(03:00):
which she could not attain her full woman in society
approves of their status, and they themselves desire it. No
wonder they walk with grace and beauty, No wonder they
walk proudly. They have been found women enough and feminine enough,
and exciting enough, and desirable enough and beautiful enough to
be put in the collar.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
So yeah. Unsurprisingly, the books were divisive. Released during the
nineteen sixties and seventies, as women fought for equality and
pushed back against patriarchy, there was public backlash. Marion Zimmer Bradley,
a sci fi author of the popular Miss of Avalon,
shared a publisher with Norman and wrote a book in
(03:44):
protest called Warrior Women, in which a female slave fights
back against her enslavement. Yet the Gore books resonated with
enough readers to sustain Norman's prolific output, roughly one book
a year for over two decades. In nineteen eighty seven,
the series inspired a Hollywood movie, Just Remembered a Woefully
(04:05):
and was treating like.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
A sage to Morels.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It looks campy and was widely panned by critics at
the time, but despite dismal box office numbers and reviews,
a second Gore movie was released a year later. I
can't even find box office numbers for that one, so
it doesn't seem like it had much of an audience.
And it was around this time in the late nineteen
eighties that Norman was dropped by his publisher, a decision
(04:32):
he has said was due to pressure from feminist editors.
But he didn't stop writing. In the early two thousands,
Norman took his work online, publishing more than a dozen
ebooks since The advent of the internet also fostered a
devoted subculture of fans. Gore obsessives gathered in chat rooms
(04:53):
to debate everything from traditional sword sizes to slave garments
to how best to integrate the social structure of the
books into one's life. In other words, how to be
a Gorrian not pretend, not role playing on second life,
but how to be a master or a slave in
(05:17):
the home, in the bedroom in life period. Today, a
niche community of self identified Gorrians still exists. They practice
master slave relationships modeled on the books keeping Norman's controversial
vision alive. And that world, well, that was Tellina's.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Gore was a world of slaves and beautiful women, of
human domination by the alien secret priest kings. And it
was also the world of Telena, the tempestuous daughter of
Gore's great warlord. She waited for the man who could
subdue her, the man who would be her master.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
From iHeart Podcasts, I'm Melissa Nelson, and this is what
happened to Teleina.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
Zar when Tom passed. I mean, she was obviously devastated.
(06:33):
Her world had kind of revolved around him.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
They had one of those bombs that you know, everybody
could aspire to.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Little town have their skeleton.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I mean, they're not with that.
Speaker 7 (06:45):
I had done some internet digging and then that popped
up with the John Norman Gorrian novels, and I was like,
what the hell are you people into?
Speaker 4 (06:52):
What is going on here?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Episode three Belonging. I had hoped to speak to John Norman,
author of the Gore series, to learn more about his
work and the subculture inspired by the books, but his
current publisher told me that Norman quote does not want
to be interviewed if the slant is going to be
(07:16):
another judgmental feminist attack. He added that Norman is also
over ninety years old, and like many that age can
be a little cranky. So instead I talked to an expert, who,
despite being a feminist, was surprisingly non judgmental.
Speaker 8 (07:35):
I don't think that when John Norman published this he
ever imagined that people would try to live like that.
Nobody writes a novel thinking now, I'm hopeful that everybody
will read my novel and live exactly like that. Would
anybody like to live through? Anna Karinina, I mean, you know,
(07:55):
fiction is an escape.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This is doctor Gloria Breem, a sex therapist and self
described kinster.
Speaker 8 (08:03):
It could have been the pure product of his imagination
and his sexual fantasies, and not a world d would
even choose to live in himself, but a fantasy world.
And we're all permitted to fantasy world. I mean, I
actually read a Gore book when I was probably twenty.
I was bored one night and I picked it up
(08:25):
and I thought, oh, this is really interesting. The vibe
of the cover was kind of sexy. It was a
guy standing looking all masterly and you know, maybe a
woman at his feet. It kind of got across its
message to readers. I wasn't even aware I was kinky.
It was just kind of interesting. It was a wonderful fantasy.
(08:47):
And he wrote a ton in the series because the
book sold a lot, probably to a lot of kinky people.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Gloria has spent her career as a sex educator trying
to reduce the stigma around BDSI, an acronym you've probably
heard thrown around that stands for bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism.
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Certainly since the beginning of recorded history, you can find
Roman wool paintings of people being whipped and having ecstasies,
and lots of art from the Roman era on that
tell us that people have always been interested in extreme
or non conventional, non reproductive sex. Looking at it from
(09:32):
the outside, it's definitely weird and bizarre, but looking at
it from the inside, we all feel like this is
where the love is, you know, the real, raw, primal love.
We're not doing it to be emotionally hurt. We're doing
it really in outs of finding joy and ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Though the Gore books were titillating, Gloria never really connected
with them. The strict gender roles depicted in the series
felt anachronistic. On Gore, men were in charge, women followed, listened,
and served, often while scantily clad, which is.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Why I didn't like the book and I didn't care
for the series, because I'm feminist to the core, and
I was from the age of fourteen, and I actually
was raised that way by my parents.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Gloria's introduction to Gore was brief didn't leave that much
of an impact, But later in life, when she immersed
herself in the BDSM community, she learned that some people
felt very connected to the books.
Speaker 8 (10:40):
A few years later, when I finally did hook up
with the BDSM world, there were Golorians among us who
took various handles straight out of the novel. It was
more about obedience and women serving the will of their master.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There's no way to know how many people in the
US or in the world call themselves Gorrian or try
to live according to the principles in the books. But
if you move in BDSM spaces, you may come across
them once in a while.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
I once met a Gourian couple where the guys started
to tell me, well, you know, all women were born
to be submissive, And that was like the end of
the conversation right there, you know, because really, you know,
there's no universal anything about male or female this world.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's been hard to pierce as an outsider reporter and
a woman. Gorrians are extremely protective of their lifestyle, knowing
that their choices are probably not accepted in the mainstream.
Those who did talk to me shared fears of being
outed and losing their jobs or jeopardizing their families. In
(11:52):
order to better understand what it even is to be
a Gorrian, I spent six months lurking in the online
spaces where they hang out these days, Reddit and discord,
and listening in on these conversations. I was able to
glean some information. For example, there's a spectrum of Goreyan participation.
(12:12):
On one end are those who keep it virtual where
they role play the master slave dynamic online. And on
the other end are people who live every day like this,
couples who enter into a contract. Sometimes we're in sometimes not,
where the woman submits to the man, relinquishing her rights
(12:33):
to choice, freedom agency. It sounds shocking, but for some
people it is very sexy and very satisfying.
Speaker 8 (12:44):
I do believe that Gorrian's, just like other bdsmmers, are
very choosy and carefortable about who they give power to,
and they reserve power for their masters. If you have
two really good people who really are compatible, that's going
to be fun. But if you are with somebody who
(13:06):
is flawed, or has mental health issues, or is actually
really a troubled person, it could be quite dangerous.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I've been a twenty four to seven slave owned by
Master Zarius since two thousand and four. One of my
friends that calls me a pragmatic hedonist. I'm totally down
with that.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I'm looking at a social media account that Teleina created.
In her bio, she describes herself and her husband Tom
aka Master Zarius.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
We're a Gorrian family and belong to the Gray Eagle family.
Previous to being owned by Master Czarius, I was a
BDSM submissive to a variety of masters and mistresses. I've
been in the lifestyle since.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I was eighteen. This is a dramatization of some of
Telena's writing on fet life, a dating and social media
site for people interested in fetish and BDSM picture Facebook,
but with dick pics and leather. If you're curious. It's
not safe for work unless your work is making a
podcast about all of this. I was able to see
(14:28):
Telena's profile simply by signing up for an account. As
far as I can tell, there was a time when
Telena was a prolific fet life user. She connected with
new friends, found events to attend, and shared a lot
of personal writing. Although fetlife is primarily a sexual form,
there's not much on her page about sex at all.
(14:49):
Most of what she shared was overwhelmingly wholesome. Little essays
focused on the banality of everyday life, and people would
respond with kind comments. This was clearly her chosen community,
where she felt safe to be herself.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I've spent too much of my life being so harsh
on myself. My house isn't as clean as my mother's.
My waistline isn't as small as someone else's, my hair
is too stringy, my taste buds aren't developed enough.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Whatever, Telena revealed a lot about her life, her insecurities,
her ongoing weight less journey.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I tried on the cute pants first, and they fit
like they were made on me. And it happened. A
small smile curled the left side of my mouth, and
for the first time in many weeks, I was able
to see my entire body in the mirror, and I
liked what I saw.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Her adventures in baking a short.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Time later, voila an excellent dessert, which the guys at
my office are enjoying right now as I type this.
I cut the result into squares and stack them to
make a cute little strata. Everyone here thinks I'm an
excellent baker.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Reading through these essays, I got a real feel for
Tellina's personality. She's spunky and adventurous. In one post, she
talks about skydiving with her niece, but she's also not
afraid to be vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I started thinking about how so much of my life
has been work to find the balance between being tough
and being soft. I went a little overboard in the
toughness department, to the point where I had no soft
edges at all. On more than one occasion, I was
thrown out of bars for fighting. A little before I
(16:39):
turned thirty, I started getting tired of always having to
be so tough, so my pendulum swung.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The other way.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
I became all soft all the time. When I took
off the exterior shell of toughness, my soft underbelly was
all that was left. I cried at the slightest provocation.
My feelings were frequently injured, and I showed her poppy
dog eyes to my owner when he raised his voice
just a few decibels. Okay, So being tough all the
(17:12):
time was exhausting, and being weak all the time was
even worse.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Si Teleina wrote a lot about her relationship with her
husband Tom, who she refers to as Master Csaius or
just Master.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
How well did I adapt to being property? Well, that
depends on whether you ask me or Master lol.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I'm not sure exactly how or when Teleina and Tom met,
except that they both served in the military, and by
two thousand and four they were living together in Indiana.
Teleina was thirty eight, Tom forty six, and it's possible
that it was Tom who introduced her to Gore. According
(17:57):
to his own posts on fet life, he discovered of
books in his youth and they made a big impact
on him. Here's a dramatization of Tom's writing.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I began reading the Gore books in nineteen seventy nine.
Within them, the philosophical tenets of a man being a
man and a woman being a woman rang true for me.
There was a twenty five year gap between starting my
journey as a Gorrian mastering my first slave. I admit
that mastering my Teleina these past ten plus years has
(18:28):
been a very rewarding and insightful experience.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
According to her profile, Telena had been in BDSM type
relationships since she was eighteen years old, but with Tom,
she moved into something different, a master slave relationship that
required her submission to him twenty four seven.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
I was not used to not being in charge of
my time tasks, Destiny. It was an ugly adjustment that
ended up bringing depth and greater understanding in my relationship
with Master. Because we both wanted to be together in
our roles so badly, neither of us expected it to
be so hard.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
They lived strictly according to Gorerian principles, which meant that
Tom was in charge of all decisions until Lena yielded
control absolutely to her husband.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
I learned how to shut up. I know it sounds
simple and truly it is. However, the amount of will
power necessary to put this into practice is enormous. The
self control practiced by all the slaves who I esteem
is beyond imagining to most of those who don't serve.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
For most people, me included, the word slavery does not
have any positive connotations. Wars have been waged to abolish it.
Generations of people have worked to ensure no one endures
such a fate, and here is someone voluntarily living this way. Honestly,
I find it hard to wrap my head around. And
(20:00):
yet the way Telena described it, their relationship sounded more
nuanced than I had expected.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I see so many posts asking what is quote normal
for a master, mistress owner to do. This is my response.
Our real master gets up at six am on the
weekend to take the dogs out because his slave has
a migraine. Our real master waters the basil plants when
his slave is away, even if he doesn't like to
eat this stuff himself. Our real master goes for a
(20:33):
walk rather than taking his anger out on his slave.
Our real master understands that his slave won't always perform perfectly.
While setting the atmosphere for perfection to happen. Our real
master punishes his slave when she does something wrong because
he loves her. A real master uses his hands to
hold and comfort a slave when she's overwhelmed with fear.
(20:56):
These are all things that I believe a real master
should do, and the these are all things my master
does regularly. I'm a blessed girl.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Teleina freely shared the inner workings of her relationship with
the Gore community, and over time became an expert, someone
who guided others new to the lifestyle. I discovered from
digging through her old posts that at some point she
actually began formally teaching classes with Tom on how to
be in a dominant submissive relationship. Here's a description of
(21:30):
a class they taught in twenty thirteen called Formal Dinner Service,
where slaves were taught how to serve food while naked.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Learn the science behind serving table covers, how to serve
formal table settings, napkin folding. Then go deeper into the
mindset behind formal service. Take some time to experience the
thrill of coordinated movements, feel the rush of performing a
job well. Acknowledge the place deep inside yourself where a
(22:00):
desire to serve naked lives. While you'll walk away with handouts,
the most valuable gift you'll receive is the knowledge that
setting and serving at a formal table is within your
immediate grasp. After the class, join us for a luscious
dinner where you can practice your skills, either as a
diner or a server.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Deep diving into the Gore series, the subculture that is
cropped up around it, and Telena's embrace of its principles,
I had so many questions, the most pressing being why
would someone so smart, self aware, and opinionated like Telena
want to engage in a dynamic like this. Don't get
(22:42):
me wrong, there's a part of me that understands the
allure of seeding control. There are plenty of days where
I feel so burned out that I don't want to
decide anything what to eat, or what to wear, or
even what show to put on to decompress. But as
a woman, wife, and mom, equity in my head household
is really important to me. My partner and I deliberately
(23:04):
strive to share the mental and physical loads of life,
play acting these roles for kink and pleasure in the bedroom.
I get that, But to live within this dynamic where
the male partner always has the final say. It goes
against every fiber of my being. Why would someone desire this?
Speaker 6 (23:23):
For many people, it feels comforting to not have to
be in control all the time. There's this feeling of
glorious freedom actually in not having to make decisions anymore.
You've just become an instrument of somebody else's will, and
(23:44):
this is actually liberating because now, instead of being constantly
faced with all of these choices that maybe overwhelm you,
somebody else is going to make them for you, and
that feels good.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
This is Julie Fennel, a sociologist and longtime member of
the BDSM community who studies gender and sexuality. She's the
author of Please Scream Quietly, a story of kink.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
I guess the last thing is just providing pleasure and
happiness to another person, which is a very human thing
to enjoy doing that. You really get a lot out
of seeing your dominant feel pleasure and be happy and
knowing that that came from you.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Julie told me that people who choose to live as
submissives are oftentimes a healthy, well adjusted, and self confident,
making the choice out of free will. But she acknowledges
that's not the case for everyone.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
I have data that suggests to me that a lot
of people are motivated by unhealthy things, which, unfortunately the
BDSM community is terrible actually having frank conversations about I
put the data in my book from twenty seventeen is
quite clear that submissives have lower self esteemed than dominance do.
I think a lot of times people are motivated to
be submissive because they think they aren't good enough at
(25:02):
being a person, and so they want somebody else who
they think is better at being a person to help
them be a person.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
There's a stereotype the people who are into BDSM must
have had bad experiences in their childhood that led them
down this path, and that BDSM is a way to
grapple with or relive those traumas. And maybe in some
cases that's true, but as Julie explained it, many others
just like the sensation of a whip on their skin
(25:30):
or being tied up with ropes.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
I can take them for a walk. I like putting
people on leashes.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It's fine, as she said, not everything has to be pathologized.
Julie pointed out that a big draw of BDSM is
the community aspect, finding others who don't judge you for
who you are. Beyond online spaces like fat life, it's
not uncommon for BDSM ors to congregate in person, whether
that's at nightclubs, backyard barbecues, or dungeons.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
Any good socia just can tell you that just being
part of the community is usually very good for people's
mental health. I think finding community is often the biggest
reason why people end up being heavily involved in the
buds and subculture. Like sure, they might like doing kinky things,
but ultimately the thing that really gets some joy and
why they keep coming back to this what is functionally
(26:21):
a social club, is because they like the people there,
and they feel emotional support and validation from them. On
the whole, it's pretty beautiful to be around. It can
be pretty beautiful to be around other people who share
your outlook and values.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I get that, but is the gore community beautiful? I
have limited insight, but the conversations I observed in gore
spaces were pretty misogynistic. In one discord form I joined,
the women slaves were constantly talked down to and seemed
unable to share their opinions freely. Their names had to
(27:01):
be in lowercase letters, and they couldn't even talk about
themselves in the first person, she instead of I. It
didn't take long for me to get kicked out of
the forum for simply asking one of the women what
it was like to identify as a slave. This Goreyan culture.
I observed it seemed to me to be a cover
(27:22):
for old fashioned beliefs about the superiority of men.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Oh will hasten to add that that is like way
outside of mainstream BDSM right now.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Goreyan philosophy is an outlier in the BDSM world. Julie
says that's because gore really goes against the current understanding
of gender, which is far more fluid and dynamic. She
mentioned a survey she conducted among bdsmers asking them if
they agreed with the statement I believe that men are
naturally dominant and women are naturally submissive. Only ten percent
(27:58):
did Yes.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Subculture as a whole is extremely liberal for a variety
of reasons. There's this thread in pan sexual media, so
I'm community that, like, we're all, regardless of our gender,
have all the ds and roles equally available to us.
The idea of a system that would restrict that is
(28:21):
very antagonistic to that norm. And so it's one of
many reasons why I would say mainstream medias some subculture
tends to like giggle a lot nowadays about Gore.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Gore gets a laugh, the sci fi elements, the arcane beliefs,
we're so far past women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
But that doesn't mean it's harmless.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
It is not unheard of for people who are in
master slave relationships to say that they have given up
their safeword, which means that like whatever the top chooses
to do to them, the bottom has said that they
will take it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Giving up your bodily autonomy, it can make you vulnerable
to abuse, to being in dangerous situations, which made me
wonder was Teleina ever in harm's way. There was one
essay she wrote that gave me the shivers.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Not long ago, Master, and we'll call it a difference
in viewpoints. That sounds pretty benign, right, he he he.
That difference in viewpoint culminated in me making a conscious
choice to not follow Master's protocols for greeting him when
he came in one evening. Frankly, I had come to
(29:37):
the conclusion inside my head that Master didn't care about
the greeting ritual and wouldn't mind me skipping it. Boy,
was I wrong. When I was close to Master, he
reached out his arms as his lips came close to mine.
I thought we were going to have a hug and kiss.
(29:58):
Imagine surprise when Master's hand went around my throat and
he forced me to my knees while calmly and quietly
asking did you forget something? I believe he even had
a smile on his face.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
As a reporter who has spent a decade writing about
domestic violence, this story raises all the alarm bells. But
I asked Julie what she made of it. She tells
it as this story of like that she was grateful
to be reminded of She was happy that he cared
enough about it that he would punish her and put
(30:38):
it back on her place. But I've spent my career
writing about domestic violence, and so for me, it's hard
to read that essay and not see it as abuse.
And like, I've seen a lot of victims of domestic
violence really come up with really creative ways to justify
the behavior and make sense of it in their own relationship.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
You tell me this story and you say this is disturbing,
and I understand why. But I hear that the story
and I think.
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Oh, that's hot.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
I'm not going to say say I think there's something
seriously wrong with John Norman and his followers.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This is Jess the Internet sleuth in Minnesota.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
I'm not like out there, I'm woman. Hear me, roar right,
I'm not doing that. But it would be a cold
day in how before my husband whipped me or told
me I could or couldn't do anything because he would
find himself outside the house.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
After finding out about Telena's disappearance from a Facebook post,
it doesn't take just long to connect to Lena to
the Gorrian subculture.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
I did like digging, like her name to Lena Tzar.
I was like, that's that's weird. So I kind of
just googled and this Goryan stuff popped up. And then
as you go through with some of her friends, it'll
say Gorrian or master or sister wife or just little
odd tidbits and I'm like, what is that?
Speaker 8 (32:05):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Scrolling through Telena's Facebook just comes across a post from
January twenty twenty, just a few months before Telena goes missing.
It's a photo of Telena's new Oklahoma driver's license, along
with her story of dealing with the bureaucracy of legally
changing her name.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Here's the conversation I had at the Social Security office today,
me I've had a name change and need to get
my card changed. Social Security worker, Why did you change
your name because I wanted to? Did you get married
or divorced?
Speaker 7 (32:41):
Know?
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Then?
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Why did you change your name because I wanted to?
So you don't have a reason. Yes, I have a reason.
The reason is because I wanted to. I don't feel
like we're getting anywhere me same.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
So right before Telena disappeared, she legally changed her name,
and not just her last name, both of her given names.
She went from Jana Lovic to Teleina Galloway. Galloway was
Tom's last name, even though they never formally married and
Tom had been dead for over two years, carrying on
(33:18):
his memory in this way seemed important to her, and
the name Teleina. She'd been using that first name for
years amongst friends and family. According to the petition she
filed with the State Online, she used the handle Telena
tzar for her social media accounts. Jess isn't sure where
tzar comes from, but Telena it appears she had taken
(33:42):
it directly from the Gore books. The Gore world is
one just knows nothing about, but she's willing to learn.
Speaker 7 (33:50):
So I started reading the novels and then listening to
him on audiobook, and it's different. It's not something I
would read, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And how many did you read?
Speaker 7 (33:59):
I think probably ten.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
While the rest of the country is exploring new hobbies
during quarantine, Jess is getting a mini education in BDSM
and Gore culture, and from what she learns, it seems
like a subculture where women could easily be taken advantage of, hurt,
or even killed. Jess knows that Talina's late husband Tom
(34:23):
couldn't have been involved in her disappearance, but what about
the other men in the Gore community, Men who saw
women as property, men who were not used to hearing
the word no.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
They have very black and white views on I'm the man,
It's my job to protect. It's your job to submit
to me and never ask questions. Ever, you do exactly
as I say when I say it. I'm going to
put a collar on you. You don't need dinner until I
say so. You have sex with who I say so.
You wait on me, hand and foot as I say so.
(34:57):
Very very just dominant, submissive, not like fifty Shades of Gray,
but like some of the stuff I saw on fet
life because I created a fake profile to creep on
these people. I mean, there's women in cages, there's women
that they bleed, that like cut them so they bleed.
They do something called kid play where they wear diapers
and for turn their kids. It's very not my cup
(35:23):
of tea.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Jess and the internet sleuths start wondering is their main
source Toelena's friend Marty also a Gorian. For one, there's
that photo where he referred to Toelena as another of
his wives. And then there's his unusual nickname Wolf or Wolfy.
Speaker 7 (35:45):
I remember a conversation where we all refused directly to
call Wolf wolf because we were like, we're not calling
you by some pseudo friggin' you know, master name. All
of us we're like, this is disgusting, we're not into it.
And then I came to understand that that was not
his Gorrian name, so we decided to call him Wolf
(36:05):
and Wolf tried very hard for the first I want
to say, two three weeks to cover up the goryan
aspect of it, even though we were very convinced that
had something to do with it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
You did think I had something to do with it initially.
I did, absolutely Still Jess is not afraid to ask
Marty Wolf pointed questions about Gore.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
He gave me a very PG version of things. He
had told me that it was like live action role
play of dungeons and dragons, but they have sex with
each other. That's how he explained it to me, and
I said, oh, okay. I didn't want to think that
I was super judging him, because I don't want to
(36:47):
make anybody feel bad about their sexual preference or what
they want to do as long as everybody's gong holl
for it. Cool sounds good.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
But the more I talked about it.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
More it sounded like these women weren't They were consenting,
but they were all abused or had had really bad lives,
and I didn't think that they were mentally capable really
of making the choice to consent to something like that.
And when I questioned him on it, he just rubbed
it off like that I didn't know what I was
talking about, and maybe I don't. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
As the COVID shutdown stretches from days to weeks, Marty
lets down his guard opens up about gore life. He
eventually explains to Jess that Teleina and Tom and Marty
and his wife were all in a Gorerian family together
called the Great Eagle Family.
Speaker 7 (37:39):
To take their family group seriously, the mento had rings
of an eagle, and they all had the same ring
because they were in the Great Eagle Family. He was
very proud of it. He thought it was great.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Teleina seemed to be proud of it too. Here's how
she identifies at the top of her fet life profile.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
We are a Gorrian family and belong to the Great
Eagle Family who hosts an event in Oklahoma called Gorefest.
We always have a fantastic time.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Gorefest was a festival created by Marty. Every so often,
he and his wife invited Gorrians from across the country
to their sprawling property in Oklahoma for a weekend of revelry.
Talina and Tom loved going to Gorefest so much so
that they ultimately moved to Oklahoma to be closer to
Marty and their Goryan friends. It was also at Gorefest
(38:31):
where Teleina met Corey, who went on to become her
roommate after Tom died. I found an old website that
Marty ran dedicated to Gorefest that includes this little history.
Speaker 9 (38:44):
In nineteen ninety nine, a few Gorrians from online html
chat decided to get together for a small gathering to
share in real time what they felt in virtual time.
To honor the spirit that John Norman wrote about in
his books. It would be a time for all to
come together and share thoughts and ideas while enjoying for
a short time what each role plays online, whether free
(39:05):
or slave, to enjoy the freedom of being themselves. From
the original thirteen that were here in the fall of
nineteen ninety nine for the first gathering to the record
seventy five attending in two thousand and four, there exudes
an astounding feeling a family.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Clicking around on this old website, I found the list
of events. Sparring acts, throwing tug awar and serving slaves
could take part in a position competition testing their knowledge
of the ten submissive positions they should be able to
assume upon command. According to Gorean philosophy. Don't look these
(39:44):
up at work either, and there was also cy a
slave auction. On another page was a list of gore
Fest attendees, divided into two categories. In one list, I
found mass Csarius, Tom, Master Shekhar Marty. In another, the
(40:06):
slave list, Telena tzar czar as In, belonging to Master Czarius.
By the time Telena went missing, Master Czarius was dead,
so did Telena belong to someone else. Marty explained to
Jess that Telena was now an unknowned slave. Marty had
(40:30):
Telena's quote protection caller, which meant that he was looking
after her. He wasn't her master, but he was a
protector of sorts, though what she needed to be protected
from was unclear.
Speaker 7 (40:43):
I asked about the protection caller he said he had
for Telena, and then he explained to me when Tom died,
he moved in there to help Teleina because she hadn't
dealt with her own money or anything. When Tom was alive,
Tulina had no control over her own life. Everything was
decided by him. When she went to work, what she wore,
what she ate when they ate, Any money she made
(41:06):
went straight to him and he covered you know, he
paid the bills. So when Tom died, wolflipped there and
did all that for her. So he said that it
was his Telena wife, so it was a second wife,
and said the caller was just to protect her from
other Gorrians trying to take her caller, and at that
time I didn't know what that.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Meant, other Gorrians trying to take her coller. Jess is
suspicious of the list of men who attended Gorefest over
the years, masters whose real identities are unknown to her,
but Marty is adamant that all this Gore stuff has
nothing to do with Telena's disappearance. She's looking in the
(41:46):
wrong place. Jess thinks there's more he's not telling her,
but as time goes on, she starts to believe he's
being earnest.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
We built kind of a trust, you know. I feel
like he would tell me a little bits and pieces
of things about his relationship, and he'd become really vulnerable
with me. He'd cry. He started telling me personal stories
about his life, his family, his mom, and we just
built a relationship. He'd like to FaceTime with me and
(42:20):
he'd see the kids in the background and he'd say
nice things. You know, he never said anything creepy to
me or the kids. To me, he'd sometimes say creepy things,
but never to my children. He'd always, Oh, look at Mattie.
It looks like she's grown since the last time I
saw her. She looks beautiful. Like things that you would
say to me, you know, you'd be like, oh, your
daughter is still pretty or something. You know. We back
(42:41):
and forth, like he'd say nice things about people's kids
to them, and we just got close.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The two are an unlikely pair, a nosy bartender in Minnesota,
a geeky goryan master in Oklahoma, having intimate conversations deep
into the night, trauma bonded in the depths of COVID isolation,
when all of a sudden, a new clue takes the
investigation in an entirely different direction. And I'm telling my
(43:13):
buddy this as we're sitting in the garage.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
And he said, do.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You not think that you just got created an entity,
an a possible friend.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That's next week on What Happened to Telena'sar? What Happened
to Telenazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's written, reported,
and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with writing and story
(43:49):
editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.
For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Karl
Catle Well fact checking by Savannah Hugley. Zoe Denkla is
our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor. Original music
by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy Thal and
(44:12):
Gideon Crevische. Episodes are mixed and mastered by Carl Katle
Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica,
and Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore.
Thanks so much for listening.
In my hands. I hold a slim paperback novel titled
The Tarnsman of Gore, published in nineteen sixty six by
author John Norman. It's the first in a sprawling series
of fantasy novels set on a counter Earth. Here's the
blurb from the back cover.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Earth could never.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Know of Gore, the world always on the opposite side
of the sun. But Gore somehow knew about Earth. As
Tarro Cabot soon discovered. Taken my force to that savage world,
Cabot was compelled to become a Tarnsman, a warrior trained
to master the great warbirds of Coroba.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
This book, it's not the type of fiction I typically
gravitate towards. It's giving pulpy romance. Novel meets planetary sci
fi vibes. On the cover is a suggestive illustration. A shirtless,
muscular man brandishes a sharp weapon, his stance exaus dominance.
Below him, a topless woman kneels, her head bowed in submission,
(01:06):
her hands bound behind her back. Looming in the distance,
A warrior rides a massive, savage looking bird. I read
the first book for research purposes, but honestly, it was
a struggle listening as an audiobook on double speed helped.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Among the trees on the clover, I threw her to
my feet. She tried frantically to readjust the folds of
her veil, but with both hands I tore it fully away,
and she lay at my feet. As it is said
on Gore face stripped.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
The Gore series spelled Gor starts off pretty tame, following
a British professor abducted from Earth and forced into the
life of a warrior on Gore. Gores differ from Earth
in a lot of ways. Fantastical creatures, homestones that hold
mythical powers for different clans, that sort of thing. Plus
(01:56):
there's your typical array of human activities plundering, nomadic wandering, kidnapping, wars.
But the most notable thing is that men on Gore
can own female slaves. They're called kajira. They wear collars
and have no rights. These women are considered akin to pets,
(02:18):
and this arrangement is mutually beneficial according to the philosophy
described at length by author John Norman, as men are
naturally dominant and women are inherently submissive. Here's a typical passage,
the likes of which is repeated ad nauseum throughout the series.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Most Gorrian slave girls, once they make the adjustment to
the caller, are radiantly happy. Society, particularly it's males, rejoices
in their existence. The male fulfills himself and the mastery,
and the girl, sheltered and cared for and nurtured and
commonly loved, even madly, receives the strict, uncompromising domination without
(03:00):
which she could not attain her full woman in society
approves of their status, and they themselves desire it. No
wonder they walk with grace and beauty, No wonder they
walk proudly. They have been found women enough and feminine enough,
and exciting enough, and desirable enough and beautiful enough to
be put in the collar.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
So yeah. Unsurprisingly, the books were divisive. Released during the
nineteen sixties and seventies, as women fought for equality and
pushed back against patriarchy, there was public backlash. Marion Zimmer Bradley,
a sci fi author of the popular Miss of Avalon,
shared a publisher with Norman and wrote a book in
(03:44):
protest called Warrior Women, in which a female slave fights
back against her enslavement. Yet the Gore books resonated with
enough readers to sustain Norman's prolific output, roughly one book
a year for over two decades. In nineteen eighty seven,
the series inspired a Hollywood movie, Just Remembered a Woefully
(04:05):
and was treating like.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
A sage to Morels.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
It looks campy and was widely panned by critics at
the time, but despite dismal box office numbers and reviews,
a second Gore movie was released a year later. I
can't even find box office numbers for that one, so
it doesn't seem like it had much of an audience.
And it was around this time in the late nineteen
eighties that Norman was dropped by his publisher, a decision
(04:32):
he has said was due to pressure from feminist editors.
But he didn't stop writing. In the early two thousands,
Norman took his work online, publishing more than a dozen
ebooks since The advent of the internet also fostered a
devoted subculture of fans. Gore obsessives gathered in chat rooms
(04:53):
to debate everything from traditional sword sizes to slave garments
to how best to integrate the social structure of the
books into one's life. In other words, how to be
a Gorrian not pretend, not role playing on second life,
but how to be a master or a slave in
(05:17):
the home, in the bedroom in life period. Today, a
niche community of self identified Gorrians still exists. They practice
master slave relationships modeled on the books keeping Norman's controversial
vision alive. And that world, well, that was Tellina's.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Gore was a world of slaves and beautiful women, of
human domination by the alien secret priest kings. And it
was also the world of Telena, the tempestuous daughter of
Gore's great warlord. She waited for the man who could
subdue her, the man who would be her master.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
From iHeart Podcasts, I'm Melissa Nelson, and this is what
happened to Teleina.
Speaker 5 (06:07):
Zar when Tom passed. I mean, she was obviously devastated.
(06:33):
Her world had kind of revolved around him.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
They had one of those bombs that you know, everybody
could aspire to.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Little town have their skeleton.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I mean, they're not with that.
Speaker 7 (06:45):
I had done some internet digging and then that popped
up with the John Norman Gorrian novels, and I was like,
what the hell are you people into?
Speaker 4 (06:52):
What is going on here?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Episode three Belonging. I had hoped to speak to John Norman,
author of the Gore series, to learn more about his
work and the subculture inspired by the books, but his
current publisher told me that Norman quote does not want
to be interviewed if the slant is going to be
(07:16):
another judgmental feminist attack. He added that Norman is also
over ninety years old, and like many that age can
be a little cranky. So instead I talked to an expert, who,
despite being a feminist, was surprisingly non judgmental.
Speaker 8 (07:35):
I don't think that when John Norman published this he
ever imagined that people would try to live like that.
Nobody writes a novel thinking now, I'm hopeful that everybody
will read my novel and live exactly like that. Would
anybody like to live through? Anna Karinina, I mean, you know,
(07:55):
fiction is an escape.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
This is doctor Gloria Breem, a sex therapist and self
described kinster.
Speaker 8 (08:03):
It could have been the pure product of his imagination
and his sexual fantasies, and not a world d would
even choose to live in himself, but a fantasy world.
And we're all permitted to fantasy world. I mean, I
actually read a Gore book when I was probably twenty.
I was bored one night and I picked it up
(08:25):
and I thought, oh, this is really interesting. The vibe
of the cover was kind of sexy. It was a
guy standing looking all masterly and you know, maybe a
woman at his feet. It kind of got across its
message to readers. I wasn't even aware I was kinky.
It was just kind of interesting. It was a wonderful fantasy.
(08:47):
And he wrote a ton in the series because the
book sold a lot, probably to a lot of kinky people.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
Gloria has spent her career as a sex educator trying
to reduce the stigma around BDSI, an acronym you've probably
heard thrown around that stands for bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism.
Speaker 8 (09:08):
Certainly since the beginning of recorded history, you can find
Roman wool paintings of people being whipped and having ecstasies,
and lots of art from the Roman era on that
tell us that people have always been interested in extreme
or non conventional, non reproductive sex. Looking at it from
(09:32):
the outside, it's definitely weird and bizarre, but looking at
it from the inside, we all feel like this is
where the love is, you know, the real, raw, primal love.
We're not doing it to be emotionally hurt. We're doing
it really in outs of finding joy and ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
Though the Gore books were titillating, Gloria never really connected
with them. The strict gender roles depicted in the series
felt anachronistic. On Gore, men were in charge, women followed, listened,
and served, often while scantily clad, which is.
Speaker 8 (10:13):
Why I didn't like the book and I didn't care
for the series, because I'm feminist to the core, and
I was from the age of fourteen, and I actually
was raised that way by my parents.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Gloria's introduction to Gore was brief didn't leave that much
of an impact, But later in life, when she immersed
herself in the BDSM community, she learned that some people
felt very connected to the books.
Speaker 8 (10:40):
A few years later, when I finally did hook up
with the BDSM world, there were Golorians among us who
took various handles straight out of the novel. It was
more about obedience and women serving the will of their master.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
There's no way to know how many people in the
US or in the world call themselves Gorrian or try
to live according to the principles in the books. But
if you move in BDSM spaces, you may come across
them once in a while.
Speaker 8 (11:12):
I once met a Gourian couple where the guys started
to tell me, well, you know, all women were born
to be submissive, And that was like the end of
the conversation right there, you know, because really, you know,
there's no universal anything about male or female this world.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
It's been hard to pierce as an outsider reporter and
a woman. Gorrians are extremely protective of their lifestyle, knowing
that their choices are probably not accepted in the mainstream.
Those who did talk to me shared fears of being
outed and losing their jobs or jeopardizing their families. In
(11:52):
order to better understand what it even is to be
a Gorrian, I spent six months lurking in the online
spaces where they hang out these days, Reddit and discord,
and listening in on these conversations. I was able to
glean some information. For example, there's a spectrum of Goreyan participation.
(12:12):
On one end are those who keep it virtual where
they role play the master slave dynamic online. And on
the other end are people who live every day like this,
couples who enter into a contract. Sometimes we're in sometimes not,
where the woman submits to the man, relinquishing her rights
(12:33):
to choice, freedom agency. It sounds shocking, but for some
people it is very sexy and very satisfying.
Speaker 8 (12:44):
I do believe that Gorrian's, just like other bdsmmers, are
very choosy and carefortable about who they give power to,
and they reserve power for their masters. If you have
two really good people who really are compatible, that's going
to be fun. But if you are with somebody who
(13:06):
is flawed, or has mental health issues, or is actually
really a troubled person, it could be quite dangerous.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I've been a twenty four to seven slave owned by
Master Zarius since two thousand and four. One of my
friends that calls me a pragmatic hedonist. I'm totally down
with that.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I'm looking at a social media account that Teleina created.
In her bio, she describes herself and her husband Tom
aka Master Zarius.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
We're a Gorrian family and belong to the Gray Eagle family.
Previous to being owned by Master Czarius, I was a
BDSM submissive to a variety of masters and mistresses. I've
been in the lifestyle since.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
I was eighteen. This is a dramatization of some of
Telena's writing on fet life, a dating and social media
site for people interested in fetish and BDSM picture Facebook,
but with dick pics and leather. If you're curious. It's
not safe for work unless your work is making a
podcast about all of this. I was able to see
(14:28):
Telena's profile simply by signing up for an account. As
far as I can tell, there was a time when
Telena was a prolific fet life user. She connected with
new friends, found events to attend, and shared a lot
of personal writing. Although fetlife is primarily a sexual form,
there's not much on her page about sex at all.
(14:49):
Most of what she shared was overwhelmingly wholesome. Little essays
focused on the banality of everyday life, and people would
respond with kind comments. This was clearly her chosen community,
where she felt safe to be herself.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I've spent too much of my life being so harsh
on myself. My house isn't as clean as my mother's.
My waistline isn't as small as someone else's, my hair
is too stringy, my taste buds aren't developed enough.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
Whatever, Telena revealed a lot about her life, her insecurities,
her ongoing weight less journey.
Speaker 4 (15:24):
I tried on the cute pants first, and they fit
like they were made on me. And it happened. A
small smile curled the left side of my mouth, and
for the first time in many weeks, I was able
to see my entire body in the mirror, and I
liked what I saw.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
Her adventures in baking a short.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Time later, voila an excellent dessert, which the guys at
my office are enjoying right now as I type this.
I cut the result into squares and stack them to
make a cute little strata. Everyone here thinks I'm an
excellent baker.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
Reading through these essays, I got a real feel for
Tellina's personality. She's spunky and adventurous. In one post, she
talks about skydiving with her niece, but she's also not
afraid to be vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
I started thinking about how so much of my life
has been work to find the balance between being tough
and being soft. I went a little overboard in the
toughness department, to the point where I had no soft
edges at all. On more than one occasion, I was
thrown out of bars for fighting. A little before I
(16:39):
turned thirty, I started getting tired of always having to
be so tough, so my pendulum swung.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The other way.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
I became all soft all the time. When I took
off the exterior shell of toughness, my soft underbelly was
all that was left. I cried at the slightest provocation.
My feelings were frequently injured, and I showed her poppy
dog eyes to my owner when he raised his voice
just a few decibels. Okay, So being tough all the
(17:12):
time was exhausting, and being weak all the time was
even worse.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Si Teleina wrote a lot about her relationship with her
husband Tom, who she refers to as Master Csaius or
just Master.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
How well did I adapt to being property? Well, that
depends on whether you ask me or Master lol.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
I'm not sure exactly how or when Teleina and Tom met,
except that they both served in the military, and by
two thousand and four they were living together in Indiana.
Teleina was thirty eight, Tom forty six, and it's possible
that it was Tom who introduced her to Gore. According
(17:57):
to his own posts on fet life, he discovered of
books in his youth and they made a big impact
on him. Here's a dramatization of Tom's writing.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
I began reading the Gore books in nineteen seventy nine.
Within them, the philosophical tenets of a man being a
man and a woman being a woman rang true for me.
There was a twenty five year gap between starting my
journey as a Gorrian mastering my first slave. I admit
that mastering my Teleina these past ten plus years has
(18:28):
been a very rewarding and insightful experience.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
According to her profile, Telena had been in BDSM type
relationships since she was eighteen years old, but with Tom,
she moved into something different, a master slave relationship that
required her submission to him twenty four seven.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
I was not used to not being in charge of
my time tasks, Destiny. It was an ugly adjustment that
ended up bringing depth and greater understanding in my relationship
with Master. Because we both wanted to be together in
our roles so badly, neither of us expected it to
be so hard.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
They lived strictly according to Gorerian principles, which meant that
Tom was in charge of all decisions until Lena yielded
control absolutely to her husband.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
I learned how to shut up. I know it sounds
simple and truly it is. However, the amount of will
power necessary to put this into practice is enormous. The
self control practiced by all the slaves who I esteem
is beyond imagining to most of those who don't serve.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
For most people, me included, the word slavery does not
have any positive connotations. Wars have been waged to abolish it.
Generations of people have worked to ensure no one endures
such a fate, and here is someone voluntarily living this way. Honestly,
I find it hard to wrap my head around. And
(20:00):
yet the way Telena described it, their relationship sounded more
nuanced than I had expected.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
I see so many posts asking what is quote normal
for a master, mistress owner to do. This is my response.
Our real master gets up at six am on the
weekend to take the dogs out because his slave has
a migraine. Our real master waters the basil plants when
his slave is away, even if he doesn't like to
eat this stuff himself. Our real master goes for a
(20:33):
walk rather than taking his anger out on his slave.
Our real master understands that his slave won't always perform perfectly.
While setting the atmosphere for perfection to happen. Our real
master punishes his slave when she does something wrong because
he loves her. A real master uses his hands to
hold and comfort a slave when she's overwhelmed with fear.
(20:56):
These are all things that I believe a real master
should do, and the these are all things my master
does regularly. I'm a blessed girl.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
Teleina freely shared the inner workings of her relationship with
the Gore community, and over time became an expert, someone
who guided others new to the lifestyle. I discovered from
digging through her old posts that at some point she
actually began formally teaching classes with Tom on how to
be in a dominant submissive relationship. Here's a description of
(21:30):
a class they taught in twenty thirteen called Formal Dinner Service,
where slaves were taught how to serve food while naked.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
Learn the science behind serving table covers, how to serve
formal table settings, napkin folding. Then go deeper into the
mindset behind formal service. Take some time to experience the
thrill of coordinated movements, feel the rush of performing a
job well. Acknowledge the place deep inside yourself where a
(22:00):
desire to serve naked lives. While you'll walk away with handouts,
the most valuable gift you'll receive is the knowledge that
setting and serving at a formal table is within your
immediate grasp. After the class, join us for a luscious
dinner where you can practice your skills, either as a
diner or a server.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Deep diving into the Gore series, the subculture that is
cropped up around it, and Telena's embrace of its principles,
I had so many questions, the most pressing being why
would someone so smart, self aware, and opinionated like Telena
want to engage in a dynamic like this. Don't get
(22:42):
me wrong, there's a part of me that understands the
allure of seeding control. There are plenty of days where
I feel so burned out that I don't want to
decide anything what to eat, or what to wear, or
even what show to put on to decompress. But as
a woman, wife, and mom, equity in my head household
is really important to me. My partner and I deliberately
(23:04):
strive to share the mental and physical loads of life,
play acting these roles for kink and pleasure in the bedroom.
I get that, But to live within this dynamic where
the male partner always has the final say. It goes
against every fiber of my being. Why would someone desire this?
Speaker 6 (23:23):
For many people, it feels comforting to not have to
be in control all the time. There's this feeling of
glorious freedom actually in not having to make decisions anymore.
You've just become an instrument of somebody else's will, and
(23:44):
this is actually liberating because now, instead of being constantly
faced with all of these choices that maybe overwhelm you,
somebody else is going to make them for you, and
that feels good.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
This is Julie Fennel, a sociologist and longtime member of
the BDSM community who studies gender and sexuality. She's the
author of Please Scream Quietly, a story of kink.
Speaker 6 (24:08):
I guess the last thing is just providing pleasure and
happiness to another person, which is a very human thing
to enjoy doing that. You really get a lot out
of seeing your dominant feel pleasure and be happy and
knowing that that came from you.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Julie told me that people who choose to live as
submissives are oftentimes a healthy, well adjusted, and self confident,
making the choice out of free will. But she acknowledges
that's not the case for everyone.
Speaker 6 (24:39):
I have data that suggests to me that a lot
of people are motivated by unhealthy things, which, unfortunately the
BDSM community is terrible actually having frank conversations about I
put the data in my book from twenty seventeen is
quite clear that submissives have lower self esteemed than dominance do.
I think a lot of times people are motivated to
be submissive because they think they aren't good enough at
(25:02):
being a person, and so they want somebody else who
they think is better at being a person to help
them be a person.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
There's a stereotype the people who are into BDSM must
have had bad experiences in their childhood that led them
down this path, and that BDSM is a way to
grapple with or relive those traumas. And maybe in some
cases that's true, but as Julie explained it, many others
just like the sensation of a whip on their skin
(25:30):
or being tied up with ropes.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
I can take them for a walk. I like putting
people on leashes.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
It's fine, as she said, not everything has to be pathologized.
Julie pointed out that a big draw of BDSM is
the community aspect, finding others who don't judge you for
who you are. Beyond online spaces like fat life, it's
not uncommon for BDSM ors to congregate in person, whether
that's at nightclubs, backyard barbecues, or dungeons.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
Any good socia just can tell you that just being
part of the community is usually very good for people's
mental health. I think finding community is often the biggest
reason why people end up being heavily involved in the
buds and subculture. Like sure, they might like doing kinky things,
but ultimately the thing that really gets some joy and
why they keep coming back to this what is functionally
(26:21):
a social club, is because they like the people there,
and they feel emotional support and validation from them. On
the whole, it's pretty beautiful to be around. It can
be pretty beautiful to be around other people who share
your outlook and values.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I get that, but is the gore community beautiful? I
have limited insight, but the conversations I observed in gore
spaces were pretty misogynistic. In one discord form I joined,
the women slaves were constantly talked down to and seemed
unable to share their opinions freely. Their names had to
(27:01):
be in lowercase letters, and they couldn't even talk about
themselves in the first person, she instead of I. It
didn't take long for me to get kicked out of
the forum for simply asking one of the women what
it was like to identify as a slave. This Goreyan culture.
I observed it seemed to me to be a cover
(27:22):
for old fashioned beliefs about the superiority of men.
Speaker 6 (27:27):
Oh will hasten to add that that is like way
outside of mainstream BDSM right now.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Goreyan philosophy is an outlier in the BDSM world. Julie
says that's because gore really goes against the current understanding
of gender, which is far more fluid and dynamic. She
mentioned a survey she conducted among bdsmers asking them if
they agreed with the statement I believe that men are
naturally dominant and women are naturally submissive. Only ten percent
(27:58):
did Yes.
Speaker 6 (28:00):
Subculture as a whole is extremely liberal for a variety
of reasons. There's this thread in pan sexual media, so
I'm community that, like, we're all, regardless of our gender,
have all the ds and roles equally available to us.
The idea of a system that would restrict that is
(28:21):
very antagonistic to that norm. And so it's one of
many reasons why I would say mainstream medias some subculture
tends to like giggle a lot nowadays about Gore.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Gore gets a laugh, the sci fi elements, the arcane beliefs,
we're so far past women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.
But that doesn't mean it's harmless.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
It is not unheard of for people who are in
master slave relationships to say that they have given up
their safeword, which means that like whatever the top chooses
to do to them, the bottom has said that they
will take it.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Giving up your bodily autonomy, it can make you vulnerable
to abuse, to being in dangerous situations, which made me
wonder was Teleina ever in harm's way. There was one
essay she wrote that gave me the shivers.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Not long ago, Master, and we'll call it a difference
in viewpoints. That sounds pretty benign, right, he he he.
That difference in viewpoint culminated in me making a conscious
choice to not follow Master's protocols for greeting him when
he came in one evening. Frankly, I had come to
(29:37):
the conclusion inside my head that Master didn't care about
the greeting ritual and wouldn't mind me skipping it. Boy,
was I wrong. When I was close to Master, he
reached out his arms as his lips came close to mine.
I thought we were going to have a hug and kiss.
(29:58):
Imagine surprise when Master's hand went around my throat and
he forced me to my knees while calmly and quietly
asking did you forget something? I believe he even had
a smile on his face.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
As a reporter who has spent a decade writing about
domestic violence, this story raises all the alarm bells. But
I asked Julie what she made of it. She tells
it as this story of like that she was grateful
to be reminded of She was happy that he cared
enough about it that he would punish her and put
(30:38):
it back on her place. But I've spent my career
writing about domestic violence, and so for me, it's hard
to read that essay and not see it as abuse.
And like, I've seen a lot of victims of domestic
violence really come up with really creative ways to justify
the behavior and make sense of it in their own relationship.
Speaker 6 (31:03):
You tell me this story and you say this is disturbing,
and I understand why. But I hear that the story
and I think.
Speaker 8 (31:08):
Oh, that's hot.
Speaker 7 (31:13):
I'm not going to say say I think there's something
seriously wrong with John Norman and his followers.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This is Jess the Internet sleuth in Minnesota.
Speaker 7 (31:24):
I'm not like out there, I'm woman. Hear me, roar right,
I'm not doing that. But it would be a cold
day in how before my husband whipped me or told
me I could or couldn't do anything because he would
find himself outside the house.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
After finding out about Telena's disappearance from a Facebook post,
it doesn't take just long to connect to Lena to
the Gorrian subculture.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
I did like digging, like her name to Lena Tzar.
I was like, that's that's weird. So I kind of
just googled and this Goryan stuff popped up. And then
as you go through with some of her friends, it'll
say Gorrian or master or sister wife or just little
odd tidbits and I'm like, what is that?
Speaker 8 (32:05):
What is that?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Scrolling through Telena's Facebook just comes across a post from
January twenty twenty, just a few months before Telena goes missing.
It's a photo of Telena's new Oklahoma driver's license, along
with her story of dealing with the bureaucracy of legally
changing her name.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Here's the conversation I had at the Social Security office today,
me I've had a name change and need to get
my card changed. Social Security worker, Why did you change
your name because I wanted to? Did you get married
or divorced?
Speaker 7 (32:41):
Know?
Speaker 5 (32:41):
Then?
Speaker 4 (32:42):
Why did you change your name because I wanted to?
So you don't have a reason. Yes, I have a reason.
The reason is because I wanted to. I don't feel
like we're getting anywhere me same.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
So right before Telena disappeared, she legally changed her name,
and not just her last name, both of her given names.
She went from Jana Lovic to Teleina Galloway. Galloway was
Tom's last name, even though they never formally married and
Tom had been dead for over two years, carrying on
(33:18):
his memory in this way seemed important to her, and
the name Teleina. She'd been using that first name for
years amongst friends and family. According to the petition she
filed with the State Online, she used the handle Telena
tzar for her social media accounts. Jess isn't sure where
tzar comes from, but Telena it appears she had taken
(33:42):
it directly from the Gore books. The Gore world is
one just knows nothing about, but she's willing to learn.
Speaker 7 (33:50):
So I started reading the novels and then listening to
him on audiobook, and it's different. It's not something I
would read, I don't think.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
And how many did you read?
Speaker 7 (33:59):
I think probably ten.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
While the rest of the country is exploring new hobbies
during quarantine, Jess is getting a mini education in BDSM
and Gore culture, and from what she learns, it seems
like a subculture where women could easily be taken advantage of, hurt,
or even killed. Jess knows that Talina's late husband Tom
(34:23):
couldn't have been involved in her disappearance, but what about
the other men in the Gore community, Men who saw
women as property, men who were not used to hearing
the word no.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
They have very black and white views on I'm the man,
It's my job to protect. It's your job to submit
to me and never ask questions. Ever, you do exactly
as I say when I say it. I'm going to
put a collar on you. You don't need dinner until I
say so. You have sex with who I say so.
You wait on me, hand and foot as I say so.
(34:57):
Very very just dominant, submissive, not like fifty Shades of Gray,
but like some of the stuff I saw on fet
life because I created a fake profile to creep on
these people. I mean, there's women in cages, there's women
that they bleed, that like cut them so they bleed.
They do something called kid play where they wear diapers
and for turn their kids. It's very not my cup
(35:23):
of tea.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Jess and the internet sleuths start wondering is their main
source Toelena's friend Marty also a Gorian. For one, there's
that photo where he referred to Toelena as another of
his wives. And then there's his unusual nickname Wolf or Wolfy.
Speaker 7 (35:45):
I remember a conversation where we all refused directly to
call Wolf wolf because we were like, we're not calling
you by some pseudo friggin' you know, master name. All
of us we're like, this is disgusting, we're not into it.
And then I came to understand that that was not
his Gorrian name, so we decided to call him Wolf
(36:05):
and Wolf tried very hard for the first I want
to say, two three weeks to cover up the goryan
aspect of it, even though we were very convinced that
had something to do with it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
You did think I had something to do with it initially.
I did, absolutely Still Jess is not afraid to ask
Marty Wolf pointed questions about Gore.
Speaker 7 (36:26):
He gave me a very PG version of things. He
had told me that it was like live action role
play of dungeons and dragons, but they have sex with
each other. That's how he explained it to me, and
I said, oh, okay. I didn't want to think that
I was super judging him, because I don't want to
(36:47):
make anybody feel bad about their sexual preference or what
they want to do as long as everybody's gong holl
for it. Cool sounds good.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
But the more I talked about it.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
More it sounded like these women weren't They were consenting,
but they were all abused or had had really bad lives,
and I didn't think that they were mentally capable really
of making the choice to consent to something like that.
And when I questioned him on it, he just rubbed
it off like that I didn't know what I was
talking about, and maybe I don't. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (37:20):
As the COVID shutdown stretches from days to weeks, Marty
lets down his guard opens up about gore life. He
eventually explains to Jess that Teleina and Tom and Marty
and his wife were all in a Gorerian family together
called the Great Eagle Family.
Speaker 7 (37:39):
To take their family group seriously, the mento had rings
of an eagle, and they all had the same ring
because they were in the Great Eagle Family. He was
very proud of it. He thought it was great.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Teleina seemed to be proud of it too. Here's how
she identifies at the top of her fet life profile.
Speaker 4 (37:57):
We are a Gorrian family and belong to the Great
Eagle Family who hosts an event in Oklahoma called Gorefest.
We always have a fantastic time.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Gorefest was a festival created by Marty. Every so often,
he and his wife invited Gorrians from across the country
to their sprawling property in Oklahoma for a weekend of revelry.
Talina and Tom loved going to Gorefest so much so
that they ultimately moved to Oklahoma to be closer to
Marty and their Goryan friends. It was also at Gorefest
(38:31):
where Teleina met Corey, who went on to become her
roommate after Tom died. I found an old website that
Marty ran dedicated to Gorefest that includes this little history.
Speaker 9 (38:44):
In nineteen ninety nine, a few Gorrians from online html
chat decided to get together for a small gathering to
share in real time what they felt in virtual time.
To honor the spirit that John Norman wrote about in
his books. It would be a time for all to
come together and share thoughts and ideas while enjoying for
a short time what each role plays online, whether free
(39:05):
or slave, to enjoy the freedom of being themselves. From
the original thirteen that were here in the fall of
nineteen ninety nine for the first gathering to the record
seventy five attending in two thousand and four, there exudes
an astounding feeling a family.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Clicking around on this old website, I found the list
of events. Sparring acts, throwing tug awar and serving slaves
could take part in a position competition testing their knowledge
of the ten submissive positions they should be able to
assume upon command. According to Gorean philosophy. Don't look these
(39:44):
up at work either, and there was also cy a
slave auction. On another page was a list of gore
Fest attendees, divided into two categories. In one list, I
found mass Csarius, Tom, Master Shekhar Marty. In another, the
(40:06):
slave list, Telena tzar czar as In, belonging to Master Czarius.
By the time Telena went missing, Master Czarius was dead,
so did Telena belong to someone else. Marty explained to
Jess that Telena was now an unknowned slave. Marty had
(40:30):
Telena's quote protection caller, which meant that he was looking
after her. He wasn't her master, but he was a
protector of sorts, though what she needed to be protected
from was unclear.
Speaker 7 (40:43):
I asked about the protection caller he said he had
for Telena, and then he explained to me when Tom died,
he moved in there to help Teleina because she hadn't
dealt with her own money or anything. When Tom was alive,
Tulina had no control over her own life. Everything was
decided by him. When she went to work, what she wore,
what she ate when they ate, Any money she made
(41:06):
went straight to him and he covered you know, he
paid the bills. So when Tom died, wolflipped there and
did all that for her. So he said that it
was his Telena wife, so it was a second wife,
and said the caller was just to protect her from
other Gorrians trying to take her caller, and at that
time I didn't know what that.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Meant, other Gorrians trying to take her coller. Jess is
suspicious of the list of men who attended Gorefest over
the years, masters whose real identities are unknown to her,
but Marty is adamant that all this Gore stuff has
nothing to do with Telena's disappearance. She's looking in the
(41:46):
wrong place. Jess thinks there's more he's not telling her,
but as time goes on, she starts to believe he's
being earnest.
Speaker 7 (41:58):
We built kind of a trust, you know. I feel
like he would tell me a little bits and pieces
of things about his relationship, and he'd become really vulnerable
with me. He'd cry. He started telling me personal stories
about his life, his family, his mom, and we just
built a relationship. He'd like to FaceTime with me and
(42:20):
he'd see the kids in the background and he'd say
nice things. You know, he never said anything creepy to
me or the kids. To me, he'd sometimes say creepy things,
but never to my children. He'd always, Oh, look at Mattie.
It looks like she's grown since the last time I
saw her. She looks beautiful. Like things that you would
say to me, you know, you'd be like, oh, your
daughter is still pretty or something. You know. We back
(42:41):
and forth, like he'd say nice things about people's kids
to them, and we just got close.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
The two are an unlikely pair, a nosy bartender in Minnesota,
a geeky goryan master in Oklahoma, having intimate conversations deep
into the night, trauma bonded in the depths of COVID isolation,
when all of a sudden, a new clue takes the
investigation in an entirely different direction. And I'm telling my
(43:13):
buddy this as we're sitting in the garage.
Speaker 7 (43:16):
And he said, do.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You not think that you just got created an entity,
an a possible friend.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
That's next week on What Happened to Telena'sar? What Happened
to Telenazar is a production of iHeart Podcasts. It's written, reported,
and hosted by me Melissa Jelson, with writing and story
(43:49):
editing by Lauren Hansen. Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.
For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Karl
Catle Well fact checking by Savannah Hugley. Zoe Denkla is
our associate producer. Jeremy Thal is our editor. Original music
by Aaron Kaufman, with additional music by Jeremy Thal and
(44:12):
Gideon Crevische. Episodes are mixed and mastered by Carl Katle
Voice acting by Lizzie Gore, Chris Ferry, Stephanie Frame, Pete Monica,
and Molly Maslin. Our logo is designed by Edo Moore.
Thanks so much for listening.
Host
Melissa Jeltsen
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