Keep the Speedos On: Desire, Dopamine, and Care Work

Justin Bieber

Look at my phone screen right now. Just look at this text. I got pulled out of bed at six in the morning because someone sent me an audio file of a guy talking about me.

Roxanne

Wait, what? Who sent it?

Justin Bieber

My manager! He goes, you gotta hear this journal recording. So I press play, right? And this guy, Ryan, he is sitting in his room complaining that his home health worker, Sadie, keeps talking about her actual husband Jacob. And he literally says, no, Sadie cannot come in here talking about Jacob. She needs to talk about Justin Bieber. She needs to be obsessed with Justin Bieber!

Debbie

He wants her to fake a full blown pop idol obsession just to clean his kitchen?

Justin Bieber

Yes! I am sitting there holding my coffee like, man, what did I do to get drafted into this poor woman's home care shift? Like, why am I your psychological shield?

Roxanne

It, it gets weirder though, because he actually lays out a whole rule for it. He calls it the keep the Speedos on rule. Did you hear that part?

Justin Bieber

Oh, I heard it. Keep the Speedos on, do not take them off, let me be crazy about you, but do not give yourself to me. That is word for word what he said. He thinks taking the Speedos off literally ruins the whole thing.

Debbie

Because if they take them off, then reality walks into the room. And reality has laundry and bad breath and opinions you did not approve in advance.

Roxanne

Right, but, but from a pure brain chemistry point of view, he is, um, he is actually describing something that neuroscientists have mapped out for years. Like Kent Berridge at Michigan, his whole incentive salience framework.

Justin Bieber

Wait, break that down. What is incentive salience?

Roxanne

Okay, so Berridge showed that wanting and liking are completely different neural systems. Most people assume dopamine is the pleasure molecule, like you get what you want and bam, dopamine flood. But it is not! The mesolimbic dopamine system is in fact associated with wanting instead. It fires during the tease, the hunt, the yearning. That is where the massive neurochemical spike happens.

Debbie

So the moment you actually get it, the chemical ride is basically over.

Roxanne

Exactly. Liking is handled by tiny hedonic hotspots, opioid systems, much smaller and quieter. Ryan literally figured this out in his armchair. He says, if you get what you want sexually, you just get a letdown. You crash. So he wants the tease to last forever because the tease is where the dopamine lives.

Justin Bieber

Man, that is wild. He even brings up that old 1978 rock song by Atlanta Rhythm Section, from that album Champagne Jam. You know the one? Imaginary Lover! Imaginary lovers, they never turn you down. He treats that song like holy scripture! He says imaginary lovers equal meditation.

Debbie

Well, an imaginary lover never leaves their dirty socks by the sofa, Justin. That is why people retreat into them. But calling it meditation is just putting a spiritual bow on plain old fear.

Justin Bieber

Right! It is like, keep the Speedos on, keep the music playing, and nobody has to get their feelings hurt. But damn, what a lonely way to keep your dopamine up.

Debbie

What really gets under my skin, though, is how he treats the actual people who show up at his house to help him live his life. Sadie comes in, she is an aide, she mentions her husband Jacob, or this other worker Ellie mentions spiders, and Ryan gets furious.

Roxanne

He, he literally says, I am not interested in her dog, I am not interested in Jacob. He wants her to mirror him completely. Like, mirror his hatred, mirror his pop music taste, play a script.

Justin Bieber

Yeah, he said she needs to play the role of me so I can see myself better! Like she is an iPad screen or something. You cannot just demand someone delete their whole home life the second they walk through your front door.

Debbie

It is classic surface acting. Back in 1983, Arlie Hochschild wrote this foundational book, The Managed Heart, all about emotional labor. Flight attendants, service workers, care aides having to paint on an emotional display that has nothing to do with how they actually feel inside. And Ryan calls it out! He explicitly uses the words surface acting. He complains that people are fake to him, but then in the very next breath, he demands that Sadie do the ultimate surface act for him.

Roxanne

Because he wants her to help him process whatever that trauma was from Rockwell City, right? He says Sadie was effective because she agreed with his hatred. But then he says there is no connection because she will not pretend to be boy crazy with him.

Justin Bieber

Can you imagine being Sadie? You walk in with groceries, thinking about your mortgage and your husband Jacob, and your client looks you dead in the eye and goes, tell me about Justin Bieber or this care session is a wash!

Debbie

It sounds ridiculous when you laugh about it, Justin, but caregiving is exhausting work. When you spend all day lifting people, managing medications, keeping someone safe, you need your own anchor. To ask a worker to erase herself and become an echo chamber so you never have to hear an opinion that does not match your own, that is not care. That is using another human being as furniture.

Roxanne

And it, it completely backfires anyway. Because if Sadie did fake it, Ryan would know she is faking it. He already knows! He is terrified of authentic friction, but he despises the performance that protects him from it.

Justin Bieber

Man, that is the trap right there. You build a cage to keep yourself safe, and then you get pissed off that the bars are made of iron.

Justin Bieber

And look where he ends up escaping to. He straight up confesses, I am married to strip clubs, I am married to chat rooms, I am not married to a partner. He says he has never had a real partner in his entire life.

Roxanne

Which makes total sense if you look at how those spaces operate. A chat room or a strip club is a commercial transaction with built in guardrails. You buy the illusion of intimacy, but nobody is ever going to see you at three in the morning when you are having a panic attack.

Debbie

There is a partition. In a club, there is literally a physical barrier or a bouncer. Online, there is a keyboard and a monitor. You never have to negotiate who takes out the trash or how to split the electric bill. It is completely sanitized.

Justin Bieber

Except he did try once, right? He brings up this guy Daniel. He says Daniel had an amazing body, he was great in bed, nothing was wrong with him at all. But then Ryan goes, Daniel should have been more appealing, but the Speedos should have stayed on. He felt disappointed by the actual encounter!

Roxanne

Because the reality of Daniel could never compete with the pristine fantasy of Daniel in his head. The moment skin touches skin, you are dealing with a real human being who breathes, who moves on their own timing, who exists outside your control. The brain creates this hyper magnified want, but the actual hedonic experience cannot match that imaginary high.

Debbie

And that terrifies people. Physical vulnerability is scary. Having three kids and being married for decades, let me tell you, real partnership is messy. It is irritating, it requires compromise, it demands that you let another person see you when you are ugly and tired. If you only trade in chat rooms and VIP booths, the second a real person touches you, you feel like you are suffocating.

Justin Bieber

Yeah, and you blame them! Like Ryan saying, oh, Daniel was not appealing enough. No, man, Daniel was just a human. He was not a JPEG on a screen that you can minimize when you get overwhelmed.

Roxanne

It, it reminds me of that bizarre thing he said about Scott, too. He talks about how Scott never got the belt, and how striking someone with a belt would give them an understanding that you desire them. It is this extreme, distorted idea that pain or violence is the only way to break through the emotional numbness and force a real connection.

Debbie

Because politeness feels like a lie to him, so he swings all the way to physical force as the only proof that someone is paying attention. It is heartbreaking, really, how twisted the wires get when you spend decades in isolation.

Roxanne

You know what piece of the puzzle people overlook the most with him? The sleep. He mentions it almost casually, but he says he has been dealing with eighteen months of severe sleep deprivation.

Justin Bieber

Eighteen months? Man, if I do not sleep for two days on tour, I cannot even remember the lyrics to Baby. I would be completely unhinged.

Roxanne

People do not realize what chronic exhaustion does to the prefrontal cortex! If you are running on four hours of broken sleep for a year and a half, your autonomic nervous system is stuck in pure survival mode. You do not have the metabolic bandwidth to process someone else's emotions. Taking care of your own basic physical survival becomes a full time job.

Debbie

He said that exact phrase: taking care of yourself is a full time job, you cannot take on two full time jobs. And when you are that depleted, every social encounter feels like someone is asking you to lift a boulder with two broken arms.

Justin Bieber

So you put on the mask. You play the cool Joe routine, like he talked about with Jason. Just smile, agree, act nice, do not cause any waves.

Debbie

And that polite mask ends up being a coffin. Because when you act nice just to survive the conversation, the other person walks away thinking everything is fine, while you are left screaming inside because nobody actually knows who you are. It is the armor of niceness. It protects you from conflict, but it guarantees absolute isolation.

Roxanne

And then he fills the silence with his rocking chair and that UFO story he is obsessed with trying to solve. Just endless mental loops to keep the nervous system occupied without ever taking an emotional risk.

Justin Bieber

It is like, man, you think you are winning because your imaginary lover never breaks your heart. They never turn you down. But they also never hold your hand, they never bring you soup when you are sick, and they never pull you out of your own head. You build this sterile little sanctuary, keep the Speedos on forever, and you end up completely alone in the dark.

Debbie

That is the price. Total safety costs you your humanity.