I don't know what kinds of qualifications are required for one to become a police officer, but of those for whom it does not come naturally, there should be a training course in compassion. I post a lot about police brutality because I think it is a unique form of violence. Inherent in the kind of public service police officers hold should be a community's trust. When a community cannot trust the people who are armed and licensed to protect them, there is a fundamental breakdown in the level of civilization in that community's social contract. Lately, here in New York City, I've been relieved to see the presence of police officers on the streets and subways -- but that doesn't mean I fully trust them. Rather, it's a matter of the worst of several evils: I'm much more afraid of the unmedicated psychotics and the thugs with a chip on their shoulder than I am of New York's so-called finest. And, of course, not all police officers are bad people. Some are very good people. But too many are either not intelligent or compassionate (or both) enough to hold their positions. Whenever I ask myself how we got here, I often come back to the same question: What kind of person would want to become a police officer? Someone who feels a natural sense of authority and courage and a desire to protect others? Someone with a sadistic streak and a bloodthirst to have license to kill someone or kill a particular group of people? Someone once bullied who now wants an opportunity to intimidate others? Someone who didn't perform well in school and saw this career as the most reliable and available route to a lifetime of employment and security? Someone who grew up in a family of other police officers and who never really considered the gravity of this responsibility and simply followed a family's professional legacy? As evidenced by the recent murder of Tyre Nichols, the phenomenon of police brutality transcends racism. And yet, racism often transcends itself in a kind of circular irony. I doubt very seriously that these five police officers would have brutally murdered a white man who committed the same perceived offense. I have no evidence to back that up. But too often I've observed the way black people, men in particular, in positions of authority pounce on the opportunity to exert dominance over other black men in an imitation of their own perceived oppressor. Compounding this, too many black men grow up in households without a male figure and don't know how to respond to the threat of another male authority figure. It is simply never learned. To me, this is very significant. In my opinion, this is why there is the instinct to run away, to resist arrest: it's an instinct. I have no evidence to back up any of these suggestions, but I've been a black male for almost half a century, if that counts for anything. Fortunately, despite being profiled more than once, I have never had the kind of police encounter that came anywhere near violence. You have to know how to talk to the police when you are a black man, whether you are in the wrong or the right, or some ambiguous space in between, and I am blessed having been raised in a family that includes one judge and three police officers. So I've always walked away from these incidents unharmed. Whatever the case, there needs to be a serious conversation about all of these issues before another Tyre Nichols is crying for their mother while being murdered in the street by those hired to protect him.
Saturday, January 28, 2023
Saturday, January 21, 2023
This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Are Hookup Apps Causing ED?
Why are there so many ED commercials for young men these days? There's an argument for it being less shame attached to it in today's more sexually open culture. But I also think there's a more concrete reason: hookup apps. The pressure to perform, or performance anxiety, seems much more likely, if not inevitable, if you know going into an experience that the entire purpose is sex, as opposed to a hopeful end to a date or meeting at a bar or dinner party. or spontaneous encounter. When you go out with someone you meet the way you might order food from seamless, there's little if any sexual tension and way more anxiety: Am I as hot as I am in my photos? Do they think I might be taller? What if they're not as hot? What if they're too hot and I get intimidated? I'll admit that there have been more times than I'd like to say in which I met Mr. Perfect online but found myself unable to perform because the guy either never spoke; expected me to get hard the second I walked in and found him bent over the couch; thought the fact that he was an 11 on a scale of 1-10 made having a personality unnecessary; or because I could sense the person was on drugs and that someone else's seminal fluid was already up there and not even dry yet. Of course, psychological and even physical ED can happen to any man at any age, just like any other affliction or illness. But I don't think the prevalence of these remedies is indicative of anomaly. Rather, I think this is happening because people don't know how to flirt or establish sexual tension anymore, which makes sexual intimacy less... sexy. It's like popcorn without butter or french fries without salt. I can recall one particular incident in which I was at the gym in Hell's Kitchen and my Grindr was on and, I admit, it was a rainy Saturday afternoon and I was in the mood for a SNACK. Not a meal, not the best cuisine I've ever tasted, just a little summin' summ'in. Well, of course, I get hit up by one of the hottest guys in Manhattan, a guy who I've met before because he is a friend of someone I know from my hometown, and who always acted like he could barely mumble a hello or look me in the eye whenever I ran into him and his friend. I figured he was out of my league anyway so it really didn't bother me. But he was pursuing the hell out of me on this app. Well, I needed a haircut that day. I was hungover from the night before. I didn't want to hook up with the hottest guy in Manhattan, I wanted to hook up with someone that was just good enough to stop my brain from bumping into my balls. I wanted a 6.5 or 7, not an 11 on a scale of 10. And it was pouring down rain, which meant I'd be soaken wet, having forgotten my umbrella. Mr. Beautiful lived two blocks from my gym and because Grindr tells you how far away you are from the person you're communicating with (in feet or miles), I couldn't get out of the situation. Yes, I wanted him. But I just didn't feel hot enough for him that day. He offered to Uber me when I said I didn't have an umbrella. He practically begged. I looked at my photos and then at my reflection in the gym's mirror. Do I even look like the guy he thinks I am? Why is he so aggressive when in person he barely acknowledged me, and in situations where I looked my best? Either way, I fell for it, mostly because I'm a people-pleaser. And as I walked toward his building I knew it was going to be a disaster. I was soaking wet. I had an afro-hawk that had started growing out on the parts that were supposed to be shaved close. And black hair, say what you want about it, simply does not look good wet. So I go to the address he sent me and it's one of those extremely expensive doorman buildings on a big-name street next door to the headquarters of one of the biggest media juggernauts in the world. I didn't expect that part. So I go in there and get on the elevator and get to the door and he opens it and Mr. PLEASE COME OVER is as silent as a mute. Can barely kiss. I make a joke about being soaken wet and he doesn't laugh. "This guy," I tell myself, "just needs some dick. So just give it to him." Of course, he's drop-dead gorgeous. His body is flawless. I couldn't have conjured a better pile of flesh if I were God myself. His ass was one of the most beautiful congealed mounds of mass I've ever seen. And he was another brother! Which, for whatever reason, is rare for me. Black men simply don't respond to me as much as others do online or in person. He was perfect. He even wanted it in my favorite position, which is sometimes not the preferred position of choice, especially by Hell's Kitchen circuit queen types, which was the only downside to his resume besides, well, seeming to have a void where is personality should be. Oh, and of course, the large, nearly wall-sized print of his older white husband and him on the beach at what appeared to be their wedding hovered over the bedpost. That didn't exactly get me in the mood. Anyway, point of the story is...nothing happened. Nada. Could. Not. Do. It. No little stirrings, no false starts even. At one point I thought the ignition was going to turn and I tried to get it in as fast as possible, but that wasn't working for him and made me look like an amateur. After 10 minutes of trying different things -- still, he was mute -- I told him I was "going through some things" and apologized. He nodded silently and went back to his phone -- back on the app and to find a 'real' man, apparently -- and I quickly put my clothes back on and rushed out the door. I told him I'd be in touch and maybe we could try again. He nodded. I bolted. The walk home was the male equivalent of the walk of shame -- when you didn't get any. Because you couldn't get it up. I was in my 40s, I told myself. Maybe it's time for Viagra? I considered calling two urologist friends of mine but decided that they would only tell me what made me feel better and blame it on the Grindr lifestyle and how unfit that is for real intimacy. But I needed to know. And I knew exactly what I would do: I would call my 'regular,' a sweet med school resident from overseas who lived up near me in Harlem and who would have seen me every day if I wanted to. This dude always offered me a drink when I came over, asked me to stay longer, and never ran out of things to talk about. He was... a perfect 6. And he was going to be my little guinea pig. Well, apparently I'm not impotent. The stallion burst out of the barn in that dude and when it was over he went to the bathroom and announced, in his sweet foreign accent, "Wow! You were extra hard today!"
This Is Not the Life I Ordered - Fizer Is in Trouble
Poignant subplot of E5 of Fleishman Is in Trouble in which Libby was struggling to break the glass ceiling at the mens magazine where she'd been working for 15 years and the implied sexism there. This provoked me to Google Taffy Brodessor-Akner, the author of the book and writer of the show, where I discovered she worked for GQ before writing her book. The interesting thing for me watching this episode was that I could see how hard it must have been for a woman at a magazine like GQ -- because as hard as it was for her to climb the ladder there as a woman, it was equally impossible for me to even get in as a black man, and I guess what you would call today a 'straight-presenting' black man. Because in the 90s and early 2000s, the only black men at Conde Nast, which owns GQ, were very flamboyantly and ostensibly gay men -- and there were only three or four of them. Of course, today you can't pass what passes for a magazine display without seeing black faces on all the covers and seeing names like Darnell and Kaneesha in the bylines. At an age where almost no one buys print magazines anymore, suddenly not only is black culture sellable, but black editorial talent is viable. At nearly 50 and as far away from the cultural pulse today as I once lived and breathed at the center of it, and often even ahead of it, I don't see myself trying to find my way back in there. Just an interesting observation watching this episode because, while I at one time 20-25 years ago would have given almost anything for Libby the character's job, I can see how the hierarchy of discrimination works as a function of cultural ownership.
Monday, January 2, 2023
This Is Not the Life I Ordered -- Hearing Voices: My Podcast Dilemma
One of the things that kind of surprises and even disappoints me a little bit about myself is that I don't like podcasts. Even though I love information and opinions, my default connection to news and ideas is still reading. However, almost everyone I know whose opinion I care about has over the last few years asked me if I listen to this or that podcast and I always say no. I've tried to follow a few, but after a while the sound of some people's voices start to grate my nerves and overpower the content itself. The chirpers and uptickers and throat-clearers and nasal voices are obviously annoying, but the most intolerable voices to me belong to people who know they have really nice voices. These folks will kill you with their handsome baritones, chrystalline Stepford pitches, and perfectly enunciated 's' sounds. (Full disclosure: I'm one of these people myself.) And while there are people on television who have similar quirks, the visual media has a way of balancing these kinds of sensory experiences. Audio media, on the other hand, is meant to be be heard while you're walking, shopping, driving, cooking, etc., so radio and podcast productions have a lot of voice resonance. I'm also just very sensitive to noise in my own space. Unless I'm drinking or hosting company, I don't play music. I don't keep the television streaming for mindless background noise. (Yet, I need noise like rainfall and ASMR vids to fall asleep.) Either way, today I feel like the guy at the party 20 years ago who doesn't read the Times or the glossies. The bore. So since podcasts are the way people share and build ideas with each other today, I'm asking everyone who likes them to share their top five podcasts with me. I don't want to become someone who is getting older and lives in an echo chamber of one. And because I'm really resistant when it comes to technology --I'm a lover of many things paper, so I'm always the last on the "new" boat -- that's a real risk. So in with the new. Thanks in advance.