Noche Buena Heist

Hola mi gente,
“Happy Holidays!” for those who don’t. J

The following is fiction. It is based on actual events and is the foundation for one of the stories in my forthcoming book of short stories I'll never finish tentatively titled Ataques de Nervios (Nervous Attacks) or 704 E. 5th St. (or some shit like that). However, I have taken huge liberties with parts of the story, the characters, and time line.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
-- H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

It’s so cold she can’t feel her feet. She’s wearing slippers in the midst of a raging Nor’easter. She’s afraid and her threadbare coat can’t protect her from the 40-50 mile per hour winds. It’s the night before Noche Buena and she’s alone, keeping vigil outside a home in a white section of lower Manhattan, but she’s here because her kids are in need... there’s no one around and she despairs. Her hands are numb from the cold and her feet ache.

It seemed as if it were hours ago when ‘Galo left with Gangster with instructions that if she saw anyone, she should whistle. In actuality, only minutes have passed. Now she wonders if she can whistle, her face is frozen, and they’ve been gone so long. What if the police come?

Finally, they come rushing out the building with stuffed pillowcases and as she starts to run with them she falls, she can’t feel her toes. Gangster and ‘Galo pick her up and they make their way hurriedly back to the Puerto Rican section of the Lower East Side, which takes too long and she’s crying, she’s in agony. ‘Galo stops to look at her feet and mutters, “Shit!” under his breath.

They hurry home.

They finally get home and by then, she’s crying in agony. ‘Galo takes off the slippers and thinks she has frostbite. She weeps, but tries to stifle her cries, fearful she’ll awaken the children. Unbeknownst to them, her oldest son, all of five-years-old, watches through a crack in the bedroom doorway. He’s afraid.

They call ‘Galo’s sister, who takes one look at the stuffed pillowcases and looks down at the young mother, as if noting her lack of moral standing. What kind of mother are you? Her looks seems to say. ‘Galo asks her to look at her feet and the sister says it’s not frostbite, but that she should go to the emergency room anyway. The young mother refuses, afraid. Afraid of the consequences of the act she just helped commit and afraid of what they may say about her toes that throb with a dull pain now.

They give ‘Galo’s sister a gold watch from the stolen loot, and she’s delighted. It’s an expensive watch, very pretty. She gives the young mother another look condemnation and admonishes her for behaving in such an un-Christian manner. The young mother says nothing and thanks her for looking after the children.

That Christmas was a good Christmas, or at least the children thought so. There was food, there were gifts under the tree, and the young mother seemed so happy though her children asked when they noticed that she limped a little when she walked. She had a brand new pair of boots, the only concession she made for the oldest will always remember the James Bond attaché case, complete with gadgets and it even shot rubber bullets if you pressed a hidden button. He also got a chemistry set that he used for hours upon hours... She made sure her children got our gifts before ‘Galo and Gangster would leave with the bulk of the loot, returning only when the money was spent on drugs. She didn’t even get herself a decent coat. However, her children got warm coats, gloves, scarves, and long underwear.

Her son never knew why she was crying that wintry night all those years ago. He thought they were fighting. But he was not surprised at her sacrifice -- the choices she made so that she could make sure her children were and had what they needed. Somehow she always made it right, even if it meant compromising her values or her reputation. She didn’t care, only her children mattered. Still, she was ashamed and part of the reason why her children had perfect posture is because she taught them to walk tall, with their heads held high. It was the last bastion against the shame -- that she made certain her children would walk proudly.

Most importantly, she taught them what really matters.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

The Friday Sex Blog [Fantasies, pt. I]

Hola Everybody,

A few years ago I got the following in a text message from a psycho-ex “internet fiancé”:

9,000 people are fucking right now, 2,000 are kissing, 1,000 are getting head, and one lonely fucker is reading text messages. You hang in there sunshine… ” LMAO!

Fantasy

Repression is not morality.

The brain, my dear friends, is the largest sex organ, and if intelligence equates to sexual prowess, then imma bad ma’fucca! I’m joking!

While you may be aware of the brain’s vital role our sexual lives, it may never have occurred to you that it’s also an incredibly resourceful sex toy. Today, I’m going to write about fantasy, but it will have to be incomplete. This topic is much too rich and profound to attempt to tackle in a one-page, single-line MS Word document. In fact, one could fill a library with books written on this topic. Therefore, I’m not going to do that, but I will offer a (very) brief overview because it’s so important for our sexual awareness/ liberation.

First: you people are some sick muthafuckas! I’ve been inside your heads and you all have some of the sickest, dirtiest, nastiest fantasies. 

Yeah you! LOL

But I’m not going to get into the content of sexual fantasies this go-round. Today, I’m going to attempt some clarification, however briefly.

As I stated before, the brain is the most fascinating, most versatile sex toy you own. While it is a fact that without the brain responding to stimuli and sending messages to the rest of the body, you would have as much sexual feeling as a piece of wood, it is also within the brain’s capacity to gather a vast supply of erotic material. These are known as fantasies. It is your fantasies that make the brain such a powerful sex toy, since fantasies can be revisited an endless number of times for sexual pleasure. Here’s one of my faves:

Some say certain fantasies are corrupt. I would disagree. On the contrary, most mentally unbalanced individuals do not have a rich internal sexual fantasy life. Case histories of most sexually motivated serial killers, for example, show they are tortured by their fantasies. They spend an enormous amount of psychological energy repressing their fantasies.

The fact is that most of our sexual fantasies are things we would never do. For example, an individual who would never have sex with an under-age adolescent girl, might still harbor such a fantasy and never act out on it. In fact, there is evidence showing that fantasies help relieve our frustrations and anxieties and, in cognitive terms, allows people to grasp its inappropriateness. In cognitive psychology, for example, one method of taking apart false beliefs is by helping the client take those often self-defeating and erroneous beliefs to their conclusions.

Simply put, sexual fantasies are illusions or daydreams people have about specific experiences. Part of the power of sexual fantasies may come from guilt (taboo) or fear (such as in the fear of getting caught sexing in public). Many fantasies have their root in childhood development and continue to be primary sources of pleasure throughout life. Other individuals change fantasies regularly. I would submit that there is a connection between actual sexual experimentation and the ability to create new fantasies.

The feeling of being overpowered by a sex partner is one of the most popular sexual fantasies. Studies show that some women have a deep attraction to abduction or rape fantasies and like to be “taken.” Right up there with being overpowered is the fantasy of having sex with a stranger. In fact, at least with research I have encountered on the subject, I would say sex with a stranger is probably tops. There is this powerful human attraction of sex with a stranger -- The Other. This is reflected in our culture when we fantasize about having sex with movie stars or performers. These are people we wouldn’t know from a hole in the wall (pun intended), and yet we entertain in some case elaborate sexual fantasies about these individuals (Halle Berry!).

As I stated before, certain fantasies evoke situations most people would not want to experience in real life. These fantasies are specifically designed to increase adrenaline and excitement levels to the point of being able to orgasm without the help of a partner. Believe me, you don’t want to know what’s in my mind (and I probably don’t want to know yours)! Just so you know, some of the fantasies of quite normal people can be quite sadistic and violent sadistic fantasies might serve the function of relieving stress and aggression more than sexual tension. If you feel guilty because you consider your fantasies sick or violent, you should read the case histories of otherwise tame and harmless individuals. In fact, you people are sick.

But that’s for the next post…

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...

Hatred

Hola Everybody,
I’m struggling, but I’m still up. Some of this springs from reflections of my recent work with the Alliance of Families for Justice. Check them out. Get involved. Don't react -- respond!

Anger and Hatred

Police attack peaceful water protectors with powerful water canons in freezing temperatures. Photo: Avery Leigh White

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd
 -- Bertrand Russell

Hatred has never conquered hatred. Hatred merely leads to revenge, and revenge leads to more hate. Hence, a cycle of suffering is set in motion that can go on and on. We only need to look at the world around us to see the sad evidence of this truth.

Hatred is an extreme form of anger. The teachings of the path I follow take anger very seriously because anger causes so much suffering. I see hate as being rooted in fear. Fear is a powerful core emotion.

Even when anger is not acted out and seems controlled, a person who is inwardly angry can instantly change the atmosphere of a room she enters. There is an invisible, but palpable chill and anyone nearby becomes more guarded and less spontaneous. This happens without conscious effort. It seems to be a response at a very deep (cellular?) level to the quality of energy that anger gives out.

You see this happen often in personal relationships, but the wreckage of collective hate is everywhere to be seen in our world. There is, for example, the ascension of a racist billionaire to the highest office in the known universe. Put there by millions who protect their anger onto blacks and Latinx. 

When anger is acted out and results in violence, the damage is obvious. Some years ago, I read the words by the Cambodian monk, Maha Ghosananda, who observed “When this defilement of anger really gets strong, it has no sense of good or evil, right or wrong, of husbands, wives, children. It can even drink human blood.” This was a tragic comment upon a bloody civil war that had torn Cambodia apart and killed almost everyone he knew. It is also, in my view, what fuels the long-standing and shameful US practice of racialized social control which has resulted in the devastation and enslavement of millions of people -- the vast majority Black and Latinx.

On the contrary, what is often not understood about hatred is the harm it does to those who cultivate it. The first person hurt is always the one who is full of hate. An mind full of hate is a suffering mind. An angry mind is agitated and tight, constricted and narrow in its thinking. Judgment and perspective vanish. All good sense disappears. One feels restless and driven. Nothing is satisfying, everything is tension. And this is what happens at the collective level. The vast majority of white people in the US, for example, are so angry, that they are easily manipulated into projecting their anger on the most vulnerable of the population.

What happens during anger is that the sense of self becomes very large, and so does the sense of “the other.” A major reason anger is so very painful is that it instantly creates a sharp distinction between self and other. An imaginary line is drawn that cannot be passed. For example, if I make the statement, “Any friend of those assholes, is not a friend of mine,” I am drawing a line (more on that later).

There is also an intoxicating effect to anger. There is a strong feeling of self-righteousness. Thoughts rooted in justification take over: “She abused me! Look at what she did to me!” This is combined with feelings of defiance and rectitude: “I am right!” However, underlying the intoxication of anger is the pain of a mind so narrowly constricted that it closes itself off from human connection. This also plays out on the national stage.

Whites, many of whom have been shut off economically, turn their anger on the false perception of hordes of undisciplined, immoral, unintelligent Blacks and Latinx who have destroyed “America” -- the same America that needs to be “great again.” In the 1990s, it was the specter of black and Latinx “super-predators” who had no conscience and needed to be “brought to heel” like animals.

The results of such hatred can be devastating. Hatred is like a poison in the mind. It generates an unhealthy cycle of cause and effect. Every thought, word, or act, or social policy has an angry after-effect. Like throwing a pebble into a pond, an act or thought rooted in hatred sets into motion a series of ripple effects that go out in every direction. Caught in the grips of hatred, we can come to feel that we are stuck with what we have done, and with the effects that we have caused.

I believe that the majority of harmful patterns of behavior are rooted in unconscious anger/ hatred. People will gossip about others, spread false accusations about others as a way of maintaining this angry state of mind. Existing in an environment of fear (lack of faith), hate, and anger, they lash out at others and create policies in order to maintain their inflated egos.

I guess the answer is not to respond in anger, but to generate love instead. However, one can choose to love from afar. One can choose to minimize contact with harmful and negative influences. Yes we can disagree and still love each other. However, if your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and the denial of my humanity and right to exist, then I can’t do the kumbaya thingee. Still, my response must be rooted in compassion (of self and other) otherwise I will have become the face of hatred. Cornel West reminds us that we should, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

And so it is with my own decisions about the difference I want to make in this life. I think what makes decisions skillful or not has a lot to do with intent. If one has an angry or hateful intent, then, like the ripples in the pond, we all suffer the consequences. However, if the intent is based on compassion and an attempt to create, or be a part of, a social justice movement, then we can live knowing that we’re walking our path to the best of our ability.

For me the answer isn’t so much on closing down jails or prisons, or even undoing mass incarceration. I see mass incarceration and racialized social control as symptoms of a deeper problem. Rather, I see the work of envisioning and creating a world where there is no place for dehumanization, the real work. Everything else is still dehumanization.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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