Lets Morph About Rape Baybee

morph verb
morphed; morphing; morphs
Definition of morph
transitive verb: to change the form or character of : TRANSFORM

I don’t follow the NFL like I used to ten years ago, but in the wake of the Antonio Brown saga, which was on every tele screen at local Pubs, I must ask these questions:
Has the definition of “rape” changed? Has the definition of “rape” morphed?
What exactly now is “sexual misconduct”? Is it flirting? Has the definition of “flirting” changed? Am I glad I am not growing up in this era? (Yes!)

Dig me, I am a man and writing from a man’s perspective because I am only hearing these complaints when I am out and about, under restaurant TV screens. One convo goes, “Men can’t help it if we have a nut sack and it produces urges we want to use!”

For what is worth, it seems now that every American woman of the past thirty years may have been or was “raped or “sexually molested” at some point in their distant past, said nothing about it until now, when the “climate” and mores have apparently changed in their favor, and when the guy becomes famous or rich (or both), then they come forward to ruin him. The latest I heard about is Demi Moore doing the #MeToo! Really?? I remember when the deep, gravelly-voiced actress first appeared on General Hospital like, forty years ago! She showed no signs of trauma on the set. Did she tell Bruce Willis about it?

In these instances, why not a civil, private convo years ago when it happened?

All my scores of life, when I heard the four-letter word, “rape” it conjured images of a sex-crazed,”Jack-the-Ripper”-style insane maniac, grabbing a random woman who was maybe walking alone down a darkened street, into a dimly-lit alley and ripping her clothes off in a violent struggle despite her screams and forcibly penetrating her private parts with his dick, in a most savage manner. Has this definition changed?

AND now, as maybe with Mr. Brown, another super-testosterone-charged athlete, we have a different dynamic. I hear the word “consensual” in the mix. Which leads me to believe that there was maybe some playful foreplay involved which led the guy to want more and at first the woman would go “No, don’t…stop..” And then it led to, “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop!” or something similar. Hmmm… So when this modern female thought about it later, I guess she decided, “I didn’t want that to happen, Ewww…” (even though she kinda enjoyed it at the time?) and one thought led to another, like the foreplay itself, which when mixed with the climate of TV news, money and fame morphed the mindset into her speaking out, where she maybe wouldn’t have in the past.

Mr. Brown, why did you have this cute female as your “trainer”? Don’t tough footballers need a man to train them? That choice had UNhappy ending written all over it, from any logical man’s perspective – but these overpaid guys are not thinking with the same “head” as we mere mortal men, right?

I’ve always wondered why a man would stoop to the conduct of rape, when there are such beings as Hookers, and massage parlors (with “happy ending”) and numerable other ways to “get some” much more easily in life – especially if you got long green to spend. Most curiously, how can you maintain an erection when struggling with someone to put it IN? How? How? How? I’ve had “problems” putting it IN when we both wanted it! lol So tell me please, what exactly are the mechanics of “rape” in the past and these days? Please describe in detail for us, what happens in “sexual harassment”?

Traveling overseas earlier this decade, I overheard how most of the rest of the world thinks about America’s sexuality, “They are Puritans publicly and perverts privately.” In other words, hypocrites.

My favorite song by Marvin Gaye is “Sexual Healing”; it was the top of the charts. Do you mean to tell me that if it was released today, it would be associated with “rape”? If so, then America is a country many men need to leave, because there obviously has been an updated definition of “rape”, the memo and specifics about which were not distributed to American men at-large. “Healing”, is what I’m feeling we all need.

“Get up, get up, get up, get up
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up

Ooh baby, now let’s get down tonight

[Verse 1]
Baby I’m hot just like an oven
I need some lovin’
And baby, I can’t hold it much longer
It’s getting stronger and stronger

[Chorus]
And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing, oh baby
Makes me feel so fine
Helps to relieve my mind
Sexual Healing baby, is good for me
Sexual Healing is something that’s good for me

[Verse 2]
Whenever blue tear drops are falling
And my emotional stability is leaving me
There is something I can do
I can get on the telephone and call you up baby, and
Honey I know you’ll be there to heal me
The love you give to me will free me
If you don’t know the thing you’re dealing
Oh I can tell you, darling, that it’s Sexual Healing

(Get up, Get up, Get up, Get up)
Let’s make love tonight
(Wake up, Wake up, Wake up, Wake up)
‘Cause you do it right

[Bridge]
Baby I got sick this morning
A sea was storming inside of me
Baby I think I’m capsizing
The waves are rising and rising

[Chorus]
And when I get that feeling
I want Sexual Healing
Sexual Healing is good for me
Makes me feel so fine, it’s such a rush
Helps to relieve the mind, and it’s good for us
Sexual Healing, baby, it’s good for me
Sexual Healing is something that’s good for me
And it’s good for me and it’s so good to me
My baby ohhh

[Verse 3]
Come take control, just grab a hold
Of my body and mind soon we’ll be making it
Honey, oh we’re feeling fine
You’re my medicine open up and let me in
Darling, you’re so great
I can’t wait for you to operate

(Heal me my darling)
I can’t wait for you to operate

[Chorus]
When I get this feeling
I need Sexual Healing
Oh when I get this feeling
I need Sexual Healing
I gotta have Sexual Healing, darling
‘Cause I’m all alone
Sexual Healing, darling
‘Till you come back home

Please don’t procrastinate
It’s not good to masturbate”

Book Preview: “Conflicting Conveniences”

“Damned smartphone!” lol

Pet Peeve number “5,000″…

Remember this?

My first “cellphone” and,

At least it did not intrude on my mood!

Neither did it remind me;

Harken to those days of sanity.

If you were born prior to 1989 you are saved;

Who can keep count these days?

Don’t you hate it when you text someone,

Then they call you right back before you finish?

If you wanted to TALK to them,

YOU would have called in the first place!

Or Don’t you get annoyed when

You are calling someone,

Their voice mail comes on and,

Just as you are wrapping up your voice-mail,

That person is CALLING you,

Without even having listened to your voice-mail?!

You could have just tex’d them!

What’s the use in their outgoing message?

I feel then like I should have hung up on myself!

Silly smart-phone configurations perpetuate,

Conflicting communications with intrusive settings,

Unfocused communication in the middle of calls!

With options to opt-out of the conversation,

Says Alexander Graham Bell,

“What the hell?”

Let us only hearken back to a Virgin who

Was my first lover;

Of flip cell phones.

I sent her a score of indigo flowers then ago,

When this instant communication didn’t happen

And a lonely “Blackberry” was the IN thing.

Even our cool beans President had one!

With the lack of annoyance,

He made leadership non-intrusive fun.

I’d rather hear your voice;

Email, sms/text or talking?

When I was a DJ on 98.7 KISS FM,

Our slogan slug line was,

“More Music, Less Talk”.

Today, it would be

“More texting, Less talk”.

[…to be continued to fix it…”]

Years Later 9/11- Do You Remember When You First Found Out?

In September of 2001, many things in my life were new: I was the new Nights (7 p.m. – midnight) man entertaining on a little AM radio station in Nashville, Tennessee. I’d do my show and then off I’d go to check out some local DJs in my new Music City. Mostly, I checked out Liquid Lounge (before it became “Elements”) till about 3 A.M., looking for new club DJ opportunities and then go a short distance from my new downtown, back to my new little two bedroom cottage.

This was still the pre-cell phone era and I only had a land line and cassette tape- based answering machine which I based in my other room, across the hall in my studio room from my bedroom and had an incredibly long cord, which allowed me to be on the “princess” phone all over the house and even out on my little front stoop. I didn’t have my first home computer yet and there were still pay phones everywhere!

So I’d sleep from like 4 a.m. until maybe noon, unless I had some special morning interaction to attend or a gig; such is the life of the second and third shift radio man and many other alternative hour workers.

Then the phone rang around 10 or 11 a.m. I guess, and I heard the machine come on in the other room, and maybe my friend, Monique’s voice say something as I slept – and ignored it. Soon, the phone rang another time and I recognized her voice again! At this point I picked it up and my friend Monique says, “Turn on the TV!” I’m like, “No, I’m sleeping…” or something to that effect. She insisted and then I fumbled around and found the remote to turn it on. What I saw I thought was a movie, in the purple haze of awakening. “Why you want me to watch this movie, Mo?” I must have asked. She said something like, “No! A plane hit the World Trade Center!!” I began to sit up in my bed and just about then, the second plane hit the other tower. Shock. At that moment, I knew that this was no movie.

As I watched the coverage that fateful afternoon, I’d almost forgotten that I had a “show” to do that evening – and the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to perform it. – I was bummed to the max! Calling my Mum in on Long Island, I asked could she smell the smoke and she said “Yes.” So I called my Program Director to ask him out of my show that night, but instead of empathy for my feelings, he replied, in, what I’ve learned is typical southern black American ignorance, “Aww man, its just a plane hit a building. G’wan in and do your show!” At that point, my respect for him, being in his position only because he was the station owner’s son, went from like and “eight” to a “one” on a scale of one to ten. How dare he condescend, knowing that my roots are at the base of the World Trad Center and having been in my house where I had a wall-sized poster of them and the whole southern tip of Manhattan above my bed!

Writing this now, I know that the rebel in me wanted to call out, but I think that my inner “Dan Rather” made me go in that evening, but not to do my usual “party” radio show. Instead, I opened-up the phones to my new Nashville local listeners, to let them air their impressions of the day’s attack. Many were initially sort of clueless, to my disappointment, but as my program grew into the evening, I remember that the discussions became more spirited and that many of my listeners knew that I was from there and expressed their empathy to me, if not for the national implications, for me as someone they only met through the radio who identified with New York City. It was the most solem show I remember in my professional radio career – I hardly played any music and we lived for the top of the hour network updates for five hours that night.

Last night, on the cusp of eighteen years later and trying to go to sleep, I wished I could listen to that show; probably taped it on a cassette which is likely in storage with much of my belongings from those days, my radio career having imploded with the advent of corporate ownership and automation, like those beloved towers fell.

In closing, I remind you to carry the message that we have to the young people in school now who have no recollection of that treacherous attack. It is super-important that we teach them the magnitude of that day, like the Pearl Harbor surprise attack was taught to us by our parent’s the generation.

Since 2016 or thereabouts, we as Americans have lost that unity that came about in the wake of those horrific and cowardly attacks. I close by asking you, my dear reader, to help bring back that sense of togetherness-of-purpose-umbrella, which we all gathered under after September 11, 2001.

Idea Sharing: Time 4 An Educated Diverse Black American Caregivers Association (EDBACA)

Be part of something diverse, positive and big and remember you heard it first here from me and our Geriatric Care Manager.

AS we Baby Boomers age, we go full circle, manage or outright care for our elders. They call it “Care-Giving” now and increasingly men/sons participate. No brag/just fact.

“Although women still make up the majority of family caregivers, more and more men are stepping into the role: Some 40% of family caregivers are now men, according to the most recent research from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, up from 33% a decade ago.” **

This topic is now a cottage industry and an issue so far neglected by those who would be our next President of the United States. As a Black American, it seems many of these agencies just want to send people who “look like” us to care for our parents, who are Octogenarian and Septuagenarian. These folks from third world counties, like Haiti and Africa, may need work and have good intentions, however their language, communication and assimilation skills leave much to be desired ninety percent of the time, in my experience. “Ask for what you want, and I’ll try my best to get it” should be the agency’s mantra.

Our hard working and lovely Irish, Italian, Jewish and other historically European-based ethnic groups call their own elder care-giver shots. Often they have long money or can acquire it from overseas to pay one thirty-five ($35) dollars an hour. Yet, when a middle class black American family, whose parents were maybe first or second generation college grads and civil servants of modest means makes a similar request of an MLTC (managed long term care) provider, we are often met with the insinuation that we are out of line, unseemly or even “intolerant” for asking that, when nothing could be further from the truth. Wanting to plug in someone superficially shows lack of real effort and imagination; “It don’t necessarily work like that!”

We too are exercising our personal family rights to have people who we feel comfortable with caring for our parents and, at least in my case, that does not automatically deem them black or brown-skinned, but it does require them to speak understandable English and preferably be from America as opposed to Haiti, Jamaica or Africa!

So these companies might as well treat me like a “white guy” then, because I’m going to ask for an Aide in-keeping with who my Mum is and the diverse values she raised me with, prior to when we let so many third world people into America to treat us, native descendant of American slaves, with disdain. You try to coach them up and they mostly reply, “Oh I know, I know” when they don’t “know” and are either too arrogant or ashamed to admit it, so that they can open the doors to empathy and learning!

When managing my own Mum’s Caregiver team (some call it “advocating for”, which is cool…) comes up in conversations that we Baby Boomers increasingly share these days, I often get the reply, “Oh you’re such a good son!”
“What else would I do? Turn my back to she who changed my diapers and gave me tough love??”, Is my response. Do people actually DO that?

If one accepts less, the system will continue to feed you less, until you accept less as the norm! Start demanding more, higher standards as were common in the 1960s, ’70 and eighties before the dumb-them-down era of President George H.W. Bush (the first).

**pickhit: stat courtesy Grace Gedye, Washington Monthly, July/August 2019