No. Ish, You simply do a ROI on Violence differently because you’ve generally undertaken some sort of lessons, private training in martial arts studied fighting so it’s more controlled, less from anger which is important. The importance being how you perceive yourself, others and the totality of your resources, business, net worth.
The whole pandemic shutdown for me sort of accentuated my capability to physically take care of myself, as I was challenged, several times by the walking dead….I mean denizens of NYC. Ironically, me, an aspiring intellectual, watching the late Kevin Samuels, he talked about Alpha men, High Value Men, who are Alphas—-and one of the things he listed as a characteristic was having been in a recent confrontation, physically. he wasn’t advocating it but he was saying it was more likely. He was also suggesting that Alphas/HVM would engage in some sort of combat training/be in the military or should look to do so to be able to be internally comfortable with confrontations and be able to defend themselves.
Mike and Martial Arts Training
In college, I worked for the campus police, Public Safety. It was the first year of mass student recruitment but we would be patrolling he two campuses and often dealing with belligerent, drunk students. They arranged for us to have self defense training. But my class schedule precluded me from making the large groups on Wednesdays and Friday, so I signed up for the Monday class. No one else signed up for the Monday class. The instructor, Mike, a Senior said though he was committed, booked/paid for three nights a week so if I showed up on Mondays, then I’d be his student, which would allow him to teach me more, faster. For an entire semester Mike taught me how to fight, at 21. I got really good because he coudl infuse even more than he did with the others as we had the whole gym to ourselves and hours to train. My personally great accomplishment, he would come at me with random attacks, was teh Charlie’s Angel flip. Remember on the old TV show when they show Kelly in the beginning flipping an opponent? I did that!!! Mike was surprised because he hadn’t taught me that but I was suppose to improvise. Then he showed me how to use a non-lethal weapon—-a kubaton.
Insanely, for years as I traveled and then came to live in NYC again my mother was thrilled and would often ask, if I had my kubaton. As an only child, combined with her own personal fears, she was always asking me about my personal safety. Then I did T’ai Chi and Qi Gong—-all slowed down martial arts moves. Finally last year I decided to formally do boxing.
Hannibal and His Warning
AT the university, as I’ve written about before my childhood friend Kevin attended there, and briefly worked for Public Safety too. A hottie gym attendant, Hannibal, who would be on duty while I wa straining with Mike—-told Kaye and I that there was sort of a gang—- group of kids from NYC who had extreme homophobia/transphobia issues. Hannibal recommended Kaye get a gun, he heard they wer planning on jumping her at some point. He said that they’d mentioned me too but he didn’t think they’d do anything to me, because I carried myself (and had done workshops where I discussed sex & sexuality—-and threatened any dipshit student mofo who wanted some to bring it. Leave me alone.) but I’d been raised by my mother and then my activist, political strategist, former Black Panther—-leaving them for the Black Liberation Army because he felt they were too soft——bank robber father. I come from interesting people. But their biggest teaching to me was about taking care of myself.
I would like to leave this at Hannibal was PHD—-Pumped Handsome and Delicious. No, no relevance but it deserves to be said as much as possible. lol
Boxing
Now the further strange part of this is my mother was actually the first one to teach me martial arts/self defense—-specifically with boxing—-that my father had taught her. her and my uncle had historical beef—-so they would pit me and his son, Chris, against one another in chess and boxing—-at like 7 years old. Gloves and everything in the living room—-have at it! Chris is what is gently known as 45 in a 55 mph lane but he wanted to please his father, so he was gung ho about it. I was more reticent until he hit me so hard, a loose tooth fell out—-then I beat the little bastard. My anger is like that—-leave me alone—-leave me alone—-then I go off.
My mother taught me to box at a young age for these sibling arena combat games she and her brother threw us into. And she continued for years. 5′2 just suddenly wailing on me. Her objective was to not only teach me to fight/defend myself but then she’d get upset, more intense if I started to cry. her point was that I had to be able to defend myself, not fall apart——even against her. I was many upset because my mother was punching me. lol In real fights, I didn’t cry—-in school scraps, etc.. Finally at 19, she’s wailing away at me and I’m like quit it—-and she’s like you have to be ready to—-and I clocked my mother.
And she was thrilled. She was a…..special woman.
Pandemic NYC-The Walking Dead
The pandemic sweeps the world and NYC becomes in many ways a paradise/Hell. A paradise in the sense that for someone like me, an introvert, the trains were nearly empty, the streets cleaner, the only real detriment was store hours being closed later. But I was able to easily travel back and forth between multiple states for educational work and then home.
The negative part was that all of the people, who I also personally felt would be the most likely to have and transmit COVID, indigents, vagrants, the homeless—-took over the city. Large buildings and hotels in midtown closed so the homeless took over their squares, their lobbies, blocks and blocks. It was getting kind of Mad Max.
Yes, there were police here but several things sort of confluenced—-the police were taxed probably with stopping the sharp uptick in domestic abuse in homes due to people sheltering too long together, the patrols were also conscious of being infected, a lot of the cops coming down with COVID; and the numbers of homeless people was estimated at 180,000 throughout the 5 boroughs—-the problem with Manhattan is that around Columbia and Midtown and then in New Jersey—-where my work/educational projects, etc. were at—-were also places of congregations of homeless shelters. Which meant that there could be as many as 3–7 shelters surrounding midtown, upper west side, etc. meaning that more homeless people congregated there, around there, traveled through there. The deeper issue was that several mental hospital/facilities were closed down right before the pandemic—-releasing over 40,000 mentally ill people-—-to be homeless. The stopgap system of mental hospitals and jails were overwhelmed—-and our current major stop gap—-Wards’ Island, a small island in the middle of the bay, was at capacity. So to infuse more folk into hospital was impossible as so many other people (with insurance) were already there with COVID. There was also rampant robberies, rioting, etc. It was a mess.
And here I am with my little wheelie bag moving through NYC and other states. lol
But it didn’t effect any of my work, in fact my work surged—-all I had to do was travel back and forth—-probably the surge was higher because I was willing to travel.
Weapon Up?
Folk, friends, family, etc. suggested I get a weapon of some sort. I’m like I have a kubaton! lol
Finally I relented, researching what I could use as a weapon that wasn’t legally a weapon so that if something happened, I wasn't in violation of the law. A rather obese coworker showed me he had like a retractable knife that he kept in his pocket while traveling to Manhattan and I pointed out—-technically, that was a concealed weapon. Even if he were in a kerfuffle—-he would be charged as well because it was a weapon. I settled on a bullwhip.
First Incident
I attach it to my backpack and/or wheelie bag and I’m on my merry way. Back and forth, multiple states for a year. Never had an issue. Until a guy tried to push through at the Path station as I was wheeling my bag through the handicap turnstile. But he came up behind me on my wallet side and the way he pushed me it felt like he was going for my wallet as I put it away, after swiping myself through.
Oh yeah, he was like 6′6 and 250 lbs. HUGE.
I pulled out my bullwhip—-somewhere some young lady who was on the platform has the video—-and I threatened—-as only an intellectual can—-”To take him back to the whip and lash days!”
I tell him to stop such a little bitch, be a man walk through the fucking turnstile, not sidle up on another man to do so—-ironically another man does exactly that—-as I refuse to move my bag or me and my bullwhip out of the way. If you’re going to commit a crime, I challenge, fucking do it, but I paid for the swipe/access, so I’m not moving.
I will also add that when you pull out a bullwhip, what was a minor argument to the 20 folk on the platform turned into theater and they al freeze as I repeatedly crack and snap it.
I demand the police come up, they do after about 5 minutes, I explain the situation and one cop takes him away as the other talks to me. I put my bullwhip back onto it’s clip on my bag.
The office, a young man, nay to 25, amused and titillated, asks why I have a bullwhip. I explain I teach sex and sexuality classes—-this week was BDSM. And get on the train. (Which was silent as everyone watches me, but tries not to watch me.)
Second Incident
I’m in Wendy’s, getting a late burger snack, about 11pm in midtown. And a young drunken guy comes in—-pushes ahead of me as I’m ordering. Now I have to curse him AND the manager/attendant out for them even thinkign they might service him just because he was White. He gets more and mor ebelligerent and I’m like—-”You want some?” (My trusty bullwhip was at my office but I was wearing a red jacket. he backs off and leaves. When I get outside he springs at me from around the corner and knocks my phablet—-it’s a phen and a tablet—-like a mini iPad out of my hand to the ground. and swings on me. I think he thought, he coudl sucker punch me but I block it—-and now I’m in Ok, it’s ON mode. He keeps tryign to hit me but I’m bobbing and weaving (insanely how my mother taugth me to fight) and finally I go in,under a blow, clock him once and then grab his sweater and spin him aroundto the ground and then throw all of my beautiful chocolate 250 lbs. onot him. I wanted to stop him, he was less than 200 lbs. without getting into a deep fisticuffs.
My phablet, though it hit the asphalt was fine, as was my bagged burger. he gets up and drunkenly runs away.
Third Incident
In CVS, coincidentally down the avenue from the Wendy’s weeks later—-the street are now really populated by vagrants etc. and this young looking lady waves me down. Asks me where she can buy some drugs? The closer she gets, the more I realize she’s small but petite, older, a White woman, maybe in her 40s—-but she’s got that hard life face with lines—and wearing a parka and open toe slippers. I don't answer and go into CVS, get my things and go to the Self Checkout.
The lady with her boyfriend—-who is like 22, she’s like a hard faced 42, come over and he says the machine he was using isn’t working—-he’ll have to use mine—-AS I’m checking out my stuff.
A born and bred New Yorker, I give him the NYC loving response which is appropriate: “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
She proceeds to grab my few items and starts throwing them to the side and I tell her that she have the machine, if she and her junkie boyfriend—-he looked really crack—-but like they both were like blonde, West Coast crackheads——which he screams that he’s never INJECTED dugs. She’s screaming at me—-from 5′2 Land and she’s sputtering and screaming and going and I say calmly to her—-”Go ahead, say it. You know you want to say it. Say it.”
“You NIGGER!” she screams at the top of her lungs.
The CVS attendants who come over and get between us—-Jamal and Jose, did not appreciate it and throw them out. When I get outside, they come at me from around the corner. Now NY law is you walk away, evade, but if they touch you——he grabs at me—-again my wonderful red windbreaker jacket on—-and I knock his hand away and literally, like a pimp—-I’m sure he'll know this then or some day—-smack him, openhanded—-like a Blackploitation film. You know where it’s not just a hand across the face but it ascends, gets some lift off and then comes down because Bitch better have my money!!!? Yeah, like that.
She comes at me, grabs me, my beautiful red red windbreaker and I backhand her away. I meant to give her the backhand—-Don't get lippy with me! slap but she was short, angle wrong, so it turns into a forearm slamming that sends her tumbling.
As I have often asked folk, I ask: “Are we done?” They get up and start scampering away—-yelling invectives once they’re at least 50 feet away.
Personal Worth
But to bring this ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way home to the question—-when I get bac to my office, to eat my jellybeans and Pepsi, I ruminate on these three incidents that occurred in the Wasteland Manhattan had become and I realized that I have the benefit of being 6′2, 250 lbs., solidly built with a resting angry face—-my cousin Pam said I looked mad walking down the street—I’m not, I’m generally thinking, hard. Part of what I reaped the benefit of—-here in NYC then, (once when someone tried to do drugs in my apartment when they had simply asked to use the bathroom—-I caught him about to shoot up, he goes off on me in MY house—-then jumps at me—-so I beat his ass to the door, opened the door and he’s still trying to grab/hit me so now I’m slimming my door onto his body and punching him in the face——only in NY, kids)—-I see that my size and countenance has prevented or dissuaded lots of other attacks. For the most part I feel safe traveling, in my neighborhood—-I even opened an institute for a year in the hinterlands of Brooklyn—-where I’d never been—-and realized a few months in traveling to teach a 6pm to 930 pm class to adults—-this is a dangerous neighborhood.
I’m big enough, secure enough, ready to deflect or engage in a confrontation——and like my parents/Mike taught me—-hit hard, get away—-my coworkers arguing-advocating deep violence—-and me pointing out—-I’ve got a career, a media business, I have a dollar extra as my mentor Carlene Hatcher Polite said when we first met at university, I’m reasonably attractive, simple tickets as a legal record—no felonies—-I have a LOT to lose.
I’m not “unique” as a Black man but I’m on the “other side” of the danger line.
(90% of my police interactions have been positive, helpful, my calling them—-they’ve only pulled guns on me once—-I had called them on a family member and in the vestibule I was standing in, my cellphone—-black and silver in my hand, looked like a gun—-they then told me to drop it—-I realized I was in an Amadou Diallo moment, dropped it and they asked to handcuff me to confirm I was the caller—which I allowed them to—-they confirmed it and I went on about never being in contact with that family member again.)
What If I Let Anger/Fear Drive My Actions?
I have a lot to lose—-as I explained to my coworkers—-if I fall and hit my head and go all gummi bears in the head—-my intelligence which is my engine, could be deeply compromised. Or worse, I have to seriously hit /beat someone, or don’t hit to stop and evade, but angrily try to hurt someone, and accidentally kill them.. I’ve seen Dateline—-this is how it happens to the smart, handsome man, who ends up in prison for some bullshit.
Or worse——-a LAWSUIT that I have to pay off for the next 20 years of millions of dollars from my work, my company, my properties, because Crackhead Sally is now a quadriplegic, as I maliciously went in for a second hit, out of anger.
Also I’m a Role Model
I mentor lots of students, adults, but that range has extended to young men and women—-teens to early adulthood—-and I remind them and even older students—-you who are employed, healthy, in school, advancing, with good family and friends, doing the right thing—-have far more to lose then some drunk. Don’t let them goad you into excessive violence or drama. What I often see in legal projects I work on is that if the person who is in jail/the criminals were a mite smarter they could’ve milked the doorman, security, bystander, building, restaurant, handsome teacher in his dashing red windbreaker—-who engaged in protracted violence with them. They could have soaked them. But the criminal element, often form poverty, are impulse driven, into the immediacy of the moment—-which is also why they’re more prone to violence…and they have nothing to lose.
The social context of poverty, particularly for men but also for young women, identity——is Lover or Fighter—-which is why they’re faster to violence—-because their social psychological has it habitualized.
I’m lucky that my parents were……..honestly, dangerous people—-one day I’ll write about their …..other skills…. that they passed on——who wanted me to be safe, be able to take care of myself—-bluntly explaining when I was school aged—-that I was an only child, do whatever I had to to deal with bullies, attacks, threats—-they wouldn’t always be there to protect me. More than one? My father was big on turning every day, nearby objects, into weapons, and always identify a potential weapon within arms’ length (and always sit facing the door of restaurants and offices.) My mother was big on hurt someone if you have to in order to protect yourself—-don’t hesitate because they won’t—-man, woman, chicken, child, animal—-she gave me permission to not underestimate women in all of her boxing training.
(I actually had a friend/former coworker I’ve since gotten out of my life—-who explained that her anger sometimes was so explosive that she’s been known to throw glasses at people over dinner, hit them, etc.. I calmly told her: “You do that to me, I will knock the fuck out of you.” She was quiet, not the response I think she expected. And that was one of the reasons why I removed her as a friend.)
What this did, in my non-poverty, middle class upbringing, and then higher, going into environments where violence isn’t the immediate but living in a city, world that has terrorists setting up gasoline filled vans in midtown, mentally unstable people out to hurt people, drug fiends who prey upon the socially polite or even drunks or homophobic adults on a university campus—-I’m in a world, a city, where I have to pay attention by virtue of race and simple human presentation as perhaps having resources someone wants—-I am a target and I move through lots of levels of people/neighborhoods—-I have to be on alert, ready to deflect, evade, get away.
But if I have to, I’ll hurt another human being to protect myself—-however, I must do it in a measured way so as to protect my fuller, brighter, more resources life.
And Lord, Jesus and three other Gods, help the motherfucker that comes for my partner or kids. Awwwwwwwww shit……….
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
No comments:
Post a Comment