Why Aren't Black and Latino Men Reading?

Right now, reading this, you're peering through the Informational Age but are you as a person gearing your life towards occupying the world/the tools you're using?  More importantly when I look at the world through a people of color lens, the disparity is not a lack of ability or talent but a lack of occupation in the Knowledge Age.  I've been thinking on how to bring this topic of reading and education all around from my relationship to the written word and how align this to Black and Latinos, particularly men.

Forward motion in society is built on knowledge.  Whether it's been from I know how to make the stick and fire last longer to let's repair the Hubble telescope.  We are now securely in a new Age.  Ages are defined by epochs in history where the society and the future, based upon knowledge and level of technology, have moved humanity, not always as a mass, but there is movement and the movement will never go back.  There has been an Agrarian Age (up to about 1950), an Industrial Age (1900 to about 1975), Technological Age (1960's to 1990's), Informational/Knowledge Age (1990's to Present).


Are you reading?  What are you reading?  I don't mean the Internet, or Facebook or Twitter---I mean are you a serious reader?  I am wholly biased on this topic because I love reading, I have loved it since....well, forever---my mother has a picture of me at 3 years old reading her college textbooks.  It was upside down but I was making a concerted effort to imitate her and my father.  In fact, that's probably one of the seeds of my infatuation with literature.

My grandmother, Dorothy, read 5 books a week, faithfully.  Potboilers, pulp fiction, westerns, thrillers, horror---I remember them being stacked on her nightstand and the sliding cabinet she had of hundreds of paperbacks.  Unfortunately, my family, good intentioned were giving her books without total regard to what they were giving her so the content wasn't always grand literature.  She died when I was 15, just coming into reading serious literature.  One of the biggest missed opportunities I often reminisce on is that we didn't get a chance to share and discuss Toni Morrison, Raymond Carver, Carlene Hatcher Polite, Raymond Federman, Samuel Beckett, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Pearl S. Buck, James Baldwin, Paul Robeson, Stephen Brookfield, Stuart Wilde, Sheikh Diop, Henry James, Jackie Collins, Paule Marshall, Octavia Butler, Peter Hamilton, Paul Beattie, Walter Mosley and the five thousand other authors on my personal reading lists.  By the time I, the student was ready, unfortunately one of my teacher's, Dorothy Mae, had died.

Magazines
I grew up collecting comic books and have had three large collections of comics, probably totalling around 20,000 in total.  Each one maybe about a good 15 minutes of initial reading---so that's 5000 hours of reading in comic books alone.  In the 90's around high school and college I got into magazines.  My mother bought Essence magazine and Ebony so they were constantly around the house.  But then I wanted to understand how to help her develop her businesses better; how to manage the incoming money so I picked up Black Enterprise magazine, also Forbes, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Time, Newsweek, The Nation, New York, The New Yorker.  Recently I was moving boxes of books and such from a storage room---honestly, to a larger storage room---to eventually move back home and I realized I have every issue of Black Enterprise magazine since 1992.  I have every issue of O Magazine since it began, about 12 years ago in 2000.  I have fifteen years of Forbes and Fortune and then an assortment of others---Psychology Today, Strategy, Dragon magazine, The Law of Attraction, W, and then the beast---Vanity Fair.  Every issue since 1994 when Roseanne Barr Arnold was on the cover in a bustier and garter set.  Pretty much about 1000 issues which is another 5000 hours of total reading time.

Books
The Motherload.  I have some books.  Quite a few in fact.  Okay, it took me about two years after high school to get to college. In-between I was working full time as part of family responsibility to keep the mortgage paid but I was still thirsty for books.  I made it a point to buy books every week from Barnes and Noble on 6th Avenue and 8th Street in Manhattan, my thinking being that if I read regularly eventually I would get to college and those books would be there.  A few years before that my grandmother had passed away and I got all of her books, maybe 300 or 400 so I felt that I had a "collection" of not just comics but real books to build upon.

I then started writing voraciously, my first plays, screenplays and then novels happening between 12 and 21.  I'd started a national amateur comic book company in my teens so by my twenties I'd written about 1000 comic book scripts, eventually abandoning that vein for literature, serious writing.  Serious writing and reading are entangled for me.  Books became not simply information but also instructional for me as well.  I learned from Tony Robbins how to motivate myself, articulate my goals, map out strategies and from Robert Kiyosaki how to manage myself, money, businesses and integrate all three by changing my thinking about what a job was and was not.  Toni Morrison taught me hwo to upend a system when the accumulation of her National Book Award, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize wins demanded that she herald the cover of the magazine at my college that I wrote for.  The editors, children themselves, in their twenties but raised in a Caucasian White mindset fought me and I used every trick and argument in the book to get her on the cover.  I prevailed.  She prevailed.  She eventually came to the university and it was an honor then and other times to be in her company because she represented the cinnamon trifecta to me: Princeton professor, renowned editor, successful writer.

By the time I got to college at the turn of the millenium, I had about 1000 books.  When I left I had about 2000---I only sold back 1 book during those years.  Integrated Algebra.  Once back in New York City I started working high end full time, earning not an hourly wage but a salary, tens of thousands and then more and more and more and the true jump off began.  I had to limit myself to $100 a week at Barnes and Noble, my previous splurge having been $300 at B&N (but I could justify that time because I was undergrad and buying my class books---ok, I was also buying every book the books and professors referenced.)

Then it got viral---Amazon.com.  Amazon tipped it two ways for me---I could not only buy any book but they would suggest others. Secondly, I found there was a marketplace to sell my extra, unwanted books at too so I started another business that eventually had me sitting at home for years cherrypicking what professional jobs I wanted to do because I had a virtual bookstore.  I sat at home on Amazon and Ebay---selling thousands of books, DVDs, cds all over the world.  I would buy out libraries and bookstores around the country and sell the inventory.  The business truth is that all inventory, especially of books doesn't sell out so I often had 30% leftover books.  I have somewhere between 4000 to 5000 books because of my appetite and leftovers from my time as a bookstore.  That seems like a lot but wait for it....I have about another 4000 books on my Amazon wishlist that I'm steadily chipping away at even as I continuously add books to it.

Reading & Technology
I read on average 250 to 300 books a year mainly because of my own interests but also because of teaching.  Books are the currency of academia and education and schools, elementary up to Ivy league are chock full of books, free and for sale.  Yes, I know what a Kindle is.  Yes, I know what an IPad is.  I prefer the heft, the smell, the decoration of a physical book and I fear that once I firmly step into digital world beyond simply books on my computer, I'll just be doubling up on a physical and digital version---I'll be part of the population who keeps publishing worlds alive.

Education
That's the Race Problem in a nutshell:  We are not inferior in capacity but more so in flexibility.  However that learning of flexibility is in books, reading, writing; education.  It's why education was, has been and is kept form not simply people of color but women and developing nations.  Knowledge creates Power(ful people).  Black and Latinos have a history with the Agrarian Age and the Industrial Age but not as much progress through the Technological Age.  Our occupation of the Technological Age is possession or simply as Consumers.  Remember Capitalism holds three positionalities for human beings---Producer (owners and entrepreneurs), Product (workers and slavery) or Consumer (you).  The question becomes how many of the three modalities do you occupy?  Even larger, how many of your family members occupy more than one?  How many of your community?  How many of your race?

Now align education to this.  More pointedly align reading to this.  We have to breakdown the value of reading.  In those thousands of comic books spawned the idea to write, draw and eventually create comic books for me, to sell posters and copy role playing games in the lunch room of middle school.  Suddenly I'd gone from simply a Consumer of comics to a Producer.  All those magazines?  They lead to starting a magazine several times in my teens and twenties and learning the publishing business.  And of course books lead me to write and publish my work all over the world.  The integration of smoothly moving my reading from one Age to the next has brought me from my Commodore 64 to my Commodore 128 to my first PC in 1996 (1 gig on the hard drive!) to this laptop which rests on another, next to a PC next to a Mac, as I instantly transmit this information around the planet.  Responses to The Kyle Phoenix television show, the YouTube videos, the podcasts, the blogs, my articles, the magazine, are from Dubai, Russia, Nigeria, Japan, China, France, Spain, Greece, Australia, Brazil.  Amazing!

I think of my grandmother Dorothy, dying in 1986 and now her name and image being beamed to all of you.  She died, with all of her education and knowing, never being able to fully conceive what I can do with her image right now.  Wow.  Imagine that.

Now I'm going to throw it back even further.  My grandmother was born in 1910. She graduated from high school in 1928, allowed to go to school because she had 5 brothers and 1 sister and it was easier to allow the girls to go because the boys were.  They went by default to school.  My great-grandfather completed high school. Beyond four generations I have no knowledge of my family---we sort of started in recorded memory after the Civil War.  Now imagine that logically, Black, Narragansett and Caucasian people, the blood that runs through my veins, existed here for 300 years prior to that recorded memory I have.  But I can guarantee part of the reason why I don't know of them is because of a lack of education because education meant incredible value then.  I believe they wanted it, desperately.  And directly, people refused, through the construct of slavery, reading and education to my ancestors.

My revenge, my retribution is my education.  Every one of those magazines and books because there was a time when it was punishable by death for someone as brown as me to even touch, much less own one.  Ironically, then and today, there are times when I and those like me are pariahs and target for knowing how to read and write.  Race based slavery worked wonders, it's been one of the best systems of multi-century physical and mental exploitation and reduction ever constructed in human history.  I am awed by it's scope and power.  I am awed by the fact that people of color survived and thrived in, through and beyond it.  I am even more deeply awed by the fact that it's as simple as education that unlocks the Power of human beings.

So, when I see Black and Latino men not reading, not writing---thumbing their IPhones on the train, rocking their Playstations, useless use of Facebook and Twitter, not a book in sight, not completing school, not buying one book at a time, building the revenge for their ancestors---I see the victory of the slave masters.  I see how discrimination could be justified by another thinking being of another race.  I see who undid Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey.  Some of the people who didn't want slavery to end, were brown and they've passed that fulfilling wish down through generations.

The question of your engagement, even to this digital world, now is: Are you the revenge of your ancestors or the long term planned outcome of slave masters?



Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Men: Lovers & Fighters

It seems like everyone wants a thug, a hard man, a hardcore man, a gangsta.  Scrolling through dating sites the push is for hard men, masculine men, aggressive men, men who will take control, uber-Alpha men.  But the push I will say has advanced over the years is the desire for more dangerous men.  The question though becomes what constitutes a thug/dangerous/aggressive man?  

Let's even push further into the concept, why would someone want a man like this?  Often I poll men online or in groups about what is the desire.  The answers generally come back as the lyrics to Someone To Watch Over Me.  Someone strong, capable, caring, able to fend off detractors and attackers, able to be confident, stable, masculine, integrity, responsible, accountable and sometimes if I really push, can fly too.  I kid but the list itself is a bit much to demand of a man, don't you think?  The only humans we really have as reference to relationships with men are women and women will tell you you can't get all of those in a man.  In fact on your list make room for selfish, childish, foolish, infantile, immature, silly, dense, undereducated, unemployed and can't even spell the word fly.

So now where does that leave someone?  Honestly, learning how to navigate to get most of what you desire and understand that some other things are fantasy and some things you don't want will show up as well.

What You Desire

The truest secret that I am about to reveal to you will rock you for a moment but you've been aware of this for awhile.  Prince Charming is never going to come.  Never.  Ever.  Ever.

No, wait, breathe on it, hold it, hold it.

Ok.

However, your Prince, someone willing to occupy that space for you will come.  However you have to think of the list, that magic list you have as boxes---each one is a box that you have filled with the sand and images and songs and movie clips exampling what it looks like..........and each one of those boxes is in your doorway.  The more boxes you have, the less a Good Man can get in.

Your Fantasy

Prince Charming was never going to come.  To you, at you or near you.  Your fantasies are just that, fantasies or worse yet form books, movies or a friends' stories, fantasies from others.  It's time to really construct what you want, need and truly can handle.  Fantasies have a way of eliminating the reality of you and replacing his vision of what he wants with all of YOUR wants.  Fantasies have a way of fulfilling our desires with the person being a blank slate that is just focused at us.  Which is why we never truly achieve or receive our fantasies in the way which we think we want them.

Things You Don't Want (And The Reasons Why He Is As He Is)

What isn't being considered in these hyper-masculine traits that are being sexualized to desire is how a man may've gotten that way.  The pictures of the heavily tattooed man, who is an Alpha, in no way at all effeminate (the height of your insanity if you believe this exists) and aggressive and assertive sexually.  There's a level of abdicating your free will in that but I'm not going to go there.  Instead I'm going to look at the Lover /Fighter paradigm as a design from poverty. When a man is simply sexualized, to his body, his organs, this harkens in America not only back to slavery, but racism.  Racism isn't simply a discrimination or stereotyping racialized cycle, it's also a predicating factor to poverty.  Poverty, by being denied access to resources, financial, educational, social, then perpetuates the appearance that those kinds of people are poor, then folds back into racism.  Poor people then are not able to educate, socially move and they happen to be standing there seemingly all brown, though that's the opposite of the truth in America, which recycles racism again.

Racism begets poverty and poverty begets racism (discrimination) but there's also a  context of how do human beings occupy poverty, how do they act?  Men in poverty are tough, they're fighters, they're misogynistic  they make babies, they work hard, they sweat, they tattoo themselves.  But then the question is what is manhood defined when one isn't poor?  Simply put, if you're poor, a man for you might only harbor some of these traits without consideration for other traits.  Of course, I'm painting broadly here but there's a limit to time and space here.

What can a man look like who isn't narrow stereotypes of Marlon Brando On The Waterfront?    Is he educated, does he have good credit, does he take care of himself, is he on drugs or addicted to alcohol, is he caring to other human beings? What we're really getting at even as we circle back to sexual manhood is what constitutes manhood?  What makes a man?  What makes a Good Man?

My own personal prescription for manhood, not only taught to me by my parents and mentors, is that a boy becomes a man when he is responsible caring, loving and accountable to other men, women, children and animals, this is what examples character.  Of course human beings make errors in there but the errors should be the exception of their character not the rule.  Therefore when I see a human male---I look for the above traits, not the amount of masculinity or femininity in his personality.  In fact I would offer that MSM, not having grown up with an affirmed sense of their identity as natural lack the natural work of learning how they fit into the context of manhood.  Or they also aren't initiated into the definitions we have now which allows humans to have a foundation and take it from there.

You still want this fantasy concept though, you desire this balance, this man's man to take care of you.  Why?  Isn't that a female psychology?  Or does this goes back to our estrogen measure of 80% of men as Betas and 15 to 20% men as testosterone heavier Alphas.  The desire is then Betas for Alphas but the numbers don't work out.  Why?  Because Alphas seek to build the manhood picture of family, marriage, children, companies/businesses, accountability and personal responsibility.  That's the testosterone impelling men to do and move forward, build, construct life and the world around them for their families and society.

The question then becomes are you available to an Alpha man's desires?  Will you raise children?  Help him build a company?  Marry him?  Now consider instead that you if you weren't raised with preparation like heterosexuals are for what to do with an Alpha male, for what to create with him are you fantasizing for something you don't have the training, ability or capability to handle? 

Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Time Warner Cable, Verizon Fios or Comcast or the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

MSM Insanity #2: Gay Mommy Men

 Of all the rolling, ranting essays I've written, this one, especially when done as a workshop, always, always, always, is a grenade in the middle of the room.  Let's just dive in and see what's what though.

You've met a guy you find sexy, he's okay enough in however you measure okay (my hope is that you're taking a little time to listen for emotional, spiritual, physical, social and financial health) but as you're listening to him.  (And just to interject here, you should be listening more heads have been cracked, bank accounts drained, STD tests flunked and laptops pawned because men didn't listen to what the other man said.)  In the listening you like him but then he can't stop talking about, talking to her on his cell phone, cancelling dates, rearranging plans, selling his socks, complaining about, hinting that she abused him or worse yet, hinting that she would abuse you and at first you think the passion or the venom or the venomous passion is about some female ex of his.  But then you realize, oh, no, he's going through all of this over another woman, yes, but it's not an ex....well, not a traditional ex.

That's right, now we're just going to travel into MSM Insanity # 2: His Momma.
Now you have to listen to what LEVEL this is occurring at:

1. He tells you he's really close with his family.<<<

2. He tells you he's really close with his mother.

<<<Yellow Alert
which means you need to put the sensors on high reception.  You're listening now for degree of closeness.









3. He tells you she's his best friend.
<<<Red Alert
---The Borg have arrived.

4. He tells you they live together.  "Molly.  You in danger, girl."











Run!  
Run like hell.  
Change your name, 
dye your hair, 
get lost....
and maybe you'll be safe from them.

"B-b-but"----trembling lower lip---"a man close to his momma is a Good Man, right?" you query.
"Look at him, Kyle!!!" you shriek.  "Look at him!"

Depends.
Take out your mental measuring tape because it's all about figuring out how close they are.

If he has siblings---that's a good thing, she might not lean on him so hard.
If he's out about his sexuality to her---that's a mixed bag.

Now you have to run her through your Mental Health Sensor sweep.

Is she married?
Not married.
This has problem potentially all over it.

Does she have a job?  If she's not dependent on him then it also broadcasts his generosity and the level of fulfillment in her life.

Now if your questions keep coming back that they do the equivalent of Saturday morning food shopping together, he's her church buddy, her spades partner, they have date night, they hang out at clubs together (there's a Mommy/Son Duo at a club in Manhattan---he often wonders why he can't get a man for longer than ten seconds.  No, really, he wonders this as he and Mommy tip strippers in the gay bar several nights a week.) and she's calling/texting him while you're together----it's a wrap, order a drink, knock it back and soak up details for your relaying this mess to your friends.

But why?

Because of Nature.  Nature builds us to be children with our parents, to go through a level of adolescence with them then socially/sexually experiment in adulthood then decide whether we're going to settle down and do the whole cycle over again this time as our parents or the adults.   People might decide otherwise but it is the cycle of Nature.  What normally happens in the cycle is that a heterosexual man's mother is replaced, supplanted by the Primary Woman as the primary woman in his life, his wife.  He may still help care for and love his mother but his parents role as #1 in his life has been replaced.  His friends are no longer #1.  In fact, healthy relationships don't even place the children of the new couple as #1, unless both parties agree upon it (think when a child says something to the mother and the father points out there's a point where you, his own child, are insulting his wife, not simply the woman who is your mother).

This is all natural.

But what if he's already set her up as the competition, she's Wifey, at best you'll get to be the Other One.  But what happens to the homosexual man who a female will not arrive to supplant/replace his mother (or father---great Russell Crowe film reversing this) with?  

1. A single woman, with her single son who will never have to compete and naturally lose to a woman (because a spouse can perform at least two other physical acts no one should be doing with their mom) has a built in male companion.  And if she's single, been a single parent---a built in emotional incest partner.  Are they friends, are they parent and child, or are they playing out a sexless couple dynamic?  See why you have to listen closely?

2. Emotional incest is when Mommy is the dearest thing in his life.  The center of his universe.  The beat in his drum.  The reason why you have to take your shoes off to sneak into his room at 2am.  Or even more insanely, she can't know about you.  Or even more insanely, she (or catshit crazy HE) wants you to meet each other immediately.

If a man wants you to meet his mother in less than a month---call your mother to ward off his.  Use the Mother v. Mother lightsaber neutralization rule.  But run.  Keep running.

File this under: Too Soon.

3. You might be all that and fantastic too but you don't want a man, you, his burgeoning engorged penis and his mother all in the same energy.  You don't  want him or her planning your deep dish involvement or exit in their psychodrama.  You want time to scope him out, listening closely.  Sometimes a man is using his mother as a foil to not have to grow to the next stage of the Mating Game.  He's purposefully trying to come off as the Boy Scout good son so he never has to make a healthy inter-dependent love connection with another grown adult who will call him out on all the silly crap she's let him think was cute, adorably annoying, useful and not his responsibility.


4. The hard truth is you can't fix him.  He needs to have her in her place in his life and men in another and a healthy space in between as he seeks partnership on an adult level.  And you need to accept that unless there's been dysfunctional friction that he had to make boundaries for his own mental/emotional health around her that you want to listen to that relationship dynamic.  But you're listening for a parent in her, not a partner.  You're listening for a man who's learned great maturing lessons from his parents that he has packed into a mental bag and moved out to use as tools to build a new relationship.  You're listening for love skills that he'll be applying with you of generosity, gentleness, patience, caring and devotion that she's taught him.

5. If she truly accepts him and his sexuality, she's been preparing him for you.  She's smart enough to know that she could double her caring child pool if she lets her boy become a man.  She will back off, butt out, respect you and your rules and most importantly your relationship.  Because she'll want your relationship to succeed because she'll want her son to be happy, beyond her capacity to provide.

However, as 21st century medicine progresses, we can keep everything from an apple to human being alive for a hundred years.  You will probably meet someone who either directly then or eventually will have to have some responsibility for his elder parents' care.  This isn't the same as the Mommy Man, this is healthy and responsible and it might make sense that they share a household---BUT you want to ask and hear about aides, nurses, his parents life and friendships away from that man.  Then you'll have to decide whether to accept or not this component of the relationship, the same as you would if he had children from another relationship.  You might not immediately become Primary Relationship #1 (in fact this takes at least a year for you to work your way up the ranks---you don't want to be promoted too soon or for it to take too long---a year is a good timeframe to see if you're moving up).

Lastly, what if you're the Mommy Man?  What if you've been in the nest too long?

Pssst, Mommy can take care of herself no matter her protestations and bewilderment and occasional trip and slip on the rug to the contrary.  Your mother is not to come first after you reach adulthood.  Your past relationships have tanked because she was helping metaphorically speaking to put the condom on you while you and that special someone were getting intimate.  In workshops I tell men to remember this---no man wants to fuck a man who's fucking his mommy.  If you came from a single parent household and a level of poverty you might mistakenly adhere to a matriarchal framework that might not work for you or your potential partners.  It's not about you and mommy rocking out to the Golden Girls, it's about you having a full, healthy, normalized sexuality in spite of the fact that you're same gender loving.  Look at your siblings---the ones who have left you as your moms best gal pal as they've moved out, on and married and even divorced once or twice, had kids, taken lovers---hint, hint---they're exampling adult maturity.


Unfortunately one's mother may be the one more sympathetic to her child's sexuality but she may also unknowingly or even more frighteningly, knowingly, take advantage of the fact that our society is slowly (but surely) making a way for marriage and biological and adopted children for same sex couples.  It can be comforting to have a dedicated adult that you have the emotional upper hand over that will put up with you where another non-related adult would walk away.  But in the end, barring some odd pact, he will eventually be lonely and even more so, alone completely stunted in the skill set of how to date and mate.

And we've all seen and known him, Mommy's Man then Mommy died and now he's this bumbling, emotionally retarded, inept, introverted manchild who's a middle aged shell that's lost 20, 30, 40 years to being a parent's child and not a man's (or several men's) husband.  But creepily Mommy's life sized portrait hangs right over his bed, above the condoms and porn so that as you wander into his boudoir you can recognize Mommy might have left this plane of existence but Norman Bates style she's still in a rocking chair somewhere........


Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Face Book or Follow Us on Twitter!  Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

What Do You Want? What Do You REALLY Want?

What do you want?  What do you really want?

Years ago, Marianne Williamson confronted me with this question while listening to one of her audio lectures and it has not only stuck with me, rocked me, resonated within me, startled me, comforted me, defined me but it is one of my most powerful weapons in my Teacher Tool Kit to confront students with.

Do you want to be successful?  Ok, first we might have to define what success is for you.  Recently I was writing in my journal, trying to distill down what I was going through, perceiving and what I truly wanted and I was able to narrow it down to 3 things:

I Want To Be Free:

I've spent years learning to listen to my own inner voice.  Learning that neither my family nor my friends nor partners nor children nor pets nor job/career nor religion or ideology defines me.  I want to choose what I want to do, to be, whom to keep company with and believe.  Lots of times I glance through Facebook (or listen to friends and family) and see people complaining about how other people are, how other people affect them, or the popular, dealing with the concept of "haters".  Hilariously enough I believe negative energy is useful; that drama and challenging people are God's gift.  It's how you deal with them.  What success do you possess if you can't handle negative situations or relationships?  I believe that part of the life cycle of growth is to learn how to handle challenges.

I often tease myself that I have survived/experienced everything except abortion and war and then I amend that with, I am a survivor of abortion.  My mother's family forced my mother to have an abortion when she accidentally got pregnant at 16 in her bedroom and she watched the baby die.  Years later, at 22, in college my mother would wear heavy coats and bulky sweaters through the Spring and SUmmer to hide being pregnant with me.  She saved money and slowly stocked up new pots and pans and linens for the apartment she would move into from her parents home, before I was born, to insure my safety.  When I was 18, my mother accidentally got pregnant again, having intending to have only me and though prepared to have the baby, couldn't healthwise and had to have another abortion.



I am intended by the Universe.

My mother's womb was a 1 in 3 shot at survival.  Whatever I may be, fundamentally, to the core of my existence, all the way up to orientation, gender, color, ethnicity, culture, religion, faculties---I was and am intended by the Universe.  Period.  It's not up for discussion, debate, contemplation because it simply Is.

I often listen or read (I have the benefit of facilitating lots of groups of all kinds of people around the city, sometimes as many as 1000 a week, so I get a full spectrum of humanity) to people who aren't sure, who doubt, who have been maligned for their existence.  You can't be Free until you know you are intended and have a fundamental right, like gravity and light and trees and water, to be here and be what you are.

But know this when you see me or approach me and we're talking about books or Jell-O or my funky red sneakers or that TV show I just did or the aliens that just landed in Times Square o matter how big or small or tall or cute you may be, that calm, solid, power in my eye, at the tip of my tongue, weighing invisibly onto my words is I am intended by the Universe.   


I Want To Be Stable:


I have a terror of instability.  On buses I generally dislike them because I'm always teetering and trying to right myself.  It's not that I'm inflexible or even afraid of falling/failing but I need to be able to establish to myself that I am okay.  Now honestly sometimes it's been two nickels, a coat and snowstorm between me and the abyss.  There was the night in Philadelphia I purposefully stayed outside after work in Center City to overcome my fear of homelessness---I wanted to move back to New York City and was terrified that if I did I would end up homeless.  I challenged myself to be homeless for a night to prove if it came to that I could survive it.  And I did.  Wandering around Philadelphia, the only rule being that I couldn't rent a hotel room.  I went to the movies, wandered around the pier, wandered around the mall until it closed and then eventually napped at the Greyhound Station and went to work a little earlier the next morning.



I've lived in some really nice apartments, homes and coops in New York and other states.  I don't ascribe to luck, so I won't say I've been lucky, I've worked hard and done some smart things (and a few times some not so smart things) and had to throw out best friends, parents, even once a millionaire because they threatened the stability of my home.  I believe that luck is when opportunity and preparation meet and I'm often in stages of preparation with projects.  Family and close friends know I've got my eye on a certain real estate property in Manhattan, cleaning snow and debris off of the steps; telling loitering people to keep it moving, sometimes sitting on the porch simply investing my energy in the building.  I've returned to school for another 3/4 of a decade sojourn for multiple degrees, really invested in developing my small business, all because I want my spouse and children to have/inherit not simply property but equity in tools to enhance their futures.

Yeah, I ain't playing.  I'm in it for keepsies.

I Want To Be Loving:

I don't simply mean the intimate relationships or family or children, I also mean I want my work, my integrity to have been a good thing, a useful thing to people.  I want to think and work hard or from creative inspiration, and come up with something that is poignant, loving and elevating to people. Whether it's the television show or this writing or my teaching work, I want it to be constructive towards my ultimate aim which is to free my people.

Now my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are African American (from the upper North and South), American Indian (Narragansett), West Indian (by way of England), Scottish and Irish.  This brings me to the question: who are my people?  Well, honestly-----everyone!  My work then is for everyone on some level or as best as I can deliver a level of access to my work.  I believe that the assignment of those who arrive at some level of Free is to immediately turn and relay to others how to free themselves, what freedom feels like, explain the balance of the costs of it; to free others.  I am not special, I am not interested in being anyone's messiah or savior, I am simply someone standing in line ahead of you who turns around and says to you: "We don't have to stand here waiting, let's walk."  And I start walking......now what you do, well that's on you.  Free people can't be responsible for the message and the mechanics of others freedom, that's dysfunction, that's codependency.

Well.

Now, back to the original question: What do you want?  What do you really want?


Enjoy!!!
Thank you for reading,
Kyle Phoenix
Email: kylephoenixshow@aol.com
Website: http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Blog: http://kylephoenixshow.blogspot.com/2012
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Facebook or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast

Gay, Thick, Fat Ass, Chunky, Fluffy Vs. GymBots, Part 1

There was recently a YouTube posting that was forwarded on to me from a Black man in Atlanta talking about going to nightclubs full of gay men and their general decline in health and being overweight.  So I replied...........

One, I think that he has a valid point/question. I think he's generalizing to simply the gay spots he was at and those men but it is a useful, thought provoking question to discuss how and why men of color might have health/obesity issues, particularly homosexuals.

 Two, higher level of estrogen, once one has gained weight, makes it difficult for testosterone to be re-activated/impel someone to go for the muscle gold.

Three, self esteem---I notice in Groups and Chat Rooms that there's an overemphasis on penis and sexual position but less so on well being. Technology, time, attention, society has a greater emphasis on appearance---a young man's game, far easier---but that doesn't mean we always grow in the internal areas of how to honor ourselves. If you're still halfway in the closet, shamed, DL, going through drama, unfulfilled, you're probably not thrilled to work out.

Four, ummmm a few of the homosexuals didn't grow up being the most physically engaged/sports centered individuals so it's not unusual that as adults, it's not a natural part of their life.

Fifth, in the video he makes an allusion to his friends talking about their excessive working habits. Men tend to subsume themselves at work because it gives an immediate response and reflection of a man whereas in heterosexual world men might have a marriage, different family dynamic, children to give him another sense of himself/his accomplishments.

Sixth, a partner, (wife, husband) would act as a force to remind a man, as they do, to take care of themselves physically. Some people are going to be more physically, kinetically inclined, others though need a reason to do it---staying attractive to your partner is it for a lot of men. But if sex is so readily available, plenty of men ready to settle for your less no matter how you look/you're ready to simply give less it's then not as much of a priority.

Seventh, food is comforting. Salt, sugar, carbs, liquor are literally designed by nature to give us a rush. If you're mildly depressed, shame based, working too much, a boost would be desired---all human beings partake in this---and we should also think about the fact that in the 20th century, we're less agrarian and food is more readily deliverable to us and culturally what does that mean? Suddenly people of color have physical and financial access to any and every kind of food they want when for generations we had restrictions and our work was more physical.

I've been both ends of the spectrum---I used to run 11 miles a day around Buffalo---like one end to the other, did marathons, etc.---eventually injuries lead me to slowing down, then I went from college into corporate America and a desk/chair/computer and even more frightening---any kind of food on Park avenue my heart could desire---the filet mignon at the Four Seasons, the 10am fresh breakfast/early lunch spread at Delmonico's on 50th, City Crab and a 4lb lobster, Billy's banana cream pie, 24hr Popeyes in Harlem---and a king sized bed.

It's taking me several years to find work arounds for my found tastes (frozen bags of veggies---2lbs or more with dinner and lunch) and long walks the length of Manhattan. I'm not Mr. Smoothie---kale and all---but I am conscious.  I also started the Body for Life program---now, I have not perfected it but I have intermittently used it to strengthen myself, drop weight, stay consistent.  it's a great program for all levels and really helps outline what to do when exercising and eating habits.


I think that while his YouTube rant goes on a bit long he does in an obtuse way ask some important questions and I thought it was really interesting how everyone defensed against it in the Thick Group rather than really talking about their weight and how it's happened positively or negatively, without all the hyperbole of "oooooh, I love myself cause Jesus made me good but my cholesterol is the same number as my weight".  Instead maybe really looking at why Haagen Dazs has a hold on a person and then they go into a food coma and then go to work, porn and clubs being the high points around that.

Sometimes the road to health and a cure is not laced with soft and fuzzy hugs and bunny rabbits, sometimes it slaps you so hard that a piece of fried chicken and biscuit crumbs come flying out.  So were you more upset by the slap or the truth or finding clever adjectives---like fluffy,m chub, thick ass, chunky, husky, stocky---to not deal with the health ramifications historically for men of color and weight?

Next time, I'll flip the coin on GymBots and the opposite end of the spectrum insanity that represents.





Thank you,
Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us on Face Book or Follow Us on Twitter!  Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

Prometheus (2012), DVD Review

Some movies can stand on their own, others need their sequels to hold them up.  This movie has the unique position of being a pre-sequel to the Alien movie franchise so it's a level of challenge to watch because special effects technology is so much greater now than 25 years ago so it's hard to devolve how  movie looks to fit it in alignment to the others.  That being said, this is a reasonably fun move with the great actresses Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron really delivering performances as studies in contrast.  One is the hero and the other the villain but their characters and motives overlap in ways that makes the film seem like blossoming multiple mysteries.  The incredible Michael Fassbender and Idris Elba also do excellent work as a human (and one non-human) who bring to life a tangent mystery to the Aliens drama.  That's the most problematic areas of this new entry to the series---we all know that this ride from say NY to California is happening but we're not sure if the journey is a straight line or by air or why we suddenly find ourselves in Texas along the way.

This movie looks at the origins of the aliens and how humanity may've been a planted "seed" by the aliens' creators.  But we're not completely sure---mainly because this is the first film in probably a trilogy and then after the other five Alien films there will probably be a film or two to sum all of this up.  That means it could take a decade or so to get a full picture of this tale....but maybe that's not such a bad thing.  Maybe we're looking at entertainment in a new way---not simply episodic television and movies with sequels but as long term projects that evolve that new visions come into.  I often wait until a series ends on television to actually buy the entire seasons (The Wire, Fringe, Homicide, I Spy to name a few) because then I get the whole plateau of the creation.

Think of this film as the beginning of your Alien's movie collection and then in a few years you'll be able to tackle a whole weekend and see if it's seamless or simply less.


Kyle Phoenix
kylephoenixshow@aol.com
http://kylephoenixsite.com/
Thanks and enjoy! You can Like Us/Share this post on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google+ or Follow Us on Twitter! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/

No Fats, No Fems, No Strings, No Imperfections

Men can be beautiful to behold.  Women too.  Children as well.  And animals.  In fact, all the sentient humanoids on Earth I'm going to give a thumbs up to.  

Except for the fat asses.

And them fem ass faggots.

Don't forget them triflin' no accountability fools.

In fact, if I catch you doing something wrong---eating a Twinkie, humming a Bette Midler tune or treating me with some intimacy or interest, I'm gonna jettison your ass.

Does this sound like the soundtrack you feel like the male world is playing at you? Are you even sometimes harmonizing with it?  Have you looked in the mirror, while tapping your foot to Beyonce, and realized that you're being rejected for being........well, you, seemingly anytime you're with a group of MSM?  

Are you perhaps one of the men who has religiously gone to the gym, kept the bass in your voice, maintained your masculinity to the point of being "unclockable" (I'm always fascinated by the inherent paranoia in that thought---I wonder if our media/technology observant culture has translated to MSM this whole fear of being seen/outed in this way) and you're comfortable with No Strings Attached..........but........you're still alone?  I often wonder, as I wander around the gym---okay, I don't wander---I tend to work out while reading or listening to my IPod at what happens when two Perfect 10s get into a room.  Then I wonder what happens when they hook up maybe from online.  Then I wonder what they do when there's nothing imperfect about the other or do they cancel each other out like bottoms of batteries?

Say you have a 6 pack or maybe an 8 pack............ummmm, okay then what?  It really only matters to two sectors---Those Who Have Them and Those WHo Think They're Attractive.  But you can't show a 6 pack every minute of the day, right?  It's not really useful for anything other than modelling underwear and, go go dancing or escorting in the gay community and if you're heterosexual, it might get you onto a reality show or two.  But is there any real usage or value beyond the obvious and the suggestive of someone either not eating or exercising a lot?  

When I'm at events it's the designers and teachers and lawyers and doctors and coordinators and such making the real world go around.  Some of them have 6 packs.  Most don't.  In fact most of the MSM I notice with educations, degrees, status, money----really aren't 8 packed out.  So does that mean that MSM who are average, chubby, fluffy, thick and chunky are really more of the norm and in fact suggest a greater possibility of stability and success?

Wait, wait, wait what about the light footed tinkerbells? The sugar footed candy lickers? The dudes with more feather than rock in their shoes? Surely they're----well, less than. In order to not have value or for there to be so much negative value portrayed and projected at them, there has to be a loss from being effeminate, right? That's logical, right? James Baldwin?  Lisping, sugar footed and honestly speaking, no Billy Dee in the mug department.  But valuable, right?  RuPaul.  Cheekbones like glass and a wig for every day of the month no matter the season but not manly, right?  Luther Vandross?  (Oh, come on, let's not play Unclockable Closet Games here.)  Women, including my mother, swore by Luther.  Prayed to Luther.  Swayed to Luther.  In fact a few of you were made to Luther because his crooning represented a velvety, sensuous seductive femininity.  The sequined jackets.  Enough said.

Yet there is such a terror at the feminine.  In fatness, chubbiness---perhaps because women are soft and fluffy and chubby?  Wouldn't want to be like a woman.  I mean what could be more awful than dressing up like one or worse yet being trapped in a soft body like one.  In fact the concept of sexing like one or being sexed like one, is already a mountainous hurdle.  Effeminacy that's not masculine, not macho, not manly and therefore it is devalued.   But then why are 6 packing men still online, showing themselves on Facebook, rocking their Grindr and Adam accounts, paying Match.com because-----------well, all them sit ups ain't making love connections.  

But femininity, the emotionality of it, is an intimacy connector and following along the precept that 85% of men are Betas (more estrogen based), then all this gym action is being done by Double Closet Cases.

What's a Double Closet Cases?

A Double Closet is a man who is working like it's a second job to appear masculine, to work out and strut and swagger and repress himself into appearing hyper-masculine.  But, he, in fact is reading this while knowing all the words to Lady Gaga and Beyonce and Whitney and Janet and Mariah and Cher and Madonna but can't allow that to be known by other MSM.  And maybe it was even you who grew up, terrified and maligned for being feminine.  For being a sissy.  You ran in form and thought from anyone applying female like traits to you so that the very thought of them being attached to you is terrifying.

Wait, then---is No Fats, No Fem, No Strings (read: intimacy)---a psychological reaction to being cast as feminine or effeminate and the desire to not have your sexuality revealed?  Is it also a way of MSM exampling misogyny because being a man who might be sexual with men doesn't exclude a man from being chauvinistic?  In fact there might be some really heavy resentment at women who get to display their sexuality, vulnerability and attraction to men and are rewarded with....well, male attention, love, resources and love?  This is along the lines in the same way that being a gay White man doesn't mean that one can't still be racist.  Just because one experiences prejudice and bias doesn't mean the energy converts to sainthood, a person is as prejudiced as the next even if they're sitting in wheelchair themselves.

Maybe No Fats, No Fems, No Strings, is a way for a nigger to create other niggers?  Bare with me here...there's a theory that the oppressed have to create other oppressed people in order to feel a sense of self esteem.  Hence why Blacks and Latinos have such a tangled social history.  Or Jews and Blacks.  Or Irish and Italians.  Or Germans and..........well, everyone else.  Maybe, just maybe those MSM who have a toilet tissue tight mental rope on No Fats, No Fems, No Strings can't see that they're missing out on the imperfections---a few extra pounds, a lisp or two, an emotional delight in pampering and caring for another---because in a Double Closet Case, you've come out to one layer of your identity but stopped before you came out as an accepting human being?

I'm always amazed when people assume that homosexuals can't be criminals, fools, prejudiced, liars, abusive simply because.........well, they're homosexuals.  In a way it's like covertly suggesting or accepting homosexuals as inhuman, therefore slyly offering that they can't experience the full range of human flaws and foibles.  Perhaps we're giving the prejudiced who perpetuate these ways of thinking---ultimately no imperfections, no embracing of the feminine aspect, however that appears or demonstrates itself in a man or woman, leeway.  Pity leeway because people have a hard time telling people in wheelchairs---the chair doesn't excuse you from being an asshole, it just makes you a mobile one.  Therefore being a bigot who happens to be an MSM just makes you a bigot, who happens to be a MSM.

Thanks and enjoy! Don't forget to watch The Kyle Phoenix Show on Channel 56 (Time Warner), 83 (RCN), 34 (Verizon) and the Thursday/Friday 12am/midnight simulcast on http://kylephoenixsite.com/