My Political Evolution

Wifey stormed out of my house last night, fuming after our first real spat. Who knew an offhanded remark about Mr. Rogers and a threesome could evolve into a political debate? Our tiff is a post for another time (After I make a major peace offering), but our little disagreement has led me think about how my political views a have changed over the years.

The Ferris Bueller Years: All I gave a shit about these years was getting a car, because of all the ass I imagined it would get me. The biggest political event of my life to this point was the election of Harold Washington as Chicagos’ first black mayor when I was real young.

The Hate Whitey Phase: Late in high school I got a car and began to roam the windy city and discover that some people don’t like those different from themselves. A surface skimming of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, several Public Enemy albums and being called a few racial slurs led me to the view that nothing white was good (Larry Bird was an exception). I didn’t wear white, talk to many white kids or eat white rice.

Fuck tha Police Years: Thanks to the great education I was receiving in college, I realized that there are assholes of every race, creed religion and ethnicity, it’s just the assholes in power that are the problem. fuck corporations, fuck apartheid, fuck our duplicitous, hegemonic, oppressive world order.

One Love Period: What did I have to be angry about? There were beautiful women of every race and socioeconomic status on campus, gateway drugs were practically being given away, and frats couldn’t be sexist or elitist, I mean we did community service and had “little sisters” didn’t we?

Political Consciousness: An older, jewish, female professor opened my eyes to feminist theory, critical race theory, and challenged me to truly READ Freire, Woolf and Nietzsche instead of memorizing select quotes to impress girls.

Informed Bipartisanship: I now refuse to rely on any one news agency, tv channel, magazine or website. To determine my view on a candidate or subject I have to educate myself from multiple sources and make decisions on what I feel is right.

And that is as political I will ever get on this blog, I promise.

There is Life After Me

One great thing about being a state employee is the benefits package, pay is low and raises are minuscule but I have great teeth, new contacts lenses and all the prescription meds I need. One weird aspect of our system is that there is only one time a year that you can make certain adjustments to your benefits package. Since we’re in that period, I went to change my primary beneficiary from my parents to my nephews. Doing anything with benefits means a visit to the HR department. This would be no big deal, but one of the HR staff happens to be the first woman I got involved with when I hit town.

When I got here a year ago, we had a new staff benefits orientation. Our facilitator was a gorgeous redhead who made it impossible for me to concentrate on anything she said by wearing a skirt that bordered on inappropriate. After the session, I asked her if we could meet individually because I still had some questions, that meeting led to drinks, which led to us having a bit of sex. At the time she was in an on again/off again relationship and we basically either had sex or I listened to her complain about her quasi-boyfriend.

To be honest, he sounded like a decent guy. From what I could tell, his most terrible behavior was insisting she take his last name if they married and ocassionally leaving the toilet seat up.

After about 3 weeks she told me she was giving him another shot, so after some sex for the road we went our separate ways. There are several HR staff but since i’d met with her several times before (so we could make out in her office) my appointment was with her. When I went into her office she surprised me by giving me a big hug and excitedly catching me up on the past 10 months. Turns out the boyfriend got his shit together, they are closing on a house and they are getting married in October. She’s going to hyphenate her name and she hopes to be able to quit work soon and start having babies.

As much as I like to think that I leave an unfulfillable void in womens lives when I depart, it was apparent she’d moved on without me. Imagine that.

First Heartbreak

This is my longest post ever, but detailing my summer driving for the the exotic dancers made me think back on that time, and the first woman I thought I loved.

I was in my second weekend of work and i’d driven Kim twice, after work (which usually was about 4:00am) she mentioned catching a taxi and I offered her a ride home. We stopped to grab some food and we ended up talking for a while (Nothing is as romantic as White Castle’s as the sun comes up). I dropped her at home and the next time I worked she’d waited for me so I gave her a ride home again. The third time she asked me if I wanted to come into her apartment and I went in, watched as she smoked a joint (at the time I was an athlete who said no to drugs) and she told me to wait in her room while she took a shower.

Kim lived in a small garden level apartment with her sister, there was no phone and there were no interior doors, only thin curtains where the doors should be. Her room contained a Queen sized mattress on the floor which took up 90% of the space and a small closet. By the time she came back in from her shower, i’d fallen asleep and I slept until about 10am. I woke up panicked because I knew I couldn’t tell my parents I’d spent the night at a womans place, but she just laughed and rolled over on top of me and soon I could give a shit about what my parents thought. We spent that entire Friday in bed, every time I made an effort to leave, she would ask me to stay just a bit longer, a few times we had sex, other times we just slept. By about 5pm We went out to grab some food and I was able to call my parents. I told them I’d had an early practice that day and was staying with a friend for the weekend (there were advantages to the pre-cell phone era). We spent the entire weekend like that, we went to work Friday and Saturday night and slept and screwed all day. By the time I made it home Sunday I was in love.

Because the league I played in had games Monday-Thursday, I didn’t see her at all until next Thursday. But after work that night we fell into the same pattern. I needed a way to be able to stay out all night and since my oldest sister was married I told her i’d met a girl and she agreed to be my alibi. I told my parents I was staying with sis, because she was closer to where my games were. Sis warned me to be careful but otherwise covered for me.

Those Thursday-Sundays with Kim consisted of sex, food and sleep, but I got an education. Prior to this i’d had a fair amount of sex, but it was your typical teenage boy variety, which consisted of search and destroy, with the subtlety of a brick. With Kim, sex was all about her, she was quick to tell me to slow down, tell me to stop something or have me switch positions. When I went down on her she gave specific directions which she’d emphasize by guiding my head. Looking back, if I had not been so young and horny I might have lost some confidence with my inadequacy, instead I just worked harder to make her happy. Once she wanted sex during menstruation and when I hesitated the first time, she gave me a look as if I was crazy, and then we proceeded to have sex. Because there were no doors, it wasn’t unusual for her sister to come into the room as if I wasn’t there. Sometimes they would have whole conversations or smoke a blunt or two with me lying there naked. Her sister called me her little college boy, but my lust far outweighed my embarrassment.

This went on for 5 weeks until one night after work, as I waited in my car she told me she’d take a cab. The same thing happened the next 2 nights and that was that. When I asked what happened she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t know. I was crushed but there was no one for me to talk to. I had not told anyone about this other than my sister and I’d not told her the whole story. Ultimately I tried to suck up my hurt feelings and move on.

Given the fact that we literally never went anywhere or did anything together it was amazing how long I pined for her. I had not seen most of my friends all summer because I didn’t have time for them on the weekends, and the idea of girls my age was unthinkable after my love for this 27 year old woman. 2 weeks later I got a chance to attend the school I eventually graduated from, so I left Chicago. Since that summer I’ve been in school non-stop until now and i’ve not been back home for longer than 2 weeks.

Considering she didn’t take any of my money (I would have bought her anything she asked for), abuse me in any way or embarrass me, I look back on it now and appreciate what I learned about pleasing women. Of course it wasn’t love, but I know i’d still get butterflies if I saw her again.

Torching the Welcome Wagon

My house sits in a cul-de-sac, in a nice little neighborhood brimming with midwestern wholesomeness. When I got here my neighbor asked me to join the neighborhood association, I thought it would be a good way to stay in the know and meet folks, so I joined. I was appointed to the greeting committee, so when a new person moves in, we take them a basket of stuff from neighborhood businesses to introduce them to the area. I honestly joined this committee because I rarely have to do anything, with moves being so infrequent.

A new family moved in about 2 weeks ago, but i’ve been busy so I was late getting to my greeting thing. With my fellow committee member (Most committees are husband and wife, but since my male next door neighbor thinks this stuff is for wusses, his wife and I are “association spouses”) we gathered up the stuff and walked over to welcome our new neighbors

As we exchange introductions (They are a young couple from Maryland that just dropped their first kid), the wife of the couple looks at me and says “You’re the professor with all of the girlfriends, I heard you go after everything in a skirt”. The minute it comes out, her husband turns red, says something about checking on the baby and darts into the house, while my partner smoothly segues into something else. I’m standing there with a half laugh/scowl on my face debating whether to ignore it or jump into Jack Bauer mode and interrogate this woman to find out where she got her information.

Deciding torture is not the route to go, we finish up and leave, with me making a mental note to spend a bit more time socializing with the neighbors, if only to find out who the gossips are.

Summer Music

Tunes i’ve got in heavy rotation this summer, some old, some new:

4 minutes - Madonna & Justin Timberlake

American Boy - Estelle & Kanye West

Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince

Birthday Girl - The Roots w/Patrick Stump

1976 - RJD2

Luv - Janet Jackson

In Da Club Remix - Beyonce

Damaged - Danity Kane

The Way I Are - Timbaland

Easy - Taxi Doll (Their Myspace Page)

Touch My Body - Mariah Carey

Flashing Lights - Kanye West

The People - Common

Getting Spanked, In a Non-Sexy Way

Bounced into the office about 10:15 feeling super energized after my long weekend, I was so happy, that i’d forgotten I had a meeting which started at 10am. Now in my defense, I’m not actually working this summer but it was a meeting that I had agreed to so I went in apologizing for my tardiness. To compound my screw-up, it was a meeting for which I was supposed to have done some prior research, there are 3 of us writing an article and we were supposed to begin fleshing out the direction we would take. It’s a great opportunity for me to get a partial publication with minimal work, so I should have been all over it, but I have been a bit happy-go-luck as of late and now those chickens were coming home to roost. To make matters worse, Dr. Soccer Mom popped in, in her now official role as Department Chair, to see how we were doing.

By regurgitating some research I’d been doing for another publication, it appeared to my co-authors that I had been busy preparing, but we agreed that my information was probably not the direction we wanted to go for this article, I agreed and offered to go back to the drawing board to seek out things more germaine to our topic. My colleagues fell for the bait and switch, but because DSM knew that I was working on that other article, she smelled bullshit. She left the meeting after wishing us luck and we continued on for about another 90 minutes.

At that point my plan was to head into my office and get started on researching for real, but I had just gotten my computer booted up when DSM appeared at my door and told me we were going to lunch. We made it out of the parking garage before she began her verbal ass-kicking, questioning my focus, and commitment while letting me know that my teaching and bullshit would only take me so far, I have to produce publications. The most stinging thing was when she told me to get a handle on this puppylove phase and get my head back into the game, a steady girl was supposed to provide balance, not distraction. As I listened, 3 things were going through my mind:

-She was 100% right, I have not been productive in weeks

-She is amazingly sexy , but even more so when angry

-She’s serious about keeping me close, so I have to step up

Once we got to lunch we conversed as if the tongue lashing had never occured, I listened to her recap of her weekend, how she was adjusting to her new job as Department Chair and her dating life. For some reason I neglected to mention my time in Vegas, it just didn’t seem like something to bring up.

A Free Ride to Sin City

Tuesday got a call from wifey asking if I liked Vegas. It had been 2 years since my last visit and told her sure. She said we’d be flying out the next day, it was all paid for so I just needed to go home and pack.  It turns out her sister was part of a group that had planned this Vegas trip months ago. Originally there were 4 couples but now they were down to 2. The last couple had to pull out due to a family death, and their package was non-refundable so they were willing to sell it for a steep discount. The remaining people wanted another couple to help defray the cost of some of the activities they’d planned, so wifeys sister was begging us to come.

Now IMHO wifey and her sister are both insanely spoiled/pampered by their father, and when wifey initially said she was not sure if she could go, her sister made a huge production and their father offered to pick up the discounted travel package as an early birthday gift for wifey. So now she was in possesion of two airline tickets and 4 nights stay in Vegas. I sure as hell did not want to take anything from her dad, but now she really wanted to go (she’d never been)and when I went over her parents house later that night to at least offer to pay, her folks assured me i’d be doing them a favor by looking out for their girls, and of course they would not think of me paying them back since they got the trip for such a low price anyway. Fuck it, I was in.

A few random musings from the trip:

-It was unbelievably fucking hot

-I highly recommend reserving a pool cabana if your hotel offers them, the personal service is great, I encourage it even more if your hotel has a European(topless) style pool.

- It was weird/kinda hot seeing the girlfriends sister topless.

-It was aggravating/kinda cool watching guys try and sneak peeks at the girlfriend topless.

-Agent Provocateur has the sexiest saleswomen I have ever seen, plus they go into the dressing rooms to help the lady get fitted. Imagining what could be going on in the fitting rooms gave me a boner.

-With international currency doing so well against the dollar, the crowds were amazingly diverse. Had great conversations with folks from all over the world.

-Why the hell do so many people bring kids to Vegas?

-Always be nice to the concierge, ours happened to be from Chicago and he got us into clubs free and with VIP status three nights we were there.

-Watching wifey get a lapdance was all I thought it could be, having her watch me get a lapdance was amazingly awkward (but by the second one I was dealing with it better!)

-Having sex in front of a window overlooking the strip as fireworks went off was so cliche, but it felt fucking awesome.

Divide & Conquer

Dr. Soccer Mom asked if I would hang out with her kids while she went out on a date. Now her daughter is 14 and her son is 12 so they would normally be fine at home alone for a bit, but each of them was going to have two friends over and she didn’t want a party breaking out in the house. I was cool enough that I wouldn’t be seen as a “babysitter”. I figured I would hang out, play Wii and make sure the boys didn’t download porn or girls weren’t sending naked pics to predators on the internet.

I got there about 7 and even though DSM told me they had all eaten, the moment she walked out they were claiming they were starving and wanted pizza, but had no money so would I buy it. It was raining like crazy out so I’d planned on the boys and girls staying in their same gender groups and going to separate places in the house, leaving me alone (i’m checking on them periodically of course) but for some reason they preferred to stay in one room, trading insults, arguing about what to watch on television, what games to play, yelling and expecting me to interact with them.

The pizza guy provided the first respite when he showed up (of course I caved and ordered food). I thought the food would occupy them for a while, but they tore through it like raptors, leaving nothing but grease stained boxes in about 10 seconds flat. Just as I was preparing to make them a batch of kool-aid laced with Nyquil, wifey showed up with her kit of traveling female stuff (278 colors of nail polish, assorted lotions and other girlie stuff). Now normally I think that encouraging such young women to play make-up and buy into the beauty myth can be harmful, but at this point practicality won out over principle. Now with just 3 boys to deal with things settled down and we spent the rest of the night playing video game and discussing the relative coolness of skateboards vs. bikes and Jojo vs. Emma Watson.

By the time DSM got home the ladies were fully manicured and pedicured talking about things I was not privy too, while the boys were worn out after a strenuous Wii olympiad.

Eight Things Meme

Was tagged by JerseySjov, and since 8 is my number this must be fate:

Eight things i’m Passionate About:

1. Love- very cheesy I know, but I am a sappy romantic at heart. I agree with Tennyson that it’s better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all, so when the planets align (once so far for sure) i’m all in.

2. Teaching - Introducing them to and helping folks understand new things is a great feeling.

3. Learning - You should never stop, it can be learning about sex, cars, food whatever, but if you stop learning you should be dead.

4. Family - You don’t have to like’em but you do love’em

5. Cooking - Few things make me happier than making a great tasting meal.

6. Women - So many, just not enough time (I think this is congruent with Love by the way). Ideally i’d have several wives. A harem would be ideal, guess i’m just selfish.

7. Friends - I’ll go to hell and back for true friends

8. True Hip-Hop - This is the music I grew up with and it speaks so clearly to me that I wish everyone could hear everything it has to say, not the new bullshit, but true hip hop, that infused old soul with a new culture.

Things to Do Before I Die:

1. Learn to surf. Point Break and Blue Crush inspired me.

2. Hang out with Hugh Hefner. Just to chat with the man.

3. Own a 1968 Shelby Mustang GT350. The first inanimate object I fell in love with. I want it blood red with white stripes and white leather interior

4. Attend an orgy - Been to an S&M party and two exotic erotic balls, but no orgy yet.

5. Receive live cooking lessons from Gordon Ramsey - He could curse at me and everything. I just wanna learn to make those fucking scallops!

6. Run for Public Office and legalize marijuana, or barring this, criminalize cigarettes.

7. Attend a Micheal Jordan Fantasy Camp. He’s still the man and hooping, smoking cigars and drinking with MJ would be amazing

8. Meet Tera Patrick. My favorite pornstar ever and I’d like to have dinner with her (i’d cook)

Things I Say Often:

1. “Excuse me Ms….” Women make me happy, so I never pass up a chance to talk to one. I might be asking them to feel my skin, or complimenting them on a scarf or earrings or something but if there is a chance to chat I will. The majority of my relationships would not have started if I had not initiated conversation so when there is a chance to start chatting i’m in.

2. “Game Over”

3. “Dude” - Terrible habit i’ve picked up from my students

4. “5×5″ - I think someone on Buffy said this and it’s stuck with me.

5. “Inconceivable” - I love saying this in meetings or to my classes and people who’ve seen the movie start snickering.

6. “Shiiiiiit” - it’s a Wire thing

7. “So what I hear you saying is…?” - Reflective listening at it’s best.

8. “Tell me why you think that” - Sometimes if you have people reflect on the dumbass things they’re saying a well thought out answer can emerges.

Last 8 Books I’ve Read

1. Generation Me- Jean Twenge

2. Duma Key -Stephen King

3. Devil May Care- Sebastian Faulks

4. No Man’s Land -Ruth Fowler

5. The Moral Order of a Suburb - M.P. Baumgartner

6. Technology as Magic - Richard Stivers

7. From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race - J. Daniel Hays & Donald A. Carson

8. Soft - Richard Kern

Movies I’ve Seen 8 Times:

1. Old School - My nephews still know what to do when I say earmuffs.

2. School Daze - This movie made me want to join a frat

3. Blazing Saddles - Perhaps the greatest comedy ever!

4. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle - Who hasn’t dreamed of riding a cheetah while high?

5. Purple Rain - Acting sucks, music is amazing

6. Krush Grove - The first hip-hop musical

7. Animal House - This move made me want to be a prof.

8. Pulp Fiction - Some of the best dialog ever written

I think all of the folks I would hit up have been tagged already.

My Most Educational Summer Vacation

Reading Riff Dogs primer on how to handle yourself in a strip club made me think of my own introduction to the world of exotic dancers, some of which I thought i’d share.

Between my first and second years of college, I was in the process of transferring schools, so my basketball career (the reason i’d attended college #1) was in limbo. To stay visible and in shape while waiting for a scholarship offer to solidify, I went home and played in some summer leagues. We played several games a day which was great, but left me no time to work. Because my parents were anti-freeloader, they were not subsidizing my lifestyle at the level to which i’d been accustomed. I reached out to one of my team sponsors, a Greek gentleman who owned a chain of currency exchanges and he put me in touch with his brother, who was looking for another driver for the strippers and escorts he booked. Since I was big, had a truck and knew my way around the city he hired me.

The job was simple; Thursday-Saturday nights, I’d drive dancers to parties, carry the equipment (a gym bag full of props and a boom box) collect the payment and stand there trying to look intimidating so no one got too handsy. We’d usually hit 3-4 parties a night and I was paid $30 a party, in addition my tank was filled at the end of each night. Considering this was the mid 90’s and minimum wage was a little over $4, there was no way i’d make that amount working any other part time job, plus I was paid in cash.

I usually picked the women up from the office and got the address for the first stop or two, then i’d get paged with the later addresses. While driving with the dancers they’d discuss the ground rules. Since the girls frequently changed, it was rare that any of them worked together consistently, so they had to iron out what exactly was permitted because once one dancer let something go (grabbing or smacking) the other dancers would get the same treatment. There was also the subject of extras. I usually drove 2 or 3 girls, so once a girl danced she could either go back into a room to wait for another dance, get dressed or do something extra (blowjob, handjob, sex etc..)for some side money. The only money i’d collect was the agreed upon upfront fee. Any tips during a performance the women collected themselves and if there was any extra stuff going on, that was to be handled by the individual dancer. If there were some girls who did extra stuff and others who did not, the girls who did extra went first, so they would have time to do their thing before the other girls finished and we had to leave. One thing I had not counted on was the fact that at the end of the night the women would tip me, I always thought that was odd, and after trying to refuse money the first time a dancer told me that if I didn’t take it i’d mess it up for the other drivers.

Given the fact that I was 19 and had never seen strippers perform before, this was an eye opening job. I was introduced to hard drugs and all types of booze at these parties but I stuck with Mountain Dew because I was scared of getting pulled over with a truck full of strippers and a gym bag full of sex toys. Probably because of my inexperience I was given lots of yuppie bachelor parties and frat party keggers, even a few high school team parties. The dancers were a variety of ages and ranged from indifferent to my presence to warm and friendly. At the time it was mind-boggling to me how a woman could slide in and out of this hyper-sexual persona several times a night while in the truck between parties be as silly and carefree as any of the girls I went to school with.

I told my parents I was delivering pizzas and although I initially thought i’d have lots of cool stories, I actually talked very little about the job to anyone. I was dating a girl at the time but because of how fascinating the women I drove were to me, my high school sweetheart seemed pretty boring by comparison, so we broke up.

There was one dancer who of course I feel in love with, and I think I was a cute diversion for her for a while. eventually she got bored and I got heartbroken but that is another story.