Right, this is the problem. It’s a govt owned and administrated account holding your money. Which is why this problem exists:
The reason this is true is because instead of maintaining principle per recipient, money has been peeled out of the account for things like welfare entitlement programs (and many others).
They’re not draining an imaginary vault of money, you’re right. They’re draining social security funds. A very real vault of money.
Not sure what any of this has to do with Donald Trump’s penis but I think you should clear your throat and do a little research.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could opt out of social security? Even if we had to put it into a 401k or Ira. It’s better from a moral and practical standpoint.
I’ve reached the point in my march to the holidays at work and home that it’s hard for me to find the time and the focus to post much in OT, but I wanted to get back to this. First, I was very slightly buzzed when I wrote the post you’re responding to, my screed on morality, lol. And secondly, I’m not going to ask you to disclose more than you feel comfortable with, but there’s nothing I love more than a conversation based on deep reflection, so if you’d be willing to share it I would love to dig in. I know I’m not alone in valuing deeper conversations, though they’re not for everyone, and I suspect that your “self-indulgent memoir” would be interesting to others.
Yes! Women as well, of course, but yes - “do unto me as I would prefer, not as I do unto others.” This is where some of the manosphere stuff makes me crazy. You’re promiscuous and selfish and willing to manipulate women, but butthurt when they turn out to be self-serving, avaricious sluts? Oh booboo! How very frustrating! Back when I was single I’d reconnected with a cousin through Facebook. She was dating two men, both dealing with alcohol use disorder and DUI’s - one went to jail for injuring pedestrians, but he was hot! Neither of the men knew about the other. I posted about this at the time - it must have been 15 years ago. She said to me once “we’re the prize,” and…uhhhhhh, no. Personally I’m not looking for a prize or to be one, I’m looking for a man whose values and interests match my own. Did I think of myself as a good catch? I did and do. I’m smart, cheerful, fit, and well-employed. And was looking for that in a partner.
I was working with a 15-year-old client around the same time, a kid who wanted to go to college for physics, and we were doing the sentence stems exercise @angry_chicken often recommended to guys, and I started using at work (men have liked this better than women, interestingly)… Anyway, the question/stem was “Integrity to me means” ands kid was confused. His answer was something about columns bearing weight - structural integrity. He’d never heard of it as a moral or behavioral thing. And we had the best conversation about how really, they are the same. The column is, through and through, what it appears on the exterior to be. Same with people. Integrity is being, through and through, what you present to be.
The morality I taught my kids was not religion-based, more just honesty, loyalty, kindness, courage, and empathy (as in “think about what might be happening for them”). When Aunt Suzie gives you a stupid gift or one you already have, remember that she spent time and money to buy something she hoped you’d like. She wrapped it and put a bow on it. So if you hate it, what do you say? And my kids would chorus “thank you!” Right, you say thank you. When you make fun of a kid at school, do you understand what you’re doing, beyond having a cheap laugh? Do you understand that if that kid went home and told his mom, her heart would break? That you’re defining for him who he is? For my boys: understand that the girls you’re dealing with have hearts, just like your sister, and do the right thing to keep it safe.
Thank you so much! And thank you also for any influence you may have had on me that has improved my influence on them.
This is probably the longest post I’ve written. Though it might seem as if it derails the thread, it is pertinent to threads on the male experience and fatherhood, and I think Emily’s suggestion is alright.
If it is too long winded for some or seems like it goes into odd territory, I am sorry. You don’t have to read, or can stop reading partly through if it bores you or you are uninterested.
Same here. Hence the full week to reply here.
I’m a little low on energy at the moment but I wanted to continue this discussion, because obviously threads like this are of high interest to me. While I cannot and likely should not divulge all about me, I think it’s clear that I am an open book on discussion issues about sexuality, family, and so forth, particularly from the male lens and my own experiences.
There have been a lot of posts in this thread, and the post I made in response to yours does did not link, I think. So I will attempt recall what I can. I recall you wrote you are an at risk young person, which, obviously I can relate to considering we have repeatedly covered social deviances that occur with fatherlessness and that my own brother was not only at risk, but got into serious trouble with the law, and thank goodness he went on to be squared up and has a career for quite some time. He has since changed careers, but in the late 2000s he was making up to 175k as a wine and liquor distributor, mostly with customers on the Las Vegas strip. That’s equivalent to 260k a year now, as I looked up the adjustment. Not bad for a guy with a GED and a former teenaged drug dealer (and I don’t mean selling dimebags on Friday nights to fratboys).
When I divulge stuff about me, I seek no pity or sympathy. I am simply here to discuss experiences as they pertain to sexuality, fatherhood, family, and the male experience. One of the risks of fatherlessness is teen suicide, and as I’ve stated several times, I had depression at a young age and had on-and-off suicidal ideation. I also believe a risk factor that I did not succumb to was gang membership and the anti-social activity of graffiti, which I’ve loosely mentioned here and there throughout the years. Thankfully my sensivitive disposition, sense of right and wrong, and justified fear of being harmed (people should be scared of “writing” and even writers are scared but do it anyway, as I will discuss), ruining my life, and not wanting my mother and family to flip the hell out on me, I did not participate.
I thought this would be brief, but whatever. I’ll continue. It’s not a big deal. If people are uninterested, they can stop reading. I also have satisfaction in putting my thoughts down, even if just for recreation.
I was from a suburban town in Queens, but my mother would routinely take me to see my great grandmother in a nursing home in the Bronx. My uncle and grandfather owned two stores in Woodside, Queens. My dad has a store in Queens Village. And one of the most prolific graffiti crews of the 1980s and '90s, who really more functioned like a gang, as they were criminals who who had penchants for graffiti, had members in the high school I would attend and was formed in a nearby suburban town. I think, considering you lived in NY for a time, and your age, you know exactly who I am talking about, as other Gen X New Yorkers on here likely do.
All of the aforementioned areas were graffiti hot spots. The highways in NY were also covered with graffiti. When my mom would take me on the highways throughout Queens and the Bronx and to the city during the holiday season, I was just a boy who would sit quietly in the backseat and would stare at the block and bubble letters I saw. The first time I noticed graffiti was on the Clearview Expressway in Bayside. It was an enormous “blockbuster” (big straight letters) by a deceased, infamous writer. I was seven or eight years old (1987 or 1988), and I was mesmerized from the start. I remember exactly what I saw, and there are several pictures of it on former writers’ accounts on Instagram.
All of the parks I played at as a kid were filled with graffiti. I even got a glimpse of train graffiti as a kid in the late 80s in Manhattan and the Bronx. One day I went to the library down the block from my apartment after school in 1988, at eight years old, and I discovered a book called Subway Art by Henry Chalfant. It was photographed documentation of late 70s and early 1980s subway graffiti. Some of the stuff was beautiful and highly artistic. And I even recognized some of the names I had seen on highways. I don’t think I’ve ever been moved by a book like that ever since.
The following summer, I was at the community pool near my house, doing my best drawing letters on paper. Some teenaged couple shared the table with me. The guy said to me, “Boy, what do you write? And how old are you?!” I responded, “Nine.” The woman, surprised, replied, “Nine?!” The guy actually turned out to be a member of the gang I mentioned above. He signed my book and spoke to me a bit.
The group I refer to was all over the highways and mentioned, made the cover of Newsday, and was interviewed on 10:00 News in 1990 with the retired reporter John Johnson in a shopping center my mom used to take me to, and where I saw my first film in the theaters: Goonies. There was a week-long series on gangs throughout he boroughs and I just so happened to stay up late one night to see their slot in it. I am not going to lie: I seriously looked up to these people, but obviously could not “get down” with people ten to fifteen years older than me. Their names were all over the highways and streets, in some cases in the grimiest of NYC towns, and they were involved in the train era of NY graffiti. They formed in the mid 80s. What was unusual about them was that they were from a suburban area but were extremely wild, violent, and always looking or ready for a brawl. Again, I think you might know who I’m talking about considering your former NY residence.
As graffiti spilled out onto the streets from the “train era” in the late 80s and 90s (the trainers got cleaned up and the Vandal Squad was formed specifically for subway graff) it became even more dangerous and the street gang experience became intertwined in the culture because writers had to deal with other elements on the streets: gangs, drug dealers, cops, store owners, civilians. When I got to high school, which had some of the most prolific writers of the 80s, the graffiti scene was gone and only two younger members (second generation) of the aforementioned group were there. I am thankful for this because of my high interest in it. Even if it were there, I likely would not have partook for the aforementioned reasons, and because I was not designed for that sort of subculture. And I wanted to live. Many writers died at early ages. This past summer, I was at an event in Manhattan and bumped into a prolific writer of the 90s, who grew up in a housing project, and said to him, “It wasn’t for me, and I was too young back in the graff heyday to get busy,” and he knew exactly what I meant. He replied, “It was not for everyone; all of us had razors on us”. He was an original member of a Manhattan gang of criminals, some of whom wrote graffiti. Another former writer I know and who I looked at in the 80s and 90s on the highways, now squared up with a family and career, (we actually befriended each other on IG and met several times and sometimes talk by phone) and living near a family member of my wife said to me last summer, “You know shit was live in the early 90s”. This is a guy who hit someone with a tire iron back in the day. He was from Queens but wrote prolifically on Bronx Highways when I was just a boy.
With all this said, and even though I am a square living like a square, I do not think me looking up to such people and wanting to be involved in a status-seeking culture (graffiti is all about status, whether through artistic style or proliferation with simple lettering or tagging) and gangs was unusual at all. Nearly all participants had no dads or some whacky or neglectful family setup. Some of their stories are miserable or very odd. And all wanted respect and attention. Even though we can reasonably say they were “piece-of-shit” criminals in their younger years, they raised each other. And sadly, they showed each other more masculine affection and made more of a stink over each other (even to this day as squared-up adults) than overly domesticated squares who actually do dump emotional loads on their women and disappear from male social circles (“I need to check in with the boss”) and might not even understand what “backup” means, corny as it might sound. All this shit about men not being able to find women, can’t get jobs, can’t make money, don’t have connections, and various other complaints (some justified)–all that shit can either be dealt with or solved by male networks. And though I don’t care to analyze the female-attraction code, isolated and atomized don’t get women. Women like men who are strong, dominant, and socially connected. Hence they become hypnotized around them, whether they are good or bad men. And yes, I have seen up close how women act around some of the types of people I’ve mentioned, as annoying as this sounds to some people.
Something else that scared me from graffiti were documentary-style videos produced in the 90s, such as Videograff, Out Ta Bomb, and Forbidden Art Video. Fictional Movies like Beat Street, Wild Style, and Dreams Don’t Die, and the documentary video Style Wars presented graff as a sort of benign youth subcultures. The former had interviews with writers and had footage of them on the ground in the 90s and showed the mean reality of it all. All of these are available on YouTube and Tubi.
One time at work, in one of our offices, two young female co-workers and I were talking over lunch, and we were discussing raising kids and I told them about such matters, as I am friends with them outside of work and attended one of their weddings. One asked me, “What if your son wanted to join a gang or write graffiti?” I answered, “These subcultures are not around us here in LI. They were in the lower and low-middle-class areas back in the day. And we don’t have a household and family that creates such a desire. But I would be 100% sympathetic to his feelings, this yearning for protection, status, masculine affection, access to females, and rebelliousness. I would inform this is not how you go about life and you can destroy or end your life through these activities.” Fatherless males get their identities through violence. My son will not be fatherless.There is hardly any highway graffiti around anymore, especially LI. But when we go through Manhattan, take a trip to PA, we do see much of it as it has made a resurgence. Sometimes my son will say, “Dad, look, graffiti,” and I’ll respond, “Yes. But remember, we’re keeping it to your markers and books.” There is a place near here called “Graffiti Lab,” opened by a very talented artist and former writer, which my friend and I are going to take our kids to. They even have workshops and events for adults who want to dabble with airbrushing and spray painting.
I could have gone on, but this was my very long-winded explanation of my own risk factors as a kid (thankfully not actualized). It is also why I make a stink over matters I discuss here or why someone mentioned a peculiar interest in them.
I’ll likely comment on what you said about the ridiculous manosphere soon.
I sometimes have wanted to share pictures of my little graffiti library and “black book” in other threads featuring pictures or other off topics but I highly doubt anyone would want to see. I only posted some in the extreme music thread because of the link between graffiti and New York Hardcore (and rap).
Of course you don’t have to divulge. Do you mean “at home” as in your family? My dad was negligent and mentally ill with some vices, but both sides of my family were mostly squares, troubled as some of its members were. My maternal grandfather was a gambling addict but he overcame that; aside from that, he was a workaholic square.
In the home. Primarily my dad. He was a Jekyl & Hyde type alcoholic. Happy good time guy to everybody at the bar, but a violent tormenting monster at home.
After my mother left (basically ran for her life) the gloves, and any thin veil of discretion, really came off. He’d bring half the bar home after last call at 2:00 am and they’d be up partying until I was getting up for school.
He’d also let friends from the bar “crash at his place” for a while. One saying I really hate, and ended one pretty long term friendship over is “We need to toughen him up a little”. Cuz to me, that just meant another middle aged drunken asshole was going to beat the shit out of me again. I was a small runty kid, youngest of five, and pretty badly malnourished. I guess that meant that some clowns needed to slap and punch me until they felt like I was sufficiently toughened up. So, when my friend said that about my son- that was the end of the line for him. I explained why then bid him a fond fuck off. So that type of stuff, and pretty regular beatings from Dad for just about any reason he felt like were a constant. The particularly outstanding reoccurring one was that since my mom “left”, we all had to take up the slack with assigned chores. Unfortunately, I was stuck with laundry, cuz that was the easiest because the machines did all of the work. But there were 4 of us boys and my dad. So I’d get overwhelmed. I was already pretty badly traumatized from some really gory stuff with my mom, so I was pretty easily overwhelmed. Then, when he’d get home from the bar on a regular week night (sans friends) he was usually miserable. So I’d get dragged out of bed in my sleep, beaten awake, and yelled at and berated while I did the remaining laundry.
One outstanding memory is of a guy named Scott. He’s dead now, so no harm in naming him. For some reason, he really hated me. I thought he was awesome cuz he was a pretty big jacked dude. Big strong construction dude that needed a place to crash (drug habit and drinking problem). So any chance he’d get, he’d punch me, usually in the arm or chest or throw me off a wall. So one day he punches me square in the stomach like really hard. Mind you, I’m 8 years old and like 50 lbs. soaking wet. Knocks me back across the room into the couch. I’m not even able to cry. Just gasping for my life doubled over in pain. I finally start moving around as able, but I’m like seriously injured. A couple days go by and my dad asks whats wrong with me. I show him my stomach, and theres a big fist sized bruise right in the middle. I tell him that Scott punched me really hard (the big guy, not my brother Scott.). He actually got really mad about that and kicked him out of our house. So off he goes, to find another place to crash. Then about a year later he was found dead in the alley behind the one bar. He had overdosed. So, I guess as a consolation my dad told me when he got home that night that Scott was dead.
That and a lot of fighting just for resources (food, clothing, sleeping quarters) with my brothers was the norm from age 6 till about 13. The other kids in the neighborhood stood absolutely no chance against any of us. I got in some fights at school because I thought that was pretty normal, but they weren’t like little kid fights. They were more like vicious one sided beatdowns.
My first therapist is a really neat guy. Unbeknownst to me, my next older brother was a client of his for several years prior to me. It wasn’t until I recognized my brother using reflective communication that we discovered and discussed our therapist in common.
Anyways, having had the experience of treating both of us separately and at different times (I started about a year after my brother stopped) it gave him the ability to cross check what I was telling him. At one point just as he was wrapping up he strongly urged me to write a book, even offering to help because there are freaking chapters of just completely insanity in my life leading up to my start into recovery from drinking/drug abuse. He felt that it would help others that have experienced prolonged and severe trauma & abuse to relate and find inspiration to recover or continue onward.
I don’t think I could do that. I let it out in bits and pieces here and there, and address current and reoccurring subjects with my current therapist, but a lot of it still hurts.
This part of the year is particularly difficult and dark for me because I lost both parents separated by some years, in December. My mother to suicide on December 24th 1984, and my dad to cancer/alcoholism December 5th, 1993. Seems like a long time ago on paper, but it often feels like yesterday (around Christmas).
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