Poems by B.R.

How Free is Your Will?
B.R. 8/1/10

Either
U have no choice
or
U have no choice
but 2 have choice.
Either way
your ass has done
been drafted.

Since Renae proposed the subject of free choice, I will exercise that and chose the closely related area of free will because that's one of my all-time favorites among Life's Big Questions.

Right off the bat, I'd like to highly recommend a website, CloserToTruth.com, that features some of the smartest people on the planet discussing topics like free will, God, consciousness and the Cosmos. They include leading neuroscientists, theologians, physicists, biologists, philosophers and the like.

Religion and free will.

Whenever the moderator on these programs interviews theists, he always poses the question concerning free will and God like this: if God is all-knowing, He knows the future, and if He knows what you are going to do, do you have any choice but to do that very thing? If the answer is "no," then you have no free will whatsoever. If you say "yes," then God is not omniscient.

I've watched dozens of such interviews and none of these very intelligent theists can get out of that box. Yet at the heart of religions such as Christianity is the concept of free will: you were created with the power to freely choose and you are judged by God according to how you make choices in life.

Degrees of free will.

Most people insist that they possess free will. My question to them is: do you mean 100% free will?

Consider first the factors that keep you from doing what you might like. Chief among these are pressures from family, friends, society, church, school, etc. If, for example, you see a stranger who turns you on sexually and you'd love to reach out and grab. You don't, though, because you're held back by these invisible forces. Your conscience, your social training, your fear of retribution inhibit your free will.

Then there are factors that do the opposite and drive you.

These, in my opinion, mainly come from your subconscious, which tends to have very selfish, demanding impulses. It drives you to pig out on chocolate, to take too many drinks, to say nasty, hurtful things about others, to keep smoking those cigarettes, and so on. If you had your wish, you wouldn't, for example, eat so much chocolate because you know it makes you fat. But, too often, you don't have your wish, you don't have enough will power, you don't have enough free will.

Oh, the complexities!

Beyond forces that inhibit you and those that drive you is a multitude of other factors that influence how you feel and therefore many of the choices you make. Not to be sexist, but a clear, obvious example is a woman's period (after all, this publication is "On The Rag"). Are the feelings you have and choices you make during those days the product of the Real You? If you don't "feel like yourself" then, when do you, what is the dividing line? Do you feel most like yourself right in the middle of the cycle?

The Real You.

A lot of people say their true self doesn't come out until they've had their morning coffee or soda (caffeine being the world's most popular drug) or had a drink or smoked a joint. Is that the Real You or is the unvarnished, non-drugged self the real one?

The food we eat can also influence how we feel and act. Or consider how the weather colors your outlook, whether it's a warm, sunny day or cold and gloomy. Even the moon's gravity or the barometric pressure can have an effect on behavior.

Or take odors. Imagine you're at a party talking to someone new and find yourself feeling attracted. Is it because he or she seems cute, or seems kind, has a great sense of humor or has that hint of exciting danger?Or is it due to the pheromones–chemical attractants–that you picked up in the air without realizing it? Maybe if you were aware of the reason behind your attraction, you might think twice about this hottie and you might get spared a lot of grief.

Whose will is it, anyway?

When we so often don't know ourselves why we do what we do, it seems presumptuous to believe that we are in complete control of our thoughts and actions. A broad spectrum of factors combine in mysterious ways and drive our behavior. You might make one choice one day then decide the same matter differently on another day according to how you feel then. Which is the real choice, which is the Real You?

To me, the key is why you make a certain choice. Because if you do something for a reason you're not aware of, are you really exercising your free will or merely doing the biding of your subconscious, for example?

Let's say your boss got mad and blamed you for someone else's mistake. You go home and immediately start to find fault with a loved one but you don't realize that it's because of the incident at work. If you had known that that was the real reason, would you still have done so? Likely not. So ripping on your loved one was not your conscious will but your subconscious will. True, it was freely done, although not your conscious self, but by your subconscious self. So is it "your" free will that committed the act? If you knew the real reason for making the choice, would you and your free will still make the same choice?

On the plus side.

Or consider more positive actions. What if you eat a lot of broccoli, even though you don't really like it, because you think it's indispensable to your good health? But what if it all goes back to when you were a kid and you did so to gain parental approval? And what if your parents have since passed away, yet you're still forcing broccoli down your throat? If you recognized the real reason for this, would you continue it?

How many times have you heard musicians say that a song just came to them? In other words, they didn't consciously create the melody or lyrics. But the idea didn't come from outside them, it came from within, from their subconscious–sometimes even in a dream as with Paul McCartney's "Yesterday" or Keith Richards' "Satisfaction." It wasn't their free will that chose to create those songs; it was their subconscious acting.

So what's a person to do?

In so many ways, I believe your subconscious occupies the driver's seat in your life while your conscious self is over in the passenger's seat. And if that's the case, perhaps the wisest thing to do is sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

From a practical, day-to-day standpoint, however, everything in this little essay is basically academic. People will lead their lives essentially the same, whether they believe they have free will or not or even think about it at all. How you answer that question, however, reflects how you feel about yourself and your life.

But if you really want to get academic about it or just see how involved and complex the subject of free will can be, check out these recent essays in the New York Times which cover exactly what's been discussed here:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/the-end-of-knowing/?hp

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/?hp

Meanwhile, let me close with a poem about free will, which uses a movie title as a starting point:

"Free Willy"?
Don't be Silly!

What would a whale do
with free will?
Pirouette instead of breach?
Hear the Call & start 2 preach?
No, no, no–
leave free will 2 the pros/
those with opposable thumbs
& bipedal swaggery
those who make choices
because they have voices
so forget it, Willy,
forget "Freedom of the Sea"
'cause I've thrown away the key!
(Gee, don't know why
I'd say something so mean/
Guess something
just came over me)

From Boobs To Buns:
One Pervert's Sex Education
B.R. 7/26/09

When Renae announced that this issue would be devoted to sex education, both in the home and in school, my initial reaction was: who can remember that far back? You see, in my case, as the only Social Security-collecting columnist on staff here, that means trying to recall events from five-plus decades ago.

Daunting.

But let's start with my midwest, Presbyterian, 1950's upbringing. Although I am certain that many of my peers grew up in homes where sex was really hush-hush if not considered downright wicked, my folks were remarkably enlightened. In fact, my father read Freud (in German) so infantile/childhood sexuality was not a foreign concept. And I do vaguely remember my parents answering the usual kid questions on sex in a straightforward, understanding way. No traumas there.

Still, this was a time in which "I Love Lucy" couldn't use the word "pregnant" (even though she clearly was), a "Tonight Show" host quit because the network censored a joke that used the term "W.C." (which stood for water closet, which is to say, bathroom) and Rob and Laura of the "Dick Van Dyke Show" slept in separate twin beds. (I'm amazed no one objected to the "dyke" in Van Dyke.)

As for school, we did learn the basics in Health Class starting at about age 12 and with both genders present. (The only time we were separated was Shop Class and Home Economics, i.e., the kitchen.) Again, pretty factual stuff with no sermonizing but also no real explanation of how things work, sexually speaking, which would have incurred the wrath of local parents.

That left the streets.

I don't recall any glut of wildly misguided information passed among my friends, but I do know that the popular culture was heavily influenced by Hugh Hefner and "Playboy." And that meant boobs, boobs, boobs and more boobs. Ask any butt fancier: Hefner has an hysterical aversion to showing rear ends, almost as though there's something dirty going on back there (talk about Freudian!).

After all, there are only two sides to the human body, Hef had a lot of pages to fill, but still he limited himself (and his readers) to half the story. So, since he was more or less the nation's default sex educator, the message was: boobs are wonderful and healthy, while buns represent The Dark Side. (Europe, by contrast, is a healthy, butt-centric bunch of countries. But over here, it was all about mammaries.)

And if you had impulses to spank bottoms (such as myself), you were the lowest of the low. So I kept that fascination to myself.

Enter into my life John Stagliano, aka, "Butt Man," a very successful maker of video porn. He tells of how he would be shooting straight porn and found himself actually avoiding shots of rear ends when he had an epiphany: "That's my favorite part! Why am I being so prudish?" When a purveyor of porn has been cowed like that, you know the taboo is pretty strong. In any event, having recognized this, Stagliano re-invented himself as "Butt Man" and aggressively cornered the market. A very smart, very rich man.

It also took a rapper, Sir Mix A Lot, to further kick open the butt closet with "Baby Got Back." It begins, of course, with "I like big butts and I cannot lie..." almost as though it was a confession but one with an affirmation, as well.

So, clearly, sex education comes in many forms, both formal and informal, and it continues throughout life. My own contribution, poetically speaking (since this is a column about poems), is as follows:

STUCK ON YOUR BUTT
Pardon me a thousand times
And believe me I didn't mean 2 but–
I'm stuck on your butt
Yes, I'm stuck on your butt
And I can't get off
No, I can't get off
Any other way.

SPANKS-A-LOT SOCIETY
B.R. 2/1/09

Greetings! And welcome to the first installment of this column, made possible by the exceedingly generous Renae Bryant.

(PLEASE NOTE: The following involves the subject of erotic spanking. If you are not familiar with it, please scroll down until you come to "SPANKING 101" for a brief introduction.)

Many of my poems are about buns and, especially, the joy of spanking buns. My interest in all that goes back to early childhood, which means, by now, I have decades of experience in this fascinating yet not widely understood area of sexual behavior.

Thanks to being associated for many years with The Dominion in Los Angeles (dominionsm.com), I've had the privilege of playing with and learning from hundreds of wonderful, kinky partners.

These are attractive, intelligent women who truly love B&D (bondage & discipline) and have developed amazing skills as players.

I have a DVD coming out soon called "SPANKS-A-LOT SOCIETY" that consists of 35 kink-related poems interspersed with a variety of spanking video clips.

The poems on the DVD include narration, graphics and music to give them more life than just type on a page. But the following will give you a good idea of what these poems are like.

SPANKS-A-LOT SOCIETY
sexy sexy human beans
only U could turn punishment
in 2 pleasure. U say:
"don't strike that child in the face/
nature provides a better place"
as U promptly pull down our pants
(makin' us BARE there)
& lay us across your Oedipal lap
(groin 2 thigh/groan 2 sigh)
with a full-moon-sized
erogenous zone high in the sky
& then U start slappin' skin
in rhythmic in-out/in-out/in-out BEATS
makin' our buns buck
& our genitals grind
("oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck!")
our behinds blinkin' RED
from kissin' your thunderclaps
buns caught fire
& baby's gettin' HOT
oh, sweet Estrous,
U call that punishment?
all that excitement
that attention
that affection
that just plain SEX?
which isn't 2 say
U don't get a woodie 2–U do!
seein' those sweet sweet cheeks
jiggle & bounce so
of course that's so much more
sexily sadistically satisfying
than 2 just scold us or pull our hair
or even punch us in the arm
all 4 our own good naturally
fact is
it hurts U more than us!
yet 4 all the spankings
that happen all the time
U hardly ever see a sign of it
in polite society
except 2 say 2 say U like it
is said 2 be perverse, so–
spanks-a-lot society
4 makin' us feel so bad
about feelin' so goddam good–
what a kick in the ass that is!

If you're interested in recrea