Bully

The scars of being bullied as a kid run deep. You move on, and it’s something you manage, like depression. Maybe it’s totally healed when you reach a certain level of enlightenment. I’m not there yet.

Bullies are cowards by nature. Their bravado is a smoke screen. They inflate themselves with physical, verbal, and emotional aggression. I wish I had somebody to tell me that as a kid, but I didn’t. I figured that out, on my own, as I grew up. Which is why these days I eat bullies for lunch. And breakfast. And even dinner. Although they don’t usually work for dinner. Too much fat and unnecessary calories so late in the day.

I became a target because I was a fat, quiet kid (hard to believe now, I know), and because I had bullies in my family. That’s how it works. You attract what you are surrounded by. Most of us don’t receive any coaching on how to handle bullies. When we get older, we gain the opportunity to learn how to deal with them. 

I started to develop physically about the same time I got into psychology, which was late high school. Gaining some physical stature, along with gaining insight into the mind of the bully proved a synergistic dynamic. I gained a confidence of both body and mind. 

The way you deal with bullies who won’t back off is to get up in their fucking face and challenge them. With all you have. Push the envelope. They will back down. Because, again, they are cowards. By Nature. 

And, even of you are once more beaten down by the bully, you have a rare and precious feather in your cap: You stuck up for yourself. You met the demon head on. It may not feel good in the beginning, if you lost that battle, but it will give you the juice to win the war. You are parlaying that into a victory of self. 

I’m not promoting violence. I’m promoting self care. Sometimes that means ignoring an asshole. And sometimes it means backing him or her off. In that case, a quick wit and calm demeanor will usually be enough. 

And I have this fantasy, where I meet each one of my bullies, one at a time. Then I kick the crap out of them. I utilize any unresolved pain as fuel. This is a fantasy. It’s not something I’ll ever act on. Because the best way to heal being bullied, or any other wound, is to be happy in life. To love yourself. To be kind, loving, supportive, and generous with your feelings. I want to lift people up. Not beat them down. I live that way most of the time. And sometimes, I think about how good it would feel to nail their sorry ass. That’s just being human.

The higher road is to have compassion for the bully. Because they were most likely bullied themselves, and they choose to bully others as a way of dealing with their own pain. Sometimes, I have compassion for them. Right at this moment, I don’t. Which is why I’m writing about sticking it to them.

And, ultimately, standing up to a bully is all about you, not them. Handling yourself in hostile situations is a life skill that needs constant honing. Being able to take care of yourself is something that children need to learn, as soon as possible. That starts with fostering self esteem and self love. The more of that the child has, the more equipped they are are to deal with hostility. I didn’t have much of either as a kid, so I was ill suited for any sort of attack. I would also teach my kid, boy or girl, how to physically defend themselves. If push comes to shove in the schoolyard, you want it to end quickly and in your favor. Don’t ever be the offender. But if you suddenly find yourself on the defense, you need to be a bad ass linebacker. Not a tackling dummy.

©2018 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved. 

Jasmine (The Art of Kissing part 3)

I've been with a call girl just once in my life, back when I was 24. It happened the night before one of my best friend's wedding. 

The groom to be and three of his lead trouble makers were hanging at a buddy's house, whooping it up the eve before the big day. Unbeknownst to the soon to be husband, we hired an escort through the yellow pages (this was years before Google). We wanted to get our pal laid by another woman the night before his wedding. 

It was a completely baked idea, which wasn't surprising, because by the time we hatched the plan, we were all completely baked. The three of us knew there was no way the upcoming groom, was gonna go for this. But, there was, at that naive age, a certain powerful sense of perverse male duty; as in "This is what you're supposed to do for your buddy as a 'Goodbye to Freedom' ritual the night before the ball and chain of marriage got impaled to your ankle.". We saw the opportunity for him to be with just one more girl before monogamy as a great gift. Maybe we even felt it to be some sort of Right of Passage into Marriage.

Sound ridiculous? Sure. But again, what the fuck did we know? We were 24 year old dudes. Hormone Raging, Egotistical, Self-Centered, Unenlightened, Pig Headed, Know-It-All-Ocasional-Assholes.

Plus, frankly, none of us liked his bride to be. In fact, we couldn't fuckin' stand her. Neither could any of his other friends, male or female. His family didn't like her either. Nobody could figure out what the hell he saw in her. Many of us had had talks with him, trying to dissuade him from taking this high dive into what he saw as a deep, smooth pool of connubial blissful turquoise water. In actuality, it was clearly a shallow, rocky, turbulent cesspool of sure as shit divorce misery. But nobody could get through to him on that.

Maybe our little posse that night figured getting him laid right before his wedding would be our ultimate inside joke on her; a silent, passive aggressive dagger in her back.

I'm not proud about trying to take prevenge on his soon to be wife. It was immature. Mean. Stupid. Morally Bankrupt. But, we loved our friend, and thought he was making the biggest mistake of his life. "Maybe she'll find out about this and call off the wedding!", we fantasized in our compromised mental condition. Our intent, as misguided as it was, was that we were trying to save his ass. We had all seen, for years, what a disaster the relationship already was. And by the time we called the escort service, we were stoned, pretty hammered, and had plenty of the devil's dandruff up our noses; a combo that leads to less than stellar thinking.

After much anticipation, Miss Jasmine arrives. Beautiful little blonde in her mid-twenties. Our friend, tomorrow's groom, wants nothing to do with this. But she's made the trek, along with her gigantic bodyguard just outside the door, and she's getting paid, no matter what. And if we had to pay her, well, one of us was gonna get our rocks off, damn it. I happen to have the money, and had never been with a call girl. Plus, I was horny, and found this girl very attractive. So upstairs we went.

We were hanging at the house of our friend. I'll call him Biff. Biff's parents were out of town, so us knuckleheads had the run of the place. "Where do I take this girl?", I wondered? Why, the parent's Master Bedroom, of course! Why screw around with a double bed when you can go at it on a king size job? It was a no-brainer, even to me, who wasn't using much of his brain at that point.

Having never been with a call girl, but having been with girls, after we removed our clothes, I went in for a kiss. "No kissing", Jasmine said to me. "What?", I replied, completely startled. "I'm paying you $125 and I can't kiss you?". "Nope. No kissing, sweetie. At least not on the lips or on the face".

This was dumbfounding. I loved to kiss. I had kissed way more than I had been to second or third base, and certainly more than I had been laid. I had far more experience and confidence in the art of kissing than any other physically intimate act. And I was a great kisser. Now, that, my most valuable asset, was being liquidated from my sexual portfolio.

It got worse. I knew that when I'm being sexually intimate with a partner, I have an oral fixation: my mouth has gotta be doing something; it's gotta have something on it or in it; your lips, your tongue, your mouth, your neck, your shoulder, your thighs, your ruby fruit jungle, your feet, a gag. Something. But with the no mouth kissing rule, I had to get resourceful and just go after her neck or someplace else.

After I had my jollies rocked, I asked Jasmine "Why is kissing on the mouth not allowed?". She said "It's too intimate." I didn't know a whole lot about intimacy at 24, so I didn't get what the hell she was talking about. But, although the idea that I could have sex with you but not kiss you because kissing was too intimate didn't make a whole lotta sense to me, it certainly intrigued me. It felt counter-intuitive, even paradoxical. But hell, I had just heard it from a pro, so who was I to argue?

 I was a late bloomer, in many areas, especially sexually. But once I bloomed, I exploded. And if I applied my passion, my intelligence, my intuition, and my insatiable curiosity to a pursuit, I became a thermonuclear bomb of excited knowledge and eventual wisdom. This "Intimacy of Kissing" concept fascinated me. So I wanted to learn more about it. Both through books, and through field research. 

I'll share more of what I've learned about kissing and intimacy in part 4.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Yoga Porn

If you're a human being, yoga is good for you; just like proper nutrition, resistance training, and mediation. There is a spiritual element to yoga that, even if you aren’t spiritual, works its way into you. Somehow, the practice synergistically enlightens you: physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

And, yoga is Sexy as Fuck.

Oh Yes. Yoga has a sexual component. 

Yoga might even be the New Porn. 

Yoga has become more popular than ever. And rightfully so. Because it works. Because it’s beautiful. Because it offers us something extremely valuable. And, because it's sexy.

Just like Weight Lifting In the 1970’s, Aerobics in the 1980’s, and Circuit Training in the 1990’s, Yoga in the New Millennium has taken its place as a way of life for millions. It’s become a much needed cultural phenomenon.  

Yoga has made its way into pop culture. Whenever anything becomes so popularized, a piece of it morphs. The essence of it stays the same, yes. The essence of yoga is, well, Life. But, for a proper definition, ask an advanced Yogi. Because I’m still a neophyte. Any definition I offer will just be a rudimentary paraphrase of its larger truth. 

In this age of unlimited instant visual stimulation, thanx to the internet, 10,000 hours of quality television programming a day, (cough), and a media onslaught of eye candy like never before in human history, we’ve got literally millions of images, available, at any moment, of beautiful women, and men, practicing yoga. Their bodies are absolutely stunning: Muscular. Lithe. Supple. Flexible. Barefoot (foot fetishists like myself are absolutely thrilled that yoga is done without shoes or socks). Modern yogis in these images are in physically demanding positions. They wear body clinging, tight as fuck clothing, that shows their gorgeous physiques to maximum effect. Or they wear next to nothing. Both of that works for me. And for millions of others.

More importantly, yoga classes are everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Soon, they’ll be offering them at 7-11’s. This means that yoga is now easily available to anyone who wants it. More exposure is good for the practice. It means more people can benefit from it. And, as this post proves, it means that it opens itself up to creative interpretation. So be it. Welcome to Planet Earth. 

The bottom line is that, if you don’t get at least a little sexually excited looking at women, or men, practicing yoga, then your libido is probably asleep at the wheel. And, dare I say, Yogis know this. This is not an “accident”. Part of the very reason yoga has become so popular is because it touches a sexual nerve. Just like weight training and aerobics did years ago. It’s great for us, yes. It’s benefits are proven, yes. And, oh baby, is it sexy.

This is in no way a bad thing. Maybe it is to some purists. But those purists may need a little attitude adjustment. 

I’ll put my money where my mouth is. I’m a Santa Claus purist. That means that the image, the symbol, the spiritual significance, of Santa Claus, is sacred to me. Ridiculous for a grown man, maybe, but true. I am aware, however, that my view of Old Saint Nick is not shared by everybody. If I got my shorts in a knot every time somebody took a shot at Santa Claus, or lampooned his image, I would be one miserable fuck at Christmas. But I’m not. I love Christmas. Because I embrace all of it. 

And, at the same time, I keep my own vision sacred. Embracing change and grounding yourself in your own unique vision are not mutually exclusive. Anybody who tells you otherwise just hasn’t tried hard enough. Or, they’re a snob. 

You can be a snob about anything. Whatever your own Sacred Pursuit, it is open to snobbery; be it Yoga, Santa Claus, Music, Food, Money, Social Status….pick your poison. The common denominators in all snobbery is that snobs have a superiority complex, and they have difficulty embracing change. Like when minorities start making lots of money. Or when “real” musicians start playing rock music instead of jazz. Or when jokers like me get into Yoga and find it sexy.

Well, NewsFlash, Yoga IS Sexy. So is rock ‘n roll. Let's deal with it. Or don’t. Your call. I’m gonna continue to practice. I’m gonna continue to see the physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and sexual beauty, in yoga. 

And I’m gonna continue to go for yoga babes. Because they totally rock my world.

©2017 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

What's Beautiful

       Are you aware when another person is checking you out? When the eyes of another are fixed firmly on good old you, do you engage in the experience? And if so, then how?
       This phenomenon can be quite different for a man than it is for a woman. For the sake of this writing, I’m referring to the cases when, for both sexes, the experience doesn’t feel invasive or creepy or lecherous. I’m not talking about a potential stalker scenario. I’m talking about when you like the look of someone, and decide to look at them a little longer, a little harder, and a little more thoroughly. The whole experience may take only a few seconds.
       We are visual creatures, us whacky humans. By design, we get a vast majority of our information visually. I’m not one to buck that inherent design scheme. That doesn’t mean I neglect the other senses, but it does mean that I actively cultivate my sense of visual beauty. I am very aware of what visually rocks my world, sets my heart thumping, stirs my insides, lights my fire.
       If we are designed to receive so much input in the visual realm, it serves us to nurture and develop our own personal visual aesthetic of beauty. Because when we do, we cultivate our sense of awe, we feed that “Wow!” factor; the one that often gets drummed out of us as we get older. By fully embracing our own sense of beauty, we strengthen the connection between our eyes and our heart. When we cultivate this sense of awareness, this inherently powerful neurological relationship, we increase our chances of being awed.
       When is the last time the sight of the autumn foliage took your breath away? When is the last time you looked at your lover with so much appreciation and wonder and passion and fire that you felt overwhelmed? When is the last time you looked at anything in this world and were so moved that you wanted to cry? That is what I’m talking about. And that is a flame that gets squelched by the passage of time and by the constant bombardment of the relatively meaningless visual input we get from our modern society. But it’s easy to rekindle that fire. You just have to commit to it. And you have to open yourself up to being wowed again. You have to let down your guard and open up your heart. And your eyes.
       What does this have to do with being checked out by another? Because the energy is the same. The vibration of the appreciation of beauty is what I’m connecting to. Whether it’s the Grand Canyon or the girl in the sun dress walking through the park, I look at them both as an opportunity to be awed, inspired, moved, wowed. I’m not comparing the two, but I am looking at each of them as an opportunity to be touched. I’m allowing myself to feel something just by looking. I’m developing that connection between my eyes and my heart. I’m cultivating my sense of beauty, my own sense of beauty, in all it’s endless forms.
       I’ve noticed that when women look me over, and I’m referring to the cases when they have a view of my entire form, not just my face, it rarely starts with my eyes. Maybe because a woman making eye contact with a man has more potentially dangerous consequences than the other way around. It’s safer not to look a man in the eyes, at least not initially. Women tend to go right for the middle, meaning the midsection. Maybe it’s a primal thing, wired into our DNA, because a man who keeps himself trim around the waist is usually in better condition than a man who doesn’t, and that means he’s well suited for procreation and other mating duties. It could also be that, because I do keep myself fit, the eyes get drawn there naturally because of the visual aesthetics of a tapered body. Maybe some of it is that she's subliminally checking out my junk. Maybe all of the above. Anyway, I’ve noticed it usually starts in the middle. Then her eyes move up.
       Within a second or two, her eyes may or may not meet mine. And if they do, I’m looking right at her, because I’m watching her eyes to see what they’re doing. I’m usually smiling at her by this point. Sometimes there’s a smile back. Sometimes there’s that coy look of semi-embarrassment, you know, the kind that says, sheepishly but adorably, “I’m bagged”. Sometimes they never make it to my eyes, because they can feel my eyes on them, and they would rather not acknowledge their actions.
       Doesn’t matter. It’s all good. I saw you honey, and I’m flattered, whether you liked what you saw or not.


©2015 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Senior Citizen Sucker Punch

       I can’t remember the last time I was punched in the face. Actually, I can. It was last Thursday night.
       It began as a classic case of mistaken driveway identity. But as I’m turning around to exit this address in search of the right one, a guy walking his dog suddenly appears in front of my car, and he won’t move. Choosing not to run him over, even though he appeared to be wearing a New York Giants windbreaker, I put the car in park. The guy starts yelling at me. Illuminated by the halogen glow of my head lights, the bright redness of his face and the blueness of his neck popping veins were particularly striking, especially as they clashed with his swath of silver hair. The guy looked about seventy.
       He walked around and stood in front of my open driver side window. “What the hell are you doing?!!!”, he screamed. This appeared to be a horribly rhetorical question. From where he was just standing, it was obvious he saw the entire nine seconds of action. For a moment, I considered a wise ass remark, but figured maybe the old guy was partially blind or something. So I played it straight. “I pulled into the wrong driveway”, I said, firmly, but hardly matching his eye-bulging rage. “Well you ran over my lawn!”, he screamed. I immediately doubted the validity of that accusation, but again, chose the high road. “That was an accident. I apologize.”, I said. There was a pause, as if the guy’s rage ridden brain couldn’t process any words of contrition. So stumped did he appear, that I half expected him to come back with an “Oh Yeah!”, or some other equally witty retort. Instead, he called me an asshole. Then he punched me in the eye. And walked away from the car.
       Now, I’ve poked myself in the eye putting on sunglasses harder than the punch that just hit me, but I have to say, I was stunned. I mean, did that just happen? Did an old guy actually punch me, in the face, after I apologized for allegedly running over his lawn? The absurdity of the incident momentarily stupefied me. Kind of like when you’re at the circus, and the clown drops his pants. And he’s got a boner. Except I wasn’t laughing.
       About a second later, after the initial shock wore off, lots of stuff came up inside of me. Anger, first and foremost. But also mitigating voices of reason. And these voices were having a little discussion in my head. Kind of the way intelligent lawyers in a courtroom do.  
       I knew that, technically, the guy had just assaulted me. So, if I got out of my car and hit him, it could be argued as self defense. However, I was pretty pissed, and if I hit the guy with even a fraction of everything I had, I could have broken his entire face, maybe even killed him. That just didn’t seem worth it. And the fallout of hitting a senior citizen, even though he had it coming, would in the long run not sit well with me. Plus, he had walked away, and thus I was no longer in any imminent danger (not that I ever was, frankly, judging by the feebleness of his left cross). To clock him at this point would have been purely out of revenge, and that’s an energy I don’t want to operate from. Bottom Line: his “assault” felt more like a punch LINE than a punch, and I certainly wasn’t hurt, or in fear of any further bad jokes. I surmised that hitting the guy at this point could have landed me in a boat load of trouble. So that was off the table.
       I considered letting the whole thing go and driving on to my destination, really no worse the ware, except for what amounted to a mosquito bite under my eye. But that didn’t feel right either. Plus, I had some energy to discharge.   
       What did I do? Tune in for part two.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.