Cranky Old Man Shit: Spare Us

DUDES: I write a blog full of provocative commentary, sociosexual sophistry, and black humor. I am aware of all the blurred lines (yeah, Tumblr, I said that) around reblogging and captioning, and how easy it is to screw up.

But you’ve got to at least try not to be a complete dick about it. Don’t tack aggressively sexual comments on to someone’s asexual selfie. Don’t turn some sixteen year old girl’s innocent fashion project into something lurid. Don’t run around telling chicks they’re fat and ugly simply because they had the temerity to pop their naked bodies out of their turtlenecks. Just pause for a second and consider who and what you’re touching when you hit that “Post” button.

Okay? Okay.

“Ain’t So Easy” – David & David

I’m sorry about your eye
I’ll find a way to make amends
it’s only that sometimes
I have to break before I bend

Ain’t So Easy uses brilliantly observant, fucked-up words to compress the breadth of a man’s abuse of a woman —the violence, the stunted demi-apologies, the minimization, the conflation of love and possession, and the steadily escalating threats— into just under five minutes of song, pairing those darkly persuading, persuasive lyrics with an almost disturbingly upbeat ’80s folk-pop sound.

Which is the beauty of the thing; the Davids (Baerwald and Ricketts) made Ain’t So Easy as deceptively seductive as its subject. They tempt you to hum along, focus on the chorus, buy into the romantic hyperbole, and essentially… look the other way. Only when you begin to pay attention does the song smack you in the face with your own cheerful complicity.

Put that suitcase down
leave it for another day
stop this foolin’ around
I could never let you get away

i just want to be tied over a table and fucked by anyone walking by, or kept captive and fucked brutally whenever his friends want. I need someone to tell me to take his cock, i want someone who will shove it in my ass without asking, i want someone who will make me eat his ass, i want someone who will throw me against walls, i want someone who will push me down and rape me on the floor, i want someone who will gag me and tie me so i cant move and let me struggle and scream while i get pounded.

If that’s really what you want, why aren’t you out experiencing it?

It’s not as if you have to actually do anything to be violated; Men, Inc. is busy every day, cranking out swaggering, staggering monsters to stalk your nightmares and/or Facebook. Like Archer Daniels Midland in your food-chain, Men, Inc. is everywhere in your life, from birth to death. No matter where you are, there’s a representative available at a moment’s notice to peel back civilization’s thin veneer and show you the splinters and rot in his humanity, even as he carves his name deeply into your own.

That you’re not already availing yourself of this free, ubiquitous, and occasionally, unexpectedly mandatory service suggests that you want more than you’re telling.