SPFPP 268: I'm Finally Settling Down

This was venting. I didn't realize how much I needed that at all. This isn't a podcast about herpes so if you're looking for that here, I encourage you to check out some other episodes.

I was struggling with podcaster's writer's block and this episode may have been precisely what I needed to break through that. I talk about NOT talking about racism, the dehumanization of being a man, the "forward" response, challenging triggers/traumas using our elders' wisdom/experiences, and I realize why I don't quite fit in to a lot of spaces I occupy. I think this is the first time I've been truly honest and vulnerable with the SPFPP audience.

Episode 268 Transcript

Writer's Block and Shifting Ideologies

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: Hey y'all, I got writer's block. Whatever the equivalent of that is for running an organization, whatever that is in podcasting, I got that s***. I'mma be completely honest with you. For the last… since November. So today is December 31st. It's New Year's Eve. Um I will say since November 5th has probably been- it's probably when I've been noticing the struggle of just being able to be real. Um, I've seen how Andrew Tate got quote cancelled uh for saying things that were just completely twisted in the media and then you know that didn't really affect him. Like he came out of it uncancelled and then over the last couple of days uh he's been detained for human trafficking allegations or something like that. I don't know. But these kinds of things, like I ain't going to lie to you, it scares me. Um, and after having been in Portland, Oregon for a little bit over a year, you know, I've also recognized that my views have changed a little bit or I've just become more aware of them.

00:02:10 Courtney Brame: And I can honestly say like I think that I'm probably a little bit more conservative than I am liberal uh in a sense of some ideologies and the way that things are done uh and aren't done. And so like I'm even finding that I've been like dancing around saying s*** like that. Um, I've been dancing around just the fact that my style of kink and BDSM. Like, while I like to engage in that community, I like to witness it. I like to support it. And there are things that I enjoy doing, but at the core of it all, like I just like to f***. And a lot of the kink stuff to me is just like, whoa, you know, I don't think I can do that. Like, good for you, but I don't think that's for me. And damn, it kind of feels good to be able to say that out loud. Um, I've not had people disagree with me over the last six years that I've been running Something Positive for Positive People.

Berlin, Disconnecting, and the Forward Trauma Response

00:03:09 Courtney Brame: And I've most recently been expressing more of my opinions and I'm finding that I am being disagreed with and that there are very great discussions that are coming out of that as well. I've been intentionally spending less time on social media ever since uh late October when I got back or mid-October when I got back from Berlin, Germany. That trip was really life-changing for me because I was so disconnected from everything that I was used to, including the sex education space, including a lot of the online connections that I've had and made and being able to just really be alone in an uncomfortable environment. like I reverted to survival. I can tell you my first week that I was in Berlin, I didn't notice getting a single erection. I did not get an erection while I was in Berlin. I was in survival mode. My flight, fight, freeze, fawn response is well… I don't have those responses anymore. I have what I call a forward response.

00:04:15 Courtney Brame: Uh I'm self-aware enough to know when I'm alarmed. I don't like to say triggered because triggered implies a sense of helplessness. But when I'm alarmed and bells and whistles are going off in my head, I know what that means and I get to consciously decide, okay, this is what that is. This is the energy behind it and I'm going to move forward with it. So being in Berlin uh in a whole another country even going was something that was uh activating for me and I chose to move forward and even being there like I had to stay in that forward response and what that is metaphorically to me is um how we respond to trauma. So, I was in a triggered state and decided to continue to go through uh being in that triggered state and use that um that sense of being triggered to go. Like I just was, it was on go. Everything was on go. And when we're triggered, I think we sort of revert back to this sense of survival.

00:05:14 Courtney Brame: And that's what it was for me. I think at the core of everything, no matter who you are, what you believe in, your orientation, what you like doing, in extreme cases of survival, we always revert back to our nature. And every human being at their core wants their nature to be nurtured. So this means having that sense of identity validation. Who you are at your core, you want that to be nurtured. And in order for that to happen, it has to be seen. And in order for that to be seen, you have to be willing to accept and go into there uh into discovering what that is for you and then being able to put it out there. Um and that was what this process was for me. It was a metamorphosis. It was a cocooning going into myself because that was all I had. fortunate that one of my college teammates was out there. Uh that someone uh that I've done uh a relationship summit with lived out there.

00:06:14 Courtney Brame: I was able to meet up with her. Uh Loren HD who runs the YouTube channel. She was someone who I probably had one of the first conversations about um just my thought process changing and like the concept of privilege and oppression and victim mentality. um I got to sort of process this out loud with her and I'm very thankful for how she was such a safe space for me to verbalize these things especially to somebody who is in a similar space um being in the sex education sexual health uh communication space and I, I'll say this too like, I've not necessarily had my identity validated as a man in… I don't know, I really can't say. Probably since I played sports and being around other men, other young men who were developing into men, being around them and then uh playing sports like having a goal, having to accomplish something. You know, I see so much on the internet and I hear so much even just in conversations passing by just about men ain't s***, men are trash, blah blah blah.

Reflecting on Racism and Generational Trauma

00:07:25 Courtney Brame: And I never really realized how that affected me until one day uh it was actually in Berlin maybe um that I really noticed and where I like leaned into it. I noticed that I was not seeing a lot of things that were speaking positively about men. And uh there was a woman there who told me, "Haha, you're so funny." In her French accent, sexy ass. If you listen to this, hi. Um, but yeah, she told me I was funny and that lit me up. I can't tell you the last time I had just like a genuine compliment uh just on my character. I feel like walking around Portland, like people always ask me, especially Black people. Oh, how do you like Portland? Or what you think of Portland so far? No, it's not especially Black people. It's everybody. Everybody who asked me what I think of Portland? Um, like I would say I come from St. Missouri and racism, whatever you, however you want to label it, like it exists and it always is going to look different.

00:08:29 Courtney Brame: Do I feel like a victim of racism? No. The most racist thing that I've ever experienced happened when I was probably seven, eight, nine years old. I remember I went fishing with my dad. My dad's 18 years older than me. Um, so he was in his mid-20’s when we went to the January W Bash Park in St. Louis, Missouri off of North Florison or New Florison Road. It's in Florison. And um we were going fishing. We had the buckets. We had the fishing poles. We had the bait. And we had this amazing spot. My dad always got up early. And I I'd always be up early, too. I had my alarm set ready to go. I saw my dad on weekends mostly because I live with my mother and my grandfather. So, we go fishing. We go to this uh… is it a pond or a lake?

00:09:16 Courtney Brame: I don't know that it was a lake, but uh we're at this pond. We're at this thing, whatever it is. And uh we find this little spot under a tree. This is apparently where bass will be at. We throw our lines in the water. We're starting to set up and then there's these rocks being splashing in the pool. And so we look over to where rocks are coming from and there's this little white kid. Little white kid was younger than me. I could have f***** him up. And he's skipping rocks and throwing them where we are. We look over and I remember this old fat white man just like sitting under the tree just watching his kid do this. And my dad, he looks over at me. He goes, "Come on, son. Let's go." And it was like a very disappointed humbug. Come on, son. Let's go. And we start packing up our s***.

00:09:58 Courtney Brame: And I don't understand what's going on. But then this little white kid is like, "Yeah, you better get out of here, you f****** n******." Dad doesn't say anything. And I don't think at this point I really knew the depth of what that meant. But I remember like my dad just had this defeated look on him. I'm like my dad could whoop the s*** out of his dad. I could beat the s*** out of this kid. Like why won't we do this? And we packed up and we left. This was again when I was seven, eight years old. I'm 34 now. I had this conversation with my father um when I was back home in November. So mid November I sat down my dad I was like hey do you remember this situation I explained it to him and he he can't remember and it makes me wonder I'm like damn you know like how racist was stuff happening around you know him in his years to where this super significant thing in my childhood that I remember is so like that was the most prevalent racist experience that I've ever had you know um another one was getting pulled over and matching the description, but the cop let me off.

00:11:05 Courtney Brame: You know, I don't think people are inherently bad, you know. Um, and cops, too. Like, I have friends that are cops. And I think that for myself, like people who yell racism have not experienced racism. Like, they just haven't or they've experienced it secondhandedly. And what I mean by secondhandedly is probably not even accurate. I'd say tertiarily. So, you might know somebody who knows somebody who saw something on social media and that's what they think all experiences are. My experience as a Black man living in Portland is uh not even… I won't even say that. I'll get back to what it's like being in Portland for myself, but on the internet I remember um I posted this uh a tweet that I made. I was like, I'm unsubscribing from all men trash content. If I see it, I'm just unfollowing you. I realized that when I was in Germany and I didn't have this social media like flooding into my face, I was very present.

Unsubscribing from the Echo Chamber

00:12:08 Courtney Brame: I took off my social media um unless I was on Wi-Fi. So, I was out and about for the majority of the time that I was there. And even when I was out or like in the clubs, you can't have your phone. They'll put a sticker over your camera or they'll take your phone completely. And I really enjoyed this because it allowed me to practice being present, especially in a room with other people who are also practicing being present. So, I'm skipping around a little bit, but when I found myself not exposed to the content that I was normally exposed to, um I think my algorithm sort of switched. And I believe that it switched after um Andrew Tate's uh messaging had exploded and gotten big. And I started to see more people talking about men in a positive perspective. Uh I think it's called Yeah, it is. It is called Manosphere, Red Pill, whatever. And when I started seeing those things, I was like this person cares about me.

00:13:07 Courtney Brame: Like they see me and it felt good. And then I asked myself, I was like, "All right, if this feels good, what the f*** have I been listening to all this time? Like, how do I feel outside of what I'm watching here?" So, when I did go back to scrolling my news feeds, I would see s*** like um men jokes, like penis shaming comments or size shaming, uh talking about how useless men are. Um, and we don't need men for s***. I don't even know, man. I started seeing that stuff and then I started to see more um people in their stories. There was one girl in particular who I unfollowed and I thought that this was interesting too. She really talked down about how her dating experience was and she like was on a dating site but didn't want to talk to anybody. She matched with this dude that she liked and he was uh cool. He was interesting and they were messaging for a bit and he was trying to meet up and she was so annoyed that he was trying to meet up and the way that she talked about him was just so disrespectful and I was like, "Yo, this dude likes you and here you are just s******* on him for pursuing you. Unsubscribe." So,

00:14:23 Courtney Brame: I unfollowed her and not too long after making the post, um she was actually one of the people who commented on I gave myself some space because I wanted to see how I was going to deal with some of the b******* that was in my comments. They were like, "Well, you need to take accountability because men blah blah blah." And it's very elitist and misogynistic. All these f****** words just being thrown at me for s*** that I'm not even doing. Like, I'm telling you, I am taking care of my mental health. I'm doing this for me. This is what I need and I'm doing it. And it just got so s*** on and disrespected. I even had someone who she decided that she was non-binary this day because I'd been talking to her using very gendered language for I don't know how long. And this day when I was like, "Oh yeah, you know, I get back to you name girl because this is just how I talk." And then she goes or they go,

00:15:16 Courtney Brame: "Well, actually, I'm feeling more non-binary today." And that I don't know why this infuriates me so much. I kind of do, but that's an aside conversation. And so this person just began sending me articles and links and education because they majored in or took a gender class or some s*** like that. And we're like, here's the harm behind uh unsubscribing from the men are trash content. I was like, yo, we can't even have a civil conversation based on the rapport that we've built with one another. Like we have been, we've developed what I thought was a friendship. Yes, it was virtual, but like I thought that, you know, we could genuinely talk to each other, you know, but that was one of the things too that just made me realize how easily and how uh how easy it is to enable yourself to be taken advantage of and used because whenever there was a problem, whenever this person had issues with men or uh disclosing or they needed some advice, I was where they would come to.

00:16:15 Courtney Brame: And it was like more of a venting session. The things that they would want to say to the men that caused them harm were being said to me. And I recognized, oh, this is a pattern. This is a pattern of mine. So that had to go too. Like I had this controversy of me just sharing this is a thing that's happening. Here's how I'm taking care of myself. and to receive like how it's not okay for you, Courtney, to take care of yourself. You actually need to just uh the equivalent of the LeBron James issue that came out with the news anchor. LeBron was speaking on something and she was like, "Just shut up and dribble. Shut up and play basketball." It was like I was getting, you know, there was an attempt to gang up on me and be like, "Courtney, shut up and talk about herpes." No. And so I did feel a little bit bad that this connection was just gone, but I was like, "Yo, uh, that's not my responsibility." So this person asked that I delete them.

00:17:20 Courtney Brame: Um, so I went on ahead and deleted them and um I guess they blocked me. I don't know. I forgot their uh Instagram handle, but anyway. No, I didn't. I remember it now that I just said that out loud. But um this bit of controversy for me like really made me see just how like how numb I was like how numb I was to the content like the man are trash man ain't s*** content from people um and myself included like I think that I fed into that s*** for a while too. Um, I might have shared something that was more shaming than I even thought it was. But it's not that the positive men's content made me feel so good, it made me recognize how the content that I was consuming on a regular basis just made me feel bad. It's that I had become so numb to it. I didn't even realize I was feeling anything at all. Like, how do you do that?

Challenging the Narrative and Embracing Reality

00:18:19 Courtney Brame: How do you go from, you know, just at what point do you do something or speak out against uh just the I don't even know what to call it. I'm sure there's a word for it, but just like the way that people talk s*** on the patriarchy and the way that they're like men period, you know, not these structures that are in place that on one hand enable for society to function as it does, but on the other hand may be crippling to some people. But I I just don't like this idea of people looking at me because I'm a Black man and immediately thinking I'm a victim or oppressed. Are there opportunities that are out there that I wish I could have or that I know I could have if I was white? Yeah. But also, I don't know that I would have developed the resilience that I've had because I'll tell you this, I'm the only Black man in the space that I occupy. And I think that I've been able to be as consistent and disciplined as I have been because of my background, because of the resilience that I had to build growing up, because of that racist encounter with that kid.

00:19:34 Courtney Brame: Like that was probably one of the more extreme situations than any of any racism that people my age have experienced. You know, unless somebody I remember my dad um I've been talking to my family a lot more about their past and their experiences throughout life. My great grandmother, she saw some s***. My great grandma almost lost her life, y'all, for whooping this white boy. Like, she gave him a whooping. She was an adult. He was a kid. She whooped this white boy for um hitting some other, it was another Black kid. And the white father came out and was like, "Did you whoop my kid?" She was like, "Yes, I did." And that was it. She would have been rationally f****** uh whipped. And in these days, Lynch, my grandmother is about to be she turns 90 on January 11th. And like I'm, I'm collecting this wisdom from my family because reading and seeing all these social media posts about transgener transgenerational trauma got me curious.

Digging into Family History: Scarcity and Sacrifice

00:20:37 Courtney Brame: Like I got curious. I want to know what patterns do I have that perhaps my elders and my family have passed down to me? How did they deal with it? Are they even aware of them? And that gives me sort of a starting point for myself to identify what it is that is like what my work is, what it is that I need to work on, what I need to work through, what I need to heal. And um speaking to her, it it it's really phenomenal because I was able to make a connection. And the connection that I made was that uh for example I'm I'm I'm doing this I'm I'm skipping around and I don't like that I'm doing this. Uh but this is probably the most motivated that I've been to record in a while. So I just want to go ahead and ride this wave while I'm on it. Um, my father puts floors in and he's damn good at it. He's put floors in since I was a kid.

00:21:38 Courtney Brame: I've learned so much about hard work from him. And my dad very early on, like uh I I was a summer apprentice for putting floors in when I was 16, 17 years old. And um when I'd come home or no, I cuz I stayed at school uh when I was in college cuz I wanted to work out for football. Before I went to college, I was a summer apprentice making $16 an hour. Uh, and I got to work with him. So, we're putting floors in and like I remember I saw the men who were dressed nicer. I was like, "Hey, what do they do?" I'm like, "Oh, that's a journeyman." Like, those people are not journeymen. Um, I don't know what their titles were, but whatever they were, they sold. They might have just been the salesman. So, they were there just to make sure that m************ like me and my dad were constantly working, like carrying heavy s*** on our knees, mixing up uh fluid, using tools, showing up on time.

00:22:41 Courtney Brame: And I found out how much they made. I was like, "Yo, why? What? Like, they make more money than the people who were doing the work." I was like, "That's what I need to be aiming towards." And I think that was my last summer putting floors in. But my dad, excuse me, my dad at 52 years old today um is still putting floors in. He's still working as a journeyman as a floor layer contractor uh and he's got a retirement pension coming up and all of that. So I sat down with my father and my brothers and we did a recording just conversation. I want to be able to pass down. Also, I realized that um in the sex positivity space, like I recognized that uh I hit this point where I thought that, oh, I can't have kids because kids are expensive. I don't make near enough money to be able to support a family. And that for me, like I've always wanted a big family.

00:23:38 Courtney Brame: My family is huge, but it's very separated. And like I've got family in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, uh mostly in the south. Um, but I think the closest people to me are all in St. Louis. And I'm the oldest of five, but I'm technically an older child. Uh, only child. I am my parents' only child together, but I have three younger brothers and a younger sister. I'm the oldest. So, this um realization that I do want a family. Like I want to remember at one point I wanted five kids. I don't know how realistic that is now. But I also know that like my mom had me on whatever is less than minimum wage. And I look at how I turned out. Like my dad and my stepmother had my two younger brothers and they made it to, you know, they're almost 30, right? So who's to say that I can't raise kids.

00:24:35 Courtney Brame: I let the social media have input this intuitive artificial intuition inside of me and disengaging from it allowed for me to really connect with what it is that I want. And I recognize just how under the influence I am or have been because I still utilize social media. So I'm therefore still being influenced. And I think about how we've gone from witnessing celebrities being celebrities and being influential people and there were just a few opinions that you had to follow to now there being influencers like influencers as a much more broad statement and unfortunately these are the things that people are striving towards. Um for myself I didn't think that I'd be any sort of educator influencer. I damn sure didn't think I'd be uh someone by someone living with herpes at age 34 with no kids. Like my dad had a 17 year old when he was 34 years old. I can't imagine looking over and seeing like a little version of myself.

00:25:38 Courtney Brame: Not only did my dad have a 17 year old, but he also had a 13 year old, a 12 year old. My mom had a 17 year old and then how was my little sister? Eight years. Wow. A 26 year old and uh a Hold on. I'm mixing up my math. When I was 17, my mom had a nine-year-old and a four-year-old. I cannot imagine. I can't imagine that. I can't imagine doing what I do right now. And you know, also having children, but that's the problem. I can't imagine it because social media has taken the internet and has taken so much of my own energy, my own creative power, and just allowed for it to leak out of me without me even knowing. It's a space for creativity. You are either producing or you are consuming. You're consuming the creativity of others. And that's even arguable because creativity is artificial.

The Algorithm as the "New God" and Seeking Real Connection

00:26:39 Courtney Brame: It's the algorithm. The algorithm is sort of like an artificial god. We praise it. We tell it what we like, what we want, and it gives us more of that. And then it quote inspires us to do these dumbass Tik Tok dances and challenges. If you can't tell, I don't like Tik Tok. I don't like making reels. I don't like making Tik Tok videos, but there is something rewarding out of it when I do it and it's executed and the dopamine hits that you get from people liking it or viewing it or commenting on it or sharing it and getting that engagement, those are the things that are sort of like the the cheese at the end of the maze for the rat to go through. And that's what I feel like like I feel like exhausted afterwards because it's also not nearly as reciprocal as hosting this podcast is like this environment that I have for podcasting being able to um just freely speak here and stumble through ramble jump around in my explanations like I'm able to connect with people who resonate with these things and the environment itself is reciprocal because of the connection.

00:27:48 Courtney Brame: there. I don't think that social media gives me that and honestly like I've been way less involved in it and I feel that I do have a lot more energy in my personal life. I have been investing more in making my own personal friendships. I try I'm in the process of getting a new website built for myself and starting another business and also like I've really settled down which was supposed to be what I was talking about settling down but um I ended up here we are 27 minutes into the And I haven't even gotten on that. But uh wrapping up what I was trying to say about my dad is uh he talked about when we were doing our recording, he had made a mention. He was like, "Yeah, you know, um he has a pension. his pension's coming up and might uh he'll be able to retire in I don't know how many years but my brother asked him he was like hey why didn't you ever just go off and start your own business and my dad was talking about his pension he was like yeah you know I work for the union and I want to get my pension I want to get my retirement and my dad's very intelligent and I watched him for the first time again my dad taught me everything I know or knew about putting in floors And I remember him being like he used

00:29:09 Courtney Brame: to talk about it. He used to talk about starting a business and he never did. And my younger brother who is working to do that himself uh he asked me like every time I come to you for advice like you don't help me like you you kind of just go off on these tangents. And I sat and I just watched what was happening and then it turned into a fight. Like that turned into a whole argument. But that's what that just taught me. I think that maybe my dad's a little bit disappointed that he didn't start his own business and my brother's also disappointed in him for not starting his business because maybe he thinks that he would have had a different quality of life as well. But um when I asked my dad uh one of the questions that I asked him early on in the interview was um my grandmother uh his mom my dad's mom passed away when I was 11 and her funeral was on the 12th birthday and the anniversary of that would have come by would have been like the 22 year anniversary.

00:30:13 Courtney Brame: Like damn man my grandma has been dead for 22 years. The 22nd anniversary of that date had just passed. And I was like, "Hey, you know, do you remember, you know, grandma? Tell me about your most fondest memory of grandma." And so we were talking about that. He talked about just growing up. And he talked about living with his grandmother who was the mother of my grandmother. Um, and he spoke about how there was this incentive uh for there not being a Black man in the house. there was um if the woman was pregnant and this is still going on today. I don't know if it's as extreme, but a social worker would come by and visit and look to see if there were any big shoes or big jackets, big clothes anywhere just to find out if a man was living there. And if the man wasn't living there, then the women who were in the house who had kids would get whatever that check was.

00:31:09 Courtney Brame: And him saying that and then when asked about the business, how he mentioned his pension, his pension, working for that pension made me remember a time for myself, um I get food stamps here in Oregon. That's not going to happen much longer because I just got another job. So I guess depending on what those hours look like, that'll be taken away. Yay. Um and when I was talking to the lady on the phone, I was letting her know like, "All right, here's how much money I make. Uh and here's the situation." Like sometimes there are moments where I will make a lot of money but that is not consistent with my job in teaching medical students how to give a genital exam. That job pays really really well. However, there are very few hours. So she's like oh you know if it's just a one-off here and there don't worry about it. I was like yes. She slipped up and told me the amount of money that I would need to make in order to no longer qualify for food stamps.

00:32:02 Courtney Brame: And when she told me that I had this thought to myself. I was like, "Oh, cool. As long as I don't make too much money, then I'll be able to continue to get this $250 a month for food stamps." And after I thought that, I said, "What the f***? I'm going to intentionally let myself not make more money in order to continue to get $250." Like, what kind of sense does that make? It doesn't make any sense. I was like, where the f*** did that thought come from? And that thought happened before I spoke to my dad, before I spoke to my great-grandmother, and I got to put it all together. So, I'm the one who challenged the thought. My dad was thinking for himself because he also mentioned how much money he would be able to charge for something like putting in a bathroom if he were to work for himself. He said something like, "Oh yeah, you know these contractors, they can charge like eight, he said eight grand for or nine grand, eight or nine grand for putting in a bathroom and I charge 800 for it." I was like,

00:33:06 Courtney Brame: "n****you proud of that, right?" Like, wait, what? So, how much is your pension to where you're missing out on,00% profit or you would miss out on,00% profit if you were to do that, you know? And even if he was to do that like for himself, he'd probably have more money to himself than he would um just working as a contractor. But it was between that thought like he chose to continue to go the safe route and work the safe route um rather than run the risk of losing his retirement or his uh pension. And I got to see where that started for him. And where that started for him was when he was um seeing the social worker come by and he saw it in his aunts and um uh his aunts, the women around him, basically him growing up. He got to see that like it was rather than going to get a job or trying to do better any kind of education, it was I'mma have these kids and I'mma get more money from the government as I keep having these kids.

Breaking the Cycle of Scarcity

00:34:19 Courtney Brame: And I was just like, wow. I was able to trace this s*** back that far to actually be able to say to myself, "This isn't mine." This thought process, the whole thing with the food stamps, that's not mine. the whole thing with the scarcity mindset like that's the core of it. The core of it is this sense of scarcity. It's this sense of um if I do more then I'm giving up my sense of safety and security and I don't value that. I again packed up and moved to Portland, Oregon. I moved here a year and two months ago now, and I did this for the possibility of getting a grant, a $10,000 grant for me to run my podcast. And I'm so glad that it worked out. I'm very fortunate that it worked out and I'm thankful to everybody who made that happen. um the Oregon Health Authority for giving me that $10,000 as well as the uh jobs that I've gotten, the people who made the connections for me in order to get these jobs so that I can support myself while pursuing my passion.

00:35:31 Courtney Brame: And I'm super super grateful for that. So, while I'm back in Portland, I think I wrapped up the story about my uh dad that I wanted to tell. Um, the racism piece, it feels very much like there's a sense of performative allyship. Like tying this back into the story that I was telling about when I said, you know, I'm unsubscribing from men or trash content. taking it back to that person who I fell off with and the person that I unfollowed. It was almost like, you know, they were this person trying to tell on me. They started tagging other women who have herpes, I guess, who are in the space. Like they wanted me, they wanted them to come check me or something. Like first off, what? Like what do you call the herpes police on me because I'm not talking about herpes? like the second I get out of line, like how racist is that, right?

00:36:30 Courtney Brame: But I didn't go there. I just let this person say what they had to say, say what they wanted to say. And I mean, sometimes that's just what people need. Uh they feel a sense of powerlessness within themselves and they have to exert that power onto somebody else. And that was sort of a thing that I was alluding to as well. Um because people were like, we're this is how we take our power back. And I was like, yo, there's a big difference between taking your power back and then having your power misplaced. Myself, as an example, the consumption of social media consistently or the consumption of internet content. Um, that consumption has allowed for me to just leak my energy. Like I'm picturing a waffle ball um where there's holes in it, you know, and I'm carrying the energy and it's just these slow leaks. Um, now the wolf ball holes are really big. I don't have a better analogy than that.

Plugging the Holes: Limiting Social Media Consumption

00:37:22 Courtney Brame: Or like a tire, you know, I got four tires on a car, right? And let's just say each tire has a slow leak. You won't notice the leak until the light comes on or until you hear that sound like if you have a nail in your tire, you'll hear it. It'll sound like you drive because it'll just make that noise. And if you're not sitting down and in tune enough to notice the nail in the tire or that there's a slow leak, you'll miss it until it's too late. Fortunately for me, I've been practicing yoga. I've been making more time for myself. I've been journaling. When I was in Germany, I didn't have any distractions. So, I was able to recognize the slow leak of uh my energy leaking out of me. And so plugging those holes for me looks like I now only utilize social media if I'm on my laptop or if I'm connected to Wi-Fi. Whenever I'm out and about, I'll um I have to I have it to where I don't get any notifications on this phone.

00:38:17 Courtney Brame: I deleted the apps off of the phone that I use uh for my day-to-day life for texting, calls, and things like that. But the phone that I record podcasts on, that's the one that has a social media app so that I can upload everything. And if I am just at home and on Wi-Fi, then like that's when I'll browse around on social media, right? So that's my um I forgot where that started. Oh, the um the racism thing. It seems like it's very performative. Um I would say performative allyship is probably a very key phrasing of it. Um, like I don't like going to places and I see like the Black Lives Matter sign. Like, okay, do you understand what you're really supporting? Like, how much do you know about Black Lives Matter? Like, do you know the cause that you're supporting? Like, I think that people are just spouting buzzwords and things that are trendy for the sake of maybe finding community, but ultimately what I see is that's a sign that says, "Hey, Black people, come spend your money here. because we put this sign up.

00:39:25 Courtney Brame: It's like the equivalent of when something happens, when a Black man's murdered by a cop, you know, everyone is on board with, "Oh, we need to do something for Black people. Support these Black people. I'm going to click this share button. I'm going to type something and then hit send." And then ah, yeah, dopamine. Like I did something. I feel like I accomplished something. That was my part. I did my part. And then that took like 10 seconds. You hit the share button from somebody, you follow. Or not even follow. Like someone did that to me and they didn't follow me. They didn't know what my content was about. They were just like, "Support this Black man when George Floyd was murdered." And that didn't feel good to me. It felt like that's how you see me. You see me the same way that you see George Floyd.

00:40:14 Courtney Brame: You see me the same way that you see um another Black man of completely different experience. It's like you don't see me for my character. And that's kind of how I felt when I was attacked by these I'm not going to say attack when I was when these people came at me on my social media for that. I'm not condoning men or trash content. I'm just unsubscribing from it because it was like, "How dare you take care of your mental health? You're a perpetrator." It's like, "No, I haven't. No, I'm not. I'm not." And we're gonna leave it at that. So, as far as the performative allyship, performative activism goes, like the anti-racist stuff, like it feels to me as if people have seen an opportunity to profit off of something and that's what they're doing. Like, now I think about these authors of anti-racist stuff and like the guilt and the shame. Like, I work with people like not being ashamed of themselves.

00:41:12 Courtney Brame: And so for me to see the shaming applied in different areas, like I see that s*** everywhere now. And it it it's it's terrible because you can't unsee it. Once you see s*** and you acknowledge it and recognize what it is, you can't unsee it. And I see it applied to so many different things. I see it applied to gender politics. I see it applied to um LGBT issues. I see it applied to Black issues. I see it applied now to like feminism and men versus women issues and like what it's not even men versus women. I think it's more Black men, Black women division than it is anything else. Whole another conversation. But coming into recognizing what this s*** is, man, and seeing things so objectively, like I recognize that I'm catching myself like trying to I can't believe it's already been 41 minutes. Like me this needed to come out apparently. Uh because I still haven't even gotten to the point that I wanted to make for the whole podcast episode.

Dealing with "Writer's Block" and the Desire for Authenticity

00:42:17 Courtney Brame: But it it feels so good to be able to just say this s***. And I gotta say it like it does. It really feels good for me to just have this space created for me where I feel safe enough to say whatever it is that I'm saying. And you know, if I got to experience cancellation or if people decide they don't f*** with me anymore, all right, cool. But like I as I've tried to um write the book um I'm writing a book, Something Positive for Positive People that essentially condenses a podcast down into an audio format of just a few hours because here we've got almost 300 hours of content. Like if every episode's an hour, 300 hours of content, nobody should have to dig through all of that. So, I've taken the more important and useful points that were made and I'm putting it into an audio book. If it goes into publication after that or whatever, yay, cool. But the big deal for me right now is um getting that book out.

00:43:23 Courtney Brame: So, um, yeah, I've had this writer's block and I've had all of these personal experiences and I really struggled with sharing my own personal experience because a lot of it is talking like this. I say s***. I say f***. I say, "n**** I'm Black. I'm I'm all these things like, and I don't care to be seen, you know, for, oh, Courtney's a Black man in this space doing this." Like, I don't, I don't like that. Like, why can't you just talk about what I'm doing or, you know, describe who I am, my character? Like, why does it default have to be that I'm a man, that I'm Black, or why does it have to be that, you know, oh well, do the issues support LGBT issues? Like, does he support Black issues? No. This is a herpes issue. It's been a sex issue. It's been a sexual health issue. And while this at its core expands into all of these different intersections, like speak to that.

00:44:29 Courtney Brame: And I think that that's probably why I feel as isolated or as lonely in this space as I am because so much of this is about these marginalizations. And I don't f****** feel marginalized. I don't feel like a victim. Like I'm able to if I need a job, I can get a job. If I need work, I can work. If I need money, I can go make money. If I need a thing, we live in the best time possible for me to go out and get that thing. I can get on the internet and Google whatever it is that I need to figure out how to do. I can learn anything in a few hours, a few videos, YouTube videos. I needed to jump a car and I couldn't remember for the life of me which car uh which the order in which to attach the cables to jump a car. and I was able to just f****** YouTube it and it took me three minutes and I was able to do that.

00:45:23 Courtney Brame: Like we can learn and do anything. So don't please don't look at me and think I'm a victim or I'm oppressed because you looked at another Black person because that's racist. If you see this Black person who's struggling and having this uh these issues, whatever, it's not always because they're a victim or they're oppressed. It's because of the way that they made decisions. Maybe their family didn't set them up the way uh for success the way that they did. And even for me, like I wasn't really, my family didn't know what to do with me after college. They told me to stay in school, don't get killed, and keep my hair cut low. And that's probably why I'm growing my s*** out now is because that was one of the things that was a survival thing. It was a survival thing. My family didn't want me to have long hair. My s*** used to be cut. I used to hate looking like I was bald.

00:46:09 Courtney Brame: My dad's bald. I like my hair. And that was a thing that so like if I was oppressed in any way like my parents oppressed me from having long hair I'm I'm I'm being an a****** when I say that but like this needed to come out I guess like all of this needed to come out. Um but no please stop doing that. Stop looking at people and comparing them to you know the tertiary experience that you've had through social media. If you hear somebody's like, "Oh yeah, Black people are oppressed." Don't f****** look at me and pity me because that's not the case. That's not the case. And I work too f****** hard. I bust my ass way too much on a regular basis to stay consistent, to remain disciplined, to be as transparent as I possibly can on this podcast, on this platform, and getting people to like practicing what I preach and trying to just keep serving people in the way that I do in a consistent way.

00:47:14 Courtney Brame: I work too hard for my f****** life, for my value, for my experiences to be devalued and diminished down to just another person who shares a similar skin complexion as me. Let's stop doing that to people. Let's stop doing that to each other. Morgan Freeman said the fastest way that we can get over racism is to just stop talking about it. Even something like that's become a profitable thing. You know, it's like people don't want to do hard jobs. People don't want to do what my dad does. I'm one of those people. I'm a person. Hey, I don't want to put floors in. I don't want to do manual labor. I don't want to go in sewers, hover over skyscrapers. I don't want to be around sharp objects and manufacturing and s*** like that. No, that's not what I want to do. And so I found a problem and I have explored where this problem is and decided that this is what I'm going to commit myself to.

Settling into Purpose and Grant Writing

00:48:16 Courtney Brame: So going into the settling down thing, like I am absolutely settling down. I'm settling into what I believe uh my role through Something Positive for Positive People supposed to be. And it's not even exclusively limited to that. Um, I am pursuing grant writing for myself. Like for the last three years, I've been trying to get funding. I've been trying to get enough donations to be able to just pay for people to get therapy. And I really had to sit and reflect on this because someone asked me, my friend AJ, I called him one day and I was like, "Man, I need advice." And I I very rarely do that s***. Like I feel that everything works itself out. Like I find myself in a position there's an opportunity. I take the opportunity and then it works out. I am f****** exhausted from waiting. I don't like waiting. I had to wait for the right time.

00:49:10 Courtney Brame: Wait for the right opportunity. And I don't want to do that. I want to choose because the way that I navigate my work life is the same way that I navigate relationships. Like I just kind of go with the flow. Like, oh, here's a new partner. Yay. That worked out. I don't have to do anything but wait. And the whole thing about patience, patience is a virtue, yes, but also so is assertiveness. Assertiveness is necessary, especially for myself as a man to be able to decide, all right, hey, I'm choosing this. This is what I'm choosing. Here's what I'm doing. If I need to reverse engineer the process of, okay, accomplishing my goal, what will I have needed to do to get there? What will I have needed to do to get to the point right before getting to that point? and then breaking it down so that I can take the steps.

00:49:56 Courtney Brame: And so I called my friend AJ. I was like, "Yo, I'm stuck. Here's where I'm at." Like I I one have things that I need to say and I don't feel prepared to deal with the consequences of those things. I didn't say it like this. Like it's much more concise after having like thought Look, speaking of D, he just texted me now. I keep getting notifications because I forgot to put my phone under do not disturb. But um that was what he told me. He was like, "What's your five years like, "Have you thought about what you need to do?" And even my therapist said this, she like, "What's your 10 year plan?" And I get such anxiety like just thinking about that s***. Like that's when I get activated and I I get triggered and I start having to think about this s*** and I'm more in a freeze state because I just don't know. Like it's hard for me to think about the future because I wasn't even supposed to be here statistically speaking.

Navigating the "Portland Experience" and Racism Realities

00:50:46 Courtney Brame: Uh going back to the uh tertiary intuitive uh or tertiary artificial intuition, how many songs Kanye West has on? We weren't supposed to make it past 25. Jokes on you, we still alive. Tupac said it. You know, we went. We ain't supposed to make it past 25. And that's what this f****** statistics say. And we ain't there anymore. Like that's just not where we are as a society. like that ain't what life is. Like the the whole slavery and racism, that s*** just looks different. It's evolved. It's developed. It's something that has self-perpetuated itself. And I think I can speak for all Black people when I can say I've seen more racism between us and among each other than I have from white people themselves. Like m************ will point out things that were racist by a white person that wouldn't even be on my radar. Hey, this m*********** didn't throw rocks in my pool and call me a f****** n***** and tell me to get out of here.

00:51:47 Courtney Brame: No, this person probably just was oblivious to a thing. And while that might cause harm to someone in a privileged position, that doesn't harm me. Like, all right, I'll just go do something else. And I don't think a lot of people don't think like that because they haven't had these experiences. And also, like I I recognize I don't speak about this s***. Like I've made so much of my existence the podcast about other people that I don't want to say I've forgotten my own experiences but I'm very much disconnected with or disconnected from uh being able to communicate about my experiences. U the racism piece included. So like I said I'm in Portland and I recognize the racism that I experience here is performative but I also see how it benefits me. Um I don't know how I do this. But, uh, I learned that like at my job, people of color get priority for bookings.

00:52:44 Courtney Brame: And I'mma be honest, like I ain't been there. I have been there for a year. Next month, I don't think that's fair to somebody who's been there for 20 years, 10 years, who's been doing this job way longer than me, who's probably way better at me. And in that sense, like, it feels like taking advantage. And that is a privilege. like that to me is what privilege represents. Uh, no, I can't say that because after the conversation with Loren, she gave me a much better understanding of privilege. But to me, what would I call this? I don't know what I would call this, but like I am given every opportunity, first priority opportunity because I'm also the only Black dude. So, we also have that. And I might be the only Black person. There's a guy there who speaks Spanish who's dark, but I don't. I don't know. I don't know if he's uh I don't know his ethnicity, but uh he's he's got a little bit of an accent.

00:53:44 Courtney Brame: So, I think I'm the only Black dude there. I'm the only Black person on the team. And so, like I get priority to work and I really don't think that's fair. But that's kind of what racism looks like. And I don't agree with that. like let the best people for the job get the job and then filter it by availability, you know, but that's again that's something that I benefit from and so Oh, I guess that would be a privilege. I don't know, man. This s***'s confusing. The wording of everything is just extremely confusing, but I'm here and I'm happy to be here and I'm here working. like being in Portland was probably the best thing for me because I did get to see uh like the extreme uh end of the spectrum of liberalism. Uh liberalism I guess like I hate using these like phrases and words but like an extreme openness to the point of apathy.

00:54:42 Courtney Brame: Like it seems like people genuinely don't give a f***. Uh Andrew Scho said this. He said uh Portland he hates Portland. Portland is the worst city in the world. and he said it's because it's like a city without God. And when he said that, I was listening to him explain why. I was like, damn, that's accurate. That's probably super accurate. And uh my my most recent podcast episode is called, you know, home is where the work is to be done. And you know, not to say that I'm doing the work of God necessarily, but there's definitely an uh this atmosphere for me. It enables me to get s*** done because I don't fit in. I don't fit in in the spaces I occupy on the internet. I left the herpes support groups because like I'm open about my status, but I'm in an environment where that, you know, that that's not where it's reciprocated. Um, I've left the men's group.

00:55:36 Courtney Brame: Like I tried to create a men's group. I tried to create Something Positive for Positive People. Herpes support group. I tried to create all this s*** and it just didn't do anything. Like people wouldn't show up. I started messaging people like I would make the post, hey, this time this day, nothing. And people join the group right away. And I think that that goes back to these little dopamine hits that we get feeling like we did something. People would join the group. I was like, all right, hey, let's introduce ourselves. Crickets. Hey, let's meet up. This place is time to stay. Crickets. Hey, what time works best for y'all? Crickets. All right, done with the group. But I did make a friend out of that. And um in our interaction, like we hung out uh twice.

00:56:13 Courtney Brame: So, we met up for lunch and uh then he followed me on social media and then when we met up again, he asked me something. He asked me something about uh like dating. And my response shook him up. I was like, "Yeah, you know, this is what you got to do. You know, this is how you go about the dating process." He's like, "I didn't expect that from you." And I guess it's because of how I show up on social media being completely different than what he would have expected from me in real life. And I recognize that there's been this um there's not been any separation between myself on social media and in real life except for what people see. And if you don't ask me my opinion, I don't give you my opinion. Um like I have very strong beliefs about things, but those strong beliefs don't dictate how I treat people or how I behave towards people who might uh have a conflicting belief to me.

Outro and the Unseen Future

00:57:06 Courtney Brame: And that's really what it's about, man. that again we all just want our nature nurtured and I'm looking to have my nature nurtured in a place that does not nurture my nature um especially being a heterosexual man um being Black creates other another element to that but the only reason that these things matter is because we make it matter like we do this labeling and s*** like that. So, all of this said, like getting to the core of it, like I'm learning the right grants because this is something that I want to do. I want to do this. I'm already doing what I want to do. Looking out to that five year, 10 year plan. My friend AJ, the advice that he gave me was just to figure that out. And I looked down and I wrote, you know, what would I be doing if I wasn't if nobody else cared? Like if no one's opinion mattered, what would I be doing? And I wrote down, I was like, I'll be traveling.

00:58:04 Courtney Brame: And I'd be cooking more of my own food. I'd still work out every day. I'd be reading, listening to audio books. Um, I'd be practicing yoga. And I, as I was writing this s*** down, I was like, "This is stuff I'm already f****** doing. I'm doing all of this stuff. I'm just not getting paid for it." And like the consultations, running the podcast, uh, talking to people about their experiences. Like, this stuff makes me feel connected to it. And I realized like ain't nobody coming to save me. Carl told me this a while ago. Carl Given, owner of Given 100. He said, "Ain't nobody gonna give you nothing." And you know, even with the nonprofit, it was arguable because like, well, people give money all the time, but there's an agenda behind it, of course. Like, it has to be connected to uh it has to be a win for them more so than it probably would be for me, which means compromising my values to some extent, I'm sure.

00:58:53 Courtney Brame: But nobody understands Something Positive for Positive People like me. So, I'm going through the process. I have a consultation look booked with Dr. Beverly Brown. I hope that's her name. If I just shouted her out and that was wrong, I apologize. But um I have a consultation booked with her to decide what's going to be the next route for me, the next best route for me. Because if I can learn how to write my own grant, then I'll be able to just continue to do this at no charge to anybody. When people are diagnosed with herpes, they find me, the resources are there, and I'm able to continue to interview people, take the information that they give me and uh make it into something that can be an intervention that aids STD prevention efforts because our lived experiences are things that everybody can learn from. I just need the time, the resources, and the money to be able to make that happen. So, I'm going through the process of figuring out what's next for me to just write my own grants and then I'll be able to just make this, you know, like y'all reach out to me.

00:59:53 Courtney Brame: Y'all ain't got to worry about paying anything. Y'all ain't got to worry about donating. Y'all ain't got to worry about liking, subscribing to the podcast, none of that s*** because it's going to be paid for because I went on ahead and I put the work in to look for the money that's out there and then make myself, you know, available to get it. It doesn't really mean much. Like, if I were to net $5,000 a month, I have a damn good quality of life. I have a good quality of life right now, but I wouldn't have to do as many things that are pulling myself in so many different directions. So, all that said, um I thank you for listening and bearing with me through my ramble. Um this is this is me. Like, this is more insight to who I am. Uh there's a fat life kink group for people who have herpes or date people and play with people who have herpes. If you want that, um hit me up. Link will be in the show notes. And uh yeah, um until next time, I told y'all I'm done saying stay sex positive because my mindset has shifted significantly. So, we'll figure that out.

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