This particular string of words is going to center on things done in the dark. This past week, which is the week before Thanksgiving, has been rife with piping hot celebrity tea and that tea happens to coincide with a couple of books I’ve been reading/listening to. Of course, this isn’t a celebrity gossip blog or a news blog. It is a blog about life…in a few words. And I read books and write my thoughts on them, and I write poetry and occasionally publish it. Here are the books I’m reading: Deep Throat Diva and Retribution, both are written by Cairo.
The Books
I read the first one years ago, but I decided to pick it up again because I forgot what happened in the book, and sometimes I read books like this when I need a quick reading win. I also like smut.
Without going into too much detail about these books, I’ll tell you the part that struck me the most and prompted this brain dump.
The main character, Pasha, loves sex. Her fiancé Jasper, is locked away in prison for several years, so Pasha decides to engage in extracurricular activities while Jasper is away. Eventually, Pasha learns that she did not cover her tracks as well as she thought she did, and her actions come back to haunt her. There is a point in the book where Pasha is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and tortured, all while she is pregnant with her and Jasper’s child. In the sequel, Retribution, Pasha plots revenge on everyone involved in her kidnapping.
Diddy and Other Celebrity Gossip
I’m a little late on this, but it happened so quickly that I couldn’t keep up. I admire the folks who put out blogs and videos about breaking news in a timely fashion. It’s why I decided that true journalism wasn’t for me. Those journalism classes I took in college taught me exactly the type of writer I don’t want to be, which is the writer who chases down stories.
Anyway, if you don’t know the story of Sean Puffy/Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy/Love Combs and the lawsuit, you can read it here.
In short, one of his former girlfriends filed a lawsuit against him because she alleged that he abused her throughout their relationship.
In other celebrity news, the private life of actress/singer/host/author Keke Palmer has been exposed courtesy of her abusive ex-boyfriend. Here’s another link in case you don’t know this story.
And then there’s actors/musicians/authors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith. At this point, I’m starting to feel a little bad for Will. He’s been catching hell for the last few years. In short, a so-called friend of theirs revealed an alleged affair between Will Smith and actor Duane Martin. You can read that story here.
Side note: I read Will’s memoir when he released it back in late 2021, but I never wrote a review of it. I’m currently listening to Jada’s because, why not? I’m not overly invested in either of them to seek out information about them on all the blogs and social media streets, but I like a good memoir. I’ll probably go back over Will’s memoir and write reviews of them both.
Tying it all together
Now that I’ve gotten all of that out of the way, here are my thoughts and how all these stories, plus the two books, tie together.
We never know what anybody is really doing behind closed doors. On the one hand, I feel like we should be able to live freely and do most of what we want, as long as we don’t injure others. However, I also wish more people would keep their personal business to themselves. With the advancement of the internet, it seems like that concept is a little too difficult to grasp nowadays. Even though I consume biographies and memoirs, I choose those and, in that case, I get what I get. That is totally different from casually scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, etc., and coming across a bunch of mess that I didn’t ask for.
Anyway, I got to the kidnapping part of Deep Throat Diva before all the recent celebrity gossip, and that sent me into a whirlwind of thoughts about people who have been through situations like that in real life but never told a soul. Pasha doesn’t tell anyone details about what happened to her until some things happen outside of her control. In real life, some folks go through some really traumatic stuff and never say anything, or they go years before they say anything to anyone. I can’t imagine, but I don’t judge either because I have been fortunate to have not experienced anything like that. I pray I never go through anything like that.
The author of Deep Throat Diva, Cairo, primarily writes erotica, or what some call street lit or hood books. One of the hallmarks of these types of books is that most of the characters or scenarios are outlandish, and they are meant to take you out of your real life into this fantasy life where everything seems so ridiculous yet entertaining. But is it ridiculous?
With the barrier to entry to publishing anything being practically nonexistent now, there are tons of videos, blogs, and podcasts detailing how shitty humans can be. During my childhood, we had daytime talk shows like Oprah, Ricki Lake, and Montell Williams and they would have so-called wild and crazy guests that made for good TV, but surely, no one actually lived like that, right?
In Retribution, Pasha is on a mission to find her kidnappers, but she doesn’t have much to go on because her captors were masked and she was blindfolded at various points. She puts together a few clues from memory, and she enlists the help of a very unlikely friend to bring down the people who hurt her. Her kidnappers wore masks while they raped and beat her. Then they released her and carried on with their lives like nothing happened. It got me to thinking: how many people have I encountered who would or have engaged in something like that, that would torture another human being for funsies?
Then, with the release of the recent celebrity tea that I mentioned earlier, it really got the wheels in my head turning. Celebrities are people; most of them are very rich people. According to a very lighthearted internet search, Diddy has a net worth of over $1 billion. That is an almost unfathomable amount of money. The average person in America will never see that type of money, even after a lifetime of working 40+ hours per week. While I don’t believe that all people in and above a certain tax bracket are all evil or unethical, many of them are.
I remember in a social psychology class I took some years ago, there was a discussion about something called the Stanford Prison Experiment. There’s been some controversy surrounding it over the years, but it showed something very important. It showed how ugly people can get when they feel they have a little bit of power and influence.
In the US and many other parts of the world, money equals power. Sometimes I wish I could run away and live off the land. I’m not the biggest fan of capitalism, but it has its place. In a society that is built on capitalism, the more money you have, the more options you have. And when you have $1 billion, you have 1 billion options. I mean, it took decades and an army of accusers to finally bring any type of justice to Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and R. Kelly. These men had enough money and influence to continue living their lives as normal before they finally had to face any sort of consequences for their actions.
In Deep Throat Diva, it is revealed who gave the order for Pasha’s kidnapping, so Retribution builds on that, as well. That brings me to my next point: people are power-hungry and easily influenced. Her kidnappers had so much desire to be in what they considered a position of power that they agreed to torture a woman who did nothing to them, but they did this at the request of somebody they felt had even more power than them. This is what happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment.
Going back to Diddy, if what was alleged was true, he did not act alone. There was an entire staff of people on his payroll, as well as other people in the industry, who witnessed and even participated in the abuse of this one woman. No man is an island, right? And this is such a high-profile case that a lot of people, especially the naysayers, can’t relate to it or imagine it even being real. It is still entertainment for them. But this shit happens to everyday people. And it is everyday people who do this to other everyday people. Traffickers are real. Rapists are real. Abusers are real.
It is a scary world out there. I don’t believe that everyone outside of my little bubble is out to get me. I do, however, believe that most folks don’t care about much outside of themselves and will do whatever makes them feel good in the moment, even if it is at the expense or torture of someone else.
I haven’t finished Retribution yet, but I already know it’s going to end on a cliffhanger because there’s a third book in the series. I doubt I’ll write an official review on these books. I’ve written a review for another one of Cairo’s books which you can read. It’s funny, I’m not exactly a fan of Cairo’s but I’ll continue to read his books just because they are easy and they pull me out of reading slumps. So, it doesn’t matter what my criticisms are because he still won because I read his books.
If you would like to read books by Cairo, you can check them out at your local library or you can find them on Everand (formerly Scribd) using my link if you don’t already have a subscription.
If you read this entire brain dump, I am extremely grateful.
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Life in a Few Words 