They drug me over to dinner the other night and we were sitting around afterwards watching the boys trying to tie cherry stems in knots with their tongues. It was a bit of a surreal and odd thing to be watching my teen son trying to master, and I was a bit put off by it, and Sus was attempting to tie 2 of them together herself when she said,"I cant get it to go in." I snickered and said,(not thinking of the mixed company)"Thats what she said" as the boys promptly spit their stems in guffaws of laughter and Sus's eyes widened in shock as her husband asked,'Just what does that mean?" Why do you say that?" I told him, its a pop culture reference and it can sexualize and make dirty pretty much any statement someone makes without thinking, and its also a delightfully dirty song. He just looked at me and said,'Ohh, do you really think that is appropriate around the kids?' Well, the boys already are well aware of that phrase and game and it goes well above Stevies ability to understand for now, so until she is able to understand the meaning, I think its okay. I have a fairly open line of communication with my kids in regards to sexuality, I think it helps to keep them from getting into trouble or things that are over their heads. At this point the boys bailed to go play video games, taking Stevie with them so the adults could debate, and I prepared to be interrogated about parenting.
I believe that having an open line of communication with my kids about most things, keeps them from being caught off guard and built up with false expectations about life. I try not to lie to them about the reality of our situation or build them up with false hope, because my parents did that to me when I was a kid, and by the time I figured out what they had done, it was too late to salvage the disaster. They had always told me,"You are going to college, you are going to be a famous photographer/artist, and you can go to the college you want to go to." They let me assume that they had been saving for it like many of my classmates parents had done, so when I applied for UCLA and UC Berkley and all the other great schools that I hoped to study my art at, I applied for a few scholarships, and financial aid, but I wasn't too heart broken when I was told that my parents made too much money and that I was the ,'Wrong minority", until it came time to pick a school and my parents told me that they could not afford to send me to any school out of state, in fact they could not afford to send me to a big in state school like Rice or UT Austin, and I would be real damn lucky if they could afford to send me to the crappy little liberal arts college up the road, in fact, they couldn't and if not for my uncle ponying up some bucks and me managing to get out of the meal plan, I would have never gotten to go to college with my peers. As it was, I got married at 19 to a guy who was in similar straits so we could both qualify as independent, and then I worked my ass off to be able to stay in school. I will never delude my kids the same way. They know they will have to work for their educations unless my book sells or we get really damn lucky, because their father will never financially amount to anything, and being medically retired out of my former career does not make me rich. I also talk very directly about sex and drugs and real life to my kids, because as a former cop, and as a family member of someone who had AIDS, I know the high cost of not communicating, but that doesn't mean that I talk to them about the entire world.
He seemed a bit annoyed that I am very accepting of homosexuality, and I called him on it and said that while there is only one or two passages in the bible that may or may not condemn homosexuality as a sin, there is a whole hell of a lot in the bible about forgiveness and loving ones neighbor, and to me in the whole grand scheme of things, I find things like people who hurt kids or commit atrocities in the name of God, a whole lot more deserving of my hate and damnation than people who cannot help that they love the same sex. I told him about the hell my cousin went through, living in West Texas, having to hear all the ,'Faggot jokes" from those around him, including family members, keeping what he thought was a big secret, until it festered inside him and caused him to drink and engage in unsafe behaviors in Houston, and he ended up HIV positive and a horrible alcoholic. He was a beautiful man, and the one member of that side of the family that actually,"Got" me, and I still laugh remembering him trying to talk me out of getting married to the boy I married so I could go to school. He even offered to take me to Houston with him, and to tell the truth, I wish I had gone, it would have been a hell of an adventure, and he might still be alive. When I was telling him this story, I explained to him that I would not risk my children's lives in that way, that I would make sure that they knew no matter who they loved, that they had my unconditional support and love, and even though I may tease my oldest son for his random comments about young actors making,'Cute chicks", that if he really was that way, then I would support him and I would still be his mom. He asked me,"have you been worried about him being gay?" and I was honest because I am not used to the casual attitude that kids have to the ambi-sexuality nowadays, but I told him that he has assured me he ,'REALLY LIKES GIRLS". I told him that so many of the young guys now days are," Pretty" that its really hard to fault kids for being so casual about things, because the more I see of some of the pictures and films of some of them recent popular actors and such, the clearer it is that there had been a bit of a shift from the masculine ideal of the macho, hairy, tough guy to the younger, sleeker, almost effeminate young men in the past few years, and luckily that is starting to change and facial hair is making a comeback as well as chest hair and a general manliness that will help to erase some of the confusion, but I told him that I really could not blame kids for being confused. Girls are way more sexually aggressive than they ever used to be, and that has left many boys wondering just what their place is in the entire grand scheme of things.
'Well that is the problem, you see the bible says that the woman should submit herself to man and when women stopped submitting, the structure of the family began to fall apart." OOOOOKAY, its "GO" time. Well, if there were men worthy of submitting to, then perhaps more women would have been willing to retain their status as second or third class citizens,but when you have men who are incapable of managing things without either cruelty or inefficiency, then it is the right of the woman to rise to the role of the dominant and take over to save herself and her family. I have had to deal with less than satisfactory men most of my entire life and that is why I reached a point early on when I said that I would never submit again. I have endured much, including beatings and attempts on my life, but,I.submit. to. no. one. I claimed my power a long time ago and I have yet to find someone worth sharing it with, so I stay alone, I answer to no one and I find its just easier to stay that way rather than try and find a man that is capable of following my rules. I think its best that we agree to disagree on this subject and drop it, but in order to stay connected to my kids lives, I follow whats popular, I pay attention to catch phrases and jokes and music and that way I know what is just silliness, and what is potentially dangerous, but I have an advantage,I taught in a High School , so that helped and I really suggest you do the same because you cannot shield them from it all, and its much better to know what they are thinking than to have them sneaking around and hiding all the weird stuff they are doing. My son didn't know I still was able to get into his computer and check his history and all that he had viewed, so just out of curiosity I checked up on him while he was gone. When I went into his history I found lots of music sites, lots of archived messages between him and his girlfriends in Texas, sites visited on physical training and workouts, a few videos from bands I dont much care for, skin care websites, and some gamer sites, but what I didn't find was porn or drug info or any other stuff that would have made me lose my mind. In fact, he had even quit downloading music from one site that I had blacklisted as a pirate site and forbade in my house as stealing. So, I guess I am doing something right.
I got up at this point and started getting ready to head back to my place and he was still wanting to discuss the whole,'Submission" concept with me, and I finally said, Look, I am a sinner, I have been a knowledgeable sinner since I was 16 years old. I could never atone fully for all that I have done in my life, and I spend my days just trying to ensure that my kids have a better life that I had and that I am able to prevent some of the darkness from shadowing them. I send them to church so that they might learn to submit to God, but its to late for me, I submit to nothing but the end and thats how its going to stand. I appreciate your efforts, but they are wasted on me, save my kids. With that, I thanked them for dinner and scooped up my daughter and headed home for the evening, hoping that he would let it drop, and so far he has.
My friendship with Sus has always been an odd one, she is very much a girly/girl and always has to have her hair done and makeup on and she dresses in heels or flip slops and jewelry and all kinds of girly crap that I could never carry off, and I am always in jeans and boots and either black or darker colors and rather tough looking clothes. She never had considered a tattoo until she met me, and now she is considering her second one, while I am on my 6th, soon to be 7th, and though mine have gotten a little less dark over the years that I have known her, they have moved into more visible areas, and with the one that I am going to be getting on my forearm, she has been waiting for me to find the right shop to get it done, but what she doesn't know is that I am going to ask her husband to finish up the drawing of it for me. He is a brilliant artist and though I have the perfect picture from the concert, my sock monkey drawing skills are not what that need to be and Stevie has been wanting to take over.Hopefully he will do it with just a minor amount of negotiation, I have yet to consider selling what is left of my soul for a good tattoo.
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