Dear Roger: Dont Neuter The Monkey!

I have finally surrendered my room.Son got given a very nice full sized platform bed so he gave his twin bed to daughter since she has vastly outgrown her toddler bed mattress on the floor, so she now has an Ikea platform bed in my room in twin size. These rooms were not made for this level of occupation. I am lucky to have the space that my queen sized bed occupies to call my own. My decor of the tin wings and the fugly mirror and other odds and ends, is rapidly being overwhelmed by monkeys, though I was a little distressed when I came to bed last night and discovered that the monkey daughter had designated as,'Mine" to care for and what not was missing from my bed. I have no idea where Fredrick the gay monkey may have wandered off to, and I spent a good 10 minutes at midnight last night searching for him, afraid that if I didn't find him, my daughter would judge me a failure in monkey care. I can only hope he was sleeping over with one of the boys. But anyway, my life has been usurped by monkeys. They are everywhere in my room and in my life. I even had to pull one out of my boots yesterday before I could get dressed. Daughter has them arranged all around the room and she tucks them into her bed when she goes to sleep at night, her special one, Jackson, snuggled right up against her, his beady little eyes peering out at me as I try to settle in for the night.

The decor on her side of the room is an homage to her favorite boy and his band. His smirking mug is everywhere, and while its not unpleasant to look at by any means, she gives me the stink eye if she catches me looking too long. That is kind of difficult to avoid, especially since she hung a picture of him right over my bedside table!

Her brothers delight in tormenting her. They steal her monkeys, especially Jackson, and do all kinds of crude and cruel things, just to hear her shriek in horror. I warn them that she is one of those people who believes in revenge and they best let her be, but they never learn and then they are shocked when she puts the smackdown on them or she does something to thier guitars. I know she loosened all the strings on sons guitars last night after he came walking out into the living room carrying Jackson in his mouth. That grossed me out more than a little and I happily reminded him that not only had that monkey been tossed into the middle of Portland city streets, he had also been wrapped in a soaking wet with sweat, headband from young Mr.Rathbone that had left the monkey soggy as well. He had been jammed down countless boy pants, and had been dropped on gnarly Portland city sidewalks.( The monkey needs a bath, and badly but daughter would end me if I even tried it. Apparently the sweat has made him sacred, I think its made him stinky and more than a little unsanitary, but I like sleeping.)The look on sons face as he realized all the implications of what I was telling him was priceless, and he quickly spat the monkey out and went and washed his mouth out with half a bottle of my mouthwash, but then he came back and simulated neutering the monkey while daughter howled in anguish. He said,"And that's what will happen to the real thing if he ever comes around my sister." as he dropped the monkey to the floor and stomped away like a mighty hunter, the little boys trailing after him, preening like cavemen after a successful kill. Daughter was disconsolately laying on the floor, the monkey clutched to her like some character out of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Its never dull around here.

I managed to perk her up by showing her pictures of her favorite boy at his movie premier last night. She saw how he was dressed and her eyebrows disappeared into her scalp. "Is he wearing makeup?" I told her,"Yep." She sat and looked at all the pictures, smiling, though her eyebrows hardly left her scalpline. Her brothers came out to see what was going on and the comment was made that her favorite boy was as pretty as she was. She stuck her tongue out at her brothers and said, "I dont care if he does like boys, I still love him!" and she flounced from the room with her monkey in tow. I think I have raised her right.

Dear Roger: Cave Dwelling For A Reason

I dont like most people. You know that. People who I have let into my rather insular existence know that, and the world around me picks up on it rather quickly. I have my reasons. When you have been either shit on or brutalized by a large chunk of the world, it tends to color your opinion of things. I prefer to just tend my own knitting, stay in my hidey hole and write, communicating with the world around me via social media or in vary limited social engagements like concerts. I pretty much trust no one, including family. The ones I trusted implicitly are all dead and everyone else seems to have an angle or something they want. I have cut off most of my family and only communicate with my sister, and that is maybe twice a month. Its not the healthiest of lives, but I really prefer it. It allows me time to focus on my writing and my art and it just keeps me from getting fucked over time and time again and from seeing things happen that enrage me, like my grandparents things being sold or given away, or my pleas for pictures of my grandparents or you being ignored repeatedly. I'm not a nice person, but then again I am the product of my experiences.

Its been a shit week around here that has made me want to retreat even further into my social isolation, but I am trying to resist the urge. I have been focusing on my writing and I managed to finish up a story that I had been working on for close to a year. I also successfully merged it with 2 of my other stories and now have managed to create an almost novel length story with characters that people got really emotionally invested in. I am finishing up the final part of it this month and I have already started posting a new story that I had put on the back burner while I had worked on how to merge the three I had been struggling with. I woke up this morning to an email box that was overflowing with positive reviews and author alerts and favorites. It was a great way to start the day. I've been sick the past few days with some hideous stomach bug that left me barfing and so damn weak I could hardly get up off the couch, but of course with 3 kids to myself after the eldest bailed on me. I'm still pretty shaky, but I am determined to clean house today and emerge from isolation just a little bit. If I keep allowing myself to stay in, I will just continue to do so and it will become a nasty circle of enabling behavior. I'm already hyper vigilant again and just trying to ramp that back down has been a challenge. Checking windows, doors, kids, watching people, making sure Major Jack is handy, its all just signs that I need a vacation maybe a concert so I can go and get my ya ya's out.

Dear Roger: Cock Blockery And Writing Jags, Does One Equal The Other?

So, like the other pale imitation of men up here in the drippy Northwest, this last one either turned gay or came to his senses and scurried off to less scary challenges. It was not unexpected, after all, we didnt have much in common and he was not within my requirements, but I did kinda like him and I was planning on taking him to a very nice dinner tonight of all nights and then hitting that like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it was the fear of the pending unleashing of the long caged beast that sent him fleeing for his very life? Who knows? I must give off some vibe of,'I am going to eat you up' like an errant Wild Thing that just scares the living daylights out of men. I swear I would not have hurt him in a bad way, but I guess we will never know. My son found it amusing. He thinks he needs to set me up with someone, but then he doesnt know anyone that would even remotely qualify. He gets skeeved out at the fact I find younger men to be more interesting, and I know that when I was in line with my daughter to meet those adorable young men in the band, my son was standing right behind me the entire time whispering ,"Mom, behave yourself!" As if he was worried I was going to drag the little one off into same dark lair and have my wicked way with him! Actually, it was the tall boy that got my attention, but I did behave myself and I simply smiled, got a bit wobbly in the knees, and went about my business.

All the sexual frustration has been good for one thing though, I have been writing like a fiend. Before the end of last month rolled around, I posted close to 20k words. Its just been pouring out of me and ideas are coming almost daily. I have had to start carrying my moleskin again so I can write things down so I dont forget them and I have been annoying the kids with all the time I have been spending just typing. My computer has keys that are unreadable due to all the typing I have done on them. My stats are fantastic and my hits are through the roof. I got over 12k hits on my stories last month and for some reason my profile posted 88 hits in one day. I have no idea why so many people would be interested in reading about me, but then again, if it generates interest in my writing, so be it. I have missed hanging out with my friends, with all the work I have been doing and with the crappy weather and the sick kids and all the general craziness that has been going on around here, but my writing has been my solace. I have gone back over it and read it and I have to say I am proud of what I have accomplished. I have stories that would stand alone as pretty damn good short stories, and I have even written a couple of smoking sex scenes, and considering its been a long damn while, I thought that was a major accomplishment.

The ex is staying in Ventura! He vacillates about it from time to time, but I can tell he loves it down there. He misses his kids, but he loves the freedom of not having to do the day to day care of them. Its hard damn work without end. He laughed at me when he found out my dating thing failed, in fact he said that my problem was that I was a,"Gay man in a woman's body." I didn't argue, I just asked him what that said about him? I try to involve him in the kids lives via phone, but he is always busy or short tempered, (not unusual), so I have decided I am just going to leave the ball in his court. If he wants to talk to them, he will have to call them. He grumbled about their Halloween costumes, but then he sent 50 dollars to outfit all three kids. I dont know how many of you have tried to outfit 3 kids for Halloween, but 50 wont cut it. We bought face paint and went with my idea and they had a blast. I sent him a picture to his phone and figure that I will deal with the bitching later. I am just glad he has decided to stay down there. Its going to make all of our lives better.

Dear Roger:Relationship Advice? Are You Kidding Me?

My eldest son and his girlfriend of over a year broke up yesterday. The resultant drama had the whole house in disarray and of course he was upset and sad. He says it was a mutual thing, but who the hell knows? He asked me why people seem to make no damn sense some times and I just had to grin at him. He realized that I was 5 days post date from my last date with no phone calls or texts or even a Facebook poke, so I was once again...thhhhpppt! 'Aww, mom! Its like you always say, F'em and feed em fish heads." Exactly, he seemed to get it at that point. People kinda suck and once you realize that, life is a lot easier. You dont expect anything different from anyone, and that way you aren't disappointed when they turn out to be an asshat. I finally got him laughing by telling him tales of my dating experiences, and all the losers I had gone out with when I was younger and my theories on why I dont have any success now. I didn't mention my tumblr full of images of men tied up and vaguely dominatrix themed art or the gay erotica I write, but he told me that I just intimidate the hell out of men. "You gotta quit looking like you want to eat them or kick their asses mom! You need to get your teeth fixed,(another bad wisdom tooth has struck), and you need to try and be girly." I have tried. I dressed nice, I tried to tone it down a bit, but I am me. I am the queen of socially awkward and weird and as my favorite button says, I am, "Deeply and creatively weird" and pretty proud of it. I dont know what to do about it. I guess just saying,"Fuck it! Drive on." is the way to be, If I am destined to ever meet a man brave enough to take a tumble with me, then it will happen, but if not, well then I will be the crazy cat lady with Duracell as company.

Son seems to be coping pretty well. He has girls hitting on him all the time and he could have gone to Homecoming with a ballerina from his school, so I guess he will land on his feet. his mohawk got him in trouble with his girly entourage. They were not happy that he had cut his hair and apparently I nearly got ugly phone calls about it from some teeny fans of my son. The boy is 15, but has already got fans and an entourage due to his guitar playing and his singing. This is not good. I guess I should count my lucky stars that I gave him the talk about protection so soon? If hes going to be a rockstar, then he will need it.

The ex is staying in Ventura. I cant say I am disappointed, in fact I am thrilled to death. He had promised to send money to help with the boys Halloween, but we all know what the end result of that was. I dont count on anyone, especially a man, so I am putting together their costumes as best I can on my own.

I've been on a writing jag on my story,"Long Distance" that I had put on hiatus over 6 months ago! I am thrilled that the characters started talking to me again, but the writing jag comes at a really inconvenient time, I am busy at work and its hard to take time to jot down noted and ideas when you are cleaning Labrador out of some scrotes fridge.

Dear Roger: Conventional Wisdom for the Unconventional?

My son tells me I am not like other moms. I dont know if that is a good or a bad thing. I tend to be strict about manners and curfew and discipline, but I also support my kids in their pursuits to be themselves. I let them know from an early age that I loved them no matter who they loved, and that we are a live and let love family. We may tease eldest son about his alleged boy crush on Jackson Rathbone, but if that was the real case, we would support him. My kids dont make the,"Eww thats gross!' face one of my friends makes when she sees a gay couple. They just treat them as any other couple. We had to clean up a lot of hate speech out of Stubby and Sticky when they first got up here, but once it was made clear that we dont allow that kind of talk because it hurts feelings, they stopped. Sticky knows words can do damage, he has heard the word.'Retard" so often that he sometimes throws it back at people when they do something he doesn't like. Nothing brings a stop to all activity in a room like a kid with Downs Syndrome asking someone,'What the hell is wrong with you, are you retarded?" He has developed quite the smartassed attitude since he has been up here and he is getting very independent. I encourage that and though its been hard for me, I have been letting him pick his clothes out and even have a say in whats for dinner.

Letting my kids be themselves is important to me. Communicating with them is even more so. My teen son has been dating the same girl for over a year now, and while they are pretty tightly chaperoned and not alone long enough to ever get up to anything, I know what its like to be a teenager and I worry. We have had a very open dialogue about things since he started maturing and though he would rather crawl under a rock and die than talk to me about it, I have sat him down and had an abbreviated version of the talk with him a couple of times,(once due the a very concerning reaction to a Criminal Minds episode), and once when he started dating. I decided that since we had a little bit of time by ourselves on Friday to go to a store where protection was sold, I would give him a lecture with visual aids.

He got that,"deer in the headlights" look as we approached the condom section, but I stopped him and I said,"We need to have a talk and since no one is around and we have a few minutes, im going to explain a few things to you." I then pointed out the things to use, the things that were crap, the reasons for some things, why some things should be replaced regularly, why some things should be avoided, and just general things boys should know. I gave him the talk that a father or a big brother should have given him, but since he has neither he got it from me. He was dying for a few minutes but then to my shock, he started asking questions! We must have stood there for a good 15 minutes discussing things and he even thanked me for clearing up some wrong information he had gotten from his buddies. I told him that my job as a mom was to make sure he was a healthy and happy young man and if explaining things to him that made both of us uncomfortable was part of it, then so be it, its part of the job.

We spent yesterday doing hair cuts. I let the boys choose what kind of hair cuts they wanted and that meant I spent the afternoon cutting mohawks on my sons. They teased my daughter about getting a mohawk and when she proclaimed that,'Girls dont get mohawks!" my son went hunting for the picture of me with mine. Poor daughter is quite the odd child out when it comes to this family. She is a girly girl and dances, sings, has long, pretty blonde hair, aspires to be an actress, ballerina, artist that marries her favorite young man and then takes him to, "France for 6 months and then Japan", while the rest of us are rough around the edges and barely civilized.

Dating...thhpt. I think I am terrible at it. I am not quite sure what I want. I swear and be damned I dont want a man around, but then when there isnt one around I mope. I find myself hungering for human contact and small doses of it just make me want more, like a junkie that just gets a small taste and then cant afford to pay the dealer for a bigger hit. I think I want romance, but then I dont know how to get it or if I even deserve it at this point in the game. All the time I have spent alone made me a harder person, but it made me a hungrier person in many ways. I throw myself into my work and my family to keep myself distracted, perhaps that is the best way to go about things. Who the hell knows?

Dear Roger:Fashion Tips From A Teen Boy

"You need to go shopping, and not by yourself. You need to take a chick, or me with you to show you how to shop for stuff to make you look decent and not like you want to kick someones ass."

This was what my teen son told me yesterday as he was digging through my closet trying to help me decide what I should wear on my date tonight. He has decided that I am pretty hopeless when it comes to my fashion sense. I have tried to explain to him that my fashion sense is my own, its not my fault that people like Ellen Degeneres copy it and then it gets skewed and labeled for a certain demographic that makes dating all the more difficult. Yes, most of my clothes are black or denim. Yes, there are a lots of snaps and leather and buckles involved in my clothing. Yes, I do own more than a couple of pairs a boots that may or may not need help not smelling like they just came in from a very bad crime scene. Yes, I do not own any heels, stockings, dresses or make up. My son looked through my closet and shook his head,"How in the hell do you have soo many kids?" I think that was a dig? He has been on my case lately about being more ladylike and civilized. I have genuinely tried. My Ms. Congeniality days are mostly behind me, though I did snap a little last night and take him down and out the back door when he kept harassing me while I was cooking dinner. I got him with the element of surprise and before he could launch a defense I had him off balance and out the back door squawking like a plucked chicken that I had,"Cheated".

I think he wants a mom that would be too worried about her nails to teach him Judo stuff? Who the hell knows, hes a teenager and nothing I can do is right, because I am his mom and wrong by default. He tells me to get a boyfriend,(I think that was son speak for get laid), because I have been kinda grumpy and morose lately, and hes even been pointing guys out to me! I don't quite know what to think about that. Hes supportive of me dating, and when I had said I wasn't going to date anymore a while back, he got angry with me and said that my unhappiness would scar the rest of the family! I didn't think I was unhappy? Ive been alone for over 3 years. I am pretty set in my ways and for the most part untrainable. I am awkward and inappropriate and a bit crude and I make no apologies for myself. I like my stinky boots,(not the pooped in ones), I like my jeans that fall off my ass and cause me to moon the street full of cars in front of my house. I like my weird music and my bad dancing. I like my stupid hats and ratty t-shirts. I miss some things about having a man around. I miss kissing and making out and just being touched. I damn sure miss sex, even poorly done its damn sure better with a man than solo. I miss talking to an adult male. The poor guy that took me out the other night about got his ear talked off. I miss the smell of a mans cologne and the feel of a short hair of the back of a mans neck underneath my fingers. Its a trade off sometimes. Not having to worry about shaving my legs or wearing the nice drawers,(or any on laundry days),and t-shirts without holes, doing my hair and all that. Not having to explain myself and my fiasco of a world to some poor sod who has dared to tread within, but then its lonely in here sometimes and I think that maybe, just maybe, I will shave my legs and wear the nice drawers I save for,"Special" occasions, and maybe I will remember I am Southern and that I do know a few things about a few things, including how to be a lady, at least hopefully more than my son knows.

Dear Roger: Touch

Its weird how you take such simple things for granted, things like simple human contact from the opposite sex, and when you get that contact again,even if its something as simple as a hand holding or a touch on the back, it can just leave you all flustered and twitterpated.

My kids have enjoyed making fun of me the past day or so because I got my hand held the other night. It shocked me! After all, it had been pretty damn near 17 years since a man had held my hand and I almost reacted the wrong way, because I didn't know what the hell was going on for a moment. Being touched again and having my hand held in public? I didn't know quite what to think. I can tell you that I was pretty shocked, and I liked it. Thats fairly new territory for me because after all, for the last couple of decades, I have not been involved with the nicest of fellas, with a couple of rare exceptions who didn't stick around for very long.

I came home smiling and in a good mood to find my teen son laying in wait for me on the couch. He flipped on the light and smirked at me,"Do you know what time it is? Give me the keys so I can go let the poor guy out of the trunk,okay? You have always taught me mom, No means NO! So you have to let him go mom." My son is just as big of a smart ass as I am, so I have had to deal with endless teasing about my good mood and my return at a reasonable hour,(old people jokes abound), but hes been surprisingly supportive of me getting out and he has even offered to babysit for me at a reasonable rate.

Things are steadily moving forward. Its amazing how far we have come. Its crazy around here at times but I read some of the stories on the 99% tumblr and I realize how lucky I am. I am lucky that my grandparents imbued me with the fortitude to fight and keep trying no matter how many times I get my feet kicked out from under me. I am lucky that I know that I have to keep trying and keep going for my kids because they deserve better. I am lucky that, even though things don't often work out the way I had hoped for or planned, they work out they way they need to work out. I'm tough because I have to be. I fight because I have to, and if I get to have a little fun along with way, then that's all good, but if I have to keep going on alone, I will do that too.

I have a second date coming up later this week. Im kinda excited about it. Dont really know what to expect, after all, its been a few years since I have done this kinda stuff and its a whole new ball game since my give a damn got busted. Its nice to not NEED a man, but to kinda, sorta, maybe, want one around for company. I have proven to myself I can do pretty damn much everything on my own. I have torn it down and built it back up, so maybe now I can figure out how to behave in polite society again and not be twitchy when a fella reaches for my hand.