Dear Roger: Monkey Is A Bitch?

Bitch. Its a word I have had directed at me so many times I simply scoff and blow it off and quite often say," Yes, you figured out my middle name, so what?" But for the life of me, I cannot abide or understand what compels my son to call my 8 year old daughter by that name. She really doesn't deserve it. Shes not a bad kid at all. Yes, I quite often joke about her being,"Evil" or the ringleader of chaos, but quite honestly, she is a very loving, very sweet little girl who adores her big brother and cant quite understand why he gets so mad at her.
She thinks he hates her. She is on the fast track to believing all men are mean and will either yell at her to,"Go Away", ignore her, call her names like,"Bitch" or worse, destroy things she loves or take them away.
Its been a powder keg around my home again and I am sick and tired of it. My little girl does not deserve it, and I don't know what I am going to do about it. I regret soo many things with my elder son, I should have gotten him in counseling when everything first happened to us. I should have demanded he get help for all his anger, but instead I let him try to handle it himself, and unfortunately he has done a terrible job of it.
I have found myself reverting to some of my old behaviors, telling the younger kids to be quiet and not bother him, trying to stay out of his way and appease him because he is so much bigger than me, and when he is angry and I have to go to work I tell my daughter to stay out of his way and quietly message me via private message if hes,"Getting too mean." My stress has been through the roof and my migraines have been back in force, just like they were when I was living in the worst of it. At times he is relentless in his verbal abuse of me, calling me to task for every single shortfall he feels I have, every failing and mistake he feels I have made, he makes fun of my stutters or stress and then sarcastically belittles me when I get upset. It feels like sometimes my ex is standing there in front of me just trying to push me into a heart attack. Today he was so relentless my 10 year old son began screaming at him to stop.
He will be cruel and hateful and then a little while later he will attempt to be kind and helpful, (honeymoon period), to get what he wants, usually money or some treat or control of the tv.
He needs help. I am trying to get it for him, but I worry about my daughter and what she is going to think about men as she grows up, at times it feels like there is just no hope and that I have failed all the way around in protecting my children from not only monsters, but from themselves.
I've told her that the very next time he calls her,"Bitch" or any other horrible name, she is to post on her Facebook page, "I wonder if my brother calls his girlfriend,"Bitch" like he calls me, because if he does, that's not very nice." At least then I know our secret will be right in his pastors lap and maybe some man  somewhere, will have some advice?

Dear Roger:The Monkey Struggles

Writers block sucks. Its probably the most depressing thing I have had to deal with in the past few years. I don't know what brought it on, but its starting to really wear on me. I've had occasional flashes and ideas but the flow I had has stopped cold and even the drive I had to edit my work has dried up. I don't have a clue as to what it would take to spark it back up again, not even the appearance of the boys who used to inspire me fairly often has helped. My tinnitus and migraines are back full force and my vision is horrible and with the Feebs,(FDA) holding up my glasses in Customs in Memphis for the past two weeks, its not been a happy fun time. I know what a large part of things are, and it is part in parcel tied into the torch I have carried for over a decade.
Things will be finally done soon, the dream achieved and I will be watching from afar. It has always been inevitable and I knew that, but I had kidded myself for a few years, that maybe the knight on the white horse would come riding up Burnside to tell me he wanted to be with me.
Heartbreak is the kind of mechanism that can either spur you to greatness with songs that move peoples souls and stories that change lives, or it can leave you a quivering mess that is not fit for human company. I am hovering somewhere in between. I have moments when I feel like I am going to be okay and life will roll along just fine, and then other moments when the enormity of the fact that I have been alone for over 3 years and that I will most likely continue to be alone, hits me and it takes me to my knees. I don't even try anymore and most of the time I am just numb inside so maybe its best I just keep trying to cope as I am, but I want to be able to write again. I don't know what I am going to do in order to coax my muse back around,
My life is getting better in many other ways, my job is going great, I have friends and I am building a social life so I can complain too much, but I do spend a lot of my time alone and I miss having straight, male company! I have all the gay male company I want, and while I adore them and would cuddle all they allow, its really not the same.
My kids try to encourage me to get out, but I don't see myself as having much to offer any potentials. I am an a control freak, I have odd habits and I really don't enjoy the bar scene though I like the music scene. I tend to not mingle well with my own age group and frankly, even I know I am strange and a bit judgmental. I have absolutely no tolerance for drunks, and find them to be pathetic so when I discovered that the last man I even remotely found interesting was into his cups before noon during the weekday, I was soo put off, that I just basically ignored him ever after, (see? Judgmental)  I try not to be, but I guess when you don't NEED a companion, only WANT a companion, you get a hell of a lot more picky and less willing to put up with things you see as weakness.
I think I am in the wrong place to be this eccentric and desirous of male company.

Dear Roger: Trigger

Life is still progressing in leaps and bounds. My job is really pushing me far out of my old comfort zone and forcing me to deal with things that sometimes bring back my old issues to the surface in ways that leave me struggling to not react in my old ways, but I have not retreated to my apartment to lurk behind my windows, hiding from the world, wrapped up in anger and stress over seeing a woman so badly beaten by an ex that her face is shattered and she is facing reconstructive surgery to rebuild it, instead I grimly went about putting measures in place to ensure she would be safe when she returned. I got a picture of the bastard off his mug shot and I made sure we had it handy if he ever gets released, but that doesn't seem likely because one thing I discovered about Oregon is they actually have a really great law here where there is NO BAIL for the type violence her and I have faced and the charges carry a MANDATORY 5 YEARS! Holy cow! A state where people have to actually answer for the things they do? I will believe it when I see it, but I hope for her sake it holds true. The amount of anger I felt after seeing her shocked me and I am probably lucky I didn't hear the assault go down because it would have been bad. I know in my heart I am capable of violence in defense of another, and I know that there are others here who would have gladly assisted me in her defense. We will help her rebuild herself, much like I have done over the past couple of years and hopefully she will start forward again, on to bigger and better things and she will have people who have been there, done that who are willing and able to help, even if its just to listen because sometimes that is all that is needed.
I am enrolling in classes in November. I guess that part is not too shocking, but what is the weird part for me is that they are business and management classes. I have never seen myself as much of a business type person, but this seems to be working for me and it also allows me some time to write and a little bit of freedom to still have a life with my kids.
My daughter is trying to grow up on me. That is the part that is really stressing me out lately. She has beautiful butt length, blonde, curly hair that I have helped her to nurture and care for her entire life. It has never been really cut, only the ends trimmed and its never been dyed or had anything done to it, but lately she has been asking quite often to try some coloring in it. It coincides with her home tattooing and other little body modifications that she has been experimenting with lately. After much thought and negotiation, I have finally decided she can have get her hair cut and she can try a color in it. I am not thrilled about it, but as a friend of mine so aptly pointed out, I have always encouraged her creativity and artistry in all kinds of ways, and she is growing up with a tattooed mother and influences who are not exactly Ozzie and Harriet, in fact nothing in her life has or probably ever will be anything less than slightly left of carnival life, so having colored hair at 8 is par for the course, but I am drawing the line at tattoos or piercing beyond the ears,(even she isn't sure she is ready for her ears to be done yet), so maybe this phase will pass and we will be back in pretty dresses and patent leather Mary Janes by spring, but considering she was totally okay with coloring Jackson's tail... I'm not going to hold my breath.

Dear Roger: Power Struggles,I Can Claim Temporary Insanity Due to Teenager Infestation

New parents of baby boys out there feeling all smug and self-satisfied that you dodged the bullet because you think that because you have only one dick to worry about, let me tell you a thing or two about a thing or two regarding that situation in which you now find yourself.
You think your little baby boy will be easier and less dramatic and less prone to bringing drama into your house? I say to you, "HA!!!" I used to believe the same thing. I thought that when I had my sons that life was going to be easy street, that I wouldn't ever have to worry about them getting hormonal, and moody over boys or overly  dramatic and shrieking because someone disrespected some odd little actor/rock star or stuffed animal that was an iconic representation thereof, but let me tell you what,boys are just as weird and dramatic and horrible about things, and often they are more demonstrative in their feelings and destructive. They do stupid things like throw their video game controllers at hard surfaces and then wonder why they don't work, take apart their guitars and skateboards and all kinds of crap thinking they can make it better or,"Fix" it and then get upset with YOU when you don't understand the method to the madness of the laptop screen with the cardboard jammed in it.
If you have more than one boy in your house,(as do I), you might have the blend of the guy archetypes. I have the "Shy, sensitive, deep thinker that slow boils to explosions", the "Cocky jock who thinks he is the man of the house and reminds you enough of Eddie Haskell at times you want to scream"  as well as the "Practical joker who finds every fart worth sharing with everyone at all times, especially in public as he blames it on you."  I have all 3 types as well as my poor, long suffering daughter who is a blend of all three in one seemingly innocuous package,(dont believe it, not for one minute!), but there will be more on that another day. I do my best to cope, but I have learned to laugh at those who find out they are having a boy and actually seem relieved. I enlighten them with a few tales of some of the things my boys have done, as well as share some tales of adventures of some of my friends sons.
To be fair, most of the boys besides my sons are Texans, and that kinda skews the dynamic because growing up Texan and boy does up the ante for pure fuckery and insanity, but truck surfing, and nearly becoming road kill while running from the game warden can happen anywhere as well as riding a dirt bike off the side of an overpass, or through a barbed wire fence or blowing up a battery and nearly blinding oneself, jousting with Roman Candles,playing with Ronsol and Axe and setting their damn jeans on fire to the point they had to come home in their chones, ending up a hood ornament on a Prius due to a downhill run on a longboard that went a little wrong,as well as any number of things that have left parents I know as well as myself with enough grey hairs to keep Lady Clariol in business for the next century.
Little boys can be sweet and cute and all kinds of fun to raise, but if you think that first time they peed in your face was an accident, I say,"Woe unto you, that is yet a sign of things yet to come."
I tell you these things now while I still can as I spend a few hours trying to figure out just how my eldest son managed to make himself administrator of our home computer network and set it up so that he can shut off my damn computer and lock me and my Iphone out of all internet access. I used to think it was pretty cool he was such a genius at all things computers and self taught at all of it, kinda like his music habit where he taught himself how to play guitar and write music and all kinds of things. I have a feeling there will be a lot of ante upping over the next few days as we engage in our power struggle to establish the Alpha in this house. He may be a teen, but he knows very little about the true cost of war and living with a person who will go nuclear with the first strike.

Dear Roger: Wake Me When September Ends? No, Try November

I've sat here for days with a half-assed, morose bit of poetry rolling around in my skull that I just cant seem to put together, and perhaps its due to the changing weather or the inevitable end of summer that I cant put my thoughts together, but I really have nothing against September, though I do really like that song and appreciate its sentiment. Its November that I wish would end, and soon. Its been like a long, protracted, suffering that has gone on much longer than it should and as sleep comes less and less easy, my temper becomes more and more short, I feel the slow build to the end and I know I am powerless to do anything other than stand back and watch what I know is bound to happen, happen. It will be my final answer, the end of everything and I will accept it and move forward, but I will mourn for the,"What might have beens" and what I wish could have happened in another lifetime.
It is a blessing and a curse, the cancer that will be going into its final remission though its unfortunate to think of it like that, in many ways its been a cancer that has been eating me from the inside for a long time, much like all good heartaches do to a person.  When its over, I will have a drink and a smoke, put my boots on and walk out the door into a new day and a new mindset with it all behind me, knowing that the door is forever closed, and that may be the true sign of healing...if I can actually do it.

Dear Roger: Love, Little Boxes, Breaking Molds, AIDS, and Finding Somebody to Love

The season of "Giving" is approaching and im finally getting back into my charity work. Its something I had really missed, and thanks to some friends of mine, I got out and did the Portland AidsWalk. The walk not only met its goal, it exceeded it by over 45k! It was quite an experience to be involved in it and I enjoyed myself. The scene was as Portlandia as Portland gets and I don't think I have felt so welcomed since I have been here. The boys who were part of my team are friends of mine and we made a day of it, just walking along talking about our experiences growing up and dealing with a society the expects everyone to fall into a particular mold. There were people of every size, shape and description walking in that fundraiser, they were walking for friends, family, loved ones, themselves or just because they know that Aids is a terrible disease we should have defeated over a decade ago. I walked in memory of my cousin and for all the people who live in the shadows and in fear. That was a huge topic of discussion that day, the stigma.
I remember seeing on the news the misery and torture that Ryan White went through when he was diagnosed with Aids and how horrible people treated a child who had an illness he had no control over and that was going to kill him. It was just the tip of the iceberg of how gay people were and are treated.
I've never gotten it. I know I was raised with a certain attitude in my home as a child because when my said to her friend that she suspected I was more than just a,"Tomboy", it freaked me the hell out. I was already getting harassed by some of the prominent members of the football team at school and called things like,"Dyke"  because of how I dressed and acted and my sports playing as well as being ostracized by people who had been friends and neighbors previously, so when my own mother made comments about my room decor  (Hollywood stars of the 40's of both sexes), It horrified me and probably had a lot to do with why I became a bit of a sexually aggressive young adult that had kids early.
I've grown a lot since then and reached a point in my life where I don't care what other people think about me, and I am just accepting of where I am in life. I am at peace with my place in life and accepting of difference and I wish more people were the same way. I see people that I know are living in pain, living in the shadows and hiding who they are and who they love for the sake of their careers or family or community and I see the heartache and the pain it causes and it hurts my heart for them because I know how much it hurts. It was refreshing to admit to myself and the friends I walked with that day that love is love is love and being open to accepting it no matter if its not in the form you or anyone else expected is an amazing and freeing way to be.
It was hard for me as a parent of 5 kids to reach that point. I was fast on the way to falling into lockstep with my family and I wanted my children to be,"NORMAL", with my sons being tough and strong men who would go on to the Corp of Cadets at Texas A&M and marry good girls with all the traditional trappings of Texas to follow. I wanted my daughters to be good girls who would marry respectable men who would be their equals and respectable members of the community. I wanted my daughters to go on to either Texas A&M or UT and get their Doctorates and become powerful women who would lead their communities before they gave me a few grand kids to spoil rotten. The thing is with my kids it that they are individuals, and as individuals they have very distinct paths and hopes for the future. My eldest has already made her own distinct path and TAMU is not on the radar and she has not shown any interest in dating.  My eldest son wants to go to college in Oregon and he talks of never marrying quite frequently. My other two boys are a puzzle. My youngest daughter has had her sights set on one particular fella for a long time and she tends to talk of TAMU as being the only school that is worth even considering, but I have stopped pushing that, and when we talk of the future and what my dreams of for my kids, I simply say, "I want to look in your faces and only see joy and peace, never pain or unhappiness, if I see that, then I know I did my job as a parent. Ill love you no matter who you love, what you become, where you are or what you are doing. If YOU are happy and being a good person who does no harm to others, then I am at peace with that."
I've always been a person who when told to zig, I zagged. I resented being forced into molds and little boxes. I always worked non-traditional jobs, dated or even married the type of guy who was so far removed from the family norm that I am sure my parents wished I had been gay at times. It wasn't because I was trying to to purposely offend anyone, it was just at the time, the person who walked into my life and shook up my world with love happened to be a Lebanese Semi-pro soccer player, or an Iranian gypsy violin playing/singing, blind, research scientist,(still do carry a bit of a torch for him), or a former Hell's Angel Prospect with issues of his own who ive now reached a peace with and share most of my kids with. Love doesn't always fit a perfect mold and being accepting of the form it takes is part of being a grown human and I think I have finally grown up.

Dear Roger: The Monkey Found Its Balls

I am a generally good natured person. I like to believe that people are who they try to portray themselves to be, but I am also a bit of a protectionist person who suspects everyone's motivations and I try to just handle my business on my own and not owe anyone a damn thing because when you let someone do you a favor, they think they own a piece of you and no one owns me. I have worked very damn hard to get to where I am, I am raising my kids on my own, housing and feeding, and clothing them, with no social life or any of that because I dont have time for it. I work and I am always looking for a way to better our circumstances but NOT at the detriment of others. I fiercely defend my loved ones, but I prefer to just move on and leave the problems behind me. Other people, I have found, do not operate by the same code, but I have managed to navigate around them so far even if they have had me angry enough to spend a few hours reviewing Libel law and what constitutes a good slander case after. I let my Buddhist learning take over and I just decided that karma will out.
I have gotten tougher and much, much braver lately about actually dealing with people and NOT returning to my den and flipping the monkey upside down. Currently the monkey is right side up, erect and flipping the bird in aggravation, but that is the pose my son put him in, and while I understand his sentiment, I try not to take it down the stairs with me. I have been focusing on the positive things in my life. I wildly upgraded my phone from the basic Iphone 4 to an Iphone 4s 16g which now means I have a better camera and more storage and even better, SIRI and all kinds of fun tools to play with. I did the same for my son and mayhem has ensued. He wanted the 5 but I didn't want to wait that long for a phone, and I couldn't justify that kind of expense. This was the result of a bad business decision on my part that I had to extricate myself out of due to my job, and while it was a very costly lesson to me, it actually taught my son a lot more and he is now a much more wary and untrusting person, especially of women. He sort of jokingly claimed he was going to become gay just so he no longer had to deal with women and their manipulations.
I actually wrote and mailed a letter that I had been dared to write a long time ago. I still cant believe I did it, and after I put it in the mailbox, I stood there in panic wanting to get it back but unable to fit my hand through the mail slot. I had no I.D. with me and the mail lady wouldn't give it back to me, so its off and gone. My first ever letter of that nature. F.M.L.
My writing is coming in fits and starts, and once its more reliable and smoothed out again, Ill post something on my tumblr about it, but for now I want to keep working on making sure the characters are true to themselves and that the story flows well. I've been working on Secrets, but Long Distance is almost done with the editing, and the re-vamp of Drifts should be done any day now. Its just a matter of finding the time to sit down at my computer to put them all together and then out there for the world to peruse.
Im not walking with my head down as much and that is a good thing. I can walk with my head up, knowing that I am doing this on my own, earning my keep working an honest job using my brain and my honest effort with no man paying anything for me, though the ex did finally find a job back in Arizona, he still struggles to just keep himself fed. My kids are happy and busy and we are soon to have a car so we wont be spending this winter walking in the rain or trapped in the house. '
Progress has been made and balls have been found.