SEX AND THE INTROVERTED BOOK NERD SINGLE MOTHER

Kids are the biggest cock block known to man. If you want to have an awesome ongoing sex life 1. Don’t get married (There’s something in wedding vows that subliminally tell women to only have sex on birthdays and anniversaries) and 2. Do not have children. Nothing makes the penis limper and the vagina drier than having to cater to irrational, helpless human beings 24/7.

What’s 1000x worse is being a single mom without every other weekend off to get her groove on (as in my sucky situation). Any single mother I’ve known gets her ass out there right away to ensnare another father substitute, but not me, nope. A man is the reason I’m in the position I’m in, so I no longer trust them as far as I can throw them. I do however, still want to fuck them.

I consider myself more like a stereotypical man than a woman. Sex for me is primarily a physical act, a stress reliever. You will never hear me utter the words, “Make love to me.” I’ll never sprinkle rose petals all over the bed, and I light candles to set the mood only because I know I look better in candlelight. My cuddling limit is about 5 minutes if that, and ideally, I’d prefer to be done with you once the deed is, cough, done.

My ideal relationship fantasy is to be involved with a firefighter, not because they’re built and possess a lot of stamina, but because I’d love a guy who’s gone for 3 days at a time, works 12 hour shifts, comes home exhausted, but still wants to fuck, then rolls over and goes to sleep and is gone by morning.

I (an introvert) used to date nothing but extroverts—lively men who always wanted to do something every minute of the day, and in my 20s it was fine because I had nothing better to do than you know, please them, so relationships consisted of constant togetherness. But now in my 40s, I have too much shit to do; I have books to write and read, rooms to paint, leaky sinks to fix, trees to trim, hair to dye, and I value my alone time like you wouldn’t believe. That’s what happens when you have another being constantly underfoot: you crave alone time filled with peace and quiet like an addict craves his next fix.

I remember years ago in a postpartum group I attended one woman said, “You don’t know how much I miss reading before bed.” Oh, I do, sister,” I told her. It was one of the things I had to give up when I got into a relationship. Yeah, I got sex, but I had to give up reading before bed and I’m not sure the tradeoff was worth it.

So now, I’m in this muddy sort of predicament where I want sex, but I also want to read, and I don’t really want to deal with relationship bullshit or needy men, but meaningless sex does get boring after a while, especially if the person is kinda meh, and it winds up being more trouble than it’s worth. There’s a reason men hire hookers; they want sex without all the hassle that goes along with it. Women are a hassle, men are a hassle, kids are a hassle. Life is one big hassle with the one bright spot being sex, but when sex becomes a hassle, too, it loses its orgasmic charm.

Now I’ll admit I have it easier than some. I can literally step outside my door and find someone to have sex with me within 5 minutes, because the thing is if you’re an attractive female, any male will fuck you once. Really. That’s the only criteria they have: Is she pretty? I’m sorry, guys, but it’s true. I have never had any man tell me, “I can’t fuck you because…” Not a one. So, we women do have all the power. (Men know this, they just don’t like to admit it.) It’s called the Power of the Pussy. I know within 3-5 seconds of meeting a man whether they’re someone I want to have sex with. 3-5 seconds. And If I decide no, then no amount of money, success, or cock size will sway me.

The dilemma the single mother like me has is she values her alone time as much as she’s a slave to her libido. So, when my son decided to have a sleepover at a friend’s house this afternoon, all kinds of possible activities floated through my head so I didn’t feel like “the pathetic female who never goes out at night” like I normally do: I could call my kinky friend and have him take me to a strip club or a dungeon for the first time. I could call my rich friend and have him take me into the city for dinner and a play. I could call my 30-year-old hot friend and go out for beer and a game of pool. I could go 3 doors down and Mrs. Robinson the 25-year-old who made a pass at me last week.

All of these dates would provide me with the sex I want, so that’s a given. It’s almost too easy, but the introverted book nerd that I am sits here on the couch, relishing the peace of not hearing, “Mom, I’m hungry, what’s for dinner?” or rap lyrics blasting and gunfire from Call of Duty. Yes, this introverted single mother book nerd who loves sex, mind you, also painfully realizes she’d have to carry on a conversation with any one of these men for hours and she just doesn’t feel like exerting the energy for what ultimately, won’t be as fulfilling as it sounds.

So, she decides to read a book instead, and eat string cheese and pretzels for dinner next to the cat and dog who could give a crap that she’s wearing sweats and no makeup. And for a short time, at least until the noisy boy returns the next day, all is well in her world.

 

WRITING, MEN, INSANITY, AND CHAOS

It’s been forever since I’ve posted, which makes me feel bad about myself because I used to post much more frequently. On the other hand, I’ve been working on my book and that has taken up all my time and energy. Writing a novel is all-consuming in that it becomes the only thing you think about morning, noon, and night. It’s like having an obsessive crush on someone who feels only Meh about you. If they show you any positive attention, you’re on top of the world (much like one feels when writing goes well), but most of the time, they could care less about you, leaving you feeling unfulfilled and frustrated (much like one feels when they think what they wrote that day stinks, or they haven’t written a single word at all).

I’m not going to lie. It’s freaking tough to write when you’re a single parent. My writing needs to be done while the boy is at school or it doesn’t get done. I remember reading an article about Jacquelyn Mitchard, the author of The Deep End of the Ocean whose husband’s sudden death left her needing to come up with a way to support her kids. She wrote that book sitting at the kitchen table with her kids running all over the place, amidst chaos and confusion.

So I tried it the other night. Writing amidst chaos and confusion. I sat my ass on the couch, Friends reruns on the TV, with my son sitting next to me, constantly interrupting to show me asinine YouTube videos he finds hilarious. The fact that I was trying to write a sex scene is neither here nor there. I wrote 2 sentences and then gave up. Even now, while writing this, the boy is in his room, blasting rap music and shouting at his Xbox. I know I’ll be lost once he gets older and moves out, but at the moment, it’s a picture this lover of peace and quiet is having a hard time imagining.

Sometimes novels and all the research that goes in to them are wonderful for self-realization. One of my main characters is bipolar, so I’ve done a crapload of research on bipolar disorder, only to come to realize I’m 99% sure my father is bipolar, which is why he’s been such an insane asshole all these years. Not that people with bipolar disorder are insane assholes, but left untreated and choosing to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, a lot of their behavior is very asshole-y.

You would think I’d have some revelatory A-ha moment and feel sorry for him for having an illness he can’t help, but I don’t. Truth is, he’s known he’s had a mood disorder for many, many years. God knows his entire family has told him as much. But when he went to his Beverly Hills physician years ago to discuss his “possible” mood disorder, the doctor excused it by telling him he was simply a Type-A personality and intense, and every Type-A person was like that.

He came home so proud after that, like a peacock strutting his colorful feathers, because he had gotten validation from a “physician to the stars,” and therefore, he didn’t have no stinking problem. Hey, here’s a heads up. When family and friends don’t want to be around you more often than not, if your moods go up and down like the strength tester game at the county fair, if your wife threatens to leave you every time you go through a particularly intolerable heinous period, then you got a stinking problem!

But it’s not my problem anymore, plus I’m out of the will anyway.

So, what else is going on? Well, I’m still single. I tried dating someone casually, but that didn’t work out too well. I went in to it stating, “I don’t want a serious relationship” (meaning You will never be my priority), but he took it as, “I hear what you’re saying, but I will eventually wear you down.” Ah, men and their love of challenges. I get it though. The first (and last) time I pursued something with a man who, straight off the bat said, and I quote: “I don’t want a relationship,” I completely ignored those words, too. Because after all, who wouldn’t want a relationship with me? I’m fabulous.

Turned out he did in fact want a relationship. Just not with me. He ended up marrying my son’s elementary school principal, and is now happily living in an all-White neighborhood where everyone makes six-figures (despite him being a tatted-up Hispanic custodian).

Anyhoo, back to this guy. After a few dates, he said to me, “I’m wearing you down, aren’t I? Tell me you’re not falling for me just a little bit” to which I responded in all my blunt honesty (since I don’t know how to be any other way), “I’m really not, and I meant what I said from the get-go.”

But he still kept at it. The situation reminded me of Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoon: What we say to dogs versus What they hear. The owner points to his dog, saying “Okay, Ginger! I’ve had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!” But the dog only hears, “blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah…”

So, since we always seem to refer to men as dogs, I’m guessing what this guy heard was pretty much the same thing.

In all fairness to him he dodged a bullet, because I’m certainly no prize. I have my hands full with an ADD son who randomly sneaks up and attacks me much like Cato does with Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther movies, which has turned me in to a woman “on the edge” at all times, a 6-year-old diva dog who still pisses on the one remaining carpet whenever she feels like it, and a bulimic cat.

Then there’s me who, while you’re talking, is thinking about how to solve that plot problem, instead of listening to you.

 

What’s new with you?

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HAIR

It’s been a while, so I thought I’d give an update on how life is with a 13-year-old boy. We have a sudden newfound preoccupation with all things hair. Starting with the hair on the head, my son has adopted what I guess is similar to a James Dean hairstyle—short on the sides and back, with upright wave-like hair on top. Thanks to the Internet (no, really, thank you), the boy can scroll through a gazillion photos, trying to find the hairstyle he likes and then come to me and ask me to duplicate it.

I gave birth to a boy for a reason. I’m not a girlie-girl. I don’t do girlie things. I mean, I don’t drive an 18-wheeler or chop wood or anything, but I bite my nails, don’t know how to do a smoky eye, and have never once blown dry or curled my hair. I’m more of a “How to pull myself together in 7 minutes or less without being labeled ‘homeless’ by the outside community” kind of girl.

So when my son asked me to style his hair one day, I directed him to his other parent for help: YouTube. Anything you want to know how to do, there’s a video for it. It’s mind-boggling. Unfortunately, with the desire for fancy hair comes the need for fancy haircuts, so bringing him to the ghetto part of town for a $5 haircut by women who don’t speak English no longer flies. And now whenever we go out, even if it’s to Walmart, it takes him 25 minutes to do his hair, because “you never know who you might see there.” (Oh, I have an idea of who we might see at Walmart and it ain’t pretty.)

We’re also at the stage where it’s of critical importance to evaluate ALL hair on the body. We’ll be driving and he’ll say, “Look at the dark hair on my legs. Look at it. In the sun. Can you see it? Can you? Look at how much there is. There’s a lot, isn’t there? See?” He has no hair yet under the arms or on the chest; it’s all in the pubic area, so I’m privy to the day-by-day account of its growth. He counted them when there were only a few sparse hairs. Now, with the onslaught of pubic hair, it’s a source of pride and warrants bragging rights.

I get it. I vaguely recall comparing my blossoming chest size to every other girl who crossed my path at school. I remember marveling over my pubes, and being ecstatic over the fact that I had gotten my period before my best friend. These are all extremely important milestones as a kid. As is the big M.

Masturbation.

I could pretend my son has monkish tendencies or very low testosterone, but that would be taking the “ostrich in the sand” approach—something I see mothers all around me doing when it comes to their kid and sex. But I’m more savvy than that. I know that once boys discover the wonders of masturbation it literally rivals all other activities…until they begin the quest of trying to find girls to do it for them.

I’m not going to lie. Porn scares me nowadays. The fact that one can find any kink with just a few taps of the keys is disconcerting. Back in my day (yes, I’m starting to use that phrase now) if you wanted to watch porn you had to go to a mafia-owned XXX movie theater with sticky floors. Which men did. But not women. No, no, no. The first porn DVD I ever saw was with my gay friend and it was the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee honeymoon one and it was so awful we laughed our way through the entire thing. I didn’t watch another porn for like 15 years because 1. I sure in the hell wasn’t going to walk into an adult store alone and buy one, 2. I sure in the hell wasn’t going to go into that section of the local video store alone and rent one, and 3. A $300 charge for porn once arrived on the Internet bill because my dumbass ex didn’t realize he was clicking on something he had to pay for, so that pretty much put the fear of watching web porn into me.

Anyway, I told my son porn would destroy his growing brain just like drugs would, and no, I don’t feel guilty for that. “If you promise you won’t masturbate to porn, I’ll buy you a Playboy. You can masturbate to that.” He agreed, we pinky-swore, and then we went out in search of a Playboy. Well. Let me tell you how hard it is to find a damn Playboy in this day and age. I must have gone into no less than thirteen 7-11s and liquor stores, claiming I was a writer needing one for research. And the places that did have dirty magazines had ones which were just as bad as porn.

For $15 I ordered one online. I wished there was a magazine out there I could give my son which would provide a more sex-positive experience—maybe one with pictures of teenage girls with various body types, including plus-size, and no airbrushing, so he could have a more realistic view of “real” women, but then I realized there are probably many of them out there. For pedophiles, and that’s extremely icky, and grounds for arrest.

We’re lying to ourselves if we think teens aren’t going to access porn on the Internet. Sure, we can block it in our homes, but there will always be that one friend who has “Ass Ventura Crack Detective” bookmarked on their phone. I can only pray my son doesn’t grow up thinking all women have huge fake breasts and tight asses. Or expect a nurse who’s examining him to suddenly unzip his pants and start sucking him off. I hope he realizes that only women who do strenuous yoga and/or perform in Cirque de Soleil can contort their bodies into absurd positions while every orifice is filled.

Sigh. Welcum to the Information Age.

MY NEW LEAF IS STILL A LITTLE BROWN

Even though I don’t make resolutions per se, I always try to start off the year with a new and improved clean slate. After all, who doesn’t need some form of self-improvement?

I’m trying to adopt a more positive attitude in my life. Some people have this crazy notion that I’m a pessimist. I correct them by saying I’m a realist; there’s a difference. But once they start showing me all the ways I’m negative, I naturally become defensive and tell them if they were a fellow New Yorker, they’d “get” me in a way that only sarcastic, pragmatic New Yorkers can, then we end up arguing, and I eventually tell them to go fuck themselves if they think I’m such a horrible person, to which they exclaim, “See?! Negativity right there!”

So for all you fellow pess-, I mean, realists out there who want to improve your outlook a little (but only to get the people in your life off your back, NOT because you need an attitude adjustment), I’ll show you how I’m doing so far.

Today was Sunday—the perfect opportunity to sleep in. Only the dogs, the cats, and the birds didn’t see it that way. So every half hour starting at 7am, either the dog would lick my face or the cat would sit on my face while the birds loudly squawked in the background.

Finally, at 11 I hauled my butt out of bed. I hate mornings. So my first thought was, Ugh, I feel like crap. Mornings suck. Damn these animals.

But then I concentrated on how much I love my pets, even though they insist on puking all over the only 3-inch square of carpet that remains in our home, rather than on the 1300-square foot of floor. Or that every year the cats feel the need to mark the Christmas tree, leaving the delightful seasonal aroma of pine and piss throughout the house. Bodily fluid infractions aside, they bring me joy 98% of the time and that’s enough to be grateful for.

Already, I was happier. Until I remembered I had to walk the dog before my morning coffee. Going outside before I’ve had my first cup of coffee is akin to getting a tooth filled without Novocain. Annoyingly painful. But I’ve been written up so many times by management for letting the diva run loose to pee that we’re now at the “You have 7 days to get rid of your dog or we’ll evict you” stage.

However, my new and improved 2016 attitude realizes they’re just doing their job, and I needed to let go of the plan to make voodoo dolls in their likeness.

So I snapped the leash on the damn dog, er, my beloved dog, and we went for a walk. First person I saw was the man who filed a false complaint with management a few months ago over my dog. He claimed my dog pooped on his lawn, he told me to pick it up, and I refused. Even I’m not enough of an asshat to do something like that. The real story was my dog did in fact, unexpectedly take a dump on his lawn, his wife yelled at me through the window, I apologized profusely, ran to my house to get a bag, then returned to pick it up.

A few weeks ago, I may or may not have confronted him on the issue, peppering my verbal assault with some choice F-bombs, but that was still no reason for him to call the cops on me (3 of them! Who thankfully didn’t charge me with anything, but let me off with a warning to stay away from him).

In any case, this lovely morning the old me would have confronted him yet again to tell him that his damn cat has been on my property every day, eating my cat food, prompting fights with my cats, and taking numerous huge dumps on my property, and did he “know the definition of IRONY? Because that’s what this fucking situation is—Ironic!”

But alas, the brand spanking new me doesn’t want to get arrested no matter how much the experience may enhance my writing, so I calmly turned and strolled in the opposite direction, thank you very much.  See that? A positive, non-confrontational response to a potentially explosive and negative situation.

And that’s about all the grateful, optimistic energy I could muster up this morning, because after looking around at all the crap I needed to do, I realized if I weren’t a single mother I’d have some help with this never-ending mountain of crap, which then made me curse my loser of an ex for leaving and ruining my life, even though it was my own pathetic fault for choosing the deadbeat in the first place, and if I weren’t such an idiot my life would be so much better…

…but I digress.

Baby steps.

PENISES, PORN, & MOTHERHOOD (AN UNSEXY THREESOME)

It’s been a while since I’ve talked penises. Raising a 12-year-old boy ensures they’re never very far from my reality. My son loves to talk about his penis and the fact that almost everything gives him an erection nowadays. Sometimes in the middle of the Victoria’s Secret commercial he’ll say, “See? I’m getting hard right now.” “Well, stop it,” I tell him.

He hasn’t gone through puberty yet, nor has he masturbated. How do I know this? Because he’s thrown out comments like, “I don’t think I ever want to masturbate,” to which I inwardly smirk and think, “Honey, as soon as you discover that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I’ll hardly see you anymore.” Which is fine. I actually can’t wait for him to start masturbating because when he’s tired of playing Xbox he drives me nuts.

“I’m bored,” is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard to me. “Read a book, clean your room, go outside…” None of these hold any appeal for him, but when the day comes when I can say, “Go masturbate then,” I’m certain the suggestion will be met with approval and glee.

I’ll admit there’s a precarious balance between being a “progressive” mother and a “prude.” It may sound like my son and I live a clothing-optional lifestyle and still shower together because we’re so open with each other, but trust me when I say half the time I’m crying, “I’m your mother! You shouldn’t be telling me these things!” But who else can he talk to about male bodily functions? “Go ask your father,” doesn’t apply here, and friends aren’t always a reliable (or healthy or realistic) option.

For as sexually open as I am, sometimes I am rendered speechless. Like when my son asked me how to masturbate. “Um, you’ll figure it out when the time comes,” I mumbled, praying he’d just drop it. He didn’t. “But like what do you do?” I stopped what I was doing and looked up. “You just kinda…you know…move your hand up and down and stuff.” Are you uncomfortable reading this? If yes, then imagine my discomfort in person. Yikes.

If I don’t answer his questions I’m terrified he’ll turn to the internet for information. A few months ago he wanted to impress a girl at school so he Googled “How to get a 12-year-old girl excited.” You can imagine what came up. So then we had to have the Porn talk. I gave him my best spiel about how porn creates unrealistic expectations about women and if he watched too much of it, eventually he wouldn’t be able to have sex with a real woman. Short of resorting to “Your penis will fall off if you watch too much porn,” I think he got the message, but come on—porn at your fingertips? A mere click away? What teenage boy is going to be able to resist the temptation? And it’s sad. It literally makes me want to cry, because I didn’t watch my first porn until I was 18, and it was a joke at that. I was living in Italy at the time, and my gay friend and girlfriend decided it would be a hoot to go to a porno theater to see a movie in Italian. Except that it ended up being in English with Italian subtitles, the floors were icky sticky, and a man sat down next to my girlfriend and began to masturbate, so we fled, laughing hysterically while wanting to throw up at the same time.

My next porn experience was in my early 20s right after the Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee video came out. My gay friend (a pattern I seem to have with porn) came over and said, “We gotta watch this. I hear Tommy Lee’s cock is huge!” And it was. But we spent the whole time snickering and counting how many times Pammy gushed, “I love you, baby.”

Porn just wasn’t a reality while I was growing up like it is today. Now it’s an obsession. So I made my son promise he wouldn’t watch any until he was 15, the compromise being that I would buy him a nude magazine when he was ready. When he asked me for one, all these thoughts went through my head before I agreed. Thoughts like: “I guess Playboy wouldn’t be so bad, right? After all, I started looking at my dad’s collection when I was 8. Although that’s the reason I have such a fucked-up body image.” And, “As long as it’s not Penthouse or Oui (is Oui even still around?), both of which horrified the crap out of me when I was younger due to its extreme graphicness. Remember the Vanessa Williams scandal? How could one forget? And Madonna with the hairy armpits and pussy…cat.”

And then I had this thought: “Too bad there isn’t a magazine I can buy filled with pictures of teenage girls with various body types specifically for teenage boys to masturbate to,” which was immediately replaced by: “There are undoubtedly tons of them out there, but it’s freaking illegal to use underage girls in porn and Holy Hell, what was I thinking?”

Clearly I’m not, as my brain seems to be clouded with penises and porn.

CHANGE IS AS COMFORTABLE AS A CACTUS UP YOUR ASS

I hate change. And yet I crave it. I’m a creature of habit, but I get uncomfortable and frustrated when my life becomes stagnant. Living in the suburbs of Southern California was supposed to be temporary. 2 years—max. Enough time for my ex and I to save up money and move back up north which we both agreed was a much better environment to raise our son.

Welp, 11 years later, things didn’t go quite as planned. The ex and I split and there I was, stuck just trying to keep a roof over my son’s head. I don’t necessarily regret staying in this area for so long, (even though I have nothing but horrendous memories I wish I could lance out of my brain), because I provided stability and a somewhat decent environment for my son for the first 11 years of his life.

But we’ve exhausted our time here, and while I would have loved to give my boy a nice suburban upbringing with extracurricular activities ad nauseam and vacations once a year, I just can’t. So I’ve decided to do the only thing I can think of to bring some free diversity and experience into my child’s sheltered life—move to a big city. Chicago to be exact. Yes, I know it’s freaking cold and windy there. And yes, I know it will be a huge culture shock. My son may hate it. I may hate it. The diva, who doesn’t like weather below 70 degrees, will definitely hate it.

But here’s the logic behind this move: I want my boy to be exposed to different cultures, food, customs, colors of skin, mindsets. If he winds up not being college-bound I want there to be a plethora of other opportunities available to him. I personally want to be able to make more than $12/hr without having to drive an hour. I want to be able to visit the world’s largest aquarium without having to add 3 hours onto the journey for being stuck in LA traffic. I want to be able to walk outside my door and stumble upon a street fair, Farmers Market, musicians. I want various experiences at my fingertips because the truth is I’m dreadfully lazy and unmotivated. And I suck at planning outings. Oh, and I also want to associate with people who speak grammatically correct English, no more “I don’t got no more.” And I really want to live in a place where every other person hasn’t done meth or sold meth.

Basically, I want to be able to grab the boy by the hand sans Xbox controller and say, “Hey, let’s go explore the city and see what we find.”

Am I freaking nuts?

TESTOSTERONE IS SOME FUNKY STUFF

Lately, it seems like all my son wants to do is wrestle with me. It’s hard to admit I’m getting too old for him to be body slamming me, but one session of wrestling runs the risk of 10 sessions with a chiropractor. The boy’s almost 12, so I can’t throw him off me like I used to. He’s rough. He hurts, and he takes sadistic pleasure in hurting.

One day, my son came home from school and we wrestled on the couch. Then he proceeded to sit on my head and fart. Who does that? Boys, that’s who. I can’t help but think if I had a daughter, her and I would be sitting quietly next to each other on the couch, doing needlepoint or scrapbooking or texting.

As I was cleaning up a hairball the other day, my naked son came up to me and declared, “I have a pubic hair. Look, it’s on my balls.” He was so excited I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was probably dryer lint. “I’m going through puberty,” he said proudly. “I even have a pimple.” He pointed to what may or may not have been a mosquito bite on his forehead.

I remember how I couldn’t wait to get my period. My best friend and I were in competition to see who would get it first. I won, and she was devastated. I had become a woman first. Yay me. My son can’t wait to shave. I tried to tell him once he shaves, he’ll have to shave EVERY day for the rest of his life. That he’ll quickly come to hate the daily obligation, eventually grow the defiant, non-shaving man’s beard and look like Zach Galifianakis. It fell upon deaf ears.

Puberty cannot come fast enough for him. Every day yields a new “symptom” of it—his throat is sore, his balls have dropped, the hair on his legs has darkened. Sex Ed started yesterday, and he was so disappointed to learn girls go through puberty before boys.

There’s a constant internal battle going on inside me over what’s appropriate to discuss with him. On the one hand, I want him to feel comfortable talking to me about sex, but on the other hand, I don’t want to feel like I’m living on The Mustang Ranch either. Out of the blue, my son will suddenly blurt out words like sex, or tits, or orgasm. It’s like he has an X-rated form of Tourette’s Syndrome. Whenever I ask him where he learns inappropriate crap like sticking dollar bills in the G-strings of strippers, for example, he always says Family Guy. How fantastic is that?

We were having a perfectly lovely conversation last week in the car on the way to soccer practice. I asked him who the most popular boy in his class was. He had no idea. But the most popular girl? He didn’t even have to think about it. “Gisella.” When I asked why she was so popular, he answered, “She has big tits. They’re like…huge!”

Sadly, I didn’t have a fork to stick in my eye at that moment, or bleach to rinse out my ear canals, but he understood my open-mouthed horror, because he quickly said, “But I don’t look at them. I look at her face. She has a beautiful face.” Uh-huh.

Of course, I threw in my 2.5 cents about how he should never objectify women—that it doesn’t matter how pretty a girl is if she pulls the legs off grasshoppers and sets her dolls’ heads on fire. But again, it fell upon deaf ears. I know this because a few days later when he was describing the girlfriend he was going to have in the future, he mentioned, “Big boobs, nice legs, a beautiful face. I don’t much care about the ass, but it can’t be too small.”

I have come to the conclusion that I am no match against the ridiculous surges of testosterone in a budding preteen’s body, and that every other word out of my mouth when discussing sex with him will be condom, because I sure as hell am not ready to be a grandma at 48.

THE HOLIDAYS—MAY THEY REST IN PEACE

I can’t lie—I’m glad the holidays are over. Yes, I’m one of those people. But when you have no family to spend Christmas with and no significant other to kiss at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, the holidays blow. I survived by drinking more than I should and religiously following the posts on a site called Emerging from Broken. It was on this site I learned I was not alone. There’s many, many more like me who either have no contact or minimal contact with their terribly dysfunctional families.

Every day I’d peruse Facebook even though I was continuously assaulted by happy people getting together with their families. Even worse was seeing photos and postings of my own happy family. It stung. A lot. It wasn’t so much the lack of them I was missing. It was the lack of a family to call my own. Most people who are estranged from their family have chosen to create their own—usually through marriage. In my case, it’s only my son and I.

At some point in December, my son threw out those dreaded words no single mom ever wants to hear: “Why can’t you marry Daddy so he can come live with us?”

“Because Daddy is engaged to be married to another woman,” I told him. The boy is 11. Sorry, but I’m just not sugarcoating it anymore. At least my response succeeded in halting the conversation in its tracks.

We spent Christmas day with my friend’s in-laws who have graciously “adopted” us. There are advantages to celebrating with other people’s families. In between the ham and the pumpkin pie, the conversation turned to religion (a big social no-no) and ended with my friend’s husband banging his fists on the table and accusing his father of refusing to acknowledge his nephew’s homosexuality. “Why can’t you admit your nephew is gay, Dad? Say it!” he screamed.

This drama didn’t faze me in the least because hey—it ain’t my family. So I got up and went into the other room with the kids. It was very freeing. But New Year’s Eve was a completely different story. Who wants to go to a party where everyone is coupled up, or worse, there are 3 token single men all vying for my drunken attention? No thanks. Plus, everyone’s an alcoholic in my neighborhood, or a meth head (or usually both), so if driving is especially dicey under normal circumstances, can you imagine on New Year’s Eve?

But after a meh Christmas and an utterly craptastic New Year’s Eve, the Gods of Fair Play decided to reward me with a book contract for my hot mess that took me over a year to write and edit. It’s called THE MEATBALL MISTRESS and it’s about a sassy Italian girl from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn who flees to the Jersey shore after finding her fiancé in a compromising position. She’s, of course, bitter and cynical about men (I really had to stretch to write about that!) and meets her match in a guy who’s probably the biggest commitment-phobe in Jersey. So how do they wind up falling in love, you ask? Hmmm…

Since I literally thought I was going to end up burying this one in my backyard underneath a mound of compost, I’ll admit I’m pleased. Hopefully this recent euphoria will work to balance out the emotional upheaval I’ll be experiencing next month when I turn 46.

So how were your holidays?

DIVAS COME IN ALL SHAPES AND SIZES

Have I ever mentioned how I came to adopt my diva Chihuahua–aka Satan, aka My Worst Nightmare, aka My Baby? No? I’m a guest on one of my favorite blogs: http://www.menopausalmom.com/2013/11/wacky-wednesday-writers-guest-post-by_26.html?showComment=1385577452301#c8604764490218201249

Come on over and show some love, and tell me whether you’re a dog or cat person. While you’re there you can check out MenoMom’s blog–she is a POWERHOUSE blogger. This woman has more blog awards than I have notches on my bedpost. And in case you need some motivation…

She’s lucky she’s so cute!

THE BIRDS AND THE BEES

Last night I was sitting in front of my laptop doing what I do best—wasting hours of my life on Facebook—when it happened.

“Mom, did you and my dad ever have sex?”

Because it came so completely out of the blue, I froze like a deer in headlights, taking some time to process the question. A flurry of answers flooded my brain all at once: “No.” “Only one time.” “What do you think?” (Answer a question with a question in hope of veering off topic.)

“Yes,” I said. “That’s how we made you.”

My 11-year-old son stared at me in horror and confusion, or rather, as if he were watching a replay of Miley Cyrus twerking on the VMAs. “Ewwww, how did that happen?”

I hauled myself out of my chair and went over to join him on the couch, thinking, Choose your words carefully so as not to scar him for life. Was I supposed to get technical here and explain that sex was like putting 2 Legos together? Be funny and say, “Well son, it usually happens when you’ve had too many shots…” Lie, and tell him it didn’t happen until I turned 30?

“It happens when 2 people love each other.” (I was careful not to say “a man and a woman,” because I want him to grow up to be progressive and tolerant.) Just as I was forming the anatomical visuals in my mind, he dropped another bombshell question: “Why aren’t you and my daddy together anymore?”

I wanted to tell my son to read my blog, except I’ve written too many posts about his penis. Instead, I said that sometimes people love each other, but can’t live together—which is a total cop-out answer, I know. But is “Because honey, your father is Dysfunctional with a capital D” any better?

“I’ll always love your father, but we’re not able to live together because we don’t get along. I love him, but I’m not ‘in love’ with him like a boyfriend and girlfriend should be.” Gah, I felt like a politician spewing a sound bite.

“I don’t want you to get a boyfriend,” he said. Oh man, really? It’s already been 10 years. Is it going to be like that for the next 10? A vision of a tombstone with the words “My Sex Drive” flashed in my mind and I wanted to sob.

When I asked him why, he said, “Because then you won’t pay any attention to me.” Awww. I am his world, this much is true.

“I will always love you and I will always pay attention to you. If I ever get a boyfriend, I have enough love to go around.” (Not enough energy, but love, yes…)

And then in typical boy fashion, he farted loudly. We both laughed, the subject was changed and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. A mother can only take so much at one time.