To cut or not to cut

[I don't know why I never published this blog post before, but I found it sitting in my drafts, so here ya go.]

“You lead a very interesting life,” my girlfriend Manna said the other night.  I was talking about myself way too much and she was a sweetheart for letting me sit on her swing out back, chain smoke, and tell her my life story.  She helped me feel so much better.  Don’t you love people who build you up?  When I confessed that I’ve been seriously involved with four men in the past two years I commented, “That’s pathetic, and … wrong.”

“Well,” Manna said reflectively, “when you’re in a loveless marriage for the past few years before that, it’s different somehow.  Like you spend a good deal of time lonely and alone, even though you’re not technically ‘single’.”

She’s right, and I never have thought of it like that before.  I feel guilty for jumping from man to man ever since my divorce (Fuzzy, then the Nice Guy who also overlapped with the high school ex, and now my current crush).  The high school ex is the only one who got “serious” with me, but I count all the others because mine and Fuzzy’s relationship was a very huge issue, one that helped get me out of that train wreck of a marriage.  Nice Guy, although it never got serious, met my kids, and we casually dated for several months.  And my crush shouldn’t really count as a “relationship”, but my level of interest is probably higher than all the aforementioned “relationships” combined, so I’m counting it.

I don’t want to make a man the focus of my life, but obviously it’s periodically a focus of this blog.  That’s okay.  I have no drama with my kids, and none with my family.  The job drama is too depressing and somber to want to write about here, so it’s understandable that my blog would sometimes revolve around relationship drama.  Plus, I can talk to my friends and family here about job and family things, but I can’t about relationships.  Talking to y’all about it feels good.  Somehow, the distance between us makes it easier to talk about things that are really personal and in that way, we’re even closer than friends I see all the time.  Odd, huh?

I sure can’t talk to my mother.  I turned to her with the Butt Knot 2010 problem and after hearing her lecture me about diet and exercise for a half hour I broke down and told her that I thought anal sex had something to do with it.  She still spontaneously cautions me to “Quit butt-fucking,” although that hasn’t been an issue for quite some time.

And take my advice on this.  Do not ever joke around with your mom about sex unless you enjoy the spontaneous visions that will surely pop into your head about your father.  The other day she said something about what drew my father to her when they were younger (he is 7 years older than her).  I jokingly said something about, “It was the blow jobs, right?” and she chuckled and said, “Well… yeah.  Haha.”

“EWWW, gross, Mother!  Don’t ever talk about giving Daddy head, Jesus God I think I just threw up in my mouth.”

“Well, don’t ask me that kind of shit!”

DEAL.

It was almost as bad as last summer, when my mother called me in San Diego to tell me that Pop was in the hospital and I may want to start checking on flights home.  I frantically began doing just that when she called back and said, “Nevermind, it’s not a heart attack.  He just took too much Viagra.”

“Mother.  Just let me think it’s a heart condition, okay? “

I do confide in my mom a lot about not getting laid.  “What is wrong with the men you date??” she asks.  And I know from things she says or little comments Pop has made that she tells Pop everything I tell her.  “Good,” I think, “at least my father thinks I never get laid, and he probably likes the guys I’m with more for that reason, and at the very least he doesn’t have the horrific mental pictures like the ones Mother induces in me about him.”

It does suck to know your father is uncircumcised.  I’ve never been with an uncut man, but I chose not to have the unnecessary and, in my opinion, mutilating and cruel procedure done to my own son.  I’m naturally curious about it.  My father is the one who talked to me about his penis the first time this subject came up (NO pun intended).  He was concerned about me having Nate “cut on” and was relating his strong opinions to me on the matter.  I’ve always wondered if it was a family thing with Daddy, and wish I had more close male friends who were willing to talk about it.  I don’t care anything about knowing private details about my family members’ and/or friends’ genitalia, but I wonder about Nate’s social life later, how this will effect him.  Though he will be in the majority of the men in the world who didn’t have this barbaric procedure, here in America and especially in the South, he’ll be a minority.  I worry about how that will effect his self-esteem.

But ya know, I’ve never been one to do things just because other people were doing them, especially not Americans, since I believe most of them are pathetically ignorant (George W. Bush for eight years?  Enough said.).  And Southerners, bless their hearts, intellect is not the general population’s strong suit around here.  So I’m gonna cut on my son to fit in with this crowd?  Hell. No.

But Nate, oh y’all… he’s so sweet and sensitive and funny and eccentric and cute as the day is long.  He inherited Jeremy’s genes in the height department, but otherwise looks like my daddy.  His eyes, his face, his smile, and – what sparks envy in me the most – his lithe figure and rapid metabolism, they all come from my father.  He will be a heartbreaker… I just hope all those qualities will override what will surely be noticed in the locker room and later, in the back seat of a car with some teenage girl.

I wouldn’t dare have my son surgically altered solely so that he can fit in, but that doesn’t mean I don’t worry about the repercussions he’ll face for being different.

So there’s a “family” issue for y’all.  Any opinions?