Kinky boots on parade

Technically I should be editing my novel Leaving Hope and working on my query letter for Second Chances. Instead I'm writing here. Hey, at least I'm writing.

I was on Facebook earlier (yes, I know, such a huge shock... everyone who knows me can stop laughing hysterically now) and a friend of mine had posted a video from the US Thanksgiving Parade. I'm including a link here...

Kinky Boots at Macy's Parade

I'm giving everyone a chance to watch it.
*taps foot and looks impatiently at computer clock*
... okay, that should be long enough.

Comments are posted in the article about how horrible it was for this song to be played at the parade. One even claimed to make the poster have a little less hope for humanity. Because, you know, people singing about love and being there for each other is such a message of despair. But my favourite comment (which was echoed in the resulting comments on Facebook) was the one that said "Let parents decide when to discuss certain topics with their kids instead of springing it on them in Macy's Parade."

What parent really believes life waits for them to decide when to have these conversations? Really? C'mon, you'd think that ship would have sailed when your toddler wanted to know why Daddy has a penis. At the dinner table. With guests over.

Or am I the only lucky one to have conversations like this?

Let me tell you about how the topic of drag queens came up in my family.

It all started on a lovely summer's trip to the park. I got the kids dressed, slathered them in sunscreen, collected a handful of toys, and set out for the local park. We were almost there when a man approached us. He was tall, at least 6ft, and he looked even taller in his stilettos. Despite it being barely after lunch, he was all dressed up for a night on the town. Make up, styled hair, evening gown... he was ready to go. And, just to make the experience even more interesting, he wanted directions to the local jail so he could visit his boyfriend. I've found that when life hands us an experience, it goes all out.

I assured him that he was on the right road to get to the local jail and it probably wouldn't take him more than ten minutes to get there, then agreed that it must stink to have his boyfriend behind bars. Then we said goodbye and he headed off. The whole time both kids stared up at him wide eyed.

The kids watched him walk away (a lot more gracefully than I would in heels) then daughter turned to me and said, "Mommy, why is that man wearing a dress?" And I looked at her and said, "Because he wants to." Then we went to the park.

That was it. No huge explanation. No confusion. It's honestly not that hard a question.

My son came home this evening right after I watched the video so I dragged him to the computer and made him watch it too, just to get his reaction (he's what's known as a captive audience).

His first reaction was sheer bafflement that the song would be played at a parade. Because floats move a lot faster than that and no one would get the whole message, they'd just hear little bits and pieces. Obviously the Macy parade isn't a tradition in our house. I promptly explained this song was performed at the beginning and had been stationary. Everyone there heard the whole thing.

Oh... well in that case he figured they should play it twice. Once at the beginning and again at the end, because that was something everyone should hear.

Then, just to round out the conversation, I googled drag queens and we looked at faces of men with half their head made up. What else do you do on a Saturday evening? I guess we could play cards (if I knew where the deck was and remembered any games) but the pictures were more interesting.

Now I'm going back to editing Leaving Hope. I'm not going to bother posting the first chapter of Second Chances (like I did with my other novels). All it does is end in a badly formatted wall of text. But I like the first chapter and hopefully some agent out there will too.

Words from my son

I love this kid. Every once in a while we'll have a conversation and he'll say something that gets me thinking. We just had an out of the blue conversation and it went like this...

Mom, there are people out there that think being gay is unnatural. Running around naked is natural, *looks over at the cats* I don't see our cats wearing clothes, and being gay is natural too.

I'd have a little bit of respect for those people, not much but a little, if they actually tried to live a natural life. You know, if they ran around naked in the woods, eating what they found and building a tent with their bare hands. Fending off bears with sticks. And if a tree fell on them, they just lay there because going to the hospital's unnatural.

If they want to claim they're for what's natural, they shouldn't be online or driving cars or wearing glasses or watching TV. *looks at me seriously* You know what's unnatural? It's unnatural to hate gays.

Obligatory kid photo...

 And he's right. How can someone sit in a climate controlled house that's wired with electricity, wearing clothes made with man-made fibers, heating their food in a microwave, while whining about what's "natural"? There are a lot of unnatural things in our lives, who someone loves isn't one of them.

On friend-zoning, nice guys, and the rape culture

 "Friendzoning" is bullshit because "Girls are not machines that you put Kindness Coins into until sex falls out." - Aeryn Walker

My son made a comment using the term "friend-zoned" today and I told him it doesn't exist; there is no such thing. Friend zoning assumes that the person (usually female) would have been romantically interested in another person (usually male) except somehow she got sidelined into thinking of him as just a friend and can't pull him out of that category anymore. He could have had a chance if it wasn't for her silliness.

I told my son that people who think that they've been "friend-zoned" need to grow up and face reality. There is no law that says just because you love someone romantically, they have to like you back. Even if they like you enough enough to be friends, they don't have to love you. That's called a crush, it happens and that's okay. No one dies from a crush.

Friend zoning often seems to happen to the self-proclaimed "nice guys". The ones who insist they treat women well but never get what they deserve. That makes them creeps, not nice guys. If you're treating a woman well just so you can have sex, you're not treating her well at all. You're seeing her as nothing more than an object, a means to your own personal gratification.

Which leads to the whole rape culture. We live in a society where women are taught how to protect themselves from rape. Don't wear overly tight clothes, or clothes that are too low cut or too short. Don't go outside at night, especially on your own. Don't go places alone like trails or laundry rooms or parking garages. And if a woman's assaulted, the first reaction is to wonder what she did wrong. Did she follow the rules?

What we need to do is teach the boys. We need to teach them they are better than this. We need to teach them to respect themselves and others. We need to teach them they are responsible for themselves. We need to teach them that no means no all the time. It doesn't matter if he's two seconds away from penetration. The words "no, stop" mean exactly that. We need to teach them that no one is "asking for it". No one. It doesn't matter if she's walking around naked, she's not asking to be raped. As soon as someone's drunk, the ability to consent is gone. I don't care if she's saying "I want you, lets have sex now". If she really means it, she'll mean it tomorrow and it'll be that much more special if she remembers it or doesn't throw up on you. And if she's so passed out she's non-responsive, you take her to the hospital, not your bed.

And we need to teach the girls they are worth more. They can say "no" without being frigid. They can say "yes" without being a slut. Their worth as a human should not be defined by who's been between their legs and they should give that same worth and respect to others. And we need to teach them that boys can say "no" too. No means no, no matter what gender is speaking and if he's drunk he can't consent either.

We need to treat our children equally when it comes to where they go and how late they stay out. We need to treat them equally when it comes to teaching them about sex and sexuality.

I am leaving a link with a video here. It's worth reading and it's definitely worth sitting down and viewing with your teens. The video shocked me, there are boys my son's age joking about raping a drunk and unconscious teenage girl while laughingly wondering if she's dead. But the video covers, in plain language, exactly why this is wrong and how boys should act instead.

A Horrifying Thing Happened In Ohio. Not Being Creepy Could Prevent It From Happening Again.

Conversations with my son

Yesterday afternoon, my son poured himself yet another glass of milk. He goes through a 4L bag of milk in about a day so him pouring a glass isn't that odd. He looked at the milk, sighed, then said, "If I could have any superpower in the world, I'd love to be able to make milk. It would come shooting out of my fingers every time I wanted a glass."

My first thought was, of course, mess. I've seen how easily he can trash a room even without milk spurting from his fingertips at a thought. Slopping while pouring a glass is nothing compared to a child who got thirsty in the middle of the night and flooded his whole bed and floor with milk.

Then came my second thought. "I had that superpower," I commented nonchalantly. His eyes widened. "You did?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes hon," I reminded him. "I breastfed you for years and your sister too."

I'm not sure if me having his "superpower" moved me up a notch in his mind, or bumped his superpower down.

Then came our conversation last night. In the past week, son's picked up a weird cough. It doesn't happen often, maybe once or twice a day. But when he coughs it's disconcerting. He asked if he could have asthma and I jump and think he's choking each time. He draws a gasp of breath in then chokes and wheezes for a few seconds... then is fine again. Of course he picked this up the day before going away to visit his grandmother and came home on Friday evening, after the doctor was closed. I'm making him an appointment tomorrow but, as of yet am clueless as to what it could be.

We're chatting on the couch when my son looked at me and asked, "Mom, why do I keep coughing like this?"

I'm known for being just a tad sarcastic and my reply was a deadpan, "It's the bubonic plague. I'd write my will now if I were you."

Son sits upright and eagerly asks, "Really? What's the bulbic playground?"

Sarcasm works so much better when the person you're talking to is listening and knows what the hell you're talking about.

Also, I labelled this post "bubonic plague" just to see how many people find it through that tag.

Generation gap

Last night my son and I were talking at the dinner table. Son is very worried about the elevators in our building. He's regularly concerned the cords are going to snap, sending everyone inside plummeting to their doom.

After several minutes of elevator talk I told my son he was like Chicken Little, trumpeting "the sky is falling".

Son looked at me blankly then said, "Yes, but Chicken Little was right at the end".

"No he wasn't," I reminded him, slightly puzzled. "It just turned out to be an acorn."

"Yes," son insisted. "It was an acorn at the beginning but then the aliens came."

Aliens? I seriously began questioning my son's sanity at this point. What aliens? There's no aliens in the book...

That was when the light bulb lit. There was a movie, which I'd never seen but apparently son had.

"No, son," I explained. "Not the movie, the book."

That was his turn to look confused while I explained the book to him. I guess that was one book I missed in his childhood.

It's funny how you can talk to someone, think you're both talking about the same thing, and discover you both have something completely different in mind.