My Family, My Lovers...

You may or may not have noticed my publishers and I parted ways. It was on friendly terms. I read in their contract that I signed that incest was not something they were interested in publishing. That's the way I remember it today, but I could re-read the contract to be sure. See, I always had in the back of my mind, VC Andrews. She was a best selling author in 1980’s and it was her tool box. She wrote the same story over and over with the exact same theme in all her books, INCEST. Flowers in the Attic told it best for me.

If OmniFic’s position is not to publish family members bumping uglies, well, I need publishers who are willing to put the family lovin’ business out there. Period. It was the missing element to Forced to Change that tied the story up and helped it right,write itself. Once I added that element into the story, it finished telling me where it wanted to go. Just that easy, my head had the answer to what was wrong with my novel and why it refused to feel finished. I couldn’t write an ending that didn’t include that aspect to the storyline. So, now that I’m staring at less than a weeks worth of rewrites and desiring using NaNo this year to flush out the 2^nd book in the series, Changed by Time, I’m goal-oriented with a full plate.

I first got into Literotica because incest/taboo was the most read category there. All the authors I follow have their reasons, but as the #1 read category, I needed to crack that code. I tried my hand at it, but I couldn’t get a ‘h’ rating for my attempts. Though the reviews were good, when my publishers suggested it wasn’t their style, I adjusted. I pulled down my incest stories from Lit. I see that as a mistake now that I’m correcting. So, that’s why the rights to FTC reverted back to me. No hard feelings. When my needs change, so do my working-on goals. Duh, that’s how my life works.

See, my #1 what if question is 'could having sex with my father have saved his life'? But according to the rules I grew up with, he was off limits as a lover. He was always married. I try hard not to disrespect other women, even one's I barely know. In my mind I passed on the opportunity to bed Peter 'MADE MY PANTIES WET' Steele with a note played on his instrument, a single word from his lips because a girl told me she fucked him the day before I met him (work with me here, in my fantasy, I had a shot). She was funny and beautiful for the twenty minutes we discussed her previous evening activities.

I learned the hard way that it ended friendships I valued to go after another woman's man. So my motto became 'PROS before Bros' IE, LADIES FIRST! Ain't nothing wrong with a PROfessional Sex Worker in my book, I pick up tips from them. The fact that my Sperm Donor wished I'd been an abortion and decided to let me know that information because of his addiction made me who I am today. What he ENJOYED, I HATED on principal from that day forward. What he FEARED I tried, including dating white men exclusively most of the time, especially a white cop. My Bio-dad once said, "No WHITE COP babies!" to me while I was dating one...

I respected my mother's fear of pregnancy before I found my way in the world. So I gave him that one. No babies, until I figured my shit out. Condoms. The Pill. And I knew in my heart if I accidentally got pregnant I was keeping the baby. In the meantime, I mothered animals and became friends with a lot of women who decided to step up for the job motherhood. I am PRO-CHOICE & PRO-LIFE at the same time. I only argued the point with my bio dad because he claimed to be PRO-LIFE while making all the kinds of choices that put him in a grave at 64 years of age. 

So Confused Connie is back up on Literotica once again. There are 2 follow-up chapters but it will take some time to get them all posted again. Bare with me, I'm also close to the finish line on FTC and working on getting that published in the coming year. My goals are set, but adjustable for life. Cuz my personal truth happens to be when I play architect in my life, Goddess laughs and sets a different obstacle (life lesson) in my divine path...

Kids Ain’t For Me

A woman I used to hang out with had two little girls, one with spina bifida  (four years old), the other is going to be a superstar (six years old). I haven’t a clue what career path this bright little light in the world is going to play in the future, but she and I had the following conversation one night when her mother didn’t feel like cooking. We met up at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that served amazing margaritas:

Cute Superstar (CS): Hey, Simone! Why don’t you like kids?  We’re totally adorable and cute. What’s your problem? (she gave me her money-making, ‘works on everyone else but never on me’ smile and raised her eyebrows up and down a few times to really sell it)

Me: I’m allergic to kids.

CS: Oh, I didn’t realize. I’m allergic to peanuts. I’ll scoot over further so you don’t get sick.

Some of you are going aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwweeee. Simone, how could you not want to be a mother with conversations like that? Um, sorry folks, kids just ain’t for me. Originally, I had a fear of getting pregnant for a couple of reasons. One might think it was because of my mother. As if she saw this as some huge failure in life and pushed me towards college and a career.

She did do that (see the contract I signed at eight years old in an earlier blog post), but mostly I had a lot of female cousins who thought getting pregnant before they could drive was a good idea while I was growing up. My peers at the time saw my cousins as ghetto, welfare moms making life choices that none of them would ever consider. In other words, I looked down on my family. I decided I would be better than them when it came to getting pregnant.

My mother and I used to have deep, informative, hard hitting fact conversations. She was as open as open could be on every subject matter. There was not a single question that could pop out of my mouth that she wouldn’t answer. Some people felt she overshared with me, but she rarely treated me like a child and I was grateful for it, especially when I consider how young I was when she died.

Her view on my getting pregnant was, “Feel free to come home pregnant. I reserve the right to scream and yell. But you can always come home. Pregnant or not.”

My mother said this statement to comfort me. We’d just learned the news that my fourteen year old cousin had committed suicide. My cousin, Tracy, had gotten pregnant and was too afraid to tell her mother the information. She choose to end her life. Tracy’s death cut at me, mostly because we hadn’t spoken since my mother had moved us back to Michigan from Ohio. I was twelve at the time of her death.

Tracy’s suicide lead to the second conversation I’d ever had with my mother about abortions. The first conversation on this subject matter came about before she divorced my abusive stepfather. In hindsight, although she never said, and I never asked, she was trying to decided what to do. I’m assuming my mother was pregnant at the time because she asked me how I would feel about a sibling.

I thought it was great. I was a lonely only child. I wanted a minion, another person to blame besides my imaginary friend when something got broken. This tactic didn’t work in our household and resulted in the murder of my imaginary friend. So to me, an actual person to blame for the busted lamp caused while I jumped rope in the living room was “Yes, yes, yes.”

No siblings every appeared in my life. My friends continued to be jealous of my lack of mini-terrorist in my home. I didn’t get that special someone to bully. The abortion part of the conversation happened because my mother admitted to me [on the car ride home] that she’d had one before I was born. I got quiet, thinking about what she’d said. I asked why she didn’t abort me after awhile. She answered the same, because she’d had one before I was born. When she got pregnant with me, she’d regretted that choice so much she promised herself she wouldn’t do it again. Her words stuck and resonated with me for years and years.

So while having the second conversation, she made sure I understood that if I ever got pregnant and came home, once she finished her screaming and yelling, she would take me to have one if that was what I decided. Only this was all theory and ended up my shaping my position on the pro-choice/pro-life debate. I was pro-choice but I figured if I should become pregnant, no matter what age, I would keep the child. To insure I never had to make that choice the moment I became sexually active I asked and obtained birth control.

Even before I became sexually active, my mother checked my wallet for a prophylactic, while ignoring the rolling papers tucked down behind it, I mean, er, uh, anyway, before I left out the house on a date. She didn’t embarrass me fully by showing my would-be suitor what she was checking for, that was between us. She did however rapid fire questions at the guys waiting for intelligent answers. When I returned home I got their review.

From the purple haired boys to the real life ‘Where’s Waldo’ I used to date, my mother always had something nice to say about the young men. She did fall in love with my beard (I dated a guy twice my age at sixteen. Nothing sexual, he really did enjoy my mind and was more of a mentor than a love interest). The beard was a great guy and today we’re even Facebook friends, he’s happily married. Though in high school he missed the function of a beard a few times, and actually brought a date with him when he picked me up.

Even though I’m in my thirties today, I don’t really see kids in my future. I’ve had plenty of friends take the plunge so there are always young minds around to warp if I get the urge. Although I claim to be allergic to children, I think I enjoy the freedom of being responsible for only my cat, Nike. I’m actually allergic to her, but I love her enough that I’m willing to be her mother, even if she did destroy a pair of Nike tennis shoes which is how she got her name.