The conversation goes something like this:
(first the phone rings)

"Hi mom."

"Nana, I don't understand your blog." 

"How are you, mom?"

"I don't understand at all.  Can you explain it to me?"

"What do you want to know?"

"I just don't understand."

"Well.  I can tell you about my "pimp and ho" blog."

"Ok."

"Well, mom, you know what a prostitute is, right?"

"Yes."

"Well a pimp is someone who controls a lot of prostitues, usually the prostitutes are on drugs and because the pimp has drugs for them, he can eontrol them to have sex people for money."

"Ok."

"A ho is a prostitute.  It come from the word "whore" I think.  Yes, it's short for whore."

"Ok."

"So, even though being a pimp isn't necessarily a good thing, because of the way people write about it and refer to it in music, in our culture sometimes to use the word "pimp" or "pimping" is to say that you are powerful or in control."

"     "

Mom?

"Ok.  I still don't understand."

So I was trying to take this word and make it into something not so sexy.  That's why I said, "pimple." Like pimples when you're a teenager.  They're something you want to get rid of."

"Ok."

At this point this is one of the cutest conversations I've had with my mom to date.  She says something about how she read the word "intercourse" in my blog and didn't know what I was talking about but it made her feel funny.  I explain that I was writing in a very contemporary style about daily life and that I was also doing word play, so maybe that's why she was having a hard time understanding.

"Well, English is not my first language, so it's okay to ask, right?"

I try to explain the poetics of my task by referring to a Taiwanese phrase I've known all my life.  It's sounds like this: "BAH ZHANG."  It refers to a traditional food consisting of savory meats packed into the center of savory rice, which is then wrapped in a leaf and steamed.  It's quite delicious.  Bah means "meat" and Zhang -- loosely means "grow" -- but in the way that green things do.  So then I said, "Like Bah Zhang, which means 'meat grows on trees'."  It's a great word because it takes the leaves that the rice and meat are wrapped in and then gives you the idea that maybe they just grew that way. 

"I don't understand."

Imagine if you're fat all your life and your grandma always said you had a lot of "Bah" or "meat."  You would always associate feeling shitty and insecure with the word Bah.  Or it could also make you think about numbness "Bah bah bah" (the tones aren't the same--but hey, this is oriental phonetics we're talking about here--the phrase identifies that repetitive twinge you feel when something falls asleep).  Then you get older and you meet your first boyfriend (you still weigh the same) but he says you are his little bah zang, so delicious!  He takes a word that has meant one thing and makes it mean another.  Do you get it now?

She did.  I explained that I wanted to take the word "ho" which represented a woman in a bad state and imbue her with possibility, other lives to be had.  Hence, "hopeful."

"Okay, I can tell by the way you're talking you're not doing anything bad.  It's okay."

--We discussed how her generation didn't/doesn't talk about sex very openly.  She reiterated how while not understanding my blog, almost all of it, she did feel funny and wanted to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong.

"Are you doing something stupid?"  (Imagine this asked in the most neutral way possible.  Non-accusatory.  An honest question.)

"I'm not sure!"

"I'm serious!  Are you doing something stupid?"

"I'm serious, too.  I don't know!  I don't think I am.  I'm not trying to be stupid.  I'm trying to be open, that might be stupid, but then, that's who I am.  Someone who reads my blog might now want to marry me, because maybe I am too open and stupid, but then, I don't want them either, right?  So that's okay, right?"

"Ha ha.  That's true, huh?"

I do have this bizarre habit of being open.  It's caused me some problems.  I have adventured on people because I can honestly go from meeting one person to the next and each one has intersting stories, motivations, passions that can keep me in a continuous rapture.  It's been a part of my personality for a long time, though it may also be a part of a manic diagnosis (but more on that later).

Anyway.  

The conversation closed with us laughing, and her saying,

"It's okay to check on you?  It's mom, right?"