Last month someone asked me a question, but I misread it and answered with a blog post instead. I don’t remember the original question. That’s not important. I thought the question was: Where did I get my dirty mind? Was it in my genes or did I learn it? (Or in my jeans. Ha. )

I can tell you right away I didn’t get it from my mother. After my sisters and I moved out of the house, she no longer felt the need to be a good example and loosened up a bit. She drank with us and admitted she smoked in high school, but if she ever had a dirty thought, it never saw the light of day. Sex just doesn’t interest her.

I got my smart-ass sense of humor from my dad. Most of his jokes were reasonably clean, although very racist, but I suspect he kept most of the dirt to himself. I remember watching Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part 1 with him (I don’t know where my mom was), and squirming at the bare centurion asses bouncing in front of Madeline Kahn’s Roman Empress. (Still my favorite scene.)

So if I got my naughty nature naturally, it came from my dad’s side of the family—his father, not his mother. I’ll never forget after she burned her bum ice fishing (long story, you don’t want to know), grandpa had to treat her blisters. “Forty-nine years of marriage and that’s the first time he’s ever seen my bottom.” Whoa.

Life made me a cynic. My parents divorced just short of their 25th anniversary, my dad died from cancer right in front of me, and my mother-in-law grew up with abuse I can’t even imagine. Both my sister and I are infertile. Yeah, I learned life’s a bitch, and I learned it the hard way.

And yet, I write romance. Hot, steamy, and sometimes nasty romance, but romance nonetheless. Maybe I picked up my dirty mind from my husband. After we got married, he bought me my first vibrator and told me masturbating was okay. I subscribed to Playgirl Magazine, skimmed the pictures and read all the stories (really!) and wrote a few. I watched my first porno with him. We researched sexual philosophies that later appeared in my books. (Research. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) He claims I corrupted him, that I was a bad girl all along. He just set her free. I think he might be right. (Shhh! Don’t tell him I said that!)

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been a dirty-minded girl. And I think I got it from the men in my life. How appropriate. I inherited it from one, and I learned how to use it from the other. So there.