The other night, I was having a phone conversation with my mother, catching her up on everything that had been going on with me this week. I got to a part in the story where I made a mention of dickfishing, and it occurred to me that she might not know what it meant.
So I asked her, “Do you know what dickfishing means?”
Letting out a long, heavy sigh, she said, “I know you gonna tell me.”
I continued, and explained to her that dickfishing is when a man catfishes his penis. In other words, he either uses pictures that aren’t his, or he is so adept at angles that when you see the real thing, you are disappointed because it doesn’t match the pictures you saw in size or proportion.
I told her that the reason I suspected this particular gentleman had dickfished me is that the pictures he sent and the penis I saw in the stroke video I got from him didn’t match up in size. Then I paused again.
“Mommy, do you know what a stroke video is?”
This time, she signed with annoyance.
“I’ve had men send me stroke videos before,” she said.
First of all, I wasn’t ready. Second of all, who are you pervs that are sending my mama stroke videos?!
The whole thing got me thinking—am I the only person who has always been able to talk to my mom like this?
Don’t get me wrong. My mom thinks I cuss way too fucking much. Sometimes I will let a string of polysyllabic cuss words fly out and she will say, “Monique! Your mouth!”
But she knows her child. She has always been the biggest supporter of my writing, going back to the early days of blogging when I had a site called Hideous Kinky.
I talked about everything on that blog, much as I do in this column (it was fate, really), and she read my work daily. She was an active participant in the comments section, and she often made an appearance in the more tame, family-friendly posts.
People who have been following me on the internet for a while know and love my mama. Everyone calls her Ms CJay.
Ms CJay understands that my mouth is foul, but I come by it honestly—and if we are being real, she should be used to it because I get it from her mama.
I learned all my best cuss words from my granny. My favorite insult, you son of a syphilitic bitch, was passed down to me by my granny when I was still a teenager. She was a real one.
A lot of my philosophies on men come from my granny. She always told me and my cousins, “Keep an extra man in your pocket and make sure they stay out of yours.” I live that to this day.
She taught me that “a man is a first cousin to a dog,” and “a hard dick don’t have no conscience.”
My grandmother was not the best cook, but she had worldly wisdom for your ass.
I also got my inner “ho” from my granny. There was no shame in her game. My mother will kill me for saying this, but my granny was so cold with it, she used to bring all her side pieces around us when we were younger. We didn’t even blink.
My mother is more of a prude than I am, but she gets me in a way that others don’t, and it is this part of her that I appreciate most.
My mama knows that I am nothing if not Rosetta’s grandchild. She knows that I am a straight shooter. She knows that I am quick to cuss someone out, but good with the soft words, too.
My mama can listen to me talk like this because she knows I will talk about penises just as openly as I will talk about social justice issues.
She loves and appreciates everything that makes me Monique. She tells me frequently that she admires my openness and my fearlessness. And I love her for it.
She follows me on Twitter, and she favorites a good majority of my tweets, but most especially the ratchet ones.
It’s macaroni art 2.0. She can’t hang it on her fridge, but she can read along and think about how simultaneously funny and absurd her daughter can be in any moment.
So yeah, she’s my mama, and while there are some things I don’t tell her (I mean, I have to keep some shit to myself), she gonna get these sex jokes and read my nightly column and all my news articles and appreciate the woman I grew up to be. Most of it is because she let me be me.
When I was a teenager, I used to tell her that as soon as I graduated from high school, I was going to get a job as a stripper. Then I would do this little twerking dance in front of her to demonstrate what I meant.
She laughed every time and told me that if she or anyone she knew ever saw my naked ass swinging from a pole, she would kill me.
I love you, Mom.
I didn’t become a stripper after all, but I still get to be raunchy every night, and you don’t have to kill me.