“The MommyFesto, Part 1
by Black Dahlia Parton
My name is Mommy. I am a sexually empowered feminist identity for a post-patriarchal sexuality. I am lover, partner, sadist and pervert. My likes are tying you up, spanking you, and teaching you to use a vibrator. My fetishes are taking you to the park, cooking your favorite meal after a rough day and tucking you in at night.
I am more than counterpart to Daddy. I am my own woman. Or man. I am male and female, cis and trans, white and POC, smurf and snork. I am every letter of the acronym and a few that haven’t been added yet.
If dykes can be Daddy, then fags can be Mommy. Because I said so, that’s why.
I love my boys. And my girls. And everyone in between. I love everyone who’s ever been told they were gross, that femmes were only good for “bumping vaginas and exchanging recipes”, and that the caregiver sexual dynamic was a privilege reserved for Daddy and Mommy still had laundry to do, anyway.
My community is one of many hurts, and I’ve brought my rocket ship band-aids.
My pink cupcake apron is my uniform in the fight against patriarchy. My lipstick is war paint. I know my place, and it’s on top. I believe baking chocolate chip cookies can be a sexy act of dominance and if you can’t agree with that than you don’t get to lick the spoon.
I am a hedonist. If I make you hot cocoa and help you get into your pajamas, it’s because I ENJOY IT, NOT BECAUSE IT’S MY JOB.
I don’t know where you picked up all that misogynistic, cissexist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, and ableist language, but I don’t like it. I taught you to check your privilege, not abuse it.
If you want me to love you, touch you, bend you over my knee for that spanking you so deserve, then you need to follow my rules: fight oppression, stand by your community, and never, ever let the patriarchy tell you what you can and can’t do with yourself and your body.
That’s my job.”
Design by D Rex
And now, a prologue.
“What’re you gonna do with an art degree?”
The same thing you’re going to do with your business degree: graduate, wallow in unemployment, work jobs you hate to pay the bills, wallow in unemployment again, and eat raw potatoes for a couple days before you form a plan to pursue a career path that, while not your first or even second choice, engages your talents, skills, and interests so you don’t feel you’ve missed out on that whole “American Dream” thing or “sold out” while keeping a roof over your head and a glimmer of self-respect on your face so you don’t avert your eyes and curse under your breath whenever you see yourself in the mirror. In time, you might even begin to believe this was what you were meant to do with your life all along, and forget you ever had dreams of being a B movie filmmaker (or, in your case, the guy who burns down his workplace and absconds with stolen money to Mexico).
My plan C is art educator. While I’d like to teach kids and maybe teenagers, I’m undecided on whether I want to be an actual art teacher, do the after school program racket or go the Bob Ross route and teach through media. As if I’d get a choice. No matter which way I cut it, I’m looking at more college, more debt, more heckling from people with “serious” majors and less letting people take pictures of me while drunk.
“Art teacher” isn’t my first choice of a job because I wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice for an art teacher. In five years of art school, I only took one drawing class and spent most of it arguing with the instructor. My background was, until said drawing class, exclusively performance and media-based. I’m a little intimidated by traditional mediums of visual art (which is really just a fancy way of saying “paints and pencils”), preferring the crayons, colored pencils, and chalk of my childhood. In all likelihood, my students will be at about the same level as me in terms of aptitude.
But maybe that’s the point. I didn’t get into art because I felt I was particularly good at it or “had something to say”. I create because it makes me feel good. I create because it briefly anchors the hot air balloon of brain cells theologists would call “my soul” to the ground and lets me feel connected to others, even if only for a brief moment, before I lift off again into the wild blue yonder of disconnection. I do it because I really need to speed up this “recover from past trauma” thing and I only see my therapist once a week. I do it because I have to. I want to show people that you need not be a prodigy to enjoy or benefit from making art. It can be a hobby, it can be therapeutic, it can be anything you want it to be. Take it from someone who’s not all that good at it but still works at it every day and considers it a core part of their being.
Well, shit. Looks like I’ve already reached the “this was meant to be” stage. That sort of faith might help me endure the long and potentially torturous journey that awaits me.
I need to get into grad school, which may be harder than it sounds. I didn’t have exceptional grades, so I might need to fluff up my application with more volunteering and activism, a larger body of work, and get a good GRE score.
My goal for this coming year is to work on a piece of art/craft every day and post the results on this blog. And stop wearing jeans to bed.
I think it might benefit my potential and no way tangible in any form career as an art educator if I work with materials and mediums available to my similarly intangible students. This may not be true, but frankly if I didn’t use this to justify acquiring toy instruments and play-doh, I’d just find another equally reasonable-sounding excuse.
It might also benefit me to go to bed and start working on this tomorrow while the sun is still out instead of staying up all night, waking up in the afternoon and being all “damn, was hoping to get supplies but it’s getting dark and cold and I don’t wanna”.
Go to bed Jetta.
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
Fun Fact: Record every performance. I played this last night at a benefit show and it was tres well received. Now, no matter how many times I play it in front of a webcam, it won’t come out as well. If this is the result of some Faustian pact I’m gonna be pissed.
My saw’s name is Daisy.
