The Honest Courtesan

Anyone who’s ever perused my Amazon wishlist has probably noticed that it features a lot more weird, nerdy things than the expensive “luxury” things most guys seem to like buying for sex workers.  That was true even long before I retired, and it’s even more so nowadays.  The reason, as I’ve explained before, is that I put things I actually want on my list, and my tastes run to the odd and nerdy.  In the last couple of weeks, several of my generous readers have sent CDs and DVDs from the list, and several of the DVDs were of old movie serials.  I’m quite pleased about that because, as some of you have noticed, I’ve increasingly turned my back on the modern world this year.  Now, a large fraction of my TV and movie viewing has always consisted of things that aren’t current at the time I view them, and I rarely read any fiction written after I was born (and almost never after I graduated from high school).  But since early summer that’s even more true than usual, and probably half of my current entertainment was created between 1920 and 1960.  Part of the reason is practical; the new adventure fiction series I’m working on takes place in the 1920s and ’30s, so immersing myself in period fiction helps with mood and color.  But the rest of it is purely emotional; this blog and its attendant social media focus mostly on current events, and I needn’t explain how absolutely awful those events have become.  Simply put, by the time I’m done with blog writing every day, I am so sick of 21st century political atrocities and media enshittification that I cannot handle one more minute of it.  So to those of you who have indulged me with these gifts, please accept my heartfelt gratitude not merely for the kindness of a gift, but also for helping me find temporary solace from a world which feels increasingly hostile to me.