Last Tuesday I alluded again to the howling things shut up in boxes under my mental stairs; what I didn’t tell you (though you may have guessed) is that they tend to be a lot more restless when I’m asleep, and every so often one of them actually gets loose and it’s all the knights of the Sacred Order of Sanity Defense can do to get it jammed back into its crate by morning. And that, dear readers, is why I do not sleep well unless sedated; if there isn’t something (diazepam, diphenhydramine, cannabinoids, etc) keeping me asleep, I tend to wake up after about three hours or so and can’t go back down. I’m not a classic insomniac; I never have any trouble getting to sleep. The problem is staying asleep after the critters start their nightly racket. C’est la vie. But as I’m sure you can imagine, this makes awakening a slow process. The lingering effects of the meds require movement and caffeine to clear away, and my dreams may require processing; I also find that my noisy mind tends to be much quieter first thing in the morning unless I had an actual nightmare, and I really enjoy having that time alone…having my breakfast, reminding myself of whatever I have planned for the day, checking my emails and Twitter. I absolutely won’t see clients before noon, and even noon is a bit of a push; I try to schedule my earliest appointments (work and other kinds) for about 1 PM. No description I could easily pen would truly capture how much I loathe waking up to an emergency, bad news or bullshit; in fact, presenting me with any of those can ruin my whole day, and doing so is thus a very effective way to get on my shit list.
On the other hand, discovering nice things in my mailbox (electronic or physical) has the opposite effect; reminders that I’m loved and admired help to dispel any gloom my nocturnal intruders have left behind, and put me in a good mood that can last all day. So I really like it when friends from time zones east of mine (i.e. most of them) send me lovely messages, or guys start their work day by sending appointment requests for me to find a couple of hours later. And one of the loveliest things I like seeing while my tea is brewing is an email (or multiple emails) from PayPal letting me know that a payment has come in from one of my subscribers. There’s something very comforting and flattering about getting those regular emails month after month; they say to me in no uncertain terms, this person admires you and cares about your work. So if you can spare a bit of change every day, would you consider subscribing to this blog? As you can see in the right-hand column there, you can sign up for as little as 10¢ a day, and it really does mean a lot to me. You might think that I need it less now that I’ve returned to work full-time, but that isn’t true; the support Matt sends me, though very generous, is a good bit less than the roughly half of his paycheck which was at my disposal when we were married, plus I have a lot more financial obligations than I did when I first posted those subscription buttons. And that’s not even counting the extra expenses from living in Seattle (not one of America’s more economical cities, I’m afraid). So yes, I really do value those small but very regular payments, not just because they help pay my bills and remind me that people put a high value on my writing, but also for the reasons I’ve described today. And if that’s something you’d like to do for me, I’ll be very, very grateful.
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I’m never sure which essays will turn into often-used subtitles in future news columns, but this month had two of them: “Buttons, Bags & Banknotes” and “Paint By Numbers“. It also featured one of my favorites of my own stories, the grisly and haunting “Rose“. The month’s harlotography was “Jane Shore“, its guest column was by Aspasia Bonasera, and it had a holiday (Mabon) and two special occasions: Friday the Thirteenth and Banned Books Week (led off by “Crippling Thought“). The Q&A columns were “Utopia“, “Convolution“, “New Kid on the Block” and “Borrowing Trouble“, and the other Cliterati reprint beside “Buttons” was “Pride Goeth“. “Denunciation” and “Just Call Me Nobody” both discussed the way people reject uncomfortable ideas by pretending those who represent those ideas are not like them; “Fever Dream” presented an 
extreme example of “sex trafficking” hysteria, while “Building a Current” demonstrates how challenges to that narrative are becoming more common. Finally, I looked at Korean courtesans in “The Kisaeng“, at American sheriffs in “Little Tin Gods“, and at the bizarre behavior of my friend Brooke Magnanti’s ex in “Diary of a Sad Man“.
