The first prohibitionist laws date to the late 19th century, but it was in the 20th that the concept…penetrated the minds of the general public so thoroughly that most took it for granted that for governments to tell people what they could consume, what they could own, and even what thoughts they could have…was not only normal, but desirable. – “Leaving the 20th Century”
If you find an article interesting, infuriating, or whatever, you can follow the thread of references back through similar articles, often for years, while marveling at the obsessive lengths and depths to which my librarian’s brain will go to impose order on chaos. – “Rabbit Hole”
Copsucking reporters waste considerable space quoting boss pigs oinking about how typical and representative cops aren’t really typical or representative. – “Creepy Coppers (#1418)”
I have never broken a promise to [Grace] in the past and I’m not going to start now merely because she’s not in a position to remind me. – “Diary 766“
One year ago today, at about 2 AM, I lost my best friend to what appears to have been an acute ischemic stroke, brought on by cancer, chemotherapy, and long-standing circulatory issues. We had known for years that her end was approaching, and had I not refused to see them, there were clear signs that it would be sooner rather than later. But human beings are very good at failing to see what we do not want to see, and I’m certainly no exception; I’m sure part of the reason was that I wanted to maintain a positive outlook to help her do the same, but most of it was just that I’ve already had so much pain and loss in my life I did not want to consciously face what even our idioms recognize as among the worst misfortunes that can befall a person.
Whenever a friend suffers a loss, we are moved to try to say something, anything, to assuage their pain; some of those things are helpful and some are not. But of the things my friends said to me, two stand out, and I still think of them often. One of them is philosophical: Grief is the price we pay for love. Indeed, people who have suffered emotionally sometimes become afraid of love because they fear the pain that must come when we must part from the loved one, and the greater the love, the greater the pain. The other helpful thing was more practical: The waves of grief never stop coming, but they do grow further apart. For the first few weeks after her passing I thought of little else, then for most of last year the waves came at least daily; in more recent months they’ve come two or three times a week. They have not yet become less intense, though I’m sure that, too, will happen in the fullness of time.
As I knew I would through long experience, I have tried to cope with the grief by retreating a bit from the world and burying myself in my work; the most important product of that work is a new series of pulp-style adventure stories featuring characters based upon Grace and myself, in which the narratives are suffused with my thoughts on friendship in general and our friendship in particular. They’re the longest and most complex individual works I’ve ever written, and the next project in the series will be my first novel. And the many hours it takes to create them not only feel like a way for me to share Grace with the world, but also a means by which I can squeeze just a little more time with her out of a world which took her from me much too soon.
I honestly feel sorry for those who truly believe that the best way to “connect” with other people is by boinking them, and the notion that people must boink to feel “connected” is a tragedy. Sexual relationships are held up as the pinnacle of human interaction, but they’re not even close; they’re in fact nearer the bottom because they’re extremely conditional.
I have always felt very strongly about this, ever since I first started really thinking about the matter before I was out of my teens. Part of the fallacy holds that romantic love is somehow intrinsically different from other kinds of love, but I don’t think that’s true either. Take “love at first sight”, for example; we only ever hear the term applied to romantic love, even though the idea that it represents something other than plain animal lust in that context is highly dubious. And yet there are certainly cases in which another kind of love manifests itself at first meeting. The very first time I really thought of that was in a fictional context: in the movie The Emerald Forest, a tribal chief in the Amazon abducts the son of an engineer surveying for a dam project, and years later he explains to the father that he had fallen in paternal love with the boy at first sight, and could not bear to see him go back to “The Dead World” of concrete and steel which the natives feared and hated.
Over the next several decades I saw other examples in both fiction and real life, culminating in one I experienced myself. In November of 1997 I met Grace at a party and she gave me a ride home; we hit it off immediately, and within weeks I’d received an actual paper letter from her in the mail. After a few more letters were exchanged, she told me she wanted to move down to New Orleans from her father’s place in Monroe, Louisiana, where she currently lived; I invited her to move in with me, and she never moved out. From that very first meeting she was as devoted to me as any sister; there was never any sexual chemistry, and in any case Grace was only sexually interested in men. But looking back to those times, I have no better term for the rapid bonding she experienced and demonstrated than “love at first sight”. And it would be wrong to pretend otherwise merely because it was not romantic love.
On this day two years ago, I wrote: “I’ve gradually come to the realization that I’m happier now than I’ve ever been for any extended period in my entire life…but having a realistic view of the world requires accepting that it and everything it contains is impermanent.” Then almost a year ago, the truth of that was slammed home when I lost my best friend to cancer, and just like that the only extended period of happiness I’ve ever enjoyed in this Vale of Tears was snatched from me, never to return. I’m not saying I’m constantly miserable now, nor that I was prior to my retirement in 2021, but previous periods of happiness were both shorter and far more conditional than that four-year stretch of peace and content. My readers needn’t worry about me; pain and melancholy have been familiar features of my life for almost as long as I can remember, and decades of experience have taught me the alchemy of turning that darkness into beauty. In the past year I’ve written more fiction than I have in any year since 2016, including my first novella (which looks like it will turn into my first major series of tales). This is not in spite of the darkness but because of it; ever since I was a child, the monsters have been the constant attendants of my Muse of Fiction, and it seems foolish to expect that it will be any different in the time I have left. Creative writing is, in a sense, a form of exorcism, draining off the energy of my inner demons to drive the mills of my art. The process, however, is never so efficient as to completely dry out that black wellspring, and though I don’t cry for Grace every day any more, in any given week the tearful days still outnumber the drier ones. As a friend told me soon after she died, the waves of grief never stop coming, they just get farther apart. And as I’ve said many times in the last year; it’s not that I feel any sense that she died too young or too soon, or that her death was somehow unfair; it’s just that I miss a beloved friend who was a constant presence in my life for twenty-seven years, and whose departure has left a very large hole.
Every year on this day, the traditional beginning of the Yuletide season in the US, I remind my readers that the real spirit of the season involves giving to others rather than literally fighting to get more for yourself. Children and whores are St. Nick’s two favorite groups of people; you can help the latter by donating to a sex worker charity such as SWOP Behind Bars, or you can help both by booking a session with a sex worker you know has kids. And if you don’t know any, you can help by participating in my annual toy drive! Regular readers know how it works: from today until Tuesday, December 16th, I’m collecting donations with which to buy toys, which I then donate to Toys for Tots. Send your donation via PayPal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net, and please put “Toys for Tots” in the subject line so I’ll know it’s not a regular blog donation; I can also accept donations via Zelle if you prefer not to use PayPal. If you’re not hurting economically yourself, please consider donating (either to my drive or to one near you). Mad Emperor Scrooge’s destructive tariffs are going to make toys much more expensive this year, and his pogroms & mass firings, plus the inflation resulting from his idiotic policies, will result in a lot of people having a lot less money for presents. Please help me provide some joy to at least a few little ones, who are even less able to understand economics than politicians. And you’ll also be helping me to enjoy some Christmas cheer in a year when my heart is likely to be heavy.
As I predicted, my feelings around my birthday were much more complicated this year because Grace was not here to share it with me; I suspect Thanksgiving and Christmas will be harder still, given that I have not spent Christmas without Grace since 1997. But my friends were here with me for my birthday, as they will be at the other holidays, and my generous readers sent me presents: a new sheet set to replace an old one which had torn, several movies, and DVD sets for The Fugitive, Partners in Crime and one of the Jon Pertwee seasons of Doctor Who. Two of my friends have a gift for finding things they know I’ll like that I didn’t know even existed; Yellowbird got me a statuette of a cobra, and Jae found me a cashmere sweater and a charming little kid’s book which I viewed as a sort of extra-long Halloween card. So even though nothing can truly fill the Grace-shaped hole in my life, it’s good to be surrounded by people who care, and are willing to go out of their way to tell me.
Every year on this day I remind my readers about the inevitability and goodness of Death, and this year is no exception. Some may believe that the passing of my beloved friend Grace has changed that, but that is not so; both of us knew we must one day be parted by death, and both of us knew that given her poor health and greater age, it was very likely she would go first. Unlike the powerful and privileged men who embrace childish fantasies about life extension or even immortality to assuage their fear of the dark, I do not whine and stomp my feet in protest of the fact that I and all I love must die, nor waste my life in vain and foolish denial of reality. If anything, my tears spring from the opposite source. I do not weep because my best friend died; I weep because I have to go on living without her.
Usually, I look forward to my birthday, and October tends to lift my spirits from their summer doldrums. But this year it has been difficult; October is the start of the rainy season here, and I suppose the quiet and dark are making the house feel especially empty. My annual tradition of watching horror movies every night in October also feels emptier than usual without my friend here to share them with. I still remember the first time I saw The Haunting; I’d read about it but never seen it, and I found the VHS tape at Big Lots (this was either ’98 or ’99) so Grace and I watched it together on Halloween night, sitting on this old Danish modern couch I had at the time. As it got scarier we slowly moved closer together, and in the infamous knocking scene, we both jumped and grabbed each other at the exact same moment Julie Harris & Claire Bloom did onscreen. It was something we laughed about for years afterward, and even though we rarely sat on the sofa together to watch movies in her later years (because she needed the support of her own chair), she was still a very definite presence in the process, from selection to scheduling to discussion. As a result, it’s just not the same any more. It’s a small thing, I know, but it’s a good example of how a close friendship sends roots and tendrils into every part of a human life, ensuring that practically every part of life afterward is a keen reminder of its loss.
I’ve written before about how Grace’s cat Speck was much more closely bonded with her than is typical for cats, and after Grace died in January, Speck’s behavior slowly became more erratic. She’s always been one to stake out specific places to sleep in when she wasn’t with her humans, but when the weather started to get cooler in September she started choosing dirtier places, like the area around her litterbox, and as a result she started smelling to the point I was about to give her a bath. But first, I decided to try picking her up and holding her whenever I found her in such places, to get her out of the habit. It worked, and she soon started sleeping in nicer places again, like on the back of the sofa or in front of the French window. But she also realized that if she came up to me while I was on the computer and demanded my attention, I would let her sit in my lap and I could simply type around her. You can see her favorite posture below: sitting upright with her head in my cleavage and her little paws hugging me under my robe; if I let her, she will stay there for hours, and because she doesn’t actually impede my work or comfort I’m content to let her stay until I need to get up for some reason. Even then, she will usually go get herself a bite or a drink and then come right back as soon as I’m back at the keyboard. I don’t think I’ll ever really replace Grace in her affections, but I’m glad we both have someone to cuddle who reminds us of the friend we’ve lost.
I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!
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The first prohibitionist laws date to the late 19th century, but it was in the 20th that the concept…penetrated the minds of the general public so thoroughly that most took it for granted that for governments to tell people what they could consume, what they could own, and even what thoughts they could have…was not only normal, but desirable. – “Leaving the 20th Century”
