Diary #377

Grace and Chekhov left for their last full run to Oklahoma on Friday, and barring another delay will arrive tonight; for the next two days they’ll be preparing for the return trip, which will be a marathon because they’re going to have the animals with them and we don’t think it’s a good idea to have them cooped up in the trailer for more than two days, even with the ventilation windows.  After that, I can sell the big trailer to recoup some of my costs; everything remaining will be able to fit in the bed of the truck and the small trailer that’s currently sitting in storage.  It’ll be nice for my income to start going someplace other than petroleum companies, auto repair & parts businesses and tire stores (not to mention hotels) again, such as building-material stores and the like.  But when I’m finally done with fixing the place up, it should be a lovely little country retreat for Grace to live in and me to visit when I get the time.  For those of you who are thinking about this for the first time: yep.  I’m spending all this money and effort on a place where I’ll probably spend less than 40 hours a month, if that.  But Grace will be there full-time, and friends in need of a retreat will have a place to go, and I’ll have a place I can spend holidays in when the mood strikes.  Hell, maybe I’ll even get a license & let Grace grow cannabis there; I certainly have the room (and a dear friend who happens to have connections in the industry so I can find buyers).  Well, we’ll see; the important thing is that I’m finally putting down roots, as I’ve longed to do for over 30 years.  And that to me is far more precious than money.

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Whirlwind

Were you a little surprised that I didn’t mention my trip to Philadelphia last week, then there it was in this week’s diary?  That’s because I typically write my diary columns on the previous Friday or Saturday, and I didn’t book the gig until Monday.  Yeah, I could’ve altered the column to reflect it, but the details weren’t worked out until after publication time on Tuesday so I didn’t want to.  Though standby travel has its drawbacks (such as the probability of being bumped out of first class and the possibility of being bumped off of a flight altogether), it’s wonderfully flexible and I didn’t even bother to make my travel arrangements for this flight until the weekend.  Yes, I said “this flight”; I’m writing this somewhere over the Dakotas (I think) and I took my second Valium about 20 minutes ago.  I only wish I knew how long Zofran is supposed to last; Mistress Google tells me that the half-life in women is roughly 2 to 6 hours, but that’s pretty damned broad range so I’m not sure if I’ll need a second one for a five-hour flight after taking the first one an hour before scheduled takeoff (which was about 90 minutes before actual takeoff).  And all the literature I can find seems to assume I’m taking chemotherapy, so it contains phrases like “take one an hour before radiation treatment and another 8 hours later”.  So will one be enough?  Who knows?  Let’s hope the flight is smooth enough that I won’t find out; it was a bit bumpy until we crossed the Rockies but it’s been smooth for a while now, and with any luck it’ll remain so until I land.  Except for the landing itself of course; landings are the worst, most interminable, scariest & most nauseating part of the flight even with my dope.  Still, my discovery four years ago that pseudoephedrine will clear up the aftereffects of vertigo pretty quickly (despite being powerless to prevent it) has made a huge difference; whereas a vertigo attack used to mean that I’d need to crawl into bed as soon as possible, cry myself to sleep and then wake up hungry in three or four hours, eat a light meal, then go back to sleep for another six hours or so, now it just means hiding in an airport bathroom toilet stall for about half an hour while waiting for the evil, evil pseudoephedrine to take effect (it’s a controlled substance, you know) and then being a little woozy and unhappy until I get to a safe place and get something to eat.  I’ve also discovered that Lorelei’s caresses speed the recovery process, but she’s not with me today so I’ll have to make do.  Anyhow, this is what I write like when under the influence of 20 mg of Valium and no liquor; maybe I should try to do a story this way sometime.  If you’ve already read “Trust Exercise” from my new book, The Forms of Things Unknown, you already know what it looks like when I write part of a story under the influence of edible weed.  And if you haven’t read it, why haven’t you? Go buy it on Amazon, pretty please!  And review it too!  Maybe I’ll try a series of stories written on different drugs; the one on MDMA should be adorable if incoherent, and the one on acid should be interesting indeed.

So okay, I just came back from a one-hour diversion to Twitter since writing the last sentence, and we’re supposed to land in about an hour and a half, and it’s getting kinda bumpy again (Lake Michigan maybe?) so I’m going to wrap this up.  I’d take a picture but my phone is too low on battery & this plane has no power outlets, so you’ll just have to take this entirely-appropriate substitute.  And if this dude behind me keeps kicking my seat he’ll soon get a free helping of verbal abuse.

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Diary #376

Travel, travel, travel!  Grace and Chekhov got home on Saturday, and tell me they have two loads left to be completely done (which is good, because this is costing me a small fortune).  It looks as though they’ll be headed out again later in the week, though that will depend on how quickly they can get unloaded, how much rest they plan to take and how much money I can come up with how quickly.  One thing that’s helping is that I’m traveling today myself; I’m flying to Philadelphia for an overnight with a generous gentleman and plan to return tomorrow, but I could be persuaded to stay another night for the right offer.  That’s the beauty of this kind of travel; I can change my arrangements at a moment’s notice if I like.  And the reason I’m mentioning it, aside from just general interest, is to remind y’all that I can now see gentlemen anywhere in North America for an overnight; if you’re west of the Mississippi an 8-hour appointment may do; in LA a 6-hour; and in Portland a dinner date!  I’ll even come to Europe for a 24-hour engagement, though the rest of the world might require a weekend.  I can’t promise I’ll always be able to fly to your side as quickly as I did for the gentleman I’m seeing today (who only contacted me a week ago), but if you have the resources and a bit of flexibility we’ll usually be able to schedule within a month of initial contact.  So what are you waiting for?  There’s only one Maggie McNeill, and arranging an unforgettable rendezvous with me has never been easier!

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Argument Department

It’s been a while since I’ve had to say this, but as my readership has grown it’s inevitable that I’ve picked up readers who don’t get it.  Some people who visit here, or read my tweets, seem to think they’re on YouTube, Reddit or some other site dominated by testosterone-addled adolescent trolls and can therefore get away with saying any stupid, rude thing that comes into their minds.  So I’m taking today to correct that misapprehension in those of you who may be suffering from it:  this is my online “house”, and if you’re going to visit here you’ll have to play by my rules (which I helpfully spelled out more than six years ago).  A little over a year after that, I penned a helpful sequel called “How Not To Get Your Comments Posted“, which you should read right now if you’ve been coming here for less than five years.  And yet, the narcissistic ninnies still refuse to get that:

A) throwing garbage out of my own space does not constitute “censorship” in any way because I’m not a government and you’re still free to strew your filth anywhere else on the internet that isn’t mine; and

B) I am not your dancing monkey; I am a professional entertainer, so even though I don’t charge people to read my blog or Twitter, if you want me to entertain you in some way that I am not interested in freely giving (such as by engaging in stupid arguments with you), you’re going to have to pay me for that just as you would have to pay me to play the part of your mother, daughter, sister, teacher, secretary, or whoever else you’d like to fantasize about fucking or being chastised by or whatever.  And it won’t even cost you my full rate; for internet argumentation not involving sexy talk, I only charge $100/hour (minimum 30 minutes).

Every sex worker has hard limits, things she won’t do no matter how highly paid, and I’m no exception; for example, I don’t do scat play and I won’t see anyone before noon except as the tail end of an overnight or part of a multi-day gig.  And in the argument department, you can forget about my “debating” you on the topic of whether or not the State has some imaginary “right” to control adults’ sexual choices, or the “right” to send armed thugs to spy on, harass, threaten, brutalize, rob, rape, cage, humiliate or otherwise harm individuals for any consensual act (including the “possession” of some object or substance the state has decided it doesn’t like).  In fact, I have absolutely zero tolerance for bootlicking, toadying, pig worship, partisan cheerleading, authoritarian apologia or any other sycophantic defense of the police state; I have no stomach for evil or for useful idiots who enable evil via their spineless excuses for it, so if anyone posts comments or tweets at me with such filth I will view it as tantamount to the intellectual equivalent of a monkey flinging poop, and that individual will be muted or banned so quickly he may not even realized what’s happened.  I do the work I do because it’s right, not because I’ve been sentenced to it, and I feel no masochistic need to watch the noblest of animals abase itself by groveling to sociopathic control freaks who think every individual is their personal or collective property.

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The Scent of Money

I’m an older gentleman who wants to start a blog, mostly about my erotic adventures.  I’ve read your “staying anonymous” article but I’m confused about how you can do that when accepting donations by PayPal.

The article you’re talking about is hosted on my blog, but was not written by me; it’s by my friend Brooke Magnanti, whom you may know as Belle de Jour.  I’m not anything like an expert at remaining anonymous online, and honestly I don’t even try any more; I’ve gotten used to complete strangers greeting me by name or telling me they saw me on TV or whatever.  However, I will tell you this: when there’s non-cash money transfer involved, you can’t be completely anonymous, period (no, not even with bitcoin).  The federal government has a sick, pathological need to peer into the business of every single person in the world, trebly so when money is involved.  So if you take donations via Paypal, Patreon, Google wallet or anything else, that is going to be linked to a bank account with your name on it.  Even if you form a corporation in Delaware as I did, thus keeping your legal name out of the public record, your corporate agent still has your legal name on file because Uncle Sam demands it.  So even though stalkers, reporters and other garden-variety Nosy Parkers can’t easily discover my legal name, I can guarantee you as sure as the sun rises that if any government actor of sufficient power really wanted my info, all he’s have to do is present a “warrant request” to his trained pet judge and they’d have my name before you can say “Holy police state, Batman!”.  Actually, I’m reasonably sure my FBI file contains all that info anyway (up to and including my legal name, street address, IQ, psychological profile, bra size and close-up photos of every one of my scars*).

All this having been said, I doubt you’re trying to hide your identity from the IRS or FBI; I assume you’re probably just trying to hide it from friends, associates and family members.  In which case, you’ll be just fine because ordinary folks can’t easily discover which bank account the PayPal account (or Google wallet) for a given email address is connected to.  But if it’s the government you’re concerned about, you might as well hang up that idea of taking donations right now, unless you plan to go around the country on foot picking up anonymous cash donations left in nondescript satchels in bus-station lockers.

*The answer is “quite a few”.

(Have a question of your own?  Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)

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Diary #374

While I was enjoying the eclipse with Lorelei last Monday, Grace was encountering problems in Oklahoma.  I’d rather not go into the nature of those problems, except to say that they were human-caused, completely unnecessary and painfully expensive.  I don’t mean car-repair expensive, either; I mean cost-of-a-moderate-new-car expensive, and bad enough that poor Grace (who had to deal with it firsthand) was quite depressed all week.  On top of everything else, her departure was delayed from Monday until Friday, and the rest of the moving schedule is now kind of uncertain.  But the return trip was relatively uneventful except for having to replace two trailer tires, so they arrived back at Sunset last night with the second load and the dogs, and we’ll figure out how quickly I can get them back on the road again.  It’s a damned good thing I have no more debt, because this move was expensive even before an asshole I won’t name elected to at least triple the cost of it by being entitled, evil scum.  Meanwhile, I flew into San Francisco this morning and will be here until Thursday morning; there’s a possibility I might still have room for another appointment into my schedule tomorrow, but that’s a bit iffy, so only contact me if you’re flexible.  Otherwise, we’ll have to try on my next trip.  And if you’ve been thinking about booking me, now would be a really good time; I might even be flexible about the length of appointment I’m willing to fly out for.

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Back Issue: August 2014

To hear the cops tell it, they’re the “thin blue line” that stands between civilization and a species of chaos resembling Mad Max meets Lord of the Flies in the midst of an immense drunken free-for-all in Somalia.
–  “Bait and Switch”

Even with only one holiday,  Lammas, August had plenty of regular features:  the guest columnist was Marijke Vonk; the fictional interlude was “Coming Up Short“; the harlotography was “Liu Rushi“; the Q&A columns were “Bad Idea“, “The Wrong Track“, “Screen, Screen, Screen“, and “Getting Caught“; and the Cliterati reprints were “Prudesville“, “Business As Usual“, and “Another Fine Mess“.  That leaves only “844,739“, a paean to Waffle House; “The Monsters Are Due“, an old Twilight Zone episode about moral panic; “New Excuse“, my first full-length statement that the War on Whores is the new War on Drugs; “Making It Up As They Go“, a look at how “sex trafficking” hysterics literally just make things up; and “Bait and Switch“, an explanation of how police departments create “child sex predators” out of ordinary young men. 

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