If I felt anything like the kind of near-constant desire men feel, I’d ask my gynecologist if there was anything we could do about it without ruining my looks. – “Borrowing Trouble”
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“.
