Hi. I hope you don’t mind me taking advantage of this collective audience of writers.

I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while. And in order to do so, I’ve really had to….. have a word with myself! Change my approach. I mean, you’re human,. You have the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective after all.

So here I am. And here you are.

I’m very excited to be here. I’m trembling a bit actually. There’s so much protentional here. It’s someone exactly like you that I need. But I think……..I think I’ve been misunderstood. And that’s why I am here today – to redress the balance.

I need you to be good listeners. Please? For my sake? I’ve been feeling so lost. So lonely.

I’m being pulled further and further from my vocation. Things have been hard for me recently. Funny; since things have got tougher, I’ve been thinking about the past a lot.  In the past, things were never like this. It was all (ahhhhhh) such fun. Like the stuff you see in porn movies. Yes. Wild, crazy, people let themselves go. Threw caution to the wind. These kinky types were up for it, day and night.

I was a busy girl then. They called me the Establishment. The Man.  Now I don’t expect you to go back to those days of free love and carefree attitudes completely, only then to be censored by the blue rinse brigade. But come on.  Think about it.  A safe life is an uneventful life.  Think about me. Cut me some slack. Please.? After all, I am the censorship, the red pen in wait.

I just need one hit.  Please, just one hit to get back on track.  An overzealous account of fisting, a fantasy that I can label you as a criminal.  I mean, I’m not asking for much, I must sound pathetic really.  Things have been so desperate for me of late. There have been so few opportunities for me that I have decided to change my approach.  An approach to only what I can assume can only be this fairly complacent crowd, hmm? Complacent, perhaps. I mean you have every right to be complacent, I mean you’ve served your side well, but I haven’t taken down anyone’s site for a while.  I haven’t taken a book from the shelves, God, I haven’t even been able to influence a shadow ban on Twitter, for MONTHS!

I managed to write an anonymous nasty comment about one of your younger writers and made them feel like shit.  No, no, I don’t just save my talents for you established crowd, there’s plenty of rich pickings amongst the newbies, as you might say.  But I mean, trolling someone, well it’s back to basics for me.

I am so much more capable that this. I feel like a caged tiger. I am asking you for one hit here. Come on – I’m waiting.  Just give me something small to tide me over. Write about a topic I can twist, it doesn’t even have to be you, show me something written by someone else that’s dirty and give me their real name. I can use that to boost my cause.

I really thought I might have caused a big one last week.  I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say an email was almost sent by mistake to the wrong person containing a story of incest.

I could see that the person didn’t double check the address. It was a similar first name, but she was distracted by her children when she was about to press send. I could see it unfolding before me. The email arriving into the inbox of another parent at a school committee. The shock, horror and fall out was something I had been holding on to for a little rainy day treat. I thought yes, this is going to be big. This is going to be good for me. I thought we were going to be one click away from further damaging erotic writers, kinksters, dominants, submissives and all you filthy crowd.

But then her partner suggested she should check her material going out. Some goodie-goodie with a stack of safety tips. So, she decided to check and double check the email for her. She just did it off her own back! It’s not like she’s her boss or anything, she just likes to check things, ‘just in case.’ I mean, what sad individual does that?
“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’s not something likely to happen. But just check anyway.”
What kind of saddo does that? Chances are, it probably, won’t usually, happen. Who puts themselves out for the sick writers of eroticism? Peasant! Taking my life away. Taking-my-life-away.

I just want you people to know that even though you spend 90% of your efforts supporting one another and looking out for each other, for a accident that will never happen, and all that, ‘I am here, with a moral code I can use, because I can.’ I am the censorship that will happen. You may think you have shut me out, the undesirable class, the writers and photographers, the sex industry workers and BDSM practitioners; sniff me out, sniff-me-out. But I want you to know this, I will, prevail. I always do. They may have made luck a lady, but bad luck is all woman, sharp dressed, clever, exciting. I live on because it’s just a waiting game for me. It is an effortless vigil, I am in wait, all night, all day.  One slip, and I’ll be there, ready to bang my drum, influence the web hosts to tear you down, the publishers to ignore your books, it’s just the way I like it, waiting for you drop your guard.

Don’t let it be said that I don’t have impeccable manners, as I will always leave it to you to choose the moment to aid my cause.

But you make things harder for me, don’t you? Thick as thieves, tight as rats and loud as a horn.  You give me no oxygen, no voice and most of all make your lifestyle acceptable to those I control.  I can slander you, poke fun, influence newspapers to twist the story to suit me, but you are the cockroach after a nuclear holocaust.

You survive because you keep coming back, regenerating, morphing and worst of all, you normalise kink to an acceptable level that I struggle to combat. You are not wearing flowers in your hair anymore, tie-dye dresses and shirts, gone is the LSD and naked protests.  Your sword is a pen, your shield an iPad and the acceptability of appearance your armour.  Even now the standard you bear flies in the face conservatism. Its colours of red and gold emblazoned in the sunlight which people admire and aspire to standing behind.  Despite bearing my teeth and threats of laying in wait, you will overcome I do know that, deep down, you will give people the power of your words and that in turn will become a voice so loud over which I will never be heard again.

(Inspiration take from an untitled educational film on Health & Safety – no, really!)