Wow, it is a pleasure to hear from you Katharine! I totally feel you on the title of the book -- I'm an older Milennial so I grew up with that kind of thumbing-your-nose-at-authorities defiant claiming of a freak label being very much the only way we had to understand ourselves at the time. And in some ways I miss it -- I'm thankful to have language that can help me find my communities now, but I think back then we were also less focused on categorizing everything into a taxonomy others could validate. Everyone was just their own ineffable individual freak back then -- and we found one another in our general sense of shared freakiness. There was a lot of good that came out of that, too.

I WISH I could see your work from the Museum of Sex show -- and especially read and look through all that you've gathered about hypnokink from that era. It was a very different time for the community, and for the internet -- and I was just starting to get my feet wet, and still very much believed that what I fantasized about was so rare that I'd never find a person like me to ever enjoy it with. (so I guess I am pretty thankful at how much things have changed, after all). I will have to pick up a copy of your book, and if you have anything left from your show that was digitized, I'd be so thrilled to see it.

It is amazing how many different roads lead back to neurodivergence and queerness in the end, no matter how one-of-a-kind our struggles may initially feel. We're both so united in our otherness, and forever set apart.