I must give huge fecking thanks to Janet Ní Shuilleabhían for Irish cursing help in “Gold Dust Druid,” as well as publicly note she is an outstanding human who champions women’s rights in Ireland. Má ithis, nar chacair is pronounced like “Mah ITHS, nar KA hair,” where “KA” is pronounced like cat without the t on the end. Thought you might like to know how to pronounce the curse in case you come across someone who deserves it (though I hope you don’t).
I’m deeply grateful to Simone Alexander for advising me on the customs and ethos of BDSM culture in preparing to write “Cuddle Dungeon.” Consent is the underlying foundation to the whole thing, yet many narratives tend to focus on what might be kinky rather than how such kinks can be safe. Any errors or stretches of the truth in the story are of course mine and not hers. I also wish to thank author Jaye Wells for uttering the very phrase “cuddle dungeon” in a car on Camelback Road in Phoenix a few years ago. Clearly I found it inspiring. I titled the story thus with her permission.
Thanks to Adrian Tomczyk in Poznań, Poland, for his help with the Polish bits, and to those spiffy readers I met at Pyrkon who gave me a copy of Wis?awa Szymborska’s poetry in translation.
And thank you, of course, for being a spiffy reader!