I’ve been having a bit of a hard time recently. This may be a surprise to those of you unlucky enough to know me personally because, at first glance, all seems well. My health is as good as can be expected for a man of my age and with my history of poor life choices. Additionally, Mistress and I got married at the beginning of the year, and I haven’t messed it up yet. I have also been consistently getting stronger while enjoying my new powerlifting hobby. Added to that, my career is going well, and I get to work from home most of the week, so my daily look generally involves wearing a lot professionally tailored collared shirts paired with raggedy sweat pants, a style adopted by most modern telecommuters that I like to think is the spiritual successor of the mullet, but instead of business up front and party in the rear, it’s business up top and party down below. Exquisite fashion choices aside, my routine is also enjoyable in that it usually involves a constant stream from Netflix or Hulu playing in the background to stave off my crushing loneliness, and the freedom to partake of a nice cool glass of refreshing maple syrup whenever I feel like it.

It must sound like heaven to you, and truly, it is, but I must remind you not to judge a book by its cover, because, not only do I need to hide how much maple syrup I drink from my concerned wife, as I mentioned before, I’ve been having a hard time lately.

My problems are twofold. First, I have not been writing as much as I need to be. A quick glance at my posting history on this website is ample evidence of this. The frequency of my blog posts has been unacceptably low for the entire year, to the point where this website seems almost defunct and forgotten, with no real excuse or apology provided. Less readily apparent has been my lack of discipline while working on The Day Traitor, the sequel to my most recent novel, The Night Ripper. I had hoped to have The Day Traitor completed before the end of this year. Sadly, that will not be happening, so for both that and for my abysmal blog posting record recently, I apologize profusely.

Unfortunately, I have no real excuse. I’ve just been lazy, and have been letting self-imposed pressure get to my head. I want to release blog posts, and I want to complete The Day Traitor, a story which I have almost fully written in my head and am quite excited about, but every time I’ve sat down to actually make some progress putting words to paper, I’ve allowed distractions or insecurities to steal my attention, which has been further stressing me out, causing more distractions and increased insecurities, in a vicious cycle of spinning in place with no forward progress.

Usually my disgust and self-loathing keeps me operating at a barely contained level of simmering rage from which I draw my herculean powers of motivation and drive, a state which I have grown accustomed to and reliant on, so having the mushy, disgusting pile of salt-water and congealed bacon fat that makes up my brain betray me with a pedestrian, garden variety type of demotivational depression is infuriating. Luckily, it has grown so infuriating that I believe I may finally be powering through my malaise upon a burgeoning wellspring of rage and creative expression. So hopefully that means more poorly written blog posts, hacked together crackpot DIY house projects, and shitty paintings, as well as solid progress on The Day Traitor coming from me in the near future.

My second issue I am struggling with does not affect me alone, but is more of a family problem. If you know me personally, or have followed this blog for any length of time, you are surely aware of my wife, the artist formerly known as Mistress Kay. What you may not know, is that (T.A.F.K.A) Mistress Kay and I have…a Molds.

Having a Molds is hard to describe. Molds is more or less my wife’s wife. She is her best friend. She is Mistress Kay’s slightly more platonic other soul mate. Molds is at this point an intrinsic facet of my life, as much an integral part of my daily experience as my constant joint pain and persistent jock itch. She and Mistress Kay are inseparable, and I, like any man who gets to share his life with not only one, but two beautiful women, am just happy to be included. Plus sometimes they both show me their boobies, and that’s really neat.

What exactly is your complaint, you may be asking. So you’ve got yourself a lovely pair of sister-wives, oh jeez, what a drag. Do you really have something bothering you Max, or are you just trying to sneak in a quick humble-brag? We get it, you have two women in your life who love each other very much and grudgingly tolerate you, how nice that must be. Fuck you Max, you’re a peepee head and a dumb idiot who is not even cool.

Okay, you know what…that’s fair. But allow me to explain what troubles me.

When a boy and a girl grow up, and love each other very much, and they get married, people naturally begin to expect certain…things to eventually happen. Things involving the C word. You see, when a boy and a girl love each other so very very much, even if they don’t plan it, sometimes it’s only natural for….something… to start growing in the girl. My situation is that this… something, this C word… has started growing, not in my Mistress Kay as you might traditionally assume, but in my Molds.

The C word I refer to is of course, Cancer.

Our Girl has got tumors. I’m not sure exactly how many, but any number above zero seems like a huge amount when it’s somebody precious to you, so you’ll perhaps understand why this news is so distressing. In July, Molds was admitted to the hospital for pain from what was initially thought to possibly be appendicitis. After a barrage of tests which I can only assume involved various mystical auguries by laudanum prescribing, crow-masked plague doctors and possibly a soothing visit or two from the godmother of modern nursing and “Lady with the Lamp” herself, Florence Nightingale; Molds was diagnosed with Stage IV Colorectal Cancer, affecting her colon and both her ovaries, or, as the scientific journals describe it – PeePee PooPoo Cancer. Evidently, colon cancer rates are skyrocketing among young people, possibly due to constantly carrying cell phones within 6 inches of our buttholes at all times, possibly due to the fact that the closest thing to probiotics we received from “healthy” snacks as children came from slurping neon-colored slime out of a plastic Gogurt tube, possibly due to the fact that we all enjoy weird butt stuff in the bedroom way more than previous generations, or possibly due to the fact that even though Toto blessed the rains down in Africa back in 1981, that blessing has since worn off and we’re all doomed because of it. Or, maybe all of those things are actually the only thing keeping our butthole cancer rates from being higher and it could actually be much worse. I can’t be certain. Even though I know my way around cutting-edge medical technology like trepanation drills, rusty bone saws, leeches, and cocaine, I’m not actually a doctor.

Since her diagnosis, Molds has, with her customary grace, can-do attitude, and only a minimal amount of bitching and moaning, gone through surgery and multiple rounds of chemo, with more surgery and more chemo still to come in her future. Molds is a strong young woman, and she is receiving care in one of the top cancer treatment hospitals in the entire country, which also happens to be the hospital system she already works in as a nurse, so I like to think they’re pulling out all the stops to treat her, even the super secret good medicine that big pharma doesn’t allow us disgusting normies to use, but still this is a scary, stressful, upsetting process. As you can imagine, there have been a lot of tears shed in my home of late, even more than the normal amount which occurs daily when Mistress Kay comes home from the local strip club smelling of cheap wine, and beats me with a tube sock full of dead batteries for not having her TV dinner ready and favorite sports ball highlights show queued on the big screen.

Molds is in the right place, surrounded by the right people, to fight this fight, but we can all help make that fight hurt less. I always thought the first (and only) GoFundMe I would ever be involved with would be collecting donations to straight up murder myself by launching my annoying ass via trebuchet directly into an active volcano, but as it turns out I am now involved in an only slightly less worthy fundraising endeavor. I previously posted the following on my personal Facebook page, but since this website has a larger following, it can’t hurt to share it here as well:

In civilized countries healthcare is affordable and accessible. Unfortunately, we do not live in a civilized country. Molds is a hard working nurse who has “great” health insurance, but even after doing everything “right”, her cancer treatment is still going to be a tough financial burden to bear.

Let’s make sure she doesn’t have to bear it alone.

We made this GOFUNDME account to take some of the financial strain away from the treatment process, so that Molds can focus on what’s important – recovering from her stage IV PeePee PooPoo cancer.

By donating, you’ll help our favorite friend/sister-wife receive the very finest cancer care available through the judicious application of medicinal herbs, voodoo exorcisms, and whatever elixirs of mercury are undoubtedly still in use by the barbaric American medical system. When I last checked in on her, the chemo was having some effect, but she was still suffering from ghosts in her blood, and had been prescribed various arsenic and opium filled nostrums purchased from the back of a traveling horse cart, so at least she’s got that going for her.

Mollys Kicking Butt Cancer in the Butt GoFundMe

Our happy little family