Even though it’s a brand new year and a year’s worth of possibility is out there just waiting to be discovered, times are still tough. Not just for me but for everyone these days and as such, I found I needed a side hustle to help make ends meet. I tried everything from Human Fracking to Milky Way Real Estate Developing to Kickstarting The Zombie Apocalypse and they all turned up snake eyes…until I stumbled upon my true calling: Starting An Online Advice Column.

To be clear, I’m not that well-known in the “advice community” yet but the types of questions put to me so far made my editor ask me to share the most memorable letter I received in my role as a Relationship Advisor:

Dear Madd Fictional,

By profession, I am a Paranormal Cleaner and if you’re not familiar with that term, I am the person that paranormal investigators call once they have established that a residence or business establishment is inhabited by entities that have moved on beyond the mortal plane of existence. It is my job to collect the spirits and physically remove them from the premises. In your head, you might be picturing the box trap gizmo from Ghostbusters right about now but the truth is a lot less complicated. The simplest way to capture a ghost is to either use a metal box that contains a layer of soil from hallowed ground (typically a church or cemetery) or a lit candle placed inside an open-lidded glass jar. Once captured, they are covered with a pinch of salt and buried in hallowed ground, which leads to my problem.

Each time I collect an Interactive Personality, Ectoplasm, Poltergeist, Orb, or Funnel Ghost, instead of burying them in hallowed ground, I take them home and release them in my bedroom. When certain urges arise, I strip down, anoint myself in equal parts cinnamon, calamus, cassia, and myrrh, in olive oil (except for my private area), and practice onanism as the spirits swarm around the room. Is this normal?—J.W.G., Pinellas Park, Florida

My response was simple:

Dear Jacks With Ghosts (I’m assuming that’s what J.W.G. stands for)

First, allow me to say that I do not actively participate in kink-shaming, you do you, let your freak flag fly, and all that good stuff, as long as it’s with consenting adults, consenting being the key word there. You haven’t specified in your letter whether the spirits have given you permission to be confined in your bedroom and made to watch you shake hands with the milkman. Also, out of curiosity, do you make them perform lewd acts on themselves and each other to aid in your banister polishing? And better still, do they physically interact with you (which I can only imagine and describe as nulling the void)?

As an answer to your question of it being normal, have you visited adult websites and conducted a search for what you’re doing? If you cannot find content that matches your act, I believe you know where you stand in the kinkiverse.

Happy New Year!