#all this is a long-winded way of saying that i am a gay charles sumner truther

[cedarboots]

I'd be interested in hearing about 'what is going on here?' if you'd like to discuss it!

Ah yeah! My original story WIP that I occasionally like to take out and play with!

I started this probably a couple years ago, after I read Hungry Heart: The Literary Emergence of Julia Ward Howe, which is a nonfiction book that gets into the strange complicated relationships between Julia Ward Howe, her husband Samuel Howe, and Senator Charles Sumner (as in, The Caning Of). Lots of interesting information about Howe's early literary work; lots of brain-scrambling details about whatever the hell kind of interpersonal tangle was going on between these three. (Sam Howe wrote to Sumner that "Julia says 'Sumner ought to have been a woman, and you to have married her'" - his wife said that to him! He wrote about it to the man his wife said it about!)

So: the story, which is just for fun and may never be finished, is set in 1840s New England and centers on three characters who are based on Sumner and the Howes. They'll reach polyamory eventually; they have to wade through a lot of significantly more unhealthy relationship dynamics first.

“Here.” Alice took hold of his hand and pulled it toward the boulder, placing it a little below where her own had been. “You can feel a line, there; I think it may be about to break.”

“It is a stone,” he said, amused.

“Even so; stones crack in the frost sometimes, you know.”

Her hand still lay atop his own; he was keenly aware of its warmth, in a way that discomfited him a little. 

“You’ve seemed somewhat better these past weeks,” she remarked. “I’m glad of it. I was quite busy hating you, before, and I did not like to be worrying after you at the same time.”

He was not certain what to make of these words. “I hope you do not hate me anymore.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t think I do.”

Thaddeus realized, then, what was rattling him. At home he lived in his cramped bachelor’s rooms, ate at his table with its one chair, and slept alone in his narrow bed; at work he wrote in silence at his desk, or spoke across it at arm’s length. He could not remember the last time that anyone had touched him for longer than the space of a handshake.