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aceredshirt13 · 3 months ago

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gang i have to share this P. G. Wodehouse quote with you all because ever since I found it I can't stop thinking about it. it's from a letter he wrote when he was 78 years old to his friend Guy Bolton (many thanks to P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters)

I have been on the sick list myself, but am better now. Inflamed bladder or chill on the bladder or something, the symptoms being agony when I passed water, as the expression is. It brought back the brave old days when I used to get clap.

he really said "yeah the pain from my bladder issue reminds of the days when I used to have so much sex I repeatedly got venereal disease"

#red randomness #p. g. wodehouse #he was so known for not having sex with his beloved wife #that i truly didn't expect this at all #i feel like i see a lot of people saying with a great deal of confidence that he was sex-repulsed ace #especially due to the wife thing #but while he certainly may have been ace on some level #i feel like at the very least this casts some doubt on the sex-repulsed part lmao #i suppose it's possible he was lying but wouldn't this be such a specific and unnecessary lie in this context?#especially for a private letter to a friend he'd known and worked with for decades #because he really didn't even need to bring it up #of course i am open to evidence to the contrary #i just dislike seeing overconfident opinions broadly prevail #even when aspects of a real person's life suggest the possibility of otherwise #the study of history is meant to breed discussion!#and something that goes against the grain of past assumption is certainly worth discussing imo #also very grateful to the unpublished monograph by George Simmers about Honeysuckle Cottage #because that's how i found out about this letter in the first place!#great monograph mr. simmers please publish it someday #opened my third eye about the potential latent homosexuality in that story (among other things)#and at risk of having someone get mad at me or say i'm trying to like. diminish or slander the ace community by saying this #please don't assume that. that's why i've been afraid to share this before.#i'm not confidently stating wodehouse is anything. he's a real man who lived and i didn't know him #but by the same token neither does anyone else #i'm just as tired of people in history who have a fair amount of suggestion of being aroace being broadly assumed gay #despite evidence to the contrary #or people confidently assigning queerness to historical figures when evidence of them being queer in any way is ambiguous at best #everything in history is a maybe. we just collect facts and analyze them.#and my current analysis based on this line is that i'm not sure i think he was very sex-repulsed after all #(but like. i'm not going around insulting or fighting people about it in dms or something. and neither should you)

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