A Manifesto

Great Things About Being A Gay Man

You are ALWAYS ready for your close-up.

You know, by heart, every line in:

All about Eve

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Your face

You understand the difference between 43 brands of imported vodka.

You can call anyone "Honey", including pets.

You understand the immense importance of good lighting.

You can be at a crowded disco the size of two football fields and still spot a toupee.

You can tell a woman you love her bathing suit, and mean her bathing suit.

You can explain the nuances between steady date, boyfriend and lover.

You really have "been there, done that".

Your women friends will tell you everything you want to know about their boyfriends. And that means everything.

You're the only type of male who gets to say "fabulous".

You can have naked pictures of men you don't know in your home.

You can have naked men you don't know in your home.

You know how to handle the telephone like a Stradivarius.

You understand why the good Lord invented spandex.

You understand why the good Lord didn't intend everyone to wear it.

You know how to get back at just about everyone.

You only wear polyester when you mean to.

You can smile to let someone know you can't stand them.

You can freeze a troll from 20 feet away.

You're good pals with women other people can't stand.

You've always got an opinion.

You've read the book, seen the movie, done the musical.

You know how to dress strategically.

Your car has an amusing female name.

You're the only one at your high school reunion who looks a lot better than you did in high school.

If your mattress could talk, it would be Joan Rivers.

You know that sex complicates things. So?

You know that being called a "cheap slut" isn't actually an insult.

There's a married guy somewhere who is terrified of you.

Nobody tells you what to do in bed...unless you tell them what to tell you.

You have a medicine chest stocked for any occasion.

You have at least one movie musical on video.

You're not embarrassed to sing in a piano bar.

You're embarrassed by people who sing in piano bars.

You never hold a grudge for longer than a decade or two.

You know how to make an entrance.

You know when to make an exit.

You worry about people you don't even know – like Liza Minnelli.

You choose the most fabulous greeting cards.

You've got sunscreen at every conceivable SPF level.

You have a cologne display worthy of Selfridges.

You understand, viscerally, Joan Crawford.

Some of your best friends are your ex-lovers.

You know when to play dumb.

You know what to do for a hangover.

Yes, you do have a condom.

You've called someone "girlfriend" who is neither a girl nor a friend.

One or more of the following apply to you:

You adore Judy Garland

You hate Judy Garland

You hate people who adore Judy Garland.

You hate people who hate Judy Garland.

You don't give a damn about Judy Garland.

Who is Judy Garland?

You can supply the last names to the following list:

Bernadette ___________

Chita ___________

Barbra ___________

You made Donna Summer a star.

You made Donna Summer a has-been.

Tanning salons were invented for you.

You've made sunbathing a performance art.

You know when the party's over.

You know where to go after the party's over.

You're fearless about fighting the elements, especially gravity.

When you hear "a stitch in time saves nine" you think of:

Your grandma

Your face lift

John Wayne Bobbit

You know that pigs and bears are not necessarily rural wildlife.

Your room-mate can be your room-mate and not your "room-mate".

You know that referring to someone as "a real lady" isn't necessarily a compliment.

Your favourite dinner accessory may also be your dinner companion.

You know that the most important part of a party's decor is the catering staff.

If your cat is a female, you swear it's a lesbian.

If your cat is a male, you swear it's a lesbian.

You sing along heartily with songs that make most females cringe, like "Stand By Your Man".

You'll never have to hear your mother complain about your wife.

A two-seater convertible seems perfectly practical to you.

You have a favourite Disney character and it's usually a nasty one.

You've left someone totally speechless.

You've shaved something other than your face.

All your friends do not have to "get along".

Your love handles are actually used as such.

When someone turns his back on you, you actually consider it an opportunity.

You've got a large assortment of movie-star biographies.

You've got the most interesting coffee table books.

You know where to find a meat rack and it ain't in your kitchen drawer.

You have a sexual persuasion with its own flag.

At some moment in your life you've envisioned having back-up girls.

You know your enemies.

After a workout at the gym, you feel like a new man. And he's right there in the shower.

You're Barbra Streisand's biggest fan.

You know that Barbra Streisand's biggest fan is Barbra Streisand.

Not only have you added spice to your life - sometimes you've added side dishes.

You know that "small talk" can be about spirituality or politics, and "important issues" can be about hair.

You've actually lived out some of your fantasies.

Unless most straight women, you have no problem being treated solely as a sex object.

You have no doubts about the accuracy of the Kinsey Report.

You have 412 ways to tell someone to get lost. 136 are non-verbal.

You can lip-sync to at least one Supremes song.

You know exactly how many Martinis it takes.

When throwing a party, you know how to put out quite a spread. Sometimes after the party too.

Pride in London is looming! I may need to put some of these "pledges" into action...

The Bourne Identity

As I recounted in my post back in 2013:

On 9th September 1971 Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge, Lord Longford, Cliff-fucking-Richard and various assorted clergy, god-botherers and other nutters convened a mass meeting of their Festival of Light, a movement dedicated to opposing "the permissive society" in all its forms, at Methodist Central Hall opposite the Palace of Westminster.

Unbeknownst to the assembled worthies, Bette Bourne, Lavinia Co-op, Michael James, Gretal Feather, Martin Corbett, Peter Tatchell and many other founding members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) had infiltrated the prayers. Many of Bette's coterie were disguised as nuns, and as the speakers tried to address the crowd they began slinging porn from the balcony. Others shouted, clapped and screamed at inappropriate moments. Mr Corbett, who had calmly pretended to be a Hall official and ordered technical staff out of the basement, brought the lights down.

As Peter Tatchell recalls: "On the night, mayhem erupted. When Malcolm Muggeridge, speaking out about homosexuals, declared, 'I don't like them.' The feeling was mutual. Mice were released into the audience; lesbian couples stood up and passionately embraced. A dozen GLF nuns in immaculate blue and white habits charged the platform shouting gay liberation slogans, and a GLF bishop began preaching an impromptu sermon which urged people to 'keep on sinning.'"

It all apparently ended, before the police and security were able to forcibly remove them, with the drag nuns doing the can-can on the stage in front of the astounded speakers!

The last word, of course, went to Bette, who, at her subsequent trial for her part in the protest, was asked by the judge to remove her hat, and said "No! It goes with the shoes."

The great avant-garde drag entertainer, actor, wit, creative genius and, above all, champion of the battle for gay rights in the UK, Ms Bette Bourne has departed for the highest echelons of Fabulon, where she will no doubt preside, bestowing her pithy quips on all who surround her.

We adored Bette Bourne. It was sixteen years ago that our gang first encountered him/her in person - at the Oval Theatre, portraying the lascivious Hollywood talent manager Henry Willson who made Rock Hudson a star, and afterwards being inducted into the "Homosexual Hall of Fame" - and fell under his spell. Two years later, we were overjoyed to be at Soho Theatre for the first run of his and Mark Ravenhill's partly dramatised A Life in Three Acts.

Then in 2013, a double-bill - not just a showing at the V&A of the film about Bette Bourne It Goes With the Shoes [see the link in the intro above for more on that], but he and his longtime partner and fellow Bloolips veteran Paul Shaw [who survives him] made a special in-person appearance at the venerable Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology to perform an extract of the troupe's classic interpretion of the lives of Roman Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, Get Hur!...

He/she could turn her hand to anything - from Blanche DuBois to Lady Bracknell, Quentin Crisp to Queen Victoria, in drag or out of it. A remarkable individual.

We'll miss Bette!

A lot.

Bette Bourne - It Goes With The Shoes

Stuart Feather and Bette Bourne talk about Polari

RIP, Bette Bourne (born Peter Bourne, 22nd September 1939 – 23rd August 2024)

"Openly left-handed?"

A joyful read, courtesy of Ryan Gilbey, writing in The Guardian:

Andrew Scott is capable of many things but giving a dull interview seems not to be among them... in one of those cosy Hollywood Reporter roundtable discussions which proliferate during awards season, he has challenged a piece of outdated rhetoric from an era when queerness was synonymous with shame.

The moment arose when the moderator Scott Feinberg singled out Scott, who stars in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers as a screenwriter magically reunited with the parents who died when he was 12, and Colman Domingo, who plays Martin Luther King’s advisor Bayard Rustin in the Netflix biopic Rustin, as “openly gay actors playing openly gay characters who are at the centre of important films”. The remark was intended as a way in to a discussion about representation, though at no point did he refer to the other performers present (Robert Downey Jr, Paul Giamatti, Mark Ruffalo and Jeffrey Wright) as “openly heterosexual”.

“I’m going to make a pitch for getting rid of the phrase ‘openly gay,’” said Scott, steering the conversation in a more illuminating direction. “It’s an expression that you only ever hear in the media. You’re never at a party and you say, ‘This is my openly gay friend...’” Why, he wondered, is “openly” always attached to that adjective? “We don’t say you’re ‘openly Irish.’ We don’t say you’re ‘openly left-handed’...There’s something in it that’s a little near ‘shamelessly.’ ‘You’re open about it?’ You know what I’m saying?” He proposed that “it’s time to just sort of park it.”

It's about bloody time someone said it!

Now, Mr Gilbey, can we "sort of park" the epithets "queer" and "queerness" as well, please..?

Fearless

Class of 72 - Tom Robinson, Stuart Feather, Mair Twissell, Roz Kaveney, Peter Tatchell, Andrew Lumsden, Ted Brown, Nettie Pollard

In the history of human rights in this country, there are many people who could be described as "pioneers" - William Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists in the Georgian era, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragettes, campaigners against the criminalisation of homosexuality Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter, and so on. 

In the modern era, the baton of the latter pioneers passed to a small but vocal group of "annoyed gayers" who fought on and made a significant impact on our society.

Among those (as featured in the photo above), the fantabulosa Andrew Lumsden shone through...

From his obituary by James Lucas:

[We have] lost a true pioneer with the passing of Andrew Lumsden. An unwavering champion of gay rights, Andrew dedicated his life to advocating for equality and justice... He recognised the need for change and was unafraid to stand up and be counted. His tireless efforts have inspired countless individuals to join the fight for equality.

In the late 1960s, Andrew was instrumental in establishing the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), a groundbreaking organization that fought for gay rights and acceptance. The GLF played a pivotal role in the early days of the LGBTQ+ rights movement and set the stage for future activism... [in particular] his role as one of the founders of Pride. Pride events, celebrated worldwide, have become symbols of unity, acceptance, and the ongoing struggle for equal rights. Andrew’s vision for Pride has empowered generations to continue the fight.

Another testament to Andrew’s unwavering commitment was his role as the founder of Gay News. This groundbreaking publication provided a platform for LGBTQ+ voices, stories, and issues. It was a pioneering source of information and support during a time when discrimination and prejudice were prevalent. Andrew’s... fearless activism, dedication to social justice, and advocacy for equal rights have paved the way for the progress we see today. His work has changed the lives of countless individuals.

The LGBTQ+ community and the broader fight for equality have lost a true hero with the passing of Andrew Lumsden. His legacy is a testament to the power of activism and the enduring struggle for equal rights. As we remember his extraordinary contributions, we also recognize the importance of continuing the work he began, ensuring that his vision of a more inclusive and equal world becomes a reality.

RIP Andrew Lumsden, a remarkable man.

All the nice boys love a sailor, soldier, and so on

Happy Armed Forces Day!

[click any image to enlarge]

I like being gay. I wouldn’t want to be straight for anything.

The inimitable Miriam Margolyes appears on the cover of British Vogue as part of its Pride 2023 issue.

In her own words:

“Gay people have the luck to be able to fashion the relationship they want. It’s much more flexible for us,” she says. “I think we have more freedom than [straight people] do. Particularly gay boys, they’re always fucking everything. It’s amazing. I don’t know how they get away with it.”

Although she loves to see the “uninhibited young enjoying themselves”, she’s never been one for Pride marches. “I actually find lesbians a bit on the boring side, because they’re a bit heavy-handed about it all,” she says, deadpan. Still, she has always been proudly lesbian. “I think gay people are very lucky, because we are not conventional, we are a group slightly apart. It gives us an edge. We’re good artists, we’re good musicians. And I like being gay. I wouldn’t want to be straight for anything.”

Amen, sister!

Read the full article. It's a hoot!

[click any image to enlarge]

Out!

Apparently it's something called "National Coming Out Day"*...

...Go for it, boys!!

[*It's called "national", and it is an American invention, inevitably, but appears to be increasingly adopted elsewhere in the world. Also inevitably.]

Times...

We've come a long way, baby.

HAPPY PRIDE!

And our mystery guest is...

...none other than cosy breakfast-telly hostess and "national treasure" Miss Lorraine Kelly - transformed into her Drag Queen alter-ego "Morning Glory"!



The occasion was a photo-shoot for the new edition of Attitude magazine - "Activists and Allies special".

She also showed her true "gay icon" status by answering ten questions in the "Gay Slang Challenge":

Lorraine Kelly - LGBTQ Slang Challenge

She's so fab!

You can order or download a copy of the January edition from the Attitude website.

Life is a party. Dress for it.*

"The things that make us different, those are our superpowers - every day when you walk out the door and put on your imaginary cape and go out there and conquer the world; because the world would not be as beautiful as it is if we weren’t in it."

- the extraordinary Lena Waithe, who wore a rainbow flag chasuble to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute annual Gala, which, to coincide with its new exhibition, was on the theme “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”

Among many others from the ranks of the great and the good and the not-so-good; also in attendance at this fanciest-of-fancy-dress parties were Rihanna as a diamanté Pope:



Queen Madge as... The Madonna:



Zendaya ["Whooooo?"] as Joan of Arc:



...and Katy Perry as a fallen angel:



My invitation obviously got lost in the post.

*quoth Audrey Hepburn.

A richer and fuller life

His stories of escapades as a young gay man in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s were as mischievous and comic as they were a window into an often hostile world, where as second-class citizens homosexual men had to tread carefully on the edges of society.

National Service was "fantastic" [he said] because it was filled with so many gay men.

Cambridge was equally "very, very gay", causing one heterosexual undergraduate to complain to him, through tears, that there was "something wrong with him" because he was attracted to women.

"I think you'll be alright Douglas," Prof Lockyer replied drily.

"There was this semi-secret, sub-rosa network of gay clubs we would go to," he explained.

One bar-hopping friend and ex-lover was Jeremy Wolfenden, the gay son of Lord Wolfenden, whose radical report controversially recommended decriminalising homosexuality in 1957.

"Places like the Rockingham in Soho... was for well-to-do, sophisticated people - it had its own writing paper.

"You had to give your name at the door and I said: 'Jeremy, aren't you a little worried that you give your name 'Wolfenden'?

"He said: 'Oh don't worry my dear I always give your name.'

"So I'm recorded as having a much busier social life when it was in fact Jeremy capering about town while his father made these important recommendations to the government about 'queers'."

RIP Professor Roger Lockyer, historian, writer and one half of the very first couple who became "civil partners" when the law changed in 2005 [they converted their partnership to marriage in 2014]. Of the occasion, he said:

"I think that particularly being a historian… people do know a bit about their own history and what others went through and it makes for a richer and fuller life if they do.

"I remember distinctly walking down the street after the ceremony thinking: 'I am as legal a person as anybody else. I am a full citizen at last.' It was a wonderful feeling."

And finally, when asked about the secret of longevity [the couple had been together for 51 years when he died] he had this to say:

The best way to stay in a long and happy relationship is to want to stay in a long and happy relationship! It helps a great deal if you find the other person very attractive, which of course I did in the case of Percy - he was a young, handsome man - but we also shared so much in common.

I learned quite early on that if you want a relationship to endure, you must not bridle at every possible insult. We’ve both behaved badly to each other from time to time, and I just kept on thinking to myself: “It’s not worth losing this wonderful relationship over things that don’t really count. The little things are the little things; the big thing is the relationship and as long as that’s sound, then to hell with any of the details."

Indeed.

50 shades of Gay

Despite the rain, it appears that a sparkling time was had by all at this year's Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras...

The god of gay sex

Who would have thought even us gayers had their own god? This was just one of of the fascinating facts I found out at Sunday's Armchair Tour of the ‘Queer People’s Knick Knack Emporium' - an LGBT perspective on some of the collected articles held by the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Our true "Divine Being" is apparently not Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Betty White, Ethel Merman, Bette Midler, Madonna or Cher; it is Tu Er Shen (The Leveret Spirit), a Taoist Chinese deity who oversees the love and sex between male homosexuals - the patron god of gay men. His name is more often colloquially translated as the "Rabbit Deity" or "Rabbit God".

From the Singapore LGBT encyclopedia:

According to Zi Bu Yu - a collection of supernatural stories written by Qing dynasty scholar and poet Yuan Mei - in "The Tale of the Leveret Spirit", Tu Er Shen was originally a man named Hu Tianbao who fell in love with a very handsome, young, imperial inspector in 18th-century Fujian Province during the early Qing Dynasty. However, because of the inspector's higher status, Hu was afraid to reveal his feelings. One day, Hu was caught peeping at the inspector's bare derrière through a gap in a bathroom wall when the latter went to the toilet, at which point Hu confessed his reluctant affection for the other man. The imperial inspector had him sentenced to death by beating for offending a nobleman.

One month after Hu's death, he is said to have appeared [as a leveret, by some accounts] to an elder from his home town in a dream, claiming that since his crime was one of love, King Yama, ruler of the Chinese Hades, had decided to redress the injustice by appointing him the Rabbit God. As such, his duty was to govern the affairs of men who desire men. In the dream, he asked the man to erect a shrine to him. When he awoke the elder obliged by exhorting his fellow village folk to raise money to erect a temple to Hu Tianbao and named it the Rabbit Temple. In return, the Rabbit God responded to his adherents’ prayers without disappointment. Yuan mentioned that people who had underground love affairs, secret agreements and unobtainable desires could visit the Rabbit Temple.

Inevitably, the popularity of The Rabbit God (at least in southern China) in the late 18th century led to unwanted attention from the more puritanical elements of the establishment. Later Qing dynastic governments tried to exterminate the cult of Hu Tianbao.



However, you can't keep a good rabbit down! The cult survived in varying degrees in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore. And in Taiwan, the "god of gays" survives even to this day...

From the Huffington Post in January 2015:

"In Chinese history, 'rabbit' was a derogatory term for homosexuals," said Lu Wei-ming, who founded the [Wei-ming temple in Taipei] in 2006, at a time when gays were excluded from most religious ceremonies.

He wanted to create a welcoming environment for a flock that had long been ostracised. "This was a group with no one to look after them, and I wanted to fill that void," said the 28-year-old priest, adding that Wei-ming is the world's only shrine for homosexuals.

Liberal attitudes have led to the flourishing of gay culture on the island nation, with Taiwan's parliament debating a bill that would make it Asia's first to legalise same-sex marriage.

Lu said mainstream Taoist society remains stuck in a conservative mindset, although the most vocal opposition to Wei-ming temple has come from members of Taiwan's small yet active Christian community. He described instances of Christian activists protesting in front of the temple, including one pastor who attempted to perform an exorcism before the altar of the Rabbit God.

I am sure we could come up with some far more fitting "ceremonies" to perform in front of that altar.



If you happen to be in Taipei at any stage, visit Chinatownology blog for directions...

In the Navy

You couldn't make it up...

Forget Britain’s Trident, or Israel’s Iron Dome – peace-loving Sweden has come up with a much more innovative, and inclusive, system of defence.

The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) is to deal with encroaching Russian submarines in Swedish waters with a device emitting anti-homophobia Morse code.

The device – officially titled The Singing Sailor Underwater Defence System, but nicknamed the “gay sailor” – is a “subsurface sonar system”, which sends out the message: “This way if you are gay” in an attempt to deter apparently homophobic Russians.

Russia has come under fire since the Putin administration introduced homophobic laws in 2013 banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations”, in a climate of increasing intolerance towards its LGBT population.

The design of the device features a neon, flashing sign of a dancing sailor, naked but for a cap and small white briefs, surrounded by hearts.

“Welcome to Sweden: Gay since 1944” is written in English and Russian, in a reference to the year of decriminalisation of homosexuality in the Scandinavian nation.

Sweden has cut its military budget in recent years but announced in March it would increase spending, as a result of alleged Cold War-style Russian aggression.

An operation involving helicopters, minesweepers and 200 troops was launched last October to search for a suspected rogue Russian submarine in Swedish waters.

Sweden is currently not a member of Nato. And thanks to the gay sailor defence system, it may never have to be.

[Source: The Guardian]

The Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement

It is most peculiar to think - in this day and age when "gay rights" equals "let's ape heterosexual mariage norms", and so-called "straight-acting" gays viciously decry campness, drag shows, Gay Pride marches and "men who have sex with men who they haven't previously met at a social function or online" - that in living memory there was a time when gay people could be arrested just for being gay.

In the UK it was bad enough, but in the USA ["Land of the Free"™] the opression was seemingly endless. Even in San Francisco. Yet there was one fantabulosa drag queen who was determined to put a stop to all that - José Sarria, Her Royal Majesty, Empress of San Francisco José I, The Widow Norton!





A precursor to Harvey Milk by almost two decades, this plucky subversive performer mixed political aspirations with mind-blowing campness - using his performing "role" as Madame Butterfly to sermonise about homosexual rights and leading a sing-along of "God Save the Nelly Queens..."

The Empress sadly died recently, and her funeral was last Friday. Camp to the end, The Widow Norton left strict instructions to mourners. Female titleholders from her Imperial Court - the gay organisation and charity he started in 1965 - were requested to wear "black/dark full length (understated) mourning attire, crowns, shoulder length veils covering both crowns and one’s face" along with "black gloves (opera length if wearing short sleeves)."

Males titleholders were "respectfully requested to wear dark suits, crowns and white gloves."

In its obituary, The San Francisco Chronicle led the tributes to this remarkable individual:

An Army veteran, José Sarria collected nearly 6,000 votes in an unsuccessful 1961 campaign for San Francisco supervisor that demonstrated the political clout of the city's gay community for the first time.

"He paved the way for every LGBT elected official in the United States," sad Paul Boneberg, executive director of the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. "Before José Sarria, people couldn't grasp that a gay candidate could be taken seriously."

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, called Mr. Sarria a "fearless community leader."

"When José threw his hat into the ring for San Francisco supervisor more than 50 years ago, he became one of the first to publicly proclaim that there is no reason, constitutional or otherwise, to deny lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people first-class citizenship, respect and dignity under the law," Leno said in a statement. "José's visionary and legendary leadership helped build the foundation for our successful modern-day LGBT civil rights movement."

Before his groundbreaking campaign, Mr. Sarria was known for his drag performances at the Black Cat on Montgomery Street, which helped make the spot one of the country's most famous gay bars before it closed in 1964. In the 1950s, police routinely arrested patrons of gay bars under California's anti-sodomy laws, but Mr. Sarria would often lead the Black Cat crowd outside to serenade the county jail across the street.

Boneberg said it was Mr. Sarria's outrage over the police raids that prompted his run for office.

"He didn't have a suit to wear. He had amazing outfits to perform drag, but he had to borrow a suit from a friend," said Bevan Dufty, a former San Francisco supervisor who dedicated the block of 16th Street in front of the Eureka Valley/Harvey Milk Memorial Branch Library as José Sarria Court in 2006. "He was saucy and flirty and off-colour."

In 1965, Mr. Sarria declared himself "Empress José I, The Widow Norton," an homage to the eccentric San Francisco figure Emperor Norton. With that act, Mr. Sarria founded the International Imperial Court System, a fundraising network that has raised millions for charitable causes through costume-ball fundraisers and remains one of the oldest LGBT organizations in the world.

Nicole Murray-Ramirez, a San Diego human rights commissioner and Mr. Sarria's successor in the fundraising organization's leadership, said Mr. Sarria was "the Rosa Parks of the gay rights movement."

"José would say, 'I was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen,' " Murray-Ramirez said. "I hope the community will rediscover José and realize what an important person he was."

A pioneer, and a singularly remarkable person.

RIP, Your Majesty....





José Julio Sarria (12th December 1922 or 1923 – 19th August 2013)

[Eternal thanks to the lovely Mistress Maddie for enlightening us here at Dolores Delargo Towers about this fascinating character. Even if it was only after she died.]