Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

Okay, so my coping mechanism these days is watching Friends. Lots and lots and lots and lots of Friends. I have a ton of work to do, including a research proposal of 1500 words that I have no idea how to do, and a nasty play to read and be clever about, and some other stuff for my new class that I haven’t even looked up online because I’ve been too busy watching Friends. And I can’t stop because Ross, you know, he has a new girlfriend who’s English but I KNOW he isn’t going to love her forever, and furthermore I know that at the end of this season, Chandler (whose fault it is I’m watching this at all, damn you Matthew Perry and Studio 60 and my flatmates for laughing at me for not knowing who he was!) and Monica, they are going to have the sex. So I can’t really stop now. Besides there are six more seasons I haven’t seen, and I’m a completist so that just wouldn’t do.

I thought I heard someone coming down the hall to knock on my door, however, and I didn’t want to admit that I was still watching Friends and had been all day today (seriously, short break to get a candy bar and wash my hair, and allllllllll the rest of the day I’ve been at it), so I fetched the book I’m supposed to be reading and started to read it. I was going to skip the introduction so that I could finish the book sooner and be back to Friends, but when I opened the book up it was at the last page of the introduction and my eyes can’t stop themselves from reading, so I read it.

Number one, the man is oversharing. I’m going to tell you his name — Morris Kaplan — so that if you ever run into him In Life, you can let him know that it is way, way not okay to talk about the fantasy echoes of his own erotic history in an introduction to a history book, even if the name of the book is Sodom on the Thames. His attachment to these figures have vacillated between desire and identification, but he’s not going to track these trajectories in detail here, since each exerted its own fascination, at least for a time. (Thank God for small mercies.)

Number two, the second-to-last sentence in the introduction is, My erotic adventures in the archives have been a source of great pleasure.

I’ll repeat that for those of you who missed it: My erotic adventures in the archives have been a source of great pleasure.

I’LL JUST BET.

I got a reading pass to the British Library, but if this is the kind of activity that takes place in their archives, I’m having nothing to do with it! Nothing! Nothing! Nothing! Thanks a lot, Morris Kaplan, you big meanie, for spoiling my happy dream of scholarly peace at the British Library; now I’m just always going to be looking over my shoulder to make sure that you’re not having sex with the manuscripts (which by the way may not be specifically listed among the rules but you know and I know that it’s totally forbidden!). And you know what? I have Merlin Holland’s fax number, and I’m going to tell him about you!

Well, obviously I can’t read Morris Kaplan’s book anymore today. And the play I have to read for Early Modern Culture is on a high high shelf, so that’s out of the question; and I can’t do my research proposal because I haven’t read Morris Kaplan’s book yet. Really leaves me with only one option. Don’t blame me, blame Morris Kaplan.

(When I’m like the world’s leading expert on Oscar Wilde, I’m going to delete this post so it won’t be super awkward when I run into Morris Kaplan for real. Nobody give him the URL to my blog.)