My life reached total fulfillment the other day

My friend Laura rang me up because she had a question about Oscar Wilde and she knew I'd know the answer. This was flattering but nerve-wracking because it would be so unfortunate if she asked me something and I had no idea what the answer was. Much like that time that I told her I would recognize what Angel episode she had seen, if she told me one thing about it.

However, in both cases, I proved to know the answers. It was that episode in the second series where Angel uses Anne's homeless shelter to mess with Wolfram & Hart, which is sort of shady of him. And Oscar Wilde was convicted for two years on a charge of gross indecency between males under that crappy Section 11 part of a law that was really meant to prevent sex with underage girls. Rubbish Labouchere (he was the guy who introduced Section 11 into the law).

Well, of course, if you ask me one question about Oscar Wilde, it is not unlikely that I will tell you a whole lot of more information about him. So I told Laura all about how things would have been different if they had proved that sodomy took place, and then I told her about some of the evidence that was introduced against him. And instead of saying "That's gross, stop talking to me," she said "Oo, that's very helpful for my paper."

HA.

Oh, and then, and then? After I had continued telling her stories about Oscar Wilde and his ways and his family, she asked me what was a good book to read about Oscar Wilde, if a person was only going to read one book about Oscar Wilde? Not for her paper but just For Life? I assumed that she was teasing me, because I am a big Oscar Wilde dork, but no, indeed, she thought that he sounded interesting and wanted to read more about him.

I HAVE BEEN WAITING MY WHOLE LIFE FOR SOMEBODY TO SAY THIS TO ME.

In case you're wondering, the book to read is Gary Schmidgall's brilliant and insightful The Stranger Wilde: Interpreting Oscar. It's not a biography in the traditional sense, but it deals well with everything, and has lots of interesting information, and furthermore it talks in admiring terms about Ada Leverson, whom I love. Plus, if you ever get bored with one bit of it, you can just skip on to the next chapter, because each chapter deals with a different thing. The one about angels and demons was a particularly good one.

The Stranger Wilde. Gary Schmidgall. It's excellent.

Also, happy birthday to Laura! And Emily Dickinson!