Colette Pt. 3: The War, Secret Gay Codes, & A Sexy Stepson

the letter H. H d be stepping out. H has a thing going on, essence G. Sometimes even though H is a little quiet about that one. Yeah, I mean I've seen chat with I guess G is usually the quiet one. How about this? How about when P and H go out together and nobody even knows it's either of them, right, some people who might even think it is G. Some people are like, oh yeah right, these and cough. It's the same sound you guys see F last night at the body wasn't here? I saw and

I saw H standing nearby G together. Anybody anybody's seen P around here lately? Oh? You what a what a world this letter land. We spend some more time there, I know, right, I'd go to a party with a bunch of letters because I'm very lame. W H is always stepping out with everyone, including W you horror or you whole horror? Wow, H gets around. Really thought about that before? H? Holy hell h H the horror of the alphabet. So we figured it out. That's why you

joined us on this podcast. But he's hard hitting, hard hitting, heart hard hard hitting for these hard hitting histories, these have truths, hearts of hearts here say here's say yes totally. He's horrible headlines today's episode of Ridiculous Romances. Talked to you about the letter H, which we've determined is the side piece of the alphabet that's hot. It's hot. Well, we appreciate spending some time with H since we've been dealing with C nineteen this week with our COVID Do

you not recommend unsubscribed? Unsubscribed for real? All the extra work I'm gonna do to edit out these coughs and sniffs because it's uh, we're climbing out of it. I feel close to better, Yeah, I think, Yeah, you had your worst day yesterday. Definitely I feel better today than yesterday. But I'm tired. Yeah, we're gonna park you up I'm gonna do the pulp fiction shot of adrenaline straight into

her heart right before we during the theme song. So she's going to come back and be like, wow, hey, yeah, I excited. Yeah, this is so exciting. We're back for Collette Part three. This has been such a saga into it. Where we at? What happened? Where we at? Oh yeah, well when we last left off, right, we got Collette through, like I guess, about like five years of her life. I think the nineteen twelve five years of her life,

not the first five years of her life. No, no, no, it would be a different, very different story, very different story. Also a boring lie. Yes, I don't think she had much to say about one through five unless she had written all those novels before she was five years old. Holy shit, incredible, that would be a story like we kep talking about Mozart. But listen, she wrote a whole book about being a fifteen year old girl at school

when she was never even been to school yet. No, we had gotten her through about five six years of her life, which included the kiss that started a riot, UM, multiple partners and trists, many many awesome sexy adventures. UM also started her new career in journalism until she married her second husband, unread Juvenel, and they had a daughter. But now war is coming to France, and after that

Collette has a sexy young stepson to contend with. So yeah, let's hear about wartime journalism and lavender languages and sexual initiation and so much more. I'm him. Let's go all right, hey the French come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract concept, don't a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the

second Glance Ridiculous Roles a production of iHeart Radio. So Henri and Collette married in nineteen twelve, and it was like acrimonious right away. They almost split up within a few months. But when they reconciled, Collette got pregnant. You know how that is that makeup sex. They had their only daughter in nineteen thirteen. Her name was Bell Gazoo, which meant beautiful gazelle, and that was actually Collette's nickname

as a child. Okay, well, and just a double back here, real quick Anri dis Juvenel was the editor of a newspaper where Collette worked, right, and that's sort of how they met and fell in love. Yeah, kind of like intellectual equals and stuff like that. But neither of them were great parents to Belle Gazoo. Unfortunately, they pretty much abandoned her to nurses and nanny's um. Not uncommon I think for rich parents who could afford to do that sort of thing. Um. But Collette was like, she really

was not interested. She would sometimes let six months pass without ever seeing her daughter. She thought parenting was a strain on her creativity and freedom. She called her daughter a rat sometimes just not a good parent. She sucked being a mom. She shouldn't have had a kid. Henri was not a great dad either, He was just really wrapped up in his own self and neither of them

wanted to focus on this kid. But they all lived together in Rosven that house in Brittany, France that Missy had gifted to Collette when they broke up, you know, she still had that house. I can't say I've ever gotten a breakup gift, let alone an entire house in Brittany, France. How many Marquees have you dated few, but not many. Okay,

we'll say that, so that's fair. I think the best breakup gift I got was being broken up with and not having to be with that person to say, I think the breakup is the gift usually, alright, But in nineteen fourteen, the Great War began that it wasn't even called World War One because no one expected there to

be a sequel. It was just the Great War. They didn't do the George Lucas thing where they were like, let me call this World War four, so that there's room to do some prequels and some sequels later, if we right, right, Because I got a theme park in mind. Oh no, the worst ever Franz Ferdinands free fall. Oh god, he well, of course, Henri was almost immediately called to active duty. Healthy man, you know you're you're going to

the front. Sorry, bro um So Bell Gazoo was sent into the country to stay because it's safer out there, and Colette went back to Paris. Now only a month into the war. The Germans were at the gates of Paris and it was not pretty like A bomb fell on Isabelle de Canig's garden. Remember her, she was the panther mistress also famous writer. Friends of Collette's were killed, and in mid October, Collette volunteered as a night nurse

at a school that was turned into a hospital. She worked thirteen hours shifts from seven in the evening until eight in the morning, which were obviously the hours nobody wanted to work, Colette was doing it. According to Judith Thurman's book Secrets of the Flesh, Collette had eight critically wounded soldiers under her care. Many of them were missing

body parts like jaws, teeth, eyes, or whole legs. Insane to think about somebody's half their face missing, perfect bombs and trapnel were just they've sucked you up, Judith It's quote. When she wasn't changing their bandages, making them tea, administering anesthetics, or tending the hot water furnace, she sat with them and talked about her father, which, if you remember, her father had lost his leg in the Second Italian War

for Independence. Judith goes on, they wanted to know where he had been amputated, higher than me, and he could still walk and he married all the same, What was his wife like? Tell us? They just wanted to know that there was still a life ahead of them if they had their leg amputated, because that was that's terrifying,

how upsetting. I mean again, you know, and some people are missing half their face, like you know, they're definitely like life is over, um, but who better to tell them about all the romance that could be awaiting them that So I kind of like that idea that she was sitting there like, oh my mom was awesome because she did. She was pretty close with her mom um.

I think she was a bit of an overbearing mother, but she's still was pretty close to her, so she was able to maybe lift their spirits a little bit and give them some hope, you know what I would say. And I don't know if this is true or not, but it just might might. Inclination for the situation is, Okay,

you've lost your leg. You're going to find someone you're gonna get married, and that person is You've already weeded out all the people who wouldn't marry you because you're you know, they consider you a burden or something like that, so you've got better chances of finding someone who is going to be so supportive of you and devoted to you. So you know, chin up there, hopefully. Yeah, that hopefully things.

That's a good case scenario like that. Yeah. Well, after a week of this grueling schedule, collect was transferred to the day shift, so it got a little simpler, you know, people less left this graveyard shift action. But after two months she was missing her husband so badly that she decided to travel in secret to join him on the front lines in very gen and she was not the only soldier's wife to do so. But they technically were not allowed to be there, so they basically had to

go into hiding, like they called themselves voluntary prisoners. Sometimes it was like Thurman rights quote. Her months at the front were the happiest in her life, in part surely because she had no rivals for Henry's heart, ardor or gratitude. She kept her shutters closed during the day, exercised, wrote, painted, scrubbed floors, and steadied chests, the ultimate proof of love that she could give to her husband. But while in Verdunn, Collette also became one of the first women to report

from the front lines about the war. Now, her stories are mostly concerned with like the human cost of the war, like the women and children, even the military war dogs were subjects of her articles, rather than like, you know, the big heavy political implications which of typical word reporting, yeah, which she might have not been able to write about. Women journalists were not given that kind of assignments or

were not asked for their opinion about that sort of thing. Um, So you know, it might have been her personal preference, and it might have been like, well, we don't care to hear your opinion about how it's going whatever, But since you're there, could you tell us about the dogs? Yeah, tell us about the dogs. But maybe because of the everyday stuff she covered, she managed to capture a side of war time that many other journalists hadn't been able

to capture. In the book Her War Story, Twentieth Century Women Write About War, which is edited by Sair P. Sheldon, one of Collette's articles from ver Dunn is published here in full. And that's great because otherwise you'd have to read it in French, and I could not find another English one could not brush up my high school French well enough to capture a whole article. In this article, Collette describes getting to the front and asking the Le

Marche family who's the couple that she's staying with? What's going on? And then I m our complain that the upholsterer is selling butter. That's actually Margarine. The piano merchant has a shipment of sardines for sale. They're charging insane prices for a single vegetable. You know, they're just giving all these like that's not what I asked for. And Collette kind of loses her temper and she's like, the war, for God's sake, how's the war going? People? Obviously it's

a war on and they kind of chuckle. They're like, oh, it's going. Don't worry. There's a war. Yeah, the war. Yeah, it's still happening. Don't you worry about the thing. There is still a war, if that's what you're worried about. Collette goes on to say, quote, I deserve that reply. It did not take me a week to realize that. Here and very donne Chocco block full of troops with

the railway it's unique supply line. War becomes a habit, the inseparable cataclysm of life, as natural as thunder and rainstorms. But the danger, the real danger, is that one may soon not be able to eat. You know. The piano merchant, he's a piano merchant. He's supposed to be selling pianos, but instead he's dealing in sardine. The upholsterer is dealing about butter. Now they're not doing any of their normal ship. Everything has been suspended in favor of finding and selling food.

That is the number one. Nobody gives a funk about piano. Nobody's buying a piano. They want a leak, you know, they want a piece of bread. And that's insane to me, because of course, our global supply chain is so different now that it's like kind of impossible to imagine that. It's just completely different. Now. It's impossible to think about not being able to find an egg, you know what I mean, We're having to go down to lows to buy margarine. Imagine, I mean you go to the Ace

Hardware and they're like, what do you want sardines? All we got is sardines hardware. We're now we're a sardware as in Sardines Sardware Friendly neighborhood, sardine sardine supplier, or a co op. Collet goes on to describe bombs falling continually, not causing many casualties, but people complain about their gardens being ruined and their sheds being smashed. One lady had to hide from quote a veritable hail of shrapnel. But

her main complaint was, quote, just imagine. I had to take shelter under the porte cochere of ex family and we're not even on speaking terms. I love our human no matter what's going on around. UM. We all know about the shrapnel, but listen to this. I had to be polite to a family I don't like. Oh my god, I feel sorry for me. Collette spent about three months in Verdun, and then she spent most of her time moving back and forth from Paris to the front, writing

her war reports. In nineteen fifteen, she escaped to Rome as a journalist for Limit, and her next door neighbor was a writer and fighter pilot named Gabrielle de Nunzio, who would become one of her lovers, and by nineteen seventeen she and Enri de Juvenel returned to Paris. He had a diplomatic mission, and she had written a film adaptation of her book about her time on the stage, The Vagabonds that we talked about in the last episode.

UM that was about to begin filming, and that made her one of the first authors to be involved in the new medium of cinemas. Collette also survived the Spanish flu pandemic, although some of her closest friends died from it. So this is just a super tragic time. People are dying from war, They're dying from disease. It's like some end time ship. Can't relate, right, what's that? But by the Great War was over and Enri was positioning himself

for a political career. He charmed a lot of people by leading this campaign to have an unknown soldier buried at the art to trio, Was he the one who got it there? Because we went and saw Yeah, yeah, he led that campaign. It worked. Everybody was like cool, that guy is awesome, and it kind of like helped to launch him as a national figure. Well, look at that. We've we've seen part of this story, yeah, part of it.

We might have seen other things. I imagine we went to some maybe one of the cafes we went to Collette had sat at once or twice in her life. Oh, we might have had one of our butts in the same chair as Collette, but got around. Uh. Now. Henri was also an early adopter and a strong supporter of syndicalism, which was a belief that political structures are inherently corrupt and that organized workers, through their trade unions, should control society.

I don't know that sounds pretty good to me, right, animal parious idea. In nineteen nineteen, maybe because of the demands of his new diplomatic and his like political career he's putting together, he made Collette the literary editor of Lametan in, a newspaper where they worked, even though their relationship was becoming more and more strained over his many infidelities and absences. Not that Colette isn't getting her own on the side here as well, right because besides this

guy de nuncio. In Italy, some people think that she had an affair with her friend, a Parisian actress named Musidora, and Musidora played Irma Vepp in a ten episode series called Le Vampire. Mussadra also co wrote and co directed Collette's film adaptation of the vagabond Mr Doris Pretty coolsa

is pretty honest. And in nineteen twenty eight, years after marrying Henri, she would finally meet his son from his first marriage, Bertrand but before we get to that, we've got some cool queer history to cover, so let's take

a quick commercial break. So welcome back to the show everyone, And in this whole series about Collette, we have just been absolutely dying to talk about why Paris was such a haven for lesbians and all like these fascinating ways that LGBTQ people have found to communicate with one another in secrecy. So we saw this information from across the bar and we really loved its vibes. So let's take a quick fling with history to learn about lavender languages

and gay perry. Yes, so even before the end of World War One, as we've learned in our two previous Collette episodes, being a lesbian in Paris wasn't that big of a deal. That's because the French Revolution decriminalized homosexuality in provided people were discreet, okay, And after that the queer scene flourished, especially in the Belle epoc era of

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So, like we talked about Natalie Clifford Barney, the Queen of the Lesbians, who ran a weekly salon from nineteen o nine until nineteen seventy two, this is a weekly salon. She's still on parties every week for like six years. They were attended by famous lesbians like Gertrude Stein and her partner

Alice Toklas. The culture trip dot com says, quote, there's not a famous modernist or lesbian, let alone a lesbian modernist who lived in Paris at that time who did not pass through her doors. Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas also hosted salons where they launched the careers of painters

like Matisse and Picasso. Culture Trip goes on to say, quote, it was the visibility and vivacity with which sapphick desire could be fulfilled in Paris, albeit relative to your position in the pecking order, that made it, as far as lesbians were concerned, the queer capital of Europe, even more so than Berlin. Women who had the money and freedom to travel, came from the UK, the USA and across Europe to attend salons such as Barney's and drink and

dance in the city's lesbian bars. So you know, again, check check the privilege. If you had money, you know, if you had a title like we talked about with Missy, it was a bit easier for you to be out and proud than it was for just a regular poor chambermaid or something right right, well, and how often has that been true? Where you know, if you have the means, you are offered a bit more freedoms than than different rules apply. Yeah, you're you're cute. Things become a little

cute quirks and eccentricities instead of criminal behavior. Right well, in different rules apply, and different opportunities are afforded to you, like you can actually go to these salons and stuff like that, right exactly, freedom to travel definitely page part of that. Um. And after the casualties of World War One, of course, there were so few healthy young men left in Paris that this only got more pronounced in the twenties and thirties. So I was already a big scene.

And then after all these men were killed, um, there were fewer men, more lesbians. One of these bars was called La Monocle, and it was in the montmart neighborhood of Paris, and women would show up wearing full tuxedos, monocles and men's shoes. Obviously great pictures, by the way, I'll bet oh man, classy, everybody out there looking like Diane Keaton. I know, right, I always wanted like a really well cut tuxedo. I think it would be such a cool, like, it's this hot look. Now, you'd look

great in tuxedo. Now. Of course, who ruined all this The Nazis. To the Nazis, they came in screwed a lot of this up. But later in ninety sixties, six Eve St Laurent brought the legacy of La monocula to high fashion, where he unveiled his women's tuxedo loo smoking

on a Paris runway because it's smoking hot. As culture trip dot com notes, quote, it was at once a radical statement of female empowerment amid the decades sexual revolution, and a nod with all the world watching to the free living, free loving lesbians who first donned the look. And it's so I mean, definitely look this up and

we'll try to share some pictures. But it's really cool to see all these women gathered together and some of them are femed out, they're wearing beautiful dresses, but most of them are wearing this full tuxedo monocle look, and they have their hair slicked back and everything, and it's just really cool to like see them chilling and looking so awesome. Apparently a lot of them would wear full length blankets down the street, like to smuggle themselves in kind of and they wud like throw dat I look

like ship, but actually look at faith. That's some like what's his name? In the Hunger Games. If you could show up in something that's all rags and then you do a spin and it burst into flames, then it's this hot tuxedo. I wish I would wear that. I mean, but in most of the gay world, even in the Roaring twenties, visibility was just a chance to get beaten up, blackmailed, jailed or killed because of course there's still illegal in

most places. UM. And so there were a variety of codes that were used to kind of communicate within the queer community who you were, and like if you knew the code, you were a safe person to talk to. And if you didn't, great, now I know you're not safe. Like that was the point of that. UM. Lavender was the color most associated with homosexuality, so these codes and slang are called lavender languages, and sometimes the codes were in the language of flowers, very important, the language of hours.

It's not really a thing anymore as much as it used to be. But like it used to, like if you sent a yellow rose to someone at the wrong time, it was like a big So the language of flowers pretty well known. Women would give each o their bouquets of violets to express interest in a romance. Oh well, what do you do if you just if you're like to turn that down? Do you like? Hand? Thank you so much? Um here will you hold these for me? I have to just step out for a minute, you know,

where do you go plant them? You could probably throw him on the ground, stomp on him. Pretty rude, very rude. I don't know. And that month that's a that's an interesting one too, because if you didn't know the code and you're like, oh my god, thank you, it is oka like suddenly the other ladies like great awkward things in sue oh man, and she's following around. I mean, this is a rom com the Violet I would I would totally watch a violence about. Yeah. She gives them

to her violet fems. She hands them over, she thinks she accepted them. They start paneling around. The woman who received the flowers thinks she's got a new best friend. Right. The woman who gave the flowers thinks that this they're in love with each other. By the end, they realized that the flowers they loved were the friends they had all along. I don't know somebody else should write this.

I was going to say, world, it's be so funny if it got if you got to use some of that very flowery language that women and men would use with each other, that now is like confusing. They're like, I think they were gay, but they were just like my love. They would just call everyone my love. That's an additional problem where the girls like I I think we just just steer my love do a girl saying and the other woman's like, she really loves me. Yeah,

this is a misadventure in the making. Also, Oscar Wilde invited his friends to where green incarnations in their lapels to the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan and according to LGBT Cultural Heritage dot Com, that made it a fashion among gay men to kind of signal to one another who they were. So they would just choose a green carnation for their button hole, and they'd see another green carnation and be like, let me get into that button hole.

You know, I'm laughing because the idea that that's discreet, Like if I wear a green carnation in my lapel, it's a secret that I'm gay that no one will pick up on. And I'm like, okay, look, I mean again, I guess they really like if you knew, could you even but you weren't gay yourself, would people even be like, oh, well, you hang out with all the wrong people, you know,

you know what I mean. Well, if you don't know and you just see it and you're like, hey, that's a good look, green carnation on my lapel, then we've got our b plot of the rom com. The guy is like, oh, what a nice look. I'm gonna wear a green carnation around And then his friend is like, oh, sir, I had no idea you had such a good fashion sense. He's like, oh, I love a good fashion sense. Like

let's go ride horses together. Also on LGBT Cultural Heritage dot Com, it says that items of fashion accessories or even small tattoos that could easily be covered up were like other ways to sort of subtly advertise your sexuality. I think it's handkerchiefs in your pocket now, right, But maybe that was the early two thousands. I don't know that's a thing anymore. That was like there was a code which color you were wearing or something into Yeah,

it was that more like kink based I think. I think like one color meant you were you were gay and trying. But then there were other colors that were like I'm in I'm a bottom, or like I'm into type of kind of black and white polka dot handkerchief that means you can you know, you can tie me up in your dungeon. And some poor gal was handkerchiefs like like the style, I keep getting the weirdest messages. This is also a round coom that will play through time.

We'll have multiple like the hours timelines going on. And so there's somebody in the modern era who's like, I really like the black and white polka dot. Look. They end up downstairs on a St. Andrew's cross. How did this happen? It's better not awaken anything. And and then the conversation dot Com talks about slang that people would use like family or a club member, or a friend of Dorothy's or a friend of Mrs King. There were

other ways to sort of carefully out yourself to someone else. Um. Side note, I did look up the friend of Dorothy because I've heard that before, and I thought that it was a reference to liking Judy Garland, right. I thought that was the initials She's like a gay icon. There is not um precise origin of this phrase that's known, but one belief people has this that it comes from actually a sequel to one of the books of Wizard

of Oz call The Road to Oz. At one point, the book introduces a character called Polychrome who meets Dorothy and all her friends and says to Dorothy, quote, you have some queer friends, Dorothy, and Dorothy replies the queerness doesn't matter so long as they're friends, which is a nice quote, and be you can see how that'd be like secret code, right and Polychrome right there that like a rainbow colors. Yeah. Also, that book did come out in nineteen o nine, so it would it would definitely

match up with our time period here. And gay people at the time also co opted the word gay from women prostitutes. They were using the word as slang to describe women in their profession, and that didn't become synonymous with homosexuality until after the Stonewall Riots of nineteen sixty nine. Maybe the most fascinating lavender language that we found is polari,

which was a slang used in the UK. Like many of these words and codes that were used by the gay community, it had its roots and slang used by marginalized communities. Right gay was female prostitutes, um, sailors used a lot of this slang back in the day and then like poor beggars and stuff like that. So it's kind of co opted from already marginalized people, which makes sense if you feel marginalized by society, kind of like oh,

that's my bro right here. Um. And once it made its way to the UK, it also borrowed from Cockney rhyming slang and back slang, which is when you pronounce a word as if it's spelled backwards, which kind of made me wonder if that's why Missy chose is sim for her artist name. It was Missy Backwards and think that was this kind of a sly reference to back slang or the gay slang, to another way of saying, hey, guess what, I'm not straight, Get the deal with it,

Like all the glasses come down. Pollari was particularly useful because to anyone who didn't know it, it just did like gibberish, total gibberish. So it concealed not only your sexuality, but it also allowed you to talk shit about people, which is very important to the gay community, at least

our friends very importantly able to talk to it. In an article on the Conversation dot com by Paul Baker called a Brief History of Pollari, he shares a phrase, vada the enough strides on the yomi ajax, and that means, look at the awful trousers on the man nearby. What is that what they were saying about me? They were talking about your naught strides. Every time I walk by a group of people, I hear vada the enough strides on them jacks. They're always saying that only when you're

wearing cargo shorts. I would never. First of all, well, I would occasionally, but only for work when it was like useful. Also, isn't it like it's been a long time. I don't own any anymore, thank you very much. I just want to get that on the record on the air. Any pairs of cargo shorts or pants, there's no cargo happening here. The slander out there about cargo shorts is incorrect. But when I was working on set and I needed a lot of pockets, they were very useful. It's true

they have their purposes. I also love it because you kind of can't say it without having a cognit, Like enough strays on the omi age act like you really want to have an accent to say Now, he goes on to say quote. Inserting a Pollari word such as bona, which means good, or polone, which means woman, into a sentence could act as a coded way of identifying other

people who might be gay. The language, itself, full of camp irony, innuendo, and sarcasm, also helped its speakers to form a resilient worldview in the face of arrest, blackmail, and physical violence. Now they'd also give themselves names like Scotch Flow or Diamond Lil, like drag names. What what's yours? What would your ugie Diana rugie? What's my yeah? What would be your your cool Pillari name? I don't know, Mr, Mr, Mr,

Mrs pretty good. I go with like, um, I feel like you'd be sweet something, because oh, I'd be like I don't know if I like I don't know if I want to be Sweetie, Sweet Caroline, Sweet Caroline, I'll go with it. One of my least favorite songs. Don't write to me about how it's good. I don't want to hear it. It's a fucking stupid song and I hate it. I don't think anyone's going to feel strongly enough to write in defending Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond, Lil,

Neil Diamond, Lil. All Right. So on LGBT Cultural Heritage dot Com they have this embedded video of a short film which is entirely in Pollari. It's called Putting on the Dish, and honestly it's really worth watching. You've got to check it out because it really does sound like an alien language. Now, Pollari fell out of favor once homosexuality was legalized in the UK in the nineteen sixties, but in two thousand three, a group calling themselves the

Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence translated the Bible into Pollari. Now, Paul Baker writes, quote this was not to mock religion, but to highlight how religious practices are filtered through different cultures and societies, and that despite not always being treated well by mainstream religions. There should still be a space

for gay people to engage with religion. Yeah uh. In seventeen, a church actually held a service reading from the Polari translated Bible to commemorate LGBT History Month, and the church actually ended up apologizing for the service. They said it was led by trainees. The higher ups had in seeing the word blah blah blah all according to the BBC, but it gave us this little gem quote. Instead the traditional glory be to the Father and to the Son

and the Holy Spirit. The prayer offered was fab miss b to the amt and to the homey chevy and to the fan tab Ylosa fairy, which, honestly, church definitely would have engaged me more. I would like to praise the Fantabulosa fairy. Paul Baker says that of course this

reading quote provoked a range of conflicting opinions. Some people think it's hilarious, Some are concerned about Church of England rules being broken and disrespect for religious tradition, while others think that God should be prayed to in any language. As someone who has spent twenty years documenting the rise and fall of Polari, I find it fascinating that even now it is finding new ways to cause controversy. Never has a dead language had such an interesting afterlife. That's great.

It's so interesting that this church okayed this and then came back and, in a very Christian fashion, threw the younger people under the bus. I was like, oh, that wasn't us. We didn't approve that their fault. Don't blame me. Wasn't it christ who said, Uh, if you do something people don't like, turn to your neighbor and blame them for it. Throw a thy neighbor under the bus. All right? Well that was a bit more of a long fling with history. But hey, when it's good, it's good, right.

You know, we couldn't get enough very interesting. We had to. We had to put that information in somewhere. This is a good spot for it and that honestly, that's just scratching the surface of lavender languages and gay codes. And while they are very cool to learn about obviously, also it kind of sucks that queer people needed a whole fake language to hide themselves behind. Right, but it is time to get back to collect and her life and

her loves. Right after this commercial break, famous b to the sponsors in Homi Chavy's name, and welcome back to the show, everybody. Alright, So back to Collette here. She is the literary editor of Laman now and things are getting rocky with Henri. Writing wise, Collette was still doing plenty of journalism. She also started writing her book Sherry, which she released as a serialized story over a number

of weeks, very common for writers back then. Makes sense too, because you can sell your journal because everybody wants to install exactly. It's like TV subscriptions now exactly now. Sherry is a novelization of her affair with our favorite department store Air August Ariotes talked about in Part two. His character is kind of an indolent and spoiled young man named Sherry, and he's having an affair with an older

courtesan named Leah. And about halfway through the serialization, Collette's book kind of became a little more like reality when she met Henri's son, Bertrand. Bertrand was sixteen years old at this time. He's the son of Henri with his first wife, Claire Boas, And even though Collette had been married to Henri for eight years, she had not met his kids, either Bertrand with Claire or the sun he

Ad with Isabelle de Comminges Um. But in Claire sent Bertrand to stay with his dad and Collette as her emissary. His mission, whether he chose to accept it or not, was to get Collette to let Claire use her old married title. Baroness. Did juvenel because Claire and Henri were divorced. They're fully divorced, not married, but Claire still used the title all the time because she found it useful in

her career as a political lobbyist. You're if you're you know, a noble doors open for you that otherwise would not open for you. Right. So she's like, this is good. I need to get in with these pourful people. If I'm a baroness. They let me come. Let me use this title. I get I get better, I get early check in at all my hotels. Um, I get a you know, a fancy dinner each night, loyalty points right, I can go to the front of the line at Disneyland.

I mean it's pretty nice. Aristocracy, man, Yes, the aristocrats had some perks, you could say. But Collette did use the title, okay, and she got very embarrassed and super piste because she went to check into a hotel and she was refused a room and regarded with a lot of suspicion as an impostor because only a few days before, Claire had checked into the hotel using the same title. They're like, no, girl, we know who the baroness did juvenel is and it ain't you. She was just here, okay.

So Colette was like, excuse me, your ex is still using your name and she was not. My god, She's like, I am supposed to have the early check in, but this is my fast past mine. She gets to Disneyland and they're like, I'm sorry, I'm you cannot go to the front of Splash Mountain because the book says you just did. When per customer, so Bertrand went to go stay with Collette and try and work this mission out,

and he was immediately struck with Collette's undeniable presence. She's a sexy lady, and she liked Bertrand right away too, so much so that she decided she should finally meet Claire. Collette said, quote, in the space of twenty minutes, we established an old friendship. This is interesting how often Collette would be friends with former enemies, because like she became friends with Isabelle to comin Jay's like who tried to murder her? You know she would she would eventually become

friends with most people. I think she really was, like she was willing to overlook a lot of stuff eventually. Well and how you know she just one of those people who is always like zep, wretched woman, I cannot stand her, and then spend five minutes there. Actually she's very nice. I don't know what I was on about before I do that sometimes just like this asshole, this son of a bitch. I did not want to meet this guy, and then to go meet him, and I'm like, stupid,

likable person, I want to spend more time with. You're supposed to suck. Well, even though Collette and Claire were totally digging each other, they seem to be good friends. Claire was still hesitant when Collette later invited Bertrand to spend the summer with her and Henri at rose Ven and Claire only gave into this when Andre basically insisted, But within a few days, even though Henri was like, let my son come with me. We're going to spend

some time with my new wife. A few days in, Henri took off, He left the coast to go back to Paris to spend time with his mistress. Instead. He's like, never mind, I don't want to spend time with my wife and son. I wanted to spend all time with my mistress, with whom I don't have a son currently hopefully never will. So he left his stepson, Bertrand, and the six year old Belle Gazoo with Collette and a

couple of her fancy friends. And maybe Claire was a little nervous because Collette, you know, she still has her reputation. She's a sexty lady. She's like kind of wild, she talks about crazy stuff. Everybody's like she's licentious, and she does her own things. So maybe that was, you know, she was kind of like, what's she going to get Bertrand into. Now. Collette, you know, very uninterested in her own daughter, as we pointed out already for some reason,

decided to get into mothering Bertrand's instead. So she spent her time fattening him up with like rich food, and she taught him how to swim, She took him shopping, she talked with him, about literature and art, and she gave him books to read in louding Sherry her book about a young man's affair with a much older woman, Goodness. She even inscribed the book to my cherished Bertrand, with the Sherry part of cherished like capitalized. What so like?

He's like, She's like, Bertrand, I have to make you big and strong so that you can carry all these hints that I'm dropping on you. They are very heavy. Well, finally, one night she was done with hinting, I guess, and she told him it's time for you to become a man. She asked him which of the three women who were staying at Rosbon her or one of her two friends he preferred to initiate him into the pleasures and mysteries of sex. Wo He's like, I guess, not my step mom,

and picked one of the other two. He did, He pinted one of the friends. They went off together, but it didn't go well. I don't know what happened. He doesn't get into a lot of detail. He just says that he emerged from her room miserable and unsatisfied. But when he came out the room, what did he see? But Collette his stepmother waiting on the landing, and she decided to finish the job. Oh my goodness. All right, well,

excuse me, but speculation station here real quick. Collette told her two friends, if he picks you do a bad job, don't don't like really just like be very aggressive and nasty, and don't don't seduce him. Laugh at him. I want him to come out and and look to me for guidance. Maybe that's that feels very obvious to me. I'm laying it down here. In speculations station is the cold heart truth.

All right, you know what happens in speculations station. We Bertrand wrote later that it took quote all of her skills, but she was demanding, voracious expert and rewarding absolutely. Suspicions confirmed. She was waiting for this, I'm the one to do this. Maybe she was hoping you would choose her and like it was too weird for him to do. She's like, yeah, definitely, that's why she gave her friends the heads up. If

he picks you make it bad, just don't be sexy. Yeah, yeah, They're all like, oh, Bertrand, this is the part of sex where I M stick this feather quill straight into your ear the point the end, and it's like, I don't know how I feel about this sex. They're like, that's how it's done. None of my friends ever mentioned this. This is the part where I just flick you in the forehead ten times in a row, just whatever they

can do. Yeah, you know, yeah, that would kind of be fun to get creative about being bad at sex. She's like, Oh, my whole point is to turn him off. Uh, write to us and tell us how you would intentionally make sex bad, to try and trick someone in thinking that sex isn't fun. Yes, yes, yes, please, Well Collette, you know she knows what she's doing. She got him fully initiated, and by the end of summer he was obsessed with her. He was deeply in love, totally infatuated,

hearts all around. Oh boy. Now. Victoria Best on her blog lit Love says that it's easy to call collect a fem fatal who overpowered this young, poor boy's sensibilities, right,

I mean, that's definitely what it looks like. Gross. But Bertrand's friends often said that he liked to make it look like he was being pushed around and forced to do things when in actuality, he never did anything he didn't want to do, so that could be a thing, But that also could be his friends saying, oh, he loves doing that stuff that we always push him around and tell him to do. I know, right, how do

you know? That's kind of a weird self defensive thing to sort of say, yeah, I think it would be very strange today to be seven sleeping with a sixteen year old and people would be cool with it, like yeah, definitely not okay, definitely not good. And I just don't trust his friends here necessarily because it's like, you know, they got him to jump off a bridge and he's like, didn't want to, and they're like, oh, he did. Want to know, you don't understand. He always says please no, no, no,

but he means yes. It's basically what his friends are saying here. I mean, yeah, I could. I could kind of see it though, Because you could, you could also there are people who are like, oh, yeah, do who do that? You know, they just want to disclaim all responsibility, so they say I don't want it, but they did

want it, you know. I mean again, I'm not saying no is yes or anything like that, but you know, they might have had a point to yeah, anyway, don't if your forties seven, don't fuss senior down to yeah.

Victoria Best also says that even though at the time Willie, remember Willie collects ex husband, her first husband the worst, Willie made fun of her for gaining weight, saying that she quote had an ass like the rear of a stage coach, which doesn't tempt me to take a ride in it, which is very rude, kind of funny, but it's but she was still sexy and alluring, even or maybe especially too much younger men. I will throw out that,

you know, when you're researching. When I was researching this part of the story, it gets a little gross because not just because of the age difference, because at this time people are like, but she's so old and dried up and fat, you know, and like, how could this young man be so attracted to her? And you know, a lot of people like, but she wasn't that old, she's forty seven, like she's in her fifties or senior citizen.

She was still a very alerting, voluptuous, sexy woman. She had very sensual presence about her because she enjoyed sex and everything about sex. She already had this reputation of being this sexy lady, bi sexual lady. I also will say, they keep talking about her being fat, but like she weighed up two hundred and eighty pounds, so it's like, yeah, it's it's like a little weird to talk about her

like she's, you know, a six pound woman or something. Right, Right, she wasn't really so overweight that it was really worth a comment, right, you know, well, you know, hops amongst us wait worthy of a comment, you know, very true, extremely true. And Colet herself fell into this trap. She she had a very very narrow definition of beauty, so she's she herself was like, I'm old and dried up and fat, and everyone else around her was kind of

saying that too. So it's a little gross to go through this part because you're especially as a woman, you're going, wow, you know, you get a little bit, get past childbearing age, and suddenly you're dried up, old, prune right, not worthy of any attention. So you know, just just throwing that out there to say, plenty of people see why Bertrand was interested. He was like, this is a hot, older lady who was going to teach me all the tricks.

But you know, even though he's very attracted to her, her motives are a little less easy to see here. Like the autumn of the year that she seduced Bertrand, she wrote Henri a letter saying, quote, if only you knew how much I love you and how much I've suffered from the fear of losing you this year. You know my desire I have only one. It has your face and your form and the term of my life. It's just she's writing that at p S. I'm sleeping with your son. But don't worry about that. I only

have eyes for you. I just have I have other things for your son. Your son's the closest I could get to you right now. Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. But Unri still stayed away, Like these letters weren't bringing him home. So maybe you know, like we said, maybe she needed this ego boost of a younger lover. Maybe it was just like a way to stick it to Unre by sleeping with his hunter. Maybe like you said, it's the closest she could get to him was his son.

Maybe she just needed somebody to hold. You know, I've just been lonely and feeling old and undesirable when here comes someone who will make her feel good about herself. So that could be it. And how much of that too, if you're feeling old, if you're someone who's you know, her existence is kind of defined by desirability and sexuality and stuff, and it sort of makes you feel younger.

Like I think oftentimes when older people are attracted too much younger people, they really just want to feel like they're still that age themselves. Sure, absolutely that that makes sense. You know, if I date a twenty year old, then aren't I kind of still twenty? You know? Well yeah, well sure in a way, right, Like you would have acquaintances and friends who are younger. Your circle would get a lot younger. So then you're you know, like I could see it being kind of a feeling of like

I'm giving myself a second use. And then they go up a staircase and you're like, hey, I'll be right there. You're like crack crack, crack, crack crack on your knees or just in concert. So when Claire came to get bertrand take him home at the end of the summer, she knew he had been corrupted by his time with Collette. She's like, something's different about you. He's got a swagger now, but he did not have before. She may be even

guess that they were having an affair. She didn't know exact was going on, but she knew that Coletts maybe a bad influence on my son. So for the next ten months, Claire would urge Honri to get Bertrand work that would take him just as far away as possible from Colette. And by Andre was elected to the Senate, so he had plenty of opportunities for Bertrand's like, he would find him internships and stuff. But the next summer, Bertrand would go back to rosven and spend his time

with Colette, and they would resume their affair. The Guardian, and an article titled Femiciele says quote she was acting on a principle she would enunciate to a friend, content yourself, I urge you with a passing temptation, and satisfy it. What more can one be sure of than that which one holds in one's arms at the moment one holds it in one's arms, Which we had talked already about. Colette's kind of like philosophy of life, which is grab as much experience as you can, and all you get

is this one life kind of thing. But also like put yourself in the world after a world war which had never happened before. All the rules changed, the borders changed, everything is different. It must have felt very much like the only thing I can believe in and and have faith in is what's exactly happening right now, And the next moment is not promised to me, and I have no idea what it's going to look like right Everything

could be different tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So I think that's sort of almost a phil like a a principle. A lot of people were feeling at this time, not just Collette, but a lot of people were like, what the funk? I have no idea what's happening anymore? Just let me grab a tiny bit of pleasure while I can. Also, can we talk about the use of the pronoun one

in some of these old quotes very involved. One is never sure what one's one is going to think about one's other one, and one must be one sort of oneself to wonder what one one what? Which I mean? Today, I was trying to like modernize it and I guess I think you would just say, you, what more can you be sure of than that which you hold in your arms at this moment you hold it in your arms, which obviously makes more sense to me. But I guess if you're Collette, that would sound like, well, I'm not

talking to you general, but like it does. You go back and you're like, some of these sentences are so involved and they're incredibly difficult. So I get through because it's almost like newspaper talk where you're trying to be like a bullet flew out of a gun held by a guy might have been in the army, Like you're trying so hard not to libel somebody that like you. Now you're not making any sense. Thanks for the ap English language homework. Let me diagram this sentence real quick.

Get back to you. I gotta pull my shrunken white for this. So after all this, Bertrand started to seek Collect more openly, going out with her any time he was in Paris and even taking a two week trip to Algeria with her. Their relationship was still a secret, and Collect tried harder than ever to kind of stop her own signs of aging. She got both a facelift and a perm when they were both brand new procedures

which some bravery involved. There. I think, to get a facelift when no one like bravery or desperation or desperation or keen marketing and and and gullibility. I just like how fashion worked. You know, if something new, some new fad came out, it was really important to be one of the first to have it, to try it or do it. So that might have been enough. I'll also say, um, a lot of people talk about Sherry a lot because

some people think that it's about Bertrand. Um. But of course she had already started writing it before she ever met Bertrand, so it's not really about him. But Leiah Leah the Cortisan and the story. She's like older and she's very um. She's able to take it like she's kind of like, I I understand that I'm older. It's fine,

I can face my aging. There's even a whole passage about her looking in the mirror and seeing her wrinkles and and and sagging and whatever else she doesn't like about herself, and she's like, but it's okay, I'm still me and it's all right. And they're like it's funny that Kolek could write that and not herself do it, Like like she's writing what she wishes she could feel feel exactly, and how she wishes she could handle the

situation well. And I'll say, it always seems to me reading this story, like, no, it wasn't about Bertrand because she hadn't met him yet when she wrote the story. But it was a fantasy that she wanted to live. She wanted to be Leah and be comfortable with herself aging, and she wanted to meet a young man who would fall in love with her. So when she met Bertrand, it was more about him fulfilling this fantasy, you know. So it almost seems like she was kind of looking

for the opportunity. And yeah, maybe so he even said that Bertrand said she wanted to live what she had written. Now, the only thing that I take exception too is that she had already lived it with a goose That's who she was writing story about, so she had I don't know that she maybe she just wanted to do it again, that's fine, but but yeah, I think mainly the main thing is Collette had a really hard time not feeling desirable as a woman in sexy and as she got

older that got more and more difficult for her. She actually also had to undergo a bunch of dental surgery, and she complained, quote, why can't one simply have all ones teeth pulled and replaced them with green jade? Which that's quite a grill. I just, first of all, I just feel that because I need a lot of dental work, and I'm like, yeah, fucking just take them, gave them out and give me something else. They're just full of holes, Just take them away. Um. But green jade is such

a strange choice because green is like the color of rot. Oh. Well yeah, but teeth it's more like black, right, I guess. Although, remember when we did the episode about Murasaki Shikibu, yeah, and the Tale of Genshi, we talked about how their beauty standards at that time were to charcoal in your teeth and make them look black. So maybe green jade was like a real beautiful color at that time or something,

and it was like, just give me that grill. She just wanted to flash that she have a full gold and diamond girl if she was alive time. But in unre revealed that he had secured Bertrand a job in Prague. Collett didn't want him to move so far away from her, and in the argument that ensued, the truth about their relationship came out, and one source it says that Collette begged on her knees for Henri to stay with her.

But as Victoria Best writes, quote, despite being in the middle of a heavy affair with a woman to whom he had already promised marriage, unreacted like the injured party and wanted to divorce. Classic. So he's off sleeping with somebody else and had said, Hey, I'll marry you. And then he's like, what, you're sleeping with my son? That breaks my heart. Now I think I might leave you,

Like come on, all right, come on now. I have questions about that because, um, maybe because she did have other affairs, so like did he not know about those affairs or was he like, my son's just going too far, which I could kind of relate to that, Like he's like, I didn't care about the Nunzio, I didn't give a funk about that actress, but my son is off limits. Girl, Yeah, you are too old to be working with him. Also, like it's weird to be sleeping with the same person

as my son. This is He's like, I ain't, I ain't Indiana Jones, Oh no, I don't want to be sleeping with the same guy as my kid, but the same girl as my kid. Come on that she talks in her sleep. I'd also love to know this argument and how who how it came out that they were sleeping together. What would be the point of saying that? Were exhausted and she was like, well, keeping me company. She must have got real mad and wanted to say

something hurt it hurtful. Well he's better in bed than you or something like that, and he was like, excuse me, how would you know? And she's like, guess what turns out? But even after helping cause a rift between his father and his stepmother, which did make him uncomfortable, Bertrand decided to move in with Colette, so he was doubling down on this relationship and seeing them together was, according to the Guardian article, quote the sport of Paris, which nobody liked. Um,

they were gossiped about, they were snickered at. Guardian says, quote only occasionally to Colette's letters betray the effort. It took in the months after her separation from Juvenile to conceal her heartbreak and humiliation. Remember, we learned she likes to save face, so she would never let people see her sweat. But um she often was very pained by the amount of scandal that she caused. Nobody likes to be the butt of a joke, so she she was

not happy during that time. When Henri's brother Robert died suddenly at forty two, Colette was not welcome at the funeral, and that made her really mad. And then she got even more mad when she found out that Henri and Claire had invited a beautiful young girl to the funeral as a provision for Bertrand. So by now, Henri is a delegate to the newly formed League of Nations, and he's a very successful politician, and thanks to him and Claire,

Bertrand is neckt even politics as well. He's organizing a youth Congress, he's being invited to speak in the United States, and he's writing articles. His parents knew that they could use all this as leverage to get Bertrand away from Collette for good, so they introduced him to young Heiress and they set a wedding date for December. On the day of their engagement dinner, Bertrand went to see Collette and he told her he didn't want to marry this girl.

So Collett's like, well, then why go, and Bertrand wrote, quote all the same, I decided to go, and I was leaving the garden went from the window. A piece of paper drifted down to me. I love you, it said, which Colette had never told me, and I went back up to her. That's pretty dark, I mean that. Yeah, when someone's leaving in you're like, but I love you and you never said it before, which was also a manipulation.

Probably come on now, that's not cool now. Claire persisted, though, even though he broke off this one engagement, She's life, I'm not done with you. So she sent Bertrand to Can for his health quote unquote for his health. That was really just to get him away from Collette, and she had a new young woman all lined up for Bertrand to marry the time. It was Marcel Pratt, the

daughter of a distinguished dramatist. First of all, only in France it does an aristocratic family be like, I will have you marry someone of my choosing a dramatist you like here, that's like who you want to scare you kids away from? Mary? Don't marry a dramatist is theater person? No? Run run? What did marry a lawyer? Now? Claire made

all the travel arrangements. So when Bertrand showed up at his hotel and can who was in the room next door but Marcel, So she and Bertrand got engaged second times a charm Nope, not if Collette had anything over it. She also showed up at the hotel with a group of friends and she asked Bertrand to have dinner with her. Damn, which he did do. Of course he did, of course he did. Um He did not bring a date, but collected it was Maurice gu Decay, a man who was

seventeen years younger than her. Maybe she is trying to make Bertrand jealous. I can find another one to replace you anymore. And at the end of the night, Collette asked Bertrand to join her in her room at the hotel, and there she's like, are you ready to move back in with me? Let's do this for real? You know. They had this real profound conversation about their future. He said he was quote ready to spend my life with her, but by the morning they both agreed it was impossible.

In the light of day. It was like your forty seven and I'm sixteen. I guess at this point he's like twenty. But still everyone in our lives is actively trying to make sure we don't end up together. Maybe there's a good reason for that, okay. And at some point Bertrand I'm sure is thinking of like a family life for himself, and that's not He's not going to have that with Colette. He can't have children with her.

He can't, you know, like, it's just not reasonable. So come on, if we did have a kid together, he'd be my son, would be my own step brother. True does get a little involved, doesn't it. So anyway, they ended up parting ways for good at this point. The Guardian article goes on to say, quote Bertrand never received the letter Collette wrote him that Marcel Pratt intercepted and destroyed,

though not before she'd memorized the content. When she admitted the theft years later, she could still recite Collette's parting words, one would love to know them. Would Marcel destroyed history. Okay, I want to know Collette's parting words. They must have been pretty amazing for Marcel to memorize them like that. Do you think Marcell ever wrote them down somewhere? It sounds like something Carmen San Diego would steal hidden message

from Marcel that she wrote down, right. I love this idea of Marcel, like constantly with her ear, like her eye out her hotel door, like waiting for a message to Collette give, and she's like reading it, like crying, weeping about this beautiful poetic words that Colette wrote about Bertrande, and then she sets it on fire. I will never

forget those words. I must destroy what I think is so beautiful now Bertrand, as Joel van Valen writes on Whistling Shade, went on to write political philosophy, and he also interviewed Hitler in the nineteen thirties. Side note, he was criticized for being too friendly with him. I guess softball questions for Hitler aren't too fondly looked upon. And Bertrande is now most famous for his quote A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.

And Collette, as Victoria Best rights. Quote had faithfully followed in the footsteps of her heroine Leah in that she had taken a young, innocent boy and made him into a pampered, coseted man, and now he had left her from marriage and a bright career, while she was alone and alienated from Henri and his family, with only the prospect of old age ahead of her. The end of this turbulent period in her life left Collette suffering more acutely than she had ever done before. The question was

what would she do now? And that is the question for us as well, isn't it. That's right, But we're going to save that for part four of our Collette series, I think, the final part and final part of our Collette until new information comes to light, until we finally find that letter from marself. She's got a hidden somewhere We're gonna have to scour France. I mean, seriously, though, you can't a letter to your boyfriend from his old, much older lover and stepmother that you memorized and kept

memorized for years. It must have been such an amazing piece of writing, and I am furious with her for getting rid of it. It's out there somewhere we're going to pull a full like uncharted for this letter. On the back of the U. S Constitution, she wrote it, give me to write this down. What was this US? You could have that back about that. Also interesting about Bertrand being so friendly with Hitler is that his mother, Claire,

was a Jewish woman. Um, so he was part Jewish. Now, of course, early in the thirties, you know, Hitler and his Nazi party had done very little and they were just a political party at that time, so maybe he was friendly quote unquote, and they thought it was like in retrospect thought it was too friendly, but at the time it was a very normal way to talk to that guy. I don't know, but I want to know more about Maurice Gutiquet, this poor kid who just got brought in as a as a patsy on this date,

Like what's his life like? Like he's just you know, walking on the street one day and this hot older woman grabs him, was like, you're my date tonight, okay, sure, and then get totally passed off, left behind while she invites this guy up to her room. I mean, Taylor, as old as time. If you're brought in as the jealous date, right, Yeah, I guess so. Well, Tailor is old as time. You will meet Maurice again because he gets more, he gets more, don't worry big part of

part four part don't forget Maurice. He's very important. Well, I'm so excited and I can't wait for the for the final question mark part of the Collette series next Wednesday. I hope you all enjoy this episode. Yeah, I hope so. I think this is such a crazy part of her life, and Collet is just such a complicated, interesting person. There's just no one way to feel about her. So I've I really am enjoying going through her whole life and having such ups and downs. Fascinating. Well, please let us

know what you thought. You can email us ridic Romance at gmail dot com right or we're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and the show is at ridic Romance. So let us know your thoughts. Let us know how you would make sex uncomfortable for someone who's never had it before, if you want to prove to them that it's not fun. And while you're at it, drop us a review on

Apple Podcasts. Yeah, and we'll see all of the next episodes and love you bye, so long friends, it's time to go. Thanks. So listening to our show tell your friends names uncles indes to listen to a show ridiculous. Roll n