 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Scott Bain, who is going to spend the hour with us. It's our great privilege. We're here to talk about his wonderful dual biography, a union like ours. But before we begin, let me tell you a little about Scott in case you don't know. Scott Bain was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and grew up in Maine, not 10 miles from where Ethel Matheson and Russell Cheney made their home. After reading about the two men in the New York Times, Bain began researching their life together, leading him to libraries, archives and historical societies throughout New England and the Northeast. And we're going to talk a little more about that during our conversation. Bain is a proud product of the City University of New York system, obtaining a B.A., so Macomb Lauda from Hunter College, an MPA from Baruch College. And what is an MPA? Masters in Public Administration. It's a not-for-profit degree. Oh, good. And a JD from CUNY School of Law. So you're a lawyer too. Very impressive. He has worked in philanthropy for 15 years, largely focused on helping vulnerable people obtain health care, housing and employment. A union like ours is his first book. He lives in New York City with his husband, David W. Dunlap, to whom the volume is dedicated. So welcome, Scott. Thank you so much. And I'm going to start by reading a short selection from an early chapter in the book entitled Falling in Love. On the fourth day of the voyage, Matheson decided to speak more candidly about sex. Presumably, Matheson fell to spark of attraction to CUNY, and their shared skull and bones membership made it easier to reveal such confidences. Matheson brought up Hablok Ellis, who's writing on homosexuality he had read the previous spring, but then he backed away. Later, after an evening of stargazing on deck, Matheson brought CUNY into his cabin to give him a good night's snack of a pear. Then he summoned all his courage and jumped in. I know it won't make any difference to our friendship, but there's one thing I've got to tell you, he said by way of awkward preface. Referring to his days at the Hackley School, Matheson declared, I was sexually inverted. Of course, I've controlled it since. Matheson described the miraculous moment that followed. The munching of the pear died away. There was perhaps half a minute of the most heavily freighted silence I've ever felt. Then in a faraway voice, I never heard came the answer. My Godfellar, you've turned me upside down on that way too. Matheson and CUNY sat for several minutes in stunned silence. They were no longer alone. Each man had found another someone whom he viewed as an equal and a peer. Until then, both Matheson and CUNY had largely cordoned off their lives with friendships on one side and chance clandestine sexual encounters on the other side. But that night, aboard the Paris in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, a different world in which love and sex could come together suddenly blossomed. This moment of emotional communion, however, did not lead to sex. Instead, Matheson and CUNY stayed up until four o'clock in the morning, talking about their respective sexual histories and experiences as each man had done as part of his induction into skull and bones. When CUNY said good night before returning to his own cabin, he affectionately two-sold Matheson's hair and thanked him for his courage in speaking so candidly. The remainder of the voyage passed quickly as CUNY and Matheson talked and talked. On the last night, they rested on the couch in CUNY's cabin with CUNY's head in Matheson's lap. Later, they changed positions, with both men simply lying next to the other, fully dressed. Their shoulders and knees occasionally touched, words ebbed as each man savored the presence of the other. And then CUNY turned and kissed Matheson squarely on the lips, and Matheson ran his fingers through CUNY's wondrously thick hair. In a more contemporary era, this might have been prelude to sex, but not from Matheson and CUNY. As Matheson later wrote about the experience, that was all. The next morning, we shook hands and I got off the boat at Plymouth. I knew I had a new unbelievably rich friendship. He and CUNY made plans to meet in Italy over Matheson's Christmas holiday and pledged to write often. The end. What year was this meeting? This was in 1924. Wow. And you know, there's a popular, it resonates a little bit with popular culture. I don't know if you saw the film, call me by your name. I have. Teach. So I was thinking to teach the pair. I didn't like call me by your name, by the way, but so I'd like to pair much more as a feature of gay male, almost seduction scenes. So tell us, let's step back a little, tell us who are, who were Ethel Matheson and Russell CUNY. Sure. Ethel Matheson was probably one of the most famous and important literary scholars of the first half of the 20th century. He wrote an influential book, less influential now, but influential at the time and for many years entitled American Renaissance, Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. Did he, the book and also Matheson helped found the field of American studies. Russell CUNY was a well regarded and well known painter, especially in the 1920s. That was probably the height of his fame. His style varied. He started out as an impressionist and moved more towards post-impressionism. And as I argue in the book, he ended up as an astute regionalist. He was, he captured wonderful scenes of life in Maine and New Hampshire where he and Matheson made their home. CUNY was, has not had as much as far a reaching influence as Matheson's writing and books have had, but there is growing interest in his work. I understand that there is going to be a show of his work over the summer of 2024 at the Gunkwit Museum of American Art in a Gunkwit, Maine. So you too will be able to see Russell CUNY's work. Well, what's interesting, what I found interesting is that he sort of came of age during modernism but resisted the lure of modernism and chose more a more conventional path. That's interesting. And you tie it in with his conventional background or his conservative background. Yes. He was from a family of very wealthy silk manufacturers, CUNY Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company, which was based out of South Manchester, Connecticut. While the family was very progressive in many ways, as a wealthy family, there was also a certain amount of conservatism in the choices that CUNY made throughout his life, his choices of painting teachers at various, at various points in his story, when it was a choice between choosing an avant garde path and a more traditional path, he often gravitated toward the more traditional. Well, I first read, was introduced to American renaissance in the middle 70s because I went to college and studied political science and lived in New York for a couple of years, but then moved to Indiana to get an MA in English. And so I discovered the study of English literature. And this was a Purdue in Indiana. And I was introduced not only to American renaissance, which I loved, but also to the writers that he talks about Melville and Hawthorne and all the American romantics. And, you know, I was able to reflect on all of this as I was reading your book because I also came out then, 24 in Indiana while studying all these people. So it was just a whole series of revelations. And what I loved about American renaissance was its encyclopedic reach that it wasn't only dry literary criticism, I think it's brilliant. And I have been interested in Matheson to this day and gradually leaked out that he was gay, which also piqued my interest. So I think he was a wonderful scholar. And, you know, I'll stick by that, even though he was criticized in later life. Yes. And I agree with you. I you you asked a little bit about one of sort of what what helped me to write the book above and beyond what my description in the book about having come across the article in the New York Times and seeing learning that Matheson and Cheney had lived in the town that when my parents came home from the hospital and we came home to a little house in Kittery and just the whole thing of history hiding in my backyard. You know, that was all. But beyond that, I, too, like you, when I first read American renaissance, I I love that kind of broad cultural history, cultural studies, history of ideas to a certain extent. I had loved those types of things as an undergraduate. And and Matheson really did it well. I, you know, I guess that goes without saying. But I loved his reading of history, history through literature and tapping into some of the main themes of American experience and American thought. What did you study as an undergrad? Technically, my major was I was an honor student at Hunter College in the Thomas Hunter. Oh, what was the Thomas Hunter Honors Program? And that counted as my as my official major. It sort of was in some ways, it was very, very American studies like that we took interdisciplinary classes. And so that was my official major. But I also had then studied English. So English was a minor and French was a minor. And when did you come across American renaissance as an undergrad? No, no, no, really, after reading, after reading the article, the book review in the New York Times in 2003 of the Crimson Letter, which mentions American renaissance and I being a sort of nerdy type of guy then went to the library to check out, you know, what's this book? And I and I was so intrigued by the idea that the the reviewer in the Times picked up on in the Crimson Letter that describes American renaissance as a love letter to Cheney. I was like, what do you mean? How a book of criticism as a love letter, really? And yet it is, in a way, I that one of the things you're absolutely right. And I agree with you and it's I sort of read it in awe of Matheson's encyclopedic knowledge of literature. But in his own way, I felt as though he was developing a queer canon in his reading of Melville and his choice of the story Billy Baud, which has a definite homoerotic sensibility to it, that in his own way, he was starting to articulate that. And you chose a dual biography, which is very interesting choice. How did you happen to, you know, conventionally, I suppose you write a biography of one person, but you chose both of them. How did you have to decide to do that? And were there particularly challenges? Sure. Well, on the most basic level, that was the story I could write. As you pointed out in my biography, I am a program officer at a foundation. I've worked in not-for-profits in philanthropy throughout my career and I'm also a lawyer by training. I wasn't prepared to write a critical study of American Renaissance. I don't that's, you know, well, first of all, those books have already been written. And I'm not trained to do that. And frankly, probably don't have a huge amount of interest in it. You know, I or write a an art historical critique of Russell Cheney, although I might add, unlike Matheson, that remains to be done. So if there are any art historians or any art history graduate students out there looking for a project, here's a great one. But the story of their lives together and the story, the universal story of their love for one another was what really got me interested in trying to write about that and to write about both of them. And I felt I could write about that. And they and also to the extent that as I say in the book, Kittery Main was their one true home in the world together. And having grown up in that area, I understood why they felt that way. It's, well, you live in New England. It's a very beautiful part of the world. It's gorgeous and they responded to it enthusiastically. Certainly Cheney and his painting, especially. But also Matheson, his writing about walks on over Thanksgiving holidays, you know, just I knew that they got it. And when they were photographed, I found photographs of Matheson on the beach in a beach that I'd gone to as a boy. You know, all these these connections is like, OK, this place was the backdrop for them forming a life together. I think I can write about this. Well, I will add that the book is really well informed. So, you know, there were several points, for example, when you were talking about Alice James and I'm a feminist scholar and I was very interested in Jean Strauss's work. And I learned that Matheson pioneered study of her work. And then you mentioned Jean Strauss. So you're on top of it, in my view. And also, you knew about the fictionalized accounts of Matheson's life, which I want to ask you about in a minute. But I wouldn't. I think it's a strength of the book that it's not dry and scholarly and so forth. But I do want to ask you about access because as we were saying before we taped, I retired from the Academy about eight years ago and doors closed. You know, if you're affiliated with an academic institution, you have access to all the archives in the world, it seems. Did you have any particular challenges as an independent scholar doing research? Not really. The the great New York Public Library system served as my home base when I was working on this. And the there's a great program at the New York Public Library called Marley Manhattan Marley. I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's basically for graduate students and independent researchers, you know, frankly, for people like me. And it gives you access to all the collections of the New York Public Library. But also you can use certain but not all collections up at Columbia and NYU. It is a great, great. And, you know, it's it's free. It's, you know, our tax dollars hard at work. So it's it's a great it's a great benefit. And I made very good use of it. Other things such as the Beinecke Library at Yale, where all of Matheson and Cheney's correspondences held that with the Beinecke, you have to register in advance. But then you you can use it and you have to say why you want to use it. And I mean, I don't know if anyone raised an eyebrow when reviewing my application, but they but they, you know, they didn't stop me. And so I was able to go there. Same with with Harvard, have to register in advance at several of the libraries. But also there's that wonderful thing that happens that the more you know, the more you can learn that as as I was was talking to people and, you know, that just in the informal back and forth with librarians and, you know, sort of it didn't take them too long to say, oh, well, I guess this guy's pretty serious. And then what's that? Approved yourself to exactly. Exactly. And then there were a lot of smaller, as I say, as in that bio that you read, you know, smaller history societies. And those those I think the places are happy that anyone's interested in looking at their materials at all. So they're more than happy to have people come and come and check it out. Since you have a full time job, do you have a did you have a particular schedule writing the book? I was just reading about someone else who works nine to five who got up and, you know, wrote for three hours like clockwork before he went to work. Did you have anything like that? I did not. I sort of did it when I could, sort of in the best of all possible worlds. I prefer to write first thing when I get up, when my mind is fresh. And, you know, I'm I'm not sort of all the the cares and worries that usually occupy much of much of my inner inner life, having accumulated throughout the day. That's my favorite. But I couldn't always do that. And so I had to do it when I could. And it took you 18 years altogether. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Did you have a writing group? I did not. I am. I didn't. I I I when I was younger, I had participate at the my local YMCA. There was a sort of writing workshop called the the writer's voice. And I went through a number of years after I got out of college and was kind of finding my way in the world. I would was taking a number of creative writing classes. And I did that for a couple of years. But by the time I got to this project, I didn't. That said, I married to a former reporter from the New York Times. So that's a kind of writing group at our dinner table. And a lot of friends are writers of one kind or another. And so at one point, when it was when it became appropriate to do so, I shared the manuscript with them to get their feedback. So, David, how many versions did David read? How many all the drafts? He read an early draft, which is like love has no greater. And then he read and then he read through the page proofs alongside. Yeah, that's the virtue of having a fellow writer in the household. Right. And in house editor, who will be honest? Yeah, oh, yes. Honest but supportive. It's the best combination. Don't you think? Absolutely. Let's talk about literary influences. Who do you like to read? Are there any gay or lesbian historians that you follow? Or it struck me that you seem to seem to have read all of the works of all of the writers you discuss, like Henry James and some of those folks. That's very. Yes. And and that was that was one of the things that drew me to Matheson early on that with the exception of T.S. Elliott, we sort of part ways at T.S. Elliott, but other than Elliott, we liked a lot of the same writers. I think I agree with Matheson that probably one of the most beautiful American writers is Herman Melville. I mean, Billy Budd is a gorgeous story. Benito Sereno is a beautiful story and trenchant, too, and timely. So I that was one of the things that I liked. And I again, as an undergraduate, I had read a lot of Henry James. And, yeah, so we, yeah, I think that that is really, really. Captured, captured my imagination in the early days of reading American Renaissance in terms of my own influences. Hmm. Hmm. I there's there's a there's a game that I sometimes play only with myself. But I think so. Who are the writers? Like, what's the short list of writers that I feel their books have really changed me and my outlook and the way I see the world? At the top of that list, I would probably put Proust and Remembrance of Things Past in Search of Lost Time. I just I read that when I was 20. And I think a big part of it was trying to prove to myself that I could read a 3,000 page book and indeed I succeeded. But just what's that? It's commendable. Oh, thank you. So Proust is on the list and James Baldwin is on the list. Who else do I put on that? I love some of Walter Benjamin's essays. They're just they're just like, oh, my God, I never knew. He's on the list. Well, somebody on my list is Thomas Mines Magic Mountain. And that comes up in your biography is so striking. Jeannie's friend, Putnam, goes to visit. Yes. And he's staying in the sanatorium, even though he's just got asthma, but it's so faceless. Yeah, it was it was amazing. It was that was amazing. The what the piece of that that I wondered about is that that both of them were at Cragmore during World War One. And I'm just wondering to the extent to which there were any feelings of like, oh, you know, and especially with Cheney, since his brothers served in the war. If there were any, you know, misgivings that they in they weren't sort of doing their duties as men, all, you know, all that, all those feelings, all that baggage that we all have. It's a point because at the end of Magic Mountain, Hans Costorp goes to the war. That's the way it ends, remember? Yeah, yes, actually, I'm totally fiving. I don't remember. But but it's but it's interesting. I I've read a lot of those a lot of those sort of modernist classics. But the Magic Mountain was one book that I had not read. And I did not read it until as as you as we talked about it, the before we started recording, I end the book with an autobiographical chapter of how my then partner now husband are back to back cancer diagnoses. And I did not read the Magic Mountain until after I got out of the hospital in 2005. I had I was hospitalized for two months, so I had some idea about what it's like to to be in an institution for a long time. And that's when I read the Magic Mountain. Interesting. I read it when I was in my 20s and it motivated me to go to grad school. Oh, wow. Oh, how great. Oh, so so. So have you had have you read Colm Toybin's book? No, I haven't. I love Master. Yeah. You're you're in for a treat. Really, a friend of mine started it and found it daunting. But, you know, I you're right. Now I'm energized to read that, too. So who is the audience for this book, would you say? Well, I envision did primarily being general readers. Probably certainly LGBTQ readers, I thought, would be interested. But I've been pleasantly surprised that all sorts of people have liked it and straight friends. And I was a little early on, I had an agent for the manuscript and she said, well, this is kind of a boy's book. And so I was a little, a little anxious that women would be turned off that it's about, you know, two men and, you know, they're, you know, but I've been pleasantly surprised that, you know, women friends have also said that they liked it. And I'm I hope that that the universal story of falling in love and having a relationship and figuring out how to do that against all the the stresses and strains of being an adult and having responsibilities and, you know, having careers and suffering, disappointments, you know, just all, you know, suffering health travails as I as I describe at length in the book that that is universal. I agree. And it's also a really important snapshot of the time. I've done some work on Paulie Murray. I don't know if you know her work. I do not. Well, she's an African American lesbian who was involved in a long term relationship. Brilliant lawyer influenced Bader Ginsburg. But anyway, that in my name is Paulie Murray is a film that came out about her and her students said they used to visit her and they said, we knew she was involved with this woman, but nobody ever spoke of it. That reminded me of Elliot's visit to Kittery, where you say he must have known, of course he knew, but no one ever spoke of it. So that whole time, I think it's an important period for us to look at. And your book does it admirable. Oh, thank you so much. And as I also I say, perhaps in the end notes some place, but I was very fortunate that a number of Matheson students and a few of Chinese relatives were still alive when I began working on the manuscript in the early arts. And almost all of them to a T said exactly what you just said. We all knew he was gay, but we did not talk about it. So what would you like readers to take away from the book? I'm interspersing these general questions. No, no, that's fine. I. Two things come to mind. The first is that. Same sex unions have always been with us. They have always been with us that part of one of my motivations was when the Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell decision on marriage equality. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his dissent that the the majority's decision was against morality, religion and history. It's like, no, no, it's not against history. It's against a kind of history and a kind of recorded history by one set of people. But against the actual history, no, it's not. These unions have always been with us. And I'm trying to show what one such particular union looked like in the early 20th century in in the US and in the Northeast. So that's one thing. And then the second thing is just sort of going back to what I said a few moments ago about showing all the the particulars of this particular union, you know, their careers, the as the health challenges, just all the stuff, you know, family, you know, navigating families, you know, all the things that all of us still do in the year 2022. So they were doing then and still managed to be together and love one another profoundly and passionately. And sustain one another. Yes. In respect of careers. Absolutely. You mentioned, I mean, there's some really sad stuff that happened to this book. Yep. And you suggest that it's. Yeah, recall, you're saying in a couple of interviews, it's not really a downer. I hate to touch on it, but it's real and it brought. It brought me to a recognition of a lot of the struggles like with alcoholism, how difficult that can be. And you speculate about Matheson's mental health in a very interesting way. So could you talk about some of some of these really heartbreaking parts of the story? Sure. Um, well, I would say on the most basic level, they're part of life. You know, and I my own family has, you know, ahead, it's it's struggles with addiction. So I'm sensitive to these things and. And I take them seriously. I think with and and certainly with mental health sort of. I'm a great fan of getting whatever mental health support one needs, myself included. You know, just get get get help. And or ask for help. So I think that I'm sensitive to those things and take them seriously. And I hadn't really, again, there's been there's been quite a bit. There have been several books were written about Matheson, but they're scholarly books and many of them have mentioned pieces of his biography and many of them have discussed his relationship with Cheney. And there have been articles that have mentioned Cheney's drinking, but I was interested in trying to document and describe what exactly does that did that mean? I mean, I was I, too, was shocked when I learned that Cheney was at such wits end with his drinking that he very likely underwent a kind of shock therapy to try and yes. And that's another insight into that sort of benighted time when that was a routine mental health and insulin therapy. All that stuff. Yeah. And and again, I didn't know. I mean, I found hints of it in their letters in which I was able to piece together what had happened. But then through my own reading on, you know, learned about insulin shock therapy, metrizol shock therapy, learned about the various hospitals or sanatoriums that both men were in, learned about and learned there's that learned that book by Jennifer Terry about medicine and and medicine's treatment of gay people, you know, read, read those to educate myself. Did you ever see that film that early film word is out? No, I've not seen that. Oh, it's fabulous. And it includes all of that. It's really. Oh, wow. Yeah. And let's be come clean. Matheson committed suicide. Right. And you speculate that maybe he had manic depressiveness. I think that's a really useful speculation. And it leads me to the question of fictionalizing historical people, because in the Mark Merlis novel, American studies studies that I taught, not only does he include the canard that Matheson testified before the House Committee of American House Committee on American Activities, but also he says he shot himself, which is wrong. And I came away with the until I read your book. That's what I thought happened. So, you know, I appreciate. I mean, when I asked you this question at the Provincetown Book Festival, you said, sure, the more the merrier, you're very welcoming about fictionalized versions of Matheson. But so what do you think about that? I don't know what to think, because I love fiction and I agree with the more the merrier kind of thing. But on the other hand, I was misinformed. Right. I think probably both are needed. I mean, certainly that to get the record straight about what actually happened, but not to not to go beyond that. You know, as you you said a moment ago, I speculate about about manic depressive illness. There's no way to know for sure. I suppose one could try and get try and get Matheson's medical records from a clean hospital. But good luck with that one. Even if they knew about it when he was being treated. Right. Right. Exactly. That said, fiction can go places that. Not in fiction and biography cannot. And so I'm open to that. You know, I think it's it's all depends on whether or not it's any good. You can you can get away with just about anything if it's good. So I'm I'm open to that. But but I also think it's important to set the records straight. And I mean, I was very the I think the thing about Matheson testifying before the House on American Activities Committee comes from the essay that appeared in the collective portrait by Paul Sweezy, and then it's just one of these things that has been repeated over and over and over again. And, you know, that said, I think there's probably more to say about Matheson's political activism. I mean, I think I made a good start on a stabula establishing an accurate record, but extrapolating more as to the role of his political activism. And I mean, I make some basic connections about I think his political activism helped expand his view of canonical literature, which is how he got to Theodore Dreiser, which was his very last book and published posthumously. But there's I'm sure there's more to say. And I don't know. I mean, maybe that will be in nonfiction or fiction, but it will be based on a more complete record. What are your current projects? You're doing a book tour. Well, Mike, as as you as you you said at the beginning, I do work full time, so I'm plenty busy. And I have had a number of speaking engagements in connection with the book, including including his pleasures speaking with you this evening and have given talks at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the History Project. So that's all that's that's been great. And taking time to prepare for these, they don't just sort of springs forth spontaneously. Also, I've written a couple of other articles. I had an article come out in the down east in the November issue of Down East Magazine, really talking about my personal connection to Matheson and Cheney's story and this project. I had an at the very beginning of when the the book came out at the end of May, beginning of June, I had another piece that appeared on the website, The Millions, which basically asks, isn't it strange in a good way that this scholar who died in 1950 continues that people continue to find continue to have interest in him and his work? And I think probably in scholarly circles, interest and his in his work has definitely ebbed. And, you know, his work has been critiqued as being too narrowly conceived, all with all fruit, all value of criticisms. But it is interesting that he continues to exert that an interest. I mean, that it's just it's just interesting. And I'm I'm just the latest in in a fairly long line of people. The trying to think there was this writer, think his name was Truman Nelson. Truman Nelson, it's a it's appalling that I can't remember this. But anyhow, who he was working at, he was working at a G.E. plant and wrote to Matheson. And they began meeting regularly. He was he was very connected with the organized labor movement. His big theme in his writing was racial equity and racial equality. And it's just interesting that he, too, in his first book, Sin of the Prophet was dedicated to Matheson. And it's just interesting that, you know, all all sorts of people have found inspiration in Matheson's work and his life story. You know, you're right. He has an incredible hold on the popular imagination even now. And he was so prolific. That was another thing that was really astounding. Oh, my God, yes. I mean, I write reviews and it takes me a while to read the book. You know, I mean, he was writing a review every other day. It sounds like in addition to writing all these books, yeah, yeah, each of authors from Sarah Ornjewitt to Theodore Dreiser to Elliott to James. I mean, just incredible. Yeah. And he published the Jewett book when he was 27 years old. I know. I know. I love Jewett, actually. But I can. Yeah, I do. I do, too. Yeah. But and again, I as I as I speculate in the book, I think Jewett was he he has all these personal connections with Jewett, a distant relative of his mother, but also Jewett really captured the place that he and Cheney fell in love. And she was expressive of that. And she herself was in a Boston marriage with Annie Fields. So he's all of these pieces are influencing him and his choices. What's interesting about him is that, you know, from a post Stonewall point of view, you you. Well, of course, I'm I'm a queer or LGBTQ writer. And this is who I am. And this is why I'm interested. It doesn't even occur to him publicly to make that sort of proclamation. And yet he's making some of the same choices. That's really that's incredibly interesting. Well, let's talk about why it's not depressing. At the end, you know, it's very sad. Cheney dies kind of unexpectedly, although he had a terrible struggle before that. And that, Atheson, you suggest, kind of turns his attention to political matters in a more dedicated, almost desperate way. Maybe, I don't know, I'm reading in there. You guys jump 12 story building across from South Station in Boston. Right. But he's not it down. If I may quote you to yourself. Yeah, no, I've said that. I've said that a couple of times. And I say that because I find it very moving and inspiring that they were able to carve out a relationship when they had no living role models, none. They. Move toward a more contemporary definition of being gay and forging a relationship through what scraps or I shouldn't say scraps. That's too strong word, but from what they read in books. And then and then they do it. And I think of that as. As a very American. Impulse that. OK, we have no roadmap, but we're going to figure out for ourselves what what is right for us. And I think there have been multiple groups in the United States who've done that and that we all have to do it on some level. And I've just found it very moving that they were able to do that. One of one of my favorite questions that I've been asked in my talks about the book was actually actually a lawyer who was my supervisor at an internship in law school. He watched one of the one of the talks online and he sent in a question. And his question was if you could say anything sort of hadn't spent all this time researching and writing about these two men, if you could say anything to them, what would it be? And my answer was you go boys because they did it. Very true, very inspiring. Yeah, I find that I find that inspiring just just not to discount the tragedy because that is certainly part of the story, too. But at the end of the day, they did it. And you have done it with this book back to life. And that's to your credit. Also, thank you. Thank you so much. Any final words, Scott, before we depart for the evening? Oh, just to say, thank you so much. I've enjoyed our conversation. I'm so glad you reached out to me in Provincetown and gave me your card. The fortuitous way in which these things happen and it's just a pleasure to speak with you this evening. It's been my pleasure entirely. Scott Bain, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much. Good night. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.