Happy Bloomsday!!
From the web:
All about Bloomsday
Jorn Barger (updated June 2002)
"I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." --James Joyce
Every year since at least 1954, fans of author James Joyce have celebrated Bloomsday on June 16-- the date (in 1904) when his Ulysses takes place. (Even in 1924 the word was used by friends presenting Joyce a bouquet.)
In many cities, attempts are made to read the entire book out loud. In Dublin, tourists dress up and retrace the routes of Joyce's characters.
Everywhere, alcohol is consumed in quantity.
The rumor
It is often asserted that on their first date, 16 June 1904, Nora made a man of Joyce by unbuttoning his fly, etc...
This is based on this letter to Nora five years later, on 3 Dec 1909: "It was you yourself, you naughty shameless girl who first led the way. It was not I who first touched you long ago down at Ringsend. It was you who slid your hand down down inside my trousers and pulled my shirt softly aside and touched my prick with your long tickling fingers and gradually took it all, fat and stiff as it was, into your hand and frigged me slowly until I came off through your fingers, all the time bending over me and gazing at me out of your quiet saintlike eyes... Did you never never, never feel a man's or a boy's prick in your fingers until you unbuttoned me?"
It's quite impossible that he could have believed it was her first time, if it was on their first date! But this letter of 29 August 1904 makes it clear it was a very recent event at that time (ie, late August): [SL26]
"...I have noticed a certain shyness in your manner as if the recollection of that night troubled you. I however consider it a kind of sacrament and the recollection of it fills me with amazed joy. You will perhaps not understand at once why it is that I honour you so much on account of it as you do not know much of my mind..."
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