Did You Ever Notice?

:Ernest Hemingway (pictured with wife Pauline Pfeiffer) on Becoming a Catholic:[I] was having a hell of a tough time with Pauline. Don’t know if it was autosuggestion from Sun Also Rises or maybe my reaction from just having divorced Hadley, but I was in a hell of a jam—I couldn’t make love. Had had very good bed with Pauline all the time we were having our affair, and after Hadley had left me. But after our marriage, suddenly I could make no more love than Jake Barnes. Pauline was very patient and understanding and we tried everything but nothing worked.

I became terribly discouraged. I had been to several doctors, I even put myself in the hands of a mystic who fastened electrodes to my head and feet—hardly the seat of my trouble—and me drink a glass of calves’ liver blood every day. It was all hopeless. Then one day, Pauline said, “Listen, Ernest, why don’t you go pray?” Pauline was a very religious Catholic and I wasn’t a religious anything, but she had been so damned good I thought that it was the least I could do for her. There was a small church two blocks from us and I went there and said a short prayer. Then I went back to our room. Pauline was in bed, waiting. I undressed and got in bed and we made love as if we had invented it. We never had any trouble again. That’s when I became a catholic.

Damn. They should use that in an ad.