#peter pears

-Monotropic focus: basically what this means is being very honed in on one/few particular interests and viewing everything else as peripheral to that. This is basically the "everything is secretly my special interest" phenomenon or "tunnel vision", but also encompasses things like hyperfocus and issues with task switching. Anyhow, music was Ben's special interest, and it's funny to see in his letters pull the "this is actually related to this music thing I know about" just like how I would hear a friend myself do nowadays. Additionally, we know that he would struggle to talk about topics that didn't fall in his interests, and at gatherings with friends would often wander off to be alone or play cards with the kids. For the record, I think childhood/innocence was also one of his obsessions, as was tennis, driving cars, and other arts (esp. poetry). There's one particular hyperfixation of his multiple biographers point out which is when he went to go see a children's film in his 20s and he went to go see it . an unhealthy amount of times and could apparently quote any section of it on command (and more annoyingly, not on command). Regarding task switching, he was apparently extremely picky about where he wanted to work and that it be absolutely silent (ocean sounds were acceptable), and if interrupted he would get irrationally angry which is. well I think you get the point.

-Sensory sensitivity: Britten was extremely picky about the food that he ate, about the texture of his clothing, things were too loud, etc. - he would "throw a fit" (read: meltdown) if he felt comfortable with the people around him and there are many instances of him getting into arguments with people over dinner if he got overstimulated. (I can't remember the details but there was one where wine got splashed on someone, idr if it was Peter or Ben doing the splashing I will have to reread the texts LMAO) A particularly bad instance of this was when he lived in NYC with a bunch of other artists (notably: Auden and Carson McCullers) where he was overstimulated constantly for months and according to Peter, drove him up the wall. Needless to say, they left pretty quickly lol. Related but not quite the same thing, there are accounts of him "stimming" both vocally and physically, especially with things like cards. I think his skill at piano is also a great example of a repetitive behavior. I think in general, music/the arts draw a lot of autistics because it rewards this focused, repetitive behavior, and is overall seen as "talent" or "genius" instead of negative, like being obsessed with sexuality or a children's movie.

-Social issues: Aside from those mentioned earlier, Ben struggled socially with other queers in addition to heterosexual adults his age. I think he felt conflicted because although he felt solidarity with himself and other queers, he also felt like an outsider within other outsiders. He didn't like loud parties, casual sex, drugs outside occasional alcohol, and pretty much just wanted to talk about music/his other interests constantly. It's really interesting to see him be very shy/reserved in interviews (also around Auden) while everyone else close to him refer to him as energetic, silly, and very expressive. This just feels like classic masking to me. It's mentioned constantly in biographies that he had a "close, tight-knit group of friends" and I would argue this is why.

anyhow there are more examples but (head in hands) I hope that convinces you! I'm applying for doctoral programs later this year, and I would like to write my dissertation on how these autistic traits show up in his music, especially with his operatic characters. There's a super cool example at the end of Peter Grimes where Grimes is alone on the beach repeating back phrases of things said at him earlier, in a sarcastic, misunderstanding tone. This is just such classic echolalia or vocal stimming to me, and there's plenty of other examples like in Billy Budd where Billy becomes temporarily non-verbal while in a state of high emotion (he is being wrongfully accused of murder!). Outside of the characters, you could argue that making an opera a theme and variations (The Turn of the Screw) is pretty monotropic thinking.

as for asexuality -

-Ben's prudishness could have stemmed from his religious upbringing (rather, his mother, since his father was agnostic and didn't attend church), but his attitudes on sex seem to indicate a sex-repulsion/indifference rather than considering sex for pleasure "unclean" or "sinful." (iirc in his diary he describes sex as something that should be cherished/done with high emotion.) Either way, it seems to me that his spirituality was not at conflict with his sexuality, and despite being unable to fully integrate with his wider queer community, he did have queer friends and collaborators his entire life. (see: half of his librettists lol)

-However, he did have issues tolerating open displays of sexuality, like what I mentioned earlier living in NYC with a bunch of hedonistic artists (and good for them!! in 1939 no less!!!!). Another example of this would be before the war when he visited Paris and his friends took him to a strip club (he was horrified). They later took him to a gay bar, and his reaction seemed a bit more neutral?? Like he was disgusted by the naked women but neutral/curious about the men. I forget which biographer it was, but one of them also noted in regards to Ben's prudishness that he lost one of his most important friendships (with his theatre director iirc) due to it coming out that he had had an affair (the director). (Ben got extremely pissed off and fired him. oop.)

-despite all of the above, Britten was extremely interested in sexuality, his entire second opera centering around a sexual assault, a lot of his most loved poets are ones that wrote with explicit eroticism/decadence, and of course, Death in Venice is just. the whole opera is about the psychology of attraction, really. There's also the bit about one of his friends describing him as "sex-obsessed" despite (gestures) everything else you see here.

-Asexuality would also explain the chosen celibacy and intimacy issues with Peter, who I can pretty confidently say was allosexual. Given that they weren't married (legally-speaking) and that Peter had other sexual partners, Ben could have had another sexual partner if he wanted to, but chose not to. this is my reading of it, so take with a grain of salt, but I think he got into his relationship with Wulff all excited to experiment, got all confused when he wasn't feeling attraction (explains the very sudden "hey peter let's go to america" during his relationship with wulff), got super close to Peter thinking "this will be different" since he was a lot more experienced/emotionally mature, but got disappointed a second time when that part didn't change.

-Anyhow, all of this very much screams to me "the best smut you've seen in your life is written by an ace," especially once you actually look at the operas themselves. Something that's been noted by scholars is how many ace people perceive/express eroticism through "autochorissexualism," or rather, "identity-less" sexuality, where the expression of sexuality is projected outwardly on an entity that is not the self (think: one's OTP). Miles and Quint's relationship in The Turn of the Screw to me, reads as this! The obvious argument would be that Quint is the self-insert for Britten, considering the "obsessed with a young boy" thing, but really, I think Miles is equally, if not a better representation of Ben's self-insert. (could elaborate more here but that'd be. a whole thing.) But then if Miles is Ben, then who is Quint? Peter? (I mean literally yes, Peter sang Quint.) But I think an even better explanation is that Quint and Miles are both self-inserts for Ben. I think their relationship is almost like an older Ben talking to a younger version of himself. In many ways, I think autochorissexuality can be described as being emotionally masturbatory if that makes any sense?? I think all expression is inherently this (in that every character expresses some element of the author), but I think this specific manifestation of it, imbued with this sensual eroticism is very typical of ace people. His other operas also avoid blatant sexual erotic sexual depictions. Like Lucretia, which again, depicts a rape, is very clearly not meant to be arousing lol. Compare this to say, Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Salome. (Apparently Ben hated the former lmfao. one of his friends suggested that it was because Ben disliked Strauss's depiction of lesbians.)

-There's been documented evidence of some kind of connection to autism and asexuality (I think one study found autistic people to be 8x more likely to id as ace?). Obviously, this doesn't prove anything in of itself, but in conjunction with the above information, provides some clarity.

-The final important thing is that I think seeing Ben as asexual completely reframes his attraction to adolescent boys. Instead of it being a "he was controlled, holding his urges back" I think he genuinely did not want to have sexual relationships with them, but mostly because he didn't want a sexual relationship with anyone. It's possible he fell in love with them (romantically), and concluded, quite tragically, that he must want to have sex with them because he felt the same towards them as he did his beloved partner. Sexual intrusive thoughts are one of the most common distressing intrusive thought to have, and in fact, there's an entire term for intrusive pedophilic thoughts specifically. There's a lot going on here, but I think the way he was attracted to the boys was different from a pedophile (this is actually noticed in a couple of the biographies - specifically that Ben would not go out of his ways to pick queer boys who would realistically reciprocate affection, and that he was not getting close to them for sexual purposes. also it's very clear to me that he felt very guilty about it.) imo he was trying to live vicariously through the boys to give them the childhood he wished he'd had. Only he also got too emotionally dependent on them in quite an unhealthy way LMAO. so. romantic? possibly. sexual? if you count intrusive thoughts, then yes.

(head in hands)