Red, White & Royal Blue(70)
“Okay, thanks, Mom!” Alex half yells, nearly knocking over his chair in his rush for the door.
“Wait, honey,” she calls after him, “I had Planned Parenthood send over all these pamphlets, take one! They sent a bike messenger and everything!”
A mass of fools and knaves
* * *
A <[email protected]>????????????????8/10/20 1:04 AM
to Henry
H,
Have you ever read any of Alexander Hamilton’s letters to John Laurens?
What am I saying? Of course you haven’t. You’d probably be disinherited for revolutionary sympathies.
Well, since I got the boot from the campaign, there is literally nothing for me to do but watch cable news (diligently chipping away at my brain cells by the day), reread Harry Potter, and sort through all my old shit from college. Just looking at papers, thinking: Excellent, yes, I’m so glad I stayed up all night writing this for a 98 in the class, only to get summarily fired from the first job I ever had and exiled to my bedroom! Great job, Alex!
Is this how you feel in the palace all the time? It fucking sucks, man.
So anyway, I’m going through my college stuff, and I find this analysis I did of Hamilton’s wartime correspondence, and hear me out: I think Hamilton could have been bi. His letters to Laurens are almost as romantic as his letters to his wife. Half of them are signed “Yours” or “Affectionately yrs,” and the last one before Laurens died is signed “Yrs for ever.” I can’t figure out why nobody talks about the possibility of a Founding Father being not straight (outside of Chernow’s biography, which is great btw, see attached bibliography). I mean, I know why, but.
Anyway, I found this part of a letter he wrote to Laurens, and it made me think of you. And me, I guess:
The truth is I am an unlucky honest man, that speak my sentiments to all and with emphasis. I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you …
Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that.
History, huh? Bet we could make some.
Affectionately yrs, slowly going insane,
Alex, First Son of Founding Father Sacrilege
Re: A mass of fools and knaves
* * *
Henry <[email protected]>????????????????8/10/20 4:18 AM
to A
Alex, First Son of Masturbatory Historical Readings:
The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.
Every time you mention your slow decay inside the White House, I can’t help but feel it’s my fault, and I feel absolutely shit about it. I’m sorry. I should have known better than to turn up at a thing like that. I got carried away; I didn’t think. I know how much that job meant to you.
I just want to … you know. Extend the option. If you wanted less of me, and more of that—the work, the uncomplicated things—I would understand. Truly.
In any event … Believe it or not, I have actually done a bit of reading on Hamilton, for a number of reasons. First, he was a brilliant writer. Second, I knew you were named after him (the pair of you share an alarming number of traits, by the by: passionate determination, never knowing when to shut up, &c &c). And third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.
Are you angling for a revolutionary soldier role-play scenario? I must inform you, any trace of King George III blood I have would curdle in my very veins and render me useless to you.
Or are you suggesting you’d rather exchange passionate letters by candlelight?
Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?
I think perhaps Hamilton said it better in a letter to Eliza:
You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else—you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream—and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.
If you did decide to take the option mentioned at the start of this email, I do hope you haven’t read the rest of this rubbish.
Regards,
Haplessly Romantic Heretic Prince Henry the Utterly Daft
Re: A mass of fools and knaves
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A <[email protected]>????????????????8/10/20 5:36 AM
to Henry
H,
Please don’t be stupid. No part of any of this will ever be uncomplicated.
Anyway, you should be a writer. You are a writer.
Even after all this, I still always feel like I want to know more of you. Does that sound crazy? I just sit here and wonder, who is this person who knows stuff about Hamilton and writes like this? Where does someone like that even come from? How was I so wrong?