Red, White & Royal Blue(71)

It’s weird because I always know things about people, gut feelings that usually lead me in more or less the right direction. I do think I got a gut feeling with you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?

I wanna see you again and soon. I keep reading that one paragraph over and over again. You know which one. I want you back here with me. I want your body and I want the rest of you too. And I want to get the fuck out of this house. Watching June and Nora on TV doing appearances without me is torture.

We have this annual thing at my dad’s lake house in Texas. Whole long weekend off the grid. There’s a lake with a pier, and my dad always cooks something fucking amazing. You wanna come? I kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty sitting out there in the country. It’s the weekend after next. If Shaan can talk to Zahra or somebody about flying you into Austin, we can pick you up from there. Say yes?

Yrs,

Alex

P.S. Allen Ginsberg to Peter Orlovsky—1958:

Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.

Re: A mass of fools and knaves



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Henry <[email protected]>????????????????8/10/20 8:22 PM

to A

Alex,

If I’m north, I shudder to think where in God’s name we’re going.

I’m ruminating on identity and your question about where a person like me comes from, and as best as I can explain it, here’s a story:

Once, there was a young prince who was born in a castle. His mother was a princess scholar, and his father was the most handsome, feared knight in all the land. As a boy, people would bring him everything he could ever dream of wanting. The most beautiful silk clothes, ripe fruit from the orangery. At times, he was so happy, he felt he would never grow tired of being a prince.

He came from a long, long line of princes, but never before had there been a prince quite like him: born with his heart on the outside of his body.

When he was small, his family would smile and laugh and say he would grow out of it one day. But as he grew, it stayed where it was, red and visible and alive. He didn’t mind it very much, but every day, the family’s fear grew that the people of the kingdom would soon notice and turn their backs on the prince.

His grandmother, the queen, lived in a high tower, where she spoke only of the other princes, past and present, who were born whole.

Then, the prince’s father, the knight, was struck down in battle. The lance tore open his armor and his body and left him bleeding in the dust. And so, when the queen sent new clothes, armor for the prince to parcel his heart away safe, the prince’s mother did not stop her. For she was afraid, now: afraid of her son’s heart torn open too.

So the prince wore it, and for many years, he believed it was right.

Until he met the most devastatingly gorgeous peasant boy from a nearby village who said absolutely ghastly things to him that made him feel alive for the first time in years and who turned out to be the most mad sort of sorcerer, one who could conjure up things like gold and vodka shots and apricot tarts out of absolutely nothing, and the prince’s whole life went up in a puff of dazzling purple smoke, and the kingdom said, “I can’t believe we’re all so surprised.”

I’m in for the lake house. I must admit, I’m glad you’re getting out of the house. I worry you may burn the thing down. Does this mean I’ll be meeting your father?

I miss you.

x

Henry

P.S. This is mortifying and maudlin and, honestly, I hope you forget it as soon as you’ve read it.

P.P.S. From Henry James to Hendrik C. Andersen, 1899:

May the terrific U.S.A. be meanwhile not a brute to you. I feel in you a confidence, dear Boy–which to show is a joy to me. My hopes and desires and sympathies right heartily and most firmly, go with you. So keep up your heart, and tell me, as it shapes itself, your (inevitably, I imagine, more or less weird) American story. May, at any rate, tutta quella gente be good to you.





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“Do not,” Nora says, leaning over the passenger seat. “There is a system and you must respect the system.”

“I don’t believe in systems when I’m on vacation,” June says, her body folded halfway over Alex’s, trying to slap Nora’s hand out of the way.

“It’s math,” Nora says.

“Math has no authority here,” June tells her.

“Math is everywhere, June.”

“Get off me,” Alex says, shoving June off his shoulder.

“You’re supposed to back me up on this!” June yelps, pulling his hair and receiving a very ugly face in response.

“I’ll let you look at one boob,” Nora tells him. “The good one.”

“They’re both good,” June says, suddenly distracted.

“I’ve seen both of them. I can practically see both of them now,” Alex says, gesturing at what Nora is wearing for the day, which is a ratty pair of short overalls and the most perfunctory of bra-like things.

“Hashtag vacation nips,” she says. “Pleeeeeease.”