Red, White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston Page 0,82
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
* * *
A 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?
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
* * *
Henry 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