So, to borrow a passage from Sense and Sensibility: “You want nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.” To paraphrase: I hope to see you put your green American money where your filthy mouth is soon.

Yours in sexual frustration,

Henry

* * *

Alex feels like somebody has probably warned him about private email servers before, but he’s a little fuzzy on the details. It doesn’t feel important.

At first, like most things that require time when instant gratification is possible, he doesn’t see the point of Henry’s emails.

But when Richards tells Sean Hannity that his mother hasn’t accomplished anything as president, Alex screams into his elbow and goes back to: The way you speak sometimes is like sugar spilling out of a bag with a hole in the bottom. When WASPy Hunter brings up the Harvard rowing team for the fifth time in one workday: Your arse in those trousers is a crime. When he’s tired of being touched by strangers: Come back to me when you’re done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad.

Now he gets it.

His dad wasn’t wrong about how ugly things would get with Richards leading the ticket. Utah ugly, Christian ugly, ugliness couched in dog whistles and toothy white smiles. Right-wing think pieces about entitlement thrown in his and June’s direction, reeking of: Mexicans stole the First Family jobs too.

He can’t allow the fear of losing in. He drinks coffee and brings his policy work on the campaign trail and drinks more coffee, reads emails from Henry, and drinks even more coffee.

The first DC Pride since his “bisexual awakening” happens while Alex is in Nevada, and he spends the day jealously checking Twitter—confetti raining down on the Mall, grand marshal Rafael Luna with a rainbow bandana around his head. He goes back to his hotel and talks to his minibar about it.

The biggest bright spot in all the chaos is that his lobbying with one of the campaign chairs (and his own mother) has finally paid off: They’re doing a massive rally at Minute Maid Park in Houston. Polls are shifting in directions they’ve never seen before. Politico’s top story of the week: IS 2020 THE YEAR TEXAS BECOMES A TRUE BATTLEGROUND STATE?

“Yes, I will make sure everyone knows the Houston rally was your idea,” his mother says, barely paying attention, as she goes over her speech on the plane to Texas.

“You should say ‘grit,’ not ‘fortitude’ there,” June says, reading the speech over her shoulder. “Texans like grit.”

“Can y’all both go sit somewhere else?” she says, but she adds a note.

Alex knows a lot of the campaign is skeptical, even when they’ve seen the numbers. So when they pull up to Minute Maid and the line wraps around the block twice, he feels beyond gratified. He feels smug. His mom gets up to make her speech to thousands, and Alex thinks, Hell yeah, Texas. Prove the bastards wrong.

He’s still riding the high when he swipes his badge at the door of the campaign office the following Monday. He’s been getting tired of sitting at a desk and going through focus groups again and again and again, but he’s ready to pick the fight back up.

The fact that he rounds the corner into his cubicle to find WASPy Hunter holding the Texas Binder brings him right the fuck back down.

“Oh, you left this on your desk,” WASPy Hunter says casually. “I thought maybe it was a new project they were putting us on.”

“Do I go on your side of the cubicle and turn off your Dropkick Murphys Spotify station, no matter how much I want to?” Alex demands. “No, Hunter, I don’t.”

“Well, you do kind of steal my pencils a lot—”

Alex snatches the binder away before he can finish. “It’s private.”

“What is it?” WASPy Hunter asks as Alex shoves it back into his bag. He can’t believe he left it out. “All that data, and the district lines—what are you doing with all that?”

“Nothing.”

“Is it about the Houston rally you pushed for?”

“Houston was a good idea,” he says, instantly defensive.

“Dude … you don’t honestly think Texas can go blue, do you? It’s one of the most backward states in the country.”

“You’re from Boston, Hunter. You really want to talk about all the places bigotry comes from?”

“Look, man, I’m just saying.”

“You know what?” Alex says. “You think y’all are off the hook for institutional bigotry because you come from a blue state. Not every white supremacist is a meth-head in Bumfuck, Mississippi—there are plenty of them at Duke or UPenn on Daddy’s money.”

WASPy Hunter looks startled but not convinced. “None of that changes that red states have been red forever,” he says, laughing, like it’s something to joke about, “and none of those populations seem to care enough about what’s good for them to vote.”

“Maybe those populations might be more motivated to vote if we made an actual effort to campaign to them and showed them that we care, and how our platform is designed to help them, not leave them behind,” Alex says hotly. “Imagine if nobody who claims to have your interests at heart ever came to your state and tried to talk to you, man. Or if you were a felon, or—fucking voter ID laws, people who can’t access polls, who can’t leave work to get to one?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’d be great if we could magically mobilize every eligible marginalized voter in red states, but political campaigns have a finite amount of time and resources, and we have to prioritize based on projections,” WASPy Hunter says, as if Alex, the First Son of the United States, is unfamiliar with how campaigns work. “There just aren’t the same number of bigots in blue states. If they don’t want to be left behind, maybe people in red states should do something about it.”

And Alex has, quite frankly, had it.

“Did you forget that you’re working on the campaign of someone Texas fucking created?” he says, and his voice has officially risen to the point where staffers in the neighboring cubicles are staring, but he doesn’t care. “Why don’t we talk about how there’s a chapter of the Klan in every state? You think there aren’t racists and homophobes growing up in Vermont? Man, I appreciate that you’re doing the work here, but you’re not special. You don’t get to sit up here and pretend like it’s someone else’s problem. None of us do.”

He takes his bag and his binder and storms out.

The minute he’s outside the building, he pulls out his phone on impulse, opens up Google. There are test dates this month. He knows there are.

LSAT washington dc area test center, he types.

3 Geniuses and Alex

June 23, 2020, 12:34 PM

juniper

BUG

Not my name, not anyone’s name, stop

leading member of korean pop band bts kim nam-june

BUG

I’m blocking your number

HRH Prince Dickhead

Alex, please don’t tell me Pez has indoctrinated you with K-pop.

well you let nora get you into drag race so

irl chaos demon

[latrice royale eat it.gif]

BUG

What did you want Alex????

where’s my speech for milwaukee? i know you took it

HRH Prince Dickhead

Must you have this conversation in the group chat?

BUG

Part of it needed to be rewritten!!! I put it back with edits in the outside pocket of your messenger bag

davis is gonna kill you if you keep doing this

BUG

Davis saw how well my tweaks to the talking points went over on Seth Meyers last week so he knows better

why is there a rock in here too

BUG

That is a clear quartz crystal for clarity and good vibes do not @ me. We need all the help we can get right now

stop putting SPELLS on my STUFF

irl chaos demon

BURN THE WITCH

irl chaos demon

hey what do we think of this #look for the college voter thing tomorrow

irl chaos demon

[Attached Image]

irl chaos demon

i’m going for, like, depressed lesbian poet who met a hot yoga instructor at a speakeasy who got her super into meditation and pottery, and now she’s starting a new life as a high-powered businesswoman selling her own line of hand-thrown fruit bowls

…

HRH Prince Dickhead

Bitch, you took me there.

alskdjfadslfjad

NORA YOU BROKE HIM

irl chaos demon

lmaoooooo

* * *

The invitation comes certified airmail straight from Buckingham Palace. Gilded edges, spindly calligraphy: THE CHAIRMAN AND COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ IN THE ROYAL BOX ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 2020.

Alex takes a picture and texts it to Henry.

1. tf is this? aren’t there poor people in your country?

2. i’ve already been in the royal box

Henry sends back, You are a delinquent and a plague, and then, Please come?

And here Alex is, spending his one day off from the campaign at Wimbledon, only to get his body next to Henry’s again.

“So, as I’ve warned you,” Henry says as they approach the doors to the Royal Box, “Philip will be here. And assorted other nobility with whom you may have to make conversation. People named Basil.”

“I think I’ve proven that I can handle royals.”