The Dream Before the Dream: Henry's Journals and Correspondence, 2016-20

September 2016. Alex Claremont-Diaz is in GQ

From: Henry

To: Percy Okonjo
Maybe I should have chosen PPE like you. The combination of philosophy, politics, and economics gives off a certain charge. That, and Shakespeare gives me no particular charge.

From: Henry
To: Percy Okonjo
It has come to my attention that I am not to tell people that Shakespeare gives me no particular charge. That's what I get for saying what's been on my mind when I see my gran. Funny that the family is telling me that now that I'm in uni. Imagine if they knew back in the Eton days. The Mountchristen-Windsors fail to pay attention until it is too late, as always.

September 20
Oddly exhausted already. It could be the looming specter of the Shakespeare papers. God help me.

It could be that my attention is elsewhere.

The palace has lightened my schedule now that I am in university, but the endless whirl of foundations and charities still bleaches the experience somewhat.

I have also been reading way too much about the Claremont-Diaz clan. The Claremont clan? Pez thinks the mother and the the daughter are fit, which gives us an opening to talk about them, but I feel like a gollum in those conversations: Tamping down my thoughts and feelings about the brother—as if that were even possible—and trying not to participate too enthusiastically in discussing the sister, because see earlier on parasocial relationships. Afterwards, I inevitably stroke the memory of the one real-life sighting of the brother in Rio like a strange and perfect pebble picked up from the banks of a creek. My precious and all that. 

If only the British public knew a gollum lived in Kensington. That would really move the needle in the public opinion polls, as Philip likes to say, playing with business jargon as if he will ever know.

From: Percy Okonjo
To: Henry
Sorry about being out of pocket so much. (Do you like how I'm talking like a City person? I love killing your spirit.)

Believe it or not, even the great Pez Okonjo gets tired. PPE ain't all that, mate. I'm escaping from Schopenhauer by reading The Schopenhauer Cure. How twisted is that?

Oh and we won't be seeing Hannah anymore. Come moon over her or our favorite politician's children? We'll pick the most out of the way tavern. We can be exhausted together.

September 29
Part of the charm of my life is I cannot go to pubs on weekends. Or even Thursdays, because this country has decided that binge drinking starts on Thursday and goes through the weekend.

Got back from Norway yesterday (indoors for meetings, saw none of the country) and met up with Pez in a dingy tavern, wearing hoodies. Movement really is different in softer clothes.

And there, of all places, I met a doctoral student named José. He is dark and Spanish and beautiful. A cliché. He also reminds me of someone else, but I pushed that out of my mind.

A graceless, deflating few moments when a new-to-me PPO made him sign an NDA. Before that, my entire body had felt more oxygenated than it had some time. We fell into bed in his attic room on the outskirts of the city. A mattress on the floor, books piled all around, a poster-sized diagram of a chemical reaction in a cell on the wall. Perfect but bittersweet and oh I still felt so dirty about the NDA, as if I were wronging him in some indescribable way.

Now what? Was the night just a one-time experience? Just two people pashing their flesh together? I thought a few small sparks flew off the flint of our bodies, but having someone new thump an NDA in front of you before even tentatively exploring your bodies must kill every possible spark. I wouldn't know. I've ever been on the receiving end.

Is this what my life will be like? Falling into the beds of various men in the dark, the legal and social strictures of my life killing any possibility of sustained connection? And stepping out, as the tabloids love to say, with a rotating cycle of women in the light, a different part of my life killing any possibility of anything beyond the most fleeting, generic of connections? And how long can I go on doing this—running this double life—before I cease to exist? Who even am I in the first place?

I wish I could talk to Dad.

September 30
Alex Claremont-Diaz remains the most incredible thing I have ever seen. I had better keep it a safe distance away from me.

And he is. It is? He is quite far away from me. All the way in America. Or more specifically, in his first year at Georgetown. Thank God. He will be too busy to come to many state events.

I have been holed up in my room with an intensity so wild you would think I've gotten news of a five-alarm fire somewhere. As far as Shaan knows, I am not feeling well and need to focus on some books and papers.

It's the September issue of American GQ. It came to my attention late in the cycle because I have tried to avoid it to avoid myself. Or to avoid drawing attention to myself and what I am. God, what a closet case. And yet, here I am, scribbling away to out-gay myself, if that is even possible.

There's Alex Claremont-Diaz, at once a shadow and the most intense possible ray of light in the blighted, narrow little life I lead. The photo concept was WASP finery with a Mexican twist. There he is in custom Ralph Lauren, pulling his standard-issue navy blue blazer open to reveal a lining in patterns found in Mexican textiles. There he is, wearing a Paul Smith shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows as if he were out in the field campaigning. My eyes catch on his forearms, the soft tension and small black hairs I want to walk my fingers through.

One photo, of him khakis and a stained sleeveless shirt, stopped me in my tracks. He is laughing, his eyes cast down in a way that suggests he is moments away from throwing his head back and laughing openly, uproariously, wholly in on the joke of wholesomely cosplaying a steel worker. Look at us alluding to the concessions we have to make to American politics. His eyelashes fan across the tops of his cheekbones, unbelievable. I put the magazine down.

I am elated. I am dismayed. I am a miserable wretch. Is this love or obsession? Or the desperation of the closet, perhaps. Why not make it all of the above. The Mountchristen-Windsors are good at combining bad feelings. No time to break the tradition now.