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

January 2017

January 10

Back from Llwynywermod. Pez was going to come, but then got pulled into family matters by his mother. Sad to not see him, but I understand the Death Star-like pull of family obligations. All too well.

Brief run-in with Philip when I got in. I don't think he realized I had been gone. He immediately sniped at me about my request to lighten public appearances. He didn't understand my reasons for doing it, that I wanted to focus on school. He never cared about school. He cares about appearances.

Philip acts like he is already the head of this family, which leads him to talk like he is about a thousand years old. Lectured me about how lightening my appearances would be comprising my apprenticeship. What would he know about apprenticeships. As if he and I were learning to be bricklayers. He is stiff and constipated.

January 13
Pez asked if the royal family received invitations to the Claremont inauguration. I laughed and said it would be terribly rich if the former colony invited descendants of George III to the inauguration of their new head of state. To rub our faces in it, perhaps. It would be funny. We had a good laugh. However, Philip was within earshot, and I thought I saw the color rise in his cheeks before he quickly left the room. He probably went to give Tommy or some other long-tenured press office aide a bollocking about not getting invited to everything under the sun, but especially world-historical events like the inauguration of the first woman to hold the office of the president of the United States. Not that Philip wants to attend all of those events. He just wants people to want him there.

The inauguration would have had a large party attached to it. And a large party so close to New Year's would frankly be hell. I hate large parties. Halloween. New Year's. Inaugurations.

Do I have parties or do I just have no friends? A chilling thought.

In any case, the American will be there, so it's for the best that I am not there.

January 16
Not that I would have been able to attend the American inauguration anyway. I'd forgotten until this morning that I was to meet the director of the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS. In an alternate universe in which I were known as the gay prince, that meeting would absolutely have fallen to me as well. I grinned in the mirror while doing my tie. Someone in the press office must know about me. Cheeky.

January 18
Watched the Claremont inauguration footage. They didn't show the American much, a mercy. (Then why were you watching the footage with such rapt attention, Fox? Surely it was not for the commentary about the American designers everyone was wearing. God, you fruit.)

The Claremont-Diaz children stood behind their mother, looking like the American fashion plates they are, jawlines impeccable. The American's shave looked so fresh and close I wanted to reach out and touch it even if it meant tracing my screen. But no. Even if doing so would not have left a telltale smudge of a finger on the screen, I must not. This is a foolish long-distance, one-sided, parasocial crush.

He danced with Nora Holleran, the vice president's granddaughter, at the ball. So there. Likely a formality, and he almost certainly has other people he dates. So.

Stop.

January 20
Philip sent email from posting, fuming about not being invited to the inauguration. This would be a new preoccupation of his.

Everyone in the family except Gran and Mum are cc'ed. The former was left off because obviously. The day Gran reads an email is the day there is a photo op about the importance of technology to every generation. Actually, that photo op may have happened. Shaan likely knows. Mum was no on cc because presumably even Philip knows she may not have the mental wherewithal for much.

The complaint seems to be that he wants to be more in the thick of things, though whingeing about it from a posting is an interesting way to do it. As if he could go even if he were invited. Philip wants to seem like more of a "global player." He wants Tommy, Shaan, and team to finagle more invitations to events, especially US ones. But they are not to appear to ask or beg so we don't look like beggars. And on and on and on. An internally contradictory email.

I closed the tab before I finished reading it the first time, then went back and finished reading it out of morbid curiosity. He is incomprehensible. How are we related?

January 22
Shaan seems unruffled, though who knows what's happening beneath that smooth exterior. Imagine being that handsome, collected, and—above all—on-task. I cannot.

I joked about Philip being incomprehensible and Shaan cracked a smile so surprising and winning that I briefly considered confessing my platonic-professional crush. Cannot believe he is single.

January 25
Hilary term is nonstop. I am swimming in books to read and analyze. Textual analysis galore.

I steal time for fun reading, though to everyone else my extracurricular reading might look as dense as the academic kind.

Reading a bit about Alexander Hamilton. Might as well find out about one Alexander if the other is simply a distant object. Well, both are distant objects, but at least one is safely dead, etc. instead of someone who who periodically parades around on my screen and gets slapped with labels like "charismatic" and "vibrant."

Must stop reading his coverage.