by Paul Rudnick
I unbuttoned Edgar’s shirt and slid my hand inside, as he moaned. His hand went to the zipper of my jeans; my hips lurched, and I made a sound that I wondered if James, Gerald and the security team had heard, but the door was solid, and if I couldn’t make noise I should just grab a parachute and once I was in the water, let the Coast Guard rescue me.
I touched Edgar’s hair, questioning if there was anything I could do to make him look less incredible. There wasn’t. He leaned in for another kiss, a major one, a lasting one, as our hands moved everywhere, and being on a plane made squirming out of our clothes even sexier. I have no idea how airplanes work or what keeps them aloft, but I quickly learned that soaring through the clouds, surrounded only by air, by nothing, by a miracle, makes being naked unbelievably exciting, and I decided that astronauts’ spacesuits are designed to be cumbersome so they won’t keep ripping them off and drifting ravenously toward each other en route to Mars.
Edgar had the sort of gangly, leanly muscled, lightly freckled body that I adored; sex with Callum had been great but ridiculous, because he was so cartoon handsome and gym-built that I felt like either his tote bag or a piece of exercise equipment. Sex with Edgar was much more intense and human and raw; he was all over me, as if sex was one of the few places where he didn’t have to behave himself, and I stopped worrying and did whatever I wanted, daring myself to treat a crown prince like a hot guy I’d picked up on a street corner.
We did everything two guys can do and then we did it again, until the stateroom was strewn with sheets and pillows and what I think was a sable coverlet. You can tell sex is good when you make an unholy mess; great sex looks like a crime scene, as if thieves have turned the place and each other upside down. Personally, I know I’ve had an amazing time when I abandon my usual instincts to straighten everything up or use a detergent pen to pretreat stubborn stains.
Finally we lay in each other’s arms, panting and exhausted, with our hands still exploring each other, until we whimpered because we’d worn each other out, and everything ached and felt wonderful and we both had the beginnings of some passionate bruises and beard rash. Edgar didn’t cultivate scruff the way Callum had, but his beard grew quickly and felt like, well, like a man’s beard against my skin, which is probably the real cause of male homosexuality.
“We have to stop,” said Edgar, licking my ear.
“Yes, Your Highness.”
There was a pause: had I gone too far and mocked Edgar or insulted him?
“I could have you beheaded.”
As we dozed, I thought about hunting down a robe, activating my phone and texting Abby, who would love to hear about Edgar’s plane. I caught myself: I had only the tiniest, earliest sense of Edgar’s life. He was an international symbol of LGBTQ pride and a figure of . . . I wasn’t sure what, exactly—limited but valuable power? Regal influence when it came to causes and whatever riding boots he chose to be photographed wearing? Or did he embody nothing besides entitlement, luck and undeniable stardom? And what did that make me? A new friend? A hanger-on? Or a glorified fan—a fan with benefits?
I was glad we were headed to England so I could experience Edgar at home and at work, whatever the work of being a crown prince might consist of. I had no concept of what I might be in for, but I wasn’t dating just some bright, great-looking, promising new guy. It was more like having incredible sex with English history, and a key player in the English economy, and a controversial chapter in any book on queer representation, where Edgar’s mainstream status would be compared with the profiles of scrappier, embattled heroes. Which brought up the most critical and thought-provoking question of all: who would play me in the movie version, and in the sex scene on the royal jet, would there be frontal male nudity, and would I have approval of a body double?
I couldn’t wrap my brain around any of this, so I shut my eyes, put my hand on Edgar’s chest and fell gratefully asleep. We were awakened by the clunk of landing gear in operation and James tapping forcefully at the door, saying, without lowering his voice, “Stop groping one another, you repellent little sex rodents. We’re in England. There are laws.”
CHAPTER 17
And you’ve really never been to London?” Edgar asked as we were being driven from the airport and I’d rolled down my window to take in everything, like a basset hound tasting the breeze with his ears flapping.
“Not since I was seven years old, with my family. My parents wanted to make sure I appreciated everything, but all I remember is a blur of statues and brown buildings, and thinking the money was fake because it wasn’t American.”
Now I was devouring one landmark after another, the war memorials and department stores and curving rows of limestone townhouses; being a child of the Jersey suburbs, I was searching for Harry Potter getting swarmed by wraithlike Dementors, Julia Roberts dropping by a postcard-quaint Notting Hill, and any of the James Bonds zipping across London Bridge in an Aston Martin. I could hear my mom recounting the history of Hugh Grant’s hair and my dad treating the entire city as an illustrated lesson plan: “Did you know that Big Ben was silenced during the Blitz so the chimes wouldn’t attract Nazi warplanes?” Abby, of course, would be clutching a guidebook annotated in glittery hot pink magic marker with locations of bakeries, theaters, museums and the homes of Kate Winslet, Adele and Robert Pattinson, along with wherever Orlando Bloom went for a daily run.
I couldn’t decide if being with Edgar made me less of a tourist, or as if I was visiting Disney World with Walt himself, or if I’d become one of those fifteenth-century sheltered French or Austrian princesses being shipped overseas to make a politically expedient marriage.
Of course, I was all of these things, but I cautioned myself sternly, Expect nothing. This is a week off, a fun vacation abroad, and that’s it. The second I rated this trip as anything beyond a fling, I’d be fooling myself and attracting the most savage emotional crash. This would be my mantra: protect yourself at all costs. Ruth Ginsburg’s voice advised me, “Be careful, bubbelah, but don’t be a jerk. Have a good time and tell the queen I say hello!”
Okay, I gave myself exactly five seconds to inwardly scream, I’M IN LONDON WITH PRINCE EDGAR AND WE JUST HAD SEX ON HIS PRIVATE JET AND NOW WE’RE HEADED TO HIS HOUSE! FUCK ME! LITERALLY!
“And here we are,” said Edgar as the uniformed sentries kept the onlookers at bay, the huge wrought iron gates swung open and the car glided smoothly across an immense courtyard, right toward:
BUCKINGHAM PALACE!!!
“Stop shouting,” said Ruth.
I had to quit delivering the breathless voice-over for a docu-series called Carter’s English Adventure, and I couldn’t continue leaning on Ruth. But calming my inner spokespeople wouldn’t be easy. My life was a mash-up of live-action fairy tale, queer rom-com and a video game encapsulating elements of both. Abby always told me to keep saying yes, and I was holding on for dear life. Edgar was helping me to stay somewhere in the vicinity of grounded, but what if he was a flickering hologram, a projection of my fantasies who’d vanish once I removed my virtual reality headset?
The car halted outside the stately front entrance as the security team drove in behind us and additional staff members retrieved my luggage, greeted Edgar in respectful, low voices and opened the massive oak doors. This was something else I wasn’t accustomed to: the sheer number of ultraefficient people who facilitated Edgar’s every move. He was like a serene A-list movie idol forever inching toward a soundstage as he was being fussed over by a small army of handlers, assistants and hair and makeup people. Edgar dealt with this constant attention in a spirit of gratitude and common sense, rather than annoyance or vanity. Being famous can be a skill and a contact sport. Edgar had a champion’s ease.
“Shall we?” said Edgar, gesturing to the palace interior, as James said, in my ear, “There are cameras everywhere. Don’t take anything.”
The entryway was grand, with a tile floor and ple
nty of gleaming, carved woodwork, but it was manageable, so I thought, Fine, it’s like a really nice old hotel in, say, Canada. I can do this. Then another set of doors was opened, leading to a majestic, towering great hall that went on forever, giving me full-on vertigo; at first I couldn’t grasp the exact size of the room or how many fireplaces and mirrors and marble columns it contained, along with potted palms, statues of Greek gods and porcelain vases over six feet tall. It made me unsteady, and Edgar obligingly touched my elbow, giving me a time-out to breathe.
How do people live like this? I know that palaces are designed to impress and intimidate, and to establish royal authority, but what was it like to be greeted by this every morning, to breeze through it, to get home at the end of a long day and drop your stuff somewhere on the premises, to grow up here? Was it normal, like anyone’s house, if anyone’s house could hold the entire state I grew up in?
“This will be your room,” said Edgar, and it took me a beat to get that he was joking, because I was so goggle-eyed and weak-kneed and gaping. Stepping into a palace is like walking on the moon or the ocean floor; it takes not just getting used to but a different center of gravity. It also smelled wonderful, a mix of old-world mustiness, time-tested polishes and waxes, abundant floral displays and what I can only call architectural magic. It hit me: this was like living inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, which was one of my fondest dreams: a cathedral with comfortable seating and fewer pointed sermons about Satan’s wrath. An associate event architect’s paradise.
“We’ll do the full tour,” said Edgar, “but first let’s get you settled. With my grandmother in residence, the team thought it best that you have your own quarters.”
“The team” included James, Marc, Alison and a roster of people with their own offices and agendas. My relationship with Edgar had been fed into some communal database, and I bet there were poll numbers, Venn diagrams and weekly projections, which I wouldn’t be granted access to; I’d guess how I was scoring from the pep talks and rueful sighs. Edgar led me past drawing rooms and parlors and arboretums as he kept up a running commentary: “It’s a lot to take in, but basically the palace is a square constructed around a courtyard, with public spaces and gardens and God only knows what. I’ve been told there are seven hundred and seventy-two rooms, and as a child I kept a notebook, because I was determined to visit every one of them, as if they were planets or mountain peaks, but I gave up after fifty-eight, when James found me sobbing in some antechamber, insisting I was in Edinborough.”
A distinction: if Edgar and I were mapping the tract home I grew up in, we’d have been done with the eight rooms in minutes and begun lazing in the carport or finished basement, watching cheesy horror movies, scarfing barely thawed frozen snacks and masturbating, which are New Jersey’s officially recognized state hobbies.
I also suspected that, if my mother and I were left alone in the palace, we could scope out, critique and diagram the whole layout over, say, a long weekend, rearranging the furniture for conversational flow. We have a gift for speed-browsing and have decimated five malls in a single afternoon.
“Here we are,” said Edgar, after we’d trekked down a long, wallpapered hallway with brass sconces and multiple oak doors; sections of the palace resembled sets for murder mysteries, or an interactive version of Clue, which had originated in England as Cluedo (something my dad had told me while beating me at Scrabble).
As we entered a bedroom suite, James was unpacking the last of my sad luggage and placing my clothing in drawers and an armoire after airing my sweaters and touching up my shirts with an iron.
“James,” I told him, “thank you so much, but you don’t have to do that.”
“I’m afraid I must, if I hope to get any sleep. Cheap, wrinkled clothing from chain stores can haunt me.”
“James is a perfect storm of anal compulsive behavior,” Edgar explained. “He’s what happens when you cross a Roomba with a Royal Marine. He’s what we call a power nanny.”
“And if I weren’t here His Highness would be having sloppy intimate relations with the sort of person who owns a raspberry cashmere hoodie from Uniqlo. Oh, I’m so sorry, that’s already happened.”
I loved becoming part of Edgar and James’s conversations; they were a slightly more queer version of Kirk and Spock, or Luke Skywalker and Yoda after a few martinis. (I could conjure James instructing Edgar to use the Force, to fold a fitted sheet).
“I hope this will be all right,” said Edgar, with genuine concern, even though the suite boasted a four-poster bed, a sitting area, a dressing room, a spa-like bathroom and enough additional furniture for a high-end antiques auction.
“I don’t know. Is there a futon?”
“I warned you,” James told Edgar. “Americans aren’t comfortable without things that fold up or down.”
“I’m two doors away to the right,” said Edgar. “But for now, I think we could both use some rest. If you need anything, there are call buttons beside the bed for the household staff and James will be sleeping on a cot in the hallway.”
“My own cot?” said James. “You spoil me.”
“Come along and let’s leave Carter in peace.”
As James left, Edgar grabbed me for a quick, steamy, welcome-to-my-house kiss, which threatened to become something more until we heard James call out, from the hallway, “The antibiotics are in the wicker basket.”
“Until tomorrow,” said Edgar, smoldering as if he was a notorious highwayman leaping out my window onto his steed.
With Edgar gone I poked around, as if there’d be a mini-bar or a coffemaker, and I read a text from my mom: “I’m so jealous. Please give Edgar my best and don’t eat in bed because even in palaces they have bugs. Don’t embarrass me.”
If the Ogdens had a coat of arms it would depict a Swiffer crossed with a can of Lemon Pledge and the motto “Don’t Embarrass Me,” in both Latin and Hebrew.
I had a text from Abby as well: “If you don’t tell me everything I’ll have you edited out of my wedding video. Bali and Dane still fabulous. Kiss Edgar and act shocked if he thinks you’re gay.”
I put on a T-shirt and tapered sweatpants, the kind straight guys wear to the office. I slipped beneath the many layers of high-thread-count, down-filled bedding, not disturbing any of it, because I was a guest. I would be an illustration in a textbook on invitee correctness, which meant acting as if I wasn’t there. I reminded myself, Just breathe, you’re a human being in a nice room in a big house, as the rest of my brain screamed with laughter.
I had trouble getting to sleep, because of the time change and because I wanted to crawl down the hallway to Edgar’s bed, but I admonished myself to demonstrate effortless self-control. Of course the more I clenched my eyes shut and tried to will myself asleep, the more I wriggled around and heard my stomach growl (I’d only had three bowls of cashews on the plane, because I’m not an animal). The call buttons beckoned, but I didn’t want to wake anybody up, so I left my room in search of a kitchen or pantry or royal vending machine—Edgar had told me there was a palace ATM in the basement, shattering the myth of the royals never carrying cash. But a home ATM isn’t exactly a foosball table.
I crept along hallways and down a mammoth staircase where brass rods held the carpeting in place; I longed for an illuminated map, like the mall directories for pinpointing the Banana Republic outlet and the Sunglass Hut. It crossed my mind: did the palace have a dungeon? A pub for family members? Its own post office overseen by a kindly robot in a tweed vest, like something at the North Pole in a wholesome holiday movie?
I came upon a grand dining room and leaned against a wall, which opened: it was a concealed servants’ entrance. I found myself in a more practical, cream-colored brick hallway with industrial lighting fixtures, as if I was onboard a submarine, or in the steam tunnels beneath Grand Central Station.
I pushed open a heavy steel door to a kitchen capable of
feeding everyone in England, or five American teenagers. It was both historic and immaculate, with a walk-in freezer, white subway tile and battered metal tables for food prep. From my event work I knew this area would normally be filled with diligent personnel in white aprons, Crocs and hairnets, the backbone of any gala.
I investigated a tanklike refrigerator and helped myself to a pitcher of milk. There was an opened carton of wheat crackers in a nearby cabinet. As I sampled a cracker a voice cried, “Thief! For shame!”
I froze. A small but sturdy woman stood in the kitchen doorway, wearing a sensible cotton nightdress and well-worn slippers, with her hair wrapped in a coiffure-protecting satin turban. She was Queen Catherine, Edgar’s grandmother. I recognized her from countless photos and Edgar’s ten-pound note.
“What are you doing here, you malignant reptile?”
Oh no. Jesus. I’d crossed the Atlantic to meet this woman, and I’d planned on showcasing myself at my most polished, as humble and civilized and an irresistibly articulate and well-groomed companion for her grandson. And here I was, in sweats, bleary from the flight, with God knows what in my hair, and Queen Catherine was insulting me and shooting lasers from her eyes and about to hoist a cleaver from a rack on the wall and slice off at least one of my larcenous hands.
“I . . . I’m so sorry, I’m Carter, I’m a guest of Edgar’s . . .”
I was saying this with a partially chewed cracker in my mouth, crumbs of which were spewing out and onto the floor. Not my best look, with my words barely intelligible. I was like a greedy raccoon, caught in the glare of a homeowner’s flashlight as I rooted through the recycling bins.
“You’re him,” said the queen. “You’re that dreadful person in the photograph who humiliated my grandson, myself and the Commonwealth. And here you are, stealing foodstuffs from my larder.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll put it right back and I’ll pay for whatever I’ve eaten—”
