My End-of-Summer Romance

Without love, life is like the seasons with no summer. -- Hairspray

It was Labor Day weekend. Eager to welcome fall, I intended to let the clock run out on summer, presuming it had nothing left to yield. I didn't see this furtive, whirlwind love affair coming at me, and was utterly unprepared for it to knock me off my feet. I was gobsmacked.

After a summer-long reading lull in which I just could not find a book I loved, I became marginally aware of one that seemed a corny confection, a trifle, a featherweight fiction. With nothing to lose, I gave it a tentative go.

Surreptitiously, as embarrassed to register it on my Goodreads "currently reading" status as if I had picked up gay vampire porn, I tiptoed into the seductive, wildly popular world of author Casey McQuiston's Red, White, and Royal Blue. A beloved, steamy 2019 romance novel, it was definitely not up to my usual highfalutin standards. I had never read this genre in my life. It was not why I had majored in English. 

But this compellingly readable tale and its equally affecting but surgically altered August movie adaptation lodged themselves under my skin and stayed there in a big, all-consuming way. They made me feel, dare I say, vulnerable.

I surrendered to the breezy, escapist story of America’s first son, the charming, impulsive Alexander Claremont-Diaz, who falls hard for his British counterpart and arch-rival, the moody, cerebral, dashing royal spare, Prince Henry. Complications ensue. As they so often do in these situations.

Superficially, it was the intimations of JFK Jr. and Prince Harry before he became the royal whiner that provided a point of entry into these alternative fictional lives. Yet it was the fantasy of their sweeping, intercontinental love story that kept me compulsively turning pages. Here, for a change, in the often sad and stale same-sex literary and cinematic thicket, was a breath of fresh air.

A love story. Romance. What the hell was happening to me? Surrounded by a fortress of defenses, I am not the kind of person who reads romantic fiction. Joe tolerated my obsession but did not share it. My sister-in-law Janice, who always keeps it one hundred, reflected the position of many when she told me she was too jaded to enjoy the romance genre.  

For all that, I had withdrawal symptoms when I finished this book. I moped around, took my consternation to Facebook, and went to bed early. I didn't want to just move on to another book. I missed reading about Alex and Henry and wished, to summon the immortal words of another gay love story, I knew how to quit them. 

What the cynics don't realize is that, despite an ongoing profusion of gay characters in books and movies, we gays are still, even in 2023, effectively starved for positive media representation, normal storylines, and happy endings. Demonized by far-right politicians, exploited by Hollywood, and relegated by heteronormative culture, we have always settled for table scraps.

I can't think of another gay narrative that rewards its audience with this kind of payoff. Historically, gay love stories are closeted affairs that snuff out even the faintest hope of seeing reciprocal or satisfying relationships. They are holdovers from a time when same-sex love was considered immoral or punishable. Even today's best gay films and books end in tears and tragedy. Some are sinister. 

Our romcoms do not achieve When Harry Met Sally-level popularity. We are seldom seen in mainstream media as capable and deserving of love in smart, affirmative stories. We don't often get to melt, as Red, White and Royal Blue's fictional Prince Henry does, when our swoon-worthy boyfriends whisperingly call us "baby."

I am far from the only person who became obsessed with Red, White, and Royal Blue. The book was a 20-week New York Times bestseller while the movie, a critical success, has been number one on Prime Video for three weeks. The Times reported that on TikTok, "videos tagged #redwhiteandroyalblue have received more than 500 million views." The two heartthrobs who play Alex and Henry saw their stock soar on the Internet Movie Database. There is much talk of a sequel.

Now it is time for me to move on -- to another book, to another story, to the familiar pleasures of the fall. But my late summer dalliance, so fleeting and unexpected, made me realize that despite being personally lucky in love and the primacy of my real-life love story, I, along with everyone else who grew up feeling repressed and invisible, found a long-missing piece of myself in this intelligent gay romance with an unapologetically happy ending.