Just a June Post

Hey, readers!

Since I’m going to be here anyway rambling about myself and my passions and projects and the audacity to think I can get away with any of it, I thought it would be fun to review some queer works that inspire me. This week, I’m going to be going over Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

Me. Picture courtesy of my wife. August 5, 2019.

This is the first book I read where being queer wasn’t just a big scary coming out event. It was a novel that built up the two separate characters as individual people with their own problems outside of their sexuality. McQuiston gave us young celebrities who were just barely managing to take on the world and then had to also deal with the fact that they had fallen in love with the wrong goddamn person.

And it doesn’t matter.

Love is love. It’s big and momentous and world shattering. The two characters have to make individual choices to come to terms with themselves and each other and then take the additional step to announce it to their families and the surrounding world. It’s on such a larger scale than most of us queer people will ever personally experience, but it’s written in such a way that every pitfall and success of their relationship is completely relatable.

It’s also the first novel that I read and saw myself in a character. Not some quirk here or there that oversized publishing houses push to try to make the female character ‘one size fit all’ for its readers. Henry deals with familial obligations and the stress of trying to fit into a perfect mold. He’s everything to be expected out of this kind of story.

Alex, though, is brave and loud and incredibly stupid. He’s me. He has a sequence in the book where he has to call an old friend and ask if some of their after dark hours were just friendly or straight up gay. It’s an incredibly small piece McQuiston snuck in, but it has stuck with me for years and made me laugh when I recently reread the novel.

My wife and I will have been friends for twelve years this August. We’ve been more or less inseparable since meeting in high school. She’s my first kiss, my first sexual experience, my first everything and I almost threw away the rest of our happy lives together because I was terrified of committing to something more than friends and labeling myself as a queer woman.

This book shines a light on those rough few months I experienced and the repercussions that seem to come from every decision. Nothing I could do or say was the right thing for a very long time. The world constantly felt like it would rupture and fall right out from under my feet.

Choosing my wife, though, even on the hard days, was the only thing I could do. It’s still the only thing I can do. I wake up every morning with that mindset. No matter what troubles are foisted from their dark realms, she and I are going to get through them together.

McQusiton has fully captured the magic that comes from loving someone fully as yourself for who they are. If you’re looking for something heartwarming this June, I cannot suggest this novel enough.