“What in God’s name were you thinking?” Edgar yelled at me back in my room at the palace. I’d never seen Edgar this furious before. He’d been anxious and apprehensive and agitated, but he’d never yelled. I hate yelling. In my family we just simmer and slam doors and make extra appointments with our therapists to discuss our fear of conflict.

“Gay Spider-Man? To sick children? With the press in the room? What did you think was going to happen?”

I’d had major fights with Callum, but they’d been strategic, with me acting ultracontrolled and insisting I wasn’t hurt, I was just puzzled that any human being could be so evil, causing Callum to run through all the gestures he’d learned doing TV shows, like “I Give Up!” or “My Brain Is On Fire!” or, finally, “Sinking To My Knees In Anguish Because I Just Found My Wife’s Body On Law & Order: SVU!”

“I’m sorry,” I pleaded. “I know, I’m an insensitive, self-involved American pea brain and I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to you! But in my defense, those kids liked the story, and I was just trying to—I don’t know—some of those parents were being so snitty and homophobic, and I was thinking, ‘Well, what story do I wish I’d heard when I was a kid?’ and come on, I did make you Spider-Man’s husband, which is seriously hot!”

Edgar’s face grew contorted and bright red and as he came toward me I was positive he was going to kill me and that I wouldn’t scream or struggle, but accept my fate, and I was sure Edgar would ask James to shove my body down a laundry chute and then dump it in the Thames, and when I never came home my friends and family would be a little sad but secretly relieved that they didn’t have to deal with me.

Edgar kept getting closer and he couldn’t even form coherent sentences as he spouted, “You demented douchewipe embarrassment to the entire LGBTQ-plus Jewish communities all over the world . . .”

That was when he grabbed me and started kissing me and before I knew it we were having our most incredible sex yet, all over the bedroom and the dressing area and the bathroom, and when James tapped on the door and asked if we’d be joining Her Majesty for dinner, Edgar yelled, “After we finish fucking!”

A few minutes later, as we lay at a contorted angle to each other, naked on the bed, Edgar stared at the ceiling and said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“But do you want to know something even worse?” I asked, also studying the ceiling, as if it might collapse and solve everything, or open a portal to another dimension where I hadn’t done anything blameworthy.