Steven Mckenna | Lover Boy / 2018

sex without a kiss

by Douglas Messerli

 

Shane Stokes and Steven Mckenna (screenplay and story), Steven Mckenna (director) Lover Boy / 2018 [16 minutes]

 

This short Irish film from 2018 deals with issues that frankly I have never previously given much thought to. The young central figure, Mark (Jamie Lloyd Belton) is clearly out to his friends and roommates Leah (Amy Gallagher) and Barry (Ruadhán Mew), but has problems regarding his desired sexual encounters due to problems with intimacy, most particularly with kissing and close hugging.

     Like many a male prostitute, he appears ready for someone to sexually touch his cock and, perhaps, even fuck him or allow him to fuck them; but he isn’t immediately ready for the most important part of gay sexuality, the very personal expressions of love that go with facial and non-sexual body embracement. It’s difficult to define the root of the problem, if it can even be described as such; it may have to do the behavior of his father and mother, with their denial of outward expressions of sexual love; or it may simply be a manifestation of his inability to fully give himself up to a total stranger, to abandon the control of body to his sexual desires. 

    For male prostitutes, it often appears to represent a commitment to homosexuality that they cannot admit to themselves. They are paid for sex, but the intimacies of kissing, hugging, and long embracement suggests a full enjoyment and acceptance of the homosexual act to which they are not willing to admit. Sex is represented as work, not sensual enjoyment.

     But clearly it is not something that occurs only in males, but in women as well, as Mark’s friend Leah attests, hating people who invade her “territory” even in talking to her—an experience which I also find uncomfortable—or individuals who come up behind her while she’d dancing and grind themselves into her. What she likes is when two individuals catch eyes across the room, as in a romantic fable, moving closer to one another to discover themselves of one mind, of one desire, and possible lovemaking.

      We realize that the handsome young Mark suffers this problem when he meets up with a good-looking gay man, Allen (David Greene), whom he’s evidently hooked up with through Grindr or some such service. He won’t even allow the preliminaries such as getting a drink with the boy, but demands to be taken directly to the guy’s apartment for sex. But even then, he stops in an alley nearby, ready apparently to share in the sexual act. But when Allen goes to kiss him, he pulls away, instead moving Allen’s hand directly to his cock. The stranger seems kind and willing, as he explains, that if Mark wants, he’s ready to take things slower, but Mark is clearly available only for the direct lust of lips on cock or a cock entering an ass. Finally, in frustration Allen moves off, realizing that his meet-up is too limited and frightened in his ability to engage in the full sex experience.

      Mark returns home, where Leah has been painting up her own and Barry’s faces for either Halloween or some such costumed holiday. She pulls Mark away to his bedroom to work her art upon him, at the same time trying to find out what happened on his meet-up. All Mark can say is that it was “strange,” without seemingly being able to perceive any strangeness was most on his part.

      Leah does up only half of Mark’s face, allowing everyone to see him as the beautifully handsome boy that he naturally it is.

      At the bar, he dances with his friends, but in the bathroom encounters a quite handsome young man who attempts to attract him by watching him in the mirror. Mark immediately pulls away and leaves.

 

     But then, just as suddenly, he spots a dark young man, Ashley (Abe Smyth) also half-made-up just as he is. As their eyes meet, our “hero” suddenly imagines them bare chested in a deep kissing session while he apparently paints the other man’s body with a red dye.

       The two continue staring at each other as, finally, Mark makes the move, the two finally standing face to face. Seeming to break the taboo Mark leans forward and kisses him on the lips. Ashley pulls back, seemingly taken aback by the beautiful gesture. But if you think his next movement forward with his entire face is a return of the kiss, you are sadly mistaken as—after a sudden black-out and a cut in the film—we encounter Mark and Leah walking outside the next morning. Mark’s lip has a deep red cut and his nose shows another red mark where he apparently bled. He’s been either face-butted and slugged out for his gentle maneuver.

       Leah, evidently a witness to the scene, argues that she would have killed anyone who did that to her; but Mark demurs, knowing just how Ashely, obviously suffering from the fear of deep intimacy even more than he is, feels. What this may do to his ability to commit to the normal patterns of love-making in the future is not established. But surely it will be a long time before he is again ready to break through the taboos of intimacy which he and others suffer, meaning perhaps that he will continue to be an outsider in the normal patterns of gay sex.

 

Los Angeles, November 27, 2023

Reprinted from My Gay Cinema blog (November 2023).