Damon Laguna | Headlock / 2020

the fine art of forcing another person to lay on his back

by Douglas Messerli

 

Damon Laguna (screenwriter and director) Headlock / 2020 [16 minutes]

 

Diego (Alejandro Akara) is a high school wrestler, whose father just happens to be the wrestling coach. Even when Diego wins, he is criticized for having momentarily been on his back, and a dinner he is told to be careful in eating his full meal since he is not allowed to gain weight. We can’t quite tell, at first, if Diego is resentful about wrestling, his father’s absolute control over him, or both.

     We do perceive, even in these very early scenes, that he is close to his friend Travis (Eduardo Alexis Peña), his friend calling him “baby Diego” and both listening at other ends of the head phone to music on Travis’ machine.

      Everything else appears to be centered around his physical condition, as he runs early each morning, checks out his body in the mirror, and practices wrestling with the other members of the team as if it were a dance, the coach shouting out “Tempo, tempo, tempo,” instead of a struggle for bodily control of the another.

      Travis is clearly popular with all the other boys, whereas, simply because of his day and night regimen, Diego is quiet and removed. But it’s clear in the showers, that Diego is overwhelmed by the handsome body of his friend, who tries to convince him to attend a party that night.

 

      But finally, after a later phone call, Travis convinces him to join him: “Come on, I want to sit with you.”

       We don’t precisely know what those words mean until we actually see the two boys leaving the party to sit on a nearby stair case on East Los Angeles, looking toward the startling beautiful nighttime skyline. There in confides in his friend that he has a feeling and he knows the feeling is right, but he can’t positively get himself to react to that feeling. “Every time you don’t go with it you’re pretty much lying to yourself.”

       Travis argues, using a metaphor from his first night of wrestling, that the fear of the unknown just holds you back. Those simple, coded sentences, are enough to bring the two into a near kiss, just at that very moment, friends from the party interrupt.

       Suddenly Travis pulls back, demanding to know what Diego is doing and slugging him, as he shouts “Get off.” Travis, alas, is doing what any boy threatened with being outed does to deny his involvement, even attacking his best friend to protect himself.

      The results for the less self-protective Diego, however, are devastating, as he loses his next wrestling match, and discovers a stack of male physical magazines in his locker, a fellow team player responding “I figured you could use those instead of getting off on us.”

        Diego attacks the young man, an assault stopped only by the sudden appearance of teachers, in particular Diego’s father, the coach, who wants to know “What’s going on?”

        If there was ever a being trapped, metaphorically speaking, placed in a “headlock,” it is Diego, who cannot escape his father, the sport, nor the sexual situation. He is trapped so it seems.

        Diego walks away without answering.

        The father looks down to see the mags from Diego’s locker spread out on the floor.

        The boy retreats to his bedroom, now even allowing his father entry and refusing to answer his ringing cellphone.

        Suddenly, as in the most romantic of rom-coms, there’s a knock on Diego’s bedroom window. Travis lifts the window from outside and crawls in, totally wet from the rain. We have entered the fine fantasy of gay romance.

        He puts out his hands to embrace his former friend, Diego quickly battling them down. But Travis breaks down in tears and in only a few moments Diego is embracing him, having surely to realize the temporary cowardice with which his friend reacted in his fears. The two finally get their long-delayed kiss.

 

     Come morning, Diego’s father knocks before entering his son’s room to find them both in bed. Unlike some hysteric fathers, however, he simply leaves, Travis soon after, having dressed, walking past him as he escapes the house.

         Either times truly have changed or author/director Damon Laguna is perfectly willing to ask us to provide a willing suspension of disbelief as Diego tells his father that he “can’t lie anymore.” “I just wanted you to be proud of me.”

         Unlike my ex-coach father, who surely might have denounced me on the spot or even turned to pretend that I no longer existed, this coach hugs his son to him assuring him that he loves him always.

         Diego leaves his house to find Travis waiting for him as they head off to school, this time presumably to deal with their homophobic peers as a pair, one of them most popular boy in the class. What can they do but recognize that that’s how it is these days.

         The only question that remains for me is “Does Diego get quit the wrestling team?” But then, perhaps he doesn’t want to.

 

Los Angeles, December 1, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Review blog (December 2023).