Michael Varrati | Infested Hearts / 2022

the kingdom of infestation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Varrati (screenwriter and director) Infested Hearts / 2022 [17 minutes]

 

A great many people suffer from entomophobia, the fear of insects. Fortunately, I don’t, but my husband is absolutely terrified by most crawling figures, demanding me to immediately come into room where he spots them to kill the beasts. I do kill the cockroaches, even the sink-bound ants, but refuse to harm to crickets and spiders, who do so much good and whose lovely voices and beautifully designed webs fascinate me more than troubling me with a sense of infestation.

    In Michael Varrati’s short, black-and-white filmeeee 2022 film, however, something far more serious is happening. It begins almost unperceptively, with a powerful slap to Ethan (Ben Baur) male partner, Dean’s (William Lott) knee where he has just spotted a small beetle crawling, a moment after he has embraced him. Naturally, Dean demands an explanation, Ethan describing the huge bug he saw crawling up his leg. But there is now no sign of it.

     But even after the explanation Dean no longer desires to “cuddle,” suggesting he needs to get up early anyway.

     This is how it begins, with a small beetle in the room. But soon after, in the middle of the night, Ethan perceives a small bug crawling in and out of his nose.

     Seemingly the very next day, Ethan asks if the book Dean is reading is the same book as he was reading on the couch the other day; but Dean points out that the incident was four days ago. Somehow time as been lost.

     Dean suggests that they should have a couple of friends over for dinner. He argues that they barely go out anymore, that it would be a good think to socialize again. But Ethan seems distressed at the couple coming “here,” into his own house. Previously, in the first scenes of this film, Ethan’s voice has expressed a problem that he seems to have about issues of “safety”: “The problem with safety is that once you know it is contingent on another, you never really had it in the first place.”

     If nothing else, Ethan seems somewhat agoraphobic and perhaps anti-social which is often a related issue. His comment further suggests that he suffers from the problem “I can’t remember when we’ve had ‘others’ here,” as if having friends over hinted at something like a foreign presence.

      Even Dean sees his friend as being somewhat “weird.” And just as suddenly, Ethan spots a spider on his lover’s hand.

      As he brushes his teeth, Dean responding erotically, Ethan suddenly spots an ant on his brush. But when they book look again, there is nothing there as in all the previous times when he has spotted bugs on their bodies.

    It’s clearly affecting their sex life, their everyday relationship. In the middle of the night, Ethan observes dozens of small insects crawling across his lover’s chest. And no matter how he cleans his chest and body with soap, the insects keep appearing. We overhear a conversation from Dean to his mother trying to explain that they’ve had two exterminators come out to check their house. Something, he has to conclude, is wrong with Ethan’s mind. But what is it? What does this bug infestation actually mean.

     Ethan cannot explain the problem, even as Dean tries to relieve him by assuring him that “Nothing is here but us.” But, as Dean describes it, it is worse: Ethan will no longer look at him anymore, will no longer touch him. Even Dean has to ask, despite he being with Ethan day and night, might he be on drugs?

     Dean asks the question we all might wonder, does Ethan still love him?

     Ethan’s only answer is, “Look, I have to ask you to understand. There is something terrible going on here.”

     And Dean can only respond, “Yes.”

     Their very next conversation regards what Dean had heard about Ethan’s previous relationship, how he’d invented reasons to push him away. And now, he feels, the same pattern is repeating itself, despite Ethan’s denials.

     Ethan insists he still loves Dean, but “they’re everyone, I can’t sleep, I can’t focus.”

    Dean is insistent, “They don’t exist. And you want to know I how I know? Because if you thought this house was infected. I you thought the problem was bugs and not me, you’d leave. Seriously, if you love me, let’s just go.”

     But Ethan can’t, he insists. He cannot leave the house despite what he is experiencing within it.

     “Because where to you think the bugs that get inside come from?”

     Dean leaves.

     The entire house becomes infested, inside and out. Even the refrigerator has bugs crawling around the bowls of leftover food.”

     “He once told me that there was no one here but us. But what I didn’t understand at the time, they didn’t come from outside like I thought. They were always here. …If a certain kind of bug is always there when we die, don’t we see them waiting, biding their time inevitable moment. The answer, of course, is shockingly simple. They’re already in us, hitching a ride as we go from broken moment, to broken moment, laying our infested hearts bare.”

      From AIDS myths of self-infection, to the long history of gay tales that convince us that we as gay men are ourselves infected, to the kind of myth that Kafka tells in his horrific story of otherness in the tale of Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis, some gay men have not been unable to separate themselves from the monsters that others perceive them to be just for being themselves.

     This is the story of infested beings who cannot allow themselves to perceive that their love is not evidence of a world inherited by the kingdom of infestation.

 

Los Angeles, December 2, 2023

Reprinted from My World Cinema blog (December 2023).