Caleb Cook | Fertilizer / 2023

flowers taking root in grass

by Douglas Messerli

 

Caleb Cook (screenwriter and director) Fertilizer / 2023 [23 minutes]

 

Karson (Mickey Frusci) begins this short film by Caleb Cook with a kiss, telling the boy that he is the first guy he ever kissed. Soon after, we see him taking pictures for a gay dating site. Things seem to be happening all too quickly in his life, particularly since only a month from the time in

which work this begins, he will apparently be moving into a college dormitory and beginning his higher education.

       That evening we observe him putting on makeup and spraying perfume on himself, presumably for a dance club date; but in his imagination the dancing figures all become skeletons, dancing, kissing, and having sex as part of the seemingly living dead. We have difficulty identifying this young knit-topped, bejeweled young man with the cute, next door neighbor-like high school senior we have previously just observed.

       In a moment of late-night fury, it appears that Karson too is having difficulty bringing the two aspects of his life into focus with each other, as if he were living two simultaneous realities that simply aren’t in sync.

        We soon see him knocking on a door, obviously a meet-up with a young man named Lucas (J. Everett Reed). But as they move forward, Karson calls out that he doesn’t “get into stranger’s cars,” Lucas yelling back, “Don’t worry, you’re driving.”

         Lucas takes him to a forest pasture, where, quite inexplicably wild flowers have grown up in the open field of grass. It explains it is one of his favorite spots. The metaphor is clearly that these flowers have grown up in a place where you never expect them, a flat pasture land where their seeds have surprising taken root.

        Clearly, they’re both uncomfortable with the meeting, particularly when Karson makes it clear he has only 29 days before leaving for college. Strangely, Lucas doesn’t invite him in after their day together. But they do get to know one another in the days following, and appear to fall in love despite themselves.

         Yet, we realize Karson still has problems regarding his old friend, the one we saw him kissing in the very first scene.

          Although the boys joke with one another, even sharing comic “secrets,” there is obviously something that Karson is not sharing. His previous lover keeps reappearing in his memories. And he admits, it’s simply not what he expected, “being out, being with boys.” Things didn’t work out the way he had hoped.

          Strangely Lucas provides some deep wisdom that such “coming of age” films rarely explore. Unlike straight boys who have all their youth and often the help of their parents to rehearse their heterosexual love, gay boys suddenly come to terms with themselves at 16 or even later, and are still expected to be as experienced in love as those young men who have been so carefully trained for it all their youth. Love is suddenly explored for many young LGBTQ figures in a manner of weeks or even days, without any of preparation for the problems they may face.  

          Lucas even admits that he never actually “came out.” “My parents just went through my phone when I was like 16 and saw my DMs with some boy.” Because he had a boyfriend, Lucas felt he could deal with his parents, take their verbal abuse and nicely survive. But his parents kicked him out of their home. “16 really fucks you up.” The shocking new information explains why he seems to be living in a motel room, and surely provides a reason why at first he didn’t invite Karson in.

          Karson now speaks of the kiss we earlier witnessed, from, we’re now told, a year earlier. “We went out a few times and he asked me to be his boyfriend. Karson explains that, living in a conservative family, he would only be able to come out if he had someone to support him through it. “It’s like the stars aligned and I my very own fairytale.”

         We see the standard “coming out” scene, the boy trying to warn his parents about what he is about to tell them, recognizing it will be hard for them to hear—the words almost always coming out of the child’s mouth with a sense simultaneous fear and relief, a kind of whispered shout: “I’m gay.” There is nearly always a momentary dead silence. But Karson goes on in full explanation of the fact that it’s something beyond his control and that he will still remain the loving son who he previously was, the “same me” necessary to assure parents that being gay not does suddenly turn someone into a bizarrely contorted version of his previous self. He’s obviously carefully thought out his “coming out” ceremony.

         When he looks up to hear their reply, he is told in the usual false “Christian” manner they still love him, although they cannot accept him—whatever that might mean, as if love could somehow exclude acceptance of whom the person fully is. Moreover, his friend immediately ghosts him, obviously having not himself come out to friends and family. Karson asks a question that is seldom asked: “Do you ever wish that you never came out?”

  

      The obviously more mature Lucas, argues that if “life sucks, it sucks slightly less by being out.” They share further disappointments and terrible high school experiences. But in doing so they become even closer, realizing that their disappointments are also those of many young gay men of their age.

         But soon it’s time for Karson to pack up for his move. The boys hug and kiss. And Karson enters the car, ready to leave. Suddenly, he runs back to Lucas demanding that they become truly lovers. After all, two hours is not that far!

        Cook’s narrative is often predictable and the film’s structure highly disorganized, the dialogue often sentimental and standardly “cute.” Yet there is a deeper wisdom in this work about the expectations young gay boys make upon themselves that is fascinating, their failures to fully comprehend love helping us to realize why young gay men, particularly in the past, often sought out serial lovers rather than monogamous relationships. Today, perhaps, in a world where young queer men and women are expected to immediately settle down like their heterosexual brethren, there is perhaps even more pressure put on young individuals who are just truly discovering sex. It might be good for them to perceive that “coming out” is a beginning, not an end. Perhaps if they simply allowed themselves to explore the new world into which they have suddenly entered, gay boys and lesbians might be better prepared to enter either serial relationships or marriage, whichever seems best for them.

 

Los Angeles, January 13, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2024).