by Douglas Messerli
Michael Mayson (screenwriter and director) Billy
Turner’s Secret / 1990
Suddenly in the last years of the 1980s and throughout the early 1990s a substantial number of black filmmakers produced films sympathetic to the LGBTQ community. It was as if a curtain had suddenly been opened and out stepped amazing black directors such as Marlon Riggs, Cheryl Dunye, Julien Isaac, and Spike Lee, to name only a few.
Obviously, some of these figures didn’t just “step out” upon a stage waiting for their entry; many directors of color had to pound and push their way through closed doors. Nonetheless, their arrival brought fresh and new perspectives to LGBTQ cinema.
Among these new figures was Michael
Mayson, who, if he was less interested in pursuing the art house works of
others, took the now standard gay tropes of “coming out,” and explored them
through a lens that resulted in entirely new perspectives.
Billy Turner (Mark David Kennerly), the
hero of Mayson’s 1991 short Billy Turner’s Secret, is no wide-eyed
17-year old, but a mature young man who shares an apartment with his life-long
friend Rufus (played by Mayson) and Rufus’ Puerto Rican girlfriend Natasha
(Khea Williams). As the film and theme song immediately establish, Billy has a
secret that he has not shared with his roommates, he’s in a gay relationship
with Gregory (Scott Evans), whom he meets, for the most part, on evenings spent
away from the apartment. But on the one night at the center of this work,
Natasha and Rufus are planning to attend a baseball game, and Billy determines
to invite his lover over for a long-deserved evening at home.
Almost immediately, as the two life-long
friends Billy and Rufus spar in their daily basketball meetup in a public lot,
we realize why Billy has determined he’s not yet ready to tell the truth to his
friend. Rufus is a misogynistic homophobe who seems unable to comprehend that
the two forms of behavior are closely related, that his demeaning attitude
toward women is tied up with his fear of sexual contact with men. Indeed,
without perceiving it, Rufus is truly terrified of sex. “Women don’t want to be
respected,” he justifies his constant cheating on Natasha, “They wanna be
dogged” (for whites who have never ventured outside their suburban split-level
castle, “dogged” means: “To be treated badly for no reason at all by someone
who led you on to believe they actually cared about you.”). Moments later, when
an effeminate acquaintance of Billy and Rufus, Skyler (Harrison White) stops by
with a message from Natasha, Rufus asks: “You sure didn’t come by to look at
our dicks?” And a few minutes tells him to get his “sissy ass out of here.”
So obnoxious is Rufus that we can well
comprehend why Billy’s leery about telling the truth. Later, when Gregory
almost convinces his lover that’s it time to free himself from his lie, Billy
begins the attempt by explaining he has something sexual to reveal to his
friend, Rufus’ homophobia so quickly jumps in that at the moment Billy is about
to admit being gay, he backs out by saying that he’s dating a white woman.
That fact leads to a long ridiculously
humorous tirade by Rufus who warms his friend about white women who, after
being “punished” by black dick, can’t go back to their pencil-thin white boys
which results in trouble and eventual arrest. From there on Rufus (Mayson
delivering his own hilarious diatribe) goes on to express a series of
homophobic/misogynistic rants that are so sadly funny that I just couldn’t
resist sharing one:
So there we sit in jail. I’m
sorry fellas, but if I’m in jail and them
jailhouse rock butt boys
start eyeing my booty, yo, I’m just gonna
have to kill him. Fuck that
faggot shit. I will fuck a bucktoothed,
bald-headed stanky breath
hundred-year-old droopy titty bitch in
her old crusty pussy before I
get together with the bend over boys
any day.
Billy, Gregory, and the audience alike are
made speechless in consequence.
The problem is that Billy’s night with
Gregory in his own bed ends disastrously when Natasha’s sister, Evelyn (Tanya
Solar) shows up a half-day early and discovers the two in the middle of making
love. A nasty woman in-the-know, she immediately blackmails Billy and Gregory
into shopping for her immediate needs, which consist of hair spray, nail
polish, nail polish remover, plantain chips, Spanish TV Guide, beer, Oreos,
Captain Crunch, lotion, Lady Bick razor blades, and Maxi-pads. The next morning
she accompanies Billy on a clothes-shopping spree, and before the next day is
over wheedles an invite to a party Billy is attending that evening.
While Natasha, a student, is out studying
in the college library, Evelyn convinces Rufus to join her at the party. We can
see what’s coming—Mayson’s Sanford and Son-like comic devices are not
all that subtle—but we delight in the inevitable show-down nonetheless.
The party that Billy is attending is gay,
obviously, and Rufus is astounded by seeing so many “faggots” in one place.
When he spots his friend there as well, he complains to him about the company
he’s keeping. And finally, when Billy comes out with the truth, his “life-long
friend” turns on him as well with another of his crass assessments of gay
sexuality.
The evening ends with Rufus being slugged
by Billy, returning home in complete bewilderment to find Natasha and the
“sissy ass” Skyler working on a student project on the computer, and a row
which ends up with Rufus slugging Natasha and pushing her to the floor. It’s
the age-old syndrome: when a male is sexually threatened, he has to take it out
on a woman, to his way of thinking, a weaker and inferior being compared with
the glorious male identity he has concocted.
The night ends with a drunken Rufus
sleeping in the apartment building hall among all his clothes Natasha has tossed
out. Absurdly, at their regular basketball session, Rufus still expects his old
“friend” Billy to do another favor for him: make it better between him and
Natasha.
But this time he’s gone too far, and
Billy refuses, another gay man arriving to once more thrash Rufus for his
treatment of his girlfriend, Billy finally intervening just to beg the man to
spare his ex-friend any further pain.
Alas, the film ends as a rather
unbelievable parable about how to stop such idiots from abusing women and gay
men: Rufus, evidently having learned his lesson, is forced to cook for and
daily clean Billy’s room and makes it up with Natasha, boasting to his old
friend that if anyone messes with him about being gay, he’ll have his back.
Given just how ineffectual and pointless
Rufus’ claims have been throughout this comic work, I wouldn’t count on him as
a gay protector nor, for that matter, as a man who might finally properly care
for the woman he purports to love. Like the bigoted TV figure Archie Bunker,
Rufus, we have to presume, is man who comes to his senses for one day only
before he turns back into the fool he has always been.
Yet I enjoyed Mayson’s explorations of
the possibility of educating all those woman-and-gay hating males who somehow
imagine they are desirable lovers.
Connected with the “New Queer Cinema”
group, I’d like to know what happened to Mayson and where his obvious talent
took him.
Los
Angeles, March 12, 2020
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (March 2020).
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