Daniel Guyton | I'm Not Gay! / 2010

trapped in the closet with another man

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniel Guyton (screenwriter and director) I'm Not Gay! / 2010 [7 minutes]

 

A nerdy business man, Gary (Jeremy Riegel), enters an empty elevator and quickly pushes the button to close the doors. At the very last moment a hunky man, Michael (Anthony Pino), dressed in gym clothes with a gym bag on his shoulder, rushes to slide his body through the closing doors,

quickly moving toward Gary in an attempt to push the button to his floor.

      Immediately, Gay pulls back, in near terror, shouting out “I’m not gay!”

     Michael, having pushed the button for his floor pulls away and moves to the other side of the elevator as the door closes.

     Inside the elevator the conversation continues: “Not that there’s anything wrong with being gay. It’s just that, you know, I’m not.”

     “Right,” answers Michael.

     Gary continues with the old homophobic trope to salve the situation: what people what to do on their own time is their own business. “If they want to some wild crazy gay sex with another guy in their own bedroom, so be it!”

     Again Michael responds with a shrug and a “Right.”

     But apparently Gary can’t stop, insisting that he would certainly never play a game with another guy of naked twister. “Because I’m not gay.”

     Michael, finally exasperated, answers: “I know you’re not gay. We have discussed this.”

     Gary just wants to make it clear.

     Michael assures him that it’s perfectly clear.

     But Gary almost immediately turns him, still bothered: “You believe me, don’t you.”

     “I believe you.”

     But there is Gary’s look of semi-gratitude also a small visual shrug of disappointment.

     He turns to Michael: “So what’s it like being gay?”

   Michael, obviously now playing with Gary, answers almost ecstatically: “It’s the most beautiful feeling in the world.”

      “Really?” Gary eagerly responds.

      “No, not really. It’s whatever…. What’s it like being straight?”

      “It’s great. I love it!”

      “You going down?” asks Gary, seemingly not even recognizing the other possible meaning of that question.

      “I’m certainly not going up,” Michael sardonically replies.

      “I’m going down.”

      “Thanks Gary, I would never have guessed,” he motions to the button he had pushed.

     Gary now wonders where Michael is going, the latter announcing, somewhat irritated, that he’s going to work out.

      Gary wonders why he’s not going to work, and Michael explains he called in sick. Confused by the news, Gay responds, “But you’re going to work out!”

       Michael leans over, putting his finger to his lips and shushing him, “Don’t tell.”

       Gary looks over at the highly muscular man to ask, “Do you work out often?” a question which echoes with the empty come-on of many a neophyte trying to start up a conversation.

       “I think you ask me that every time you see me.”

       Suddenly Gary boldly asks what it’s like kissing men, Michael wondering why he cares, with Gary assuring him yet again that he doesn’t care and he isn’t gay.

       We’ve now seen enough surely to realize that, in fact, Gary is fascinated with and even envious of the gay life, perhaps even attracted to the possibility that he might…. But that would be as far his mind might stretch.

       Yet Gary now can’t stop, asking Michael “Do you like it up the ass?” the situation now growing out of hand, especially when he repeats it, a bit louder, presuming Michael may not have heard his question.

       Again Michael, now fully frustrated, wants to know what business it is of his?

       Gary reassures him yet again that he’s not gay, he’s just curious. “I’m just not used to being around gay people, that’s all.”

       Michael reminds that he lives in New York City and that he better get used to it.

     Gary takes it ever further by suggesting that he thought all gay men lisped, and he’s noticed that Michael doesn’t lisp. He’s also aware that Michael is a cop, hard for him to believe imagining him with “all those hardened criminals and those big metal handcuffs…,” apparently a kind of S&M fantasy for office worker.

     “I’m not a Village Person, and just because I’m gay does not mean I’m wild and crazy sex fiend, okay!”

      Gary looks even more disappointed.

      As Gary starts up another possible fantasy, Michael puts a stop to it: “Look, I’m a regular guy, okay. I don’t lisp. I don’t have wild trysts in woods with strange men. I’m not a flaming drag queen. I’m just a normal guy the same as you.”

     “You work out more than I do!” Gary comes back, admitting he doesn’t even know what he means by that statement.

     But now Michael can’t let it go, insisting he’s just a normal guy who works and goes home each night.

       Gary however notes that he does go to bed with another guy. And a moment later, he intrudes with yet another crazy fantasy: “You ever lick a man’s balls?” he asks holding out a hand as if cupping someone’s testicles.

         Suddenly Gary is all over Michael, cornering him, demanding he fuck him up this ass.

 

       As Michael pushes him away, Gary sadly comes back to his reality. “Oh, my God. I don’t know what came over me.”

         “Gary, I can’t help you with your problems.”

      In horror, Gary points to Michael: “I’m not the one with a problem, you’re the one with the problem!”

        Finally, the doors open and Michael leaves the elevator, Gary calling after him: “I’m not gay.”

     This comic skit, which might have been something performed on ‘Saturday Night Live,” nicely mocks the situation of not only many true homophobes but of many men who truly doubt their own masculinity, confusing their sense of sexual inadequacies or simple unattractiveness to women as having something to do with homosexuality.

       In this case, however, it appears that the character is so desperately closeted that he’s no longer safe even in an elevator with another man. But in Gary’s case, he may also be better that he isn’t out and searching when we realize that he would perhaps have even less chance to find someone in a gay bar, on Grindr, or even in anonymous bathroom sex. His fixation on Michael is the closest he can get to want he truly desires.

 

Los Angeles, May 17, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (May 2024).