Ethan Wellin and Ron Hill | No Homo / 2010

open sesame

by Douglas Messerli

 

Blake Larson (screenwriter), Ethan Wellin and Ron Hill (directors) No Homo / 2010 [6 minutes] 

 

Nick (Jonas Marukas) arrives at college with his bags, knocking on the dorm room to which he’s been assigned. He’s greeted by his future roommate, Trevor (Blake Larson), who almost as soon as Nick’s gotten into the room announces, “Glad to see that you’re normal. I was all worried you’d be weird or some shit.” As Nick quietly disavows any abnormalities, we already sense that there may, in fact, be something strange about Trevor.

     Trevor asks if it’s true that Nick’s an engineering major, to which his to roommate responds, “I’m in my third year, so I guess I’m on my way.” Nick turns to find his new buddy’s face nearly up against his own, Trevor puckering up for a kiss which he attempts, so it seems, to immediately plant on Nick’s face. As Nick falls back to the couch, Trevor immediately steps back and shouts, “No homo, bro.”

      When Nick admonishes him for just trying to kiss him, Trevor answers, “Yeh, so?”

      “Well, I’m not gay,” Nick responds.”

      “Wait a minute. Have you never heard about “No homo?”

      “What the hell is that?”

      “It’s a joke dude. You do something that seems super gay to another dude. And then when they freak out you rip on them for being weird about it. No homo. Get it?”

      So begins a series of perverse actions of Trevor’s part that create an almost terrorizing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde creation, a roommate who at any time of night or day suddenly for a few seconds turns into the very thing he claims he’s not, namely being gay. It’s clear that whoever created this game, as well as those who play it, as Trevor says all of his frat boys do, is desperately searching to discover what he claims not to be. What might happen if when you throw a “no homo” kiss, the other guy were give it right back?

     Like any normative heterosexual, Nick doesn’t quite get it. How can licking another guy’s ear to watch him get freaked out be truly funny?

      But of course, in its very absurdity, it is funny to us, watching this obviously horribly closeted kid try out the territory time and again, as if he were attempting to break down his roommate so successfully that he might not really mind a kiss, a lick of the ear, a jab of the cock.

      Nick, obviously a true heterosexual, is slow to comprehend. In the next frame, Nick seated at a table is treated to a shoulder rub and told his hair smells like strawberries. In another instance, Nick is in the bathroom staring into the mirror when Trevor comes up behind him to jab him in the ribs, obviously another “no homo” moment. Asleep in his bed, he is awakened by Trevor lying beside him who asks him to quit hogging the covers—“No homo!”

      Nick shares the problem with friends, recounting the worst of the “No Homo” events when, just that morning, he suddenly turned around in the shower to discover Trevor standing behind him, completely naked, pointing out that he just dropped the soap. Nick’s friends also fail to see the humor in the situation. 

       But when Trevor shows up in the middle of the conversation and grabs Nick’s ass on his own way to the gym, even Nick’s friends have to laugh—just as we do for the absurd desperateness of the act.

      In Trevor’s world conventional behavior is turned on its head; having created a society of friends who use homophobia as a way to secretly perform gay sexually illicit acts. All he needs in his topsy-turvy reality to permit him to kiss another male without his permission, to lay down with him in bed, and even appear nude with him in shower is the secret passwords: “No homo!” It’s as if declaring oneself not to be gay has given him permission to actually be queer.

     Nick still doesn’t quite get it, determining, like a Puritan father to provide his roommate a lesson. When Trevor returns home from the gym, he finds Nick standing in his underwear (a pair of red boxer shorts with white hearts). Nick begs him to come forward and touch his penis. Trevor appears somewhat taken aback, and comes forward seemingly unwilling, reaching down in his friend’s shorts as if it were a sort of punishment. Nick repeats the open sesame and briefly lectures Trevor, “Now you see, it’s not funny when someone else says it to you, is it?”

      By this time Trevor has clearly reached Nick’s penis and is obviously not only touching it, but rubbing it. Nick begs him to stop, but having been given permission, Trevor continues despite Nick’s protests. Trevor yells out “No homo,” as Nick finally looks down—the camera discreetly not following his eye. He begins to laugh. Suddenly, he gets it, he declares, having witnessed apparently his own erection. “All this time when you were rubbing my nipples and tickling my balls and I was freaking out, that’s why it’s funny. I absolutely totally get it!”

    Trevor pulls away in the joy of finally having his friend come to see his point of view. Nick immediately moans, “I didn’t ask you to stop.” As Trevor puts his hand back into Nick’s shorts, they both agree, “No homo though.”

      Nick has suddenly realized the power of being able to use just two words to wipe away all fears of enjoying male-on-male sex, as the film simultaneously demonstrates how ridiculous the fears of straight folks actually are.

 

Los Angeles, May 16, 2024