Jerell Rosales | These Things Take Time / 2018

the first lesson of gay love

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jerell Rosales (screenwriter and director) These Things Take Time / 2018 [19 minutes]

 

Zander’s (Zackary Arthur) father (Timothy Ryan Cole) delivers his son up for his third-grade school year, but explains that he won’t be able to pick him up given the requirements of his job. They have a loving relationship, but clearly it’s not enough. Zander is missing out in a love he can’t quite explain to himself.

     A girl immediately sits down beside to declare that he is now her boyfriend, a confusing and possibly troubling development in Zander’s already somewhat confused life.

     In class, Zander is clearly a good student, his hand high in the air to help spell out the words in which he finds perhaps far more significance than the other students. “A-d-o-r-i-n-g,” spelled out by Kayla (Meilee Condron), sitting next to him.

     The next word is “Handsome”—which certainly characterizes Zander’s teacher, Mr. Wiley (Jason Heymann)—but is given over to another student to spell out. Meanwhile a girl in the back of the room, the duplicitous Reagan Park, claims harassment from the boy next to her.

      Finally, Zander is asked to spell “butterflies,” but is suddenly so nervous that he needs it put into a sentence, which Mr. Wiley gladly does, in the process making it perhaps even worse: “When I see someone I love, they give me butterflies in my stomach,” not the first sentence, I presume, most of us would have created to help contextualize this word.

     In the midst of his spelling, Connor (Markana Say) and Reagan (Samantha Krull) again interrupt, and Zander is forced to switch seats with Connor, putting him now into the control of the young girl who earlier declared him her new boyfriend and putting him in the far back corner of the room where his isolation from his beloved teacher is assured. It doesn’t help that Mr. Wiley thanks him for being a “team player,” and adds “my man” almost as an endearment whenever he addresses Zander.

      What Zander now learns is that those who are seemingly engaging in bad behavior get far more attention that he does as the teacher’s pet “my man,” as Connor is held back after class for further discussion of his behavior.

      The bossy Reagan now demands that Zander walk her home. In the game of “step on a crack, you’ll break their backs,” we now learn that Reagan has two dads, a subtle statement in this film that might have been unimaginable a few years earlier. The cracks she’s stepping on are all about Connor, upon whom she’s quite obviously more focused than her current “boyfriend” Zander.

 

     Once more, Zander’s father takes him to school, reporting that he cannot pick him up, suggesting even further that he doesn’t truly have time for his son. He has to work, and, a bit like Mr. Wiley, presumes on his son’s ability to understand, upon his complaisance in the way things are. The totally appealing young boy seems to make male adults presume that he will naturally understand why they need to focus more on other people and events, he presumably being the wiser and more intelligent “other.” We also now perceive that the father is a step-father, replacing the original man who disappeared from his mother’s life. Zander displays his acceptance and resentment in saying, “Goodbye Keith,” giving the man a name other than the appellation of “father” or “dad.”

      If this scene brings tears to my eyes, it is because I totally comprehend the supposedly “wiser other” that some children are selected to perform, based on their own intelligence and basically good behavior (but oh, the anger sometimes for being forced to perform that role that lies within!).

     Observing Mr. Wiley typing up the shoe of one of his peers, Zander unties his own shoelace, but when the teacher comes over to tie it up, out of nowhere Reagan appears to fix it up, not a pleasant resolution for what we now realize is a boy in love with his third-grade teacher.

      Trapped in the Siberia of the classroom, Zander insists that Reagan talk to him. She has no intention, however, of getting him in trouble, which clearly is his intention.

      As Zander makes further trouble, Reagan is made to switch seats with another boy, much to Zander’s relief. The poor heavily be-spectacled boy admits he now has difficult in even seeing the teacher.  And if Zander thought that perhaps Mr. Wiley would be providing him an after-school scolding, it is Reagan who is made to stay behind, while “my man” is sent on his (un)happy way. Waiting outside the closed room, desperate to know what’s going on inside, Zander meets up with Mr. Wiley’s girlfriend Scarlett (Annmarie Nitti), the devil incarnate in this young boy’s imagination, yet another threat to his love of the teacher.

     Once the door opens and Reagan spills out, Scarlett, after kissing her boyfriend teacher, turns to Zander to ask “Is that your girlfriend? She is so cute!” She might as well have put a knife to his neck given her heteronormative appreciations. What can a third-grader who doesn’t even quite realize what’s being spoken, let alone being able to perceive the significance of what is being expressed, to do? His face expresses it all: exasperation, confusion, resistance.

     Coincidentally, it’s Zander’s father’s birthday, and on their walk home, Reagan observes that her “boyfriend” is walking on so many cracks that he might “kill them,” without imagining that she and Scarlett along with his step-father may be those upon whom the now evil boy is focused.

     Zander’s mother Cheryl (Ashley Ledbetter) gives his boyfriend the watch, actually his grandfather’s pocket watch, she’s had remade over for him as a wrist watch. But as he puts it on, it breaks, she apologizing, but he suggesting it’s an easy fix.

     This time during their written spelling bee, Zander goes out of his way to make trouble with his new table mate Jeremy. Zander admits to cheating and is put into the corner of the room (for “a serious level II violation”). This time at the end of class it is finally Zander who is kept behind. Demanding to know “what’s going on,” Mr. Wiley finds his prize student finally speechless. He assures him that it’s only the two of us here and “I’ve always got your back,” which sound to this child like code words that might permit him to speak out about his love. Reaching deep into his pocket, he pulls out his stepfather’s watch, proclaiming to Mr. Wiley, “I love you.” There is a new look of desire, hope, and possibility in the boy’s innocent face—

as opposed to an impossible expression of the tired, slightly fearful, necessary denial in his teacher’s demeanor.

    The tragedy, and for the young boy it is precisely that, is that there can be no resolve.

   Tears are shed, parents are called, the child retreats to his bedroom in shame for even acting on his deep emotional response.

   In this instance, Keith is a good father, handing over the beloved family watch to the boy, and promising him when the time shifts ever so slowly, all will be better. He makes clear that he loves Zander. At school the next day, Reagan announces that Connor is again her boyfriend. And Keith shows up to take his son home.

    So the movie seems to suggest that all is now well. But the film’s title makes it clearer: it takes time for the young boy to realize that his infatuation for his teacher is probably his very first investigation into a world of male love which most certainly won’t be easy—at least until years later when he can determine which male might be waiting to beat him out of his affection or readily embrace him, a truly difficult difference that takes young gay boys years to comprehend. In the LBGTQ world love isn’t just an open expression; it exists only when you gradually begin to comprehend that the emotional response we call love has to be delicately and carefully tested and selected—something which Reagan, despite her two fathers, will never even have to consider as she moves on from man to man.

     Rosales’ sensitive and intelligent short work helps us to remember how difficult it is for all gay children to comprehend that their love will always be something different and apart from that of their normative heterosexual peers.

       Finally, I would add, this film reveals a truly remarkable development from his earlier 2016 title, Please Hold.

 

Los Angeles, June 16, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2024).