Ashton Pina | WC / 2104

pleasure

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ashton Pina (screenwriter and director) WC / 2014 [3 minutes]

 

After rewatching Pickett’s horrific view of male / male bathroom sex, it was almost delightful to watch Ashton Pina’s rather straight-forward and totally honest film, described mistakenly I believe as a “salacious experimental film.”

    Alternating between before and after, Pina wastes no time as the two players, Diont’a Boykin and J. Michael Kinsey hook up in a subway bathroom, making eye contact before moving to a stall in which they alternately suck and fuck one another to great pleasure, apparently, given the final subway smile on actor Diont’a Boykin’s face.

     This 3-minute film makes no excuses for its representation of a totally pleasant experience seemingly for both men, who meet up, have sex, and proceed on their individual ways.

     The film makes no pretense about greater significance, moral righteousness or, for that matter, even providing a salacious porn-like experience given its judicious and careful editing. Perhaps we should view this work almost as a documentary of what occurs thousands of times in the subway systems of many major cities throughout the world, somewhat similar to William E. Jones’ depiction of public bathroom surveillance in Tearoom (2006) and Monte Patterson’s Caught (2011).

 

Los Angeles, October 21, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 21, 2022).