Dominic Haxton | Tonight It's Me / 2014

blow me down

by Douglas Messerli

 

Eric Jett, Charles Mallison, and Jacob Robbins (screenplay), Dominic Haxton (director) Tonight It's Me / 2014 [13 minutes]

 

Tonight It’s Just Me begins with a scene that is anything but exclusive. A heavy set “Voyeur” (as the credits describe him, Neil Elliott) sits watching a young hustler, CJ (Jake Robbins), whom he’s hired, suck off one of his friends (Christian Patrick). Asked what he what’s going through his head when he walks into a house like this, CJ answers, “It’s going to be a payday.”

    The only thing that seems to upset him is that one of the “clients” has squirted sperm on his T-shirt. CJ, it appears, is very careful about his grooming, and certainly doesn’t want to show up at his next appointment with cum on his shirt.

     That next appointment, however, turns out to be something that he’s never quite encountered before. The young “boy” who’s hired him, Ash (Caleb James) has long hair and is extremely effeminate. In fact, as Ash soon makes clear to CJ, “he” perceives himself as a woman.

      This boyish woman, moreover, is fairly witty and willing to truly talk with the hustler instead of simply make demands.

     When the hustler asks her, “Why do you like being a girl?” she responds without a pause, “Why do you like being a boy.”

       Somehow this knowing hustler, who seems savvy about his business, has never before encountered a transgender individual! It seems more than a little preposterous to me. But I’ll grant director Dominic Haxton and his three screenwriters some leeway imagining that CJ’s ignorance allows them to explain, in quite simplistic terms, just what a transgender individual is all about.

      I’m not sure, however, that making herself up to look like a woman (i.e. putting on the lipstick and makeup) really explains what experiencing the gender diaspora of being a female in the wrong body is really all about.

     But, in this case, even after what appears to be wonderful sex—for the first time, evidently, the client attending to the hustler’s sexual needs before her own—CJ appears to be absolutely fascinated by the gender discord, and is only too ready to fuck the “girl” who has just sucked him off. There seems to be something almost transformational about his experience with this straight-talking woman in a boy’s body, who has evidently not yet had a sexual operation even though she’s currently taking hormone shots.

     Before he leaves, Ash demands CJ shoot her up, not with the kind of drugs he’s used to, she explains, but a very special kind of drug.

     The hustler is paid and he leaves, but there is something in the air that seems different, almost as if for the first time in his life, the hustler might want to return for another night.

      In this case, I think Letterboxd commentator Leonora Anne Mint rather nicely sums up my feelings about Haxton’s short film:

 

“I couldn't help but be slightly won over by this short film about a frustrated male prostitute's romantic nightlong encounter with a lonely transgender woman; it's sweet and technically very well made, with good cinematography and score. That it joins a long line of films about sex work that don't portray it in a terribly nuanced way is possibly more excusable because it's short and the topic is complex; my major peeve, though, is the fact that this is listed in so many places as a Gay Short, the plot summary here is kind of iffy, and the main trans character is played by an apparently cis male actor* who performs the role in a pretty stereotypical way. The dialogue is fine, but the stereotypes are thick—we get some quick Trans 101, a whole scene revolving around injecting hormones that has nothing to do with the story, and long scene of applying makeup because goodness knows that's what we spend most of our time doing, har har. Away from these old chestnuts, it's a sweet story and a good short, and cis people will probably come away with hearts warmed, feeling untested. I came away with my heart warmed, but also feeling fairly uneasy.”

 

*I don’t know how this commentator knows this to be true. Why should we presume that actor Caleb James is a “cis male?” The only clue might be that he continued to use the same name in his activities in later films as art director (working on Haxton’s We Are Animals the previous year), extra, and crew member (Resurrected, 2023).

 

Los Angeles, September 24, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).