Garth Bardsley | Latch Key / 2005

necessary alterations

by Douglas Messerli

 

Garth Bardsley (screenwriter and director) Latch Key / 2005 [11 minutes]

 

About a third of the way through Garth Bardsley’s comic short film, Latch Key, I was about ready to turn it off since it didn’t at all appear to me to have anything to do with the LGBTQ community, unless some gay man got some perverse joy in watching to pimply adolescents jerk off together—under a blanket, I should add—while upstairs one of their brothers is trying to convince a girl that he should fuck her.

      But then everything changed as Sam (Ren Casey), at the moment he and his jerk-mate Thomas (Brendan Bradley) were about to come, passionately kissed him, clearly the first time the two had done anything that was even vaguely gay. In the past, their sessions, while watching straight porno tapes, we can guess were the “normal” activities of two male teenagers trying to simply satisfy each other’s sexual needs. It’s become clear that Sam is now seeking something closer to gay sex.

     Upstairs, Sam’s brother Lou (William S. Caleo), having finally convinced Vanessa (Carey Macaleer) to engage in sex (Lou has evidently been away and in his absence Vanessa has been dating another guy) had just cum when the boys’ mother drives up, finally back home after a long hard day at work, box of pizza in hand.

      Rather abashedly, Thomas stands with hands in his pockets, perhaps still sporting a hard-on, and as Sam runs upstairs to throw the blanket in the laundry, he notices Vanessa has been unable to escape.

     Sam helps her slip through the front door, while Thomas, a regular in the household as Sam’s best friend, makes up a rather flimsy excuse for why he can’t stay for pizza, running off.

     Mother and sons serve up the slices and prepare to eat, when they hear a commotion in their front yard. Running to their front door to find out what’s going on, the trio discover Thomas and Vanessa arguing in their front lawn, before hugging and making up, engaged in a long and loving kiss, which director Garth Bardsley brilliantly captures in the reflection of the front door window through the boy’s peer. Logic tells us that Thomas is Vanessa’s new boyfriend. And from now on the brothers will have to look elsewhere to satisfy their sexual needs. But perhaps it is all for the best: Thomas will perhaps have to look for another gay boy and Lou will have to seek out a girl who won’t be so easily convinced by his bullshit theories about love and sex.

 

Los Angeles, September 10, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).