Reid Waterer | Performance Anxiety / 2012

poor straight boys

by Douglas Messerli

 

Reid Waterer (screenwriter and director) Performance Anxiety / 2012 [15 minutes]

 

What is it with straight guys? These two heterosexual male actors, hired to play a nude gay sex scene, have so many problems when it comes to even touching each other that their private rehearsals quickly verge into the absurd if not the obscene. I don’t know many gay guys who have difficulties with touching or even kissing a female, but these two guys behave as if they kissed another guy they might immediately catch a dread disease or become gay on contact. Although it’s recognized that heterosexual boys go through a period in which close male bonding and even same-sex activity is common, these “dudes” (a word I truly distrust) can’t even bear to see one another’s penises. I wonder what they did in gym class.

     Of course, this film perhaps portrays a stereotypical view of straight men, Duke (Lawrence Nicols) in particular behaving as if to prove his masculinity he must return to the halls of his hometown high school to brag about how many makeup girls he fucks working in plays. But, except for a TV ad, he hasn’t been to get any film offers, and he admits that he’s only taken on this role because he is desperate and his girlfriend wants him to give up his acting career.

      The slightly more experienced of the two Jacob (Danny Lopes) is certainly not terrified of getting naked, having performed, so he reports, in Equus, Hair, and Take Me Out. However, when he suggests he can’t imagine why he gets these kinds of roles, I want to tell this actor (aren’t actors naturally vain?) to simply look in the mirror. And although he’s great at sucking his fellow actor’s nipples, he has equal hesitation at getting fucked, even though a pillow is placed between Duke’s penis and his rump and they’re still in their underpants. At one point the two even act out a father / son scene to get into the spirit, but quickly determine that such a kiss is too perverse to even imagine enacting.

       To even “block out” the scenes, they have to play tricks with themselves, pretending to be two Italian men meeting up again, a doctor checking on his patient’s penis, imagining the most beautiful women in the world, and other acting-school exercises to get the nerve up to kiss on the lips, pretending various wrestling positions to put them in the spirit of a good fuck. At least Jacob has a good reason for accepting the role: a friend who has lost was gay without him even knowing it. And he thought he might gain some insights about his long-time buddy by playing a gay man. It is possible that he does.

       Or course, when it comes to actually performing the scene, which we see in black-and-white, they make perfect lovers, truly convincing us of their cunnilingus and anal penetration. At film’s end, however, it is the actor who has been fucked, Jacob, who seems slightly sad that their scene is now over, running out after they hug (like straight men hug) to say goodbye in order to tell Duke that he has a “nice ass.” And Duke does…have a nice ass. But he’s off to a day with his girlfriend and hasn’t any time to get together again with Jacob.

        For some time, I wondered if these might not actually be gay men—a kind of joke on gay director Reid Waterer’s part—performing as straight jerks; but for the credits these obviously truly straight guys feel it necessary, it appears, to reiterate just how straight they truly are, thinking as they fuck, for example, that a girlfriend is waiting out in the car or arguing that, even with the pillow, the fuck really hurt. Or maybe they truly are truly gifted….probably not. They’re more convincing in the credits than they were even in the filmed shots.

      Poor straight boys. They have almost every moment so very much to prove about their sexuality. It makes me feel sad.

 

Los Angeles, September 26, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2022).