by Douglas
Messerli
Martin Edralin (screenwriter and director) Hole / 2014 [15 minutes]
Billy (Ken
Harrower) is a physically challenged man who has hardly any use of his legs and
suffers significant difficultly with his arm motions. Just to watch him rise in
the morning and struggle into his pants is painful for those of us who take
these motions for granted.
A few frames later, as he sits up in his
wheelchair, his handsome caretaker Craig (Sebastian Deery) arrives, apologizing
for being late but having brought his patient some more food. He wheels the
chair near the bathroom door, as Billy scoots out of it and shuttles his body
across the bathroom floor, pulling off his clothes, again with great difficulty,
before Craig lifts him up and plants him into the bathtub where he showers and
washes his patient.
Billy announces that in the evening he will
be going to a movie.
Craig dresses him, makes his bed, and
evidently prepares a meal which we watch Billy eat, before his caretaker leaves
him for the day.
That evening we indeed to see Billy
maneuvering his motorized wheelchair down a city street. The “movie” to which
he’s headed, however, is not a motion picture, but a small porno theater, where
he watches the screen for a while, simultaneously eyeing the glory hole. Billy,
it is clear, is also a gay man in need of some sexual relief.
Finally, a penis appears in the hole,
which Billy, slightly leaning over, is only too happy to suck off. But when the
man on the other side of the hole finishes and makes it evident that he is
perfectly willing to fellate Billy in turn, the problem arises. Billy cannot
stand in order to receive the desired sexual fulfillment.
The next day we watch as Billy scoots about
what seems to be a giant Goodwill store where he apparently works, stocking the
shelves with porcelain figures.
On the subway back home, we watch him
staring at a young heterosexual couple who are holding hands and looking very
much as if they about to speed off home and into bed, with great envy. Soon
after, he again seems to be waiting outside the porno shop.
Back home, we see him imbibing in several
beers. Obviously his life, given his appearance and physical disabilities, is a
lonely one. And, in a real sense, his sexual being is nothing more than serving
as a kind of open hole, the mouth sucking off others without being able to
enjoy the pleasures of another serving a similar act.
The incident seems to have further
reverberations when the next day a new caretaker, Grace (April Lee) shows up
instead of Craig. “Where is Craig?” Billy wails out. “Oh, I don’t know. I just
go to where the agency sends me,” Grace answers in a rather official and
certainly not a delicate or elegant manner.
With her Billy is a different man,
preferring, as she prepares him for the shower, to attempt, unsuccessfully to
undress himself. Billy attempts to call Craig later that afternoon, with only a
call back answering machine.
As evening approaches, we see Billy, again
on his motorized wheelchair attempting to ring up Craig, evidently, at his home
address. No answer.
But this time the disabled man refuses to
be shuffled off into the hands of yet someone else. He camps out at Craig’s
door.
When Craig finally arrives, asking what
Billy is doing there, the man answers: “I need you to help me. I don’t have
anyone else to ask.”
In the last painful scenes, we see Craig and Billy in the cramped into a porno booth, as Craig helps Billy so stand in order to have fellatio performed on him in return for his sexual favors.
It’s hard to describe this as a graceful
situation, but certainly Craig has performed in—puns cannot be escaped—an
uplifting manner as one can possibly imagine in such a situation. As one of the
film’s IMDb commentators simply and forthrightly expressed it: “We all need
love, intimacy and sexual gratification. Billy too.”
Canadian director Martin Edralin’s
sensitive and honest film reveals that there are few places these days where
LGBTQ cinema is afraid to take us. And I believe we are all better for it. I
only wish some straight people might take the time out to watch this sensitive
short film.
Los Angeles,
January 27, 2025
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).
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