by Douglas Messerli
Al Calderon and Joseph Tilley (composers), Al Calderon (performer), Ian
Schober (director) Come Get It / 2025
It seems that new gay singers are coming out of the closets every day.
This new song, Come Get It, is performed by New York-born actor Al Calderon
in Spanish and English, with no translation of the song itself provided.
The video begins with a
conversation (in Spanish, but with English-language subtitles) in which the
singer, coming out of the gym, calls up his former, obviously male lover, who
has apparently been away on vacation. Calderon speaks of the former lover’s
possible tan before, almost casually, mentioning that he misses him, wondering
even if he’s still on vacation since he hasn’t yet responded to his messages.
Hence the song that follows,
filmed largely in a laundry, but also featuring Calderon wearing only a towel
in a sauna and working out. The song’s repeated phrase “Darte un ratito, come
get it,” (“I’ll give you a while, come get it.”) refers clearly not to simply
stopping by to pick up the shirt but to Calderon’s ready body, poised to be
taken.
If the early conversation
seems casual, even accepting of what has happened between them, the song itself
is filled with pain, impatience, and mostly a desire to start the relationship
up again, and some feeling of resentment of the blame the other seems to be
creating for the end of the affair.
Here are the first few
stanzas of the song, along with my translations:
Baby por qué
no me quieres?
‘Tamos en una tormenta
Hemos estado
Hemos estado
Hemos estado
Tratando
Baby dímelo pa, qué pasó
los últimos seis meses
A million other things that could ruin us
(italics, my translation)
Baby, why don't you love me?
‘We're lost in a storm
We've been trying
We've been trying
To understand it all
Baby, tell me, what happened
these last six months
A million other things that could ruin us
Hace un tiempo
que no hemos hablado
que no hemos hablado
Hace un tiempo
que no hemos hablado
que no hemos hablado
(italics, my translation)
It's been a while
since we’ve talked
since we’ve talked
It's been a while
since we’ve talked
since we’ve talked
(in English in original)
I
Wanna talk but there’s nothing to say
Baby Before we get carried away
Darte un ratito, come get it
Darte un ratito, come get it
Tried to make you love me
Make you trust me
Gave you space
When you didn’t even want me
Find
it funny when you trying to avoid me
Finding
problems just
So you can blame it on me
I realized just after I had
written this piece, that of course, the person Calderon calls could also have
been a woman who just happens to occasionally wear shirts or blouses that look
like shirts. I went back over the entire scenario of this video and attempted
to explain to myself why I felt it had to be another male he was calling. Was
that he was so baldly offering up his body to his former lover? But then vain male
straights often do that to women as well, believing they are God’s gift to the
female gender.
Calderon’s attempts to make
his lover “trust” him, and to make the other “love” him do sound similar to a
gay man desperate to convince a boy who still would like to imagine he is
straight despite the joy he takes in their sex. But these same qualities might
also exist in a straight man trying to seduce his girlfriend to love and trust.
I have gone over and over the
lyrics and the cinema itself several times, and can only that perhaps I must
have caught on with one of the very first words of the text, when Calderon
addresses his former friend as “Papi.” But finally, what perhaps most convinced
me is that Calderon, in his activities in the laundry, sauna, and work-out
space, seems like a man attempting to attract other men, not women. He poses,
shows off his body, and attempts to seduce the viewer just as a gay man might.
It is his pink underwear, the turquoise reflection of the shower tiles across
his near naked body, or the spread-eagle position of his legs during his work-out
that reveals his sexual desires with regard to gender? Perhaps it’s his final
facing-out pose in a jockstrap while standing on a blood-red carpet, the tools
of his trade laying at his side. Of course, straight men are capable of just
such tactics to attract the opposite sex; they simply might think twice about
so obviously betraying their desires through their bodily gestures. Straight
boys make presumptions that gay men simply can’t.
Upon further research I
discovered that, indeed, Calderon is openly gay (having long ago come out of
the closet) and appeared most recently on the NBC soap opera Days of our
Live playing Javi, of whom Queerty commentator Cameron Sheetz writes:
“Self-described as a ‘garden variety gay who worships Jennifer Coolidge,’ Javi
was a true sh*t-stirrer when he first arrived in Salem, but when he began a
relationship with Leo Stark (Greg Rikaart), it was clear the character wasn’t
going anywhere any time soon.” It is difficult to cover all the gay and lesbian
figures who have moved in and out that soap opera since it began in 1965.
Calderon is also slated to
play a character in the second season of Brilliant Minds, the NBC series
based on the life and writings of the gay neurologist Oliver Sacks. I’ll review
the first season soon.
Los Angeles, August 17, 2025
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2025).
No comments:
Post a Comment