love without sex
by Douglas Messerli
Jordan Gear (screenwriter and director) Ace
/ 2018 [19 minutes]
Z (Lukas Gage) and several of his friends,
Russ (Jonathan Lipnicki), Joanie (Ariel D. King), Clara (Gisselle Bonilla),
Deek (Ty Chen), and Toddy (Holly Blair) appear to live in a college
commune-like situation, some of them sexually connected but with deep ties of
friendship that go beyond even their sexual connections. They celebrate in
late-night parties, dinners, and weekend grills, etc.
As
the film begins the group is celebrating the fact that Z has just been accepted
into one of the best dance schools in the nation. Evidently Deek has invited
someone’s cousin to the event, who shows up late in the evening and is
introduced to the others as Ace (Lukas Gage). The shy young man who has, so
we’re told, just moved there from “up north,” is easily assimilated into the
group and evidently remains in their house through the night, because the next
morning Russ and Ace are seen knocking at Z’s door to wake him up, the
celebrated boy so drunk that he needs Ace to drive him back to the campus.
In
a series of moody, hallmark card-like scenes beginning with their drive to
campus, during which Z stops by the ocean to take a naked dive into the waters,
and which extends for the next weeks after, director Jordan Gear establishes a
growing relationship that develops between the beautiful blond-haired Ace and
the handsome Z.
One
night back at the community house, as the boys are seen dancing with each of
their girls— in a scene that is highly reminiscent of the prom scene in Get
Real (1998) in which the guys, dancing with their gals, only have eyes for
each other—culminates with Z and Ace sharing a bed, gently interlocking
fingers, and finally kissing. We don’t know if it goes any further, but it
certainly looks as if their long attraction to one another is finally
consummated.
Yet the next morning, Ace arrives to breakfast where the rest of the
group are already gathered, and maintains a distance, instead of choosing to
pull up a chair to the long group table, he perches on a nearby ledge to eat.
As the day wears on, he almost adamantly chooses to ignore Z, while spending an
inordinately long time playing a guessing game with one of the women.
Angry with his behavior Z storms off, eventually Ace joining him in an
attempt to explain. And for a moment it appears that their love will pull the
two back together as Ace moves toward Z and they hug. But a moment later, Ace
pulls away, shouting out “I can’t. I can’t.” End of movie.
Obviously, there are several ways you might explain the reasons why Ace
pulls out of what almost appears as an inevitable love at the last moment, and
why the movie ends at this very moment, a fact that clearly irritated some
amateur commentators.
Underneath his open acceptance of the group which is clearly bi-racial,
Ace could be hiding some secret phobia about blacks. Given his obvious
attraction to Z throughout most of the film, however, and his general abilities
to relate to the community, I find it very difficult to believe the director is
suggesting any racial bias here.
For most viewers, the obvious reason for his refusal to go through with
what he clearly seems to desire is that he hasn’t quite been able accept his
own identity as a queer man, which in opening himself up to a full relationship
with Z, Ace would have to admit to. We’ve seen this behavior in dozens of films
ever since queer cinema has begun openly talking about such issues in the
1960s, and certainly in the 1990s and since. Our only hope, in such a
situation, is that sooner rather than later Ace can finally come to terms with
is sexuality and still return to Z before it’s too late—the wishful thinking a
most queer observers of such scenes in movies.
In
2018, the acceptance of aromantic, demi-sexual, or grey-sexual individuals—all
conditions surrounding the term Ace, which categorizes some of those
individuals who basically experience a lack of sexual attraction or desire, who
are yet, on occasion, attracted to gay, bi-sexual, lesbian queers—was not
generally recognized. These individuals, seemingly lacking the sexual urge, may
be attracted to other LGBTQ figures but generally cannot carry through with the
sexual act, defining themselves as asexual.
I
gather that this group of individuals, long having felt invisible and ignored
by the queer community, joined the LGBTQ+ coalition sometime around 2010, since
that is the year when Ace Week began to be celebrated.
Certainly, by naming his character Ace, it appears that Gear is
attempting to make a direct connection with that phenomenon, and although we
don’t get any verbal reaction from Z about his would-be lover’s comments, and
therefore cannot truly ascertain whether or not he is actually an Ace bigot, it
is quite clear that Z is angered over what seems to be a flirtatious invitation
to love that goes nowhere, and leaves him empty after he has himself fallen in
love with the boy. And there is no evidence that Z perceives what is the cause
of the boy’s behavior. He most certainly might perceive him to be a closet
bigot or a still closeted queer without even knowing that there are people out
there who, while attracted to other gay men, can’t fully engage in sex itself.
I
must admit that only in the past year I have encountered the condition, and am
still uncomfortable with its inclusion in the LGBTQ community. It is not that I
do not perceive that there might indeed be people who feel confused by their
asexuality, and who feel in our highly sexualized culture that their condition
is ignored.
I
have nothing against Ace individuals and would be happy to have any Ace for a
friend, since I don’t think of my friends generally in sexual terms. Indeed,
except for a few youthful jerks, who among the majority of us defines their
friends in terms of their sexual behaviors unless in their sexual activities
they are engaging young children or endangering others’ lives? How might it
possibly matter to me if one of my friends didn’t feel comfortable having sex?
Even as a young man, I did not spend my hours sitting around talking about my
sex life—although that has often been a standard cliché of gay behavior.
For me the LGBTQ coalition, on the other hand, was from its founding
very much about sex and gender, and how the heterosexual world, before
liberation, generally punished, tortured, and degraded those of us who were
sexually queer or didn’t behave according to our birth genders. These were
sexual matters because we acted on them and behaved in ways that for centuries
heterosexuals had feared and hated.
Not having sex was simply not part of the quotient. If one didn’t want
to or felt they couldn’t be sexually active, what, one might argue, could be
the problem; who would possibly choose to ostracize or ignore such individuals?
I guess I feel somewhat in sympathy with arguments such as David Allen’s in Spike
magazine (August 21, 2022) that the LGBTQIA+ has taken over the original
homosexual base of LGBT, adding in what he feels are group of “straights”
muscling their way into the gay agenda, or what was originally known as the
“gay community.”
I
don’t see the alphabet-soup additions as necessarily being an invasion of
“straights” as much as I see it as a embracement of numerous other issues which
have little to do with the original group of beings attacked for their sexual
behavior, and accordingly distract from the coalition’s focus on important
larger issues such as educating youth concerning their sexual fears, job
security, the impingement of religious rights, and the original freedom of expression, increasingly become of
importance given the current wave of activist conservatives throughout the
world who attempt to roll back queer rights—the most basic principles of what
we all fought for, possibly even gay marriage in the US.
As
Gear’s film makes clear, however, it is apparent that Z probably is not going
to keep Ace around as one of his best friends. And particularly for younger Ace
men and women, in our highly sexualized society they might find it very
difficult to keep friends to whom they feel attracted but cannot connect with
through sex. I have attempted to think back in time to see if there might have
been such individuals who I rejected as a younger man because they didn’t pursue
sex. But then, I also have to admit, when I was a very young gay man, before
meeting by lifetime husband, nearly all friends, outside a few friends I made
in my theater, choral, and church activities, were lovers or other gay men. So
perhaps I wasn’t a bigot simply because I completely ignored most of my
university colleagues. Friends seem to be something I developed a few years
later, when finding someone each night for sex was no longer an issue in my
life, and when I began reaching out to others through our careers. I think
being Ace or asexual if an issue more important for the young; certainly at 76
one wants to cry out, what the fuck is the problem? But I can now most
certainly recognize the problem that an Ace individual has in finding someone
to love and share his or her life, if that is what she or he desires.
Los Angeles, March 2, 2023
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(March 2023).
No comments:
Post a Comment