Leon Cheo | People Like Us, “Past Times,” Season 1, Episode 4 / 2016

the racecar driver and the pastry chef

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leon Cheo (screenwriter and director) People Like Us, “Past Times,” Season 1, Episode 4 / 2016 [8 minutes]

 

Finally, Joel and Ridzwan go on a “regular” date, once more a surprise to the shy, closeted man since Joel takes him to a huge flea market. There he finds a childhood “Racecar” driver viewer, explaining that as a child he was fixated on the sport—an unexpected palindrome—but didn’t want to end up with broken bones. Ridzwan admits that as a child he wanted to be a pastry chef, but probably would have wound up fat.

     When they begin to explore where they might go next, Ridzwan reveals that he doesn’t like the beach. Since he doesn’t like crowded places, Joel suggests Ridzwan take him somewhere that he likes, which takes them and the audience on a trip into Ridzwan’s past.

     He walks him first to a playground where as a child he played soccer after school. He asks if Joel was in sports, who conjectures that he was probably in band practice where he played drums.

     He next ambles over with Joel to a small concession area, now closed, where’d they go after soccer to buy ice pops. “And then,” Joel asks, making Ridzwan curious as to why he wants to know about his past. Nonetheless he takes him to his primary school, where the two peer in through a high fence at children playing in the schoolyard. And soon after Ridzwan continues in his childhood memories, recalling that as a child he had a huge crush on the captain of the badminton team. “I didn’t know why I was attracted to him, or why he was so cool, but I started to try to be friends with him….” Joel interrupts with a joke involving a “shuttlecock,” which irritates Ridzwan in the midst of telling him personal things he’s never told anyone before.

     He asks Joel how long was his last boyfriend, which, of course, again elicits a joke, before he states that the relationship lasted 6 months and that the choice to break up was not his. In fact, he admits that all of his former companions broke up with him. Maybe “I couldn’t make them like me enough to stay.”

     Ridzwan finally takes him to a place where he and other boys used to go to play “catch,” the tree he points out being the “house.” It was there also that he received his first kiss. With a girl, he adds. “I was so young. I wanted to be normal.” When Joel moves forward to kiss him, Ridzwan once more expresses the fear that they might be seen.

     They wind up back in Joel’s bed, this time with him having bought a number of condoms. And this time, in quite graphic sex, Joel does get fucked. Having enjoyed the day, he can’t wait to tell his university friends Michelle and Alvin. But Ridzwan asks that he not tell his friends about him.

      So ends a quite revealing episode where we see Ridzwan still caught up in his childhood past, while Joel doesn’t feel worthy of the men he meets. It’s clear this would-be racecar driver and pastry chef must reconcile a past of heterosexual innocence with a future of gay self-acceptance and worthiness, problems that face many a gay couple.

 

Los Angeles, June 7, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (June 2023).