Lucas Haviland | Pages in the Wind / 2025

4 days in april

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lucas Haviland (screenwriter and director) Pages in the Wind / 2025 [15 minutes]

 

Bailey (Quinton Walker) sits on a greenyard working on his journal where nearby, so the journal soon tells us, his lover Gavin (Brian Pils) is also working out before taking his daily run.

   Bailey rereads his most recent entries about four days in April. On the 7th Gavin, so we discover, attempted to make breakfast for Bailey, a total disaster which nonetheless created even more love between the two on account of the sweet failed effort to celebrate their anniversary.

      On the 12th Bailey is planning a special night at home to watch their favorite movies. Gavin calls saying he’ll be home late, which of course, ruin Bailey’s plans but do not at all alter their love for one another, as the scene ends with them lying side-by-side in bed, and snuggling up to sleep.

     On the 20th, Bailey comes home from a night at the bar with his female friend Karine (Kelli Fitzgerald), quite drunk since she, whom he describes as a “slut,” spends the entire night ogling and dancing with men. The dramatic queen comes forward in Bailey’s personality, as he wonders whether or not his alcoholism is finally catching up with him. Gavin brings him a glass a water and orders him to calm down as they kiss, Bailey expressing his love of Gavin, the latter suggesting that his lover brush his teeth before another kiss, but not before replying that he loves Bailey as well.

   The night of the 29th is not a good one for the couple, since Gavin has been out at a bar where his friend Austin has posted a picture of him and another boy making love. Gavin attempts to apologize to Bailey, explaining that the boy was drunk and moved in for a kiss the minute Austin began filming; what was he to do with an inebriated stranger hanging onto his body? He reassures Bailey that he loves only him, but our diarist needs some time to think things over.

   As between the other journal episodes, director Lucas Haviland returns us to the greenyard where Bailey sits mulling over his previous entries. Karine calls to report that she’s on her way. Finally, she arrives, Gavin having finished his run, joining them.

    But things have now shifted.

    The necklace that Karine wears around her neck, sports the letter G, and when Gavin joins up with them he kisses the girl, not the boy. We quickly realize that Bailey’s journal entries have all been a fantasy, and that the real relationship is between Gavin and Karine, not between our narrator and Gavin. Bailey’s roommate is actually Karine, not Gavin, who has left his keys in their apartment, which Bailey hands him back.

     Together they invite Bailey to join them in a special evening out with other friends, perhaps, we suspect, to announce their engagement to marry.

    Watching this film the second time, I was surprised not see a montage which I was sure I remembered: the torn pages of Bailey’s little journal blowing off in the wind like the image of the opening credits of Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. Evidently, in reality Bailey had nicely tucked his little melodrama in his backpack for later fantastical adventures in his nonexistent life.

 

     The two, man and woman, walk off, calling back to see if Bailey is joining them, he wandering like a puppy close behind.

 

Los Angeles, September 20, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2025).