Michael Hyman | Billy's Blowjobs / 2017

the beginning or the end

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Hyman (screenwriter and director) Billy's Blowjobs / 2017 [17 minutes]

 

Imagine if the figure in Andy Warhol’s iconic figure of 1964, DeVeren Bookwalter in Blowjob, instead of facially expressing his ecstatic satisfaction from the sexual act being performed on his nether parts, spent the entire time instead on describing his prior experiences and the current voyeuristic movie being made of him at the very moment while insisting his sucking partner stop paying attention to his words and attend to his cock!

     After all, Billy (Wilson Cruz) has been coming to the same out-of-view spot against a fence behind which the LA subway now runs for many years, the cries of pleasure, the many fellow groan and moans having been lost in silence to time. He is the last man standing in the old fields of pleasure, checking his watch and even that of his fellationist. “We are the last people left on earth,” declares Billy, “except for that kid over there who’s had me under surveillance from so far away.   

      God knows, Billy has tried to stop, to give it all up and leave the degradation of his life. But he simply can’t despite the fact that his current sucker chews his cock just as often as he pleasurably sucks, and clearly isn’t giving him the satisfaction that he wants.   

     As Billy argues, “I hate to be a buzzkill for your happy experience down there, whoever you are down there, but I must speak. I must speak to feel less alone.”

     Of course, over the years, that’s been Billy’s major problem. He’s never bothered to know “whoever you are down there” was. Billy clearly isn’t satisfied because all of his life was about anonymous sex, the signifier of his nightly events. And now, talking up a storm, he isn’t even communicating to the last of his cocksuckers, the word fully expressing its many meanings.

     As Billy himself expresses it, “This is tough work,” followed soon after, by the sound of footsteps rushing off, the cum having been offered and the devotee having received its offerings, speeding into oblivion, Billy calling after, “Thanks for the company.”

     Alone, after Billy’s “brief encounter,” he invites the surveillance operator over. It takes some doing, the young boy, Paul (Jason Caceres) not being able to even comprehend that he might now be invited over to participate in what he has so long been witnessing. But Billy is, after all desperate.

     Finally, the boy with a camera, moves over to the idol, Billy, taking his place as all the others have, squatting before their master.

     Billy begins to head off, but the boy admits that it’s taken whatever nerve he has to come over to him. The boy argues he’s not like the others just looking for cheap thrills. He’s alone. And slowly, for a few moments, they play a Pinteresque game of why the boy is “here” instead of “there” where he has been. “You’re too young. You’re too cute. Why are you here?”

     Paul answers, “You’re too hot. Why are you here?”

   But when Billy asks the question over once again, and the boy answers in highly metaphorical language: “Because I don’t want to become just another shadow. Out past midnight running away from himself.”

      Even Billy, the rhetorician, can’t comprehend those words.

     When Billy asks, “Why have you had me under surveillance for two weeks?” Paul counters, “Why have you allowed yourself to be under surveillance for two weeks?”

    The two have established a kind of rapport about which Billy admits “This could be the end of something or the end of something. Or the exact reverse.”

      Eventually, Paul admits to Billy, “I get the feeling you’re not the kind of man who’s not going to hurt me as all the others have.”

      Paul continues, “I’m not just looking for cheap thrills,” Billy again repeating what you might almost describe as a desperate mantra: “This could be the beginning of something or the end of something. Or the exact reverse.”

       But when Paul goes down on him, Billy joking, “try not to chew,” we know it is the same old, same old. Paul is nothing but another of the endless sexual encounters that Billy has had over the years. And he has converted the boy into yet another reason to remain at the nowhere spot where he meets up with the endless parade of men who he never truly comes to know and soon after doesn’t want to know. This is but a continuation of Billy’s excuses for the uncomplicated, anonymous sex through which he has so long survived.

       The only hope this film provides is that after another subway passes and Billy cums, we observe the two walking off together. Maybe. Perhaps. But this seems to be both the beginning and the end.

        Forgive me if I continue to be a cynic. Billy is interested, it seems to me, only in satisfaction, not in love. 

 

Los Angeles, August 13, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2023).