Hoang A. Duong | Tom Clay Jesus / 2001

the man that got away

by Douglas Messerli

 

Hoang A. Duong (screenwriter and director) Tom Clay Jesus / 2001 [17 minutes]

 

Tom (Scott Saffer), a good-looking gay man brings home Clay (David Ojalvo) for a night of sex. The two truly enjoy each other, and we recognize them almost immediately as a perfect couple.

    But this is still a long 13 years away from when gays in the US could get married, and accordingly, despite AIDS, there was still no strong cultural pull in the gay community to couple up, even though Clay leaves Tom his telephone number with the hope he might call him with the hope that a fuller relationship could develop.

     A month goes by, however, without a call. When they meet up in a bar again, Tom has already committed himself to go home with another man (Charles Kaiser), yet seeing Clay he goes over to him, hugs him, flirts for a few minutes, and orders up a round of drinks, before kissing him goodbye, Clay reminding him that he still has his number to call him.

     When Tom’s new pick-up asks who he had greeted at the bar, Tom replies “a friend.”

     Clay meanwhile often appears to sit home alone nights awaiting Tom’s call. The only call we observe him receiving, however, is from his mother concerning his father’s failing health.

      Tom, we can imagine perpetuates his life of pick-ups, although he too, we perceive, remembers the smooth skin of Clay, recalls they raucous time in bed together.

       Clay ages a bit from his youthful cuteness, becomes somewhat lankier, and grows a beard. Still no call from Tom.

      One day while taking his clothes to a local laundromat, he spots Tom inside. He almost turns around, fearful of encountering him again after all these weeks. But his desire is still potent, and he enters without greeting his former lover.

       Tom appears not even to recognize him, but is still quickly attracted, introducing himself to whom he perceives as a stranger. Clay, a bit flabbergasted, looks up at the wood-paneled wall, where hangs a portrait of Christ, as he turns his eyes back to Tom, naming himself Jesús. Tom invites him home.

       There Clay’s discovers near Tom’s computer the blue slip of paper on which has so long ago written his name and number. When he asks who Clay is, Tom once more replies that he is a “good friend.”

       The two begin their foreplay, Tom clearly intrigued now by finding himself with a man he believes is a Latin lover, responding to Jesús’s further query about his “friend” that he, Jesús, is a better lover than Clay.

       As they get into bed, Tom tops Clay, asking what he prefers sexually. Clay pauses before answering “I want to go home.”

         A bit taken aback, Tom suggests that he too has other work to do. Clay stands and quickly leaves.

       We see both men pacing back and forth in their one-room apartments, both troubled by the recent situation for different reasons, Tom clearly surprised by the rejection and Clay/Jesús torn by the decision he has made to break with his phantom lover.

         Tom takes up the blue slip of paper and calls Tom’s number. Tom nervously answers, somewhat delighted that Tom has finally chosen to call. But when Tom speaks, he tells him simply that he has a wrong number.

          A very smart commentator on the IMDb site, with the moniker of Atlantis2006, likens it to French psychoanalyst/psychiatrist Jacques Lacan’s description of “phantasmatic desire”:

 

“As Jacques Lacan explains in Ecrits, the nature of the object of desire relies deeply on a most effective assertion: one's greatest desire is to be the object of desire of the other. In "Tom Clay Jesus", the lives of Tom and Clay get seemingly interwoven at first. There is a promise, a longing for an ideal that would henceforth consolidate a meaningful relationship. But as one could guess, ideals are not an easy item to come by, whether it is an abstract ideal or the ideal man.

     …Desire is mediated by this phantasmatic distortion that forces Tom to overlook his newfound partner and makes him to rapidly feel attraction towards Jesus, a bearded stranger he meets two months after the first scene.

     When Tom fails to see beyond his phantasmatic obsession he disqualifies Clay as an option. But when Clay can relinquish this failed status, and in fact has the power to personify the very phantasm Tom so eagerly awaits, he also sees Tom under a new light. Perhaps then, the shifting of what Lacan denominates "object a" in regards to desire, eliminates the possibilities of a steady relationship.”

 

       He’s probably right in his analysis, but you don’t need Lacan to explain that when you keep overlooking the one you really love and, finally, can’t even recognize him when he offers himself up to you in a slightly different manifestation, then it’s time for the other to call the whole thing off! As sad as it is, Clay better start looking for another man to replace his former heartthrob. And if Tom is smart, which he clearly isn’t, he should rethink his life of one-night stands. As Tom ages, Jesús won’t be the only one who turns him away.  

 

Los Angeles, November 3, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).