Nick Oceano | El primo (The Cousin) / 2008

the long night of public lies and personal truths

 

Nick Oceano (screenwriter and director) El primo (The Cousin) / 2008 [15 minutes]

 

Mark (Daniel Marin), a rather sheltered teenager and his mother visit his cousin Luis (Many Montana) and mother in Laredo, Texas, the elder immediately whisking his younger cousin away into his male lair which contains his former DJ equipment and boxes of records which immediately interest his younger cousin.

    His cousin has heard Mark is a bookworm—word has obviously gotten out that he’s a good student—but the boy insists that he parties all the time. When the two women drive off together, Luis takes out some heavy dope and encourages his innocent cousin to join him.

    How can Mark refuse his far more experienced and knowledgeable cousin whom he clearly admires and for whom we already suspect he might have a sort of teenage crush.

    When was the last time you got laid, asks the cousin, shaking his fist back and forth, to indicate that masturbation doesn’t count. “Oh, I don’t know, last month” brags the kid.

    Luis can’t believe it’s been that long. Who was she, he asks?

    Mark quickly comes up with a name, Margaret.

    Is she a librarian?

    No, my lab partner. 

    And the conversation quickly escalates into a discussion of white girls versus Mexican women.

    In the middle of the conversation, Luis looks meaningfully at the boy, strips of his shirt—as the boy’s eyes grow wider—and puts on a dress shirt, handing another one to Mark. Mark wonders if they are going someplace, which indeed they are!

    When asked where they’re going, Mark replies that it’s a surprise.

   Before he even knows it, the primo is sitting in what looks to be a bar with female strippers and prostitutes, drinking down shots with his braggadocious cousin.

    For a moment they have a serious conversation, Mark asking if Luis has graduating from school which Luis declares he will be soon, planning simply to “get the fuck out of here,” obviously unhappy with his Laredo, Texas existence.

    What about San Antonio, Mark innocently asks.

    “For what, so that I can come and visit you, baby?” And Luis’ next question is a painful one for the boy, “Seriously, why are you such a square. It’s not like you’re this fucking dork or you’re ugly or something, you know?”

    There’s little Mark can answer, wanly turning his cousin’s comments in a kind of joke: “You think I’m not ugly?”

    “I mean, maybe if you cleaned yourself up and stopped hanging out with your fucking lab partner, you wouldn’t be such a mamma’s boy, you know?”

    How can anyone, especially a sensitive, probably gay boy, answer that question. And it is the heart of this movie, a moment when Mark must finally begin to face up to who he really is.

    At that very moment, in sidles the favorite bar prostitute, sexually flirting with a few boys as she makes her way over to Luis, stands him up and unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off, leaving the buff Luis facing her off. He pulls of her blouse, and in the next minute we see Mark sitting on a staircase outside a room wherein, quite obviously, his cousin and the woman are having a quickie.

     Luis soon comes out, zipping up his pants and turning the whore over to his cousin.

     The next scene will remind anyone acquainted with gay film of the numerous short films where young gay boys are forced to face off with prostitutes, much to their dismay (works such as Gregory Cooke’s $30 of 1999, Cameron Thrower’s Pretty Boy of 2015, and Taisia Deevva’s The Cure and Denis Laikhov’s The White Crows, both of 2023).

   But in each of those works, the boy explained the situation or the women caught on rather quickly. Elena (Carla Tassara) is far less insightful, imagining simply that it’s the boy’s first time with a woman. She isn’t mistaken, but she can’t at all comprehend why he can’t get an immediate erection, presuming that he’s just nervous.

    As she sits on him, trying to arouse him and involve him sexually, you can see the increasing look of terror and frustration registered upon his face. He finally sits up, bent over in tears.

    She still doesn’t get it, as she attempts to hand him back his money, which he demands she keep.

    She can only draw his face down to her shoulder for a hug, which he finally rejects, quickly standing and dressing.

    It has clearly been an earth-shattering night what with his cousin’s pointed questions and now his own full awareness of his disinterest in the opposite sex.

    Luis is waiting outside, congratulating his cousin for the joy of the experience.

   As Mark drives Luis home, all he can do is peer over at his sleeping cousin, finally as they arrive and park, carefully, skittishly placing his hand over his primo’s hand, his admission to himself, if no one else, of his real love.

    This is a gritty coming out tale in which, as in the deep history of gay experience, there seems to be no one to come out to except to oneself.

 

Los Angeles, November 27, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2025).