cruising
the spiritual world
by Douglas Messerli
Justin Kelly and Stacey
Miller (screenplay, based on the essay by Benoit Denizet-Lewis) Justin
Kelly (director) I Am Michael / 2015
Benjie Nycum and Daniel
Wilner (directors) Michael Lost and Found / 2017
After watching, quite by
accident, Ben Nycum’s short documentary, Michael Lost and Found (2017),
I read the essay, first published in 2011 by The New York Times
Magazine, “My Ex-Gay Friend” by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, following that up
with viewing the Justin Kelly-directed film based on the essay, I
Am Michael, that appeared in 2015. Although the reviews of the longer film
were often negative—Nycum and Wilner’s documentary being filmed, in part, to
counteract its vision of his lover, Michael Glatze’s transformation from gay
activist to conservative Christian minister—I think that, perhaps, my order of
viewing and reading these works allowed me a more tolerant view of all three,
and certainly gave me a more nuanced understanding of its still, often-puzzling
focus, Glatze (played in the longer movie by James Franco).
Even
today the transformation of Glatze remains a kind of shocking event,
particularly within the gay world. To watch such a committed being as
Glatze—who seemingly arrived in San Francisco well-read in theories of gay and
gender theory, who would join the staff of the San Francisco-based
national magazine for young gay men, XY, demanding that
people not just “accept” but “celebrate” their gay sexuality, and who dedicated
many years to helping young gay boys, several of whom had been thrown out of
their homes and were still having difficulty with their sexuality, to find
their way into that joyful community—gradually pull away from the gay world
and, ultimately, insist the same kinds of gay youths he had previously helped
must return to the closet and accept Christ in order to save themselves,
arguing that “homosexuality prevents us from finding our true self within”
seems nearly unbearable.
What
had brought about such a radical transition? And how could an individual who
had expressed so much love, not only to his partner, Bennett (Zachary Quinto in
the movie) and his live-in third lover Tyler (Charlie Carver), but to so many
young gay and lesbian women, suddenly turn his back on them to seek out the
love of a fellow Christian fundamentalist woman? The hypocrisy seems so
apparent to outsiders that it wounds those of us who remain proud gays.
Kelly’s
film, at times, makes out Glatze to be an impenetrable villain, and for many in
its audience it almost seems justified, despite the fact that the movie also attempts
to show the slow drift away of Glatze from the causes to which he was so
committed. Nycum and Wilner argue that the changes were part of a larger
breakdown exacerbated by Glatze’s sudden panic attacks when he began to
fear that he had inherited a heart disease that killed his father; the film
does attempt to convey this shift, although Franco in his brooding
inarticulateness seems unable to explain what is actually happening within
Glatze’s head. Stares into space and an obsession with reading and cataloging
the Bible simply don’t add up to his sudden turnabout. Quinto and Carver are
left, in many scenes, with nothing to do but look shocked.
Even
Denizet-Lewis’s original essay on his friend, Glatze, puts those radical
changes into the context of such a short period that we can only rub our heads
with wonderment:
A
lot had happened in the decade since we last saw each
other:
he and Ben started a new gay magazine (Young Gay
America, or Y.G.A.); they traveled the
country for a docu-
mentary
about gay teenagers; and Michael was fast
becoming
the leading voice for gay youth until the day,
in
July 2007, when he announced that he was no longer gay.
To be fair, Glatze had long argued that sexuality was not simply a
“this or that” issue, that it is was not like a suit one put on to never take
off, sexuality being a shifting thing, ideas which have become increasingly
popular in the years since with our rising understanding about transgender
individuals who have taken years to recognize their true identities.
In
Nycum and Wilner’s film we meet a Glatze who is still loving and caring, his
wife and him having turned against the more fundamentalist Christian teachings
to create a sort of non-denominational church that accepts anyone who wishes
spiritual guidance. And a bit oddly, he seems to explain all the most
fundamentalist notions of religion to be based upon greed.
Glatze’s
wife, moreover, also appears to be a loving and kind soul whom nearly anyone
might seek out. Nycum, himself, praises her:
Well
for starters I adore his wife, I think she's an
amazing
woman, she's someone I would love to
hang
out with, I could see myself being attracted to her.
So
from that perspective I was so relieved that
Michael
had this person in his life.
The film also gives nod to this idea, as we watch Glatze’s girlfriend
discovering on the internet what several of her fellow women students already
knew, that Michael had previously been an outspoken gay man.
What
the film also makes clear is that Glatze was seeking all sorts of spiritual
possibilities, including the meditation he might find in Buddhism. Although we
do sense in that search a kind a manic confusion, since he seems attracted to
idea as much by an attractive young Buddhist, Nico (Avan Jogia), whom he
quickly beds, as for its spiritual concerns. Indeed, because of his constant
Christian quotations, he was asked to leave the retreat.
Standing
back, after reading and seeing all three of these recountings of Glatze’s
internal shifts, one recognizes, first of all just how powerful were those who
love him—Nycum, Denizet-Lewis, and Michael’s wife—and, secondly, that perhaps,
as his fellow XY colleague, Peter Ian Cummings once
queried: was Michael ever really gay?
At
a very young age, he had all these very well thought
out
theories about identity and sexuality. Maybe this gay
or
queer identity that fascinated him, and that he had taken
on,
wasn’t really true for him. It doesn’t explain why
he
says such ridiculous things about gay people now,
but
maybe, just maybe, he’s not in denial about his
own
sexuality.
I, personally, have known at least two
straight men who suddenly went through a kind of gay transition, acting out
sexual activities and what they thought was gay behavior before later
abandoning them; and I have one openly gay friend who seems to behave far more
like a straight man in his sexual attractions.
In
retrospect, it seems that what Michael Glatze was seeking all along was a kind
of spiritual identity, something which could bring order and meaningfulness to
his life. Surely the rave parties he and Nycum attended in the Castro or even
their seemingly joyful ménage a trois relationship with Tyler might have made
the peaceful sense of spiritual well-being that Michael was seeking difficult.
Despite his denials, perhaps the gay world was, for Michael, something like a
suit he put on and couldn’t easily take off. It took a radical awakening (a
familiar refrain in the American spiritual tradition) to permit him to seek
elsewhere for his religious meanings, which it appears in Nycum’s and Wilner’s
documentary that he has not quite yet found.
In
the gay world, “cruising” is a term generally used to describe a search for
someone to have sex within a bar or on the street; hopefully, a search for
someone to love. Michael uses the same process to search for spiritual meaning
without recognizing the immense sacrifices such a search entails. Perhaps he
has finally found peace in his small Wyoming church. One can only hope so, and
none of those who loved him wish him to suffer. But then, surely, he already
has, and caused others to suffer as well.
Los Angeles, June 26,
2017
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (June 2017).
