Ethan Gough | Do People Think We’re Gay? / 2025

do you think?

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ethan Gough (screenwriter and director) Do People Think We’re Gay? / 2025 [6 minutes]

 

This rather silly short film dares to ask the question of two presumably straight guys (Reece Vanderveen and Aiden Bond), or I should say dares for the two straight guys to ask the question about their friendship, which includes the necessity of holding hands in public (one feels uncomfortable in crossing open streets), living together, sleeping in the same bed, and spooning (i.e. curling up close with the other in bed), if they might suggest to others that they are gay. As one of them explains, it’s simply a matter that “I get lonely at night, and I need someone to cuddle.”

    Obviously, these two men are into deep, deep denial, since they maintain that despite their later open kisses—perhaps just the imagination of the one who has maintained an erection throughout the night—and simply their lovely rapport together has anything to do with homosexuality.

    Perhaps Michigan boys are simply not into such big words, but you’d think that they might at least offer up the possibility that they might be queer, even it they use the word in the old-fashioned manner.

    This film is obviously just a little tease. These guys are truly into one another in terms of male-on-male sexuality, selecting their records as a pair, shopping together for each other’s sweaters, even grabbing an imaginary cop of a naked man on a poster.

     Actually, I’ve met such true innocents, back in my university days, college roommates who loved to wrestle, hugged, shared their lives together without even stopping to consider whether their intimacy meant anything other than being a great ‘bro to another brother. I think they’re now both married to deeply possessive women.

     But really haven’t we gay men now have more to talk about than boys playing house without realizing it? Just as the barista reportedly says early in the film: “They’re so cute together.” But does any of this matter?

     Cute is a midwestern term for something that provides nothing but a surface pleasure. But these boys, curling up together in the middle of the night, are just dumb to the deeper joys they might have enjoyed. And frankly, I don’t give a damn anymore. Let them spoon in bed. This is 2025; even as an old man who no longer can get a hardon, I just want to fuck.

 

Los Angeles, January 25, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2026).