appointment
in samarra
by Douglas Messerli
Mike Roma (screenwriter and
director) The Dick Appointment / 2020 [10 minutes]
Wally (Patrick Reilly), a skinny gay
boy who clearly feels bodily inferior to all the boys with whom he would love
to have sex, has lost his lover after only four weeks. What’s a bottom to do
but spend his days on Grindr and other such apps trying to find the perfect
lover?
It doesn’t work. Most sign off before he can even attempt to lure them;
he’s rather self-destructive in his determination to meet up. But far more
importantly, he isn’t sure he really wants a lusty fuck. One contact, also a
bottom, seems more interested in just an episode of cuddling. But our hero
soldiers on, determined to discover a hunky new boyfriend.
Nothing comes of it. One either really or imaginatively fantasy lover meets
up, and the moment he’s heard that Wally is clean, turns him over preparing to
treat him somewhat like an inflatable doll. Wally dismisses him in frustration,
as I had long before felt necessary to do with this little film about stereotypical
gay types.
Top? Bottom? I suppose such terms must mean something in gay mythology,
but my companion and I never felt the need to play those roles. I was both; he
was neither, not preferring anal sex. The difference did not interfere with our
being our binding as a couple for now 56 years.
The question might really be why gay movies have to continue to promote
such delimited conceptions of gay men, who play roles instead of play with
other human beings. If all your life you keep waiting for a “dick,” that may be
precisely what you are left with.
I never did apps; Grindr was not a reality in my days, but I probably
found more sexual contacts than poor Wally could even imagine just walking down
the smalltown streets of Madison, Wisconsin or in the Greenwich Village alleys
of New York. But if I had been offered an opportunity to just cuddle up and
watch a movie (as actor Colin McCalla offers him), I am sure I would have
immediately taken up the offer, sex or no sex. It sounds fun. I also liked to talk
to people.
I’ve grown a bit exhausted, despite my youthful love of cruising, of men
who need to endlessly scroll down their cellphones looking for a pretty face.
In my days, you just walked out your door and looked for someone who might be
strolling your way that day. Or you met is small back rooms of bars to find
your “dick appointment.” I assure you it was for more exciting and fun.
But then, I suspect that was writer/director Mike Roma’s point. Too bad
he couldn’t have more simply expressed his viewpoint by having Wally take a simple
walkabout. If there’s any evidence that computers might have interfered with
our sexual pleasures, it is this film and the dozens like it. When did cruising
turn into a fast rotation of images, music turn into sampling, sex transformed
into an imaginary quick kiss and even more hurried fuck? Hello, I must be
going.
This short film is as forgotten
as the images Wally has been scrolling through before it has even begun.
Los Angeles, April 19, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(April 2026).
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