at the brink
by Douglas Messerli
Aj Knight (screenplay), Darrin James
and Aj Knight (directors) Daisy Boy / 2021 [10 minutes]
Daisy Boy is a truly remarkable fantasy film wherein a young man,
Jameson (Aj Knight) again and again reimagines himself in liberating
landscapes, first with a black man, Guy (Indar Smith) who takes him to a
transgender/transexual bar where he is introduced as the “Daisy Boy,” a now
rather obscure term that refers to “a delicate, sort, of effeminate young man.”
The term shifted in the 20th century to be describes as a “pansy” or “buttercup.”
In Jameson’s imagined bar he suddenly, with glitter on his eyelids and
dressed in a yellow sports coats with a naked chest, reveals himself as a wild
young beauty, able to dance (as the actor readily proves) the night away. He is
welcomed by a true queen (Markus Molinari) who wonders what took him so long to
show up.
Later after that imaginary experience, he simply talks with his new friend about all of his problems, including even the necessity of “coming out” or even defining his sexuality. He hasn’t yet kissed another boy even, let alone fully figured out his identity. Yet in his dreams, he kisses Guy. But even that so real imaginative experience quickly wilts, as we find him back in his bedroom, seemingly awaiting a date.
A car honks. And suddenly the daisy boy again comes to life again,
adding the glitter to his eyes, and dancing down the street, with even the
lovely postman joining in and grabbing him by the balls, to which our daisy boy
objects. (This is after all a terribly “correct-thinking” version of true
liberation).
Yet, we know that our beautiful “daisy boy” is just on a new fantasy
roll. Will he truly ever come out of his shell? That is, obviously, the
question all young queer boys must answer at his age 16, despite his earlier insistence
at the bar that he is 18.
When you’re a 16 year-old effeminate young man you imagine all sorts of
things. You wish for a world that is just seemingly a few feet away from the
one in which you live. You can experience is so fully that you believe you are
actually sharing in the experience. But you are thousands of miles away from
the day, as Jameson wishes, to be able to kiss all the boys in his sight.
Daisy Boy is a liberating and truly exciting jump into a gay
world that keeps pulling its young hero back, the way all the restrictions we
put on youth do. He is ready; he is not ready yet. He is desperate, feeling
that he has already suffered a nervous breakdown. But he is simply not yet able
to make that leap into the full sexual world he desires simply because he
cannot yet full imagine it or comprehend its joys and dangers.
We were all there at one time or another, I probably stood at the brink
far longer than most of my gay peers. But at that age, you have no peers; you
feel alone. And you can jump only when you feel ready. And then, Daisy Boy will
dance his heart out.
This exuberant short gets it precisely right, and Aj Knight proves
himself to be a true charmer.
Los Angeles, June 30, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(June 2026).
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