Jordan Fox | Parallel Circuit / 2025

train crash

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mikey Ragusa (screenplay), Jordan Fox (director) Parallel Circuit / 2025 [8 minutes]

If this US film from 2025 had gone on any longer than it’s 8-minute run, the two best friends of the story, Avery (Mikey Ragusa) and Jonah (Benjamin Tanner) might have realized that they are not on a “parallel circuit” but have already had their hard-wire circuits hotly connected and have crashed into each other so intensely that there is no turning back. But the film seems as confused as its characters.

     There is poor, lonely, much-abused school-boy Avery sitting home alone in his bedroom when who should knock as his bedroom window but his old high school friend, the beautiful boy of everyone’s dreams, Jonah, come straight through the window from his girlfriend on vacation evidently from Christmas break in college to re-engage with his sorrowful younger friend. He feels guilty for not having been there any longer to protect his obviously gay friend and he feels abused by his clingy girlfriend who throws a fit even when he announces he is on his way to see his old friend.

      I’ve seen this type of woman before, even though she’s invisible in this work, terrified that her lover might at any time pick up on his gay past, even if he believes he’s totally straight. Her presence is felt at every moment in the encounter with the two boys who simply cannot keep their hands off one another.

      Finally, the smoothly running friendship spills over into a moment of intense kissing that threatens to become a beautiful moment of gay sex—that is until the almost completely blind Jonah, stripping off their clothes, suddenly remembers, with perhaps the lamest excuse ever mouthed, “I can’t go on, I have a girlfriend.”

     Even the much-abused boy still locked away in high school, whom his peers call “a pussy,” wonders does Jonah really love her at all? But he is wise enough to push the pause button, suggesting they don’t have to figure out their relationship all in one night, although you’d think by this time something might have crept into that thick scull of pretty Jonah or at least leaked a little further into Mikey Ragusa’s (who plays the younger youth) script.

     These boys are so desperately in love that it is quite clear why his now home-alone girlfriend is spitting fire. Everyone but them must realize that they are no longer running like two trains as friends down the tracks, but have made a detour that simply must admit their crush/crash.

     I give it a week, a most a month before Jonah admits his relationship with the closet is caput. But then sometimes you have to hit the poor closeted boy over the head before he’ll come to terms with himself. And, yes I’ve seen it, sometimes he just can’t escape.

     I met a lovely young boy Polish boy in college who took me back to Chicago to visit his gay teacher and his friends, clearly hoping I might be encourage to have sex with him. I too should have protected him and brought out of the closet from which he was desperate to exit. I didn’t; I had sex with the teacher who though he’s found his love. Years later I joined by now married friend for lunch, long after I’d been in a full relationship with Howard. He begged me to please not tell his wife that we were having lunch together, that she would be furious he she found out. I never met his wife, and had no way or intention of contacting her, but I saw how “whipped” (the word Jonah uses to describe himself) he had been by his wife. Awareness does not come to all. And these days, for some waking up to anything different from what you’ve been taught by their poor ignorant parents is so, so very difficult. The closure of the mind is highly encouraged by local and federal governments.

 

Los Angeles, July 13, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).