Roberto Pérez Toledo | Hidroalcohólico (Hydroalcoholic) / 2020

because of grandma

by Douglas Messerli

 

Roberto Pérez Toledo (screenwriter and director) Hidroalcohólico (Hydroalcoholic) / 2020 [5 minutes]

 

Hydroalcohoholic of the same year, 2020, also explores gay sex in the days of the pandemic of 2020-2022. In this film Rafa (Adrián Expósito) shows up at Javi’s (Julian Jaramillo) door. Both boys are masked, but Javi even wonders why Rafa is there, particularly when he carefully outlines his fears. He brings his grandmother groceries each day and would be horrified if she caught COVID from him and died. He even questions Javi about his activities. It’s troubling enough that he has been out with a few close friends, but the fact that he still goes to the gym, one of the most dangerous of places, gives him further pause.

      Yet he can’t resist being with the boy with whom he’s evidently communicating on the internet. He unzips his bag and brings out a small bottle of watered alcohol to rub on his own and his friend’s hands. As he does so, the action itself becomes sexual and the two rub their most accessible body parts together in almost in a frenzy.

      It brings Rafa to suggest they might have sex, but with masks on—just for his grandmother’s sake—meaning they won’t kiss. Javi impatiently describes it as surreal, but is ready to proceed only if, for a just a moment, the other boy removes his mask just to get a glimpse of the “real thing.” Slowly Rafa removes his mask, as does Javi, both revealing beautiful smiling faces, something surely these two will remember as they rub their entire bodies together for what may be for the first time since the quarantine.

     But first Rafa demands a dose of hydro-alcohol, but the application will surely be fun at that.

     “This is going to be very weird,” comments Javi. 

     “Everything is weird these days,” Rafa responds.

    Strangely, given the circumstances, it almost appears as if sex has again become something of a tease, an experience that demands the decorum and restraints of another age previously abandoned.

 

Los Angeles, March 2, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2023).