two men in desperate need for a hug
by Douglas Messerli
Mike Lemon (screenwriter and
director) Touched / 2003 [25 minutes]
After dinner with his female friend,
Mike (Bob Bowersox) determines, since it’s been a long while since he’s
actually touched another man, that he should stop in at a local gay bar, even
though he realizes the chances of, as he puts it, a “middle aged pudgy man,” still
being attractive any longer to anyone in the bar are slim.
To
his surprise, a very attractive young man begins cruising him almost the moment
he enters.
Even more surprising the young man,
Michael (David Duzenski) comes over and introduces himself. Mike buys him a rum
and coke. Michael, it turns out, does even know for sure if he is gay, but has
come because he’s curious. Although Mike is gay, he admits that he didn’t come
out until age 45 explaining that he was married before for 23 years and had 7 children.
Michael also admits that he is married at least for a couple of years;
he’s currently 24. He has one child. He describes himself as a mason.
But when the younger man asks the elder what he does, he surprisingly
answers—as we later discover, surprising even himself—“I’m on a spiritual
journey.”
When they take a cab to Mike’s
place, however, things begin the change. Suddenly Michael grows silent
suggesting that because of Mike’s comment about his being on a “spiritual
journey” he can no longer do what he was first intending to, to “kill him.”
Mike takes the comment with an odd serenity. “Why?”
Michael’s answer is equally strangely oblique and intriguing: “I don’t
know. I just knew I had to kill someone, and when I saw you I knew it was you.”
“But why would you want to kill someone?”
“Because I have to. I hate people. My life sucks.” He soon begins screaming,
“And I really fucked up, really fucked up.”
“If there’s something I can do…” ends in another shouting
session, with Michael saying the obvious: “What the hell could you do. Nothing!
So shut the fuck up.”
Almost immediately he calms down, however, apologizing. “I get so angry,”
he almost whimpers. “I don’t know what to do.”
He turns to go, with Mike assuring him that he doesn’t have to go,
Michael repeating that he “has to, or he might hurt him. I don’t want to but I
might.”
Mike insists that he trusts him, Michael almost unbelievably asking why.
Mike explains that he had no idea why he want to the bar, that he hadn’t
been there for more than a year and had no intentions of ever going again. My
feet just took me there and we arrived at about the same time. The only one he saw
was Michael.
Michael agrees, he felt the same way.
“Is there any doubt that we were supposed to meet tonight?” He wonders
whether there could have been anyone else at the bar who said what he said, and
cannot explain why he said it.
His next question is perhaps the most important of all: “How long has it
been since you’ve been held my someone?” Michael cannot even answer, but Mike
responds in kind, “Me too.”
He wonders if before Michael leaves if he can just hold him, no sex or
games involved.
The moment Michael hugs him, he breaks into tears, and together the two
retire to the bed, Mike hugging the younger man who cannot control his emotions
any longer.
It’s now almost morning, and Mike
dives Michael back to the spot where he met him, handing over a large some of
money, Michael at first refusing it, but upon Mike’s insistence finally does
so, telling him that he saved his life and awarding him a gentle kiss.
Mike calls his female friend, leaving a message: “I just wanted to tell you,
I touched someone.”
Evidently based on a real story, this can only remind any gay individual
who has had many encounters with others, that once in a while, there is still a
special someone with whom you truly communicate, not even sometimes sexually,
but meaningful, helping one remember what human love is really about.
Los Angeles, September 15, 2026
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(September 2026).
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