the wrong codes
by Douglas Messerli
Raoul O’Connell (screenwriter and director) A
Friend of Dorothy / 1994
Right off the bat, Raoul O'Connell’s 1994
short A Friend of Dorothy presented me with far too many things I simply
couldn’t swallow—and I don’t mean any of the appendages attached to the
attractive young boys in this tale. For example, why does a handsome young
freshman, Winston (O’Connell in the flesh) who transfers from Podunk State to
New York University (he’s obviously seeking something missing in his education)
with his “fat” (his father’s words not mine) girlfriend Anne (Anne Zupa) (read
“fag hag”), after having the incredible luck to be assigned to a room with one
of the most beautiful men on campus Tom (Kevin McClatchy), have absolutely no
clue where to find a nice guy with whom he might relieve his obvious sexual
tension. He reminds me, a little of a 19-year-old me, after having just landed
a temporary room on Jane Street in Greenwich Village, asking some boy if there
were a lot of gay people in the neighborhood. I should imagine that I wanted to
go to bed with the kid and was simply playing a ridiculous innocent to attract
his interest. His answer showed up the absurdity of my question: “Like selling
coals to Newcastle.”
Of
course Winston’s got the hots for his roommate, but he can’t quite figure out
if Tom’s gay or not (the roomie seems to have a girlfriend, but Winston can’t apparently
read between the lines that she’s simply Tom’s version of his Anne), a
confusion he maintains despite the fact that whenever the hunk looks his way he
flashes the most glorious smile and finds some way to put his hands on the new
kid, and even asks one night whether to pay his school debts if it’s an option
for him to “hock the family jewels” as he seductively strips off his T-shirt.
And I thought was I was being coy with my question! Winston doesn’t have a
ready comeback.
Why
does Winston head straight to the library where he finds only a heavy-set,
unattractive boy (the writer’s prejudice, not mine) and a horny female
librarian (Bianca, perhaps a transsexual), when everyone knows (as Winston’s
friend Anne later advises him) he might have trotted straight down to the
library basement bathroom, which, when he does he picks up a hot boy in the
next stall (Jerry Haggerty). But evidently bathroom sex just isn’t Winston’s
thing. Nor are the easy-going, always sexually available boys and girls at a
groovy drugged-out, guitar-playing party to which Anne drags her frustrated
friend.
Winston also seems to have some sort of aversion to the very
good-looking Asian boys who are on the verge of asking him to join their gay
liberation pink triangle group. O’Connell’s film seems to be filled with all
sorts of subtle racial prejudices. Winston is apparently so dumb that when a
park-bench preacher offers to show him the way to find joy in the village, the
new kid in town allows himself to be sucked into a Moonie indoctrination
session.
Even when Winston meets Tom’s absolutely beautiful “special buddy,” Matt
(Greg Lauren) who sits down next to him and puts his arm around him, the boy
can’t figure it out. Why, wonders Matt, has Winston just purchased new albums
of Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler and no Judy Garland? Why is Winston
reading D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover instead of Henry David
Thoreau’s Walden, Tom wonders. And surely even a guy from Podunk State
would have at least heard of Judy Garland and read of Thoreau, if not
having actually heard or read their works.
More confusingly, why is this young, very cute director, who probably
made this movie for his NYU film degree, suggesting that entry into the gay
world is dependent upon coded words and interests such as “Are you a friend of
Dorothy’s?” I don’t know, maybe in the early 1990s things had changed from the
New York I knew of in the late 1960s when if you saw a good-looking guy and he
looked back at you, you’d simply ask “My place or yours?” or at least “You got
some place to go?” And on occasion even the bathrooms weren’t that bad. And
where did all the gay bars go? Surely at least Julius’ was still nearby? And even Winston must have had heard of Stonewall, just a few blocks away from
Washington Square.
Meanwhile, Winston does get up the nerve to clumsily trip over to Tom’s
bed and reach out his had to gently stroke Dorothy’s friend before they fall
passionately into active sex. Too bad Dorothy’s got to leave Oz the very next
day, Tom having found a job and now required to give up his university dorm
room.
Winston learns to swallow his pride and agrees to listen to a Garland
record (after which I’m sure he’ll have to admit that as good as Streisand is,
Garland is better) as he picks up a new boy in the record shop.
I’d laugh at all this, except that my young gay friend Felix once told
me that he utterly adored Bernadette Peters but couldn’t bear Audra McDonald.
Perhaps if I suddenly found myself young again I wouldn’t know the proper codes
to find somehow with whom I might go to bed. But then perhaps I’ve always just
been less choosy than Winston and my friend Felix appear to have been.
Certainly, I had a lot of fun. But then....I'm now an old man.
Los Angeles, February 8, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (February 2021).
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