David Brown | Rural Heat / 1997

a wilde coming out

by Douglas Messerli

 

David Brown (screenwriter and director) Rural Heat / 1997

 

The school is preparing for its annual theatrical productions of various kinds, including a presentation of a selection from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest. Various of the performers, directors, and school mistresses are gathered backstage as we hear a constant voice- over of announcements for the performances.

     Meanwhile, one of the boys, Gregory (John Matthews) is brought up, almost by the ruff his neck, by his mother to another of the thespians, Matthew (Brian Glanney) who is told in no uncertain terms to stay away from her son; “He’s told me all about you.”

     Matthew is more than a little startled by the fact his friend Gregory had told his parents all about their gay relationship. Gregory suggests they would have found out in any event and that it’s better this way. He also suggests that Matthew is going to have to tell “her,” since Gregory’s mother is also going to tell “her” as well. Whether “her” refers to his apparent “girlfriend” Bernadette—who pulls Matthew demanding he help her with her lines—or his mother—who is one of the multiple directors of this affair—is uncertain. In any event, Gregory soon spots Matthew and Bernadette (Mia Gallagher) kissing. It doesn’t help for Matthew to explain that it was her doing, not his. Even his admitting to Gregory that he loves him doesn’t seem to help.

     And meanwhile, Gregory must soon go on as Algernon Moncrieff in the Wilde play, while the John Worthing character, to be performed by Christopher (Darren Stallard), has just been found drunk in the school bathroom; since Matthew knows the lines, he is asked to substitute.

     Chaos is let loose upon the stage in the form of magic tricks, sword-swallowing, and backstage high jinks. But soon the Wilde scene begins, with Jack having to admit that he believes Algernon to be untrustworthy. But suddenly he begins to change the lines, admitting that “We share the unspeakable vice of the Greek.” The backstage prompter is most confused, the schoolmistress becoming quite distraught with the line change, although anyone who has ever seen the play realizes that if Wilde could, he might have written just such a line into that work.

    Matthew stares into the space of the audience, announcing, “We are lovers.” He steps off stage to announce to his mother that he is in love with Gregory, she replying “I know. Go on with the show.” The schoolmistress attempts to close down the show, demanding the curtain be dropped. But Matthew’s mother insists the “show must go on!” And it is too late by this point, anyway, to hide the matter since Matthew and Gregory are almost in each other’s arms.

     In 1996, the year previous to this short film, Hettie Macdonald’s Beautiful Thing had demonstrated two boys coming out without the full public announcement of this work, and by the next year, British director Simon Shore’s Get Real and American director David Moreton’s Edge of Seventeen would establish the basic format of the genre as a feature film that I’ve described as the “Coming Out” movie, version B. But this short Irish work has to be described as the first film to represent that genre’s essentials: the admission to each other of their gay love, a temporary or permanent break in their relationship due to the unreadiness of one of the lovers, and the final public announcement of gay sexuality, accepted or rejected by parents and society in general.

     The quality of the DVD I saw was far from excellent and, as so very may amateur productions, the sound along with the heavy Irish accents create problems for Brown’s film school project, particularly for the American ear. Let us hope that this important 13-minute work will soon be restored and brought into a better format with subtitles.

 

Los Angeles, July 10, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2023).

Henry K. Norvalls | Shower / 2012

invitation to a sexual act

by Douglas Messerli

 

Henry K. Norvalls (screenwriter and director) Shower / 2012 [7 minutes]

 

There is, at first, something rather charming about Norwegian director Henry K. Norvalls’ horrific short film, Shower (2012). A swimmer (Svend Erichsen) is showering in a public facility. Another hunkier man (Per Magnus Barlaug) enters and takes another stall. Within a few moments, the first showerer hears strange noises coming from the other stall, pauses the flow of water, listens, and returns to his cleanly business.

 

     Soon after, he hears the sound of pleasurable groans, and again he stops momentarily what he’s doing, only to return to bathing himself. When it happens a third time, his curiosity, and we can presume his hormones, are somewhat aroused, and he turns off the water, darts out of the stall, and quickly moves into a stall closer to the sound of the pleasure.

      Finally, witnessing the man openly masturbating in the stall, he chastises him for his inappropriate behavior. Almost in total innocence, the man says, he enjoys it.

      A bit flummoxed, the swimmer suggests this not the place for that kind of behavior, with the man responding once more about how much enjoys it, moving out into the changing room, presumably with an erect penis.

      Even more angered by the recalcitrant masturbator’s behavior the first man once more expresses his disconcertion about the second’s public sexual activities, although one might argue with only one other being to observe him, his actions are just slightly “public,” and Barlaug’s character even suggests something like that, arguing that if the other man truly found such behavior so abhorrent he might have left immediately, but instead has stayed and even moved closer to the engagement.

     The first man briefly turns away, but turns back when the sexually aroused man tells the first that he is even more excited by the other’s observation of the acts, and outrightly asks him, “Put your hand on my shoulder.”

     Almost as in slow motion, Erichsen’s character moves forward as if in a trance, putting his hand on the other’s shoulder as the man again proceeds to jack off.

     The first man’s eyes widen in witnessing the immediate action, stuttering out the words, “Is there something else you want me to do?” He seems to almost be pleading for further involvement, for an invitation to participate in the sexual act.

      After what seems like forever in a 7-minute film, the second responds: “Kiss me when I come.”

It is, when one thinks about it, a rather strange request. One might presume he would ask the other man to help in the masturbation, to perform fellatio, or even become involved in other sexual services, but the very innocence of asking him almost to award him for the success of his self-pleasuring is a bit odd and distancing even if at the same time there is a kind of utter innocence in the request.

     An even longer few seconds of only the sound of the hand slapping across his penis ensues, followed by a growing moan in the masturbator’s chest, as he cries out “Now, now,” the first man, wearing a gold chain from which hangs a tiny cross, moving toward the other’s lips for a kiss.

       At that very moment, an older man (Bjarne Hjelde) enters the showing room, obviously witnessing their acts. He says nothing as the camera returns to the expectant faces of the two men.

     Without warning, the first man slugs the second, sending him to the floor, bending down to hit him again and again and again—so many times that it is difficult to even believe what we are suddenly witnessing immediately after his previous gentle and almost teenage-boy like behavior. His obvious wonderment and even joy has turned, with a blink of the eyes, into hatred, as the camera pans back to show the body of the dead showerer, blood pooling up beside his head.

        Every openly gay man probably has long heard of such stories. In the late 1960s when I was active in the New York City gay scene, I heard time and again such tales of how a simple sexual encounter turned murderous the moment the act came to an end, legendary stories of how a friend of the teller’s had been picked up for sex never to be seen again, or, surely a common urban legend, how a stranger involved in fellatio suddenly bit off the man’s penis the second the sperm began to well up. And we all later read of the repulsive perversions of the Milwaukee madman, Jeffrey Dalmer, who killed and sometimes ate parts of the bodies of 17 boys and men from 1978 to his capture in 1991.

       These ominous warnings were part and parcel of living in a hostile environment wherein homophobia was a natural result of the culture’s general fear and even terror of gay men and the growing LGBTQ community as whole. But to see it so lucidly laid out in Norvalls film came as something of a shock. As commentator Ivan Kander writes:

 

“With one location, two characters, and minimum dialogue, Norvalls crafts an undeniably engaging scene that exposes its protagonist to his bare core, both literally and figuratively. ...In other words, it’s a character drama about sexuality, repression, and identity that essentially feels like a suspense film. Quite simply: it’s tough to look away from.”

 

     As Norvalls himself described his response to an international short [movie] challenge that asked its participants to interpret the theme “naked”:  “I came to the realization that naked for me meant to be caught in a lie or have a secret revealed, when others knew what I did not want them to know.”

     It’s the “not wanting” others to know that leads to the swimmer’s attempt to blot out the very existence of the evidence, in this case a human being simply enjoying the pleasures of his penis.

 

Los Angeles, November 28, 2020

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (November 2020).  

Miguel Lafuente | Lo que quiero de ti (What I Want from You) / 2012

the stalkers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Miguel Lafuente (screenwriter and director) Lo que quiero de ti (What I Want from You) / 2012

[13 minutes]

 

As we approach Halloween again, my least favorite of holidays, I thought it might be time for a new gay horror film, my least favorite genre. As I ask elsewhere, don’t LGBTQ+ individuals have enough danger to face up to without having killed off by their own kind?

     Spanish director Miguel Lafuente’s short film of 2012 begins as a kind of throwback to the romantic films of the late 1930s and 1940s, or even to the kind of world described in Knut Hamsun’s fiction Hunger of 1890, wherein men, becoming suddenly obsessed, followed women—or in this case men—in an attempt to get to know everything about them and, ultimately, to meet up with these fantasy-like figures. Today we call it stalking, as the stalker Daro (Jaime Astuy) describes himself late in the film.

      Daro has first encountered his beautiful “victim,” Victor (Juna Luis Peinado) at a film showing of Nosferatu, an appropriate venue for what we soon discover about Victor. For if we might feel sorry for Victor—who early on, through Daro’s surveillance of him, we observe getting locked out of a lover’s apartment—we soon discover that Victor himself is a handsome psychopath who the minute he ejaculates wants to immediately rid himself of his newest lover.

      Victor, in fact, might be described as a stereotype of the old school queer, men who never getting enough of sex quickly move on to another. That was, after all, why AIDS so quickly spread throughout the gay community, so the legend has it.

      But Victor is a more complex figure, he two stalking his companions for long periods before he finally moves in for sexual contact. And if, after that moment, he becomes absolutely disinterested in his “victim,” he realizes that his compulsion is quickly developing to not only “love ‘em and leave ‘em,” to torture them and send them off. Particularly with one young man, he plays a bondage game which turns nasty when he suddenly becomes a kind of vampire figure, stabbing his sexual companion in the next and sucking up his blood (actually, he doesn’t like the taste and spits it out) before further torturing him and sending him off into the horrible night.

       Having had wonderful sex previously with his own private stalker, Daro—the two naturally share a love of classic movies—he has simply ignored him since the event. But Daro has continued on, creating cinematic scenarios, as he did the first time he encountered Victor (see above), following him closely and almost daring him to arrange for a further meet-up.

       When the two finally do meet up again, perhaps Victor, more smitten by the young and beautiful young Daro than he admits, and Daro, in turn, explains his own compulsion, when things take a different turn.

     When Victor asks Daro what he wants from him, the possessive romantic youth immediately responds, “I want you. I want life.”

        That is, of course, perhaps the very worst thing to say to someone who wants only to move ahead, like Don Juan, in search of his next sexual conquest. As Victor admits to his psychiatrist, when he told me we wanted my life, I took his.

         Perhaps the lesson we learn from this fascinating metaphorical short work is to never match up a possessive individual with a man who wants total sexual freedom. In the late 1990s and early 2000s young would-be married men were not truly compatible with gay boys of the pre-AIDS days. 

 

Los Angeles, October 27, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2023).

 

Cuong Ngo | The Golden Pin / 2009

the impossibility of turning a lover into a friend

by Douglas Messerli

 

Matt Guerin and Cuong Ngo (screenplay), Cuong Ngo (director) The Golden Pin / 2009 [15 minutes]

 

The Golden Pin is another film about the difficulties young men and women of Asian heritage have in coming out to their parents given the strong sense of familial expectations and cultural pressures. This work by Canadian director Cuong Ngo focuses on the character Long (Kris Duangphung), a swimmer in love with fellow swimmer Ryan (Ben Bela Böhm), who hasn’t yet been able to tell his parents about his sexuality.*

    This 15-minute film puts the central issue right up front, with Long’s Vietnamese father intoning what must have been a speech heard by his son many a time as he grew up, an intonation of family failures and desires that begins with the reminder that Long is their only son; they wanted more children but were allowed only one. All of his brothers were killed during the war. “You’re the only hope to continue the family line.”

     The centuries’ old heteronormative notion of the family line being continued dominates the young boy’s experience, and is an emotionally heated topic not easily shed even for a gay man. Clearly it’s having a terrible effect on his love life with Ryan as Long continues to date his beautiful girlfriend Vanessa (Lily Nguyen). And early into this work, Long’s family hosts an elegant party, to which Ryan is invited wherein his father announces that Long and Vanessa are to be married.

    A complete shock and sadness registers upon Ryan’s face, but this is not a soap opera, and basically, although there are certainly dark encounters that follow between the two gay lovers, the focus remains on Long and what the decision to obey family tradition means to him as he is forced to suffer the consequences of never being to find the love he really seeks.

      A beautiful sequence in the swimming pool where Ryan encounters him about not sharing the fact of his marriage is not played out as some hostile reprimand, but rather a true attempt by Ryan to try to probe into the wall Long has been forced to create in order to keep his desires in abeyance  in the process of suddenly turning his lover simply into a friend—an impossible proposition revealed in the next moment as the two young men kiss, with Long pulling away, apologizing, knowing that his actions are the wrong ones, but unable to challenge them.

      Lots of long looks in the mirror, stalking the room, staring on photographs of himself with Ryan, and other tropes of inner dilemma follow. But finally, it is his mother (Minh Ngoc Nguyen) who notices that her son cannot sleep and comes to him to talk. She senses his worry about the wedding and relates a long story beginning with the fact that for her wedding she had choose a yellow dress, even though her husband’s family were against it, particularly since her former boyfriend had known about her love of yellow roses. She tells her son a story that she has never before shared with him.

      On the boat from she escaped from Viet Nam, his father saved her life by rescuing her from the refugee camp, presumably through his proposal of marriage. But just a few days before the marriage, her ex-boyfriend showed up in the same camp. Torn between love and obligation, she wrote a farewell letter the night before the wedding to Long’s father, determined to follow her heart. But her lover wouldn’t permit it, and disappeared as he had previously, leaving her the golden hairpin passed on to him by his mother as a goodbye present. They had just attended a classic opera where the Princess refused the King’s order to abandon the warrior she loved in order to marry King whom she didn’t love.

      The King sent her poison, a rope, and a sword. But she chose none of them, stabbing herself instead with an object like the golden pin.

       But I didn’t choose that, she admits. People all have tragedies, but we need to move on. “It’s fate,” she argues.

       It sounds almost as if she is suggesting that he must accept the fate that he is born into. Pausing in her story, however, she holds his face close to hers and argues that she wants him to be happy and to stand up for what he believes, even though it is clear that she was unable to; that she has lived a life basic unhappiness.

       Were every Asian gay boy to have such an understanding and experienced mother. She leaves the golden pin with him, a woman’s object but also a kind of symbolic weapon for his own life or death.

       He arrives at swimming practice the next day to see his lover sitting on a bench in the hall. He turns into the showers instead speaking with him, and soon all the swimmers march out of the locker room, getting into their positions for a swimming maneuver. They all dive in, except Long who stands in place for a few moments, pondering matters, before he finally pulls down his goggles and jumps in. During the credits we watch the bodies swim back and forth underwater across the pool before they finally come up, smiling, the camera moving one by one down the line to observe their faces.

       The film provides no definitive answer to the issues that are rushing through Long’s mind, but somehow it nearly impossible to imagine that he will not not turn back to his swimming friend for a deep hug and a kiss after the others have left. Indeed, any other decision is nearly unimaginable unless he chooses to become a martyr for a cause that no longer has any meaning. His decision is surely a refusal to marry into the same kind of unhappy relationship into which he mother had.

     

*Just a few short and feature films since 2000-2020 which share the Asian perspective (China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indonesia) in exploring LGBTQ+ sexualities are Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady (2004), Samantha Rebillet’s The Suitor (2004), Tsai Ming-liang’s 黑眼圈 (Hēiyǎnquān) (I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone) (2006), Hong Khaou’s Summer (2006), Josh Kim’s 엽서 (The Postcard) (2007), Vũ Ngọc Đãng’s Hot boy nổi loạn và câu chuyện về thằng Cười, cô gái điếm và con vịt (Rebellious Hot Boy and the Story of Cười, the Prostitute and the Duck) (2011), Liang Hu’s Listen (2012), Hong Khaou’s 轻 摇晃 (Qīngqīng yáohuàng) (Lilting) (2014), Ray Yeung’s Paper Wrap Fire (2015), Andrew Ahn’s Spa Night (2016), Leon Cheo’s People Like Us (2016), Chih-Yen Hsu and Mag Hsu’s 誰先愛上他的 (Dear Ex) (2018), Hao Wu’s All in My Family (2019), Ray Yeung’s 叔．叔 (Suk Suk) (2019), Szu-Wei Chen’s 小傑 (Jay) (2019), Koo Chia Meng’s After Noon (2020), and Alice Wu’s The Half of It (2020). Although, there is no one common theme or issue in this diverse selection of films, conservative attitudes toward sexuality and generational differences in attitude are a common subject. An archetypical film concerning these issues was Ang Lee’s 喜宴 (The Wedding Banquet) of 1993.

 

Los Angeles, June 23, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).

Damian Overton | Papercut / 2018

everything to lose

by Douglas Messerli

 

Damian Overton (screenwriter and director) Papercut / 2018 [14 minutes]

 

Actors Josh Kieser and Kieton Beilby play the two film actors, Kane and Gabriel, up for the same award for a performance in a film as recounted in Australian film Papercut, written and directed by the Damian Overton.

     The two men, like other major film actors in the past, are in a gay relationship, but over their drive into the city for the ceremonies, sitting in the backseat of a limousine driven a man named David (Donnie Baxter), they discuss their priorities for their careers and the problems of being in the closet while being involved in an acting career.

     The situation is probably not so very different from discussions between Cary Grant and his lover Raymond Scott, who lived together for 11 years so intimately that the studios finally ordered a photo shoot to tamp down the rumors by presenting the couple as bachelor roommates in their so-called “Bachelor Hall,” a piece aimed primarily at their female audiences in the photo tabloids.

    Given that photographer Jeremy Zerbe was a gay man and shot them in numerous homoerotic poses and Ben Maddox, the closeted gay journalist who edited the spread, slipped in several suggestive captions, it didn’t work; and Grant was forced by the studios in 1934 to marry Virginia Cherrill, a marriage which lasted 13 months before he rushed back into Scott’s arms, the two “rooming together” once again.

     Or certainly such a conversation might have happened between Anthony Perkins and his then lover Tab Hunter, Perkins evidently so career-oriented that when Hunter mentioned that he was being considered for a new role, Perkins auditioned for it, grabbing the role away from his lover.    

     Kane and Gabriel, are also headed for rocky times, as Kane, apparently more highly career-oriented than his lover, at first seems terrified that if Gabriel wins the award he will have to thank Kane, providing further fodder for the tabloids who have already scented that something might being going on between the two given the coy statements Gabriel as made.

      Kane is determined to straighten up his lover the night before by reading him the agent’s riot act: he should read what studio has provided him to say and he should meet up with André (previously Andrew) who will tell him where to go, who to talk to at the ceremony, and how to behave. This understandably does not go over to well with the far higher spirited and “fuck-the-industry” attitudes of Gabriel.

      Kane is so uptight that he afraid even the driver, David, might be overhearing their conversation and knowing who they are, will leak out the truth of their relationship. Gabriel asks him if he knows who they are, to which David replies in the negative. But Kane, we soon discover, is even more nervous for other reasons.

      They are not heading to the awards venue, but stopping by to pick up a woman with whom Kane used to date, Brit. As they hit the carpet, he will announce on twitter that he and Brit are about to married, a marriage obviously arranged by the matchmakers from hell, his female agent and the studio publicists. Kane rotely tells Gabriel what may have to repeat to himself many times each day in order to survive: “She’s the best thing for my career at the moment.”

        So astounded is Gabriel, that he can only marvel at the stupidities coming out of the mouth from the man he thought he loved, responding with sarcasm instead of pain and anger. When Kane announces, “Look, I just want to make super clear that I’m straight now,” his lover responds: “Well, you didn’t seem that overly straight last night when my dick was in your mouth.”—words that once more send Kane into a fit, afraid as he is that David might be listening.

     Throughout the sequence of events, Kane keeps repeating that, on the top of their careers as they now are, “They have everything to lose.” But what he doesn’t realize is that in putting his career before all else and in determining to return permanently into the closet; as a fake heterosexual he will indeed be losing everything, including the love of a seemingly clever and handsome man, Gabriel. Without intending to be ironic, Kane simply expresses the situation: I want to say goodbye to whatever we had. It’s just been going on for way too long.”

      At one point when Kane is terrified that they’ve been overheard, as David asks “You gents all right back there?” he declares, “We’re fine, just talking about “footy” [soccer].” When David asks what team he supports, he has no answer except to say “the blue team.” For the first time, David opens up to tell them that he was once a professional soccer player who loves the game but evidently suffered an injury at his prime. He speaks a truth that passes right over Kane’s head, but is certainly applicable: “One day you’re at the top of your game and the next driving a car full of strangers to the city.”

      When they finally reach the spot where he plans to meet Brit, Gabriel passes on the pre-cocktail party, suggesting he’ll move on to the awards venue in the limo. Indeed, Kane is relieved to be freed from having any longer to deal with his now ex-lover.

      Once he leaves the car, Gabriel asks the driver to take him back to where he picked him up. He takes out the speech hidden in his pants cuff which he had told Kane that he had never written—probably filled with appreciation and love to Kane—and tears it up.

      David looks sadly in the rear-view mirror, saying “I loved your film by the way. You’re much better actor than your friend.”

      It terrifies me that such conversations are probably still happening every day in Hollywood, as well as the London, Paris, Mumbai, and Sydney film communities.

 

Los Angeles, October 19, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2022).

 

 

 

Mike Lemon | Touched / 2003

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.”

    He takes out a picture of his daughter Samantha and his former wife, explaining that he fucked that up over a year ago. He takes off his coat and shows Mike the needle marks. “They left me. They had to.” They’re now with her parents and they have a restraining order against him, so that he can’t even see his daughter. He was fired from his job and he’s been on the streets for months. As he describes his plight: “It’s hell.”

“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).