My First 'Queer' Film

Recently, I went to go visit my brother in college. He's really into offbeat cinema: independent films, foreign films... he even has a collection of black and white 1950s school-hygiene films on tape.
(Those last ones are so anachronistic, they're hilarious, by the way... one of my favorites was a 50 year-old anti-marijuana film where a pair of guilty-looking teens were caught lighting-up a doobie in a school bathroom. The teacher walks-in, spots them and starts scolding them.
"Aww, c'mon Mister Johnson, we were only smoking a harmless marijuana cigarette!" the teens protest.
Mister Johnson waggles his finger. "Yup, you kids have a lot of words for it nowadays, dontcha? Reefer. Grass. Weed. Goofball. Mary Jane. Squeege. Mary Jo. Arizona Prairie Ginger. Pot. Flootwaddle. Skeezix. Bethchedruharudzeb. But it all boils down to one thing mister: it's dope." He grabs the joint and flings it to the floor. He grinds it under his spit-shined shoe. "One puffa this, sonny, and you can turn into a vicious killer of men! These goofballs are poison!" Heh, I almost expected him to add 'one puffa this and the Reds will march-in over the north pole, junior! You wanna turn us all int'a buncha Ivans??')

Anyways, Brother informs me that there's a 'Queer film' playing at an art studio nearby. That is to say, a film created for and by the gay community. Chelsea is busy tonight so he and I go by ourselves. We talk as we drive.

"I've never seen a queer film before... are they like: 'oh, I'm constantly stalked by ennui and existential dread!'?" I chuckle.

"Not always. This one is called Pink Narcissus. It was one of the underground queer films of the 1970s, so I've heard."

Hey, I'm open minded. I had a feeling that it probably has quite a bit of dialogue that might provide some insight into issues facing homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps. Oh, and there might be a few tasteful shots of the male genitalia, but I'm okay with that. This might be edifying to say the least.

What, do you think if I go to one gay film then that means I'm gay? Nope, sorry.

Not that there'd be anything wrong with that

Indeed, the film starts. It was Pink Narcissus. 1971. Directed by Anonymous. (Yeah, 'Anonymous'. I'm not kidding.)

The images flicker to the screen. After panning through a small jungle of potted plants, the camera focuses-in. The film was somewhat grainy; almost as if someone used a hand-held 8 millimeter camera to shoot it.

It was a semi-nude fellow laying-down in this rather airy pink chiffon bedroom. The framework is obviously balsa-wood thrown-together on a set, so it's not a real bedroom in the conventional sense. The walls and furniture were covered with sequins and costume-jewels. It's what it would look like if Liberace opened a halfway house. I shake my head. Surely this is a parody or something? No way can this be serious... I wince as I get a clearer look at what's going on: the main character is looking at himself in a mirror and pleasuring himself.

Then a dream sequence begins where he's envisioning himself as a matador. His 'bull' is a leather-clad biker and Spanish-like music plays as they play toro for a few minutes. And his bullfighter's cape is a sheer pinkish wisp of silk. Oh, his matador-style trousers are skin-tight and his genitals are situated in such a way that they are very pronounced. Oookay...

Then, the dream fades back into the sequined bedroom, the main character is struggling into some skin-tight, white pants and walking into a public urinal. He stands at the urinal, minding his own business... but then, the leather-clad biker from the matador dream comes into the urinal... they spot each other... The audience chuckles knowingly.

By now, I'm holding my head in my hands. No, no, this can't be right. So far, it's been horrible. This has to be a parody! This looks like a homophobe's attempt at approximating a gay film! But no, it gets worse. The anonymous public urinal hook-up continues...

The two are making-out on the floor of the urinal... pants get pulled-off and the two embrace each other... I gag. Not because it's two guys kissing, but because this scene isn't even being done in a remotely tasteful manner! They are in this filthy, public restroom, lying down on a never-mopped floor... in fact, the leather-gloved hand of the biker is splashing-around in the scummy water at the bottom of the urinal. Ick.

The film goes back and forth between the pink bedroom and various dream sequences. Each one becomes more and more explicit. There's one short scene where the main character is having his crank sucked-on by the biker, the biker is semi-submerged in a bathtub full of milk.

There's a knock at the pink bedroom door... and there's this bell-boy-style fellow bringing a package... his pants also look painted-on, there is no question as to the size of his dong... The audience chuckles.

Then there's this sort of Arabian Nights dream sequence in which the main character is sitting on satin pillows with a wide variety of semi-nude middle-eastern-style retainers around him... and they are all watching a male belly-dancer twirling round and round. The belly-dancer is totally naked, save for a bunch of mardis-gras beads and a wispy bolt of silk wrapped around his wang. He dances to this twanging, fast-paced music and his hard-on flops and bobs as he moves. I throw my hands over my eyes. Noooooo!

Kill me now!

The belly-dancing goes-on for what seems like fifteen or twenty minutes. He just keeps dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing... and every time the music slows-down and you think it's just about to stop, it just starts-up again. The audience murmurs with laughter.

Every now and then there's a hand superimposed over the belly-dancer... the hand is grasping a cluster of beads and is moving up and down along the cluster of beads in an obvious masturbatory fashion... after what seems like forever, the dancing ends with a head-on shot of an ejaculating member, spurting its creamy man-pudding all over the camera lens. The audience roars with laughs.

"Isn't this gonna ever end?" I whisper to Brother. He shrugs, grinning widely.

"This is hilarious!" Well, he doesn't seem to be getting-off on this. The cum is dripping-off the camera-lens with a semi-opaque mardis-gras bead-chain superimposed over it. "Sooohohoho.... manyyyyyy... beeheeeheeeeads!" He adds in a warbling, pretending-to-be-horny voice.

Back to the bedroom- our hero is lying down on the pink chiffon cushions, and imagines himself lying naked in a grassy field... then, this claymation butterfly flies-in and lands on his crotch. The butterfly flaps its wings and our hero writhes in pleasure... the butterfly is pleasuring him? He grasps himself and crushes the butterfly against his throbbing, veiny thingamabob. Chuckles come from the audience around me.

Things just get weirder... another dream sequence begins where our hero is dressed in a black suit with a cane, walking down a seedy urban street... the street has all sorts of gaudy flashing signs and everyone walking around the street is wearing no pants. The entire group of people is walking-around totally bottomless and are clearly fondling themselves the entire time. There are also these odd vaudeville-style pantomime things going-on in the background. Like in those silent comedy films where the damn dirty Irishmen are throwing crockery at each other and making over-exaggerated gesticulations. This goes-on for about ten minutes; our hero walks past it all, seemingly oblivious to the buffoonery going-on behind him.

Anyways, the movie goes-on for what seems like quite a while longer. I am grateful when it finally all ends...

What the flaming hell did I just see?

We filed-out of the theater

"Did we just watch porn?" I ask. I'm so confused. My head is spinning at the mish-mash of male-only sex-acts that I've just seen. Great Caesar's ghost!

"Oh yeah. Sure, NiceGuy." He snorts. "Everything is porn."

"But... but... we just watched ninety minutes of guys masturbating!"

"If you get-off from watching a person eating an apple, then a film of a person eating an apple is technically porn."

"But... there were a bunch of naked people playing with themselves!"

"It wasn't porn, it was art. It was satire."

"Well, I figured that it couldn't be serious... I mean... fer Chrissakes, no one had any pants! And when someone did have pants, they were pants that showed what direction his penis was pointing-in. I mean... if it was a bunch of straight people wanking-off, wouldn't it be considered porn?"

"Porn is tasteful..."

"Oh, believe me, not all porn is tasteful..."

"Okay, true. Porn is supposed to make you horny. Well, no one could get horny off this film because it was so distasteful."

"Okay, can you please explain it to me, then? Because I just don't get it. There wasn't one spoken word in the whole film."

"First of all the title of this has the word 'narcissus' in it. The main character is obviously in love with himself... that's why he's masturbating. He loves himself. In all those dreams: he was both master and slave to himself."

"There's one bit where it's obvious he's drinking a champagne glass full of his own pee!"

"Yes, he loves himself that much." He nods.

"But that one street scene where no one has any pants... everyone was jerking-off.

"Right, that represented the ghettoized gay lifestyle of the 1960s. All the vaudeville stuff, that was a commentary on the whole parodistic, ridiculous aspects of the lifestyle that were stereotyped by the world at large."

"But... one of them uses mustard as a lubricant! And there was an ice-cream push-cart marked 'Jism-cicles'!"

"Right, ridiculous. But the main character was walking past it all, above it all. He didn't need their campy, over-exaggerated, drama-queen lifestyle. He has himself to love."

"Are you just making this stuff up? I'm so confused... and how about the twenty minutes of belly-dancing? Explain that for me, because I have no idea."

"That... that one I can't explain. It was just a fantasy, I guess."

"It went on for ever. It wasn't related to the plot... hell, what plot? It was a mish-mash of images. All that dancing was intended to titillate, wasn't it?" Once the image of the bobbing wang was watched, it proved impossible to scour from the mind.

"No, it was too campy to titillate."

"The whole thing... It all... it looked like it was edited by a muttering madman in a basement dark-room! As for the directing... it was 'directing' insofar that the camera was actually pointed at the actors! It was like... like... Meet the Feebles, only with people instead of muppets!"

"Well, it's obvious that this was a cheap affair. Gay cinema usually doesn't have much funding behind it."

"With films like the one we just saw, no wonder! I swear, I came-off with the distinct impression that it was some kind of attempt at seedy, low-budget porn for morphine-addicts."

"It wasn't porn. Why do you keep insisting it was porn? Because it had a bunch of naked guys jacking-off? Is that porn? What's wrong with that?" I opt not to answer that one because I know I just can't win. He continues talking. "It was just a campy parody on certain stereotyped aspects of the gay lifestyle. The anonymous urinal hook-up. The leather-daddy biker. The skin-tight pants. The sequined furniture. Everything was too campy to be serious."

"I'm sorry, I just didn't know it was supposed to be a parody. I was trying to take it seriously. Well, you know, it had to be really easy getting costumes for that movie... I mean, for starters, no pants." I sigh. "Still... it was really kind of gross." I shivered as I tried to get some of the images out of my head.

"That's because directors in the U.S. don't like to use male genitalia. You're not used to it. Oh, sure, they can have a gorgeous woman naked in a film. That's no problem. But show so much as one dick, and they'll run him out of town. 'Out, ya tosser! You're a freak for showing a tasteful shot of the male genitalia!' Attitudes towards penises on film are so much more relaxed in Britain. Seriously, they can't possibly-"

"I... I was trying to take the genre seriously. I mean, if there were a few tasteful shots of the male package, I'd be okay with that... but this was just... you know, all in your face. Wanking everywhere. Does one really need all that wanking?"

"Too explicit?"

"Yes."

"Not all queer film is this explicit."

"Well, perhaps this was a bad film to start-off with?" I ask.

"Hmm... yeah. I guess maybe it was." He agrees. "Heh, but thanks for coming, though. Most straight people would shy-away from this kind of film. They'd react with 'what, will I catch 'gay' if I see it?'" he chuckles.

We get back to the apartment

Maybe I should've watched a different movie? Something more 60s-campy like The Adventures of Rat Pfink and Boo-Boo?

Chelsea was there waiting for me...

"Chelseaaaaaaa!" I wrap my arms around her and hop up and down. She laughs and hugs me right back.

"Have a good time, you two." Brother winks very obviously and walks into his bedroom.

Chelsea and I embrace, retreat to her bed, and make love. After, she lays on top of me in a disheveled, sweaty heap.

"Oh God, NiceGuy..." She pants. "You deserve a medal for that!" Out of breath, she runs her hand over my chest over and over. "God, the things you did to me... Whooo! God..."

Yup, I didn't catch 'gay'.

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"Show me a woman who isn't jealous of another woman, and I'll show you a man." -- Phil Hartman, News Radio.

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