Today I took the liberty to see a film that I’ve been eagerly waiting to see since it came out two years ago in 2006. I was told by close friends of mine, that I completely trusted, not to watch this film until I was 18. It wasn’t because of the content or subject of the film, it was merely because they felt that I would better understand the film two years after its debut. I can’t say that that’s necessarily true, I have to give myself more time to absorb what I’ve just seen and process it. I will say one thing, is that this movie has probably become my favorite movie, ever. I felt a connection with this movie, granted that I might not have gone through everything that the characters have, but regardless there’s a lot that I feel like I have.

What film am I talking about? I am talking about John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, which before you read anymore, please write the name down and the next time you want to see a movie, go and rent it. Purchase it. Download it. Just watch the film.

If you’re not one for spoilers, please stop reading. If you aren’t 18 or over, you should probably stop reading. Also, if two men having sex offends you, I suggest you stop reading.

Shortbus

Taken from the website:

John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS explores the lives of several emotionally challenged characters as they navigate the comic and tragic intersections between love and sex in and around a modern-day underground salon. A sex therapist who has never had an orgasm, a dominatrix who is unable to connect, a gay couple who are deciding whether to open up their relationship, and the people who weave in and out of their lives, all converge on a weekly gathering called Shortbus: a mad nexus of art, music, politics and polysexual carnality. Set in a post-9/11, Bush-exhausted New York City, SHORTBUS tells its story with sexual frankness, suggesting new ways to reconcile questions of the mind, pleasures of the flesh and imperatives of the heart.

When I first heard about this movie, which was by word of mouth, I was 16. That was an interesting time for me, as I became heavily involved in reading and watching solely gay & lesbian literature/cinema. Laugh all you want, there are -some- movies that have a story better than porn. In any case, I think the reason why I was told not to watch the film at that time was because I was heavily convinced that what happened in the novels I read, and the movies I watched, was really out there. That somehow, I’d go through this entire dramatic experience with some guy I thought was beautiful and nothing like me, and that we’d run away together…or that I’d be the out-of-the-closet boy helping a closeted boy get out, and that we’d become first, or seconds (though at that time it would’ve been my forth or fifth) lovers and stay like that forever.

I can only imagine if I saw Shortbus then what I’d think of it. I’d probably have a higher boyfriend count (one day it’ll hit seven, and hopefully stay there) and my fantasy to have a threesome wouldn’t be a fantasy anymore. At least that’s how I imagine things would’ve unfurled.

The first character that I felt a connection between was Sophia (Sook-Yin Lee). It wasn’t because she was Asian or a bottom. It was simply because she was what she called “pre-orgasmic” and not in the sense that she was going to have one, but that she -never- had had one.

I remember the first time I had sex, I couldn’t cum, how raunchy of me, I couldn’t have an orgasm. I was sure at that time, it was -his- fault, since we were both new to it. There wasn’t any lube, and he kind of just forced it in and the pain I felt was unbearable. I told him to get out, because I couldn’t take that pain. So much, that I didn’t want to try it until another year had passed. That would make me roughly 14 years old, and I didn’t have sex at the time. I lost my virginity, but I didn’t feel like I had lost it. I remember speaking with my friend Ashley, and how we both were terrified of becoming buckets, so the idea of letting just anyone fuck me was not an option. I wanted to believe at that time that only the person you love, should gain entrance there.

So the first time I lost my virginity, and it felt like I was losing my virginity, was when I was 15. I was very young, and I say young in the sense of being naive and foolish. I played the role I needed to play in order to have someone that I was interested in even dare to touch me. I remember having to lie when I said that I didn’t want to have a relationship, and that I just wanted to have fun. He was 26, a man of several odd jobs, living in a tiny holy in upper west Manhattan. His bed was against the wall, that he had to pull down. I remember being nervous as he sat me on his lap. There was a smirk on his face I can’t remember, the face a man makes when he knows he’s getting some. I was in my boxers at the time, and seconds later I felt my bare cheeks against his shorts. We had moved to the bed, I was lying there naked and he was kissing my neck, my nipples, my navel and my thighs. I returned the favor the only way I knew, by stripping his clothes off and going down on him. He wasn’t some kid when it came to sex, he knew how to do foreplay right, and right in the sense of loosening me up. When the first condom slipped over his penis, I was so nervous that I told him I had to pee. I did have to pee, but not as badly as I thought, so it was a few minutes until I came back. He smiled at me before carefully putting me on my stomach, on top of some pillows so I would be at the right angle. And then it began. It hurt a little, but it was bearable, and a few minutes later it felt sorta’ good. It ended quickly, and dazed that I had just done my first full and real hook-up, I couldn’t have an orgasm while I was being screwed or after. So we went to bed, and the next day he went to play basketball with some friends and I took a morning train home.

I knew I didn’t want to have a relationship with a man like that, so I blocked him and ceased to speak to him. At the same time, I was interested in a 23 year old. He had a lot of attractive qualities, and he made me feel somewhat special, though that was probably because of the way I looked at things. In any case, I eventually stopped looking at anyone else and directed all of my attention to catching his eye. It was a success that lasted a few months.

He wasn’t interested in a relationship, and I told him I wasn’t into one either. And so began the several dates, being picked up and taken out and then brought home. It was a month until we had sex, which surprised me, because I thought he’d have done it on the first, second, third…every time? So when I found myself naked with him, I was nervous and happy. Happy that I had reached that point, nervous that I wouldn’t be able to please him. He did everything right, and the way I felt when he was in me was amazing. I didn’t realize until this moment how good sex could feel. There was so much energy going through my body that I didn’t want it to end, and I learned a lot as a bottom from him. What to do, what not to do, how to do it. And that’s what’s made me what I call, a not-so-lazy bottom. I didn’t cum while he was in me, but I felt good enough to cum after he had. It was an amazing experience. It became something quite frequent. I remember how he said that I felt amazing, more amazing than most of the boys he’s fucked, and that made me feel really confident. He also told me how he wanted me to have an orgasm while he was in me, and I told him that I didn’t know why I couldn’t and wouldn’t. It just felt awkward to do so, because I had been so used to jacking off in a certain way.

Then there was the one night, where I had felt a sensation that was completely out of this world. He told me not to jack off for a week, and when we went to have sex on the eighth day, I was incredibly horny. He teased me and I teased him, and starting from foreplay all the way to the last orgasm, it was five hours long. We went through an array of positions, and switching from slow to fast to gentle to aggressive. It was one of my best sexual experiences ever. And when I felt that sensation swelling at my penis, and I saw for the first time my own junk hit his chest while he was still in me…there was just shock. I couldn’t believe it. He quickly pulled out and seconds later I felt a warm liquid land on my back and the top of my cheeks.

To this day, I haven’t had an experience like that. I’m on my eighth guy that I’ve allowed to screw me, and I haven’t had an orgasm while being fucked. A lot of people tell me it’s natural, but it always makes me feel odd that I can’t. Some people are mean, and say that the top just sucks, but I know that’s a lie because the sex feels great. So I wonder.

And that’s why I felt connected to Sophia, I know, I got graphic, it’s only going to get worse. The way Sophia described things was similar to how I felt, that up until a point of the sex, there’s this feeling of angst and pressure of not being able to reach an orgasm while having sex that is just so….so…frustrating and annoying that you simply have to scream. I mean, her case is much worse, she couldn’t get off at all. I at least could jerk off until that horny feeling went away.

The next I connected with, and probably somewhat live vicariously through, was James (Paul Dawson). James’ relationship with Jamie was just so surreal and closely related to my relationship with Brandon, that there came a point in the movie where I just cried because it was as if I was reliving one of the most hardest points in my relationship with Brandon.

It’s a little cliche, in the fact that Boy A and Boy B love each other, but Boy A is depressed but can see that he has everything. James and Jamie go to couple counseling after James suggests that the relationship becomes an open relationship, and I’ll stop spoiling the movie from there.

I remember the first time I thought of an open relationship with Brandon. It was our first summer together, when I went to visit him at his home in PA. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, not yet at least, I just knew it was suggested to me because he was going to Japan for a year, and long-distance never works, so they say and I believe. I brushed the idea off, and instead pressured to have my fantasy of a threesome come true. We talked about it, and it seemed like it would work but only with his friends. In the end it never happened, and he went away to Japan. A month without him I was pissed off and somewhat hurt, and soon later I told him that I wanted to make it an open relationship which was really my way of saying let’s end it. And so we did. And I started to date, and I still wasn’t pleased. Not with anything that I had found or had. I even had Barrias at that time, but I just wasn’t pleased, there was something in me that wanted more.
I began to have fun in 2007, when I met Jordan and Tyler told me that he was going to move to NY for me. Jordan was new to a lot of things, and I didn’t mind helping him move along, but I knew I didn’t want to have a relationship with Jordan because Tyler was coming. Disaster struck, when Barrias came to visit and Brandon came home, all in May. Some twisted part of me believed it would be a good idea to have them all meet, and it was the most awkward thing I had ever experienced.

And as the time for Tyler’s arrival came closer, I remember this sense of fear and panic. There was so much of those two emotions running through me, that when Brandon came at the right time and said the right things, I clung to him…and in turn, I fucked Tyler over. It would have been similar to me taking a bat and hitting him across the head. Still, I went on with Brandon. I was for brief moments of the time, in love, but overall there was this overwhelming sense of my want for Tyler. I don’t think I could’ve ever been happy with Brandon, at least not in the long run.

There came a point in the movie, where James and Jamie are at the Shortbus and Jamie just asks James, “Do you love me anymore?” and James can’t answer. All he does is just kiss him and then holds him. That one moment I cried. Not just because it was a sad scene in the movie, but because I was seeing something so familiar.

I remember when that same exact moment happened to Brandon and I, when he asked me whether I still loved him, and all I could do was kiss him, hug him and tell him “I love you”. It came instinctively, as if to make him not cry and become upset. I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have, and maybe I should’ve said how I really felt. Maybe things would’ve ended nicer. Who knows?

It just felt so surreal to watch that scene. It was as if someone was saying all those things to me, right through my screen…and I’m probably making a bigger deal out of this to you, but to me…it’s not. To know that you’re depressed, and even though things are going great, you just can’t feel entirely happy and that there’s this overwhelming sense of dread and this want to commit suicide, it’s chaotic.

There’s one thing that freaks me out more than the gore that’s shown in Saw or Hostel, and that’s watching someone commit suicide. It simply freaks me out. I’ve had a close encounter with it, suicide that is. That was back in eighth grade, I tried, failed, and through the friends of the time, made a pact to never do it again. A promise, a pact, an official agreement. Little did they know that I added a minor small print, and said to myself, that by time I was 25, if I couldn’t find anything worth living for, I would disappear. Relax, I don’t believe in that anymore. In any case, I got terrified that one day I’ll be driven mad enough to attempt it, mostly because I was seeing it happen.

I know it won’t. It just freaked me out.

So I don’t believe that I truly understand the movie, but I don’t think that I’m seeing it incorrectly. In the end I really like the movie as I’ve expressed in the beginning. I’m going to end on that note, because this is already lengthy and it’s 8 in the morning.