TOO MUCH GINGER (Part I)

I keep telling myself it’s the ginger.

 

I’ve been awake since 3:30 this morning, my stomach feeling like everything in that vicinity had a scrum with a cheese grater. For the next few hours, I shifted every which way, a pillow constantly readjusted to numb that feeling of having multiple organs sliced and diced. If I’d been more alert, I’d have gotten up and searched for the hot water bottle, but I have no idea what cupboard, box or drawer it’s been since my July move. I figured by the time I found it, I’d be too wide awake to fall back asleep. I suppose I was delusional, too. Falling back to sleep was never going to happen.

 

Since my boyfriend, Evan, and I live in different cities, we try to call each other before going to bed on the nights we’re apart. “I love you,” “Sweet dreams,” and whatnot. It’s possible there was too much whatnot in last night’s call.

 

But I did put an awful lot of ginger in the pumpkin pie I made on a whim yesterday evening. Three times what the recipe called for. A quick Google tells me ginger can lead to “heartburn, diarrhea, burping, and general stomach discomfort.” Okay. My side effect beats diarrhea. If I had any say in it, I’d have gone with burping though. Might have offered a flashback to my early teens when we made a game of chugging Barq’s root beer.

 

In five days, Evan and I are off on a three-week trip. Maybe it wasn’t the ginger or last night’s call. Earlier in the day, before Evan drove back to Seattle, we’d talked about packing. It’s going to be challenging for both of us. For Evan, that’s because he’s a clothes horse. While I care about what I wear, Evan takes it eight or nine levels beyond me. Every outfit is a fashion statement. There are layers and accessories. He’s the kind of person Bill Cunningham of The New York Times would have photographed if they’d crossed paths on the street in Manhattan. My packing concerns are more practical. Our trip begins in Colorado and Wyoming where temperatures will be below freezing with possible snow on the ground, but then we fly to Key West and Miami where temperatures will call for shorts and swimsuits. I need clothes for daily workouts as well, with what I wear for a run in northern Colorado differing radically from my beach jogs. All I have is a carry-on since my suitcase didn’t survive the ordeal of first being lost and then severely damaged when I went to Iceland and Sweden last spring. 

 

Three weeks of all-weather wear! I suppose I can fit in time to buy a suitcase today. If that means a better night’s sleep, it’s definitely worth the money I hadn’t wanted to spend. My stomach will be so relieved.  

 

My mind’s drifting back to yesterday’s pie. In my waking hours, there are times when I dream of making pumpkin pie. Usually, I put up enough resistance, but it’s such an easy dessert to make. I cheat with a ready-made crust so all I have to do is toss several ingredients in a blender, pour the liquid in the shell and stick it in the oven. Sometimes my daydreaming about pumpkin pie comes when I’m in the grocery store. It takes willpower to resist adding certain items to my basket. When canned pumpkin puree or sweetened condensed milk is on sale, I set aside willpower. I tell myself these are wise purchases. Huge savings! Dad would be proud.

 

But it’s not like I pull out the can opener as soon as I get home. I’ve got that bag of caramel popcorn (also on sale or at least twenty cents cheaper than at Safeway). It’s quicker to pig out on that instead. The canned goods go in the pantry; I forget about them. Societal norms dictate that pumpkin doesn’t even appear on the dining radar until the beginning of October since that’s when Thanksgiving is, at least in Canada. For some, pumpkin ideation begins a month earlier, but I don’t go to Starbucks anymore and, besides, I don’t want pumpkin coffee any more than I want banana bread. Stop playing with your food, people! 

 

It's possible that several ingredients in last night’s pumpkin pie expired long ago. The carton of egg whites was only five weeks out of date and I figured that any of its badness would be baked out after fifty minutes at 375 degrees. I keep missing Canadian Thanksgivings, including this year’s, due to travel so it’s quite possible both the canned pumpkin and the sweetened condensed milk were past prime, too. I didn’t want to look for stamped dates since pumpkin pie had risen to a must-have craving. The condensed milk was still its regular creamy color. Last time I opened one, it had turned a butterscotch hue, forcing me to trek to the store for something more current. (How do I go years between pumpkin pies and then find myself blindsided by the most urgent need to feast on one?) The pie shell had a “Best Before” some month in 2020 but that just seemed silly to consider. So, yes, maybe it was an ancient puree that upset my tummy. Or a combination of that, trip packing worries, too much ginger, stale graham cracker crumbs and egg whites gone green. I’d also been overly generous with the nutmeg and cloves. It’s not a COVID thing, but my taste buds have always needed extra everything to wake them up.

 

There’s also the fact that I may have eaten too much pie in one sitting. Actually, it wasn’t one sitting. Pumpkin pie became dinner, dessert, snack time and then the target of a fridge raid just before bed, the annoying beeping sound the door makes when it’s been open too long finally ending my extended grazing session. I swear there was still some pie in the tin when I turned in for the night. How much? That’s an awfully personal question. I’d rather disparage my intelligence and say I’ve always been bad at fractions. Two-thirds? One-fifth? What’s the diff?

 

Today I’ll just have to slog my way through, downing a few more oat milk lattes than usual. For the moment, the stomach is behaving. If I get a bad sleep tonight, I suppose too much coffee will be to blame. Surely none of this restlessness is due to the fact one week of my trip involves staying with Evan’s parents whom I haven’t met and all the hoopla leading up to our arrival which he mentioned on the phone last night…

 

No, no. It’s the ginger. Google already confirmed that. I’m overthinking this.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

SINGING A DIFFERENT TUNE

I was eleven when it dawned on me I didn’t have to listen to my parents’ music. It had served me well enough. They had a hi-fi in the living room, encased in a lovely wooden cabinet as was common in the seventies and I would slide open the door that hid the shelf that stored albums, scanning through them in search of something contemporary amongst my dad’s classical collection. Favourite album: “Close to You” by the Carpenters. I loved to sit on the step leading down to our sunken living while listening to Karen’s glorious voice sing what I wanted to be my future wedding song, “We’ve Only Just Begun” and that tune about someone with captivating beauty, “(They Long to Be) Close to You.” 

On the day that you were born, the angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true,
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold 

  and starlight in your eyes of blue.

That is why all the girls in town
Follow you, all around,
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you.

 

At first when I sang along, I suppose I just sang what Karen sang because that’s the way the song went. I knew she was singing about a guy. In time, I thought more about the words coming out of my mouth in an unintentional off-key harmony to Karen’s perfect pitch. A heavenly guy with throngs of girls in tow. “Just like me, they long to be close to you.” Sometimes I thought it was funny; other times, it just made me feel funny. 

 

Richard and Karen grew up outside of L.A. and the very white dude, with blond hair and blue eyes may have been a California surfer, but I only knew of the Golden State from “The Brady Bunch” and “Adam-12.” I imagined a handsome prince instead. Oh, dear. I was beginning to feel very funny.

 

I made the necessary adjustment. I changed “girls” to “boys.” Presto! A blue-eyed blonde as the centerpiece. Using fairy-tale magic, I’d turned the prince into a princess. “All the boys in town follow you, all around. Just like me, they long to be close to you.” Whew. I still felt funny, but I was working on it. Presumably, it would take time for gender reassignment lyrics to stick.

 

My entry into pop music, a realm I continue to love, came in sixth grade, when Cam Millar stood up at lunch and said, “Raise your hand if you like Elton John? Whoever doesn’t isn’t cool.” Hello, peer pressure. Naturally, I raised my hand. Elton. He was the guy with goofy sunglasses, right? I went home and asked for an Elton John album for my birthday, his “Greatest Hits” from 1974, still an amazing collection. Beyond the sunglasses, there seemed to be something funny about Elton, too. Something about his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, drew my attention as well. I suppose I was still working through my own funny feelings. 

 

Listening to Hamilton, Ontario radio station CKOC—clearly none of the broadcasting authorities had dyslexia—on my A.M. transistor radio proved to be a great way to be cooler (or so I thought) as I got to know all the songs by, not just Elton, but ABBA, KC & The Sunshine Band and Barbra Streisand. Surely memorizing all the lyrics to Diana Ross songs would get rid of funny feelings, once and for all.

But then pop music introduced me to Andy Gibb and Rex Smith, triggering more funny feelings, not so much about what they sang but based on their photos gracing the sleeves of the 45s I bought. Hair, I told myself. Clearly, it’s just hair envy. I’d buy some Vidal Sassoon shampoo and puff up my hair with a pick and a gob of mousse. Maybe my big hair could be as dreamy as theirs. I regularly checked their photos, strictly for hair comparison’s sake, of course.

 

I hadn’t yet realized how badly I sang so I continued to belt out pop tunes I played on my brand-new stereo. My family and a few unlucky friends hid their horror while I made songs like “You Light Up My Life” and “Can’t Smile Without You” more grating than they already were.[1] Still, I became more self-conscious, if not yet about my vocal (in)abilities, then about what others might intuit from the lyrics I sang.      

 

Some songs were safe, if plain weird, like “Muskrat Love” and “Disco Duck (Part 1)[2].” (Some parts of the ’70s are hard to explain. Too much Tang, I guess.) I could also sing “Car Wash” without a thought as my parents fretted about my career aspirations. Butchering the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band came naturally since I didn’t have a clue what they were singing and there was no internet to check myself. (Seriously, who or what was little Early-Pearly and what’s a curly-wurly? Maybe writer Bruce Springsteen was taking in more than Tang.) 

 

Singing along to songs by guys was also worry-free as I attempted to hit the notes for “She Believes in Me” by Kenny Rogers and “She’s Always a Woman to Me” by Billy Joel. However, I gravitated to the songs women sang so singing often required revisions. Over time, I became much more adept at pronoun gymnastics. Sometimes I made the adjustments while other times I decided the changes would be clunky or just too much to consistently carry off. Donna Summer and I sang “Will you be my Mr. Right?” in “Last Dance” because a change to Mrs. Right seemed nonsensical. I’d never heard that expression. Did guys just not care as much? As well, I had too much fun belting out Sheena Easton’s “Morning Train (Nine to Five)” to bother with alterations. It was chock full of he, his and him. 

My baby takes the morning train
He works from nine to five and then
He takes another home again
To find me waitin' for him.

“My baby” might be surprised and disappointed to find me at the end of the workday. Clearly, I’m no Sheena but then who is?

 

And flash forward to 2022. I’m not going to do the math. It’s not hard. It’s just hard to take. (Cue Al Stewart’s 1978 ditty, “Time Passages.”) My, how far we’ve come from the days when Elton sang about “Little Jeannie” and “Nikita,” Barry Manilow sang to “Mandy” and George Michael sang “Everything She Wants.” In the past month, “Unholy” topped the US and British charts, the first Billboard Number 1 by someone who identifies as nonbinary (Sam Smith) and someone who is trans (Kim Petras). No chance though that I’ll be singing along to its inane lyrics, alone or in public. (“Mummy don’t know daddy’s getting hot at the body shop, doin’ somethin’ unholy.”) Still, as they say, it’s somethin’.

 

I don’t sing aloud when others are present anymore. A friend’s cutting critique not so politely put a stop to my sing-alongs. Simon Cowell would have been nicer. What’s done is done. Karaoke bars are safer to visit, I suppose. Still, I mumble-sing in my home as music plays from my laptop. 

 

Yesterday I listened to YouTube as I did abs on my exercise mat. The online channel has a knack for knowing what I might like to hear after my chosen tune ends. It played a soulful song I wasn’t familiar with, the male voice sounding better than most. As I continued to do sit-ups, the singer sang, “He tears me to pieces.” It startled me. Did I hear that right? And then: “She don’t know you like me. She could never love you more than me.” I glanced at the screen and made a mental note…Omar Apollo singing “Evergreen.” When I finished my workout, I listened again, a video with the lyrics on the screen. My ears weren’t mistaken. A man singing about a man. (According to Wikipedia, Apollo is openly gay.) The song was a modest hit on the Billboard chart, missing the Top 40, peaking at number 51. So far, it’s hit the Top 40 in the UK, Ireland and Australia, its greatest success coming in the Netherlands where it reached number 4. The various videos of the song have more than ten million views on YouTube. 

 

Recently, the music channel reacquainted me with an English band called The 1975 which first garnered international attention with the song “Chocolate.” Their songs are catchy, but I’ve never really gotten into them until their new album, “Being Funny in a Foreign Language,” was released in the past month. I listened to several songs and the lyrics made me listen, having something to say beyond generic fare designed to appeal to (or not offend) the masses. On the lead single, “Part of the Band,” lead singer Matty Healy sings:

I fell in love with a boy, it was kinda lame, 

I was Rimbaud and he was Paul Verlaine

In my, my my imagination.[3]

Healy sings of a woman, too, letting listeners speculate about his possible bisexuality or a total ambivalence about sexual orientation. The song hasn’t received a great deal of airplay, not likely due to boy talk but perhaps more on account of its frankness in mentioning heroin, cocaine and ejaculations. Still, the video has received about five million views. 

 

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Same but different. While other people get worked up over pronouns they and them, I’m still taking in how he and him are popping up and evolving in pop music. How lovely to have a singer killing me softly with his song, no lyrical adjustments required.

 

 

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[1] Full confession: I like “You Light Up My Life” and “Can’t Smile Without You.” I just know I’m not supposed to admit it. Alas, peer pressure persists.

[2] Good grief, is there a “Disco Duck (Part 2)”? Turns out, yes. Mercifully, it’s an instrumental. I’m not providing the link. If you must go there, you’re on your own.

[3] Rimbaud and Verlaine were 19^th-century poets who had a torrid, sometimes violent affair. Rimbaud didn’t seem to hide his homosexuality while Verlaine struggled with it, marrying a woman and often getting intoxicated whereupon he would become violent. 

EXERCISE RULES

“You’re always so happy after a run,” Evan said this morning after I poured a cup of coffee and we chatted a few minutes upon my return. “I think it’s the dopamine.”

 

“Maybe,” I said. Likely not. Endorphins, dopamine, other body rushes triggered from a workout…I’ve heard people talk about them, made up things to justify a fitness class in lieu of another hour of doomscrolling on the sofa. “I obsess over exercise all day until it’s done. I’m happy when it’s over.”

 

“I wish I had your disease,” Evan said.

 

“No, you don’t.”

 

I know Evan was joking and I took it as such. There’s a lot about my eating disorder he doesn’t understand, but this was not going to evolve into another prolonged Q&A, thank goodness. I’ll leave the information dump here instead.

 

Not everyone with an eating disorder is obsessive about exercise, but I met several while in treatment programs and it came as a relief that I wasn’t the only one ruled by workouts. The year 2019 was my most intense attempt to tame my eating disorder, attending weekly supervised meals and outpatient programming before spending a quarter of the year undergoing live-in interventions, first in an ED ward at a hospital and then in a group home. I gained a few insights but no pounds. Really though, my weight isn’t in a harmful range, as confirmed by cardiologists and internists after some initial concerns. 

 

In hospital, I wasn’t allowed to do any exercise at first. I knew this prior to admission and fretted about it aplenty but then surrendered to the program and its attempts to distract me by required participation in No-Impact Adaptive Yoga and Arts & Crafts (I turfed the painted flowerpot and the first-grade-caliber greeting cards I made for no one). When I received increasingly longer passes to leave the hospital, I was still not allowed to exercise. I was supposed to take the bus whenever I stopped by my home and do things non-exercisers do…perhaps some of that aforementioned doomscrolling, readily available with Trump still in the White House. I’d report back my compliance each time I returned to the hospital ward. The fact I’d race-walked home and fit in a quick gym workout or jog on the seawall was my little secret. And, yes, as with this morning, I was happier after having done it.

 

In the group home, the dietitian and occupational therapist allowed me to exercise some. We went back and forth, the negotiations seeming more intense than what they were used to. I think they knew they’d have to give me something or I’d just lie about sitting on park benches, policing people who tried to get out of picking up their Rottweiler’s poop. Big dog, big poop. How did they not know that when they adopted it as a cute, little pup? Every week, I reopened our negotiations, pressing for more time and more options. I’m convinced the dietitian grew to hate me. My desperation may have made me sound combative, even aggressive. Still, I settled on allowing more blank spaces on my calendar, working out three days in a row and taking the fourth off. There were time limits as well, but I blew those off. Getting every fourth day off from exercise was radical enough.

 

I will concede that my body needed the more frequent rest days, given that every workout remained extreme in terms of intensity and duration. I enjoyed having more days when I didn’t have to think about a looming fitness routine, when I could agree to meet a friend for coffee without worrying about it cutting into gym time or a bike ride, when I could read without constantly checking to see how long I had before heading to the pool for the allotted time to swim lengths.

 

I don’t know what triggered it—COVID boredom perhaps—but in June 2020 I reverted to my old ways, insisting on six days of working out each week. I exercise when I'm sick. I exercise when I'm injured. Even with international travel, I haven’t strayed once from this expectation. I’m not sure if I could say this is a choice or that this is about commitment, discipline or some deep belief in the benefits of exercise. Without dopamine or endorphins, it’s not about pleasure. It just is. It has to be.

 

It's not entirely true that once my daily workout is done, it’s out of mind. I move on to thinking about how my workouts will look for the upcoming days, frequently checking my weather app to see when I can slot in outdoor activities (e.g., hiking, running, cycling) and when I should plan on a gym or swim workout instead. I’m not sure if Vancouver truly has difficult weather patterns to predict or if somebody just does a poor job of it, but I frequently have to readjust plans as weather updates change and then change yet again. It’s stressful for someone who has to schedule exercise and absolutely cannot just take a rain check on it. 

 

At present, Evan and I are exploring the northwesternmost corner of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. I climbed out of bed before daybreak to fit in a run before a day of beach walking, a road trip to Neah Bay and a short walk/hike to Cape Flattery, the northwestern corner of the contiguous United States. Lovely activities but not enough calorie burning. Run done, I can enjoy them now at a leisurely pace, the next day’s run not until tomorrow morning. Unless it rains, as is more likely in this area which is a short drive from the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic National Park. Please let there be a gap in the rain. Plan Bs are so tricky on the road with no bike and no gym or pool nearby.

 

But happy. Yes, I am indeed feeling that. Maybe it comes from relief. Run done and a lovely day of new adventures ahead of me with my partner. I’ll do my best to put pesky thoughts of tomorrow’s fitness aside. That’s another sort of workout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CALL ME BY MY NEW NAME: AGING GAYLY

Name changes happen. Facebook is now Meta. Datsun became Nissan. The TV sitcom, “Valerie,” was retitled “The Hogan Family” after Valerie Harper (RIP) left the show. Sir Elton John was born Reginald Dwight. Arnold George Dorsey performed as Gerry Dorsey before switching to—why, oh why—Engelbert Humperdinck. Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) transformed into   (aka, The Love Symbol) before settling on The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Sean John Combs has been Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Sean Jean, Brother Love and Sean Love Combs. 

 

I seem to be on the Puff Daddy-P. Diddy-Diddy track. 

 

It’s with some trepidation that I’ve renamed my blog. Way back in 2008, when blogging may have still been a thing, “Rural Gay” fit perfectly since I lived a ferry ride away from civilization. As a single homosexual in his forties, the title was bound to attract a little online attention, if only from initial curiosity. Why the hell would he make that kind of move?

 

Yep. Why, indeed. Seven years after starting the blog—and a decade after that cockeyed relocation experiment—I settled anew in Vancouver. Rural Gay no more! 

 

For some reason, I figured I needed to keep that designation in the blog title, probably since it was the core of the web address. I gave the blog name a clunky tweak: Rural Gay Gone Urban. Always hated it. What did the wretched title say about my writing abilities? Still, I stuck with it, deciding my time was better spent writing posts as a pleasant diversion from drafting essays for occasional publication in the great beyond while continuing to hone novel-length manuscripts.

 

Another seven years have passed. I’m still blogging, even if that’s not much of a thing anymore. I’m an old dog and I haven’t developed an appetite for new tricks like podcasting and TikTok dillydallying. Old dogs can use words like dillydallying.

 

I don’t like to think of myself as old even though I’m almost at the point of admitting that the whiskers from three days’ growth on my chin are gray, not blond. (I should look into softer lighting in the bathroom.) I’m startled when I’m reminded that Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” is forty-five years old. I curse whenever I think of mentioning VCRs, answering machines or Charles Nelson Reilly in a conversation with my niece. (Charles Nelson Reilly? WTF?!) It’s always hard to transition after a blank stare. 

 

Allow me to transition here to the new name for the blog. Like it or not, from my vantage point there are more young ’uns than old coots. We’re all aging, of course, but I’m more aware of it now. Remember how the time to reach sixteen or twenty-one seemed to move at a snail’s pace? Such an excruciating wait to drive a car or drink without a comically bad fake ID. Years and whole decades whiz by now. Staring into the bathroom mirror is now about checking for wrinkles, not zits. Oh, how I had so much hope for the powers of Clearasil; not so for my L’Oréal Revitalift eye cream. That thing about getting wiser isn’t always a good thing.

 

So, yes. I. Am. Aging.

 

I feel like I’m thirty-six in mind, body and spirit but, judging from how often I’m called “sir” these days, nobody else is buying it. I did get carded at the beer garden at the Washington State Fair last month, but I withheld the urge to woot. Standard procedure. She didn’t even bother squinting to search for where the birthdate is on a British Columbia driver’s licence. 

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say I’m not exactly aging gracefully. Nope. I’m kicking and screaming. Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” keeps popping up on my YouTube stream. Same for Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free,” a disco-era gem. Dammit, my song choices don’t help my case.

Okay, so enough about the “Aging” part of my NEW, IMPROVED blog title. On to “Gayly.” I had to keep some reference to “gay.” The blog has always been about being a gay man and that will continue to be the case. While I’m okay with “queer,” there was a time the term felt too abrasive—a derisive term that gays took back as their own. There are other descriptors under the LGBTQIA2+ umbrella that seem to suit me, but they weren’t around when I did the hard work of coming out. I love that there are more specific terms people can consider when figuring out their identity. I am committed to accepting and supporting anyone based on how they choose to define themselves with regard to gender and sexuality. In turn, I expect to be respected for sticking with “gay,” at least for now. 

 

Old dog, remember. Throw me a bone or, better yet, just drop it in front of me.

 

As a stickler for the grammar and spelling, I’m accustomed to using “gaily” when writing, assuming I would use the word at all. Still, Merriam-Webster recognizes “gayly” as a variant used “less commonly.” I like that. After all, I’ve spent my whole life navigating less common tracts.

 

As a twenty-something, in a pre-GPS world, there were many times I sat in a car with gay friends and someone called out directions by saying, “Go straight.” The remark was always corrected. “Impossible. Go gayly forward.” Yuk yuk. Yes, these were the same people who chuckled over random references to balls, nuts and the number 69. Don’t be fooled by arty, gay pretensions. We’re as simple as other men…although I’m pleased to say I no longer laugh over farts and fart jokes. Some things just get old when one gets, ahem, old.

 

So there it is. A new blog title, keeping “gay” and chucking the rest. What do you think of “Aging Gayly”? This is likely a superficial change. I plan to continue to post on similar topics as before: gay culture, my relationship, queer literature and entertainment, and mental health issues, including eating disorders. I hope you’ll stick around, check the blog from time to time, leave a comment on occasion, here or on Twitter. (Retweets and other forms of sharing are always welcome!) I don’t want millennials to shy away from clicking to the blog, but I suppose it’s time for me to accept the gray whiskers while continuing to strive to sustain a healthy, active lifestyle. Thanks, as always, for reading!

     

DOES "BROS" MATTER?

Better late than never, they say. But is it? I went to see “Bros” a week after its critical box office debut.[1] The two tickets I purchased will do nothing to alter its designation as a flop. This post isn’t to critique the movie but to consider the importance of its release. Straight audiences didn’t show up, but I get the sense a lot of LGBTQ folks gave it a pass, too.

 

My quick two cents on the movie: It’s worth seeing. I laughed more than I do during most movies. It wasn’t so much major plot points that got me chuckling—rom-coms follow a formula—but there were plenty of amusing observations about gay men and pop culture that peppered the script. Billy Eichner’s Bobby talks in rapid rants—reminded me of Woody Allen, in a good way (if I’m allowed to extend a nod to Woody anymore). I’m sure I’ll appreciate the commentary even more on a second viewing once the movie goes to streaming. That’s right, I’d watch it again. Something for Vancouver’s upcoming monthslong rainy season. I saw a lot of my own frustrations about gay culture and dating in the movie. Thumbs up. On the Meg Ryan rom-com scale, not in “When Harry Met Sally” territory, but on par with “You’ve Got Mail.”

 

Prior to its release, “Bros” was billed in the media as a big deal: first wide release of a gay film by a major movie studio. It played on more than three thousand screens in North America. Much of the publicity focused on the fact that virtually all roles, straight or queer, were played by LGBTQ actors. By golly, this was the Gayest Thing Ever in Hollywood! (I’m still hoping for a big screen premiere of “Bert Loves Ernie.”)

 

If a gay film appears in theaters and nobody shows up, did it even happen?

 

It grossed five million during its opening weekend, September 30-October 2. Not horrendous but not a winner considering the film’s reported twenty-two-million-dollar budget. By comparison, the top movie that weekend was another debut, the psychological horror film, “Smile,” which earned close to twenty-three million. There will be more weeks in theaters and more revenue streams, but it’s unlikely “Bros” will turn a profit. (As of today, it’s earned $10.8 million.)  

 

Does the mediocre box office matter to anyone besides theater owners, Universal Pictures and the producers and stars of “Bros”?  I would argue it does. Rightly or wrongly, “Bros” has been held up as a Big Gay Movie and it will serve as a barometer for financing future queer films that dare to play beyond the indie leagues. 

 

The takeaway that it tanked doesn’t bode well. “Bros” is no breakthrough for gays the way “Crazy Rich Asians” was purported to be for Asian actors and works. I suspect that the immediate response of most LGBTQ people is a shrug. There is plenty of queer content on streaming channels and by accessing queer film festivals online. Productions with smaller budgets will continue. I don’t really need to see an epic car chase or CGI-created elephant stampedes in gay stories I watch. Perhaps that apocalyptic sci-fi thriller with gays making an exodus to Uranus—is that still the gays’ favorite planet?—will never see the light of day. I don’t think that sex scene in spacesuits would have done anything for me anyway.

 

Maybe “Bros” was an ill-advised experiment. Maybe the headline-making pre-release hype—an attempt to increase interest, aka ticket sales—hurts us in the end. Maybe it puts LGBTQ people in their place. We can marry, we can get bakers to make fancy rainbow cakes (with reduced-fat icing, thank you), we can aspire to be the CEO of Apple or run for president. We just can’t expect straight people to come out to see us as the focal point of a love story on the big screen. Let us remain sidekicks who own avant-garde galleries, don gorgeous garments and drop snappy one-liners. Pals not paramours. 

 

The movie’s lackluster box office does not mean a thumbs down to all gay stories, although I fear that’s how many studios will construe it. It’s the wrong genre. We stand a better chance as a Marvel hero or a cinematic doctor/lawyer/detective/villain…really, anything but a love interest. Rom-coms are never what straight men crave. Presumably, they get dragged along by their girlfriends on date night, hoping it may pay dividends—sex or a Sunday football viewing marathon. I’m not sure straight women are even up for a gay rom-com, but I’m certain they know better than to think they can drag along their husband or boyfriend. I read lots of comments about “Bros” on Twitter from guys purporting to be straight. Despite LGBTQ advances, a dude can stay entrenched with his standard line: Two guys kissing? Hell, no! 

 

The fact Judd Apatow was a producer of the movie didn’t help. In fact, it may have even hurt in terms of expanding viewership. Apatow is known for infusing raunch into comedies that might otherwise get classified as rom-coms. It meant more ticket sales for flicks like “Knocked Up” and “Trainwreck.” In “Bros,” that means talk of a throuple and glimpses of what’s supposed to be a four-way gay sex scene. 

 

Cue straight dude: Ewwwwww! Double hell no! Triple! Quadruple…and whatever comes after that. I think the majority of straight guys have come around to thinking, “You can be gay. That’s cool. Just don’t talk to me about the gay sex stuff.” Adding visuals only makes them squirmy. I would imagine that, if any were actually in the theater seats, they’d have sprinted down the aisle for an emergency popcorn situation. More butter, STAT! 

 

Would straight women choose “Bros” as a girls’ night out flick? Again, doubtful. Gay men have spent their lives having to see themselves in female rom-com characters portrayed by Kate Hudson and Julia Roberts, but women have never had to make the gender and sexual orientation adjustments. They can wait around for the next man-woman rom-com to hit the theater, turn on the Hallmark Channel or catch another viewing of “The Proposal” somewhere online.

 

There was never an urgency in the LGBTQ community to see “Bros” during the opening weekend or ever. This was not a matter of life or death as was AIDS activism. This was not about civil rights as was marriage equality. Even in terms of the arts, the stakes weren’t so critical, as in the case of censorship of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos or the banning of books like George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Lesléa Newman and Diana Souza’s Heather Has Two Mommies or David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing. “Bros” has given the greenlight without any significant blowback. I did a quick Google search and didn’t even find anything about picketers out front of a single theater that showed the movie. To be sure, that’s an indication of progress, but it can also make people blasé about any Big Gay Movie (that doesn’t include a bathtub scene with a rubber duckie).

 

Still, the relative failure of “Bros” will cause major studios will be even more hesitant about gay fare. The conclusion goes beyond the notion that Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane aren’t leading men at the box office. All gay actors in gay roles are a risk. (Can’t we just go back to casting Tom Hanks and Jake Gyllenhaal?) There is trickle-down harm for all sorts of gay creatives. Basically, the perceived apathy over “Bros,” as jumped on by the media, may lead investors to question banking other gay works in the arts. We are reduced to being a niche market. Profits are minimal. Producing works focused on Tom Cruise and Sonic the Hedgehog are safer bets. That’s right, our stories take a back seat to a blue animated hedgehog. 

 

Had “Bros” blossomed, I would have mentioned it in queries for my gay novel that I’m trying to get published. When seeking an agent or publisher to take a chance on a manuscript, it’s common practice to pitch “comps,” listing titles the work is comparable to. It helps them see there may be a market for the book, that it will turn a profit. They’re trying to make a living, after all. Flops don’t put steak dinners on the table or even generic-brand peanut butter sandwiches. Yes, I had high hopes for “Bros.” Its success might have given me a greater shot at success, along with other developers of gay comedy.

 

People want gay stories! 

 

There’s a market for humorous tales about older gay men trying to navigate the dating scene! 

 

But is there?

 

“Bros” got decent reviews but that didn’t help to build an audience. You can be sure I will dare not speak its name in my query letters. If I were to say my novel is similar to “Bros,” there isn’t a single agent or publisher that would get excited. Ooh! Let me get this book published and then I’ll figure out how to apply for food stamps.

 

Nope. Not mentioning “Bros.” Also not mentioning “Uncoupled” which starred Neil Patrick Harris and aired on Netflix this fall. (Its eight-episode run was set up for a second season, but Netflix hasn’t rushed any announcement in that regard. Speculation is that’s not going to happen. Older gay men looking for love? Not a draw. Even when “older” means forty-something and the men are in great shape. Too much reality. Leave that for RuPaul and gay men giving makeovers. We are niche at best.

 

Go see “Bros” anyway. It’s not going to be a sleeper hit, but I’d venture to guess it’s more entertaining than the blue hedgehog movie which grossed $403.8 million globally. Money is not an indicator of quality in a work but, alas, it has a major impact on what entertainment is available over the next several years. If you yearn to see another larger-scale work about gay relationships, it will probably be a while. Maybe “Sonic the Hedgehog” will be the new comp to use in persuading a studio to take a chance on Bert and Ernie. Please tell me you’d at least show up for that one.

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

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[1] I failed to see it during its opening weekend since I was on a road trip in Canada’s Rocky Mountain region, kayaking on Lake Louise, hiking Glacier National Park and spending internet-free evenings in a cabin, listening to wolves howl at the moon. I didn’t think to reschedule. My bad.