I Am Writing a Book

How I visualize one of my characters, Christian... probably AI

 

Well, not a real book in the sense of paper pages since I doubt it will ever be published, but that's not my real point. I was curious what it's like to write a real story with dialog and all of that. I've found that it is harder than I expected but much easier than I expected too. The harder parts are sort of technical like keeping everything straight with timelines and all of that. Surprisingly, the easier part has been writing the story itself.

I've written things before like how Aric and I got together, but that didn't have dialog in it and the character development wasn't very deep -- it was already longer than I wanted so it was purposefully abbreviated. I started something else which I got quite a ways into but ultimately decided that it really didn't have a central conflict that was compelling. It did give me some experience writing dialog though which was useful. That and dreaming up characters out of whole cloth has been an interesting experience.

In both cases I borrowed somebody else's world as a basis. I really hate that it might get labeled as "fan fiction" because from what I can tell that is a very creepy world. At the very least if you're going to borrow somebody else's world you should respect that world in my opinion. Much that I've seen is like it's fine to write about whatever you want to write about, but at least have a reason that it's rooted in somebody else's world. So many premises I've seen absolutely do not. I mean, is it so hard to create your own world when the premise and situations are completely different? I've seen this quite a bit with Red White and Royal Blue it's like have they even read it? But it's a good way to generate hostility if you point that out. I've thought about whether I could or should just create my own world. I think I could but for one thing: Dante's name is important. For now, I'm happy in the in between.

I'm almost done with the first pass of writing with one chapter left to go out of about 70 chapters and 400+ pages. I expect that with editing it will hopefully get shorter. I read somewhere that it's a good idea once you get at my stage, you should put it on the shelf for a couple of weeks or even a month before taking it up again. I already understand why since it's so long since I wrote some things, it's hard to remember what happened before. As of now it's taken me about 3 months to get to where I am now.

So while I was working on my previous attempt, I heard about this new movie called Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. I had signed up to Starz to watch Mary and George and it was streaming there too so I watched. I loved it, suffice it to say. It's the tale of a young Mexican American teen who is full of anger and self doubt and feelings he can't name when by chance he meets another boy who completely changes his life when he offers to teach him how to swim at a local pool. If you haven't seen it, stop here and watch it or get the book which is even better by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (the audio book is narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda who also produced the movie. I'd wager he was completely smitten by the book too).

What I loved about it is that it transported me to a world I have no experience with. Aristotle -- Ari -- and Dante are sons of Mexican immigrants or at least second generation (the Japanese call this Nisei -- I wish we had a cool word like that) growing up in late 80's El Paso Texas. Dante is a free spirited boy who shows Ari a world that Ari couldn't comprehend. I won't recount the whole premise of the book, but suffice it to say that boy finally gets boy.

There was a sequel which I eagerly read after which was what happened after boy got boy and the ending was unsatisfying to me but actually pretty typical. All of these teen romance stories face a dilemma that the likelihood is that they'll break up organically because of circumstances they don't control. In the sequel it was them going off to different colleges far apart. The sequel didn't exactly say that they broke up, but it was kind of the implication. I have no idea if the author intends a trilogy or not but it was almost 10 years for the sequel and the author isn't getting any younger so who knows?

That's usually where everything stops for these kinds of stories -- how do you handle being separated? If you look at things like Young Royals, people want to believe it's forever but there are so many obstacles in their way for that to even vaguely be likely. It seems that Alice Oseman is going to give it a go though with Heartstopper which they claim they are starting to write, but I'd say that's pretty unusual and it will be interesting to see how they handle it.

So anyway, I had an idea of how to handle it better and came up with a central dilemma. What if they instead of breaking up, they put their relationship into limbo and take it school year by school year where they were allowed to see other people and indeed break up if they found somebody? Sort of an open relationship, but not exactly since breaking up is an OK outcome too. Painful, but OK. Sort of to keep expectations down.

So it has one conflict: how to stay together while they are apart, but that didn't seem like enough so it occurred to me that it was the late 80's and not the best time to be young and gay so what if the most horrible thing possible happened: that Dante caught HIV? That is definitely a dilemma and a half. Young and invincible is what HIV preys on, especially with pretty and free spirited boys like Dante. 

I really liked this idea because it's a peeve of mine because so many gay men want to completely erase anything to do with that period as if it didn't happen because it's "not happy and I only want to see happy".  If you want to write something commercially successful, writing about being gay during the AIDS crisis is probably a good thing to avoid. But I have no illusions that this will be for anybody but me so I don't care. Never mind that Angels in America is probably the best piece of gay theater ever written. Never mind that The Living End is a funny gay/AIDS take on Thelma and Louise. If it has the A word or the H word, people will complain and avoid.

I originally started writing it as a blog post and sort of an outline but then started writing some dialog too and it was starting to get bigger and bigger until I decided that I really should just put it into Google Docs so I could take advantage of the better writing environment and ultimately be able to collaborate with people helping me with editing. My guess is there are much better programs to write actual books especially given a bunch of problems I found along the way that could be helped by tools (for example, keeping timelines, what's still to be done, etc, etc).

So I had a plot with a good conflict -- it's sort of hard to argue with life and death as a conflict -- and started writing. I wrote a lot of it linearly especially at the beginning but then I'd get ideas that caused me to fast forward which immediately exposed that keeping a timeline was needed. Since the story spans their years in school and beyond, it was really hard to keep track of what was happening when, but I imagine that that can happen with more compressed time frames too. I also noticed that as the set of characters became bigger, I needed to keep track of them: who they were, how old they were, a little of their backstory if needed that I might not actually write about, but needed to know myself. I needed to keep track of ideas I had but hadn't got to yet, and things that were problematic with respect to continuity.

One of the interesting things for me is that I had to remember what actually was possible back then. It's I'm sure a central problem of any historical fiction, but the modern age was just starting to come around back then with the internet which they were perfectly placed to take advantage of (email, primarily) being at school. I've had to do quite a bit of checking of "could they do that then?" I didn't insist that it be pedantic but I didn't want it to have gross errors. either

The internet was one of a chain of happy coincidences that I realized as I was writing it. The one I liked the most was the appearance of Hale Bopp, our last great comet, and how it so almost perfectly fit my timeline of some of the crucial events -- I actually had to do some surgery on what I wrote when I realized that it would have been in the sky night after night to get the timing approximately right so that I could use it as a metaphor.

There were also a lot of things that were easy to take from my and Aric's life too. It's in no way autobiographical but has themes that I can relate to which was pretty fun. I tried to keep a lot of lighthearted humor to it. I had taken to reading my husband Aric passages from what I've been writing, and in one passage Ari is trout fishing and shows them how he pinches a worm in half to thread on the hook and while I was reading both the characters and Aric simultaneously shouted out "Ewwwwwwww". Mission accomplished.

At some point I came up with an idea: what if Dante came out about being HIV+ publicly? What if he did it in a way that went viral and changed their lives completely? At first I was pretty skeptical because it had all of the trappings of jumping the shark, but I decided to go with it just to see what might happen. What did he do? A senior project for his art major. Was it plausible it could go viral? I was recently reminded of Pedro Zamora from The Real World who ultimately died and how much that touched people and now am comfortable saying "Yes, it could be" because coming out publicly as HIV+ back then was not a normal thing and could easily pique interest if it got in front of the right eyes. I feel pretty comfortable about it now, but on many occasions I thought I should just delete it.

What was interesting is that it lead to a story arc that was wholly mine. It allowed me to explore what might happen when an improbable set of new characters met the established characters and how they'd change each others lives as they became more and more intertwined. It was interesting to me to see one of the characters who I really didn't understand when I first started writing about him and didn't expect him to be much more than an ancillary character. He then bloomed into being a third main protagonist much to my surprise. It will be interesting going back in the early chapters when he first arrives on the scene with knowledge of how he ends up. I'm hoping that my naivety at the time will reflect the two main protagonists not knowing who he is, but I suspect I'll need to make some adjustments to keep things consistent. This is another thing I've been learning about writing is that it can be hard to keep things consistent over the hundreds of pages of characters and their development and make certain that it's plausible. That and not repeat yourself or have multiple instances of the same revelation. I'll have to be careful about that in the editing.

Another aspect is just research. Google of course makes this super simple these days so I can appreciate how hard it must have been before the internet came around. I still don't understand now how the hell I got anything done in those days before it too but somehow managed. With the comet, I literally had the Wikipedia page on it for weeks to keep the timing right. There were many other things that I had to keep open for days and weeks at a time too.

One thing I realized the other day is sometimes things would just flow from a place I had no idea where it was coming from where my fingers were just translating a flow of consciousness. There were also plenty of times that I'd sit around and try to game out what was happening and what needed to happen -- for quite a while I'd get up in the middle of the night, watch a youtube vid and then stare at the Chromecast screen saver thinking about what I wanted to do. But what I realize now is that that stream of consciousness is very reminiscent of writing code where I'd make notes or sketch out a skeleton and that sort of thing but normally it was just filling in the blanks that didn't really require too much thought. When I realized this, it gave me some appreciation. I've always thought that writing code is a creative endeavor with need for spacial and time awareness, and this kind of proved that out to me in what pretty much everybody would consider to be a creative endeavor. One difference is that writing is looking for conflicts to be resolved. With coding you'd generally like to avoid conflicts upfront. Another thing that is similar though is that there is no such thing as multitasking. You're either in the zone or you're not and interruptions are death and take a long time get back into the zone.

Another thing is the constant uncertainty. Does this make any sense? Will it make sense to somebody just reading it? Are these characters believable? Is what they're doing believable? Is there enough characterization? Too much even? Am I getting details right about things I really don't know much about like places I've not been or technical stuff that I'm not familiar with? I mean, at some level you have to suspend disbelief for just about any kind of fiction, but I'd prefer to minimize the unforced errors. I guess with the editing pass I should have better feel of these than where I am now. 

Then there is the inherent problem for me is that the world I'm borrowing is heavily influenced by their Mexican American upbringing. I am eternally grateful for knowing a new word "pocho" (half assed Mexican), which I think is a hilarious concept even though it was fighting words, apparently, and while I've used it when it seemed appropriate I've tried to stay away from trying to make it seem like I understand MexAm slang or vibe because I know it will come off inauthentic and I'd rather it be written neutral than some gringo's cringy approximation. Ideally it would be good to find somebody who could help me out on that, but for now I'm not going to be tossing around vato this and vato that and will be cool if that doesn't happen.

One novel thing happened though: probably the most pivotal scene involves a performance of an oration to background music. I realized that the music I chose had to at least be plausibly timed to the words. This lead to me to hunting down the music and speaking the words to the music over and over to make sure it could work. It helped a little that one of them -- Barber's Adagio for Strings -- can seemingly be more or less adagio. How the character found the Goldilocks tempo is an exercise for the reader, I guess. Another part uses Mendelssohn's Lobgesang and I realized after rehearsing it that he would practically start singing his words over the chorus. That was really fucking cool. Lobgesang has been the earworm from hell though for months.

Another interesting thing came up with this which is that it often toes the line with spirituality. I am utterly not spiritual and never have been. The inherited characters seem to be fairly neutral about it, though they grew up around Latino Catholicism so they're sort of imbued by it already. Given the events it's not surprising to me that they'd embrace some amount of spirituality and imagery. This has been very weird for me to write to say the least. I also used a fair amount of magic allusions which when I rewatched the movie, I noticed that the original had some too. Another is that we both like the awe of the stars. I picked up on that and had lots of references to meteor showers, and the biggest event of them all in their young life: Hale Bopp, the great comet.

So did I suffer from writers block? Maybe? I'm not on any timeline so if I get mentally exhausted I just take a day or two off, and sometimes I don't know what way things need to go so I just sit on it until I get an inspiration. What I'd typically do is go work on something else in the book until I found the solution of where to go. Sort of like Gandalf in Moria: "that way!" There were definitely some chapters that were hard to write that I put off for a long time because they were so emotional. Researching for them wasn't fun either. Even though I hate that people dismiss anything HIV related out of hand, real shit does happen and that it's fucking hard. But probably the hardest ones for me were the more triumphant ones. My last chapter to write (not the last chapter) is one of those. I think it's hard because obviously it's going to work out, but I don't want it to be too cliche so there needs to be build up and conflict leading up to it which is pretty hard for me.

So this post is what is known as procrastination. I pretty much know what happens, but it's still hard. Christian, you're really going to sleep your way through town before you click your ruby red slippers together, aren't you and finally allow love? Oh that's another thing: I've fallen in love with some of my own characters. I guess you're supposed to do that too.

Epilogue

It's 8/21/2024 and I've officially finished writing and have checked off my todo list. I read somewhere that it 's a good idea to just put it down for a couple of weeks or a month before starting to edit it. I'm not sure exactly how to edit it either since it's not just about spelling and style choices and all of that, but whether things should be cut, whether the continuity is correct, whether the flow makes any sense and whether details that I remember well from previous sections will be remembered by the average user since most users only read something once. That and is it repetitive? I think some amount of repetitive is ok since readers don't always remember but too much and especially introducing it again as new information is bad. 

I'm actually pretty good at figuring things out on my own. I designed the software for a laser printer not knowing a damn thing about computer graphics before the internet and designed email authentication with zero training in network security stuff which is used the world over, day in day out. But this seems different. I had complete imposter syndrome for both of those too, but even if I fail with this I'll be happy.

I still have a ton of reservation about borrowing somebody else's world. When I first started this it was an experiment if I could do it at all and I never expected it to get to something 470 pages long based in that world. I know I could and maybe should rewrite it with my own world but would probably need to move it from El Paso to somewhere else and I'd  need to create a different backstory, but the name Dante itself is really important -- names as destiny. It would be hard and error prone, but it would be more authentically mine. I think I'll leave it be and think of something new to write since this has been fun and challenging.

Hey Benjamin if you ever read this, thank you so much for inspiring me to do something so completely outside of my experience. It's been fun to finally do something years after I gave up Silicon Valley rat race.

More to come...

Stonewall is just a creation myth

Martha's Quest for the Gold Lamé Fleece

 [NB: I use "gay" as the catchall because I really hate the word queer. Sew me]

The more I've looked at gay history the more that I've come to the conclusion that Stonewall the event was really pretty irrelevant. That goes counter to the popular narrative that it was an inflection point in gay history and that we really need to know about the exact history of the drag queens and transsexuals that spearheaded it, and who threw the first brick is super-duper important. It isn't. Stonewall was one of many uprisings that happened in the 60's across the country like Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco and the Black Cat protests in LA. And let's not forget that whatever happened at Stonewall had very little relevance outside of America in the western world at the time. A short NY Times blurb about a riot in New York did not ignite an international movement in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Berlin. Yet.

A net.acquaintance by the name of Jack Carroll wrote a  fascinating diary of gay life in New York City  in the 60's through the 90's. He was actually in the West Village during one of the nights (first?) of the Stonewall riots but didn't witness it firsthand (he had a dinner reservation). It didn't even make much buzz at the time. He lived on the Upper West Side which had its own gay scene far removed from the Village. It's easy to forget in the age of the internet that information traveled really slowly even in a metropolis like NYC and a smallish community like gay people.

Stonewall itself as described by Jack was a complete shithole run by the mob with disgusting toilets, watered down booze and generally awful ambiance. It seemed to have a good jukebox which was something of the currency of the realm in those days. It wasn't some haven of drag queens, transsexuals, people of color and was instead mostly white bridge and tunnel gay men from like New Jersey and Long Island slumming and locals looking to score on them. Ironically Stonewall didn't even need to exist because of the Sip-In at Julius's lawsuit made it legal for gay people to gather and carouse. The lawsuit was brought by the Mattachine Society and was pivotal for NYC gay life. The thing that Jack points out is that gay life was getting much better under Mayor Lindsey so there wasn't some sort of then-and-now inflection point. It was just a progression of things getting better for gay people incrementally. But nobody really knows what happened at Stonewall those nights because it was... a riot and chaotic and over several days. Nobody's iPhone was slipped out to record it.

But it wasn't just in NYC and Stonewall. Change was happening in many cities with large gay populations like LA, San Francisco, Chicago and more. More important is that we were starting to organize behind the scenes. Harry Hay lived in Los Angeles and was part of the Mattachine. The Mattachine itself was very much a Good Cop organization in that if they asked nicely they thought they could get their rights. There was almost certainly internal division on the good cop bad cop tension and Stonewall may have been a symbol that some amount of bad cop was good too. Harry Hay went on to be one of the founders of the Radical Faeries so he was clearly open to evolving away from the Good Cop strategy eventually. A lot of these organizations had a shelf life anyway and the Mattachine's was due to expire.

The Mattachine Society had an annual protest in Philadelphia called the Annual Reminder where they all silently in their Sunday best marched up and down protesting the lack of gay rights. It was conformist to a fault with all kinds of rules of what gays and lesbians were allowed to wear and how to behave. They predictably didn't achieve much. But one thing happened after Stonewall that did change things pretty much forever: the Annual Reminder was transmogrified into a march commemorating the Stonewall riots in late June the next year. The march started as a smallish number of people marching down from Sheridan Square in the West Village but gathered steam as people joined in along the way to Central Park. Similar marches happened simultaneously in LA, San Francisco and Chicago of various sizes and coordination. Stonewall would have been a historical footnote too were it not for the Pride that followed.

Pride parades are what actually changed everything in several ways. The first and foremost was giving the middle finger to erasure. Coming out has always been by far our most potent weapon. When people are given a concrete that their son or their loved uncle or their granddaughter is gay, it's much, much more difficult to reject than from the abstract. Yes, of course that rejection happened in droves and drove generations of gay people to gay friendly neighborhoods, but it also put a fine point on it: I will not hide for your sake. It's not surprising that other cities and countries picked up on this. Pride was a potent expression of that openness to show that we are people too. The second is that Pride is extremely important for gay people for our own reasons. I like to say that Pride is actually for young gay people to show them how very much they are not alone. That their alienation has an exit. That a better life is possible. Maybe not easy, but yes the Emerald City exists. The third is that it gives frothers something to froth about. We seriously don't give a fuck about how hard you clutch your pearls. We're just having fun and you're scandalized. By what? Anything you'd see at any beach? Let them froth: it's keeps us in the news and makes them look silly.

But Pride parades were really part of a larger phenomenon of coming out in general. Pride just memorializes why we need to. They are the beautiful amalgam of us being out and having fun to celebrate that we aren't just freaks, but living and breathing beings that deserve to be happy just like anybody else does. Part of happiness is having sex with our loved ones -- just like everybody else. Fuck your heterosexual norms being forced on us -- especially the part about having to be heterosexual. We can figure things out for ourselves, thankyouverymuch including wanting those same heterosexual norms if we choose. Or not. And neither is wrong. But the openness of the 70's is what really changed and made the gay rights movement look much more like what we know today. By the time I came around in 1978 gay culture and the way we live and find each other was already fully formed. Pride was an annual -- and very visible -- marker of that progress. But was it Stonewall itself that affected our general openness and coming out? Color me dubious. I am very certain that it didn't color anything at all for me and I really don't recall when I first even heard about it. I doubt it colored many other young gay people either.

But back to Stonewall itself. It's just a totem. A MacGuffin used to move the plot along. And just like Hitchcock's famous use of his Maltese Falcon MacGuffin it doesn't actually matter what the dreams were made of, or that our actual MacGuffin is largely ethereal. And that's OK. We need our creation myths even if they are vague and probably inaccurate as passed down over the ages and glorify their actual importance. The scholarly accounts trying to tease out the angels on a pinhead are charmingly funny if not rather pointless (or self-serving as is supposed to be the case with Martin Duberman's account). Let's have Martha P Washington and her quest for the Gold Lamé Fleece as part of our lore. Let's have the gay Trojan Horse filled with condoms and gay glam twinks storming the West Village overrunning the NYPD. Let's have José Sarria's The Widow Norton calling on her inherited empire's gay militia to muster and put on their feather boa'd tricorns and repulsing the homophobe army. Let's have the Daughters of Bilitis as a lesbian Spartan Army of Lovers. We're fabulous and we are allowed to make up our own myths and fudged history and we shouldn't care about whether it's literally true. The proof is in the pudding: Stonewall itself didn't change much itself, but it gave an entire movement something to hang its hat on: a shared myth. Something that the rest of the world embraced as a convenient myth too. Pride and the general "not taking it" feeling that was in the air gave us the courage to come out and change our world in unimaginable ways that even in the 10 short years later when I came onto the scene, that things were very different. Myths serve purposes. The stuff of dreams, indeed. Symbolism matters but we should also keep in mind what our actual history is too and not get too worked up over the literal truth that we'll never really know.

RWRB: What the movie gets right and wrong

The pivotal scene that Henry accepts Alex's love

 

There is a perpetual debate about books vs movies. People who read the book first invariable are incensed that the movie doesn't have every last bit of the book in it which they never do and never can. This is especially true of the adaptation of Red White and Royal Blue as the director Matthew Lopez apparently had to fight to make the film as long as it is, let alone how long it actually needed to be. Ideally it would have been a series, but I think even 15 more minutes and certainly 30 minutes would have helped.

That said, book-first people usually miss that the movie gets some things right and are actually much better than the book. This can be for a variety of reasons, but the visual media has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Just to be clear I saw the movie first before reading the book for which I'm glad because it makes me more objective (if I do say so myself).

The Movie vs the Book 

The book and the movie are different. It's fair to criticize things that the movie got wrong, but it's unfair to criticize the cuts that needed to be made that is the studio's fault.

Movie Gets Right

1. Nicholas Galitzine is beautiful. That is all. Taylor's eyelashes slay
2. Matthew Lopez's use of Stephen Fry and Thomas Flynn as the homophobic King and Crown Prince is hilarious since they're both out in real life. I can only imagine the convo he and Stephen had about him taking the part. They were probably laughing their asses off
3. The use of The Blue Danube in the cake scene is inspired
   
4. The cake scene in the movie is really hard to beat. I mean, it begs to be seen not described. The cut to the White House with Bad Reputation is brilliant in my mind
5. Zarah is everything you wanted in Zarah and more 
6. For such a smallish part, Aneesh Sheth does a really good job as Amy. That she is trans in real life like Amy is very fucking cool
7. I kinda like that Henry drives rather than arrives in polo gear. The car plays on his father's being a Bond
8. Henry's cheeky use of sweetheart in handshake scene is a nice bit of foreshadowing (not that anybody doesn't know where this is heading)
9. The foreshadowing of being wrong in the interview scene to the love making scene is nice and really ties Alex's journey to the most intimate part of the movie
10. Sental 33 -- the company that makes it must be thanking their lucky stars. I don't think this is in the book
11. The line of Henry saying the palace insisting on parading him around I don't think was in the book, but really helps Alex start to understand Henry
12. The text flirting is just brilliant with its use of visuals and Henry being there virtually
13. Even though I wish it were longer, the scene of the two of them in Alex's bed talking turkey is a great use of the visual medium and shows that Alex is really warming to Henry even though he's clueless about the true nature of it
14. I believe the movie was the one where Henry called Alex a bellend which is really hilarious given Alex's contact name for Henry
15. At the NYE party Henry is very visually jealous which is pretty impossible to convey in the book since it's from Alex's POV 
16. The visual in the Get Low scene is great and is a good metaphor for Alex really seeing Henry and the tension between them (and boy does it get tenser in a few moments)
    
17. The dialog of the first kiss scene is better in my opinion. And of course the visuals trump the descriptions from the book. Alex's expression of amazement and shock is perfect. It really conveys that he just had a major life altering event
18. The movie captures Alex's doe eyes for Henry at the state dinner -- use again of visual
19. The movie played up Henry's boner perfectly in a hilarious way
20. I like how the movie has quotes from the book scattered around in different places. The gay as a maypole line was originally with Henry hissing at Phillip in the Queen scene
21. Moving the polo match back to England makes much more sense. It's the middle of winter and Connecticut is frozen solid by then. Update: ah, they meant Windsor Ct so we're back to it making no sense.
    
22. I love the visuals of Henry bouncing around on his horse because we know he's going to be bouncing around on something else soon enough
23. The "was a mouthful" scene was perfect with their continued flirtation
24. I've said on more than one occasion that the Paris making love scene was one of the best depictions of gay love making I've ever seen, but now I think it is the best depiction. It is so beautiful and romantic and captures perfectly as Alex enters Henry which I'm not sure I've ever seen before. Most gay sex scenes are outright awful -- you can't just shove it in -- but that they taught Nick how to play his facial expressions is perfect. It's also obvious that Alex is falling hard for Henry
    
25. The condoms and lube being visible is again great
    
26. Henry kissing Alex on his arm several times is a nice touch. It's not just about sex, it's about intimacy too
27. The morning after the DNC scene is way better than the book in my opinion. Again, they take advantage of the visuals and Zarah's meltdown is precious. Zarah reading Henry the riot act is better in the movie
    
28. Considering that Nick is a really good singer in real life, it must have been unbearable butchering Don't Stop Me Now
29. Alex's expression of being completely in love with Henry at the Texas karaoke conveys in an instant which took pages and pages in the book. You can see that he can't contain his love for Henry anymore
30. I agree with Matthew's decision to cut the prince and his amour scene. It's a beautiful one-off but it really doesn't make sense the way he was trying to incorporate the email source. In the book, Henry's just trying to tell Alex who he is and why he is the way he is. In the movie Alex is asking permission to love him. Henry's story was easily taken as "yes" by Alex even though it was ambiguous -- probably to Henry too. If Alex interpreted it that way -- which is clear he did given the next day -- he would have told him that night which would have caused the flow to not work. I can't imagine Alex after hearing his story wouldn't have been overwhelmed in emotion and would be unable to contain himself: "Henry, I am so in love with you."
    
31. The platform in the lake scene is both beautiful and heartbreaking. The visual metaphor for Henry drowning because of his closet is spot on. The overhead filming of them on the platform was really good too. The movie is much more succinct though it does leave you wondering what happened after before Henry leaves. In the book it was at night and he was gone in the morning, so it doesn't make much sense that he waited till the next morning in the movie?
    
32. The V&A scene is beautiful and amazing as it's the real V&A museum. The book is more drawn out about Henry's accepting Alex's love but this works for the movie. Although the book is more realistic in that Henry is the one that puts on Your Song, the movie is more poetic that Alex gives Henry his daft pubescent fantasy. The natural lighting pretty accidentally worked perfectly in this scene too
33. Alex giving Henry his key is better. In the book he puts it on his key chain but that would have clanged around. But Alex wearing the signet ring would have been hella sus though since Alex clearly doesn't start with H. Who is this H, hmm?
34. Alex's speech is better in the movie, in my opinion. It's both more compact, but gets to the matter at hand that Alex is in love with Henry and why in fuck is it a scandal just because Henry is a he?
    
35. The scene with the lead up to Alex and Henry finally being able to talk again after the email was made public was pretty much the same. It was on the plane in the book and in the White House in the movie, but the net effect was the same. However, the tenderness of Alex and Henry meeting on the stairs comforting each other was visually perfect
36. I prefer the movie not bringing in Catherine who we've never even met. It's really Henry's place to stick up for himself. I like that this snapped Catherine out of her funk in the book, but it's really not necessary. We never do find out if Catherine made good on her threat to the queen, so that's a little unsatisfying. But beyond throwing Henry in the Tower of London, what exactly could they do to prevent him telling the truth anyway? He has plenty of money from his dad, after all. The king does rollover too easily though
    

Tossup 

1. Nora and June being compressed into Nora. June really never moves the plot forward, but Nora does -- on several occasions in the book so she's the obvious choice
2. I think that Alex in the movie comes across as more of a douchy frat boy than in the book
3. The cut hookup scenes are fine -- we get the picture that they are horny and falling in love 
4. The hospital scene is obviously really condensed. A lot of people were butthurt that the Star Wars refs were omitted but I don't really miss them. If they were willing to put in the Han and Leia mural from the book it would have been worth it, but beyond that no big deal  
5. The great turkey calamity would have been nice to be, er, fleshed out more. I really miss the "buy the turkey a vacation home in Mallorca" gag
6. The Texas strategy memo part of the movie I'm a little meh about. The way it played out in the book is a lot different than in the movie. I get that it's a device to introduce their email back and forth, but it was a little hokey
7. Pez is a great character and he's sort of a straight version of Alex in that he knows how to talk to Henry. It's really too bad we don't see more of Auntie Pez
8. I don't think it really is explained in the book, but there is no way that people wouldn't know who Henry was especially at an event like NYE
9. The Nora confession scene pretty much is the book, just trimmed down. Both work
10. Both the book and the movie fail on whether Henry does indeed dick Alex down which is a bummer. It's hard to imagine that Alex wouldn't want to find out what it's all about since it clearly blows Henry's mind too
11. Once it's obvious they've fallen in love it's too bad that we don't see how fiercely protective Alex is of Henry (which I clock as around Paris for Alex). We get it in glimpses after the email hack, but it started much earlier than that
    
12. Ellen is much more chill in the movie about Henry being his boyfriend when he comes out, while she's much more "I'm president" in the book. Both work. But props for the shout out to safe sex and PrEP in the movie
13. The storming the castle scene is good in both. We miss where Henry hisses that he's been in love with Alex the whole time and "nothing gets by you, does it Alex", but we do see the raw emotion on Taylor and Nick's faces which is powerful
14. When the news broke about their email it was told from Henry's POV which is different than the book which is always (?) from Alex's POV. It's a weird difference because this is a classic October Surprise with American politics so you'd think that would be more pertinent 
    

Movie Gets Wrong

1. The height comparison thing is tedious. Taylor is clearly taller than Nick though in the book Alex was 3-4 inches shorter which I like. Alex is Henry's little snuggle toy and Alex melts in Henry's arms
   
2. Uma Thurmond's Texas drawl is a bit much. And Alex has neither a Texas drawl or a Mexican accent -- just sort of a standard American accent which I'm sure is not what you'd get when you combine the two of his parents' accents
   
3. Ok, we get it -- it's an international incident -- but no government is going change its course on policy based on a cake going overboard
4. The real life reporters on cakegate are so cringe. Stop pimping yourselves out, girls
5. Ok, Miguel is by far the biggest miss in the movie. I get that the whole Raf subplot had no chance of making it into the movie, but a reporter at a two bit magazine is not going to be able to hack Alex's account. They should have just reworked the republican campaign being the perps but slimmed it down to fit the time given
6. Soliloquy is such the wrong word 
7. The chick at the party is basically sexually assaulting Alex. I want to throttle her
   
8. I really don't like that Henry was so completely buttoned up in the bedroom scene in the movie. Alex was not passive in the book and I find it hard to imagine him being so considering how obsessed with Henry he is and now sexually. This wasn't just a bro gives another bro a blowjob, it was Alex's awakening that he is fully into Henry
9. Ok, it's a nit but Henry has a car so it's implausible that he doesn't "own" a key for it
10. I know this is totally unfair but the movie doesn't capture their love letters which are integral to the plot. The Texas campaign with Alex is to give them some vehicle to show them but given email's long format the movie is doomed to not be as good
11. The cut from the DNC back to the White House was really confusing at first. The movie suffers from this in several places including the cut from the polo match to Paris -- how did we get to Paris?
12. They need the scene with Alex watching with glee Henry eating with his fingers. I know not enough time budget, but it was a cute scene in the book and one of Alex's pranks on Henry
    
13. The scene with Alex and Oscar at the lake was better in the book. In the movie Alex basically comes out to his dad, where in the book Oscar figures it out and teases Alex. But the movie doesn't have the setup with talking about Raf so it might have been awkward without it
14. David clearly doesn't like Nick very much or at least isn't excited to see him
15. Again, Miguel Ramos is so cringe in the interview. This is just not good
16. Alex holding a press conference without straightening things out with Henry and the palace is out of order. It would be really disrespectful of Alex to do that without Henry's permission. This just seems like a goof to me
17. The Sheep May Safely Graze has been a godawful earworm for months now after Alex flies in to London. Groan
18. The cut to election night from the palace is way too abrupt. The entire last few chapters in the book are anticlimactic too, but the movie is worse. There really does need to be something to set up election night
19. Where the hell did they get those bikes? In the book it was Liam and his boyfriend's. Small, sure but did they get out the bolt cutters to steal them? "Hey Amy, I need some bolt cutters!"
    

Cut from the Book and Notable Changes

1. June is combined into Nora
2. Cash is combined into Amy
   
3. Oscar is not divorced and is not a senator from California
   
4. The Raf arc gets morphed into the Miguel arc
5. The White House Trio is not a thing 
6. Liam is gone
   
7. Alex's inner life of his goals is pretty much gone
8. The entire line of Henry's pic in a tabloid that Alex has been obsessing over for nearly a decade
9. Rio Olympics became Melbourne Climate Conference 
   
10. "I'd rather be waterboarded" -- Henry meeting Alex
    
11. The Cornettos scene was cut (though filmed)
12. Alex's arc of denial of his bisexuality and Henry in particular
13. The entire Star Wars arc is gone
    
14. "Can you get rid of him" at the Olympics vs "I need to get out of here"
    
15. The dialog about Henry's prank on Alex about the turkey needing a vacation home
16. The Xmas scene was cut along with June finding out that Alex has a friend (soon to be with hella benefits)
17. A small difference is that it was June who invited Henry to NYE. It shows that the two obviously have a back channel and are plotting in their own ways and that they adore each other
18. In the book Alex and Henry are both naked in bed and both get off rather than just Alex and neither are naked for their first sexual escapade
    
19. The polo match was in Connecticut vs England in the movie giving the ability for it to be a day trip for Alex
20. Henry and Alex fuck for the first time in Paris in the movie; there is no equivalent to "he is" about Alex's name in the book either
    
21. The NYC birthday scene is cut
    
22. Pez is mostly cut out
23. Alex gets a hickey in Berlin
24. The family names conversation is over the phone in the book along with Bea's backstory cut
25. The road trip with Auntie Peza is cut
    
26. The LA scene is completely cut -- karaoke is moved to the lake scene
27. Wimbledon scene is completely cut
28. Alex can cook! (at the lake)
    
29. The lake abandoned scene is at night vs in the day on the platform
30. The storm the castle scene deleted the makeup/breakup sex and the next morning how Henry finally decided to fight for them
31. All of chapter 11's email is deleted
32. The entire prequel of being caught in the elevator is deleted
33. Alex and Bea's dialog of loving Henry for all of him when the news breaks is cut
34. Catherine doesn't exist in the movie, the queen is a king
    
35. Chapter 14 doesn't exist except for Alex's speech
    
36. The courtship photos were cut
37. Alex's Big Plan getting tossed in favor of taking it slower is cut
     

The Book

I'm not comparing it to the movie, per se and I'm not saying that it should necessarily be in the movie. This is much less comprehensive than the movie section so I'm mostly picking out things that I thought were either wrong in the book, or a lot better in the book that probably wasn't in the movie.

Book Gets Right

1. The backstory of Alex's obsession with Henry and the centerfold pic of him almost 10 years ago is helpful in knowing that Alex has it bad for Henry. It's sort of the counterpoint of Henry loving Alex all along from when they first met
2. I'm totally on Team Alex with respect to Star Wars. Ewoks are a big fat NOPE
3. I like the Xmas Eve dinner call with Henry. It reinforces that Alex can talk to Henry and that Henry understands him in a way that nobody else does. Alex is finally opening himself up to somebody other than Nora and June. They are both very closed off but in very different ways. The book also has Zarah in a red turtleneck which is echoed in the movie when Alex confronts her about his binder
4. For NYE is June conspiring with Henry? We know later that they have their own side channel but after she finds out that Alex likes Henry (as, a "friend", lol), is she trying to egg that on?
5. I love after Henry kisses him that Alex is ridiculously jealous of Henry kissing somebody else. D00d, you have it bad
6. In the scene at Kensington after Wimbledon when Alex fucks Henry again, the description sounds suspiciously like Alex gave Henry a prostate orgasm. Well done, Alex!
7. I love how Zarah at the DNC probably got a look at some royal D
8. In the Hamilton series of email, Alex muses that Hamilton could be bi. I like that it is brought up, but I'm ultimately skeptical as I think that the manifestation of what was masculine and acceptable was pretty different back then. Lincoln gets brought up in the gay/bi context quite a lot too but barring more concrete evidence I don't think we'll ever know
9. I like the touch of how Oscar segues from Raf to Henry at the lake after telling Alex that he and Raf have a lot in common. Like, oh say, liking dick too?
10. "The face you made when you read the last one". Lol 
11. "Seria una mentira porque no seria el" "it would be a lie because it wouldn't be him"
    

Book Gets Wrong

1. Tech stuff really needed somebody to review it before publishing. It's really grating at times. You'd never say "write a code", for example. The email is dangerous trope is really just flat out wrong 
2. The book spends entirely too much time describing the same features of Henry over and over. Yes we get it, Alex thinks he's hot
3. The first time that Alex fucks Henry in LA they're both still pretty drunk. The Porter at Hell's Gate might like to have words about "nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes"
4. The scene with Waspy Hunter fighting with Alex about Texas is super cringe. It's so typical and basically Stockholm Syndrome that people from red states -- Casey is from Texas -- like to trot out to try to justify their state's shitty politics. No, it is not Democrats' fault for not paying attention to them, it's their people's fault for putting fear and resentment ahead of their economic interest. People don't just vote for their wallet's sake. Bigotry and tribalism are a thing too
5. Casey forgot about the War of 1812, so it would be the third English-American war 
6. Nora should be smart enough to know an NP problem when she sees one (ie, the calculate out the future comment)
7. I'm pretty sure that Alex's use of filibuster is either wrong, or archaic
8. It's not so much wrong, but how can both Ellen and Oscar be in congress together when they were still married? Was one of them a carpetbagger in another district?
9. All of the allusions to fighting and punching is a little much. Yes, we know you're from Texas and you stand your ground by blasting first, asking question later but seriously stop it
   
10. Small nit: in SoCal you'd never say "the 101". It's either the Ventura Fwy or the Hollywood Fwy
11. Are there white chalk cliffs in Wales? They're from the Appalachian Orogeny so it wouldn't be sea floor like Dover
12. In the book, the revelation that it was the Richard's campaign that outed Alex and Henry never really gets resolved. Given the lengths they went to to drive that sub plot, it's unsatisfying that the only thing you can tell is that Ellen won. You kind of want to know if it hurt him
13. One nit: if they are going to prosecute Richards and his campaign, I'm pretty sure that the fruit of a poisoned tree doctrine would apply to the stash of email that Raf nabbed
    
14. I don't think there is poison oak in the UK
    
15. I wish the bonus chapter would make clear whether Catherine deposed Mary or not. Apparently Catherine has a guest room at their place in Brooklyn, but that would be probably a logistical nightmare for security. Or would it be Phillip that takes Mary's place?  
16. In general once Alex and Henry are open, I'd really like to see Alex parading his boyfriend around a bit in the book like to Raf and Liam and even Ellen for that matter. Or when Alex gives the speech on election night dragging Henry back out onto stage to introduce to the crowd. Alex is immensely proud of Henry and not because he bagged a prince, but because of Henry the person that he wants people to know how he sees him, not Henry's stiff royal veneer
    

 

 

 

 

 

Husband Material: grrrr

At least the pic is cute

 

 [Boyfriend Material and Husband Material are written by Alexis Hall]

So i just binged through the Boyfriend Material and then Husband Material books. Boyfriend Material was OK though rather plodding. Oliver in it has almost no character development and frankly his character is boring which was the overall premise for why he was a safe choice for Luc, but we get nothing more. His main attribute is seemingly being able to deal with Luc's neuroses and that's about it. Who is this guy? Yes, he's neurotic too but not in a lovable way. Does he have any passions and things he likes to do outside of work? It's all so robotic and while that's the actuality of a lot of life it's not a good formula for a book character. At least with Red White and Royal Blue Henry's facade is defensive and he's revealed to have a rich inner life when he lets it down. With Oliver? Not much there other that his weird neuroses. Luc seems to love him only because Oliver loves him back -- not a good formula for a relationship.

 

So now to Husband Material. I had heard it was a bad sequel and it didn't disappoint. I've read that the author's name is a pen name which is fine, but the reason he gives is that his writing is not compatible with his day job. Hmm. There may be perfect legit reasons to separate the two, but it could be from a closety point of view too. Given the rest of the book and the hints of internalized homophobia in Boyfriend Material I'm leaning on the more uncharitable take.

 

So anyway, here we find out that not only is Oliver boring, he treads dangerously close to the Unlike the Other Gurls style of internalized homophobia*. It's OK not to care about Drag Race or rainbow flags, etc, etc, but when you feel oppressed by it that's a red flag. They go on and on about a fucking balloon rainbow arch at their wedding. I mean, wtf? Your bf wants it and it freaks you out? Another red flag. That's the hill you'll die on? The proper response is to roll your eyes and let your boyfriend make it his wedding too. Having rainbow whatever at your wedding doesn't define you, after all. After the wedding you can go back to not giving a shit about all of the gay trappings.

 

The entire premise is pretty lame of Luc offhanded musing that they should get married was an actual marriage proposal. I mean, who does that? It's certainly not uncommon for couples to discuss marriage ahead of time before one of them proposes. In fact, I think lack of discussion is pretty much a red flag in and of itself. Marriage does bring responsibilities along with its yummy rights and shouldn't be entered lightly. If nothing else, you'd want to figure out what it means for finances. It's just not believable that an offhand remark should be binding. So the entire premise is flawed.

 

There is also Oliver's switch from vegetarian to vegan now and apparently it's messing with his physique. Previously he went on about Uber and its unsustainability. I certainly agree that Uber is a piece of shit company but that doesn't seem to the entire point. There may be other neuroses that I'm forgetting, but it seems to me that what the author is really doing is making a point: Virtue Signaling bad. Virtual Signaling harmful. The entire bit with rainbowphobia may well be in the same vein: that Luc is virtue signaling his gayness or something weird like that. His internalized homophobia might rationalize his internalize homophobia  into a stand against virtue signaling. I won't say with certainty that's what's going on, but given the rest is sure seems like it is possible.

The book itself is basically a bunch of weddings. There really doesn't seem to be much point to them other than setting up the strawman argument that marriage requires heteronormativity. I couldn't even finish the Alex wedding chapter because it was just so awful in both is glacial pace, and its silly premises. Brig's wedding seems to be about the  Best Day of Her Life  and setting up other heteronormative strawmen. But going to his ex's wedding who shit on him to the tabloids? Why on earth would anybody do that? In my humble opinion weddings are perfect for finding a reason to get out of them, and that is such a trivial Nope. But that's just me, I suppose. But it still remains absurd, and I really don't get what the entire message is supposed to be. That Luc is an abuse bottom? The only part that had any redeeming value was the part where Oliver gave his speech at his father's funeral.  So we're going for Three Weddings and Funeral, but we really aren't because it wasn't romantic and it wasn't funny.

 

The final part is so messed up and contradictory that it makes me want to strangle Oliver. First of all as a barrister if he doesn't understand the vast legal infrastructure that marriage provides he should be disbarred. He has a homophobic mother who would absolutely disinherit Luc were something to happen to Oliver. They both seem to buy into the bs that marriage changes everything and the Special Day and that marriage is special and that marriage is showing love. What twaddle. My husband and I had been together for 14 years before we got legally married and 15 years later You know what's changed? The legal stuff and that's it. It was a great party with friends and not much more. Then the complete idiocy of calling it off because Oliver didn't want to be thought of as wanting white picket fences. Well then fucking don't have them and who cares if people think you do? He doesn't want to be heteronormative when that's literally how he's been the entire time? What the actual fuck? I mean, not wanting to kiss until you like/love somebody is as heteronormative as it gets (and even then most actual heterosexuals find that sort of normativity to be no barrier to, er,  entry). Is this the author saying that gay marriage: bad because it might make you look gay? Or straight? Or something else? We're left to speculate because it's never resolved. I kept getting more and more worried as the number of pages dwindled with absolutely no resolution in sight. And then, nothing. We're left wondering what the fuck just happened. 

Luc's part of not wanting to get married at least makes a little more sense in that it seems to relate to commitment issues. The last little bit about they shouldn't work but do is a commitment issue. But then there is the weird take that the limerence period isn't permanent in a relationship about their date night.Yet that is true regardless if you have a marriage license or not. The only way to feel that way again is to find somebody new. And it's not like you can't have nice romantic date nights just because you're married. But the whole thing is rather silly as they should have had conversations about all of this, so maybe a valid reason to not get married is that they are too immature. Regardless, this is deeply unsatisfying in that we really have to guess why he really doesn't want to get married.

 

This is just infuriating to me who has done my part in the journey for marriage equality including being the face of gay marriage for a time on NBC. Lots of people in the day had a lot of issues with gay marriage and its implications about patriarchy. Fine. But then AIDS happened and showed that those legal protections were really fucking important and that the heteronormativity was optional all along. Nobody is forcing you to get married any more than they are forcing you to like rainbow balloon arches. This is clearly written by somebody who has no fucking clue what marriage is actually about for gay people, or chooses to ignore that vital part. All I have to say is if the supposed premise of the next book is about getting kids and they don't consider the legal implications the answer is: no, don't. That's especially true with homophobic relatives who could make life a living hell. 

If you want to have a conversation about the merits and demerits of marriage, fine. But pulling the rug out at the last possible moment with basically zero discussion? That's one giant NOPE. The only thing that makes any sense to me about the whole thing is that the author has some real issues that he very likely doesn't realize he has. That he's hoping for affirmation for his internalized homophobia which is definitely a thing with disaffected gays, especially men in my experience. But straight acting Oliver not wanting to get gay married? Quelle surprise. Bletch.

 

1/10

 

[*] Unlike the Other Gurls is a manifestation of internalized homophobia where the person tries to claim that they are not like the flamboyant gays and why do they have to be that way? Never mind that actual flamboyant gays are a minority. Typically the reason is that they are afraid that their gay fabulosity will reflect poorly on them somehow. This can range from disgust at drag queens all the way to the most insignificant indicator like a rainbow bracelet or some other thing that might tip another person off that they are either gay or gay friendly.

Why I think Red White and Royal Blue succeded

One of the most realistic gay sex scenes I've seen

Romcoms are pretty much a dime a dozen and mostly just like a quick fix of sugar and gone in 5 minutes. The premise of RWRB is pretty silly in many ways -- a Prince of England and the First Son of the US--  like that's terribly likely. Throw in gay and it's getting even more tenuous on the reality front. But romcoms are supposed to be silly, so it's just hewing to the the genre. RWRB is more than that though.

First off there is Henry, the closeted prince. The intersection of celebrity and the closet has got to be a terrible place to live. Given the internet -- and its forever nature -- I think things are probably even worse than the bad old days. I like to use the analogy of Hollywood. In the old days you could be a gay celeb and the studios would run deflection for you. Hollywood was and is homophobic, but stars make them money and money > homophobia. So back then you could be more or less discreet and live a pretty gay life. Everybody around town knew so and so was gay, but the studios controlled the narrative and could take channel locks to the balls of the press if need be. With the internet -- "you're on your own, son". 

I think a lot of gay people really relate to Henry's predicament even if they haven't been in the closet forever or were never in it in the first place. The closet is a near universal experience for gay people and it can be soul crushing. The most typical reason is religion, but it can be for almost any reason where it's dangerous to come out. In Henry's case it's the shitty expectations of family. Even for those of us who had it pretty easy, we've all witnessed people and their closets and the stories about it and it is truly heartbreaking. While Nick Nelson in Heartstopper was also closeted, it was largely a closet of his own making. Maybe that's not quite fair, but his stakes were pretty low. Henry on the other hand is truly fucked. I think that kind of closet is much less common in gay movies, especially when you throw in how hard it is to be private. It makes you ache for him.

For Alex it's another angle that you don't really see. Alex isn't closeted because he doesn't understand his feelings. We know that he's obsessed with Henry, but he doesn't understand the real reason. He tries to rationalize that Henry is awful and entitled, but the book makes it much more clear that Alex finds other guys attractive and he definitely finds Henry very attractive, but he thinks it's normal for straight guys to be able find other guys attractive. That's certainly true -- I can find women to be beautiful but that doesn't mean I want to fuck them. But Alex always has doubt  as to which is which.

So I like the latent bisexual arc and it's pretty unusual. Unlike Nick Nelson from Heartstopper who is quite young and still in the phase where you're usually figuring things out, Alex is older and almost certainly dabbling in the hot chick circuit. His dalliance with Liam was in high school, so that too is easy to blow off since that's pretty common. We never know if Alex has had girlfriends before -- seemingly not -- but he's almost certainly had a fair amount of sex. Zarah more or less confirms that when she tells Alex "and no hookups" for his trip to make Henry his new bud.

Then comes the caketastrophy and the subsequent need to be buds. And then they start flirting. Henry is overtly and not so discreetly flirting with Alex, and Alex the great emotional intellect remains clueless. I'm not sure I've seen that done, like anywhere? Then comes the New Years Eve party and Alex is still clueless about his real feelings for Henry. Then Henry kisses him which is like a bolt of lightning out of the blue. Alex finally understands what this has meant. It's just that it took a clue-by-four to get him to realize it. Even his confession to Nora is weak: he's looking for an out and she reads him to filth. I really like this as it completely changed everything in his life and his understanding of himself. It doesn't really need to be a prince to have that sort of awakening, but it helps because you're probably not going to have a decade long obsession with the schlub across the street. 

So that's very unusual to the point of I don't think I've ever seen that kind of bisexual representation, especially male bisexuals representation. Male bisexuals are still pretty invisible and often find themselves in a weird no-man's land where gay men don't trust them not to run off to a little missus, and women are worried that they are really gay and just using them as a beard. The reality is there are probably tons of male bisexuals who just label themselves as gay or straight because a) it's easier especially if they are more attracted to one than the other and b) if the issue isn't forced. But Alex has definitely been forced and big time. He now knows that he's extremely sexually attracted to Henry and it was sexual tension all along. That's fun for a big old homo like me who's known he was from puberty on. True lots of people don't get it till much later, but it's usually repression. Alex just never makes the connection until Henry kisses him. 

The Red Room seals that they are now lovers. And boy can they not get enough of each other. The other thing that is sort of unusual is the banter both in and out of bed. Sex is not just animalistic or sensual, though it can be. Sex is fun and can be silly and playful too. That you definitely don't see often. The scene in New York where they are racing to get their clothes off laughing the entire way captures that playfulness. Matthew Lopez and his intimacy coordinator who are both gay really did a good job of capturing some of the dimensions of how gay men actual experience sex rather than the one dimensional crap that is all too common. Nick Galitzine is almost certainly straight, but my god did he get the making love scene right. Hats off.

The other part that works is that it really pulls on your heartstrings. Henry is perfectly happy with Alex as his plaything figuring Alex will get bored of him eventually. But that is incredibly sad because Henry has been in love with Alex all along. Even though the deleted fireside scene doesn't entirely make sense, you feel for Henry. He's trying to escape and let Alex love him, but he panics. That was just so horrible for both of them. Henry hurt Alex in the worst possible way. I read that in the KP bedroom scene where Alex gives Henry his ultimatum that Taylor started crying and then Nick heard him and started crying too completely unscripted -- that is very special. I figured it was scripted but to find out that the actors were so invested in that scene -- wow.  Bet that doesn't happen often in Hollywood. Then there's where Alex flies to London after the scandal and they meet on the stairs. When do you see with gay flicks two lovers who are in complete despair trying to comfort one another? Holding the Man maybe? That and it's it's almost impossible for me to not speculate when Alex is really in love with Henry. My feeling is that it was when they made love that Alex knew that he was falling.

From the comedy part of romcom, Zarah is just wonderful. Her mental breakdown finding Henry in the closet is beautifully acted. And of course there is the obvious irony of closeted Henry being in a real life closet.  But Henry and Alex both provide plenty too with their constant banter even when it's very obvious they are in love. My prediction is that Alex goes to his grave with Henry's contact as HRH Prince Dickhead 💩. From the very first time they really meet there is tension especially with Henry calling Alex sweetheart in a teasing way. In the book the scene with the turkeys Alex is trying to get the turkey to gobble for Henry and Henry tries to guide him "look the turkey in the eye..." and eventually "buy the turkey a vacation house in Mallorca". I think this is really a guy thing as guys are supposed to be competitive with one another. Too often that goes missing. The scene in the book with Henry after Alex fucks him and can't get any words out he thinks something to the effect of "if I had known that's what it takes to shut him up, I'd have done it months ago". Beautiful.

One last thing that may be a bit underrated was the cinematography. It was beautifully shot. The stairs scene. The overhead raft at the lake scene. The drowning scene. The shots with Bea in that beautiful garden. The first kiss scene. The deleted fireside chat scene. And my goodness the absolute beauty of the scene at the V & A. And of course the cake scene. I heard that they had a really famous cinematographer who also shot Angels in America. Now that had to have been a challenge at every level with Angels coming out of ceilings fergawdsakes so his pedigree is real. The sets were really well done too. They must have cost a pretty penny. The costuming is pretty ok too, though it's fairly easy because they are dressed in boring suits for the most part. And the infernal use of The Sheep May Safely Graze earworm that has burrowed into the center nucleus of my brain. The sound track was really good. Except for that. God damn you to hell.

It's not to say that the movie (and the book) don't have flaws. For the movie the near fatal flaw is that the  time budget of two hours was way too short. That's the studio's decision though. I really don't have a problem with a lot of what was cut -- Wimbledon was just another excuse to fuck and LA didn't work as well as the movie IMO (I mean, both drunk and Henry having just eaten an In-N-Out double double before getting porked?). But the cut from the polo scene to Paris was way too abrupt and lacked any context. Same with the DNC speech and the coming out scene. It took me a while to figure out that they were two different scenes since they were in the Oval Office but seemed like they were still in New York. And the entire last several scenes went by way too fast. The Miguel Ramos plot device was not great either. The book is flawed there too (er, what happened?), but a scorned journalist queen? Feh. 

So overall these are the reasons I tell myself why I'm not insane to be obsessed. The book and the movie had real innovations and things that you don't often see. I keep telling myself that I'm retired and it's not embarrassing to have something to obsess about since I'm kind of bored. It is, of course, but this is my defense. I may be convicted and sent to 6 years of hard labor at loser reform camp, but I'm at peace with that. My husband Aric even bought me a History Huh? mug and shirts. I was mortified. But popcorn. I need more popcorn. And a fucking sequel.

A rant on people's constant whining about gay movies that involve AIDS or have sad endings

Yes, everybody knows about the Hollywood trope of dandy gays or dead gays which was starting to change by the 80's. There were starting to be more movies and series that didn't involve gay men dying and even if it were a sad ending, you can chock a lot of it up to recognizing society's homophobia which was definitely not the same as the dead gays trope which was that we had it coming. Movies like Maurice and Another Country can't have happy endings because the times didn't allow that. That doesn't make them bad for being sad, it means that homophobia sucks. It still sucks; it's still relevant. In the 80's that was something that needed to be shouted out at the top of our lungs. If that offends people's tender sensibilities today, well, fuck off. It's bad enough to have so much gay history erased at the hands of homophobes, but to consciously self-censor what things were like 100 years ago and other historical dramas is to erase our history willingly and I call bullshit on that. We need to constantly be reminded that we now are the historical oddity and how fragile that actually is.

The other thing is that historical fiction is usually done from the point of view of the victor. Well guess who the victor was back then? And the victor's literal goal was to not speak its name. Sure you can pull the Hollywood series's stunt of rewriting Hollywood's history in a farcical and completely unrealistic way but while I get what they're trying to do -- being aspirational -- it's annoying as well because it is so false. I mean, if they did a movie about Oscar Wilde, are they supposed to omit the fact that he was thrown in jail for being gay? Or maybe we shouldn't see anything about it all because it has that inconvenient sad fact. Or maybe Alan Turing to whom we owe a great deal of having this conversation at all, and omit that he was driven to suicide by the homophobic state just so it isn't sad?

Now onto AIDS. There seems to be this notion that in the 80's all movies that dealt with gay content were AIDS related. That is utter and frankly offensive bullshit. I don't think the first film that dealt with AIDS came out until around 1985 and it was a low budget affair (Buddies?) without much reach. So half the decade down without a single mention. The other thing to realize is... there was no public internet. Information moved at a glacial pace compared to today. Gay men were dying because we didn't know what was going on. So something like An Early Frost which also came out in 1985 was extremely needed just to get the word out. That's true from a health standpoint, but also from a political standpoint since nobody gave a shit because it was "killing all the right people". Oh but that was then you say. But that's true of anything that involves history which these films have become.

By the late 80's more AIDS related movies were available but they were far from common. Heck just about any gay content was hard to find. By the early 90's it was a little more common but again we are talking about a very tiny universe. We are now swimming in a sea of gay content and there's maybe a dozen or two movies that dealt with AIDS. What's the fucking problem? Some of them were even funny like The Living End. Not every movie has to be happy. Like it or not, it's part of our gay past and it's maddening that people want to erase it as if it never happened -- because it's sad. Yes, Holding the Man is extremely hard to watch but it's our history too: that gay men of my generation were practically wiped out from a disease that nobody knew about. That it was a historical accident that it embedded in the gay community in the West unlike the rest of the world where it's primarily a straight disease. That it informed a lot of the politics of the day. Everybody should watch BPM just to get a sense of how desperate it was and frankly the heroes most of whom are now dead who transformed not only their times, but generations to come. Oh, you say, I just don't want to watch it now. Ok if not now, when?

I wonder if the same people who hate sad gay content avoid movies like Schindler's List and the like that deal with the Holocaust. Or heck, even Fiddler on the Roof for that matter. Or movies that deal with Black slavery in the Americas. What, no Kunta Kinte in Roots because: sad? I'd much rather people not watch ahistoric pieces of revisionist history like Gone with the Wind that erase Black history instead. I'm neither Black nor Jewish, but I am gay and movies about our pasts need to be made and watched because god fucking damn it: NEVER FORGET.