searching for love in all the wrong places
by Douglas Messerli
David
Moreton and Todd Stephens (writers), David Moreton (director) Edge of Seventeen / 1998
17
year old Eric Hunter (Chris Stafford) and his friend Maggie (Tina Holmes) have
just finished their junior year of high school, and are looking forward to
working for the summer at the local amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. The year
is 1984, and
their brown-checkered costumes are hideous. Their jobs, working in the park’s
restaurant is just as unpleasant. The only joy, for the seemingly clueless Eric,
is a fellow workmate, Rod (Andersen Gabrych), who, one year older, is attending
Ohio State University nearby.
Although it becomes apparent to all quite
quickly that their manager, Angie (Lea DeLaria) is lesbian and that Rod is gay,
Eric seems unfazed about his own attraction to Rod, and Rod has soon cornered
him the kitchen for a kiss, and, a few days later, beds him.
To seek out others who might feel like
him, he visits a local gay bar, The Universal, owned by his amusement park
manager, Angie, who welcomes him openly and introduces him to some of the bar’s
patrons for protection. At the bar he meets up with another handsome Ohio State
student, Jonathan (Jeff Fryer) with whom he quickly finds himself having backseat car sex, experiencing his
first rim-job. But when they are finished,
and he attempts to share addresses, it is clear that Jonathan has little
interest, making it another one-time fling, the fact of which troubles the boy.
Taking Maggie to the bar doesn’t help,
as she’s openly described as his “fag-hag,” and angrily storms out, deeply hurt
by the implications. And things at home become even more problematic when his
loving mother, who has become increasingly disturbed by his changing
appearance, queries him about his behavior: “People are getting the wrong idea
about you.”
In loneliness and some desperation he
drives to Ohio State hoping to meet up again with Jonathan, instead running
into Rod, who this time—with Rod’s current boyfriend sleeping in the next bed—gives
the boy his first anal experience. Realizing that there no real love there,
Eric returns home, only to find that his mother has found a pair of matches
from the gay club in his coat pocket. Eric
denies he’s ever
been there and runs off. When he returns home to find his mother playing the
piano—who had given up her musical career for marriage and children (and music
also plays a large part in her son’s life)—and admits to her that he is gay. We
returns to the bar where Angie is singing, welcomed back into its small gay
community. The next year, it is implied, take him to New York where will he
will surely be able to live a more fulfilling gay life.
For all that, the film’s beautiful young
hero seems, as in Patrick Wilde’s Get
Real, made the very same year, quite well-adjusted, despite his personal
fears. Indeed, all the teens in the films about young gay love that I have
reviewed here, are far more excepting of their sexuality than I was at that
age. But the early 1960s were simply less forgiving, with opportunities to meet
others—even had I been able to except my own sexuality—almost nonexistent. As
I’ve written elsewhere, I never knew whether Cedar Rapids even had a gay bar
until decades later. Perhaps there wasn’t even one in my days.
Sad to say, this film no longer seems to
be available on DVD; I was forced to buy a used copy. A fascinating coincidence
is that Stafford, just like Ben Silverstone, the teen lead of Get Real, after a short acting career,
became a lawyer.
Los Angeles, June
15, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment