MDW BLOG

There's this memory that's come back to me in recent days, from high school. I think it might be very loosely based on the death of John Hughes (as both Brat Pack-ers and queer independent film followers will understand), but here goes:

On a Saturday night during my senior year of high school, when I was 17 years old, me and a good friend got back to my place after an unnecessarily complicated drug deal that had us driving around town for a few hours, navigating our way to the guy by cell phone, for some weed that wasn't too cheap, but our main source had dried up so we were stuck. We smoked up, and made the decision to head to a party a block away and up a hill, that was being thrown by a friend we'd come to mistrust. We were sure the party was gonna be bad, but if we went stoned we could at least laugh at it together - marijuana provided a safe way for a couple of teenage males to build trust and empathy that allowed for that kind of bond.

Anyway, we showed up and our friend was already drunk, with some people we vaguely knew, wrestling team guys, our old dealer, and a kid who we'd been friends with years ago but who'd started acting weird, especially towards me (which will probably end up as another post on here eventually...). One reason that night was notable was that after going through more than enough beers and smoking out a car, I got to see that kid get into a fight with with a wrestler and end up down on the concrete floor of the garage, his jaw busted open.

But afterward, having been through enough drama and alcohol, we wandered back to my house. We ordered pizza, drank some more beer, probably smoked another bowl. We were lying on my futon, barely able to move, and I had the remote and happened to see that this movie called High Art was on. It's an independent film from 1998 and it's about a young woman who's seduced by an older lesbian photographer, played by Ally Sheedy (there's your Breakfast Club connection). I pretty much forced my straight friend to watch it with me, as we went through the pizza and started drifting off.

Later on, he told me that was one of the first times he suspected I might be gay - the night when, after watching a kid we'd been friends with in middle school get his ass beat, we were stoned as fucked and I forced him to watch High Art. I've kind of always had a soft spot for that film and for Ally Sheedy because of that. It's a weird memory, and it reminds me of a time in development when identity isn't something that you accept, but it's something you fight, and try to beat down, or try to smother down with drugs or alcohol, or whatever else will put a boy your age in bed with you.