I got to see Andrew Haigh’s film, “Weekend”, tonight.  I went along after a gym date with my friend Mark, we hadn’t been able to see each other properly for a while and had much news to catch up on, on both sides of the friendship.  We rode to the cinema after the gym where we were met by Mark’s boyfriend, Kyle. While Kyle and I went up to get seats, Mark stole away to get some sushi for us to eat. Kyle and I entered a cinema populated primarily by northside homosexuals. It was a busy session, and we were forced to sit in the extreme left of the second row. Not a comfortable place to enjoy a film, especially one I had been anticipating.  Kyle and I sat with the third empty seat between us to preserve it while we awaited Mark with our sushi. A succession of eligible homosexuals approached us to see if the seat was in fact taken. Kyle eventually placed his house keys there to declare it thoroughly taken, an irony not lost on me as we sat down to watch a film about gay intimacy, the boundaries of definition and the tension between the normative and the hetero-normative. After the film, we stood in the foyer chatting to another couple, two performers (a dancer and a circus performer) Kyle and Mark knew, and eventually I discovered we shared mutual acquaintances. We chatted politely, then Mark and Kyle invited me to join them for dinner.  Over dinner I regaled them both with stories from my weekend; both the romantic, and the open, honest details of the sex that took place. Mark and Kyle, we joke (partially), live vicariously through my “singledom”, and I enjoy the attention. Many of my friends, gay and straight, are in relationships at the moment. Of my close circle, I am one of a handful of single people, and of those single people, I am the only homosexual.  This makes me the slut of the group.  There is a line Weekend that Glen, the younger, sharper character, says. I’m paraphrasing but he makes the point that friends don’t want you to be who you want to become, they want you to stay as the old you, the you they know. It made me sad, sadder than the charmingly honest, sometimes-sentimental portrayal of gay romance I watched, and enjoyed. In the film, Glen’s bitterness is tied to his location, and perhaps with some self-examination he might have come to realisation that rarely is it our friends, or the suck city we find ourselves in, that binds us to behaving in a particular manner. The role we play in any given circle is cast very precisely, and is more often that not by our own design. Perhaps I’m bored with the part I play with this current group of friends, or perhaps I’m just melancholic after watching a well-drawn, depressing film about white gay male privilege. 

I got to see Andrew Haigh’s film, “Weekend”, tonight. 

I went along after a gym date with my friend Mark, we hadn’t been able to see each other properly for a while and had much news to catch up on, on both sides of the friendship. 

We rode to the cinema after the gym where we were met by Mark’s boyfriend, Kyle. While Kyle and I went up to get seats, Mark stole away to get some sushi for us to eat. Kyle and I entered a cinema populated primarily by northside homosexuals. It was a busy session, and we were forced to sit in the extreme left of the second row. Not a comfortable place to enjoy a film, especially one I had been anticipating. 

Kyle and I sat with the third empty seat between us to preserve it while we awaited Mark with our sushi. A succession of eligible homosexuals approached us to see if the seat was in fact taken. Kyle eventually placed his house keys there to declare it thoroughly taken, an irony not lost on me as we sat down to watch a film about gay intimacy, the boundaries of definition and the tension between the normative and the hetero-normative.

After the film, we stood in the foyer chatting to another couple, two performers (a dancer and a circus performer) Kyle and Mark knew, and eventually I discovered we shared mutual acquaintances. We chatted politely, then Mark and Kyle invited me to join them for dinner. 

Over dinner I regaled them both with stories from my weekend; both the romantic, and the open, honest details of the sex that took place. Mark and Kyle, we joke (partially), live vicariously through my “singledom”, and I enjoy the attention. Many of my friends, gay and straight, are in relationships at the moment. Of my close circle, I am one of a handful of single people, and of those single people, I am the only homosexual. 

This makes me the slut of the group. 

There is a line Weekend that Glen, the younger, sharper character, says. I’m paraphrasing but he makes the point that friends don’t want you to be who you want to become, they want you to stay as the old you, the you they know. It made me sad, sadder than the charmingly honest, sometimes-sentimental portrayal of gay romance I watched, and enjoyed.

In the film, Glen’s bitterness is tied to his location, and perhaps with some self-examination he might have come to realisation that rarely is it our friends, or the suck city we find ourselves in, that binds us to behaving in a particular manner. The role we play in any given circle is cast very precisely, and is more often that not by our own design.

Perhaps I’m bored with the part I play with this current group of friends, or perhaps I’m just melancholic after watching a well-drawn, depressing film about white gay male privilege.