My impending move to LA has me considering reaching out to my college professor, Sage (not her real name), to tell her how she changed my life for the better. Though, I’m skeptical of my motivation for doing this. It could be because I believe everyone wants to hear that they’ve positively impacted someone’s life. But it could also be a devilish attempt to try to get close to her again and delude myself with fantasies of us banging on the beaches of Malibu. I’d prefer it to be the former reason— it makes me seem cooler, and I haven’t spent three years slinging a black fanny pack around my torso to not seem cool.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever fully admitted how much I felt (pined) for Sage. I can hear my college friends cruelly cackling at the naïveté of that sentence. But, to me, whatever I outwardly expressed at the time seemed like a kiddy pool of passion compared to the oceanic trenches of obsession inside me. I was madly and embarrassingly in love with Sage.
Because I work to hide how insane I am, I love to watch characters who refuse to veil their true selves. I live vicariously through their shameless freedom of expression, which feels like enough for me (for now). Recently, I’ve found connection with the abundance of unhinged characters in Mike White’s oeuvre. After watching The White Lotus, I binged all things Mike White, including the season of Survivor he was on, David Vs. Goliath. All his work is brilliant and special, but the film I can’t get out of my head is Chuck and Buck (2002). It follows Buck, a man-child (like really, you wonder if he’s developmentally challenged) who is obsessed with his best childhood friend, Chuck, now a responsible adult with a fiancé and an important job. After reconnecting with Chuck at his mother’s funeral, Buck moves to LA to be near him (full-out stalk him). When the two were younger, they did sexual acts in the woods together, and now Buck wants Chuck to acknowledge this memory, do these sexual acts again, and in turn, be close once more. The film shows how fickle the line is between childhood and adulthood. They’re demarcated by cultural constructs and time, but… what is time? Feelings are stronger than time. I won’t give away the details of the story, but the last scene is my favorite: Buck, more sane and “grown-up” for having burned through his obsession, attends Chuck’s wedding and revels, childlike in the sweetness of the cake, nodding to a random man in a suit next to him. It’s such a wink, wink moment, as if to say, we may think we’re grown-up, but at the center of society’s most grown-up ceremony is a giant treat that only a child could dream up. As strange as Buck is, I can’t help but love and relate to the guy. He admirably goes after what he wants, leading with his id rather than ego, which makes for some cringe-heavy comedy.
I was taken (awe-struck) by Sage the moment she floated in to teach my video art class. I’d never seen anyone like her, and would later come to realize she’s a Bette Porter type but with a sense of humor. I signed up for a second class with her on media and representation where she fully blew my dumb, straight, white mind to bits and then put it back together to compute that The Help was, like, actually really problematic. She taught me the importance of seeing oneself on screen—in art—and how representation forms identities. She showed me meaning and purpose in what I loved. Before her class, TV was a vice, after, it was something that could change the world! Finally, all those years of drooling in front of Disney Channel Originals were paying off.
Life imitated class, and I experienced the lesson firsthand a few weeks into this course. I was sitting on the concrete floor of the school’s art gallery watching Sage dreamily talk about the space she curated, and a completely random thought popped into my head: I want to fuck this woman. I’m sorry for the crudeness, but that’s exactly what I thought, and I’m trying to channel Buck here. The few so-called lesbians I’d seen leading up to college were all “butch” and therefore, according to the ignorance of the Oughts and my high school peers, were synonymous with ugly and gross. Before bed, I used to thank God that I wasn’t a lesbian because as stated by my internal dialogue, “that would suck, dude.” I’m not religious and I’m pretty sure no one straight did that, so that should have been an obvious sign that I was gaaaaaaaaay. But, I could only realize I was a lesbian when I was finally able to see myself represented in one— in her. The straight seas parted to reveal a glowing gay portal. She changed my life by showing me a life.
A genuine tweet from my first semester at college. Bonding with all the other straight ladies like, “men suuuck.” Truly had no idea what was in store for me.
I did everything to be near her. I took a third class of hers. I asked her to be my advisor (she said YES!). I internet stalked her so hard that I was sure I’d broken a law. I became her research assistant for a book she was writing. My senior year, she was pregnant and I fully convinced myself that I was ready to be a step-mom. As long as I was around her, it was safe and cool to be gay.
No matter how bonkers or polarizing Mike White’s characters are, we always understand the motivations behind their absurd actions. To Buck, it’s more about what Chuck represents than who he actually is. The death of Buck’s mother catapults Buck into adulthood, but he doesn’t want to go. To him, adulthood is lonely, especially as a queer man. So he tries to hold onto a warm childhood memory of when he was happier, and felt close and connected to Chuck. I know that it’s what Sage represents to me more than who she is as a person, but still…
Earlier, I mentioned that in the end of Chuck and Buck a chilled-out Buck attends Chuck’s wedding, a marker of his growth and ability to move through his fixation. I hope one day, I’ll have a similar catharsis— one final scene with Sage, in which I’m at her wedding, smiling cooly and contently eating cake....out of the palm of her hand because it’s our wedding.
