The Plains, Spring 2015
When I lived in the gay neighborhoods of Los Angeles, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, there were annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals to attend.
In the Straight World, not so much. You can go to mainstream film festivals to see an occasional gay-themed piece (mostly about gay teens being bullied at school) amid the many selections about lonely, isolated heterosexuals and melancholy children:
A woman tries to keep the rattling suitcase of her dead husband closed.
A young boy walks through a deserted city to a house where a little girl is ballet-dancing.
A man chases a balloon through a subway station.
A young girl collects fallen leaves.
Buffed Polish actor and dancer Rafal Iwaniuk, who has posted a "like" of a gay sauna in Warsaw on Facebook (unless it's another Rafal Iwaniuk) plays a tough who sits next to a guy on a train and makes him feel threatened.
The festival of short films here on the Plains last year was sponsored by the University, and held in three venues downtown. Most of the shorts I saw were held in a t-shaped theater with folding chairs and couches.
My date (Jimmy the Boy Toy) and I sat on a couch on the left side of the "t," where we could see the screen and the projection booth, a narrow room separated from us by a curtain.
The projectionist stood and walked into the "t" to adjust the sound and so on. Otherwise he slouched on a couch just in back of the curtain. He didn't realize that I could see his legs and crotch perfectly, especially when the screen lit up with a bright scene.
The rest of the story is too risque for Boomer Beefcake and Bonding. You can read it on Tales of West Hollywood.