There you are, halfway through the first episode of Fellow Travelers, and Jonathan Bailey's lower jaw has extended far enough, like a gluttonous python, to fit Matt Bomer's entire foot inside his mouth. We're talking sloppy, full-Nancy-Reagan-style throat goat on Bomer's toes; the latter moans in ecstasy, the sounds that would indeed escape your lips with Jonathan Bailey slobbering all over your tootsies. And you feel a certain way. A bit of a twitch. As the French say, the fanny fluttérs. This is an unashamedly hot, refreshingly taboo, and authentic moment between two men, getting down and carnal at the height of the Lavender Scare in the '50s, when putting another guy's foot in your mouth was, let's say, frowned upon.
Fellow Travelers, a schmaltzy period melodrama which tracks the clandestine relationship — physical, and eventually something more — of two male politicos in McCarthyist Washington, is a great, if shallow, watch. And it isn't all about the sex, the eight-part series simultaneously operating as something of an American gay history lesson with all the familiar touchstones, from Stonewall to the AIDS crisis. Nevertheless, its unequivocal carnality is a stand-out reason why, a few episodes in, you'll probably be hooked.
Yes, sure, Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer shagging under a generous film of golden light which renders these already preternaturally handsome men as nowt less than sexual demigods will appeal to any hot-blooded human untouched by the hand of repression. But, surely to the chagrin of the moralistic naysayers who contend sex scenes are nothing more than plotless space, they tell us so much about these men, about their social predicament, about their shame, guilt, desires, proclivities, and kinks. They tell us what they want to be for each other. Importantly, they tell us that Bailey's Tim, who goes by the hilariously boyish pet name “Skippy”, is a subby little freak. (On a sojourn down to the coast, so as not to arouse suspicion, the two men pretend that Tim is the nephew to Bomer's Hawkins “Hawk” Fuller. Which is a porn name.)
It's interesting, really, that amid backlash towards sex scenes in media, with one recent study suggesting that Zillennials are put off by onscreen fucking, gay sex on screen is having something of a moment. For a very long time, it's something you only really saw in indie movies: think Brokeback Mountain and Jake Gyllenhaal's bussy full of beans, or the handsomely shot, horny tableaux of My Own Private Idaho, or for a more recent example evoking Brokeback, Francis Lee's God's Own Country, the sexy, Yorkshire-set farmer drama in which Josh O'Connor had his bareback breakout. Filmmakers have historically erred on the side of tasteful reverence, or perhaps caution in the face of movie censors. It's only six years ago that Call Me by Your Name came out, after all, setting into motion the endless online discourse — on which director Luca Guadagnino has since opined with an appreciable shrug — around its camera-pan-to-the-window with Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer's first midnight rendezvous.
But this year, the fucking is candid. It's messy. It's real. It isn't confined to the traditional territory of Sundance films, and the fall festival favourites; even a rom-com like Red, White and Royal Blue, which centres on the intimate relationship between England's spare prince and the son of the American president, swallowed an R rating in the U.S. to ensure that its variously tame and tasteful sex scenes would make the streaming cut. That being a broadly popular commercial picture, mind you, with a ready-cooked audience of all the teenage girls and Millennial women who worship at the alter of Casey McQuiston, the YA author who wrote the original book.
In one scene, when the duo are caught in a hotel room by the White House comms director (great movie), a bottle of lube sits on the bedside table, next to an empty condom wrapper. It's just there. As they should be, given the functional realities of gay sex, so often neglected on screen. Not to overstate the representational power of a mawkishly enjoyable rom-com, endlessly rewatchable so it is, but the very presence of familiar queer paraphernalia is a noteworthy corrective. The only regret is that the prince doesn't huff poppers.
Even amid the indie space, there are more delectable provocations, more titillations, than we've long been used to. The most notable leap is Rotting in the Sun, which lends a generous slither of its screen time to unsimulated sex between men, more than once featuring its lead protagonist, the Instagram influencer and actor Jordan Firstman, who portrays a satirical version of himself. It's there for provocation, certainly. Given we see Firstman deepthroated in close-up, lit by the sun on a cruising beach, that would seem silly to deny. But provocation is, in and of itself, exciting.
Then there's a movie like Ira Sachs' Passages, which was struck down by U.S. censors for its beautifully photographed missionary between a married gay couple on the wane, Ben Whishaw's Martin and Franz Rogowski's Tomas. (The former's butt is given fine screen time, and has been complimented in the press by Whishaw's German co-star.) Early next year, audiences will finally be able to sit down to Weekend director Andrew Haigh's latest tryst piece (with a twist), All of Us Strangers, which sees two London loners, played by Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, engage in a nocturnal romance with unvarnished, blood-rush physicality. None of this, crucially, is horniness for horniness' sake. But it is, crucially, very horny.
Fellow Travelers is now streaming on Paramount+.
