The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema”: Trick
"Enter You" is a double entendre!? Why am I only just realizing this???
Friends! Welcome to the very first edition of The Agony of “Gay” “Cinema”! For my first trick, I will be revisiting Trick, a 1999 indie romantic comedy set in pre-9/11 gay New York which remains absolutely delightful! Cute and sweet and sexy. Quite sexy, actually. Mmmm… Also, I’ve had the main character’s dumb song stuck in my head for days now. Like, just walking around my apartment whistling “Enter You” like a happy-go-lucky song-and-dance man doofus! Where are my tap shoes???
It’s early morning in New York City and Neve Campbell’s cherubic little brother Gabriel is just waking up from a night spent sleeping in the stairwell outside the studio apartment he shares with his straight roommate Rich. Rich is a total horndog bro who constantly needs the apartment to himself so that he can do sex with women, which is why poor little Gabriel Campbell is forever sleeping in the stairwell like a cursed elfen prince. This movie basically revolves around what a nightmare it is to have a roommate, which honestly, I still have PTSD about that, even though I never had to share a studio with anyone. But I have been to Fire Island a lot, which everyone thinks is a gay separatist paradise, but in an ironic, monkey’s paw kind of way is actually hell because everyone there is super horny and hoping to get laid every single night, but almost no one has a room to themself! Which I guess is partly why the Meat Rack is a thing?
But Trick is not about Fire Island. It is about Gabriel, whose roommate Rich’s girlfriend Judy is returning from France that night, so Gabriel, who just spent the night in the hall so that Rich could sexify with one rando lady (Lacey Kohl; look her up, you’ve seen her in stuff), can’t be in their apartment tonight either!
In addition to having an abusive roommate situation, Gabriel is also in an abusive relationship with his best friend Tori Spelling, who calls him at work a lot because she needs him to run lines with her. See, Tori Spelling is an extreme theatre kid working actress type: excessive personality, always on, never not performing, an all-engulfing perpetual need for attention. She is a black hole of self-absorption in lots of animal print who probably thinks all gay boys love her but actually she is ruining poor Gabriel’s life. Like later that day, after work, when they present a number from the musical he’s writing for his musical writing class, and Tori Spelling sings and tap dances and everyone starts bleeding out of their eye- and ear-holes.
Afterward, Perry, the only survivor of the performance and also the musical theatre teacher I think (?), has notes for Gabriel about his song, “Enter You,” which is supposed to be about someone who’s world has just been rocked by a kiss. Perry doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t think Gabriel has ever been kissed before. He’s like, “Go out and get laid, virgin! Grab some gay balls and fall in love with them tonight!”
And so, after Broadway school is over, Gabriel ditches Tori Spelling to go to a gay bar where he can maybe get someone who blew their audition to be in N’SYNC to initiate him into a world of carnal pleasures, the knowledge of which will help transform his woe-tunes into SHOW-tunes! (I tried real hard to identify which gay bar this was, and I think it’s maybe Splash? I went to an unfortunate number of happy hours at Splash when I first moved to New York in 2005, but I can’t remember if they ever had go-go boys at happy hour.)
Now, despite his awkwardness and general put-upon vibe, Gabriel is a bright-eyed, dimple-cheeked snack with a tight little bod, and so he is immediately chatted up by someone I will call Millennium Soulpatch:
So, Millennium Soulpatch asks Gabriel what he does, and Gabriel says he writes musicals, but admits that, due to internalized homophobia, that means he is a disgusting gender traitor and sexually valuable to no one and must be spat upon immediately and then shot out of a cannon into the sun so as not to disturb the delicate sexual ecology/economy of this gay bar which relies on a specific minimum performance of masculinity. (I make jokes, but this interaction is a fascinating time capsule of 90s neo-liberal ambivalent gay assimilationist self-conception. Like Gabriel is so afraid to be perceived as too gay!) But Millennium Soulpatch is just like, “Want to come home and do an orgy to me and my boyfriend?” But Gabriel is too pure and virtuously conventional for that sort of gay thing, and runs away in terror.
Next, Gabriel is ordering a Diet Coke with lime because I guess maybe he’s a Mormon, and watching the sexy go-go boy dancing on the bar (barefoot! Why is this dancer barefoot on a bar??? In Guiliani’s New York!? That has to be a ruinous health code violation for this club!), when a character I will call Vinny Cigaretti (who also has a soul patch!) leans over to tell him that he, sweet shy virginal button-eyed Gabriel, should also dance upon bars for the pleasure of men. But Gabriel just blushes and clutches his pearls (which are gross and queeny and not yet a sexy accessory for Gen Z ravers thanks to Harry Styles) and is like, “Why Mr. Cigaretti! You forget yourself!”
Vinny Cigaretti says that he used to be a dancer too and explains go-going to Gabriel: you take off your clothes and perform bodily movements upon the bar and drunk people get to put one-dollars into your thong (not your jockstrap, because gays didn’t invent those until 2008) and sometimes you do sex work, I guess, but only if you’re bad and dirty. Then the hot barefoot go-go boy strides over to them, and Vinny Cigaretti gives him a one-dollar, but Gabriel just virginally hides under the bar because of how innocent and shy and not like other gays he is. But when he peaks back up, the go-go boy is having an altercation with a drunk gay who is getting fresh with him and he hops off the bar and disappears. Also, Vinny Cigaretti has disappeared and in his place is Old Martini, who dwells in the shadows of gay bars waiting to suck the youth from the bones of wayward twinks who don’t guard their virtue!
“You’re cute as shit, little one,” croaks Old Martini, whose monstrous sin of surviving decades of homophobia and then AIDS to reach the ruinous age of 50 has damned him to his present reviled state of degradation. Gabriel fleas, but Old Martini’s dry as dust laughter will haunt our apple-cheeked angel hero for the rest of his days. In years to come, he will gaze into the mirror and with each grey hair or new wrinkle he finds, he will feel Old Martini’s grip tightening around his heart and hear the wind whispering, “You were cute as shit…”
Gabriel is taking the subway home when who should saunter smolderingly into his subway car but that barefoot go-go boy! Wearing sandals now because I guess his piggies just really need to breath? So, Baby Gabey is gazing longingly at the go-go boy who seems to have dozed off. But surprise, he’s just faking and he opens his eyes and gazes back, and he’s for sure cruising Gabriel now. But then the train stops and it’s sweet Gabriel’s stop, so he gets off, and the train doors close just as the go-go boy is jumping up to follow him, and in some alternate timeline Gabriel and the go-go boy never meet. Gabriel just cuts off all his hair and never fulfills his dream of making a Broadway musical and then he dies.
But this is not that timeline! The doors open again and the go-go boy, whose name is Mark, hops off and is like, “Let’s go do gay sex stuff at your house for a while until your roommate and his girlfriend from France come home!” And suddenly Gabriel is like, “Yes! Of all the strange suitors I have encountered on this fair summer’s eve, it is to you that I shall offer myself in sexual congress!”
Except when they get to Gabriel’s apartment Tori cock-blockerella Spelling is there printing out thousands of resumes because of her career in acting. Ugh. God. So, now Tori Spelling has a captive audience (Mark) to whom she gets to monologue about her parasitically co-dependent relationship with Gabriel: They used to date in high school before he came out, because obviously that is the only origin story for this kind of girl, but she is definitely not still punishing him to this very day by ruining his chances of ever getting laid or having a functional relationship with anyone else. Also, apparently her nickname is “Puss,” which…gross. But then this prompts Mark, sprawled invitingly on the bed, to say his nickname is “Beer Can” and lift his eyebrows at Gabriel and I passed directly away.
Then Tori Spelling suggests that they do one of Gabriel’s musical numbers! So, they play “Enter You” again, which I guess is Gabriel’s only song? But Gabriel’s dog Trixie hates Tori Spelling’s singing, just like all the poor deceased people from Broadway class earlier. Mark also wants to hear just Gabriel sing solo, which he does. And Mark is watching him the whole time and if this was a Disney movie all the clocks and dishes and things would sing that song from Beauty and the Beast. You know, “here might be something there that wasn’t there before!”
But instead, the printer chokes and dies on Tori Spellings resumes. So Gabriel kicks her out and with that nonsense out of the way Mark takes off his shirt:
A word about Mark: this whole time he has been the most infuriating and enticing blend of totally aloof, completely at ease, always in control and never making an effort; smolderingly seductive and at the same time totally distant, unreachable. He is completely aware of what he looks like and the affect he has on people, and he just does not give a shit. Everything about him says, “I don’t have to be here,” which makes you—I mean, Gabriel—feel all the more lucky that he is. Like, you almost wonder if he’s a sociopath—which maybe all impossibly untouchable gorgeous people are? Anyway, I’ve fully known guys like this in real life—like to the point where I’m kinda wondering whether they actually studied this performance of the power of masculine beauty in order to imitate it. Anyway, it must be said that John Paul Pitoc, the actor who plays Mark, just fundamentally nails this performance.
Ok, so now Gabriel and Mark are gonna do it finally, right? Wrong! Gabriel is way too awkward, and decides that he should get naked and…play the piano to…relax? Then he’s like, “I’ve always dreamed of having you give me oral sex while I play piano.” And god bless him, Mark is totally game! But just as they’re getting ready do musical fellatio, Rich and Judy arrive. Boooooo!
So, Gabriel and Mark have to leave. But they can’t go to Mark’s house in Brooklyn because he “rents the room from this old woman.” And while they’re sitting there on the stoop trying to figure out where they can go to have gay sex, Gabriel starts rambling about how he used to think he didn’t like gay people and he didn’t think he was one of them “culturally”, because he’s a good boy and there’s really only one way to be gay which is: bleach hairs and go to gym and do promiscuity in bars and also dance clubs. Meanwhile, Mark is starting to lose interest in Neve Campbell’s poor dear brain damaged baby brother. He’s fully cruising another gay who does have very bleached hairs right there in front of sweet Gabriel, when Gabriel remembers Perry!
“Let’s go ask my elder fem friend if we can have gay sex at his house while he performs showtunes at a bar!” he says. To which Mark inexplicably replies, “Cool.” (Like…why is he putting this much effort into hooking up with someone in whom, we are to understand at this point, he has only the most passing of interest?)
When they get to the piano bar, Perry is singing a bawdy song called “How Do You Like My Cock” but in Spanish so no one is offended because who even would know how to speak Spanish in U.S.A.??? So, when that’s over, Gabriel explains the predicament he and Mark are in and Perry is like, “Sure, go make gay sex at my dwelling!” But first he wants to ask Mark inappropriate questions, like whether he “hustles,” which is what gays in the 90s called gay sex work. Mark doesn’t hustle though. Actually, despite what he looks like and what he does for a living, he’s not a filthy gay whore at all, but a good normal boy who once dated a Whiffenpoof, which is what gays in the late 90s called gay non-wizards.
On the way to Perry’s place in Chelsea, he’s telling them all about how he just broke up with his boyfriend, and Mark seems genuinely interested and sympathetic, because he’s a sweet nice boy deep down below his muscles. Then suddenly Perry’s ex is there, and so he grabs Mark because he’s the hot one and pretends that they are gay together to make the ex jealous. And again, Mark is super game and playing along, because this is what crazy hot guys are like sometimes like with older gays like Perry. They’re like, “Aren’t you cute and impressed by me! I can just be charming and there’s no way you really think you have a chance at sleeping with me so I don’t have to be a dick and punish you for your sexual interest in me, because hahaha WE WOULD NEVER!” And, again, John Paul Pitoc is just nailing this cocky, kind of condescending character in a way that I don’t think we, as a culture, talk about enough! So, then Perry just nonconsensually kisses Mark, dipping him like a sailor in Times Square.
Sure enough, the ex sees them and is sad. But Mark jumps in and starts talking about how studly Perry is, but it’s a shame they’re both tops so they need another bottom to go with the one they already caught, which is Gabriel. And all of this is just too much for Perry and the ex, and they fall into each other’s arms and now they’re back together. Which means they have to go make love at Perry’s house instead of Mark and Gabriel. But Mark and Gabriel aren’t mad. Their hearts are warmed as they watch Perry and the now un-ex stroll off together, and then they walk away holding hands!
With nowhere to have sex, Mark takes Gabriel to a gay dancing party where everyone’s shirt is off, and everyone there has already done sex with Mark and wants to do it again. All of this makes sweet pure polo shirt-wearing Gabriel insecurer than ever! But then Mark starts dancing with him TO A DANCE COVER OF “I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR” (???), and now Gabriel is having gay fun amongst the gays and so he takes his shirt off finally and no one throws rotten eggs at him because he was cute all along!
Sadly, Gabriel’s newfound gay pride and body positivity is short-lived because out of the crowd, famous drag queen Miss Coco Peru emerges, and she gives him a look that makes think, “Hmmm, I bet that drag queen has a traumatic sex story about Mark to tell me.” But he shrugs it off and keeps dancing. That is, until Mark’s very high friend Dino also appears and shows them his new ass tattoo. Now Gabriel is all insecure again, so he puts on his polo and goes to the bathroom. And that is where Miss Coco Peru finds him!
It turns out, Gabriel was right! She does have a traumatic gay sex story to tell him about Mark! See, one time after gay Pride, Miss Coco encountered Mark on the subway, and he was pretending to be asleep…JUST LIKE HE DID EARLIER WITH GABRIEL! Oh, no! It’s all a scam! And Mark is evil! Because, according to Miss Coco, he was all charming and just as she thought she was falling in love with him, he ejaculated directly in her eye hole! And that’s no good because the introduction of human semen into the naked eye produces an uncomfortable sensation. Or, as Miss Coco iconicly puts it:
So, now sweet insecure boy sprite Gabriel is worrying that Mark, A GO-GO BOY WHO CRUISED HIM ON THE SUBWAY, is actually only interested in having a one-night stand, WHICH IS LITERALLY WHAT THEY’VE BEEN TRYING TO DO ALL NIGHT! Heartbroken, he fleas the gay dance club and goes home. But Mark follows him, casting aside all the other sexy shirtless dancing gays who throw themselves in his path as he tries to escape the club.
Back at Gabriel’s apartment, Mark finds him sitting in the stairwell like usual because Judy and Rich are still having straight sex. Mark is like, “I’m sorry I’m so hot and everyone including you wants to have gay sex with me.” Also, he thinks he left his keys in the apartment, so they have to go in and look for them. And while they’re searching, Judy, who in addition to being hot is also an aspiring sex therapist, wisely helps them work through their issues.
Mark is like, “I don’t know how you feel about me!”
But Gabriel remembers Miss Coco Peru and her story of sexual trauma! And for some reason they keep referring to Miss Coco with he/him pronouns because…the 90s, I guess? But the part Miss Coco didn’t say to Gabriel in the bathroom is that she was actually nonconsensually filming her sexual encounter with Mark, and that is why he ran directly away from her!
Still, this is all too complicated for Gabriel who feels dumb for spending the whole night trying to find a place to have gay sex. “Is that all we were doing?” asks Mark. “I thought there was something…more going on tonight.” And as he storms out, he reveals that actually, he didn’t break up with the WifflePuff. It was the PuffleWoof who dumped him! Which proves that he is a nice boy and not an evil promiscuous hell-gay.
Also, during all of this Judy is topless, which, tee-hee-hee I guess?
So, having found Mark’s keys, and realizing that they are in love with each other, Gabriel runs after him. He catches up with Mark at the subway and they kiss and live happily ever after. The End!
Except that’s not the end, because then they go to a diner where Tori fucking Spelling is holding court with the cast of her play. And she’s talking and talking and talking and suddenly Gabriel realizes that Tori Spelling’s wig is exactly the same as Miss Coco Peru’s and he’s fully triggered and he flips out and tells her to JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP because he wants to hang out with his new boyfriend he just met tonight! And god bless her, Tori Spelling sees the opportunity for DRAMA and she SEIZES IT! She grabs it between her prominent jaws and she GOES TO TOWN! Because Tori Spelling LIVES FOR THIS SHIT!!! This is her MOMENT and SHE, not Gabriel, is the star of Tricked! Which is why it’s called Tricked, because we were tricked into thinking this movie was a gay love story when really it was a psychological thriller about Tori Spelling all along!
Anyway, she flips out and fleas the diner, so Gabriel has to run after her now. And she cries manipulative white girl tears and they make up and he promises to come see her play tomorrow night. EXCEPT NOTHING ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP DYNAMIC HAS CHANGED!
Back in the diner, Mark admits that the reason they couldn’t go to his house is because he lives with his mommy. Then they both go to the bathroom and Mark starts singing Gabriel’s song, “Enter You,” and as he’s sexily crooning it to Gabriel I suddenly realize, I think probably for the very first time, that IT’S A FUCKING DOUBLE ENTENDRE!!! ENTER YOU! Get it??? Because he wants to ENTER Gabriel! With his penis!!! DID EVERYONE ELSE GET THIS THE FIRST TIME THEY SAW THIS MOVIE??? WHY DIDN’T I?!?
But instead of finally having hot gay sex right there in the diner bathroom like normal gays, they leave. And it’s sunrise again in Sheridan Square, and they finally kiss! Mark gives Gabriel his phone number before disappearing into the subway. And, apparently still not entirely sure he trusts Mark, Gabriel dials the number on a payphone and is relieved to hear Mark’s voice on the answering machine! But wait…wouldn’t Mark’s mom have picked up…? Whatever! Gabriel strolls off, newly in love and singing “Enter You” to himself, probably thinking about all the times that Mark is hopefully going to enter him in the near future!
Do we think these two crazy kids stayed together? Meh! Part of me thinks Gabriel probably called the following evening and left a voicemail, but Mark never called him back. And then Gabriel got busy with work and didn’t bother to follow up. And maybe months later they run into each other at a bar and it’s awkward. But then Mark maybe moves to L.A. so they never see each other again until years and years later when Gabriel gets curious and looks Mark up on Instagram? And then I don’t know what happens after that, but apparently director Jim Fall has written a sequel and even got the whole original cast signed on to make Trick 2, which was supposed to come out in 2019. But then it never did! So, if you know what happened with that, please let me know! Otherwise, I’m just going to be wandering around my apartment forever with “Enter You” stuck in my head, which stops sounding dirty really quickly once the hot go-go boy isn’t singing it.