Cachorro

The now-famous chocolate icing for bitterlawngnome and rfmcdpei's birthday cake last night, made by djjo with some help from yours truly. 12 oz of chocolate, a pound of butter, a dash of vanilla, a few dashes of Cointreau and some icing sugar.

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I had been looking forward to seeing the Spanish film Cachorro (2004), or Bear Cub, but was unprepared for its effect on me. I knew it was about a gay man in Madrid in the bear subculture, whose nine-year-old nephew arrives for a visit. I was interested to see an acclaimed movie, winner of several Spanish awards, about the kind of men I hang out with.

In fact, the bear scene is a relatively minor factor in the movie's plot. It could have been about any gay man. The fact that it was about a heavyset guy with facial hair only brought it marginally closer to home. I suppose I expected the relationship with his nephew to be whimsical and idealized. Hollywood has taught me to expect that from movies.

Instead the emotionally wrenching story struck painfully close to some of the most sensitive and important themes of my life. It might as well have been about me. To watch it last night with a room full of childless gay men was a surreal experience.

As the closing credits began, someone said: "Strange." It was strange; and so is my life as a bear-identified gay man with children who sometimes live at a distance and sometimes live with me fulltime for weeks straight. I would love to have watched it with the three gay dads on my friends list who would each relate to the film's tensions in different ways. But then we probably would have been a mess together at the end. Perhaps it was best that I got to curl up later with my boyfriend who didn't receive it so personally, but knows me well enough to understand my reaction.

Take a carefree guy who lives alone with a life of ambiguous sexual relations and fun-loving friends, bring along his sister's intelligent and perceptive son for a two-week stay that turns unexpectedly into a much more serious and demanding arrangement, throw in a lonely, scheming grandmother who uses blackmail to interfere in the bond between uncle and boy, and you have a rough outline of this film. By altering its details slightly you could also approximate the moral dilemmas, crises and heartaches that have marked my life.

The movie tried to throw in a twist ending. Such twists usually fool me, but ironically I intuited how this one must resolve.

I also declare kudos for niether portraying Pedro as a dimwitted, selfish, addled adult nor for idealizing his relationships and way of life. It might have been tempting to place him in a stable same-sex relationship to juxtapose against the malice of his detractor. Instead he is single by choice, even lonely, yet not without love. The arrival of his nephew restricts his carefree activities, and yet Pedro embraces the responsibility. His lifestyle becomes complicated by duality, not duplicity. All of this reminds me of me.

It was a hard film to watch, and yet I must place it in my list of favourites. No other has hit so close to home.