Why I love My Own Pri­vate Idaho

I live as a straight man with rare flash­es of homo­sex­u­al long­ing. I’ve nev­er admit­ted that pub­licly before, and even typ­ing it leaves me anx­ious. But in the hands of Gus Van Sant’s My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, the director’s third and most emo­tion­al­ly com­plex film, I am among friends – it is as murky about its char­ac­ters’ sex­u­al­i­ties as we all are in our most unpro­tect­ed moments.

I’ve enjoyed sex­u­al rela­tion­ships with female part­ners. As have Mike (Riv­er Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves), two young hus­tlers liv­ing on the streets of Port­land, Ore­gon. One of the first scenes of the film fea­tures Mike mid-orgasm receiv­ing fel­la­tio from a rotund flap of a man; in a fol­low­ing mono­logue, Scott admits he’s more than will­ing to sell his body, even pos­ing for the occa­sion­al mag­a­zine cov­er when he needs the money.

Yet nei­ther of them is explic­it­ly gay or straight. Their mantra is that if it can earn them extra cash, they’ll do it. ​“It’s when you start doing stuff for free,” Scotts ven­omous­ly spits, ​”that you start to grow wings… You grow wings and become a fairy.”

What’s quite clear, though, is that Scott nev­er real­ly need­ed the mon­ey. At the start of the film, he’s a week away from inher­it­ing a for­tune from his ail­ing father. So what are we to make of his rela­tion­ship with Bob, a vet­er­an hus­tler who returns to Port­land and calls Scott his ​“true son”? They’re nev­er shown sleep­ing togeth­er, but when they share a kiss, Scott doesn’t flinch.

The first time I watched My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, a scene mid­way through the film cut me deep: Mike and Scott sit beside an open fire togeth­er, with Mike slow­ly mus­ter­ing the courage to tell Scott he’d like to have a ​“talk” with him. ​“I real­ly want to kiss you man,” he can bare­ly say. Scott isn’t recep­tive; ​“Two men can’t love each oth­er,” he says, leav­ing Mike qui­et­ly drown­ing in dismissal.

This moment is equal parts tremen­dous and uncan­ny. I can’t count the num­ber of mug­gy night­time chats I’ve had with my clos­est male friends, bathed in porch light as we trade our most rest­less fears. It’s an rev­er­en­tial feel­ing. I want to break script and move a bit fur­ther, but the nerve is nev­er with­in reach. I keep the wheels of con­ver­sa­tion spin­ning, dread­ing the moment silence falls and the grav­i­ty build­ing between us begins speak­ing for itself; I nev­er allow it to, and I leave won­der­ing if maybe that was best for all parties.

What those sce­nar­ios mean is nev­er quite clear. Do I want sex with these men? Or am I so swept up in the fright­en­ing inten­si­ty of our life­long grat­i­tude for each oth­er that sud­den­ly, words alone don’t feel explic­it enough? In My Own Pri­vate Ida­ho, Van Sant seems to think one may be an expres­sion of the oth­er. He sketch­es a world where sex­u­al­i­ty is less a char­ac­ter­is­tic and more a tool for get­ting by. On the Bret Eas­t­on Ellis Pod­cast some years ago, Van Sant even posit­ed that Mike and Scott might not have sex­u­al­i­ties in the con­ven­tion­al sense. Do I?

My attrac­tion to men is not sex­u­al per se — that’s reserved for women — and it may not be lit­er­al­ly homo­sex­u­al either. It’s a chaste pas­sion, but it’s a pas­sion pure and true. Being hon­est, I’m at a loss for how best to describe it. ​‘Bisex­u­al’ feels too strong a word, too defin­i­tive. Per­haps I’m just queasi­ly roman­tic towards all humankind.

I won­der if Mike and Scott have sim­i­lar atti­tudes about their own male rela­tion­ships. Both have oth­ers of their own sex they’re in var­i­ous stages of love with, pla­ton­ic or oth­er­wise, but only because they act as escapes from the cir­cum­stances of their lives. Scott goes through life run­ning from a stiff white-col­lar world by which he feels con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. Mike seems con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by life itself. He’s reg­u­lar­ly the vic­tim of nar­colep­tic spells that seem less like afflic­tions than bio­chem­i­cal inter­ven­tions. In fight-or-flight stress, his body makes up his mind for him, set­tling for a deep sleep, where dreams of his moth­er embrace him and whisk him away from the real­i­ties of his numb, com­pass-free existence.

Lat­er, Scott and Mike go on a trip to find Mike’s moth­er. There Scott meets a young Ital­ian girl named Carmela (Chiara Casel­li), and the two embark on a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. Mike’s face looks more betrayed with each fol­low­ing scene. By hav­ing sex with a girl, he seems to prove that their three-year life togeth­er was not a mean­ing­ful endurance but rather a curi­ous excur­sion into exotica.

Are my thoughts excur­sions? I used to think it mat­tered, but as usu­al I stand cor­rect­ed by expe­ri­ence. All of us, beyond gen­der and pref­er­ence, are search­ing des­per­ate­ly for any peo­ple extra­or­di­nary enough to return our crooked world, as Paul Thomas Ander­son once phrased it, “…back to its inher­ent state of per­fect.” They may iden­ti­fy as men, women, both, or nei­ther; friends, lovers, or fam­i­ly. But they’re out there, and once you find them, their assigned draw­er is up to you, and there are no wrong choices.

These feel­ings remain hazy to me, and they may not clear up any­time soon. I’m not sure Scott and Mike fig­ured things out either, not com­plete­ly. In ways I can’t reveal, life inter­vened before they had a chance to. But if I learned any­thing fol­low­ing their dream­like drift, it’s that love is not for cat­e­goris­ing; it’s for tak­ing in. That’s the lux­u­ry I have that Mike was denied – I’ll nev­er be with­out peo­ple to share in my love, and so regard­less of where I end up, my own pri­vate Ida­ho will nev­er be far from reach.