Longing for Love, Pick Me Gay: Understanding Myself and Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s ‘Like Grains of Sand’
Longing for Love, Pick Me Gay: Understanding Myself and Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s ‘Like Grains of Sand’
I hope that I heal in the process of writing this.
I have always felt bad when people call me “bakla” for being effeminate. One school mate placed his bet that I will become gay when I grow up. Every time I would enter our school service, it was impossible for me to escape his bullying. Every day. I have also heard that a relative of mine told my mom that she is sure that I’m gay while I belt Whitney Houston’s songs. One classmate even posted “magladlad ka na” in our section’s group chat and when I confronted him, he blamed me. He told me that I act “like a girl” and I should change myself if I do not want to be called these words.
I remember shaking during that time, typing words from my heart—to defend that I am not. I tried to watch every action of mine. I started to make sure that my hands were stiff and tough. My sister even had to act “like a man” so I could adapt her actions. She did not want me to become gay. My family did not want me to become one.
I did not understand myself. I even asked why do these people assume that they know me better than I. Who gave them the authority to dictate my gender? Did my action permit them to classify me to belong in one of the marginalized groups in our society? If I were really gay, what are the implications? Does it really affect who I am as a person? Why do people care a lot about it?
These things did not help as I was coming to terms with myself. I was afraid to validate their suspicions, hence, I suppressed everything that I felt. People did not know about my stolen glances at those shirtless men who I see in the streets. Our neighbor Kuya Jepoy, whose chest is so toned, attracted my eyes so much. My grandmother did not know that when she was helping me study for my exams, I searched privately on my phone for pictures of hot men in their underwear. I would grab a pillow, put a towel inside it, and rub it against my dick. All these things happened before high school.
These sexual tensions I felt at a very young age were kept secrets. I did not feel comfortable sharing about them. I would pretend and project myself as the pure and innocent boy who knows nothing about masturbation and pleasure. I thought I could still handle things since I still get attracted to women romantically. Yet as I gained more years, I realized that it was not easy. High school made it difficult. Romance made it worse. The institutions made it unbearable.
Sexuality is a construct built by society. As soon as I was born, I was expected to conform to it. I was expected to castrate women with my god-given phallus to become an indifferent father. This is what society expects men to be: tough, dominant, and powerful. Yet I am the complete opposite of it: soft, submissive, and passionate.
I have identified myself with a character in Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s ‘Like Grains of Sand’, a 1995 Japanese film that tells the story of Ito, a high school student, who falls in love with his friend Yoshida. However, Yoshida is attracted to Aihara, Ito’s friend. Like me, Ito is effeminate, eccentric, and was bullied by his classmates. Ito also grew up barely having his father beside him. In my case, my father had to work far from home and harder to sustain all of us.
The film is full of confessions. Perhaps, the characters think that doing such would heal their “medical” loneliness. To define, confession is a risk. Confessing does not guarantee an answer. Confession does not guarantee a favorable answer. The act of truth-telling entails uncertainty. If that uncertainty remains unresolved, looming anxiety will exist forever.
In an essay by Alexander Lambevski, he quoted David Halperin:
Abjection is also the gay men’s strategic response to their oppression and pathologisation by a society that despised them, a socially constituted affect that can intensify the determination to survive, can conduce to sexual inventiveness, and can lead to the creation of various devices for extracting heightened pleasure, and even love, from experiences of pain, fear, rejection, humiliation, contempt, shame, brutality, disgust, or condemnation (Halperin, 2007, 93)
Even if this essay talks about extreme cases like sex (bareback) and the stigma surrounding HIV AIDS, the act of confession and barebacking have something in common—as mentioned above, they are both risky to do.
In the film, Ito finds himself wanting only one thing, a reciprocated feeling from his best friend. But Yoshida is none like him: he is a heterosexual male. What he wants is the impossible. This is illustrated through the film’s camera movement—mostly one takes, long shots, and grounded. Hashiguchi’s choice of slow movement makes us want for something more. The camera lingers and observes the actions of the characters—distanced, making us look at every detail. With our eyes looking at the tremble of the hands, the awkward gaze of the eyes, and the realistic space between them. The camera longs, so is Ito.
Ito’s confession to Yoshida.
Ito’s love for his best friend is genuine and overflowing. Love at that age is difficult to handle. Hormones are at their peak. Peer pressure is ubiquitous. And for a queer individual like Ito, the most important thing is validation. Lambevski also mentions the collective queer emotional struggle and the desire to be part of society. He quoted Halperin that homosexuality is not a medical condition, instead of a stigma that is caused by the constructs of society. Ito’s father brought him to a psychiatrist when the doctor told him that homosexuality was no longer treated as a disorder anymore. This isolation and segregation Ito might have been feeling resulted in a yearning for someone’s presence—a sense of belonging.
I remember when I had to go to different church leaders just to ask things with my struggling faith. I started to question God why he let such things happen to me. I continuously blamed myself and my harasser for why I became gay. For a long time, I was made to believe that I wanted and enjoyed something I did not consent to happen to me.
I sought psychological help and at that time, I was not ready to answer everything. I envy Ito for he knows what he wants, who he is, and he is not ashamed of them. When the psychiatrist asked me if I have a boyfriend, I was in shock. No one knows that I am queer. No one knows that the reason why I was struggling at that time was that I fell in love with my best friend.
Lambevski explains emotions well. He explains gay emotions well. The words he used are confused, conflicted, and uncertain. Those were the things that I felt at that time. One, I was unsure about myself. Second, I was uncertain about my feelings toward my best friend. Since we got separated after junior high school, I longed for his presence. I even did weird things just to convince myself that I am not in love. Yet that was also the time I knew and said to myself that I am willing to be queer for him. I never told anybody about it. I just made films, wrote poems and sort of literature—mostly inspired by what I feel for him. So young. So dumb. So hopeless.
With the film having lots of confessions, the confrontation scene in the last part of the film was the highlight of everything. It is when Ito wears Aihara’s dress, faces the sea opposite Yoshida, and pretends to be Aihara. Aihara speaks as if she is the person standing in front of Yoshida. When Ito is asked why he let Yoshida come to Aihara’s secret place, he answers that he wants to see how Yoshida falls in love. Ito wants to understand Yoshida’s mind and how it feels toward things.
Ito, in this white dress, places himself in an abject scenario. Ito, a man, now blurs his identity by sharing the characteristics of a woman. He becomes the vessel of Yoshida’s love (or desire), and at least for that specific moment, he feels what it is like to be loved by someone that he loves. Despite looking desperate and hopeless, he gets what he initially wants, but we are unsure if he really had what he internally desires.
Yoshida confesses to Aihara — through Ito.
I remember when I confessed to my best friend. I was rejected. I asked what was wrong with me. He is queer too but why can’t he choose to love me back? He knew me so much, so did I. I thought to myself can’t best friends make a good couple? I remember the conversation Aihara and Yoshida had in the beach confrontation scene.
"Why do you like me?"
"There's no reason why."
"Even if I were a man?"
"I might like you, but it would be a different kind of feeling."
"Ito likes you seriously too.."
"He's a man."
"So what? Is being a man bad?"
"I can't sleep with a man."
"You don't like me. You like me because I am a woman. You just want to fuck."
This whole dialogue and scene explore the complexities of gender. All these things: confession, confrontation, and pretension happening on a beachfront. With the water free flowing like their sexuality, with the grains of sand being difficult to hold up: three messy teenagers reveal their truths and uncover their feelings. The film poses many questions. Is fucking the only basis of loving? Is sexual attraction different from romantic attraction? Why does it seem women only operate for the satisfaction of the men?
I remember Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure with Aihara saying that Yoshida just wants to fuck and when Aihara lies on the sand, told Yoshida that he can do anything to her. Yoshida kisses her. Perhaps, Aihara was right. Yoshida did not want her. It was just Yoshida’s heterosexual desire to fuck someone. A phallic thing.
While this painful event happens, Ito watches them, yet he lets go of his gaze and swims off the water. Aihara tells Yoshida to save his best friend, and when Yoshida does, he drags him off the shore. Yoshida does CPR, a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Ito wakes up smiling, telling Yoshida that Yoshida is capable of kissing him.
My best friend and I ended up dating a year after that failed confession. But unlike in this film, it was difficult for us to tell the truth to each other—to confess. We use Twitter bios to say what we want to say. We put songs as our bios and we listen to them. We were both having a hard time as we wanted to preserve the friendship. It was a long exchange until one day the truth revealed itself. Until one time, the truth ended up being a lie.
In the film, the camera captures in long takes and shots, mimicking the movement of the water. While life resembles the water, we are like grains of sand—small and indistinguishable. We live and coexist and we all just want the same thing. Ito’s choices show the long history of struggle in the LGBTQ+ community. The risks that we have to take. Those desperate, illogical choices did not seem to undergo thorough thinking and decision-making. These actions are our resistance against the long years of discrimination.
The film ended with them riding a train back to the city. The film was aimless, so were the characters. The confrontation happened in summer—an indication of transience. I remember the first person who made me realize that I am queer. He was a classmate of mine, a groupmate in our Physics project. It was night and I was not used to traveling alone at night. We were 15 and in that short trip with him, I got to know him more. I wanted to know deeper about him but after that, I never had the chance to talk to him again in that way. But what is important, I was introduced to songs that I hold on to until now.
Ito stares at the window as they travel back to their homes.
Now that I am happy, I wish the same for everyone.
