I needed that.

Gay movies are often problematic in social awareness terms.  It's not unexpected, really, and isn't to say that they're worse than more mainstream movies.  The issue is usually that, in addressing one axis of oppression, other axes are often forgotten or ignored.  For example, it's not unusual to have a gay movie or a black movie, but to have a gay black movie (like "Moonlight") is very unusual, at least for the moment.

Gay movies also tend to fall into three tropes: coming-out movies, almost-porn, or "unrequited/unfulfilled/broken romance" stories.  I think, in practical terms, this is because most gay movies are *gay* movies rather than gay *movies* - the emphasis, from the origination, is on the sexuality of the characters, and thus the story must be focused on that sexuality.  This reduces the number of options to some basic patterns.

That isn't to say that gay movies can't be fantastic or are all crappy; there are plenty of crappy ones out there, believe me.  I would just like to see a few more options out there.

All that being said, I saw "Love, Simon" on Thursday night.  It was an early showing, and the theater was only about a third full.  There were far more teenage girls that I was expecting (I'm not sure why; that's long been an audience for romance stories in general), a fair number of adult men (40s and older by appearance, mostly gay from what I could tell) and adult women (about the same age, not necessarily seated with the older men), and - thankfully - a dozen or so guys in their teens or early twenties.  I say "thankfully" because, to me, they're the ones who really needed to be there.

Surprisingly, I did too, though I didn't realize that until the end.  It's a cute story, with plenty of humor and awkward moments and actually a few times when the cliched thing *wasn't* done that got laughs.  It's a coming-out story in its basic form, so the arc is largely predictable, but it's still a fun journey to get to the end.

And the ending... Well, that's what I needed.  Not actually anything on-screen, mind you, though it was nice to see an interracial, interfaith, on-screen gay kiss between a couple of teenage guys in a movie playing outside of art houses.  No, what I needed was the reaction.  It took me a second to realize it.

I was sitting in the second row of risers; in front of me was an older gay couple.  One of them took out his phone and actually snapped a photo of the kiss - and I realized as he did so that it was because this was the first time something like this was happening.  But then I cued into something else: the cheering.  And clapping.  The girls behind me were going crazy, but it sounded like most of the theater were cheering.

And I can't even type that out without getting teary-eyed.  I actually started crying in the theater, not because of the love story on screen but because of the cheering.

I was the only openly-gay kid in my high school in 1992-1995.  Yeah, I had a boyfriend - who went to Stanford - for a couple of years, and I certainly had gay friends outside of school (almost all older).  But at school, and at home, and in my "regular" life, I was the only gay person I knew.

That kind of isolation takes its toll.  It's unfortunately all too common.  But I remember how excited I was when, in 1994, a movie called "The Sum of Us" came out, and it had a gay plot. I talked a friend of mine into going to see it with me - and we actually ended up going to see it just about every weekend for 6 months or so, on increasingly smaller screens as time went on.  A couple years later, "Beautiful Thing" was released, but it never made it out of art houses.

But sitting in that chair Thursday night, part of me remembered being 14 and alone and feeling like I was a total outsider.  And yet, here were people not only watching high school boys kiss but actually celebrating the fact.  I can't really express what that means to 14-year-old-me, or what I hope it does for the modern versions of 14-year-old-me: guys just coming out or just realizing their attractions and feeling like they're alone in the world.

After I left the theater, I stood outside and discreetly watched some of the other viewers come out.  When I saw the younger guys come out, they all looked like they were bottled lightning: like they wanted to scream or run around and shout or explode into a million pieces but couldn't actually figure out which to do and so did nothing.  There were a smiles and the look that meant more than words could say.  There was even one case of holding hands.

I would love for there to be more "normal" gay movies - action or scifi or mystery or romance or whatever where the lead(s) just happen to be gay, where being gay isn't pivotal to the plot.  We need more of those.  But I have to admit that, for better or worse, we still need coming out movies like this.  And I hope that, all across the nation, young gay or bi guys can go into a theater, watch "Love, Simon", and hear the audience cheer at the end.

Because the cheer isn't just for Simon and his beau; it's for all of us who have been there.  And we really need to hear it.