Gay men feel for: Bagoas!

It’s a technique as old as time, know what the audience wants and withhold it- tease them with it and withhold it some more until the climax of it; in the foreground of this scene is poor Bagoas (Francisco Bosch) literally laying it bare on the dance floor convinced he is doing the seducing. In the background is Alexander ( Colin Farrell ) and his party-the audience where the real seduction is taking place: his tool-diplomacy and Bagoas as an object of destraction, intent to stall and sneak in his ideas on ‘Herakles’.

I had two reactions the first time I saw this scene: the first being ‘wow, what an unforgettable dynamic & rhythm of a scene!’ there are 3 tiers of political interest and suspicion between Alexander, his army and the Indians and complimenting that, 3 tiers of romantic interest and jealousy between Bagoas, Alexander’s new bride Roxane(Rosario Dawson) and Hypertension played by Jared Leto sorry I mean ‘Hephaestion’ combined with a tribal beat and looks of homophobic discomfort made it all so…seductive.

My second reaction was second hand embarrassment-that pity kiss! It is well within the unexplored dimension of hot but cringey, 5 miles off the cost of hot and just arrived into cringe town! I had been very familiar with this ‘‘area thirsty 1’’ in my life and that is when it dawned on me; I felt bad for Bagoas but mostly because he reminded me of…me.

Let’s get to know Bagoas: He is a eunuch in the court of the Persian Empire in the 4th Century BC. He literally comes with the palace, exists for the pleasure of the king and was possibly a lover of Darius and later Alexander the Great. Throughout the film he is portrayed as yearning for the king’s affection and it does not help that he is put in charge of the king’s quarters where he has to watch the king in his private space show affection to those he really cares for like Roxane and Hephaestion.

The irony is, we already know Bagoas because we have been him at certain points in our lives; between those intervals before the great gay epiphany no matter how many times you have had it, the gay rite of passage i.e. realizing that your shy but obvious efforts to seduce a guy (usually straight guys) are not worth it.

The unsaid truth is, most of these straight guys knew that we were ‘’shooting our shot’’ and they used that to seduce us into pulling in favors or only kept us around for a confidence boost in some weird ‘double seduction’ web, but all we ever got was pity rewards like being called ‘best friend’ or if you were lucky and he was open minded, a pity ‘bro job’. So yes, let me give you that closure; He anticipated your interests, knew that you were into him, teased you with it and withheld any kind of relief. The entire time you thought you had been the one doing the seducing, yet you had been the object of seduction; but guess what!

You didn’t die, you crystallized and now…