Starring

“IT’S LIKE BEVERLY HILLS, 90210 ON ACID”

Nowhere has become my quarantine obsession. On my first viewing of the film, the last in Araki’s so-called Teenage Apocalypse trilogy, its breadth was almost incomprehensible. When recalling the movie now, I think mostly of the main storyline of Dark and Mel (James Duval and Rachel True), a sexually-fluid couple in an open relationship. Mel has a girlfriend, Lucifer, whom Dark despises. He finds himself longing for the shy, quiet twink, Montgomery, from his Modern Society college class. As they all prepare to go to a rager, Dark keeps his camcorder running, spotting an alien throughout the night. The world’s end seems nigh.

But even relaying the plot is besides the point. Nowhere is to be experienced. Just watching the film gives you a molly-like rush, frenetically jumping between what feels like one million storylines and characters, who are all going through major crises. Cowboy is trying to get his boyfriend, Bart, off drugs. Egg goes out with a celebrity who, in a horrifying scene, sexually assaults her. Zero’s car gets stolen by a gang. Angela rails and gets railed by an aggro biker. There’s an televangelist whose sermons drive people to suicide. And an alien is stalking town. Nowhere is like the most insane and fucked up party on the planet that you can’t bring yourself to leave.

Described by Araki as “Beverly Hills, 90210 on acid” and stuffed with stars from the late ‘90s, there’s a type of queer fluidity and openness to its central characters that, when viewed now, feels contemporary. Dark tries to navigate his discomfort with non-monogamy with Mel. Dark wrestles with his desire for Montogomery. Dark ponders his own existence and need for intimate love. Araki constructed a queer world where his characters live their life with no explanation or regard for a straight audience. Coupled with fashion which reads as very fucking cool in 2021, HBO’s genera+ion wishes it was this interesting.

I found comfort in watching Araki’s perspective on the end of the world while living through what feels like the end of the world. In marked contrast to the isolation of coronavirus pandemic, the characters in Nowhere sweat, touch, scream, snort, and fuck their way to Doomsday. Though contained within the four corners of my screen, Dark and Mel and Lucifer and Montgomery seem so much freer to do as they please. There’s a kind of permission in their existence--be the freak you’d like to see in the world--but they’re also just fun to watch. They make alienation seem sexy and remind me that an apocalypse doesn’t strictly mean “The End.” It’s a new beginning too.

“CITY MORGUE. YOU STAB ‘EM, WE SLAB ‘EM”

What was that alien doing smack dab in the middle of the City of Angels when Dark first glimpsed him across the street?

Ok ok ok when I say that, what I’m actually wondering is how that creature got there, prime for glimpsing across the street. Like, did it crash land from the sky? Or slither out of a belching crevice in the deep sea? Maybe it took the bus. Or biked across the city.

Ok ok ok but really what I’m interested in is the alien’s sense of itself. During dull moments, I try to imagine how the California sun felt on its lizard skin. Its shock at the concept of a refrigerator. Its aim. Whether or not the creature misses the company of its own kind. Or if it was aware as it stalked the streets and neighborhoods and locker rooms and drug-fueled parties and teen boys of Gregg Araki’s LA if it knew all the meaning it carried. Alienation made so obviously literal.

I spent a good part of my time in quarantine trolling the internet for reasons why Nowhere wasn’t released on DVD. As if distributors and lawyers and production studios were deliberately targeting me, preventing me from accessing what I consider germinal queer movie history and sending it to every gay person I know with the message “WATCH THIS.” How the fuck is Nowhere not playing on every channel on television?, I’d angrily type into Google to no response.

But in a 2015 Reddit AMA, Araki says he gets asked this question “ALL THE TIME.” In a friendly and surprisingly exclamation-laden reply, he seems to suggest that the soundtrack--stuffed with Suede, Hole, and Radiohead--is the culprit, the copyrighted music preventing the film from coming out on DVD. He said the rights will revert back to him in “i think another 5 years or so,” which would mean now. Apocalypse IS nigh.

“YOU KNOW THAT I FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT HUMAN BEINGS ARE BUILT FOR SEX AND FOR LOVE AND THAT WE SHOULD DOLE OUT AS MUCH OF BOTH AS POSSIBLE BEFORE WE’RE OLD AND UGLY AND NOBODY WANTS TO TOUCH US ANYMORE...AND JUST BECAUSE I MAKE IT WITH OTHER GUYS AND GIRLS IT HAS NO AFFECT WHATSOEVER ON MY FEELINGS FOR YOU”

Mel was the first Black bi femme dirtbag I’d ever seen on screen. And she’s really fucking hot. She floats in between her blue-haired girlfriend and sad-boy boyfriend with a type of nonchalant ease to be aspired to, nearly licking her lips at the prospect of getting spitroasted by buff twins Surf and Ski. Neither Lucifer’s nor Dark’s feelings are a factor for Mel when it comes to her sexual exploits; her unchecked desire is her sole guide. I loved that the center of gravity for herself was herself. Queer Black femmes are rarely allowed that type of hedonism and selfishness--I treasured watching it unfold onscreen.

On Halloween I decided to go as my interpretation of Mel, putting myself into Araki-like drag. I separated my hair into bouncy twists, smeared my face with glitter, knocked back molly-water, and buzzed around listening to Cocteau Twins. My friend, MarcNotJacobs, sat on the couch patiently listening to me babble about how much I loved him and his boyfriend. I texted my friends a selfie, telling them how much I appreciated them being in my life. It feels good to give out the love you’re capable of to as many people as possible. Mel’s philosophy is one of abundance and I’m just following along.

“BOOKS SHOULD MAKE YOU CLIMAX. MARC JACOBS MAKES ME CLIMAX. BUT MAYBE YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CLIMAX IN HEAVEN.”

In 2020, Marc Jacobs and collaborator Ava Nirui released a new line of clothing called Heaven. The collection is largely inspired by the Y2K-era and brands itself as “polysexual,” praising a type of gender, sexual, and generational fluidity that you, too, can participate in if you can pay the price. Integrating the work of contemporary artists and icons from decades past, the clothes are rave-ready and photographed inside what looks like a teen’s bedroom.

Despite the actual films’ relative unavailability, Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse trilogy and early work was a cornerstone in the collection’s initial drop. You could buy a $195 sweatshirt or a $95 mesh tee with a very young James Duval’s face from Totally F***ed Up plastered across it. Phrases from the film’s chapter headings--“more teen angst,” “your screaming automatic pain,” “alienation generation”--were preserved in their original font and slapped on ringed baby tees.

In a corollary shop run by Climax Books, you can even buy paraphernalia from Araki’s hard-to-find films: the soundtracks for both Doom Generation and Nowhere in CD form, a Living End poster, a Japanese pamphlet for Doom Generation. In Heaven, you can consume Araki’s movies, but only as context-less images and items, simply for their aesthetic rather than their substance. It actually seems fitting that the still of Duval, vulnerably confessing his sexual confusion into a camcorder (another relic of the past), got twisted and translated onto an expensive article of clothing.

And yet, it’s hard to be mad about it. The nihilistic, “polysexual,” and overtly angsty nature of Araki’s films are ripe for sartorial consumption by Gen Z whose ambitions, identities, and senses of self freakily mirror the queer, angry worlds of the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy. Araki seems like the queer godfather for a generation that will inherit a world that’s gayer than ever but still rocked by climate change, rampant economic inequality, fascism, and a pandemic. Perhaps Heaven’s line will facilitate a meeting of the minds--and some new fucking DVD releases--that’s sorely needed.

I bought the ringer tee that screams “more teen angst.” It didn’t fit over my boobs.

“THIS PARTY IS AS ABOUT AS FUN AS AN INGROWN BUTT HAIR”

A little before I moved into my first apartment a few months ago, my friend Dylan told me they had a housewarming gift for me. Weeks earlier, I got wine drunk and compelled them and their friend, Casimir, to watch an online rip of Nowhere I found. I’d been over-enthusiastically recommending the movie to both of them for weeks and was giddy to share. As if I had a hand in making it. But we all became obsessed with the movie, vowing to somehow replicate Dark’s dreamy, art school-like haircut.

In the kitchen, Dylan presented me with two gifts. One was CAConrad’s Ecodeviance: (Soma)tics for the Future Wilderness and the other, a DVD rip of Nowhere they sourced on eBay. It was still wrapped in plastic, its cover a dreamy poster of the film I had never seen before. I felt genuinely touched by their gifts, glad to finally have a physical copy of Nowhere in my hands. The items moved with me into my new space. The DVD case is still plastic wrapped. I tell myself I’ll save it for the right occasion, like it’s an expensive bottle of wine. It’s too holy to desecrate by opening.

“ONLY IF YOU PROMISE TO NEVER, EVER LEAVE ME”

It’s exactly when Dark gets that cute boy in between his sheets that the world decides to end. Fucking figures.