Previous: Episode 3.3: Baby Billy sings forever, Kelvin can't say the word, BJ poses nude, and I'm depressedCousins' Afternoon: The Gemstone siblings and their partners sit on cabana chairs, insulting their cousins, the Montgomery boys, while they swim in the trout pond. Kelvin lays on the femme stereotyping, even flashing a limp wrist. This will be important later.
Keefe, who of course looks at men's crotches a lot, points out that Cousin Karl has a lot of pubic hair. Kelvin quips "Looks like he's got a chinchilla up there!" It sounds like he is making a mean joke to draw attention away from his interest in what men really have up there.
The Fire Dance: For their entertainment, Keefe performs a highly erotic fire dance in the waning light, near a path lit by a thousand fires. I am reminded of Coleridge's "Kublai Khan":
A savage place! as holy and enchanted as e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted by a man wailing for his demon lover.
Keefe here is the demon lover, pure erotic energy, offering his mouth, butt, and penis simultaneously. He is the new Messiah of Muscle, rejecting cozy, tepid phileo, friendship, for the eros, erotic desire, that promises ecstasy or damnation.
Top photo: the real Fire Dancer
Why would anyone perform a highly erotic dance for his boyfriend's family? What does Keefe hope to accomplish? I think he is showing the family -- and Kelvin himself -- that he is a sexual being, Kelvin's lover, not a "good buddy."
Early in the episode, Kelvin couldn't admit that they were lovers. Now Demon Keefe shows him that they are. He has never been sure if his desire for Keefe will lead him to heaven or hell. Now he knows -- both.
Background note: The dark, disturbing music playing is "Balkan Sex God" from
A Serbian Film, 2010, which regularly appears on lists of "the most disturbing films of all time." It features Srđan Todorović as a retired porn actor drawn into starring in a snuff film.
Todorovic dick
Cousins' Evening: A huge dining hall, with the family and cousins using just one table, Keefe and Kelvin sitting across from each other instead of side by side!
Why does the staging back off from depicting them as a couple?
Kelvin pours on the femme stereotypes thickly, limping his wrists constantly as if he's in a 1920s pansy act, and coincidentally or not puts his "wedding ring" on full display.
Uncle Baby Billy pretends he's the host of his Bible Bonkers game show, where families compete at Bible trivia. He goes around the table and asks each of the "contestants" their name and what they do for a living. The Montgomery boys work in landscaping. Then it's Keefe's turn. He is ready to speak, but Baby Billy skips him with a rude "nuh-huh," angering him. But it's not a homophobic snub: Baby Billy skips over BJ, too: "You ain't family." Only born Gemstones count.
Next it's "the weirdo boy with the puffy muscles," the second and last reference to Kelvin's physique this season, and maybe a euphemism for "gay." But Kelvin refuses to participate.
More Balkan sex gods after the break
