The dreamboat
Sailing away in a fantasy of desire
I’ve never been in a long-term relationship, but I fall in love at least twice a day.
Living in London means that on a daily basis I pass thousands of strangers — on public transport or in the street or in a coffee shop. The best of them trip me up and into a daydream of desire.
This short essay is about these dreamboats. They drift into our vision, spark our desires, and then sink when we realise they don’t really exist. The person may be real, but the fantasy my mind begins to play about them never is. It’s a topic inspired by episode 5 of Karl’s Kaschemme, in which my interviewee Dolf picks Warren Beatty as one of his desires.
In fact, Dolf does not really pick Beatty. He picks a character played by Beatty in the film Splendour in the Grass from 1962. That character, someone’s fantasy, is called Bud Stamper, which sounds like a gay porn star who makes foot fetish films. Bud/Beatty does indeed look dreamy, as Dolf says:
“His eyes sparkle a lot,” says Dolf, remembering watching the film as a young teenager with his parents.
I agree. Dreamboats all have a certain sparkle. In the case of Bud, that magic is achieved with Technicolor. It’s a bit of a Hollywood cheat. But even dreamboats who don’t actually sparkle have a metaphorical sparkle — that is their unique quality, and it is that thing that they capture us with. It could be a calf muscle, or a laugh, or simply their face.
Their faces are so beautiful that they can zap me out of reality and into a fantasy in which only they exist. Leonardo DiCaprio did this to me in the late 90s for the two hours or so before he turns into an ice cube in Titanic. When I saw Titanic, with my mum and my great-aunt on a day out to Hull, I fell into Leo’s face. Gorgeous. Cheeky. Symmetrical. In a giant cinema, I had nowhere else to look but into Leo’s big-screen blue eyes. A good dreamboat in the street can have the same effect, giving me tunnel vision just for him.
This tunnel vision is not frivolous. I think it means something. Whether it is Leo on a big screen or a regular Jack in the street, they provoke me to fantasise. And it’s a queer fantasy — Leo/Jack is also gay enough to show the world, to show me, his body, and to want to be the object of my male desire.
And in these moments we share, in which he ignores me and I try to avoid staring, I am making him queer. In my fantasy I am re-casting him exactly as I want to. I may be asking him to do a certain job or prefer certain sexual kinks or to laugh a certain way. In any case he certainly likes dick. Including mine. It’s all a fantasy. I am at sail on his dreamboat. And then, he passes, slipping into WH Smith’s to buy a hole punch. My dream vanishes. And like a dream, the moment could be forgotten within minutes.
But there was a moment when he was queer, and that is important. For people with minority sexualities, the dreamboat plays a unique role. We can queer them. That was one of my favourite things about La-La-Land. I already knew I was in love with Ryan Gosling, but in that film he plays a musician. I love that. And not just any musician. He’s a musician who is in the flat one night, when it’s dark, and I get home and he’s just playing the piano, waiting for me. The piano!
In that scene, Ryan not only has the face I desire, but also the act. I am projecting a lot on to him, a queerness that doesn’t exist, but it’s relatively easy because he already has so much of what else I desire — the face, specifically the eyes, and the piano.
The dreamboat enables us a sense of freedom from the reality that most people are not like us. Most people don’t want to sleep with someone of the same sex or gender. Gay people can cluster in pubs or on apps, but generally it is hard to meet others, especially outside of big cities. It’s very unlikely to meet someone with a sexual kink that matches yours.
So I celebrate the dreamboat. My fantasy is beyond their control, and all the better for it. I see them, and my heart leaps. That starts the dream. In the dream, in that moment we pass on the street, I can grab hold of their image and make it do things that are probably not possible in real life. I am writing and directing my own queer dream.
