HBO’s ‘Am I OK?’ is Way Better Than Just OK
By Anne Gregg
“I don’t want to be this thing that’s different. I don’t want to have to tell everybody this big thing. I know that it’s fine and no one cares but I care. And I’m late. It’s so late in life.”
The queer community is over coming-out movies. We know the story; a high school aged protagonist feels different from their peers, they develop a crush on a cute classmate, and the two share some secret moments together. Through a tear-filled monologue, the main character comes out and accepts their sexuality. The message of the movie is love and acceptance; it validates queer youth and teaches straight audiences that queer people are “just like anybody else.” When this formula is the only kind of coming out story, it obscures other modes of coming-out through omission. While queer people need stories where we can just exist we also need coming out stories that represent how different people come out differently.
Am I OK? flips the coming out narrative on its head by telling a 32-year-old woman’s coming out story. The film is a semi-autobiographical retelling of screenwriter Lauren Pomerantz’s coming out journey. It is also directed by Tig Notaro and her wife Stephanie Allynne. The screenplay and the lingering directorial choices ground the film in reality and authenticity. Am I OK? follows Lucy (Dakota Johnson), an anxious secretary for a massage parlor and her outgoing best friend Jane (Sonoya Mizuno). Lucy has settled into her life. She orders the same thing at restaurants. She buys the same gray clothes. She doesn’t date, and only hangs out with Lucy. At dinner with Jane and Jane’s boyfriend Danny (Jermaine Fowler), Lucy learns that Jane is moving to London for her job. Unable to cope with this news, Lucy gets wasted. While drunk, she comes out to Jane as a lesbian. Jane decides she will find Lucy a girlfriend before she leaves for London.
For some audiences, it may be weird seeing a 32-year-old who has never so much as kissed a woman realize she’s a lesbian. The explanation is subtle and never said out loud but it’s a mix of compulsory heterosexuality and Lucy’s anxiety and self doubt. Lucy doubts every decision she makes in social situations. She even doubts if she is supposed to be happy. Of course she would doubt her sexuality. When she comes out to Jane she can’t even say the word lesbian. Jane has to say it for her.
In the beginning of the film, Lucy has been spending a lot of time with her friend Ben (Whitmer Thomas). Jane and her boyfriend tell Lucy that Ben is only hanging out with her to have sex and she should make their relationship official. Lucy doesn’t want to. Jane believes sex will solve Lucy’s problems, but Lucy’s real problem is she lacks connection, with herself, and with other people. Because the people around her assume she’s straight, she convinces herself she is.
Lucy defines herself by what other people think of her. She does what others tell her to do. It’s hard for her to define herself as a lesbian when she doesn’t fit the stereotype. On top of her uncertainty Lucy is scared to be gay even though she lives in LA. The line “no one cares that you’re gay” is not helpful when someone comes out, because they care about their sexuality; they still have to come out. Even if you’re in a safe place when you come out the worry still creeps in. Jane, Lucy’s best friend, makes gay jokes. They are small, socially acceptable but the underlying stereotype is always there. Jane’s little comments are never called out. Most things in Am I OK? are subtle, intimate, real. When Lucy comes out as a lesbian, Jane decides that Lucy should hook up with a lot of different girls. She should go to a queer bar and make out with a stranger. Because that’s what Jane would do.
But Lucy does not do what’s expected of her. She doesn’t have sex with the hot new masseuse Brittney (Kiersey Clemons ) at her job when they first hang out. While they do hook up after an emotional intimacy is created between them, it turns out that Brittney just wants to experiment with girls and she goes back to her ex-boyfriend. Crushed but with a new-found confidence, Lucy signs up on a dating app. The montage of her dates does not include having sex or making out with girls at a club. It’s dinner or coffee and bad jokes. It’s getting to know other people. It’s dating at Lucy’s speed. A triumph for her is going on a date, or ordering a new food at a restaurant. She doesn’t fundamentally change to be what Jane or anyone expected her to be.
Am I OK? is the coming out movie that I needed. While I love a coming of age story that revolves around stolen kisses and the prying eyes of fellow classmates, that’s not everyone’s experiences. Many queer women discover themselves later in life. They worry if it’s too late for them because they didn’t follow the normalized timeline of coming out. Am I OK? is at its core a story about learning to move past what’s safe and what’s comfortable and into what makes you happy. It’s about not being complicit in your own life. On top of it all, it’s about learning to love the woman you see in the mirror.
About the Author
Anne Gregg is a poet and writer from Northwest Indiana. She is an English Writing major at DePauw University and is the editor-in-chief of her campus’s literary magazine, A Midwestern Review. She is a Media Fellow at her university and loves dissecting how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in film and tv.
