Falling in Love at The End of The World

In SHIVERS, parasitic slugs that stimulate hypersexual behavior slowly infect the entire population of a high-rise apartment building. For most of the victims, the parasite unleashes horrifying darkness; the film’s climax is a whirl of extreme sexual violation, brutal violence, and the blurring of the line between.

There is one notable departure: a woman is tormented throughout by her husband, an early infectee. He demands sex from her in increasingly violent ways and then vomits bloody slugs across their bedspread until she flees the apartment, seeking refuge with her boho queer-coded female friend on another floor. Unbeknownst to the woman, her sexy friend also has a parasite, leading the viewer to expect the worst. 

However, what follows is a gentle kiss that is only incidentally a parasitic transfer. The two spend the rest of the movie floating in sapphic newlywed bliss among the carnage. Eventually they drive off together, hand-in-hand, prepared to spend their honeymoon spreading the viral parasites throughout the population of the world. 

Cronenberg once explained that the parasites did not intend evil, just unrepressed sexuality. Perhaps that's why some lost themselves in mindless sadism, but others peacefully enjoyed the sexual freedom that came from the collapse of social mores. Maybe that’s why the queer characters that represent gay menace to some seem like giddy newlyweds to me. Queer love thrives when society falls. 

You will never watch SHIVERS, so it doesn’t matter if I spoil the ending here. Your favorite movie is 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, which you have seen so many times that you know it from the first guitar note that squeals over the Touchstone logo. We watched it together on one of our first dates, and now that we live together I use it as my secret weapon. When the roar of death gets too loud at the windows, I can create a few hours of softness for you. Trans love can even cotton the edges of the apocalypse. 

Another apocalyptic love story is MIRACLE MILE. It opens with a fuzzy animation that explains the coincidences of evolution, interspersed with narration. The lead character muses that he must have followed a similar path to meet his girlfriend, as serendipity took thirty years to push them into the same place at the same time. 

I also would not have you if it were not for apocalyptic serendipity; we both moved thousands of miles to the same big city, unsatisfied with our lot in life and intent on finding happiness before the doomsday clock ticked down to zero. It also took us over thirty years to be ready for each other. We had other lives to live first, where we learned what we needed for the life we share now. Our cracks and imperfections are the worn-away places we fit together the best. 

We have a beautiful home together, with a real porch and enough space for an uneasy cat truce. I learned to drive a U-Haul through Chicago city traffic for you, and you held my hand and called Planned Parenthood when it was time for me to try testosterone. We hold hands at the beach and cry about climate change, about Gaza, about another law passed in another state we can’t visit anymore. I tuck you into bed every night before I clean the house, and you make me coffee and cuddle me awake every afternoon.

Some might say these things don’t matter in the face of an apocalypse. But they are the only things that matter. We both live like people who know that, in a world of people who act like they don’t. It’s one of the things I love about you the most.

MIRACLE MILE is comedic until its coincidences turn tragic. One of our young lovers misses a date with the other due to the actions of a mischievous crow (!?). While trying to reach her, he accidentally intercepts a call from a soldier trying to warn his family about impending nuclear war. The rest of the film invokes the healing nature of apocalyptic knowledge. Imminent doom fixes broken marriages, reunites families, and motivates our protagonist to dash across L.A. and rescue the woman he loves. He barely knows her, but apokalypsis has stripped their situation of bullshit. It’s ride or die time, even if they’re almost certainly going to die no matter what.

This isn’t my first apocalypse. My world ended when my mother died, when I came out, when the pandemic left me at the kind of loose ends that land you in grad school. I have walled myself away many times to weather out catastrophe. It would be hell in here without you.

I don’t care if it hurts to love someone as hard as I can before the world ends. I am glad I had enough time to grow the scuzzy beard you love. I am glad we had enough time to meet the dogs at the beach. I am glad the world lasted long enough for us to have a life together at all. It doesn’t matter if it ends decades from now or tomorrow. The only real tragedy would have been if we’d never been brave enough to love each other before it happened. The end of MIRACLE MILE—

“Don’t tell me how it ends.”

“Do you want to watch it with me?”

“Maybe not right now? Soon.”

I squeeze your hand and stare out over the lake. The red and white shooting stars of airplanes cut through purple clouds, tracing the constellation of the flight path over the water. I blink and clear my head, leaving the apocalypse behind me. The press of your hand and the cold smudge of your lips on my cheek weigh me to the present.

“No rush. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

(I love you, Celina. Happy Valentine's day.)