AJ Sloan’s Screening Room: Nuanced Nostsalgia with Stranger by the Lake

June 4, 2023
AJ SLOAN

Many moments in film history shape us, sexually or otherwise. Then others have the ability to flood us with nostalgia. My very first sexual experience with someone other than myself seems like another lifetime. I had gone to that forbidden part of the beach that no one talked about. You know, that part with random men by themselves, nonchalantly skinny dipping and periodically disappearing into the trees.

With my heart pounding out of my tits, I descended into the all-men’s land fueled with curiosity and fresh hormones. I spotted a hairy-chested man straight out of vintage '70s porn taking a dip. As he took notice of me, he stood up from the water to oh-so-casually show off his third leg. Mesmerized, I immediately stripped down and entered the lake. We swam around, keeping some distance but slowly creeping towards each other. After a few moments, he ascended from the water again, this time looking a bit more plump downstairs, walked to the shore, and sat down to wait for me. I made my way towards the shore slowly revealing my raging hardon.

As I sat down next to him, he reached to stroke me, and I returned the favor. This was the first time in my life that a hand other than my own made contact with my cock. We stroked each other off in the afternoon sun. In my mind, time was suspended. In reality, I uncontrollably blew my load in more or less thirty seconds. He smiled at the mess and at me with a sense of knowing that he had left an indelible mark on my sexual psyche. I hopped in the water to rinse off, got dressed, nervously smiled back one last time at him, and floated off in ecstasy and terror.

A while back, a friend shared a film with me. As we watched it, the memory of my first lakeside handy rushed back to the front of my mind (and cock). The 2013 film Stranger by the Lake is a French flick directed and written by Alain Guiraudie and is about a young man who discovers and becomes enamored with an exceptionally active cruising area on the shores of a quiet lake. For anyone who has seen the film, you know that the filmmaker leaves very little to the imagination.

Stranger by the Lake portrays an array of intersecting sexually charged themes as well as the pleasures and the perils that cruising brings. Our protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps) embodies the naivety and excitement of a newcomer fresh to their first experience of cruising and the voyeuristic exhilaration that comes with casually spotting men taking other balls-to-chin while walking through the bush.

Another aspect of the cruise that the flick plays upon is the anonymity of the art form. No names are exchanged and often no words whatsoever, all participants are focused on the one common goal of getting off. We are stripped of the identity that we carry every day, leaving nothing but our libido-driven urge to swap loads.

Stranger by the Lake brought me right back to my first experience… by the lake. Although I will never know the name of the man that milked out my first load, I will always remember his chest, his cock, and that knowing grin of his. The poetry of it all is that he remains just as anonymous in my mind as he was that spring afternoon. Revisiting this film has got me feeling certain ways right now....