Pillion’s Ray is a LOSER. he says he is discreet but that makes no sense because all of his friends are gay leather daddy bikers and all he does is gay leather daddy biker kink shit. His apartment is barren and empty and has no indication of any rich inner life, it’s like an airbnb. He has a tiny piano facing a wall and some books and that’s it. There’s no art anywhere in his apartment, nothing that would expose him as anything other than an Intellectual.

But he has ELLEN WENDY ROSIE tatted on his chest. his top 3 favorite female talk show hosts. He is a FAGGOT! And it is inscribed on his body but no one is allowed to ask about it. “No.”

The thing is, Colin is obviously the loser here, right. From the first frame that’s how he is portrayed. Colin is abject, he’s a freak, he’s pathetic and desperately lonely, he lives at home. But Colin is surrounded by family who love him and we see these brief scenes of his coworkers liking him. He has this vibrant home life and parents who support him unconditionally. And what is he actually doing in these opening scenes that are so cringeworthy? He’s doing his hobby that he’s very talented at and that he loves to do. And it’s framed completely different when we see him doing it once more at the end. Who cares how other people see it? Colin doesn’t care if people think he looks stupid in his barbershop quartet. He doesn’t care if anyone actually puts change in his bucket. He’s doing it because he knows enough about himself to know what he loves.

What the fuck does Ray know about himself? When does he experience joy? Biking is his hobby but I don’t know if he even likes it. Colin is the one we see experiencing a transcendental moment of joy when he steals Ray’s bike and rides it for himself!

Throughout the film, various characters comment on how hot Ray is and how crazy it is that he’s with a guy like Colin. Because Ray is portrayed by Alexander Skargard and Colin is portrayed by Dudley Dursley, and because of the way Colin is framed for most of the film, obviously we understand this sentiment. But in the end we realize that Ray has fucking nothing going for him. That is why he can only handle a relationship if he controls every aspect of it, all the time.

Giving a partner the reins means vulnerability. Vulnerability means exposing the fundamental emptiness of his life. The threat of that exposure is so terrifying to him that he flees the fucking country rather than face it.

Colin’s mother asks, several times, what “discreet” actually means. (She never gets her answer, of course.) I think this is key to a central theme of this film. What does discreet actually mean? In the gay community we understand this to mean on the DL, in the closet, maybe having a wife and kids, a separate life. But when Ray says he’s discreet, he means something different.