If I were to ask you about the first time you saw an uncircumcised penis, you’d probably respond with a story about how it belonged to a guy you had “met” 45 minutes earlier in a chat room. You were sitting in the front seat of a Honda Accord in a parking lot off campus (since both of you had roommates), the Shins playing softly on the radio, the heat blasting from the vents in the dashboard. In the blurry darkness inside the car, you reached your hand down into his pants and, something feeling strangely awry, thought, “Huh? Oh. Ohhh. Okay.” That story would be much more believable than your face flushing with embarrassment and a nervous giggle erupting from your mouth before you stammer, “I’ve never seen one, but I do have a date with this Mexican guy tomorrow night and I’m so nervous about seeing an uncut cock for the first time!!!”
Yet that is what Patrick, our adorable life-sized Ken doll of a protagonist (but with the staggering depth of a Skipper), essentially tells everyone in this week’s Looking. Of course, it’s not a thought he comes up on his own, but one incepted into his brain by Agustín after Patrick tells him and Dom about his upcoming date with Richie. All this is polite little expositional banter that takes place while the three friends carry Agustín’s things out of the apartment to move into his new place with his cute boyfriend, who insists on living in Oakland. As they make the trek, Agustín casually mentions what he’s been up to — specifically, oh, no big whoop or anything, the AWESOME THREESOME HE HAD.
After Dom nearly revives young Patrick with smelling salts, the shock of Agustín’s polyamorous explorations resulting in him having one of his spells, Agustín points his nose high into the air while smugly explaining how humans cannot simply remain monogamous. “All relationships end in cheating,” he says, pleased with his incredibly progressive and novel ideas about the inevitability of modern relationships. “Well I certainly wouldn’t want my boyfriend to get done up the butt by a bunch of muscle bears, or whatever you kids are calling it these days,” Patrick grumbles. Dom then drives Patrick back to his apartment, where he finds that Agustín has defaced the wall in his living room with “Agustín + Patrick 4EVA” à la Mark Wahlberg’s bloodied chest in Fear. He then sits in his lonely apartment, which is eerily empty despite Agustín only owning enough stuff to fit into single carload.
Dom meets up for coffee with his ex-boyfriend, the meth addict who was scared straight (but not that straight) and is now selling real estate. The ex, who looks remarkably similar to Bret Easton Ellis’s Twitter avatar, tells Dom how awesome he is now that he’s sober and super rich, and asks him if there’s any way they can relight that old flame. Dom, meanwhile, conveniently forgets to ask him for all the money he loaned to him. It makes Dom start feeling feelings, and we certainly can’t have that, so he goes right home, gets on Grindr, and invites over this twink who I can’t help but notice was the Broadway actor whose profile I came across on Tinder, but with whom I was not matched. They have very quick sex standing up with the lights on in front of a mirror, which seems very exotic.
Afterward, Doris comes home to find Dom sitting in the living room listening to the dulcet tones of his playmate singing “Defying Gravity” while he takes a shower. He tells Doris about his ex, and how he feels like such a cliché for needing sex to feel happier. The scene cuts out after that very emotionally characteristic line of dialogue and before Dom’s little friend could ease into “Let It Go.” Later, Dom goes to meet Lunar Park-era Bret Easton Ellis in the bar at his hotel, where he is entertaining clients. Dom rejects his request to date again and asks for his money back. His ex just laughs and is like, “Ha ha ha, I used to be a meth addict, why would you expect to ever see that again, dude?” Dom reacts as anyone would: he screams, “Once a meth head motherfucker always a meth head motherfucker” as his ex returns to his professional peers.
After spending the afternoon doing Google image searches for “uncut latin cock,” Patrick throws on his Evening Hoodie and goes out to meet his Señor Grande for their big date. He makes charming first-date banter, revealing that he has had sex before, thank you very much, and examines the image of Jesus that Richie has hanging from a chain around his neck and says something like, “You’re religious? You’re really Mexican.” After dancing to some Erasure, Patrick entices Richie to his apartment with promises of his mom’s mac and cheese, but they head straight into the bedroom. Patrick again gets the church giggles while unzipping Richie’s pants, and, when asked what’s so funny, embarrassingly shouts, “I just can’t wait to see your uncircumcised penis because your experience as a human being is literally such a foreign concept to me that it’s the only thing I can think about!”
Richie, naturally, makes it A Whole Thing, and starts to pull up hs pants, claiming he and Patrick are looking — hey-o! — for different things. Richie gets sad, eats some macaroni, and calls Agustín to say that he might be a racist. (He’s at least retroactively self-aware.) Agustín is like, “What are you talking about? I’m Cuban. You can’t be a racist.” Agustín then falls asleep feeling super comfortable that the only thing he has to show for himself as an artist is a collage of penises shaped like a My Little Pony. It seems like everyone still hasn’t found what they’re looking for!