Retake 2017

A mysterious traveler named Jonathan journeys to San Francisco with a single aim: to hire a male escort. After a failed start with Scotty, he returns to the streets and encounters another escortless moment before meeting an unnamed hustler. What begins as a transactional encounter soon spirals into something more charged as a night of sex and polaroids leads Jonathan to propose a road trip to the Grand Canyon, with the escort agreeing to come along unconditionally. The trip becomes a test of trust, identity, and longing as they traverse the American Southwest, chasing a sense of escape and self-discovery.

Jonathan asks the escort to adopt the name “Brandon,” and the bond blossoms quickly. The two men fall into a rhythm that feels both dangerous and intimate: Brandon begins to tailor his appearance and mannerisms to fit the role, while Jonathan softens enough to imagine a future beyond his regimented plans. The escort digs a little deeper—and discovers a photo of someone named “Brandon” tucked in Jonathan’s shaving kit. Instead of walking away, he cuts his hair to resemble the photo, signaling a deeper immersion into the shared fantasy. As their chemistry intensifies, Brandon presses Jonathan to loosen up, to savor the moment, and to shed the defenses he has long carried.

Their journey takes a playful turn when a skinny-dip in a hotel pool goes wrong and a curious straight couple, James and Iris, stumble upon them. Jonathan slips away from the scene, but not before the night leaves him with a mysterious tape of someone singing to him, a clue that something about Brandon’s presence is more than mere illusion. The road trip continues, and a chance encounter with Iris and James at a local bar deepens the sense that Brandon is helping Jonathan become more alive. A drunken return to their motel reveals a new layer of vulnerability; instead of words, they share a moment of motion and light—their headlights painting the night as Jonathan admits he has mostly looked toward the future rather than the present.

The morning after brings a wrenching turn: Jonathan is mugged outside the hotel, his bruises a visible sign of the fragility beneath the surface. Brandon consoles him, but something about the whole arrangement feels unsettled. A hidden packet of old polaroids surfaces, and with it comes the shocking truth: most of the trip, including the mugging, was a fabrication—an elaborate setup to relive a road trip with the real Brandon. The hustler confronts Jonathan with the revelation that the chemistry they shared might have been manufactured from a dead man’s memory. Jonathan confirms a painful truth: Brandon had died of an overdose during the original journey, and he has been chasing a ghost.

The lie collapses, and the two men confront their pasts. The hustler, now revealed to be named Adam from Dayton, Ohio, leaves the flickering dream behind and begins to tell his own story: how he was kicked out of his house as a teen and turned to hustling because he didn’t know who else he could be. Yet in this moment, he and Jonathan recognize something real in each other—the possibility of starting over. They reconvene emotionally at the motel, staying up all night to talk and listen, trading histories that illuminate both their hurts and their stubborn longing for authenticity.

In the dawn of a new choice, Adam vanishes first, leaving behind a quiet reckoning: he slips away with money for a bus ride home, while Jonathan continues toward the Grand Canyon. The distance between them grows, but the emotional bond endures, offering Jonathan strength as he faces an uncertain future. He reaches the rim of the canyon alone, the vast emptiness reflecting his own open-ended path: a future that could be shaped by the lessons learned on this impromptu road trip and the fragile, formative connection that briefly changed him.