We talk a lot about Shane’s closet. The flat color of the paint on the walls. Its contents are piled high, hangers filled and shelves packed, but it’s also organized, everything in its place. Everything perfect, if only everyone else would follow his plan, he can find a way out of it that won’t make anything fall.
But what about Ilya’s closet?
Ilya views his sexuality positively, but practically. He is attracted to men, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s be serious. It’s a treat. Something you do to indulge. A vacation from the path that he must walk. I don’t believe one single article of Ilya’s being thought he would end up with a man until it was too late. He already loved one. Oops.
He hasn’t built an elaborate closet organizational system like Shane, he simple aborts the possibility before it forms. My coach’s son, nothing serious. It’s just a plan to fuck. We get together, we fuck, it’s simple. Even at the cottage: Hollander! It’s not a big deal!
I believe Ilya saw his life as inevitable, rather than trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, like Shane, where there’s effort to hide. To Ilya, it’s simple. Ilya would marry a woman, maybe Svetlana, maybe someone else who he likes and gets along with. Women are fantastic, he prefers them, canonically, or at least acknowledges that it’s easier to prefer them. Have children, he loves kids! No problem. His life is not going to rock the boat, so what does it matter if he fucks a few men now? What does it matter if Shane Hollander stays the night and Ilya makes him a tuna melt and says his name tenderly because he wants to? None of this is real. None of this is the inevitable life that will be his. Is his.
You can contrast this to Ilya’s relationship to hockey, which I think, like Shane, he thought would be the pillar of his life. It would be his actual legacy. Where he made an impact for himself and others.
I think Ilya’s relationship to his bisexuality is tied up with what he thinks he’s deserves as a person. He’s a good lay for men and women, but he’s not anyone’s top choice. And that’s fine, he doesn’t want to get tangled up in feelings anyway. Better to keep things friendly and transactional, like with Svetlana. Like with Hollander! We have a good thing, maybe we can push it a little bit because neither of us have expectations of the other and—oh shit.
You don’t like me: I’m the fun party guy. I’m the guy who fucks you good, I’m not someone you should stake a claim on, someone that should occupy your thoughts. After all, I will not be getting deeply involved. My life is laid out before me, and this doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. We can’t be something, Hollander.
But instead, as we see, Ilya Rozanov dedicates himself to a sweeping, all-encompassing, queer love. He accepts that he has a well of feeling to share, that he has the ability to love deeply despite inconvenience. That he can go against the grain, and be strong. That he isn’t inherently lazy! There’s another Ilya Rozanov in a different universe that said this is too much. I’m supposed to just fall into a life, not build one from scratch.
There’s a reckoning there. But there’s also triumph. Because where Shane must surrender control to find self-acceptance, Ilya must accept that he has to take control of his life in order to find love, contentment, and joy. No one is going to make this happen for him. He has to build it from scratch.
