balthazar's sexuality
this is, and i will warn you, about 40% based on content in the movie and 60% my own speculation and personal theory. i suppose you can consider me an expert because i am coming at this from the perspective of someone with antisocial personality disorder, which i not only firmly believe balthazar has but was also told by oscar boyson in a Q&A that it was the intent for him to show symptoms of it. with that out of the way, here are my thoughts on what balthazar's actual sexuality is and why it matters. spoilers for "our hero, balthazar" under the cut.
it is obviously a fact that balthazar shows a sexual interest in women. his attraction to eleanor and somewhat freudian attachment to his mother are, in my opinion, very real signs of sexuality. in contrast to solomon (who very clearly doesn't have a strong sexual interest in women, at least not outside of cartoons; i legitimately believe solomon had no interest in taylor and really, truly, just wanted to be her friend), balthazar feels very forward and driven with his sexual desires, though not necessarily in the way where he views women as...people.
he has no real romantic interest in eleanor, in my opinion. he is driven by thinking she is attractive because she is different. the "difference" comes from the fact she has a knowledge of violence—something balthy absolutely already found sexually intriguing before ever seeing her speak about school shootings. he outright says to her that she stood out to him because she talks differently from everyone else, and even then, he doesn't have any desire to learn about her passions, beyond spouting buzzwords and key phrases which he assumes she'll agree with ("we're fighting for our lives, here!"). i don't think he wanted to date her or even really converse with her. he believed he had found someone who was intrigued by violence for the same reasons as him and, in reaction, wanted to sleep with her. isn't the fact he tried to make out with her, alone, in his bedroom, to school shooting footage, an obvious tell of that?
& balthazar's mom—she is infantilizing, she is smothering. she clearly sees him as a very young child and i think that babying has created the odd dynamic between them that exists in present. balthazar is both not at all repulsed by the thought of his mother being sexual (1) and feels almost sexually possessive of her and somewhat threatened by other men that have a close tie to her, i.e. hakeem and antony. (2) sure, part of his dislike for hakeem could be from the emasculating and infantilizing comments ("that's a boy's name") but he accepts it readily from his mother. he feels somewhat entitled to her and to say that isn't atleast somewhat sexual in motivation is just silly. obviously, i don't think balthazar wants to fuck his mom. i think, more accurately, his extreme lack of real boundaries with her and her neglect of him and his real emotions has created a link in balthazar's mind between the act of sex and the representation of his mom.
i will be frank: i think balthazar would have sex with solomon. i think this is not an out of character concept. i think there are specific situations where, if all is right, he would initiate a sexual encounter between him and solomon. he would not need to be forced.
i also do not think balthazar is sexually attracted to men.
let me explain.
balthazar strikes me as an aromantic individual (no interest in romance whatsoever, a full inability to feel romantic attraction or romantic love) with a strong interest in sex. i think he likes the gratifying aspect of sex but more than that likes the powerful position that it gives him. he likes to feel in control at all times. with solomon, he would be able to acquire that control even if he doesn't necessarily find solomon attractive and honestly is more disgusted by solomon than anything else. he gets off on being able to overpower first and foremost, and that's why things like watching shooting footage create a level of buffer that ensures he can get off without necessarily needing to be violent during sex.
essentially, i think his sexuality is more sadist-forward than it is gender-forward. if someone adequately lets him air out his sadistic desires (and solomon does; solomon gives him guns and lets him shoot them, solomon is weak and ultimately very passive, solomon is willing to get aggressive with him) he will be interested more than someone who won't but is physically alluring.
but his interest in eleanor doesn't cease when she reacts negatively to him showing her the footage, ultimately because he doesn't think of it as her rejecting sadism—she is still passionate about "death, real death" after all—but rather a misunderstanding of his point. that's why he continues to try and talk to her. maybe, if he lets her in, she will see that they're not so different and that he was just trying to help and do good. that solomon needed to die. that death, maybe, isn't so bad and scary when it is inevitable. that maybe that inevitability is titillating.
so what is balthy's sexuality? in my opinion, it doesn't matter. he conflates sex and violence to such a degree that anything can be sexual to him so long as it inhibits violence.
i think this comes at a great contrast to my belief that solomon's fear of his own homosexuality means he'd be more considerate of a sexual encounter if he lacked any control at all. where solomon wants to feel like he is not responsible for the [gay] sex and thus not capable of being accused of homosexuality, balthazar sees things like "homosexuality" as simple political buzzwords that don't mean much and otherwise will take interest in anything that can give him an inflated sense of violent control. this is why i think they could probably fuck but that's a side thing. (ahem)
tl;dr balthy is the "secret third thing." thanks for hearing me out.
