Honestly what just gets to me about Private Romeo at the moment is how clearly envious and repressed Josh Neff/Mercutio is.
He’s the product of a culture where passion for other men is only acceptable when expressed through violence, dominance, competition or friendship. The rules of affection, touching, and expression are obviously severely limited by that.
You can see it in the way he’s always touching his friends’ necks in a severely intimate way, but then changing it and leading them around, asserting himself as dominant. Or when he so casually delivers the “Prick love for pricking,/And you beat love down,” line like it’s the most natural thing on earth, it’s clear he’s constantly told his own feelings of love to fuck off. He beats them, and others, down all the time.
It’s why he’s so upset about Sam/Romeo, in two parts. For one, it means he loses his own hold over Sam, who he very clearly wants to remain close with, keep proximity over, and is probably fairly obsessed with. He’s possessive. He’s also, I interpret, jealous that Sam has rejected the rules of passion for the same gender in ways he hasn’t allowed himself to. He lets himself be gentle, and kind, and soft with Glenn. He gives affection physically with no aggression, and feels no more need for fighting, and doesn’t only express affection through banter anymore, even leaving Josh and Gus/Benvolio in favor of following Omar/Nurse.
And I think most of the characters don’t escape that trap, because they haven’t found the bravery to love each other like Sam and Glenn do until the end, maybe, when instead of fighting his enemy, Josh bandages Carlos/Tybalt’s hand for him, and Gus tells Sam where Glenn is. The movie, complete with a cute dance move and song number, ends on a moment of hope that maybe these two boys, braving the risks to love, can change the way they relate to each other.
