Simon, Alex and second childhoods ....

I didn't set out intentionally to watch "Love, Simon" and "Alex Strangelove" on consecutive evenings, but while checking to see if Amazon was offering a pay-per-view deal on the former, hit the wrong button and ended up buying it. Which turned out fine.

"Alex Strangelove," a Netflix production, started streaming there on June 8. I'm a subscriber. "Love, Simon" was released in late March by 20th Century Fox and became available digitally on May 29.

I suppose it might seem a little odd that an old guy in the 70-plus category is watching --- and enjoying --- the latest in the teen-romance genre. I just call it part of the second-childhood experience.

Those of us who grew up gay in the 1950s and 1960s didn't anticipate the happy endings in positive settings that these films offer. We certainly had our moments --- mine principally in haylofts, along creek beds and in other hidden places --- but there was never any sense that these fleeting interludes could lead anywhere other than to disaster in our heteronormative universes. My goodness, the fear.

"Everyone deserves a great (teen) love story," the promotional material for "Love, Simon" proclaims. And so do we, darn it, even if only vicariously a considerable number of years later.

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Both films are beautifully produced --- and acted. "Love, Simon" is more appealing --- and charming. "Alex Strangelove" is promoted sometimes as Simon's naughty brother, focused as it is on how a closeted gay kid reacts to the must-get-laid imperative of his straight brethren, and kind of lives up to its advertising.

Both play out in idealized settings of middle-class affluence, supportive high schools where race is of no significance, gender identity and sexual orientation of increasingly limited social consequence and parents are understanding and supportive even though sometimes mildly confused.

But it is interesting to see the same factors operating in these fictional young lives that operated in ours so long ago --- a yearning to be "normal" in a largely heteronormative universe when we know that's not possible, a reluctance to step out of the closet and show ourselves to be who we are even when the result is likely to be generally positive and the deeply embedded fear of losing friends and family when they find out who we really are. 

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My advice to all parents, feeling warm and fuzzy, frazzled and frustrated as their families grow, is to try to imagine during the parenting process that at least one of those kids is going to announce one day, "I'm gay." With a little preparation, you lessen the risk of behaving like an asshole if and when that happens.

I'm not saying that watching either or both of these films will prepare you for this eventuality, but they're lovely idealized visions of how it might work and and watching one or the other certainly won't hurt.