At the end of the video for “That’s What I Want,” it reads, “Story by Lil Nas X.” But the more accurate crediting would be to Annie Proulx, the author of “Brokeback Mountain,” published as a short story for The New Yorker in 1997 before it became a trailblazing film directed by Ang Lee for the Hollywood mainstream in 2005.
Before Lil Nas X dives right into “his” version of the homo cowboy plot, he starts us off on the football field at Montero University. A meteoric light in the sky rains down over the stadium, producing Lil Nas X like some kind of gay Lucifer—the fallen angel meant to show certain other football players their “true identity.” The player (no double meaning intended), in this scenario, being portrayed by Yai Ariza, a dancer for Lil Nas X and, at times, rumored to be his “main thing” (as Ariana would call it).
After Lil Nas X is wheeled off the field for his knee injury, Ariza finds him in the locker room, answering X’s lyric, “I wonder if he got the G or the B/Let me find out and see, he comin’ over to me, yeah.” And soon, cumming all over Lil Nas X as well whilst proceeding to take him from behind in the shower (clutch your pearls not, however, for safe sex is promoted with a nice shot of the condom wrapper being ripped open with Lil Nas X’s mouth). But after this scene, already meant to “normalize” not just gayness but Black gayness (especially in the hip hop industry) with its so-called “pornographic” shock value, Lil Nas X can’t resist borrowing from another tired trope in the gay male fantasy realm: the cowboy fetish. Bringing us back to his slow buildup to outright filching the “Brokeback Mountain” narrative (established “long ago on the Road” a.k.a. “Old Town Road”). Thus, we see him in full cowboy regalia strumming his guitar by the campfire that Ariza is also sitting next to, clearly the Ennis del Mar to Nas X’s Jack Twist.
After the requisite “sexy time” scene in the tent, another cut to Lil Nas X approaching Ariza’s house—a set design and moment that looks pulled from The Notebook—with flowers behind his back leads us to the inevitable “Michelle Williams problem.” Or rather, Michelle Williams playing Ennis’ wife, Alma. Here, too, Lil Nas X is met with the unwanted reality of Ariza’s fundamental “straightness” (more “B” than “G,” alas). Not only is Lil Nas X horrified to see a woman (and a white woman, to boot) answering the door, but also the presence of a small child that further complicates any chance for love he thought he might have had with Ariza. Thus, we cue the requisite “emotional driving” scene, also executed by Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain, followed by the anticipatory drinking-home-alone scene (that rather reminds one of Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit).
Despite Lil Nas X’s intent with “That’s What I Want” being to accent the particular brand of loneliness of the homosexual Black male seeking more than a hookup (and oftentimes on the downlow), his lyrics resonate across all walks of life when he laments, “These days, I’m way too lonely/I’m missin’ out, I know/These days, I’m way too alone/And I’m known for givin’ love away, but/I want (I), someonе to love me/I need (I), someonе who needs me/‘Cause it don’t feel right when it’s late at night/And it’s just me in my dreams/So I want (I), someone to love/That’s what I fuckin’ want.” Antithetically, the subtle insertion of the word “I” in parentheses throughout the chorus serves to highlight just how impossible it is for those living in the age of narcissism to be in anything like a genuine relationship.
Resigned, therefore, to a life of, as Instagram and other social media outlets have taught us to do, loving himself, Lil Nas X walks down the aisle of a church in a wedding gown (another instance of him “unwittingly” lampooning women [aside from the whole “I’m pregnant” shtick] in a bid to claim, “Gender nonconformity” for gay men). He’s about to marry, who else, himself—sologamists rejoice! Even though this was a precedent set by Carrie Bradshaw in the SATC episode, “A Woman’s Right to Shoes,” Nas X isn’t doing it to justify setting up a registry at Manolo Blahnik, so much as to insist that he’s learned, at this point, how to be alone. Not only that, but he’s aware that being your own best friend (as Beyoncé phrased it on “Me, Myself and I”) is sometimes what one has to “settle for.”
Plus, that’s easy enough to do when you’re taking control of your emotions on an electric guitar handed to you by Billy Porter (because no commentary about Black male gayness would be complete without his randomly occurring presence). Directed by Stillz (best known for his work with Bad Bunny, a “queer icon” himself regardless of being straight), the earnest breakdown of the song comes as a tear-stained-from-black-mascara Lil Nas X strums the final notes on his guitar and screams, “So I want (I), someone to love/That’s what I fuckin’ want!”
Or so he thinks… until, like many of us, the presence of “someone to love” still doesn’t quite fill the void inside (appropriately, there’s also a song on Montero called “Void”). And yet, he can’t help but romanticize the feeling of what it would be like to, as Freddie Mercury said, “find me somebody.” Anybody. Ergo Lil Nas X’s lyrics, “Look, you know it’s harder to find in these times/But I got nothin’ but love on my mind.” Making it, like everything else, about capitalizing on youth, he adds, “I need a baby while I’m in my prime.” This, too, can allude to his well overplayed at this point pregnancy gambit.
Being an honorary resident of LA, Lil Nas X also isn’t ashamed to admit that “love,” for him, isn’t as much about a person’s intelligence as it is about their appearance, asserting, “Love me or nothin’ ‘cause I’m not wanting anything/But your loving, your body and a little bit of your brain.” For Ennis and Jack, the connection wasn’t really about “brains” either, so much as a magnetic physical attraction and a deep emotional connection rooted in their shared background of repression. As Prouxl described of their spark, “Rural North America, regional cultures, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.” A large part of this quote applies easily to Lil Nas X, who once believed, while stuck in the specific rigid and difficult circumstances of his own upbringing, that he would likely never be able to come out. And look at him now, one of the lone queer icons of the notoriously homophobic hip hop industry.
Yet, like Olivia Rodrigo’s recent “brutal” video, the lack of newness in the concept of “That’s What I Want”—despite touting itself as being “avant-garde” (in Rodrigo’s case, because of the “masks,” in Lil Nas X’s case, for banging a dude in the locker room)—is merely another trick of capitalism. Convincing us that even though we’ve seen everything they’ve packaged to us before in some form or other, what we’re seeing this time is truly “different.” The underlying reality, of course, is that this is patently not new. Because, yes, it already happened, at the bare minimum, in Brokeback Mountain. For those that doth protest the argument as a result of Brokeback portraying white instead of Black men, take comfort in Lil Nas X’s repressed college-age element in the video being plucked from the likes of high school movies Blackbird and Naz & Maalik [minus the Muslim aspect]). Ironically, Lil Nas X even shares something in common with Rodrigo’s go-to visual lexicon in that he sets his stage in the world of jock sports (opting for the college setting, instead of the high school one, which, in truth, makes the tryst less taboo because, as we’re all told, college is the place we’re told we can finally “be who we are”). To boot, the intro to “That’s What I Want” could even pass as the opening for “good 4 u,” itself a rip-off of Paramore’s “Misery Business”—everything being a copy of a copy of a copy, as it were.
And, speaking of, Prouxl once admitted her surrender to “Brokeback Mountain” forever being the story that people glom onto, especially men, as she lamented, “They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for ‘fixing’ the story.” That seems to be, on some level, what Lil Nas X is attempting in “That’s What I Want” by inserting himself into the narrative (among other things) under the pretense of “homage.”
