Shortbus: Sex, a Brooklyn Salon, and the 2006 Film That Would Not Behave

In 2006 John Cameron Mitchell released Shortbus, an erotic comedy-drama that got a standing ovation at Cannes and then bumped along the release path because it is explicit. The story is in Brooklyn. A group of lonely adults ends up in a salon called Shortbus. The name comes from the short yellow buses that carried “challenged” kids, and Mitchell uses it for these adults: gifted and also in trouble. They look for each other on a scuffed floor, through art, talk, and sex that is not simulated. Mitchell wanted film to use sex, because sex is too interesting to leave to porn. It is not a dungeon tutorial. Kink, queer relationships, and bad therapy are the same subject. The question is how to connect without disappearing.

Sook-Yin Lee plays Sofia Lin, a couples counselor who is pre-orgasmic: at this point in her life she still cannot come. Her husband Rob is gentle and dull. Their life together is quiet. Sofia’s turn starts when she loses control in a session. She is then sent to the Shortbus salon. Drag artist Justin Bond hosts it, a room where people already admit what they want. At the same time James, a former sex worker, and Jamie, a former child star, start a threesome with Ceth, a former model. Across the street, Caleb has been watching the couple as his private serial. He is afraid Ceth will break that picture, so he comes to the salon and faces the newcomer.

Sofia’s tie to the dominatrix Severin is the uneasy one. In a sensory-deprivation tank Severin helps Sofia loosen. They build a friendship that is not paid for, and they have unplanned sex. Sofia still does not come. The film is plain about that: more kink does not automatically produce an orgasm, and a professional Domme can be locked inside the job too. On another track James has been shooting a film that is a suicide note, and he tries to die. Neighbor Caleb saves him. While James is unconscious, Caleb writes his own phone number and email on James’s face. That is how the two reach each other later. The sex that knows the most about BDSM is not the flogging. It is James, who has never let himself submit, letting Caleb penetrate him. That is grief work, not a hunt for sensation.

The production was a gamble of its own. Mitchell ran workshops for two and a half years before the script was set. The audition site took half a million hits. Forty people improvised in callbacks. Most of the sex is unsimulated. Mitchell turns Hitchcock’s train-in-the-tunnel trick around: if you can show it, the sex itself becomes a metaphor for the rest of a life. In the opening sex scene Lee wears a female condom so the male actor does not have to wear one on camera. Carson has a real orgasm in the orgy. Mitchell performs cunnilingus on camera for the first time, and he called it a gesture of solidarity. The choice cost them. Lee nearly lost her hosting job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Korea’s media rating board banned public screenings over the content and the gay material. Amazon Prime refused the film five times, citing captions out of sync and “offensive content.” What they got back is on screen. Sofia finally comes with Nick and Leah, and the power comes back on at the same time.

The Shortbus salon is not one dungeon set. It is a house with different temperatures. People actually fuck in the Sex-Not-Bombs room. In the Truth-or-Dare room the mayor sits with burlesque performers. There is a trapeze, a swing, and a bedroom. Justin Bond’s hosting is an unspoken order of the room, so the place does not turn into a noisy mall. Rob pays Severin to flog him because he cannot ask his wife for it. The scene ends when Severin loses control and Rob has to comfort the professional. Paid play is labor, and labor has feelings. A client who wants a beating may end up holding the person he hired.

At the end Justin Bond sings “In the End,” and a brass band turns the number into a parade. Sofia comes. The lights come back. That is not a porn promise. It is a narrative amnesty. Mitchell came from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the glam-rock wound with songs. Here he swaps the songs for sex and keeps the wounded jokes. Both films treat a chosen family as something you can assemble from people who do not fit the official bus. In Shortbus, sex is a language for connection, love, and fear. It does not glamorize the awkward body, and it does not use the awkward body as a punchline.