Two men get stuck in the middle of nowhere, en route to meet up with some "pretty ladies" who they hope will wash the gay right out of them. Shoulder, one of Flashpoint's Fringe Festival offerings, tries to create sympathy for a couple of self-loathing gay men, but ultimately creates just the opposite. This is no Angels in America, a story of men struggling to make sense of their place in a society plagued by political oppression. Though there is one vague mention that the play might take place in the early 1980's (their broken-down 1972 Chevy Nova), there is no other social context to the story, so it's difficult to understand the motivations of these characters, especially sitting here in relatively Gay and Proud Washington, D.C.

Rob Heinly is successful at putting emotion into his character, Rafe, especially considering he spends the whole play seated on the ground after having been inexplicably chained to a tire and abandoned by a policeman who caught the two men "changing a flat tire" in the middle of the woods at three in the morning. Of course, most of this "emotion" is loud, profane vitriol directed at either Mitchell (Christopher C. Holbert) or the constantly screeching cicadas in the background. Holbert is a bit awkward, and seems to read his lines from unseen cue cards like an SNL Host. Randy Tusing is believable as a crazy swamp man, but often spoke what seemed to be important lines too softly to be heard even by this theatergoer sitting four feet away.

The problem isn't the acting, however, it's the subject matter and playwright Bob Bartlett's intended goal, which flounders from some kind of group hug for disenfrancished gay men, into, instead, an embrace of the "Gays Can Change" mentality. Or at least, if they don't, they'll never be happy or find real love.

Prostitution, incest, and man-on-dog/donkey imagery abounds in this play, to the point where one wonders if Rev. Fred Phelps actually wrote this faux-progressive script under a pseudonym just to fuck with our heads. The two men are ambiguously brothers and lovers; Rafe screams at Mitchell to forget his Marine ex-boyfriend who forced him to clean house and cook meals ("like a little woman") but, a la Pretty Woman, never kissed him on the mouth; and in the most revolting of analogies, Crazy Swamp Man lovingly watches a spider bite him on the shoulder, only to later beg the brothers/lovers to slice his arm clean off, for fear the poison will spread and infect his whole body, like so much homosexual cancer.

All this culminates in a final, cum-spraying scene of despair so grotesque you're not sure whether to be sick just from the sheer shock factor, or from that ultimate kick in the gut for these two pitiful, self-flagellating men who want you to hate them even more than they hate themselves.

Shoulder plays on July 27 (10 p.m.) and July 29 (3 p.m.) at Flashpoint's Mead Theater Lab. Tickets can be purchased here.