The sexual age of consent in most states of the United States is eighteen. Sex with someone below the age of consent is considered statutory rape. What happens when a fifteen-year-old boy truly loves a man nearly twice his age? In Eban and Charley, writer-director James Bolton sensitively focuses on both sides of such a relationship. Twenty-nine-year-old Eban (played by Brent Fellows) is a Seattle schoolteacher who craves “chicken,” that is, underage boys. Previously, he had a relationship with a teenage member of the soccer team at the high school where he taught, but he was fired and had to end the relationship when authorities found out. Luckily, he was not jailed, so he heads home for Christmas with his elderly parents in Oregon. Although his mother seems supportive, his father is distant. Meanwhile, fifteen-year-old Charley (played by Giovanni Andrade) lives with his stepparents, since his birthmother died; although he has an inheritance, his stepfather will not let him have the money and even refuses to buy him new shoes when they are stolen at school. By chance, Eban and Charley meet in town, hang out, end up in the sack together, and fall in love, with Charley considerably more desperate for affection. When both sets of fathers find out about their intimacy, they demand an end to the relationship. Charley then begs Eban to go away together; after Eban ponders the options for a day or so, he agrees. At the end of the film they are on a train bound for Seattle, eloping together. (Filmviewers expecting a tragic double suicide, a not uncommon outcome in real life, are thus relieved.) But since the law will still disallow the relationship, and neither has a job, the film ends without a clue how the two will survive, thus tantalizing filmviewers to expect a sequel, but doubtless a story in which Charley grows up and no longer needs Eban, who will then suffer a severe trauma to his co-dependent personality. Similar to L.I.E., a film that focused on love-starved teenagers driven to have sex with older men, Eban and Charley come from homes where parents are distant from their sons. Whereas Charley wants a father figure to help him cope with his gay tendencies, Eban evidently seeks a younger boy to provide the love that he missed when he was a teenager. An interesting twist to the plot is that a young boy and a young girl, both friends of Charley and children of abusive or indifferent parents, decide to elope before Eban and Charley do so. The message that the behavior of children is a function of the behavior of parents is perhaps even more profound than two simple questions explicitly posed in the Eban and Charley. Why does age matter? What rights does a fifteen-year-old have to choose a life of love? MH