NeuroDivine

Sitting in the Irish Film Institute watching Pillion, I felt the film tugging at different threads of my own life—threads of difference, desire, and faith that rarely sit neatly together. The story of a young man drawn into the orbit of a motorcyclist, with its uneasy mix of intimacy and domination, became for me less about kink and more about the fragile ways we entrust ourselves to another.

As an autistic person, I recognised the protagonist’s hesitations—the awkward pauses, the sense of being out of step with social rhythms. His vulnerability was not weakness but the raw honesty of someone who longs to belong, even when he cannot quite read the signals. That longing resonated deeply with me, reminding me how often intimacy begins in asymmetry, one person leading, another following, yet both searching for connection.

As a gay man, I saw in the motorbike itself a symbol of queer love: exhilarating, risky, demanding courage. To ride pillion is to surrender control, to trust that another will carry you safely. That trust is never simple; it is both thrilling and precarious, echoing the risks we take whenever we love openly in a world that does not always welcome us.

And as an Anglican, I could not help but hear liturgical echoes in the film’s power dynamics. My faith teaches that relationships are covenants, not contracts—that grace can transform imbalance into communion. Watching Pillion, I wrestled with the question: where is grace in a relationship marked by domination? Yet I also sensed that even in such uneven spaces, vulnerability can become a doorway to recognition, and recognition a seed of care.

The film unsettled me, but in that unsettling I found something holy. It reminded me that God meets us not in polished perfection but in the raw edges of our lives—in awkwardness, in risk, in the trembling act of trust. To ride pillion is to place oneself in another’s hands; to live faithfully is to place oneself in God’s. Both acts require courage, both expose us, and both hold the possibility of love breaking through.