Brokeback Mountain

While it's still fresh in my head I feel compelled to write about this film I saw tonight. I sat with a room full of mostly men at The Chelsea Cinemas for the first showing of Brokeback Mountain. I have to say what I expected and what I got were two very different things. I expected half naked bodies frolicking in the sunshine with the great landscape of Wyoming serving as a backdrop ala some Falcon Video. By and large Hollywood has never been able to, or had the courage to present a true love story about two men without drawing on stereotypical characters and cheesy gay themes. Brokeback Mountain is a moving tale of two men and and a love that spans 20 years of getting married, having children, going thru the day to day routine in seperate states and always secretly longing for the other. These men meet on "fishing trips" over decades, but never spend more than a week together. In the end one is left alone when the other dies in a freak accident. Heath Legers character finding out his best friend and lover of twenty years (Jake Gyllenhal) is dead by a DECEASED stamp in red ink across a returned post card he had sent in hopes of seeing his buddy Jack.

These two men were so thought provoking to me. I have lived my life "out loud" since I was 24, which is pretty late compared to many of my friends. I move thru life surrounded by proud queers who live for the most part safely within the confines of the concrete that makes up Manhattan. On an average day I would have to say at least 50% of my interactions are done with people who live the same lifestyle I do. The other half is done with people who see me and my community on an everyday basis. They might not understand it, but certainly don't chase me down the street with a baseball bat. I have never really had to explain my life to too many people once I stepped up to the plate and owned who I was. The main characters in Brokeback Mountain are quite the opposite. This question keeps coming into my head. Does falling in love with another man make you GAY or simply capable of loving another human being without thinking FIRST about what is between their legs? Being "GAY" is a lifestyle in many ways. I do not believe an individual has a choice in the matter of desiring someone of the same sex. Your brain may try to reason otherwise, but your heart tells you what feels right to you. These men of Brokeback Mountain were not flag waving, freedom ring wearing guys you would see at the parade. They were two men that no matter how conventional they tried to live their lives, HAD to have each other.

I have met so many men in my lifetime that desire other men, but could never commit to living their lives in the open. They could never come clean with themselves or the people around them that they have felt an emotional as well as physical need to be with the same sex. Many need their partner to at least appear as the opposite sex to be ok with being intimate. These men live their day to day routine with girlfriends and wives and children. Their lives are burdened with shame and denial. They carry a secret that they feel is so bad that if they were find out their lives would be ruined. I don't know what living like that must be. I have had an on again, off again love affair with the same guy for nine years. What I wear is not an issue with him. I have always been introduced as his friend, which I am. BUT I am also something much more. His face kept flashing in front of me during the film. I thought how bound he must feel. How heavy his heart must be to never be able to say out loud who he is. I used to try to pressure him. I WANTED him to be gay. I wanted him to say it. How selfish on my part. To him gay is not a life he is cut out to live. IS he gay, or is he simply a man that for what ever reason found another person that he wanted to share himself with? It really is baffling. Why is my desire so strong to live my life in the light and his so secretive that he constantly wrestles in the darkness?

This film is important. Number one is paints a picture of two men in love that are not lisping leather daddy's or drag queens. It is a story of two common men living their lives a million miles from Christopher Street, the East Village or the Castro. They know nothing but what feels right to them. There is a purity to this film that I have not seen before. Jake Gyllenhal is admirable as Jack Twist. This movie belongs to Heath Leger. His portrayal of Enis is so human. Roles like this don't come around often, like stories like this seldom get told. Go see Brokeback Mountain and tell me what you think.